Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  I cast my eyes down to the carpet, trace a geometric pattern in the pile with my index finger. “Sometimes,” I begin politely, quietly, “a car’s ignition can be triggered remotely, sometimes when the speedometer hits a certain speed, something malfunctions, something explodes.” I look into his eyes, whispering as if I were revealing a confidence. “I had thought about a kind of trigger like this when I was in Los Angeles. I read a lot about them. I could easily install one.”

  He reaches for his tea, momentarily unsettled. “You know of course that I would know immediately if you provided any information that might compromise my situation. You know, as well as anybody, that the consequences would touch not just you, but your family,” he narrows his eyes, “that American woman you married, and your sons.”

  “I understand.”

  He sits back, looks up, closing his eyes, consulting with himself. “I can get you to Spain, Guatemala maybe.”

  “Mexico. A flight to Mexico.”

  “Give me some time.”

  Chapter 20

  * * *

  The word from Sheikh Omar arrives in an envelope, unexpectedly ornate, like an invitation to a wedding. He has invited me to join him for an evening of music Celebrating the rich cultural heritage and brilliant innovation of the master Afghan rubab player, Hamyouk Hussain and Peshawar’s own Masood Zakiri on tabla. Perhaps the invitation is a ruse, and the Sheikh intends to kill me before the evening is out. Perhaps the invitation reflects his profound understanding of what has kept me alive all these years. Regardless, the invitation is irresistible. I purchase a new kurta, elegant with zahri-work embroidery along the collar and hems. When the car comes to fetch me, I tremble, perched on the cusp of a great shift in my life. I feel as if I am preparing simultaneously for my wedding and my funeral.

  I sit on the deep pile of the red carpet, the same carpet on which the musicians sit a mere ten feet from me. As they warm up their fingers and wrists on their instruments, I look around, try to distinguish individual conversations from the low rumble of voices. Someone discusses the routes of East West airlines and their frequency through Dubai, another ridicules the audacity of some small merchant family sending inquiries about his daughter’s marriage plans. All conversations discretely stop, though, when the door at the end of the room opens and Sheikh Omar steps in, his arm over the shoulder of another man, who is immaculately groomed and elegantly dressed in a kurta, obviously, but diffidently tailored out of the finest cloth.

  The musicians sense the change in the room, express thanks for the host’s hospitality and begin to play. In all my years of listening to recordings of the music, I have seen my beloved musician only a handful of times, and never in such an intimate setting. I can hardly contain my excitement to see the plucking of the strings in the very instant the sound is created. But my delight does not, cannot last long. As I feel their eyes on me, I look up. Sheikh inclines his head to whisper into the other man’s ear and nod in my direction. The man looks familiar, I try to place him. I close my eyes and feel the music. I remember him, Dawood, from a newspaper caption under a photo, the eldest son of Ibrahim Dawood, the powerful king of the underworld, the Muslim mobster who fled India and took refuge in Pakistan. This son helps him run the family’s far flung businesses—hotels, drugs, shopping malls, even East West airlines—from Bangladesh to Morocco.

  When the music finishes, Sheikh Omar and Dawood the younger clap politely, I look around the room again, wondering about the dozen or so men, Afghans, Pathans, Pakistanis, but do not approach any of them. And when I turn to look again at Sheikh Omar and Dawood, they are gone. The only person I really care about in the room is Ustaad Hussain, Master Hussain. I wait until the other men have expressed their appreciation, their hands to their hearts, nodding, flashing brief smiles. Finally I approach him, unsure what to say after two decades in a one-sided relationship. He looks up at me and I am silent, amazed simply to be looking into his eyes. What pain they must have known, what understanding of beauty they convey.

  “You cannot imagine how honored I am to have been here, Ustaad.”

  He smiles. “The honor is mine. I am indebted to Sheikh Omar.”

  “Really?”

  He smiles again. “My most important patron.”

  “Here in Peshawar or in Afghanistan?”

  “Yes,” he says with ambiguous finality.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I continue before he can refuse me, “do you have any words for a man returning from exile?”

  He thinks for a minute, inhales. “No words, but listen,” he motions for me to sit down. He plucks a few notes from his instrument, each one seemingly a whole beautiful phrase in and of itself. And then a cascade of angry arpeggios, and long lilting notes of sadness. He looks up, eyebrows raised to see if I have understood.

  “Bittersweet,” I say.

  “Precisely.”

  I return to my room, my cell in exile, relieved to be alive, bewildered about the meaning of Sheikh Omar’s invitation.

  Zaid, my assistant, knocks. “A car has come. You need to take a look at it. Range Rover, custom stereo.”

  I open the door, Zaid stands as he always does, even as he continues to grow older. But today I stand differently, perhaps smaller, but leaning forward into my future. “I’m done with my service. You can repair the car, you have all my tools, you know as much as I do now.”

  He pulls back, stands taller. “Really? You think you can stop just like that, like turning off a light?”

  The word makes me think of Noor. She said it is written that I will leave. Looking at one more car won’t make a difference.

  I follow Zaid, sit in the driver’s seat. I turn the key in the ignition, all of the meters glow to life and the engine hums without error. He didn’t mention the problem. With a sinking feeling, I imagine Sheikh Omar has sent the car, somehow booby trapped. I reach to turn off the car, notice an envelope in the compartment between the seats. A small handwritten note inside says, The path to freedom begins beneath your feet. And the music is for you. I turn on the stereo and hear the notes of Ustaad Hussain. I recognize the melody from the night before. I relive those magical minutes, without the anxiety of Dawood’s gaze. When the music ends, I brace myself, pull up the floor mat. No wire, no trigger, no explosion. I find a passport, the cover carefully worn. Inside, the photo of a Sikh man in a turban with a dour expression gazes at me with my eyes. A small sheet of paper stuck between the pages notes a flight, East West Airlines, Karachi to Dubai to Madrid, scheduled for three weeks from today.

  Chapter 21

  * * *

  I run my finger over the new hairs above my lip. After two and a half weeks my mustache has grown in above my beard. My Islamist identity has transformed into another Sikh identity. I unburden myself of the things I have acquired in Peshawar. The tools obviously go to Zaid. My few books I bring to a second hand bookstore. My music collection and the latest of my players I pack into a small satchel and bring to Lucky Lane. I want Noor to understand the Ustaad’s message; beauty continues in exile, and eventually exile can lead to homecoming. But more importantly, I need her blessing.

  She sits with her back toward the door, the room still smells of male sweat and sex. She turns, her expression of bland fatigue softens into recognition. She respectfully pulls a chunni over her hair, as if our meeting required the manners of the outside world.

  I kneel before her, rest my head in her lap. “I’m returning. I need to see my sons, to face my wife.” She runs her fingers through my hair. “What should I say to her?” I ask in a whisper.

  “Don’t say much.” She traces the outline of my ear with her finger. “Listen. Tell her you have never stopped loving her. Mostly, you must ask for her forgiveness.”

  I inhale at the enormity of such a request, lift my head to see her eyes. “Do you think she would give it? Would you?”

  She looks past me, seeing beyond this room to some distant landscape, maybe the apricot orchard, maybe the edge of her
brother-in-law’s farm. After a long pause she finally speaks again. “She will ask why you waited so long. Why you didn’t let her know you were alive.” She looks directly at me. “What will you tell her?”

  I squirm as I did when once my mother learned I had cheated on an exam. Then as now, I could offer no good answer, I could only recognize some flaw in my character, some selfishness, some weakness. “I’ve been ashamed, I’ve felt afraid. I was strong enough to plan and build a bomb, but I wasn’t strong enough to face her.”

  “You’ve waited long enough. Go and be a man.”

  Chapter 22

  * * *

  I tell the taxi driver I am going to the airport. He simply nods and shifts the car into gear. For him this routine trip means nothing more than a large fare and perhaps a good tip. He does not know that the airport will launch me into a world of unknowns as dangerous as the dragons cartographers used to draw beyond the contours of the charted world. The car merges onto the street that leads to the ring road, ascending the overpass, swerving quickly to avoid a man leading a bullock cart loaded with his family and their ragged bundles of belongings. Perhaps he is in exile, perhaps he has left his home and garden, his trees and goats on the other side of the Khyber pass. For a moment I envy him the warmth of his wife and children.

  Last week Sheikh Omar had called me on my assistant’s phone. “Everything is arranged,” he had told me. “But you will only come to know the details of each leg of the journey when you need to. Have faith,” he commanded me, “and do not fear. Your fear will only arouse the suspicion of others.” I close my eyes and recall a familiar melodic phrase plucked from the rubab. I hum the phrase over and over, as others would repeat a mantra.

  In the airport, I struggle to understand the bewildering maze of ticketing and security. Two decades out of practice, I ask other travelers which way to go, where to stand, what documents to present. I may have spent countless hours sitting in luxury cars, but I am less worldly than the illiterate laborers who leave this place, dreams of consumer goods and education for their children fuelling their flight.

  And then I am on a plane, rising into the air. Pakistan falls away below. The air host previews the Chinese action film, the complimentary feature which will be screened on the seatback screens. And suddenly the ease of my release stuns me. Without any physical exertion, without any contrived interchanges, I am hurtling toward America. Three and a half hours ago I closed the door on my small rooms for the last time. I could have made these same actions last year or the year before, or many years before. Noor’s question haunts me. Kathryn will ask why I waited so long.

  The taxi turns into a run-down neighborhood on the outskirts of Madrid where storefront signs are lettered in both Spanish and Arabic, two languages I can read but cannot decode. The driver stops in front of a small hotel, turns and speaks to me. I shake my head. He points to the piece of paper where I had written an address. Still unsure, I pay the fare and step out into the smell of fried fish and garlic, diesel and potted rose bushes.

  I look for numbers on the building that would match the address in my hand. A Moroccan man, dressed in an ochre-colored jalabeyah walks past, answering a tinny recording of the call to prayer. Suitcase in hand, I follow him into a narrow doorway, opening into a small courtyard leading to a mosque, covered in brilliant North African mosaics. I crave the coolness of the mosque, the familiarity of the prayer. I leave my shoes in the antechamber and roll my suitcase up next to them. I wash my hands and face in the communal faucet and pray on foreign soil. Only when another man eyes me on the way out do I remember that my turban marks me as a Sikh, not a Muslim.

  I check into the small hotel room and fall into a coma-like sleep. The morning brings a breeze and a new set of fears. I don’t know where or when or how I will get to the next place I am going, the next increment closer to America. I sip strong coffee in the hotel café and notice a changing of the guard at the front desk. A dour old man takes over from a young man, perhaps he is the grandfather, for the day shift. Clutching my cup for some kind of false safety, I approach the old man.

  “Excuse me,” I ask in English, remembering the question Sheikh Omar had instructed me to ask, “do you know where I can exchange Pakistani rupees for dollars?”

  The old man laughs, his face suddenly opening like a vision of Santa Claus. “No one wants the Pakistani money,” he squeaks. “But maybe I have a friend who can help you with the transaction. Wait here, he will come this afternoon for his tea.”

  “Thank you,” I say discerning a knowing twinkle in his eyes. “Shukria,” I say in Punjabi, expressing not just polite thanks, but profound gratitude.

  I wander a few blocks from the hotel taking in the strangeness of the place. The people dressed in such modern clothes, the women revealing shoulders, hair, cleavage so nonchalantly. I stare at these provocative curves as if they were magnets, the local men hardly seem to notice. Advertisements display shiny cars, sleek mobile computers, clean and beautiful people consuming all manner of alcohol. In all my memories and fantasies of America, I had omitted the brazen sexuality and consumerism of the West. Like a mole deprived of light, I have developed other senses to compensate. I have fallen in love with music, with sounds that reach the most intimate recesses of my heart. I follow the curves of the sublime, understand the seduction of memory and hope, know that riches and lusting after material things are merely strategies for crowding out loneliness. I return to my hotel bed, close my eyes, try to calm my jangled nerves.

  In the afternoon a young Palestinian arrives at the hotel, dressed in athletic clothes I find ugly and cheap looking, but suspect reflect the latest fashions. The old concierge directs the young man to my table. He does not sit, or want to linger over tea. He glances every few seconds at his mobile computer sliding his thumb across its screen. “Tell me who you know,” he enquires bluntly.

  Stunned at his impatience, I say quietly, “Sheikh Omar.”

  The young man scowls, he reminds me of Ali, a restless misdirected energy brewing beneath his skin. “You cause me a lot of work. But follow me. We’ll start with the hawala and the funds.”

  I avoid thinking too much. I allow myself to be led, directed. I sit on the back of his scooter, close enough to smell his cologne. He pulls up to a small shop selling mobile phones, prepaid calling cards, and a rainbow of frivolous phone accessories.

  He speaks to the man behind the counter in a pastiche of Arabic, Spanish, and English. At some point, he looks around the shop, confirming we are the only customers and then opens his palm, motioning for me to hand him something.

  When I shrug, he whispers impatiently, “Passport.”

  I remove the small book from my pants pocket, clutch it for a moment before allowing him to take it.

  Once again on the back of his scooter, darting through cars and small lanes, he says over his shoulder, “I’ll come back to the hotel in a couple of days, you’ll have an Indian passport.”

  I return to my hotel room and resume my painfully familiar occupation—waiting.

  And then I am on a plane to Buenos Aires. Another hotel, another couple of contacts, I don’t bother to ask if they are Palestinian, or Algerian, Egyptian, or Lebanese. What do I care about their jihad, their revolution, the illicit ways they move people and money and weapons around the world? I have faith in their abilities.

  More waiting.

  Then a flight to Mexico City. I take a bus to Tijuana. Woozy with the smell of stale beer and fried corn, I am weary from the waiting. I ask my way to the hotel. As I sit on the bed watching a cockroach wander unafraid along the floorboard, the phone rings. I pick up the earpiece, hold it gingerly next to my head, as if it might hurt me. “Hello?”

  “Buy a business suit, you’ll travel by Mercedes and need to look like a businessman.”

  “When?”

  “Two days.” The line goes silent.

  I lie back on the bed and smile, amused. I may not be comfortable with a Western suit, but a Mercedes,
any Mercedes, will be like an old friend.

  I check the corners of the ceiling, but no arrow points toward Mecca. What do I care? The only direction I want to know is north.

  When the car arrives at my hotel two days later, my intestines are in turmoil from the water, but I am pleased to see the car bears California license plates. The driver looks me over as I sit in the passenger seat, he does not linger in the driveway. “Not the most stylish suit, but I guess it’ll do.” I figure he is Lebanese, maybe Syrian. “And the shoes?” he asks. I lift my foot to show him.

  “White socks?”

  I am silent. They are new, I bought them at the same time I bought the shoes.

  “Don’t you have any dark socks?”

  I just shake my head. Why does he care about my socks?

  “God dammit. We’ll have to stop and get you some dark socks. Better be quick, it’s nerve wracking enough to cross the border, but sitting here in Tijuana in a Mercedes is just asking for trouble.” He swerves to pull into a small parking space. “Wait, I think I have a pair in my bag.” He jumps out of the car and I see the trunk open through the rear window. He returns with a crumpled pair of black socks.

  “If we’re lucky they’ll just wave us through at the border, but sometimes they look in and if they see something that strikes them as odd, they’ll pull us over for extra scrutiny.”

  I cringe as I pull on his dirty socks.

  He pulls the car back into the street. “You can call me Abe, short for Abdul. Show me your passport.”

  I pull it from my breast pocket. He holds it in his lap, glancing back and forth from the stamped pages to the cars around us. He nods, pulls a small plastic card from his own breast pocket, slides it into the passport and returns it to me. As I examine the forged green card in the passport, he talks quickly.