Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  “Who?” Her words catch Michael off guard.

  “Your father.”

  “You finally want to talk about what happened?” He had wondered if she would ever breach this taboo.

  “No. After everything, after all these years, he wants to see you boys.”

  He cannot make sense of her words, smells the alcohol on her breath. “Did you dream about him?”

  She opens her eyes, sits up and looks squarely at Michael. “It was no dream, Rashid Siddique is alive. He came to see me today.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me he’s alive?”

  “I didn’t know.” She opens her mouth to speak, uncertain where to start. When the words don’t come she asks Michael for a glass of water. He goes to the kitchen, returns to find her head slumped on the back of the couch, her eyes closed. He touches her shoulder to rouse her, hands her the water.

  “Where’s he been all this time?” he asks.

  She closes her eyes, raises her eyebrows as if they will help her articulate her thoughts. “In Pakistan, living underground with a different name.” She retells some of what Rashid told her today. She closes her eyes again, not wanting to see the pain this will cause Michael.

  “So where is he now? When can I see him?”

  This reaction surprises her, she sits up, suddenly alert. “Why would you want to see him?”

  “What do you mean? He’s my father.”

  “He’s a terrorist.”

  “And you’re his wife.”

  Before she can stop herself, she slaps her son. After so many years of fighting this identity, of reconstructing her life to avoid being the terrorist’s wife, to protect her children from the reality of their father’s actions, she cannot tolerate her own son forcing this identity upon her.

  He stands up, backs away from her, stunned. “That was uncalled for. I didn’t do any of this to you.”

  She starts to cry, holds out her hand to him. “I’m sorry. Sit down. I don’t know what to think, what to do before he comes here again.”

  “He’ll come again? When?”

  “I don’t know, he just said he would come again.”

  “We need to call Andrew. We all need to be together.”

  “No,” she says fiercely. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  “You can’t keep this from him. Rashid’s his father too.”

  “Some father.”

  “Andrew can judge Rashid however he chooses, but you at least have to give him the opportunity.”

  From the freeway they can hear the scream of an emergency vehicle, and then the night is quiet again.

  She sighs, closes her eyes. “Call him in the morning, it’s too late now. I just want to sleep.” She looks up, feels only her own weakness. “Will you stay on the couch?”

  “Of course.”

  Kathryn wakes, walks to the bathroom, opens the medicine cabinet for aspirin. She blinks through a residual alcohol fog. In the bathroom she notices the bathtub is clean, not a single shard of broken glass. Perhaps she only imagined the encounter with Rashid the day before. Perhaps she has only awoken from a nightmare and the sunlight will shine on her life just as it did the previous morning. But in the kitchen she sees Andrew already sitting with Michael. He stands to kiss her.

  “Hi, Mom. What’s going on? Michael told me it was an emergency.”

  “More like a disaster. Michael hasn’t told you anything?”

  Andrew shakes his head. “What’s wrong, are you sick?”

  “Is there coffee?”

  Michael pours her a cup, adding milk and sugar as he knows she likes it.

  “Michael, can you explain this to Andrew? I don’t have the strength to tell the whole story.”

  Michael exhales, puffing out his cheeks at the enormity of the story. “You remember my commencement speech? About the different systems of justice?”

  Andrew nods.

  “Well the idea of a man from another culture obligated to take revenge for some injustice done to his family, that wasn’t…um… that’s much closer to our lives than you think. Sometimes a man does something because he has no choice, because his culture demands it, they don’t have better systems.”

  “Michael, spare me the moral lecture, what’s happening here?”

  Michael tries another tack. “Andrew, our father did a terrible thing when you were just a baby. He didn’t die in an accident, we thought he was killed in a bombing in Los Angeles that he had planned. A revenge attack, after his own father was killed by an American drone attack in Pakistan.”

  Andrew’s brow furrows. “Mom, is this true?” She doesn’t look up from her coffee cup. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Michael’s telling you the truth. But what I found out yesterday…someone came to see me…your father isn’t dead…he was here yesterday.”

  “What the hell? Why don’t I know anything about any of this? I always thought our father was Greek.” Anxiously, he squeezes one of his thumbs. “Mom, you lied about this all these years? You broke your precious little code of conduct to me, of all people? ‘Tell the truth’ you always harped. What’s the truth here?”

  “I didn’t lie,” Kathryn says, almost a whisper. “I protected you by telling you nothing. Whatever you heard about your father when you were children, I’m sure Michael told you, not me.”

  “All right Mr. Storyteller, you better tell me the whole story now. How long have you been lying to me too?”

  “Don’t twist this, it’s not all about you.” Michael looks at their mother protectively. “I haven’t lied to you either. I found out all of this on my own in law school, I went looking, did some research.”

  “And you found…?”

  “And I found we are the heirs to a very ugly legacy. Mom tried to shield us, but the truth always comes out.” Michael takes a gulp of coffee. “It’s probably best if I start back when Mom was working in the Middle East.”

  “Mom, you worked in the Middle East?”

  She nods, “A long time ago, before you were born.”

  And Michael continues the story. The facts Kathryn recognizes. The nuances, the inferences however, seem foreign to her. So invested she has become in protecting herself and her boys with an alternative version of the story, that she can hardly understand the possibility of another perspective. Eventually Michael’s story leads to the present. Silently, he places his open palm over the top of the coffee cup, a gesture of finality.

  “Oh my God.” Andrew runs his fingers through his thick wavy dark hair. “What do I say to all this? You two, my family, now you feel like strangers with all this deception. And some stranger shows up claiming to be my father and wants to know me.” He pushes his chair back, stands up. “No thank you, I don’t want any of this. You can work out the drama without me.”

  “Andrew!” Michael scolds. “We need to see him, he’s our father.”

  “I never had a father.”

  “Mom, don’t you think we have an obligation?”

  “An obligation?” Andrew snorts. “Since when do you owe him anything?”

  Michael begins to answer, but a knock on the door interrupts him. He and Michael both look at their mother, unspeaking. The knock comes again. Kathryn stands up and calls out, “Just a minute.” She steps into the bedroom to change out of her bathrobe. When she comes out again, dressed in dark pants and a sweater, Andrew is sitting next to his brother, hands clasped, knuckles white. Kathryn nods at her sons and calls through the door, “Hello?”

  “Hello. May I come in?” a man’s voice replies.

  She inhales deeply and opens the door. Rashid, bearded, with dark circles under his eyes, appears darker skinned than she remembered.

  Andrew unclasps his hands, presses them into his thighs, wishing he had already left, but unable to turn away from this strange looking man.

  Kathryn steps aside to allow him to enter.

  Michael speaks first. “I’m Michael.” He stands, holds out his hand. “You must be Rashid Si
ddique.”

  The father reaches out for his son’s hand, holds the warmth of his own flesh and blood as a stranger. Rashid wishes he could pull this man close, embrace the little boy, now grown.

  Into the pregnant silence, Michael speaks, “And this is my brother Andrew.”

  Reluctantly, Andrew stands up and puts out his hand, forcing Rashid to move toward him. “Masha’allah. My God, you are such a man.”

  “That’s what happens in twenty years,” Andrew says caustically.

  After another awkward pause, Rashid tries to be gracious. “Can I take you all out for tea, maybe somewhere we could sit and talk?”

  “Not outside,” Kathryn says. “I will make you a cup of coffee if you want. We’ll sit here.”

  “Yes, please. I would appreciate it.”

  The father and his unfamiliar sons sit down around the table. Kathryn brings the husband a cup of black coffee, remembering how he preferred his drinks sweet and milky. She waits to see his grimace, wonders if he will have the nerve to ask for sugar. He only nods in thanks.

  “I knew you two in another lifetime, past,” he says, the English feeling foreign and clumsy on his tongue. “I don’t know you now. Can you tell me what you’re doing?”

  Andrew looks at his mother and his brother for guidance.

  Kathryn speaks for them. “Andrew is studying clean tech at San Diego State University. Michael has studied law and has just passed the bar exam. He’s working for the American Civil Liberties Union.”

  “Do you both live here with your mother?”

  “Not anymore,” Michael says. “I have an apartment near downtown, and Andrew lives on campus in student housing.”

  Rashid takes another sip of bitter coffee and tries to conjure up the next question.

  Andrew grips the edge of the table, “What do you want from us? I didn’t know anything about you until this morning, and now I know only that you’ve done horrible things not only to us, but you have killed people because of what my brother here calls your… how did you say it…your ‘primitive belief in an alternative system of justice’.” He straightens his arms, forcing his torso as far away as possible from the table without letting go. “So let’s skip the small talk and tell us what you came here for.”

  “Andrew,” Michael hisses, “you don’t need to be so rude.”

  “Really?” Andrew scoffs. “This guy blows up people and then abandons his family for twenty years and you’re worried about my manners?”

  “Look, I remember him from before. I haven’t seen him since I was in kindergarten. I have some questions.”

  Rashid nods. “Ask. I’ll answer every question.”

  “How did you feel when the bomb went off? Were you satisfied?”

  Rashid raises his eyebrows until they nearly disappear under his turban. He pauses, thinking. “I felt terrified. I had wanted to alert the authorities about the plan before it happened.”

  “But you didn’t,” Michael says.

  “So once I realized I couldn’t stop the bombing, I realized this was my fate and I had fulfilled something…something important to my mother, my family in Lahore.” He runs his hand over his beard. “Imagine how would you be feeling if your father were killed.”

  “Um, we didn’t have a father, remember?” Andrew says with thick sarcasm. “And if I had known our father was you, I would’ve been glad if he was killed.”

  Rashid purses his lips together. “Then imagine if your mother had been killed. The woman who did everything to raise you.”

  Andrew looks at his mother, sees so clearly how she has aged. She avoids eye contact with all of them. He reaches out to touch her hand. “I would feel terrible, angry, sad, of course.” He holds her hand now, tightly. “But I wouldn’t go out and build a bomb and sacrifice my wife and children for some stupid sense of grief.”

  “So you never knew anything about me?” Rashid looks at Kathryn. “You never told them anything about the attack in Pakistan? Anything about who I was?”

  She only shakes her head.

  He buries his face in his hands, horrified. “Maybe you cannot ever understand,” he looks up, “especially you boys. Your world is so different from mine.” He halts, resting one hand on top of the other. “Do you have another question?”

  “What do you think should happen to you now?” Michael asks, as if he had long ago prepared a set of questions.

  Rashid closes his eyes again. For all of his dreaming about this reunion, his preparations now seem woefully inadequate. “What should happen? I’m not sure. What could happen? I could get to know you, see you in your lives as adults. Help your mother, if she will allow me.”

  “It’s a little late now, don’t you think?” Andrew says. “I think she did just fine without you.”

  Michael moves his coffee cup to the side, as if to clear the way to his father. “Really? You don’t think that you deserve any punishment? You aren’t worried about law enforcement?”

  “I’ve worried about law enforcement for twenty years. But now that I’ve seen you all, I won’t fear them anymore.”

  “Why won’t you answer my question?” Andrew almost whines. “What do you want from us?”

  Rashid looks each of them in the eye in turn. “I just wanted to see you again, and—” his stomach turns as it did the first time he saw the bombing on the monitor in the airport “—and I want to say I’m sorry, to ask your forgiveness.”

  “What? On what grounds?” Kathryn erupts. “We should just forgive you because you come waltzing in here and ask for it?” She stands up. “Get out of here. Leave us,” she says with a deep, quiet voice. “You’ve done enough damage. I don’t want you here, threatening everything I’ve worked so hard to build after you abandoned us.”

  “Mom,” Michael interjects. “We’re not done.”

  She turns to him, asserting her authority. “I’m done and this is my home.”

  “Capen Code, rule number nine,” Andrew whispers to Michael. “Be polite to your host.”

  Rashid sits paralyzed by his fear of the abyss beyond her door.

  “What are you waiting for? You need to go!” she thunders

  “Please,” his voice constricts, “let me talk with the boys a bit longer.”

  Unnerved that Michael’s expression nearly mimics Rashid’s, Kathryn relents for her son’s sake. “You have five minutes. I’m going in the other room, and when I come out you need to be gone.” She turns and walks into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Rashid fixes his gaze on her half-empty coffee cup.

  “You can’t imagine how painful it was to be away from you, how many times I’ve thought of you, imagined your lives.” He tugs nervously on his beard. “I was always sending my love.” He looks up at his sons.

  “How?” Andrew asks. “By carrier pigeon?”

  “I sent my prayers every night, and I sent money, four times a year.”

  “Useless. We didn’t get either,” Andrew replies flatly.

  “How long will you be here?” Michael asks.

  “Only some minutes I think.”

  “No, I mean how long will you be in the U.S.?”

  “I want to see you both again, I would be glad for more time to know you.”

  Michael raises his eyebrows, “The longer you’re here, the more likely you’ll be arrested and tried. You know there’s no statue of limitations on acts of terrorism.”

  Rashid nods in acknowledgment.

  Andrew sits mutely, his arms crossed. Michael pulls his wallet from his back pocket and retrieves his business card, handing it to Rashid. “I don’t want to aggravate my mother, you should go now.”

  Rashid stands to go, turns to look again at Andrew who sits impassively. Michael moves to hold the door open. Rashid clutches the business card in his left hand, the only hope preventing his fall into nothingness. He reaches with his right hand to shake Michael’s hand again. “Thank you,” the words conveying an insufficient, thin politeness to his ears. “Shukria,” he revert
s to the Punjabi word to express his indebted gratitude.

  In the bedroom, Kathryn hears the door open and shut, closes her eyes, and weeps.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  The hostess tells him to sit anywhere. Rashid surveys the restaurant, everything clean and bright, popular music piping through speakers. He chooses a booth in the corner, as far from the door as possible, but with a clear sight line. He sits, stares blankly at the plastic stand on the table advertising a new breakfast dish. Why is America constantly reinventing everything? Even breakfast. A waitress comes with a coffee pot and mug in hand. “Coffee?”

  “Tea please.”

  She frowns and turns around.

  Sitting on the smooth vinyl seat, his insides feel ragged, his thoughts blunted. He can accept, even understand if Kathryn rejects him. But if his sons will not see him, his whole life will have been a waste of waiting, he may as well have blown himself up with that bomb. At least then he would have died knowing he was loved. The waitress brings his tea and a menu and still no one arrives. Rashid checks the front of the laminated menu to be sure the name of the restaurant is the one Michael had told him on the phone last night. He pours cream and four packets of sugar into the tea, hoping for a familiar pleasure. He can barely drink the excessive sweetness.

  A television perched above the cashier’s stand projects a series of silent video clips and a scrolling newsfeed; replays of last night’s American football game, then planes taking off from an aircraft carrier. Perhaps this is part of the U.S. Navy build up in the East China Sea, or in the Indian Ocean. The superpowers continue to tour their deadly dance in theaters around the globe. He shudders.

  Michael finally appears at the table. Rashid stands quickly, aching to reach out and embrace his son. Michael politely shakes his hand, as if they had met to discuss business.

  “You are good to come today.”

  “I still have more questions,” Michael has not come for Rashid’s pleasure.

  Rashid nods. “Tea first?”