Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  “And the people who helped you to return to the U.S., you must know who those people were.”

  “I knew a man, only by a single name, a nickname really.”

  “So tell me that name,” Michael nearly pleads.

  “No. No.” He remembers Sheik Omar’s threat. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Not worth being in a place where you could see us, your wife and children, more? That’s not worth a name?”

  “It’s not safe to give you that name.”

  “Not safe?” Exasperation elevates Michael’s voice. “What could happen to you? You’ll be in a secure facility.”

  “But you won’t.” Rashid looks his son in the eye, spreads his hands on the table as widely as the shackles will allow. “You…you more than anyone must understand…revenge cannot be stopped. I’m allowing America to have her revenge.” He makes a fist with his right hand. “Let her do what she needs to do. To me.” He bangs his fist against his left hand. “But I will not give the world one more action which could cause another man to seek revenge.” He turns his left hand, palm up, and wraps his fingers around his right fist, embracing the inevitable.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  Kathryn glimpses her reflection in the glass door as she enters the bank, her wide-brimmed hat obscuring her sunglasses and unpainted lips. She feels a tremor of anxiety as she steps inside, maybe she should have called Ted and asked him to come and protect her in her attempt to evade reporters. How many times has she made this trip, an envelope of cash in her purse, an ache in her lower back? But today, she has nothing to deposit, she is not shedding something illicit, but harvesting, harnessing the power of her patience. She sits in the familiar room with her safe deposit box. Instead of the habitual hurry, she sits quietly, pausing to formulate her intention, to gather a little prayer for her son. Michael had sounded like a small boy when he called, requesting money.

  She removes all of the envelopes, extracts the bills from each one, makes a stack of cash on one side of the box, and discards the envelopes on the other side. With each envelope she thinks now of the sender, not some nefarious group making martyr payments, but Rashid, sending money anonymously through some local hawala agent. With each set of bills, she begins to understand his sense of devotion, his misguided idea of caring for them. As she closes the cover on the box she hears metal rattle inside. She reaches in, remembering now, retrieving two wedding bands, seeing again the inscription Beneath the Same Heaven on the gold band. She pauses, thinking to leave these rings to their darkness. But instead, she slides them into a pocket in her purse. She will return the box empty, close the account, end that chapter.

  She rings the doorbell with both relief and apprehension. Her brother opens the door, gives her a feisty smile.

  “Never a dull moment in your life, huh?”

  Kathryn pauses, uncertain what to say.

  “Come in, come in.” Ted smiles, “I’ve almost forgotten what you look like without those red lips.”

  Janet comes into the hall, hugs Kathryn. “I’m glad you’re here. We’ll have a good dinner, it’s been too long.”

  “Is Andrew here?” Kathryn puts down her bag, still full with the money.

  Ted shakes his head. “But don’t worry, he said he’d come, we’ve seen him a couple of times since…since Rashid returned from the dead.” He exhales a little laugh.

  In the kitchen Janet has already poured four glasses of red wine. “How’s your mother?”

  “She’s a little older, a little more frail, but she’s been wonderful taking care of me.”

  “And what do you hear from Michael,” Ted asks, “aside from what we see in the media?”

  “He’s fine.” Kathryn doesn’t elaborate. “I don’t know where this is all going.” She accepts wine from Janet.

  “Doesn’t seem to me this has to change your life too much,” Ted muses. “Rashid pleads guilty, goes to serve his time, you continue on with your life.”

  She starts to object, as the doorbell rings.

  “That must be Andrew,” Janet says moving to open the door.

  “Mom,” he greets her sullenly. “Hi Auntie Janet, Uncle Ted.”

  Kathryn winces, resists the urge to reach out to him, goes through the motions of conversation as they sit down for dinner. At last, when she can no longer stand the elephant in the room, she nearly blurts out, “I need to tell you all something. Something about Rashid that no one knows.”

  “Oh fuck,” Andrew mutters.

  Kathryn pretends she hasn’t heard him. “I have almost a hundred thousand dollars in my purse there. Cash.”

  Andrew furrows his eyebrow. Kathryn rubs her lower back. “I received unmarked envelopes with cash in them every few months. I realize now Rashid was sending them, this money was for you and Michael. It’s about time I gave it to you.”

  “My God, Mom!” Andrew leans his head back covering his eyes with his hands. “How many secrets are you going to suddenly reveal? Any more lies you’ve been telling me that you’d like to come clean about?”

  “Shit, you got any piles of money in there for me?” Ted teases. Janet suppresses a smile.

  “You can take my share, Uncle Ted. There’s no way I want anything to do with that money or that man.”

  Ted scoops a forkful of salad. “I’d love to buy some surf toys with that cash, but it doesn’t belong to me. Take a little while to think about it, Andrew.”

  Kathryn reaches for her wine. “Actually Ted, I was hoping you might make the deposit into Michael’s account in small increments, like you were supporting him.” She takes a sip. “You know, I just don’t want any questions from the feds about where this money came from.”

  “Wow, now that I’m almost retired I could pick up a new career in money laundering.”

  “Call it what you like, I’m asking for your help.”

  “Yeah, I’m used to that.”

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  Rashid waits in his chair, looking through the glass into the empty visitor’s room. He runs a hand over his neatly trimmed hair, reaches—out of habit—to tug on a beard long gone. He can’t remember the last time he felt so at ease. He hears the clank of a metal door and Kathryn comes into view, carrying her purse and a manila envelope. A prison guard follows her, standing in the corner where he can observe them both.

  “I appreciate that you’ve come,” Rashid says as she sits down in the chair on the opposite side of the glass. “I know it’s a long flight from the west coast.”

  She nods. Fidgets in her seat as she takes in his appearance through the glass.

  “It’s not bad here,” he presupposes her question. “I have time in the library and outside every day.”

  “And the other people?”

  “Mostly they leave me alone. Since I’m not white or black or Latino, I don’t have a place in their gangs.” He decides not to tell her more than this. She doesn’t need to know about the constant possibility of violence in the prison, the taunts and slurs he endures. He doesn’t seek sympathy from her. “How is Michael?”

  “He’s fine. He decided to give up his apartment and he’s staying with me temporarily.” She pauses as if deciding whether or not to tell him something. “He’s planning to use some of your money,” she inhales, “to go to Pakistan.”

  “Really?” Rashid’s heart leaps inside his chest. “Finally he’ll go back to see where he comes from.”

  “He’ll see where you come from.” She frowns, looks directly into Rashid’s astonishingly clear eyes. With his graying hair, in the wrinkles of his forehead she can see the likeness of Rashid’s father, and in the fullness of his lips she sees the familiar curve of her son. “I’m thinking to go with him.”

  “So you can see my family?”

  “I just think it’d be safer if I went with him.”

  Rashid sets his hands on the table, resting one on top of the other, almost gracefully. “God is great. My family will welcome you both.”

/>   She sits quietly, observing the calm in his movements, the gentleness of his voice.

  “Will Andrew go as well?” he asks hopefully.

  She shakes her head. “Andrew…Andrew will need some time and some space to know what he feels. He’s hardly speaking to me.”

  “Of course. He’ll come back to you, don’t worry. A son will always return to his mother. He has no choice.”

  His words, simultaneously soothing and stinging, penetrate the protective emotional barrier she had carefully cultivated on the long car ride from the airport. She lowers her head, sighs. “Somehow I can’t believe how all of this has transpired, so beyond my control. What more could I have done? Could I have made it different in some way? I wish we’d just had a normal family life, I wish we just could’ve raised our sons, been normal people worrying about small things.”

  She looks up, leans her forehead against the glass. He can see tears in her eyes. He sets his fingers against the glass, as if he could wipe the tears away.

  “Kathryn, it was all written. What I had to do was terrible… terrible. So now it’s my responsibility to pay the price for that. There must be justice. But there’s nothing any of us could’ve done to make things different.” He finally allows himself to reach his other hand through the small opening where the glass meets the table. The guard leans in, alert. And she accepts the gesture, reaching her hand to touch his.

  “Almost Morocco,” he whispers.

  “What?”

  “This is almost as sweet as my dream of meeting you in Morocco. At least here I have nothing left to hide, nothing left to fear.”

  She closes her eyes, focusing only on the sensations in her fingers where they touch his.

  “What’s in the envelope?”

  She inhales deeply and pulls her hand away. “Well, you’d asked me to bring you news of the boys and me,” she pulls a stack of printed papers out of the envelope. “It’s not exactly news.” As she lifts the envelope, something falls out, metal clinking against the table top. She picks up a gold band, triggering a ripple of recognition in his body. Setting the papers aside, she picks up the ring and presses it between her palms. “This is yours, you should have it back.”

  Wordlessly he opens his palm, with something approaching disbelief.

  “No passing objects,” the guard barks.

  She flinches, nods, slides the ring onto her own index finger.

  “Thank you,” Rashid whispers. “Please wear it.”

  She takes the papers in her hands. “This is something I started writing in the last few weeks, trying to….” Feeling exposed, despite the glass, she presses the papers up against her chest. “Do you want me to read you some?”

  “Of course.”

  She sets the papers back on the table, bites her lower lip, takes a breath. “Kathryn answers the phone,” she reads. “The man asks where Rashid is. She recognizes the man’s voice, her husband’s manager. ‘You should know where he is,’ she says, ‘you sent him offshore for a job.’ He tells her she better call him. She sets the phone down, confused. When she hears a knock at the door, she opens it, surprised at the serious expression of a man in a suit. ‘Are you Kathryn Siddique?’ he asks. ‘I am agent Roberts, FBI. I need to talk to you about your husband.’ She tries to close the door…” Kathryn pauses, looking up to see if Rashid recognizes the story.

  He presses his eyes shut. “Can you ever forgive me?” He looks again, into her silence.

  She reaches her hand to her heart. “It’s the only thing I can’t…” slowly she sets her hand in the space beneath the glass. “Forgiveness is the only power I have to make things different.”

  She closes her eyes.

  He nods.

  Acknowledgements

  * * *

  I am grateful to those who helped me bring this book into the world. I am grateful to the whole Grewal family for welcoming me into their family and sharing with me their culture and their love; to Isvinder Singh Grewal, Arshdeep Jawanda, Sattar Izwaini, Tracy Sterk, and Eric Aamoth who helped me understand other points of view; to Sarah Jane Lapp, Amy Alyeshmerni, Sidney Higgins, Kim Fay, Kris Ruff, Dureen Ruff, Jill Muller, Heather Capen Cox, and Michael Swinney who read early versions; to Christopher Little and Emma Schlesinger who provided expert feedback over the course of multiple versions; to Madeline Baugh, Emmy Harrington, Amy Perry, Holly Prado, Molly Ann Hale, and Charlie Davis who encouraged me and kept me on track; to Barbara Baer who read each step, believed in the story, and showed me the way; to Kelly Huddleston and David Ross who delivered it over the line; to the bus drivers of the Metro 96 line who unknowingly hosted my writing studio; and to family—my children Nirvair William and Sukhdev Josh, and especially my husband Lali—whose love made it all possible.