by Sorayya Khan
“No wonder the flight from here to my grandparents’ takes so long!” Lizzy whispered.
Eight thousand miles didn’t seem remarkable to me. The distance was shorter than the one my family’s shipment had traveled from Vienna to Islamabad. Our container had traveled on a ship up and down the coasts of Africa because of a six-day war that closed the Suez Canal for years, including the summer our belongings were making their way to Pakistan. My father had us study the world atlas so we could see what twelve thousand miles looked like on a map. The number had seemed so huge it might as well have marked the distance between two planets. But in light of what my social studies teacher had said, twelve thousand miles had shrunk.
When I asked my father how long it took to fly from Teheran to Islamabad, he estimated it would be perhaps two or three hours, longer than the trip from Karachi to Islamabad.
“Don’t worry about your principal,” he added.
“Why not?”
“The Iranians won’t dare harm United States citizens.”
“Why not?”
“They’re from the United States, after all,” he said, exasperated with my questions.
“Did I tell you Mr. Simon was once posted in Teheran?” I asked. It occurred to me that if it weren’t for the few years between then and now, Lizzy’s father might have been a hostage that very minute. My father mumbled an unintelligible acknowledgment and returned to his newspaper.
Sadiq arrived to clear away the empty teacups, but before he could leave the room, the television captured our attention. In the midst of a sea of people, an American flag was doused with gasoline, lit from opposite ends, and curled in flames. Sadiq, clutching a copper tray heavy with dirty dishes, was hypnotized along with the rest of us. In the black-and-white television footage, a few of the sixty-six hostages walked with their captors into the crowd, hands tied behind their backs, their slow shuffles suggesting bound feet. Although they had no choice, it was shocking to see adults allowing themselves to be led, rocking slightly in their steps as if they were reassured by the presence of their captors at their sides. The blindfolds, rags really, covered most of their faces, and what was left for us to see—chins, beards, bald heads, and hair—was strangely separate, not parts of faces. One man, whom my mother declared had a dancer’s posture, came to a stop, tilting his head toward his captor, straining to hear what was being said to him. He turned, as if he could see his captor, and replied. Was the response in English? Farsi? Did Americans in Teheran speak Farsi? The blindfolded man, the wide collar on his short-sleeved shirt open, spoke calmly and without hesitation, seemingly courteous, and I wondered if that’s how a grown American man was taught to speak if he knew he might be killed.
In the financial report toward the end of the news, the newscaster announced that the Americans had stopped importing Iranian oil and had frozen billions of dollars of Iranian assets in American banks.
“You’d need a separate building to hold that much money. Or at least a whole lot of briefcases!” I was quickly hushed and left alone to contemplate how much Mr. Hill, my principal, was worth in terms of ransom money or, if he was killed, settlement money. How would such an amount be determined for each American hostage? Were they all worth the same amount? Was the figure one million rupees? Two million rupees? Then I realized the transaction would probably be made in dollars, and whatever the amount, it certainly would be more than the 50,000-rupee value ascribed to Hanif’s life. The fact was that Americans were always and unquestionably worth more than Pakistanis or anyone else.
The news broadcast ended without a glimpse of Mr. Hill, and my father turned off the television. He joined me on the couch to gravely say, “I hope you haven’t forgotten that you must stay away from the embassy.”
“No, I haven’t,” I replied, annoyed at being reminded of a rule that I’d made for myself long ago.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if your school changed bus routes and schedules now,” he said.
“Why?”
“There’s scarcely a more visible US symbol in the entire city of Islamabad than the buses with the name of your school boldly painted on them. And the daily bus routes and schedules are as predictable as my watch.”
“What do you mean?”
“You get home every afternoon at 3:58. Did you know that?”
“How would you know? You’re never even here!”
He sighed. “All I’m asking is for you to be a bit more cautious.”
“Why? Nothing ever happens here.”
My father gave me a skeptical look and said, “For the moment.”
A few minutes later, I went to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. Sadiq was unloading dirty dishes from the heavy copper tray and shaking his head in silent disagreement with something to which we were not privy.
Finally my mother asked him what was wrong.
“Kuch nahin,” he said gently. Nothing.
In a burst of unwarranted aggravation, my mother stomped her foot on the marble floor the way she sometimes did when frustration got the better of her.
“Then don’t shake your . . .” my mother said, but stopped midsentence when she saw me by the refrigerator.
Sadiq looked up at her and waited in case she intended to complete her thought. When she didn’t say anything more, he filled the sink with warm water and began washing teacups more slowly than seemed humanly possible.
TWENTY
Wednesday, 21 November 1979
The VOA newscast was somberly announcing the headlines, and I wondered aloud why we were listening to VOA instead of the usual BBC. The morning newspapers scattered on the table shared the same glaring headlines: The Grand Mosque in Mecca had been seized by gunmen, and President Jimmy Carter had ordered the USS Kitty Hawk to the Persian Gulf. There was no mention of Pakistan, which should have been a relief, but I sensed otherwise.
A minute later, as if I had asked, my mother explained, “Kitty Hawk is not a person. It’s an American ship.”
“With nuclear weapons,” my father added.
“For war?” I asked.
“God forbid,” my mother said, distracted by my grandfather as he slurped the last of the milky tea from his saucer.
Sadiq arrived looking more besieged than ever, all because of my grandfather. In the weeks since our servant had arrived, my grandfather had persisted in adding to his misery. Sadiq had a dustcloth and broom in hand and had already spent hours working.
“Did you hear the news?” my father asked Sadiq.
“God have mercy,” he replied, shaking his head in slow motion, and everyone but me supposed he was talking about the gunmen in Mecca. Only I knew he’d given up the news.
Before the school bus came, my grandfather and parents disputed a VOA detail that blamed Iranians for the mosque’s seizure. They said it wasn’t reasonable to believe that fellow Muslims in Iran, even if they were Shia, would occupy the holiest mosque in the world. Although I was only thirteen and not entirely sure of the differences between Pakistani Sunnis and Iranian Shias, even I understood that the occupation of the mosque was sacrilegious.
It happened during science class.
My first clue should have been the school bell. The bell, which marked the end of one class and the beginning of a new one, rang during our science test and wouldn’t stop. I’d never thought of the bell as particularly shrill or annoying, but it was both this afternoon. We all assumed it was broken, even when the new substitute teacher left the classroom to investigate. As soon as she did, we swapped test answers, and Lizzy, who was sitting next to me, gave me her iced animal crackers left over from lunch. She caught a simple math mistake in one of my calculations, and I pointed out an incorrect definition on her test. The morning had been long and slow in anticipation of the Thanksgiving holidays scheduled to start the following day. We’d already had one test, albeit in gym, where we were timed on our ability to hang from a bar with our chins well above it. I’d failed to reach the “presidential” standards for this e
xercise, whatever that meant, and it would be noted on my report card, as it was each semester.
My second clue should have been that when the teacher returned a few minutes later, she ignored the talking she’d expressly forbidden and instructed us to form a line by the door. Delighted that our test had been interrupted, we caused the ruckus we reserved for substitute teachers. Suddenly, one of the students declared he heard shouting. The teacher confirmed that an emergency was under way and scolded the student for being slow to get in line. The questions came from every direction.
“What do you mean by emergency?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Where?”
The teacher screamed to be heard. She explained that a small crowd of angry locals had gathered outside the school gates, and as a safety precaution, our assistant principal, Mr. Mancini, had ordered all students to assemble in the auditorium. When two boys shoved each other, the teacher ignored them, along with the tests left on our desks. Another student joked that we were all about to become hostages, which made the teacher lose her temper and order him to shut his mouth. As a rule, teachers never spoke like that, so her remark immediately silenced us all.
I was reminded of the false emergency alert a few years before. From inside a classroom in the elementary school quad, I’d watched the marines and Pakistani police form a circle around the buildings. I hadn’t been afraid at all. The marines and their precise maneuvers seemed more silly than anything else, and the Pakistani policeman running behind them, shouting, “Sir, sir!” was even sillier. I was younger then and didn’t believe in the possibility of a real school emergency. Besides, the marines were only at the school for a few minutes before the principal informed their commander that their efforts were being wasted on a false alarm.
This time was different. More than a few minutes had already passed, the school bell had become a never-ending alarm, and our substitute teacher was fretting. I expected the incident to be a hoax, just a more serious one that would get students expelled, and when our class was assembled in the quad, I told Lizzy as much.
The final clue was the parking lot. Two or three young Pakistani men jumped over the newly extended wall, where they joined a handful of others on the school grounds. They were shouting, but in the confusion of the moment, their words were lost on me. A few teachers, including Mr. Duval and the Pakistani field hockey coach, had formed a line of defense. Some chowkidars stood by, uncomfortably holding their guns, afraid or reluctant to put them to use. Some of the older students, along with the captains of the football and soccer teams, conferred near their lockers. One had a baseball bat in his hand, and another nervously bounced one of the school’s premium basketballs. Baseball bats and field hockey sticks were being distributed to the older boys. I was terrified.
Amir once told me that during his senior year, the school roof had been patrolled by teachers trying to catch students smoking. Shah, the prime minister’s son, was caught like this, although the school didn’t suspend him as they did all the other culprits. I’d never heard of teacher roof patrols since. I glanced up, but as far as I could see, the roofs were empty except for green air-conditioning units and, presumably, painted American flags. We’d all heard rumors that when the school was first built, flags were painted on the roofs as a precaution so that if the Indian air force ever attacked Pakistan, the pilots would see the American flags and spare the school. I didn’t believe the story, but it was lodged deep enough in my consciousness to make me look to the sky, as if help, not necessarily from the Indians but from someone, was meant to drop from above.
Lizzy dug her fingernails into my arm. I hadn’t fooled her; she knew that whatever was under way wasn’t a hoax or a mini-royit, and she, too, was terrified. Fear worked like that. Once it got hold of one person, it spread to everyone else.
“What’s happening?” she asked, as if Pakistan was my country and, therefore, I would know.
I couldn’t think of an answer. Instead, I pretended to know more than she did and said, “The police will be here in a minute.”
“Oh my God! Where are the twins?” Lizzy asked, further alarmed. “I’ve got to call Mom!” Anne Simon was not in school that afternoon. I knew she had left for the embassy with Mikail for a doctor’s appointment because we hadn’t been able to play with him during lunch.
“It’s going to be fine,” I insisted.
We waited in line while the classes ahead of us filed into the auditorium building. Although the parking lot was no longer in view, I counted the number of strangers I’d seen there from the image in my memory. Counting in Urdu required a lot of concentration and helped me not panic. I’d reached trais, twenty-three, before someone cupped my head with a large hand. I jumped and turned around, and as I did, stumbled into the girls ahead of me. When I regained my balance and looked up, I was staring at an old man wearing a crumpled shalwar kameez and swinging a car jack at his side. He looked like a madman. And he was my grandfather.
“Dada Abba!” I cried.
He kissed my forehead as he did every morning, and I didn’t wipe away the moisture his kiss left behind.
“What’s wrong? Is Daddy OK?” I was consumed by fright and had barely managed to form the questions.
The presence of my grandfather on the premises escalated the emergency beyond my imagination. Had my father died? My mother? Had Lehla been killed in a car crash, or had Amir been murdered? What could possibly be so wrong that he’d come here?
“Problems. Embassy burning. Cannot ride bus,” he whispered in Urdu in what was staccato, even for him.
It took me a moment to absorb his words. “Is Daddy fine? Mama? Amir? Lehla?”
“Yes,” he said and repeated himself. “Problems. Embassy burning. Cannot ride bus.”
“What embassy?”
“American,” he said.
“Fire?” I asked.
“Attacked.” He hadn’t said much, but I got the basic idea. It wasn’t much of a leap to recognize that his information also explained the emergency at my school, the American School of Islamabad.
I suddenly remembered Lizzy standing next to me. “Remember my grandfather? We’re going to get a ride home with him.” My grandfather hadn’t said anything about taking Lizzy home, but I wasn’t going to leave her behind. I didn’t give her a chance to respond, just grabbed her hand and began walking.
Our substitute teacher approached and asked me where I thought I was going. Pointing to my grandfather—who, I had to admit, looked slightly deranged in his rumpled shalwar kameez, car jack in hand—the teacher said, “Who is he? He isn’t even supposed to be here.” I felt sorry for her, a new substitute, starting on a day like today, but her disdain toward my grandfather offended me. Rather than worry about him, shouldn’t she have been more concerned about the growing crowd of troublemakers in the parking lot?
We were interrupted with a sudden crash and, subsequently, what could only be described as a roll of crashes. Some students were slamming the lids of industrial-size tin garbage cans into the pavement, and the noise momentarily drowned out the emergency bell and, by then, the chanting men. Did the boys really think their noise would return everything to normal? It helped to be deaf sometimes. My grandfather continued to pull me with him, I held onto Lizzy, and the three of us, virtually holding hands, left the vicinity of the auditorium.
The teacher didn’t give up. She ran after us, angrily demanding, “Where are you going?”
“Home,” I answered.
“You,” the teacher said, pointing to Lizzy, “cannot go with them.”
“Why?” I asked.
“All Americans must stay right here.”
Lizzy looked around nervously, weighing the teacher’s words. Her clear blue eyes shifted from the chowkidars to the strangers, the boys and their trash-can lids, and finally me and my grandfather. She tugged on her ponytail, this late in the day uncharacteristically high on her head.
“Says who?” Lizzy said forcefully, narrowing her eyes
, and I was proud of her.
The teacher backed up a few steps. “If you leave, you’ll be in serious trouble,” she threatened Lizzy.
“No, she won’t!” I replied.
We hurried away, but then Lizzy stopped and shouted, “My brothers!” She ran in the direction of the kindergarten classroom, my grandfather and I following close behind. The sign outside the principal’s office had been changed that morning to reflect eighteen days of captivity. We found Lizzy’s brothers almost immediately in a group of sobbing children who were covering their ears and shuffling toward the auditorium.
While Lizzy informed their teacher that she was taking them home with me, I had a few words with my grandfather. I pulled his face right next to mine and spoke in Urdu so only he would understand me.
“How do you know about the embassy?”
“Saw smoke. Confirmed by BBC.”
“Why was the embassy attacked?”
“Americans involved in Grand Mosque siege,” he answered, and I didn’t understand what he meant.
“What? Will they burn the school, too?”
My grandfather’s No wasn’t convincing, and without being asked, he reached to pick up one of the scared twins. Lizzy crouched down so that her other brother could climb on her piggyback-style, and the five of us hurried to the parking lot.
“You drove here?” I asked, shocked at the sight of my parents’ old Toyota Corolla. “Where’s Mushtaq?”
“Office,” he said, and I knew my grandfather had taken the car without my mother’s permission, for she never allowed him to drive in Islamabad.