“Then in the name of God listen! You dreamed that your father asked you to bring him two horses, a black stallion and a white mare. He told you to ride the white and lead the black on a line. You headed up a high mountain along a narrow path with a precipice on one side. The mare was calm under you, but the stallion was unruly and kicked and bit at the mare, so you decided to disobey your father and ride the stallion instead. The path grew steeper and narrower, and then to your horror the stallion bolted and plunged off the edge. You were suspended over the void by the line but did not fall, because the white mare held it. The line stretched and came near to breaking. Then you heard a voice saying, ‘Cling to the line and cut the stallion loose.’ But you were afraid to cut the line because of what your father would say if you lost a valuable horse. Again the voice called, ‘Save yourself, my son, and cut the line!’ When you realized it was your father’s voice you cut the line, the black horse fell screaming into the abyss, and the white mare pulled you up to safety, but as you rose you wounded your heel on a rock. That was your dream.”
“Yes,” he replies with a quaver in his voice. “What does it mean?”
“The narrow path is the way of Islam; the white horse is the teachings of the Prophet, on whom be peace. The black horse is the horse of pride and the violence that comes from pride. The abyss is the gate of Hell, to which the prideful are condemned. Your father is your father. He is dead, is he not?”
“Yes. He died in the jihad, when I was a baby.”
“God sent him to you out of Paradise then, as a warning, to keep you safe from Hell, by making you return to the path of Islam and the certain guidance of the Prophet, peace be upon him.”
“But I am on the path of Islam. I am a mujahid.”
“Your father was a mujahid. He fought the Russians, who denied Islam, stabled their troops in mosques, murdered women and children, and defiled the holy books with their filth. But you murder good Muslims, which I saw with my own eyes, and make war on the innocent.”
“Not true! Idris Ghulam says we must do the lesser evil for the greater good.”
“Which is what?”
“Driving the kafiri out of Kashmir and Afghanistan and building Islamic states.”
“If you wish to drive the Indians out of Kashmir, you should be shooting Indian soldiers, not Pakistani Muslims. And Pakistan and Afghanistan are already Muslim states.”
“They are not proper Muslim states. They are allied with America, and they don’t follow sharia law.”
“Tell me, what is the year?”
“What do you mean?”
“The year! What is the year, counting from the hegira?”
“It is 1429.”
“Yes, and why do we count from the hegira?”
“Because it is when the Prophet, peace be upon him, fled with his followers from Mecca to Medina.”
“Yes. Don’t you find it interesting that the birth of Islam is counted from a retreat? Not from a victory, not from the victory at Badr or at Ohod or from the conquest of Mecca, but from a retreat. Why do you suppose we do that, Patang?”
The boy is mute, baffled, and so she continues.
“Because the Prophet, peace be upon him, was reluctant in the highest degree to shed human blood. He did not form a secret society in Mecca to assassinate idolaters and their women and children and burn down their homes. Instead he retreated to a place of safety. And even when the idolaters attacked the Muslims at Badr and God gave the faithful their victory, the Prophet, peace be upon him, released all his prisoners after the battle and warned his followers not to molest the harmless or destroy their dwellings or their means of livelihood. And this was when Islam was a mere handful of families, not a billion people and two dozen nations. No, child, you ride the black horse of pride, you and your Idris Ghulam, and it will lead you to the flaming pit. Your father warns you from Paradise. God warns you. Heed the Prophet, peace be upon him; ride his horse on the narrow path. Thus says the Prophet, peace be upon him: ‘He will not enter Hell who hath faith equal to a single grain of mustard seed in his heart; and he will not enter Paradise, who hath pride equal to a single grain of mustard seed in his heart.’ ”
“That is not true!” the boy shouts. “Why should I believe you? You are a foreign woman and a witch!”
“I am not a witch,” says Sonia. “You asked how I knew of your dream. I could have lied and put fear in you and say I divined it with the help of the djinn, but God hates liars, and so I say now that I heard you tell your dream to the other guard. But my interpretation is true, as you will see, for you will be wounded on your foot and then recall your father’s words and mine.”
The boy utters a frightened curse and leaves, locking the door behind him.
In the dark, from the other charpoy, Sonia hears Annette stir. “Did we disturb you?” she asks.
“No. What was that all about? The guard didn’t seem too happy.”
Sonia summarizes the conversation. Annette gives an astonished whistle. “Wow! Do you think it’s wise to annoy our guards?”
“The truth is often annoying. Besides, just now it’s our only weapon. I’ve penetrated his self-righteousness, just a little. He sees himself as a holy warrior, which is why he can bear to serve in a unit with men from other tribes, and take orders from men from tribes with whom his tribe or khel has a blood feud. This is how Pashtuns are: they can join briefly against a common enemy, but they always tend to pull apart after that enemy is defeated. That’s what happened in Afghanistan after the Russians left. This so-called jihad is all that holds them together now, so we have to break them of the idea that they are fighting in God’s cause, which of course they are not. Let’s see what happens when young Patang hurts his foot.”
“But what makes you think he’s going to hurt his foot?”
“Because he dreamed it and I interpreted the dream that way.”
“What? That makes no sense.”
“No, not rationally, but we’re not in the rational world here-or in our dreams either. Patang will be thinking about his foot all the time now.
He’ll be extra careful for a while, but it will gnaw at him, he’ll grow clumsy, because, of course, you can’t really do any of the things we normally do with our feet using conscious thought. So he’ll trip and sprain an ankle. Or he’ll become so obsessed with the idea that he’ll unconsciously discharge the tension by ‘accidentally’ dropping a load of bricks on his toes. Then, naturally, he’ll blab the whole thing. Pashtuns are fascinated by this kind of stuff; it’s threaded through all their folk tales-the prophetic dream. We should get some attention after that.”
“My God! Isn’t that incredibly dangerous?”
Sonia laughs softly. “Well, we’re not exactly in the lap of safety as it is. No, first we have to draw their attention to us-to me, actually-as something other than a victim. Once I’m established as that, I’ll have to challenge them from the heart of their religion, which I’ve already started doing with Patang. I told you before, hostage and captive are in a relationship and we have to control the tempo of that relationship, even though we have no power. Think of the Romans and the original Christians. The Romans murdered them for three centuries, and with every murder the Christians grew stronger and the Romans weaker. Why was that? Because their faith allowed Christians to die with nobility, even though they were slaves, and that struck at the heart of the Roman idea of how the world was constituted. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Any belief that allowed a slave to die like a Roman general had to have some underlying reality, so every martyrdom in the arena made a hundred converts.”
“But what if they kill you?”
“Oh, they’re going to kill me. I was doomed from the moment they stopped our convoy. But I’m going to make it hard for them, and maybe that will save some of you.”
Sonia can now make out the shape of her companion across the room. The gaps between the slats in the shutters have gradually become visible as slate-blue strips.
“Wh
at do you mean you were doomed?” says Annette. “Why you in particular?”
Sonia laughs again. “Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration for effect. I have a tendency to oversell. It comes from being raised in the circus. Tell me, do you know who Sonia Bailey is?”
“Some kind of explorer, back in the seventies? My roommate in college had her book.”
“Ah, that’s a welcome answer. Let’s hope our friends out there share your ignorance.”
“I don’t understand. What does Sonia Bailey have to do with us? Anyway, isn’t she dead?”
“Not yet. I’m her.”
“You’re Sonia Bailey?”
“Yes. Pleased to meet you. Anyway, it’s not like Superman and Clark Kent, although I try to keep it quiet. Back when I wrote those books I declined the usual celebrity perks: I didn’t give interviews or do book tours, I wasn’t on TV, I didn’t even have an author photograph. The mysterious Sonia Bailey. Obviously, my family knows, and several members of our group here, but for the past thirty years I’ve been Mrs. Laghari, a Pakistani-American therapist, a respectable lady who did not travel the haj to Mecca disguised as a man. If these jokers find out they’ll snuff me like a candle.”
“Jesus!”
“Just so. Crucifixion is one of the traditional punishments for blasphemy, although, for women, chopping them into pieces is more common. On the other hand-”
She stops. A thin wailing has begun outside, hardly distinguishable from the whine of the eternal wind, announcing that the night is ended; it is time for morning prayers. Annette watches Sonia as she washes and performs the ritual gestures and prostrations, so different from her own private, silent, liberal religion.
Sonia finishes the Fajr, the shortest prayer of the day, and becomes aware that the other woman is staring at her. She smiles and says, “It must seem strange to you, this kind of prayer. Primitive?”
Annette blushes. “Yes, frankly, a little. I realize it’s not politically correct, but I tend to be suspicious of highly ritualized religion. It’s too easy to punch in all the rituals and then feel you’re right with God, meanwhile feeling free to be as nasty as you like in daily life.”
“Spoken like a true child of the Reformation,” says Sonia, and they both laugh. “On the other hand, we’re animals, we have bodies, and what our bodies do is important. That’s one reason God gave them to us.”
“Don’t you find it hard to practice back home? I mean in the States.” “Oh, no. Back home I go to church. I’m a Catholic there.”
This knots Annette’s smooth brow. “You mean it’s a pretense?”
“Not at all. I’m perfectly sincere at the moment of prayer in either tradition. Surely you don’t think God cares how we worship Him? And a mass, with its ritual motions and responses, is very much the same as salat, in the sense that humanity is one family, whether you call it the umma or the Body of Christ, and it’s important for us all to do the same thing with our bodies at the same time. Every believing Muslim in this time zone just did what I just did, and as the earth spins around today so the tide of Fajr will flow with the light of day, and then another prayer at noon, Dhuhr, and then Ashr, Maghrib, and Isha, five in all, today and every day. It’s a pretty neat feeling, being engulfed in prayer and, despite individual differences between people, to be united in that one thing.”
“Yes, well, it doesn’t seem to have helped the Muslims get united any more than it’s helped the Christians.”
“No, it’s a scandal. We’re none of us what God meant us to be. But on the other hand, if you suppress that kind of ritual you atomize the faithful even more. Islam has a small number of divisions, and the Catholics are still hanging in there, but anyone with a Bible and a good speaking voice can start a Protestant church. Recent history suggests that when you cast off all that uncomfortable ritualistic stuff your religion tends to collapse into mere sociability and niceness, and then it fades away. Then some joker comes along and says, Believe in me; we can make Paradise here on earth; we don’t need God. All we have to do is get rid of the capitalists-or the Jews, or make everyone into a capitalist-all we have to do is make everyone rich and have lots of sex, and life will be perfect.”
Annette says, “Surely you’re not saying that religious fanaticism is better for the mass of humanity than civil rights, clean water, health care, and a decent income.”
“No, of course I’m not saying that,” Sonia replies, but any further clarification is interrupted by the sound of the door. In comes a woman carrying the usual food tray with tea, chapatis, and dal. It is not the old woman who has served them before, but a younger one, just a girl. Her shape under the concealing robe is slender, her face is veiled by a fold of her dupatta.
Sonia takes the tray, smiles, and says, “May God be with you,” and the girl answers, “May you live in peace,” in a voice curiously distorted. Sonia says, “My name is Sonia. What is your name?” The girl says, “Rashida,” and immediately turns and leaves the room. A guard, the one with the bushy beard, glares at them for an instant and then closes and locks the door.
The two women sit and eat their breakfast. Annette asks, “Why did she keep her veil on? The other woman didn’t.”
“Oh, I think she was embarrassed. Didn’t you hear her voice? Her nose has probably been cut off.”
“Good God! By who?”
“Probably her father or a brother. It’s less common than it used to be, but it still happens. It’s common enough so that among Pashtun boys it’s a coarse flirt line, like ‘Show us your tits’ among drunk frat boys in the States. You accuse a girl of having her nose cut off, and maybe she’ll flash her face to show it’s not true. Risky, but it does happen.”
“But why would they do that to a girl?”
Sonia shrugs and takes up another chapati. “It could be anything. She was seen talking to a boy; she exposed her leg or her face to a strange man. Or it could have been just suspicion-maybe her family thought she was too seductive-looking.”
“And I’m sure the man who did it thinks he’s right with Allah because he says all his prayers.”
“I’m sure he does, although that kind of thing has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. Every culture has fetishes, and among the Pashtuns it’s on the one hand hospitality and on the other the chastity of their women. Among the Americans it’s on the one hand money and on the other sexual hypocrisy.”
“Surely you can’t compare that to mutilating a girl!”
“I can and do. Businesses and factories are closed down, people are discarded, whole communities are destroyed, with all the catastrophes that follow-crime, suicide, domestic violence-just so a firm can get a bump in the stock market, and we think that’s perfectly okay; that’s how capitalism works. We keep the poor in festering ghettos. If you can’t pay for health care you sicken and die. It’s rational, we say, because return on investment is our highest good. Well, to the Pashtuns honor is the highest good, so it’s rational to cut off the nose of a girl who’s compromised your honor.”
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
Sonia pauses as a loud vehicle grinds up the hill outside the hujra. It soon stops and they hear shouts and clankings from a nearby building. The diesel engine from the night before roars anew.
“It seems to be a busy day in the village of no return,” observes Sonia. “But it’s not a question of what I believe-or, rather, it is but in another sense. If you believe in God, you’re inclined to take the world as it comes, rather than impose a system on it. The problem with both the Pashtun way and the American way is that they each worship something other than God: honor and money. The Pashtuns shouldn’t cut off girls’ noses for honor, and the Americans shouldn’t destroy lives for gain, especially since the Prophet preached extensively against pride, and you’ll recall Jesus had some harsh things to say about loot. But what you seem to be implying is that the Pashtuns are inherently depraved because what they falsely prize is different from what we falsely prize. And that can’t be true.�
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“I don’t prize money,” says Annette.
“No, you fly into dangerous places and try to make peace. It’s very noble.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Not at all. But you know, people devoted to good works are in exactly the same danger of spiritual pride as people who concentrate on doing the rituals properly. There is absolutely nothing more dangerous in the world than self-righteousness tied to power. Those idiots out there are one example, and the recent foreign policy of the United States is another. The world is beyond fixing. That’s why we pray.”
“But surely, faith without works is sterile-” Annette begins, and then is stopped by a shrill scream, followed by shouts and more screams. A door slams and all becomes silent again, except for the wind and the diesel.
“I wonder what that was all about,” says Sonia. “I’m sorry… you were saying?”
But Annette has dropped her theological point, as though the cry from outside has pressed upon her with renewed force her present dire circumstances. She says, “Excuse me. I’m very tired right now; I need to rest,” and she lies down on her charpoy and pulls the quilt over her head.
Sonia observes this and understands. She herself slept a good deal after her mother was killed, twelve or even sixteen hours a day, for weeks. There are life events that can destroy the personality, which is a lot more fragile than most people imagine, constructed as it is from bits provided by others in the most haphazard way. People can be torn down to the core, “shattered,” as the expression goes, and then they seek sleep. And dreams, which provide the ground for the construction of a new and more integrated self. Providing there’s a core, and providing they’re willing to do the work.
Nor does insight help much. Fluss was always calling insight “baby steps.” During her first year in therapy, she had balked; she was tired of going over the sad stories, she thought she was done, and he’d said, You aren’t even started, my dear. Yes, now we have the dynamics, the demanding mother, the ineffective father, the shattering accidents, the insecurity, the rejection of offered security, the purposeful disruptions, the running off, the guilt and what results-all fine. Write it on an index card and stick it in your wallet. But now we must start on the work. Now we must get you to awaken!
The Good Son Page 15