The Good Son

by Michael Gruber

  But the worst thing was that I was no longer armed. I would walk in the streets and imagine someone insulting me or my mother and I would have no way of obtaining satisfaction or revenge. This thought obsessed me, and when the time came for me to leave the house and go alone to school I took care to arm myself with the dagger I’d taken from my mother’s trunk. It seemed like a hundred years ago, but it was still very sharp.

  Long story short, I got into a stupid argument with a football player in the cafeteria one day because he thought I was staring at his girlfriend, which I was. He pushed me and accused me of having sex with my mother, so I pulled out my knife and gutted him. A cultural misunderstanding, of the kind the U.S. government makes all the time, but that was not an excuse I could use.

  I have to say Farid came through for me after I got arrested. He had a lot of contacts in the legal system, being a lawyer himself, and he got me charged as a juvenile, even though the commonwealth attorney wanted to charge me as an adult, because of the heinousness of the crime. My victim didn’t die, although he had to quit football for the season, which I guess added to the heinous nature of my crime. So basically it was a year in Bon Aire Juvenile Corrections Facility, which would be a four-star hotel anywhere north of Peshawar, and where I was a model prisoner and completed my education in American culture and got a high school equivalency degree. I still couldn’t write very well, but the standards were not high. They had job counselors there, and they were always saying that in order to succeed in life you had to have a skill set; just having a strong back and a willingness to work wasn’t enough anymore. I took the message to heart. The week after my release I enlisted in the U.S. Army. I figured I had the necessary skill set for that already.

  I said good-bye to Billy and told him I wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. He didn’t show he cared, or maybe I just couldn’t see it. I’m often like that myself, so I sort of understand.

  It’s a long flight to Lahore from D.C. through London, and I never learned to sleep on airplanes so I had a lot of time to think. The TV screen in the airport lounge had shown a news lady doing a story about Craig and the kidnap, with a logo that had Craig’s face and the burnedout bus from the kidnap site on it. She said it had been a week since the event, and no word on what had happened to the hostages after the first video. So I thought about that and what I was going to do and what the army had to do with all of it. I figured my days as a soldier were coming to a close, even if I didn’t get busted for this particular caper. I’m working against the interests of the United States here, no question, and I’m starting to feel funny about taking my paycheck.

  No hard feelings or anything, the army does what it does, and I was reasonably happy in it, probably happier and more successful than I would’ve been in any other occupation, given my history. But I never got to love it, just like I never learned to love my mother’s country. I know that’s unusual; most immigrants, especially immigrants from the impoverished lands, turn out more patriotic than the nativeborn, but not me. Maybe it’s because I never got to know America, only TV and a prison and the military, so you could say I did not see the best parts of it.

  Also, because of my upbringing, I got along a lot better with the mujahideen than I did with the Americans. Most American troops are jocky overgrown schoolboys, mainly white kids from small towns and a good chunk of minority types, and after their unit’s served together and been blooded there is unit cohesion, as they say, the men look after one another and sometimes they cry when one of their number gets blown up. But in most line units there are one or two who don’t necessarily cohere, and don’t cry at all, although otherwise they are excellent soldiers, efficient, self-sacrificing, and so on, but really they don’t give a damn. That would be me.

  The plane landed in Heathrow and we went through passport control. I got the fish eye because I was traveling on my Pakistani passport and because I’d been letting my beard grow for the past week or so. My Pakistani passport says I am Abdul Ismail Laghari, although I don’t believe anyone ever called me Abdul. The name means “slave of God” and Theodore means “God-lover,” which probably amounts to the same thing, and even my Pakistani family calls me Theo. I was actually baptized Theodore at the cathedral in Lahore, privately so as not to cause scandal. So I have been a kind of undercover person from birth almost, and I am bound to offend those who like neat classifications. The passport guy (one of those) looked at his computer for a few minutes to see whether I was the terrorist I seemed to be, but then he gave the passport back to me and moved his eyes to the next in line. I suppose I will have to get used to that when I travel now.

  I bought half a dozen bottles of good scotch at the duty-free shop. I have a license to possess and consume booze within the borders of Pakistan, a state that’s officially teetotal but whose citizens behave a lot like the Americans did when religious fanatics banned alcohol there some years back. My booze license is one advantage to having two identities, and bottles of scotch make a nice gift or bribe.

  They called my flight and I got on with my yellow duty-free bag bulging and there was the usual boarding mess, because everyone else on the plane had been shopping too and the overheads were jammed tight. I had a seat in the next-to-last row in coach and there was a Pakistani family behind me with a five-year-old girl who insisted on sitting on her mother’s lap and shrieked when the flight attendant made her buckle in for takeoff. As soon as the flight attendant turned her back, the dad took the belt off and put the kid back on the lap. This cycle went on several times until the flight attendant threatened to throw them off the plane, after which the kid howled and kicked the back of my chair until the plane was roaring down the runway and the flight attendants were belted in, at which point the dad blithely unstrapped the kid and returned her to the lap for good. I was back in Pakistan already, where no one pays attention to rules and family peace is the main goal of life. It felt just like home.

  Customs in Lahore gave me some heat about the Scotch, but since I have a pale skin and spoke perfect Urdu (and had the booze license) the guy figured I was connected to the elite and let me through. My Auntie Rukhsana was waiting for me outside passport control, and I got a big hug from her, followed by a flood of tears-Oh, your poor mother, you poor boy-and so on, and I thought it was a little extreme, it’s not like either my mother and I were the center of family life among the Lagharis. She asked me with a kind of hungry desperation how our plan was going, and I said it was going as well as could be expected but the thing now was to find out where the hostages were being held and I had to be here to do that, and she asked me how I was going to proceed, all business now, the tears dried, and I said I still had some contacts and I’d ask around. She pumped me a little then, like the good journalist she is, but I put her off, like the good secret agent I am, and at last she quit and flashed me a smile. “Little Theo, all grown up!” she said. “We’re having a party for you tonight. I hope you are not too jet-lagged.”

  “Not too,” I said. “I’m used to traveling. But I’m not exactly in the party mood.”

  “Yes, I understand, and we all, or almost all, feel the same way. But here the family is the most important thing; whenever something happens in your life, good or bad, the family gathers and we all eat, eat. You don’t understand that maybe, but I think we must have such a gathering, because I think you will need our help in what you are going to do. So it is, in a sense, part of why you have come.”

  “Okay, got it,” I said. I’m nothing if not culturally flexible. “Who all is going to be there?”

  “Oh, just the immediate family, Jafar and our children and Nisar and his wife and children. They are dying to meet you.”

  “And Seyd? He’s not coming?”

  She made a face. “Oh, Seyd! That’s all we would need, an ISI-wallah and you in the same room.”

  “Why not? I’m sort of an ISI-wallah myself. We could have an interesting conversation.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” said my a
unt darkly, and then turned to snarl in Mahji dialect at the beggars and porters who had surrounded us as soon as we left the terminal building. Another sign I was back home, people willing to carry heavy loads for a few cents, and other people treating them like dogs, and me as one of the non-dog higher beings: the feelings connected with that, and the near-solidity of the humid air, a sticky sludge of diesel, sewage, and hot spicy oils.

  We got into her Mini and Rukhsana gunned the engine and pressed the horn, trusting the dog people to scramble out of our way, which they did, apparently without resentment, and she whipped us out into the exit road traffic.

  I said the expected “Lahore Lahore hai,” and she laughed and replied in Mahji Panjabi.

  “Yes, and can you still speak your cradle tongue, or have you forgotten?”

  I answered in the same language. “I have not forgotten, Auntie, although I think that even you are more comfortable in English or proper Urdu.”

  “Yes, but I am part of the cosmopolitan liberal elite that will be the ruin of pure Islamic Pakistan, according to my brother Seyd. I believe he has stopped using English entirely.”

  “Then, we’ll have to speak Urdu when we meet.”

  “You intend to visit Seyd?” She seemed astounded.

  “Sure,” I said. “I need to find out what ISI knows about the kidnapping. I’m assuming he’ll be forthcoming. One of his relatives by marriage is among the hostages.”

  “Whom he has always despised. Honestly, Theo, you cannot be so naïve. Don’t you understand that the people who did this atrocity are ISI pawns? I would not be surprised to learn that ISI arranged the whole affair.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “A number of reasons. To embarrass the new government, who perhaps are not as bloodthirsty or purely Islamic as they would like. To discredit anyone working for peace with India. To curry favor with the mullahs. For money.”

  “How money?”

  “Well, if you have kidnapped one of the richest men in the world, I assume there will be money involved. I have heard rumors of negotiations. I have heard of lunches up in Pindi between businessmen, strangers, and high officials of the military and Inter-Services Intelligence. Something is going on. It is well known the whole country is for sale, so why shouldn’t our terrorists be for sale as well?”

  “If that were true we’d have bin Laden by now. No one’s collected the twenty-five million.”

  “Oh, well, those are Pashtuns. In any case, betraying a leader is a different affair entirely to selling a hostage.” Then she yelled, “Get out my way, you shit-eater, go rape your sister!” out the window at a multicolored bus as she whipped across several lanes to make a left turn.

  “You’re not going to Model Town Park?” I said, as we changed direction.

  “Oh, no, we are too fine for Model Town Park now. We have a house in Gulberg, which would have been quite convenient when the children were at school, but now we float around in it like fish in a tank. We have fifteen marlas, can you imagine?”

  “That’s a good-sized house,” I said, falling easily back into the traditional calculations. A marla was 272 and a quarter square feet, so fifteen marlas was a big house for urban Pakistan.

  “You must be doing very well, Auntie.”

  “Oh, well, I am working and the children are grown and Jafar was made head of his division, and we did well on the Model Town house and some investments. You know, most people have small houses full of elderly relatives so we all take one another out to restaurants. When you are able to entertain in your own home that is a big something.”

  “Yes, Auntie, I know. I was born here.”

  “Of course, I know that, but you look like such an American now. Anyway, it is now considered more chic to have others to one’s house, and that was one reason we bought it. You’ll see. Of course, it is not old Lahore, not like my father’s house, but Gulberg is not nothing either.”

  She sounded sad when she said this, and I asked her, “And do you entertain very much, Auntie?”

  “No, we do not, or rather not for some time, because when one is promoted to head of division one has no time for such things anymore. He is in Kahuta half the time, and I am by myself. And even when we did entertain it was all very stiff, the women on one side talking children’s accomplishments, the men on the other talking office politics. No conversation that any civilized person would recognize as such. Oh, Theo, do you remember those nights at my father’s house? People from every part of Lahore, faquirs and generals, merchants, chemistry professors, journalists, ministers, and that wonderful music, with the ghazals floating up through the colored lanterns on strings. What happened to that world, that is what I want to know? We are richer than ever we were then, but somehow the taste has gone out of life. Or am I just getting old?”

  I had nothing to contribute in that department, so I asked how her kids were doing, always a safe subject for a Punjabi woman, even a modern one, and she told me about Shira, who was in the foreign service, a diplomat, if you can imagine, and Hassan, who was prepping for Cambridge, and the baby, Iqbal, not such a baby anymore; he is mad for computers and doesn’t want to go to college but open his own software business, and Nisar is encouraging him, offering investments, and his father is going to shoot both of them; and we talked and argued about stuff like that for the rest of the trip to Gulberg.

  The house was a new one, two floors, tan stucco, and a lot of sheet glass, with little Islamic details so you knew you weren’t in L.A. My aunt showed me to a guest room and told me dinner would be at eight, she would be out and about getting ready, and if I wanted anything just ring.

  I remembered that aspect of life in Pakistan too, and after unpacking my stuff, I rang. A young woman appeared, who seemed surprised when I addressed her in her native tongue and asked her to bring me tea and snacks. Upper-middle-class Americans don’t usually have clusters of servants, but my aunt did, and I found I had not picked up any of the typical American discomfort with them. I guess you have to be born into a feudal society to understand what that’s all about.

  But I was gringo enough to ask the woman what her name was and how long she’d been working for the Lagharis and tried to start a little chat, but I saw she was not happy with that, was getting more and more nervous, and I realized that the only reason a male guest would normally engage a maid in conversation would be if he was planning to throw her down on the bed and fuck her, so I froze my face into a commanding mask and waved her out.

  I fell on the bed alone and conked out for a couple of hours and then I had a bath and dressed in my one suit, a custom-made number I’d picked up in Dubai a few years ago for about what a pair of decent jeans would cost in the States. I’d bought some silk shirts and a tie at the same time just for the hell of it. I’d never owned an outfit like that, and I guess I’d put it on two or three times at weddings and the occasional party at the house in D.C., but I wore it to dinner that night because I didn’t have any Pakistani clothes.

  When I got down to the living room, which looked like anything you might find in suburban Washington, I found that all the men were dressed Western-style like I was, and I guess they were doing it in honor of me, which I thought was pretty neat. I think there are about twelve cousins in my generation of the family, counting me, Rukhsana’s three, and Nisar’s three girls. Seyd’s five kids were naturally absent. I was a little nervous about this gathering because of the current situation and the family history, my mom not being the pride of the clan, but it all went fine.

  Better than fine, to tell the truth. I’m the senior cousin, the son of the oldest brother, which counts for something in Punjabi society; and it turned out they’d been hearing stories of my colorful exploits all their lives, mainly from Auntie R, and they were fascinated; and when it turned out I could speak their languages and wasn’t a typical American asshole, was totally desi except for the skin tones, had manners, et cetera, it turned into a love fest. Rukhsana’s three were as described, all good-lo
oking and a lot smarter than me. Nisar’s Yasmin, Zahra, and Miah were all in various schools; they chattered and tried out their flirting and used American slang they’d picked up from the Web and movies, just wrongly enough to be charming. Pakistanis of that class obviously travel a good deal nowadays and have total access to international media, but they’re still psychologically sheltered, and now they had what amounted to a tame monster right in the family. I felt like I was coming out of a shell of my own devising into the sunlight of human life, that for the first time I could see a cure for the evil of my days, and I regretted having denied myself this for so long, nursing my isolation and loneliness, buried in the world of grunts, not that much better off than Billy Olin. What wonderful people, I thought: my family!

  So we talked and laughed through a really terrific dinner, and they told me about their lives and I told them what I thought they could handle about mine, and the only things that weren’t quite right was that Seyd had refused to come or let his kids come, and Jafar came in late, when we’d already sat down, and I could see that there was something not right between him and Rukhsana.

  After dinner, the men walked out on the roof terrace for smoking and guy talk and I gave Nisar and Jafar the bottles of eighteen-year-old Macallan I’d bought, which they really seemed to appreciate, and Jafar got a servant to bring glasses and ice and we all had an illicit drink, with which we toasted Babaji, and Nisar said, “Scotch is not wine,” and everyone laughed.

  Then Jafar got into a discussion of the recent cricket test matches with his sons that I couldn’t really follow and Nisar took the opportunity to pull me away for a private conversation.

  “So what are your plans?” he asked.