by Arif Anwar
She finishes the fall semester and submits a request for a deferral a week before the Christmas holidays. When she finally calls home, her mother makes the three-hour drive from Reading to DC the same night.
She spends the winter in Pennsylvania, then spring. At points, when reconnecting with old friends she had left behind for college, relatives to whom she must explain her life and choices, she wonders if she has made a mistake in returning.
More sober about the prospects of an international career, she busies herself with night courses at a local college in the new year, focusing on a fast-track finance degree. All the while the child within her grows, a placid, benign acceleration other than for the occasional morning sickness. On some nights, the being makes itself known, an errant limb or the head pressing against her until its outlines can be seen across her belly. Feeling mischievous during these sightings, Val gently pushes down against the protrusion with a finger until it disappears again in the depths of her womb, like a startled fish.
One morning, her mother leaves for her part-time volunteer position at the local library, reminding Val that she is expecting a package, so when the doorbell rings around half past ten, she descends the stairs with hurried but careful steps, one hand bracing her belly, worried that if she missed the FedEx truck they would have to drive to the warehouse located in the outskirts of town, twenty miles away.
She opens the door and the words with which she planned to greet the delivery person wither on her lips.
Shar stands before her, dressed simply in an olive green T-shirt and jeans, a canvas backpack slung over his shoulder. On the driveway behind him sits a gray Buick that he has presumably rented to drive to her.
He makes no motion to approach. His hair is long now, his cheekbones more prominent, the arms and elbows honed sharper. He does not smile. His eyes are hooded and wary. Buried below the man she knew was another, and his emergence is nearly complete.
“When did you get here?” she manages to ask.
“I landed in DC a few days ago. I thought you’d still be there. I had to track you down. You didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“I didn’t hear from you, so I stopped writing. I didn’t think anyone would come looking for me.”
He stares at her belly. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
She shakes her head. “I asked them not to tell me. Felt like a measure of control over the process.”
“How long are you here for?” she asks him.
“My visa’s good for three months.”
She still has not moved out of his way, nor has he moved a step closer since they began speaking. Val sighs and leans her head against the doorframe.
“Well, my friend, just what the heck do we do now?”
Shahryar & Anna
Washington, DC
SEPTEMBER 2004
SHAR stops to catch his breath, nearly an hour after he began speaking. All that time, Katerina has not interrupted him once. It is cooler now, their breaths just beginning to fog in the air. Faint sounds of revelry drift in from Dupont Circle. A dog barks nearby, insistent at first, then trailing into silence. A raccoon, back arched and wary, steps out of a driveway across the street, and upon spotting them, retreats into the dark.
He notices Katerina wrap her shawl closer. Embarrassed that it took him so long, he offers her his jacket. She accepts with gratitude.
“Your story is unbelievable, Shar,” she says, zipping the leather jacket halfway up. “I mean in a good way. Not in the way that I don’t believe you. Why did it take you so long to get back, though?”
“After finding out about my birth parents it felt like nothing was real anymore, except for them. I had to know more, I had to. I spent months in that village, talking to everyone and anyone who knew them, who might have known them. And all that time, it was as if the rest of the world had disappeared. But I had to come back home at some point, if only to convince my parents that I hadn’t completely lost my mind. They told me that Val had been calling, showed me her letters. After I read the first one, I immediately applied for a visa to the States, which normally takes months to get, but my father pulled all the strings he could. I left two weeks later.”
“Were you there for the birth of your daughter?”
“I was, but Val and I couldn’t work out how we wanted to be in each other’s lives. Those first few months, things were tense. It was everyone’s fault and no one’s.”
Katerina inches closer. “I know we discussed this at Mr. Ahmed’s office, but was reconciliation not possible?”
“We discussed it. I didn’t want to leave so soon after Anna was born. I offered it. We would have had to get married for me to stay back. But she said no, saying that we didn’t have a good foundation on which to build a relationship, but that I could be in Anna’s life in whatever capacity or extent that I wanted.”
“When did she meet her boyfriend?”
“A couple of years later.” He tells Katerina how Val worked during the days at places like Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma while Anna was watched by her grandmother, all the while taking night classes for her finance degree. An executive track MBA at Drexel and a CA certification followed. She secured a position at ING in Maryland, rising quickly to become a senior financial analyst, then finance manager.
It was in Baltimore, one day after work, when Val’s car would not start in a Trader Joe’s parking lot. The man in the BMW beside her offered a jump-start, and when that did not work, drove her to the babysitter’s residence so that she could collect Anna. Finally, he gave them a ride home, a business card on which he wrote his cell-phone number. A number that Val would dial three days later, proposing a walk in Rock Creek Park. She mentioned that she would find a sitter for Anna, but Jeremy insisted that she bring her daughter along. Anna was a little over two years old at the time.
Shar was working in a small NGO near Chittagong by then, finding time to research his roots in his spare moments, all the while keeping up regular correspondence with Val and Anna. He was also realizing the unsustainability of his lifestyle and trying to find a way to be closer to his daughter. Applying for a doctorate, with proposed research on the lives of the fishermen of the Bangladeshi coast, presented itself as a possibility, and he applied to the Social Anthropology program at GW, receiving an acceptance letter four months later.
Val broke the news about Jeremy to him gently. A few weeks after he moved back to America and began his doctoral classes at George Washington, she invited him for grilled-cheese sandwiches and coleslaw at her apartment one Saturday afternoon, told him that she had been seeing Jeremy for some time, that she and Anna were planning to move in with him.
I want you to know that this does not in any way diminish your role in Anna’s life, she said. I think it’ll be good for her to be in such a loving environment. Jeremy and I can provide that. And you’ll of course be a big part of it.
He sat for some moments, blindsided by the news. When he spoke, his words were enveloped in a quiet fury. I could have provided that. I offered, twice. You said no both times.
This seemed to be an accusation she had prepared for. I did. It’s true, she said. The first time, I wasn’t ready. But the second time, it was you. I could see the relief in your face when I said no then. You couldn’t hide it. You weren’t done with your past, and even Anna wasn’t enough reason for you to remain here. I know you would have stayed back if I’d made you, but unhappily. I don’t blame you for that. I can’t imagine being caught between the past and the future the way you are . . . were.
She reached across the table and entwined her fingers with his. This is for the best, Shar. I swear. It’s no small thing you’ve done in moving back here. I know it. Jeremy knows it, and when Anna’s older, she’ll know it too.
AND now, Katerina lays an arm on his, recreating the past. “She was right, you know. You’re not alone in this. I know just as much as you how painful it is to not see your child. And we’re both lucky to have Mr. Ahm
ed on our side.”
“I know,” he says. “Thank you.” He gently takes his arm away. He has spoken longer and in more detail than he thought he would. Now he feels a glaze of shame to have laid out so much of his life before this woman who is barely more than a stranger.
Katerina stares at him intently. He breaks the eye contact, reminding himself how easily beauty and charm can be weaponized.
“Mr. Ahmed’s going to work his fingers to the bone for you, Shar, but he also needs your help in return.”
“I don’t have a lot of money, but I can do my best to—”
“No, no. That’s not what I mean.”
Katerina’s shoulders are tensed, as though she is steeling herself for what comes next. Her voice is barely above a whisper when she speaks.
“Do you know who Pablo Aguilar is?”
HE takes a taxi home from Dupont Circle to his apartment, too weary to be frugal this night. Before he left, Katerina urged him to consider carefully what she proposed—the fee that was Faisal Ahmed’s demand.
He sits at his desk and turns on his laptop to search for Pablo Aguilar.
The very first result is his official US Senate web page, with a picture of the handsome young senator in the upper right corner.
He returns to the list of search results and clicks on the second entry—an article from the New York Times. Less than a year old, it concerns the growing political chatter around the young Republican senator from Maryland as a potential presidential candidate in 2008. Originally a state senator, Aguilar was nominated to the US Senate by Maryland’s Republican governor to replace a long-serving Democrat forced to resign due to scandal.
One of Aguilar’s priorities is to introduce a comprehensive immigration bill within the next year, and to this end, the young senator has been building consensus across both sides of the aisle. The article concludes with quotes from an anonymous source on the number of policy experts already collaborating with Aguilar to refine the proposed legislation in a way that will be palatable to both Democrats and Republicans.
One of them is Albert Volcker, the director of the Institute for Policy Dialogue, where Shar works.
Book III
Surging
Ichiro
Chittagong, East Bengal (Bangladesh)
APRIL 1942
He wakes sightless and bound. He is blind, he decides. Blue skies, light-flecked waves, the flicker of wings through the trees—all will become memories.
He twists, moans as movement coaxes blood to his limbs. There is the chafe of ropes around his wrists, ankles. They are tied to the posts of a bed.
“He’s coming around,” says a woman in English, and he knows that he is captured. A man’s voice, nasal and crisp, confirms this. “You are now a prisoner of His Majesty’s Army. You will be interned under the conventions stipulated by the military tribunal for detainment of enemy soldiers. You will be held indefinitely, or until a necessary prisoner exchange occurs with your government. Do you understand?”
The man stops speaking as another translates his words into rough, accented Japanese.
“Do you understand?” the man and the interpreter repeat when he does not respond.
Still he says nothing.
A hand seizes his hair and pulls up his head. “Do you, Jap?”
The woman interrupts. “Selwyn, I don’t think this fellow’s recovered enough for such rough stuff.”
“How well do you think these gooks would treat us if the tables were turned?”
“None too well, I imagine. But they don’t set our standards, do they? And I assume if he’s valuable you want him at full strength when he’s interrogated.”
Selwyn releases Ichiro’s hair, and his head flops back onto the pillow. A rage courses through him at this indignity. He channels it through to his clenched fists under the sheets, his jaws, teeth that he clamps down hard on his cheeks.
“I suggest you give him what he needs and no more. It makes me sick that our boys are out in the halls while he gets a cabin.” Selwyn and his interpreter exit the cabin with the sharp metered cadence of soldiers.
He takes a slow trembling breath, unclenches his fists and relaxes his jaw until the coppery taste of blood floods his mouth. The world is dark still; he hears the moans and cries of other wounded soldiers. The door to the room must be ajar.
The woman remains.
“I’ve something that belongs to you,” she says. “I think it’s your diary. It’s in Japanese, but I saw German and English as well. I know it wasn’t proper to look inside but . . . I know you understand me,” she hazards.
He does not speak. What if this woman and the man who spoke before are collaborators in a trap? Is Selwyn lurking just beyond the door? Smirking at his naïveté? Ichiro has been told to expect no mercy from the British if he were captured, advised to swaddle his heart and mind in stoicism to withstand the torture that would be inflicted on him, then take his own life and die with dignity at the first opportunity.
“You’ve nothing to fear while you’re under my care. My name is Claire. May I know yours?”
Her tone hardens when he remains silent. “Very well. If you won’t speak, you won’t get your diary back. When you’re ready, you can ask for it. In English.”
Claire leaves the room in determined footsteps. He listens to the sound of her heels echoing down the hallway.
He would have told her everything if she asked just once more.
IN the sightless days that follow, his nose charts the scents of the hospital: the astringent scent of Dettol in his cabin; the must of smoke in the evening air from the burning hay of the paddy fields; the manure supply’s pungent arrival on a creaking cow-cart in the morning, outside his window. His ears tally the sharp footsteps of the British sisters rapping over the hallways like steady reports from a pistol, the soft swish of whatever footwear that their Indian counterparts don; the dull clang of the shift bells.
His tongue is less clever in comparison—barely able to discern the morning porridge from the evening’s potato mash, the idiosyncrasies of the chalky pills he is forced to swallow.
The sclerotic officer from the first day returns twice more over the course of the week. He questions Ichiro intently each time, and each time, Claire oversees the process.
He continues his silence during these ordeals. Already blind, he has little to lose by feigning deafness. After the third pointless interrogation, Selwyn asks Claire when Ichiro can be released into military custody.
“Well, you can see that he’s not recovered. We’re yet to even take the bandage off his eyes.”
Ichiro receives a hard poke in the ribs from what feels like a baton. He grunts in pain and surprise. “He seems fine to me.”
“Even if he were, it’s not as though he’ll suddenly be able to speak English. I don’t understand the rush.”
“Being married to Drake gives you no protection or privileges, Claire. If this is about what happened back in Rangoon—”
“Not at all,” Claire interrupts. “I’m simply speaking as a doctor. I’m on your side, Selwyn. Surely you agree that if I release him before his time he’ll just be back here again after a few days. I’m saving you from wasting time.”
There is the rustle of paper as Selwyn produces a document. “Ready or not, we’re moving him to the mobile interrogation center in a week, then he’ll be shifted to the Delhi Cantonment for further questioning.”
“That’s too soon.”
Selwyn’s tone turns a shade kinder. “Look, Claire, I understand that you see his hairless face and you think of someone’s son, brother. But you can’t imagine what they’ve done. I’ve seen it firsthand. He’s no innocent just because he’s a pilot. His hands are as bloody as any.”
All warmth has fled Claire’s voice when she responds. “I know what they’ve done, Selwyn. I see it around me every day. And did you forget why we had to flee Burma? I’ll take the order under advisement.”
“Just remember—a week and no more.�
�� Selwyn departs.
Seconds pass. With a lack of warning that makes Ichiro shudder, Claire pours a desperate whisper into his ear. “If you don’t talk, then there is nothing more I can do to help you. And I’ll have to surrender your journal.”
He tastes the rust of unpracticed English on his tongue. “And why would you want to help me?”
She edges close again, flooding his senses with lavender and sunshine. “I knew it.”
She undoes the straps around his wrists and his hands tingle as the blood rushes back in. She places something on them and his fingers scrabble across its hard leather surface, caressing again the smooth warm grain, tracing the shape of a heron in flight that is embossed on the cover. He knows that it is pictured as though from above, the tips of its wings meeting in a point before its head to form a graceful circle, the white feathers reminiscent of chrysanthemum petals.
His father had bought the journal for him when on a visit to Tokushima. A month before his enlistment.
He sighs and thrusts the journal back in Claire’s general direction. “Thank you. Will you please keep it safe? It is of no use to me in this state.”
She takes it.
HE hears unidentified footsteps approach him the next day. Heavy. Masculine. They belong to a doctor who informs him that the bandages from his eyes are to be removed.
“He’s suffered retinal damage from the explosion,” he says to another in the room. “We’ve done our best to save his vision, but God only knows what he will or won’t see after we take the bandages off.”
The hand on his face is rougher and thicker than Claire’s but still gentle. He keeps his eyes closed as the bandages are removed.
“You can try opening your eyes,” the doctor says. “We’ve drawn the shades.”