Asymmetry

by Lisa Halliday

  Home from graduate school years later, I was having dinner with my parents in Bay Ridge when my father started talking about Schiphol, the airport just outside Amsterdam. Specifically, he was telling us about how, in Dutch, schiphol means ship grave, because the airport had been built on land reclaimed from a shallow lake notorious for its many shipwrecks. Dad, I said. I already know this. You told me this when I was twelve. You told me this when we were there, waiting for our flight to Amman. That can’t be right, he said. I only just read it this afternoon. Well, maybe you’d forgotten that you knew it, I said, because I can clearly remember sitting in the terminal, waiting to board, and looking out across the tarmac and thinking about the boats buried underneath. I remember picturing ships like skeletons, with bones like human bones—femurs and fibulae and giant rib cages for hulls.

  Huh, said my father.

  A moment later I added:

  Or maybe it was Sami. Maybe Sami told me about the ships.

  At this point my mother held up a hand and said that this was the first she had ever heard about any ship grave. She also reminded us that that December, of 1988, when I was twelve, was the same December in which Sami was recovering from mono and spent our layovers en route to Baghdad slumped over our luggage or prostrate on a bench. Well, I said. He still could have said it to me. Or maybe he said it on the way back, when we passed through Schiphol again on the way home. Now my mother gave me a wounded look that a moment later softened into something like pity for me and my selective amnesia. Amar, she said quietly, your brother was not with us on the way home.

  AS IT GOES, DENISE’S hair is more of a walnut color. She’s also wider in the hips than I’d remembered, and in the crook of one elbow was carrying a manila folder so thick you would have thought I was Alger Hiss. I made a show of sitting up straighter, bookmarking the book I hadn’t been reading, and raising my eyebrows in the manner of someone cooperative yet bemused. I was bemused, but my inclinations toward cooperation were waning.

  Denise sat down beside me and spoke quietly, discreetly, while I detected in her eyes a certain frisson. As though she’d been waiting a long time for a case like mine. Maybe I was even her first.

  Mr. Jaafari. Apart from your American passport, do you have any other nationality passport or identification document?

  Yes.

  You do?

  Yes.

  What?

  An Iraqi passport.

  (Again the frisson.) How is that?

  My parents are Iraqi. They applied for one after I was born.

  Do you have it with you?

  I bent down to unzip my backpack. When I’d pulled it out and handed it to her Denise began turning the pages of my second passport slowly, by the edges, like you handle a postcard whose ink isn’t yet dry. When do you use this?

  Very rarely.

  But under what circumstances?

  Whenever I enter or leave Iraq.

  And does that give you an advantage?

  What sort of an advantage?

  You tell me.

  If you had two passports, I said evenly, wouldn’t you use your British one whenever entering or leaving the UK?

  Of course, said Denise. That’s the law. But I don’t know what the law is in Iraq, now do I?

  I didn’t mean to, but I smiled. And faintly, Denise flinched. Then, still holding my second passport—which is to say the only passport I had left—she nodded slowly, comprehendingly, tapped it lightly once on her knee, and stood up and walked away.

  SOMETIMES I THINK I remember the pomegranate. Its tannic sweetness, the sticky juice running down my chin. But to this day there is an instant Polaroid of the moment taped to our refrigerator in Bay Ridge and again I cannot be certain whether if there were no photograph there would be no memory.

  In both, Rania is wearing a blue hijab. The way she’s holding me, the way the fabric flows down over her shoulders and around my diaper and into her blouse, make it look like we are posing for a Maestà. How many times does a boy open the refrigerator of his youth? Six thousand times? Nine thousand? Whatever the number, it was plenty to make an indelible impression. Every glass of milk, every swig of juice, every leftover slice of maqluba . . . And of course my brother would have seen it every day for a good many formative years as well.

  The following December, my parents returned to Baghdad on their own. I stayed in Bay Ridge, under the pretense that I did not want to miss Junior Varsity Swimming tryouts, and was supervised by the parents of a classmate whose bedroom contained a lumpy trundle bed and a life-sized poster of Paulina Porizkova. I did not try out for the swim team and when my parents returned at the end of January they did not ask me how it had gone. They were preoccupied with the news that my brother wanted to marry Rania.

  He had also mentioned wanting to move to Najaf in order to study at an Islamic seminary there. When my father told me that, my mother covered her face with her hands.

  That Rania was our first cousin was not inherently the problem. Nor was the problem the heightened risk of offspring with a recessive gene disorder—although my parents had long made clear their opinion that clan fidelity is not worth burdening a child with something that might be avoided with a little genetic testing. The problem was that marrying Rania clearly indicated a broader intention to resettle in Iraq, whose values my brother had claimed to prefer over the rather less decorous ones on display in America. And yet, to be valid in Sami’s own mind—to accord with the more decorous values he claimed to prefer—the engagement required our parents’ blessing. Rania’s parents had already given theirs; they had even waived a dowry. But my mother and father were not so ready to sanction Sami’s rejection of the life they had strenuously uprooted themselves to grant us. What they decided was that their blessing would be contingent on Sami and Rania marrying in New York and Sami earning his graduate degree from an American university. He could study religion instead of medicine if he wanted. He could return to Iraq afterward if he wanted. But if he wanted to marry Rania with full parental endorsement, these were the conditions, and my brother agreed.

  We expected him to arrive in New York with Rania and our grandmother the following July. At the airport, however, we found my father’s mother waiting outside the Arrivals gate alone. She had flown with them as far as Amman, where they were to catch a connecting flight to Cairo, but the Jordanian authorities had stopped Sami and Rania on the basis that they did not believe they were going to America in order to be married. What is your real reason for traveling to America? To get married, said Sami. That is a lie! said the authorities. You would not be traveling together if you were not already married. No, Sami insisted. Really. We are not yet married; we are going to be married in the States, where my parents live and are expecting us. Then you must be a whore, one of the officers said to Rania. A slut. How else do you explain this traveling with a man who is not your husband?

  At this, Rania had fainted, which the officers gladly took as confirmation of their suspicions.

  As a result Sami and Rania returned to Iraq while our grandmother flew alone on to Cairo, London, and New York. She was meant to visit us for seven weeks, my grandfather having stayed behind in order to recuperate from a hip operation. But then Iraq invaded Kuwait and seven weeks became seven months. My grandmother was not the only one displaced: I had moved into Sami’s bedroom and given her mine, owing to my mother’s concern that Sami’s room was too drafty, by which I think she meant contains a piano, which my grandmother had been raised to regard as a frivolous invention, although apparently not so frivolous as to be resisted when she thought no one else was home.

  From time to time, Zaid would call to tell us that everyone was fine. Jiddo’s hip was getting better. Alia was taking care of the fruit trees. There was no mention of air-raid sirens, or cruise missiles whistling across the sky, for life in a panopticon had long conditioned Iraqis to believe that the walls have ears and the windows have eyes and you never know when the watchmen are off duty so you assume they are
always on. Less convincingly, the panopticon was also blamed for my brother’s long silences. Sami had never been a letter writer, so I had no right to expect in-kind replies to the loquacious novellas I typed up and mailed off to him roughly once a month. However my brother did not even acknowledge those letters, not in his breezy Greetings from Baghdad! postcards and not when he called, which I seem to remember him doing only twice. The first time was on New Year’s Eve, when our parents would have been back in Iraq themselves had there not been a war on. Ostensibly, the call was to wish us a Happy 1991, inshallah, but then Sami went on to say that he and Rania were not going to be married, after all. He did not sound disappointed. Instead, he sounded perfectly sanguine: sanguine and maybe even a little relieved. Rania was going to study art history in Paris and he too had reconsidered his plans to move to Najaf and was looking into applying to Baghdad Medical School instead. What’s wrong with the medical schools in America? I asked when it was my turn on the phone. Nothing, Sami said blithely. What’s wrong with the medical schools in Iraq?

  The second call came about three months later, by which time America had begun to withdraw its troops and my grandmother was packing up to go home. This time, Sami spoke only to our father, who, after hanging up, immediately took his jacket off the coatrack and went out for a walk. When he got home he went into my bedroom, where my grandmother’s suitcase was three-quarters full and her boarding passes to London, Cairo, and Amman were propped up against my fishbowl of dice. He sat her down on my bed and took her hands in his. Then he told her that Ahmed, her husband of fifty-seven years, had had an embolism that morning, and died.

  MR. JAAFARI?

  I looked up to see her standing on the other side of the immigration desks, evidently refusing to complete the distance between us.

  We’d like to ask you a few more questions. Do you want to come through?

  We rode an escalator together down to the baggage claim, where Denise consulted the overhead monitors. Then we walked the full length of the vast hall to locate my suitcase standing in solitude beside a stopped carousel. Extending its handle I tipped it into its wheeling position and followed Denise most of the way back to the escalator followed by a left into Goods to Declare. A male customs officer awaited us there, and while I hoisted my case onto a metal examination table he snapped on a pair of purple rubber gloves.

  Pack the bag yourself?

  Yes.

  Anybody help you pack?

  No.

  Are you aware of all of the contents of your bag?

  Yes.

  While he poked around among my socks and underwear, Denise resumed her own questioning, thinly disguised as small talk.

  So. What’s the temperature like in Iraq this time of year?

  Well, it depends on where you are, of course. In Sulaymaniyah it should be pretty mild, like in the fifties.

  What’s that? Denise said to the customs officer. Ten? Twelve?

  Got me.

  So when did you last see your brother? She opened my Iraqi passport again.

  In January of 2005.

  In Iraq?

  Yes.

  Is he an economist too?

  No, he’s a doctor.

  The customs officer held up a package wrapped in pink-and-yellow gift paper. What’s this?

  An abacus, I said.

  An abacus like for counting?

  That’s right.

  Why do you have an abacus?

  It’s a present, for my niece.

  How old is your niece? asked Denise.

  Three.

  And you think she’d like an abacus? the customs officer asked.

  I shrugged. The customs officer and Denise both pondered my face for a moment and then the officer began prying at a piece of tape. The paper underneath was thin and as the tape peeled away it took some of the color with it, leaving behind a white gash. Peering into the open end, the officer gave the package a little shake; we all could hear the wooden beads clacking together as they slid back and forth on their thin metal rods. An abacus, the customs officer repeated incredulously, before feebly attempting to rewrap it.

  I followed Denise back up the escalator and down a narrow hallway into a room where she gestured toward a chair facing a desk. Sitting on the other side of the desk, she began jiggling a mouse. Several seconds passed, and then I asked whether if this was going to take quite a bit longer I might make a call.

  To Mr. Blunt?

  Yes.

  We’ve already called him.

  Eventually Denise found what she was looking for and stood up to cross the room and jiggle another mouse attached to another computer. This monitor looked newer than the first and was rigged up to an elaborate array of auxiliary equipment including a glowing glass slide and a camera that looked like a tiny Cyclops. A photograph of my most neutral expression was taken, followed by my fingerprints, all digitally. In order to get a complete and acceptable set Denise had to squeeze each of my fingers between her own forefinger and thumb and roll the tip over the glowing slide at least twice, sometimes three times; with one of my thumbs, four. I did not find Denise attractive. Nor was there anything suggestive to the way she manipulated my fingers, so it was a surprise when our prolonged physical contact began faintly to arouse me. Cooperating as we were, united by our desire to appease her hard-to-please computer with its red Xs and supercilious little pings, gave me the feeling that we were merely playing border control, and that any moment now Denise’s mother would call her in for supper and I would be freed.

  Instead, when the fingerprinting was done, we progressed to a second room, this one containing a small square table and three metal chairs. The upper half of one of the walls was composed of a dimmed glass in which my reflection was less a mirror image than a silhouette. Running horizontally under the glass was a long strip of red plastic, or rubber, like the tape you press on a bus to request a stop. A notice had been taped to the glass: PLEASE DO NOT LEAN ON THE RED STRIP AS IT SETS OFF AN ALARM.

  Denise and I sat facing each other, my passports and her fat manila folder on the table between us. Then Denise thought better of this configuration and shuffled her chair around so that we were positioned at a right angle to each other instead. Sitting very erect, she opened her folder and took out a small stack of paper that she tapped vertically into alignment. Then she explained that she was going to ask me a series of questions, my answers to which she would write down and give me the opportunity to review. If I were happy with what she had written, I would sign my name at the bottom of each page, indicating my approval. I could see no fairer alternative to this process, and yet as it was explained to me I began to have the sinking feeling you get when you agree to a game of Tic-Tac-Toe in which the other person gets to go first.

  For the next twenty minutes, Denise and I repeated almost verbatim the same conversation we’d had nearly three hours earlier, when I’d first reached the end of the metal maze. This iteration took longer, of course, because Denise had to write everything down in her loopy, schoolgirlish handwriting, and then, whenever she reached the end of a sheet of paper, there was the time it took for her to swivel it toward me and wait while I read it over and signed my assent. Naturally, answering questions I’d already answered felt like a waste of time—but soon enough I regretted my impatience, because when we finally did move on it was into more sinister territory.

  Have you ever been arrested?

  No.

  Is Amar Ala Jaafari the name you were given at birth?

  Yes.

  Have you ever used another name?

  No.

  Never?

  Never.

  You have never told a law enforcement officer that your name is anything other than Amar Ala Jaafari?

  No.

  Denise studied me intently for a moment before writing this last no down.

  Can you tell me in more detail what you were doing here in 1998?

  I’d just graduated from college and had a yearlong internship at t
he Toynbee Bioethics Council. I also volunteered at a hospital on weekends.

  What was your address during your stay?

  Thirty-Nine Tavistock Place. I don’t remember the flat number.

  And how was it that you came to live there?

  It was my aunt’s apartment.

  Is it still?

  No.

  Why not?

  She died.

  I’m sorry. How?

  Cancer.

  The pen hovered.

  Pancreatic, I said.

  And now you’re returning to London for the first time in ten years? To see some friends?

  To meet up with Alastair Blunt, yes.

  For only two days?

  I looked at my watch. Yes.

  I’m just thinking . . . It’s a long way to come for only forty-eight hours. Not even forty-eight hours.

  Well, like I said, I’m flying on to Istanbul on Sunday. It was the cheapest ticket I could find.

  What is your relationship to Mr. Blunt?

  We’re friends.

  Do you have a girlfriend? A partner?

  No.

  No partner?

  Not at the moment, no.

  And no job.

  No.

  Denise smiled at me sadly. Well, I guess it’s not a good time to be looking, is it?