These are events not mentioned in the more popular newspapers and magazines, but in light of Iraq’s invasion, I believe they ought to be. All angles of the situation ought to be examined, all parties ought to be included in the debate and the debate ought to be made available to the public. But why is the public not being told what the UN, US, Iraq, Kuwait and other relevant Middle Eastern nations are discussing? Does the US have other plans?
Perhaps. We need to also examine how the American government dealt with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq crisis, when it was taken off the ‘terrorist’ list. Compare this with what happened immediately after the cease-fire. Practically overnight, it was again declared a threat in a document with a name worth noting, War Plan 1002–90. Why the about-face? It was the same Iraq, the one that had been funded and armed by the US during the war. Mirroring the government’s shift, the US media also began to portray Iraq differently. It was no longer an ally. It had become the enemy.
The American public has been told that the 40,000 US troops currently stationed in the Saudi desert are there to protect Saudi Arabia from the 120,000 Iraqi troops moving into it from Kuwait. Why haven’t we been shown these Iraqi troops?
A good student of journalism should not accept statements as true till hard evidence is available, particularly not on the brink of war. So an in-depth discussion of the circumstances leading into Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait must be had. We should read the smaller publications that dare to exercise their right under the First Amendment. These might be the ones that are better – as you yourself have said – ‘guardians of the truth’.
‘This is a perfectly reasonable entry,’ mumbled Daanish, looking up from the journal. In red ink, Wayne had written, A weak analysis. Choose another topic. Explore other avenues. ‘What do you mean by exploring other avenues? That’s what I’ve done. No one else in class has touched the topic, though it’s a lot more important than vitamins.’
Daanish was pleased with himself for remaining calm. Though he wrote boldly in his journal, he rarely found the courage to confront Wayne in person. So far, he was doing well.
‘Look,’ said Wayne, shutting the journal abruptly. He leaned forward, fixing him with icy blue eyes. Daanish forced himself to glower back. ‘I can understand how upsetting this must be for you. Miles from home, nostalgic perhaps. Lonely. You’ve done well to get this far. I’m proud of you. Really, I am. It’s good to take pride in your own.’
Daanish was aghast. ‘Pride in my own?’
‘Well, you being an Arab and all, these events …’
‘I’m not an Arab,’ Daanish retorted, before his lips snapped shut. Not this, he thought. Wayne had never accused other students of being swayed because of their backgrounds. But Daanish’s had become a weapon to silence him with, though Wayne couldn’t even get the details right. He opened his mouth before knowing how to say this, and, with the same scorn that he heard in Wayne’s voice, said, ‘Arabs comprise less than thirty per cent of Muslims.’ But this was not his most important point. He sat quietly, listening to his heart race.
Then: ‘I’m a student of journalism. My journal has nothing to do with my religion.’ The next sentence hung on the tip of his tongue: Have I ever questioned your skills based on your faith? He swallowed it.
Wayne leaned back into the swivel chair again. He looked at his watch. ‘Well,’ he shrugged, ‘your role as a budding journalist is to understand that all media persons deal in facts, not opinions. Fact: Saddam invaded Kuwait. We cannot change that by asking why. You’re free to speculate,’ he rotated his arms in a magnanimous gesture, ‘but your speculations are not news. Your opinions have no place on the front page.’
This time Daanish did not pause. ‘But that’s all that’s on the front page! What do you call this?’ He pointed to a page in his thick stack of articles. ‘Headline: More Than a Madman. Are you telling me that’s a fact? And what about him being called a Hitler? They’re actually trying to prove that he’s some reincarnation of him! Did they learn to report in such a factual fashion in college?’
Wayne smacked his fleshy thighs, making to stand up. ‘You’re going to get nowhere by siding with Saddam, young man.’
‘I am not siding with him.’ He was shivering. It wasn’t cold. ‘It’s a sign of my professional commitment that you’re unable to detect my true feelings for the man.’ He paused, determined to let that sink in. His head was pounding now. He’d never stood up to a teacher before. Vaguely, he worried that he was pushing himself off a cliff.
‘I’m asking if the media is presenting us with facts or, or mere labels. Something easy to latch on to so that if there is a war – and would it go through all this trouble if it didn’t know the administration intended one? – there’ll be too much hatred against the “enemy” to question its destruction.’ Yes, he had definitely pushed himself off. His organs swished under his skin. Still he kept on. ‘Who is really being brainwashed? The irony is that the top of this article begins with a photograph of school children in front of a photograph of Saddam and the caption reads: From birth, Iraqis are taught to obey their supreme leader’s every command. The caption could easily read: From birth, Americans are taught to obey their ruling troika: the White House, Pentagon and the Media.’ He sat back, shocked at himself.
Wayne marched toward the door. He waited for Daanish to do the same. ‘I did say you were likely to get emotional. Uh! Uh!’ He held his hand up in a restraining motion. ‘Just listen. I’ll tell you what, you mull over it. The vitamin story may seem mundane to you, but perhaps there’s a lesson here. You’re only a sophomore.’
Now Daanish’s courage did fail him. His voice sank to the bottom of his pants. He bit on his belt. His words were not in his throat, they were in his hands, but as he rolled off the cliff, he let them go.
Another professor passed by the open door.
‘How’s it going?’ Wayne cheerfully greeted her.
They walked away, leaving Daanish in the corridor. He could hear them discuss the venue for the next board meeting.
2
Revisions
JUNE 1992
Daanish stood at the window. His head was leaden with yet another night of intermittent sleep. Every morning since his return to Karachi, he’d given up the fight for rest soon after dawn, when the builders arrived next door. He watched now as a bare-footed, bare-chested old man climbed a bamboo ladder, balancing a cement bucket on his feeble head. His hair was dry and bleached, like sugar-cane husk. Between the first two toes of his right foot he carried a trowel. The bucket on his head, and two more in his hands, wavered. With the heel and toes of his free foot, he pressed the sides of the ladder till it steadied. In this way he arrived at the top rung.
The old man handed over the buckets to a younger worker hunkered on the roof. Wiping his face with a wrinkled cloth, he then lit a cigarette, savoring it as though he was the one indoors, standing aimlessly at the window like Daanish.
The sky was a peach-gray pierced by dish antennas, sooty rooftops, telephone wires. There were hardly any trees.
Beyond, but invisible to Daanish, was the sea. Like him, it lapped different shores. On this one, the old man was born on the wrong side of the belt. Here, Daanish could scribble slander on a napkin and hurl it his way. Here, he never had to scrub pots the size of church bells, or clench his jaw in the presence of Kurt or Wayne. If he wanted, he could step outside and lord it over anyone. Simply by crossing an ocean, his place in the universe changed.
The laborer tossed away his cigarette. A figure walked toward him. It was Khurram’s driver, carrying an aluminum pot. He’d seen him at some point every morning, when Khurram’s family did not need him. As on the day he’d driven him home from the airport, Daanish was struck by his good looks.
After the girl in the blue dupatta left the caterpillars, Daanish had asked his uncles what they were but the men brusquely recommended destruction. ‘Forget about that rude incident,’ his chacha had advised.
He couldn’t. So h
e decided to slip outside with the three fat slugs and ask the construction workers. They passed on the inquiry till it reached the driver, who knew immediately.
‘How?’ Daanish asked, holding the larvae in his palm.
‘My sister works on a farm where they’re bred,’ the man answered. His face was forever expressionless, as if it had simply been jammed.
‘What do you know about them?’ Daanish pushed.
The man moved to Daanish’s other side and asked him to repeat the question. Then he replied, ‘Feed them a lot. When they’ve spun their cocoons, if you want the thread, boil them.’
‘That’s a bit extreme,’ Daanish mused. ‘What do they eat?’
‘Leaves. There’s a large mulberry tree in the empty plot at the end of the street. They’ll eat lettuce but they prefer the leaves of that tree, especially if chopped.’
The builders were pleased to take time off and chat with the boy from Amreeka. Though Daanish was pleased to get away from the mourners, he soon tired of being asked for a visa.
‘You should see how I’m treated at their Consulate! I’m nothing to them! I can’t help you!’
They hadn’t believed him.
Daanish turned away from the window and looked in one of the drawers where his shells had been. They were gone now. His temper began to rise. For the millionth time, he opened the door of the new closet and rummaged through the pile of clothes Anu had stacked. His beautiful shell boxes had been stored in the old closet. They too were gone. He slammed the door shut.
Anu was the only one who could have gone through his things. Yet she denied it. He shook his head: the doctor would never have invaded his privacy. It had to be her. Why? And it seemed she was still at it: his books and the envelope full of photographs were also gone. So was his bloody camera!
This was not how he remembered her. She’d changed. He did not want her to. She ought to be steady, like the boulder she sat on while he and his father went exploring. They’d been a piece, like a vase of cut glass, with her the light from the back and his father the glowing foreground. With the front gone, she was strangely like a gaping well. He was afraid of peering in too far.
She’d not even told him what ‘question’ she’d posed the morning of his arrival. ‘There is plenty of time to answer me,’ she’d said, but then the next evening, knew nothing about it. He cursed again.
Shedding his clothes, he stood before the full-length mirror. The light-brown eyes that answered back were his father’s. After hearing of their likeness for years, he saw it clearly now. He was exactly his height. The weight he’d acquired this year at college, when the plastic flavors of Fully Food finally stopped nauseating him, was beginning to settle around his midriff in a soft, barely noticeable belt of flesh, probably exactly as it had begun to do on the doctor when he was twenty-two. His legs were still sleek and sinewy. Swimmer’s legs. Going by the doctor, they’d always be Daanish’s best feature.
Becky had admired them the day they first met, when he walked her home from the gym. Thinking of her made him remember the missing photographs again. He’d liked the one of Pamela leaning against an oak tree. The ground was strewn with autumn leaves reminding him of their tryst in the sunken garden where Daanish loved to roam. Only, there was none of the humiliation of that time with Penny. By the time he’d met Pamela, Daanish knew better than to poke a stomach or buttock like a blind mole. The photograph was taken just before she sat on the bed of leaves and began to slowly undo her blouse. It was a three-quarter view, so her right bluish-green eye appeared larger than the left. Above it, a thin eyebrow was raised, giving Pamela her characteristic expression: Oh yeah?
Damn! Where was it? For the next half-hour, he searched every corner of the rearranged, freshly painted room. His eye fell on the lacquer box, one of the few items not missing from the duffel bag. But this too had been touched. He’d never before seen the photograph inside it. What on earth was it doing there?
His head began to throb. He got into the shower. Because there’d been no electricity since yesterday, the water pump hadn’t been switched on. The tank was almost dry and the pressure so low only two holes of the showerhead released a few drops. Still soapy, Daanish returned to his room and stood naked on the new white rug. He looked up at the ceiling fan wishing for the telltale whine that sounded when it spun. But the loadshedding continued.
Soon his sweat blended with the soap and he was covered in a thin coat of slime. He left a trail of gray footprints on the rug. This pleased him. As the rug’s color muddied, his head began to clear. Toweling himself dry, he listened to Anu making preparations for the Quran Khwani downstairs. It was just after eight. The mourners would start arriving around nine. There were fewer now that three weeks had passed since his father’s death but there were still more than he wanted to meet. He combed his hair and braced himself for another day of being the Amreekan orphan.
But he didn’t go downstairs. Instead, he returned to the drawer. He kept the three cocoons there now. Exactly as the driver said, the insects had spun their homes. Though he was disappointed to have missed the weaving process, the downy balls entertained him in their own way. They moved. First he’d left them on a pile of newspapers on his desk. When he returned, they’d jumped into a walnut bowl that held his pens. By the following day, they’d hopped onto the desk, far away from the newspaper. No matter where he put them, they wanted to be somewhere else. At last he found a place they found acceptable: inside a dark, dry corner of the drawer. According to the driver, if Daanish wanted the threads he’d have to cook them next week.
Kneeling for a closer look, he whispered, cocoon. It had a calming sound. Soft like sleep, like nestling. He fit into it somehow. ‘What should I do with you?’ he asked. ‘You’re so different from my beautiful shells. They can’t live without water, you can’t live within it.’
He thought of the gazelle-eyed girl in the blue dupatta. If she returned, he wanted to be the first to talk to her. He wanted to tell her he’d followed her advice and found out what she’d left. He wanted also to look more closely at that smooth, caramel face with the gracefully tapering chin. But he’d not seen her again. Did he even remember her correctly? Hell, he needed a picture of her too.
It was the hope of finding the girl that finally forced Daanish downstairs.
3
There, of course!
A swift glance revealed the girl was not there. He kissed his mother good morning and picked up a siparah, heading for the adjoining room, where the men sat.
The room looked on to a small garden fringed with hibiscus bushes. The grass was beginning to scorch in patches. His street badly wanted water. Two lanes away lived a minister, so no loadshedding ever plagued that street. Some of the mourners were discussing this when he joined them. They fanned themselves with newspapers and Daanish knew that in amongst the prayers for his dead father were prayers for bijly, and a brand new lot of politicians.
Along the opposite wall sat three of Daanish’s uncles. They came and sat beside him, too hot to read, keener on conversation. His chacha turned to him. ‘All his life Shafqat Bhai knew you would make him proud. Everything he did, every hour of toil, was for you.’
Another uncle chipped in, ‘Our children in Amreeka do very well. There, of course, they have all the opportunity to shine. And they do! Look at Daanishwar!’ He thumped Daanish heartily on the back. ‘Come, you’ve told us nothing of your experiences there. All good things must be shared.’
The other men nodded with gusto.
When Daanish remained noncommittal, an older cousin nudged him. ‘I hear it’s very quiet and peaceful over there. Not like here, with army troops muscling their way into our neighborhoods.’
Immediately his phoopa interrupted, ‘Things are a lot better since the army operation. I know. I drive through Nazimabad every day, unlike you in your elite street. I see how many fewer buses and trucks are being burned. It’s because of the troops!’
‘Yes,’ said his chacha. ‘But w
e have to question their tactics. They’re rounding up anyone from the Muhajir areas and beating them regardless. This is only going to fuel the MQM’s anger.’
There was a general murmur of consent, in which Daanish’s phoopa remained aloof. After a pause, he looked up. ‘It’s the Punjabis who are being made to pay. We’re going to be driven out. I’m thinking of taking my family back to Lahore.’
‘Rubbish,’ said another. ‘It’s the Muhajirs. How many of us are in prominent positions? The quota system must end.’
‘You all control Karachi!’ came the bellowing response.
The chacha was quick to intercede. ‘One thing we can all agree on: those Sindhi separatists are imbeciles.’ Everyone nodded. The chacha continued, ‘Now, what is the point of getting into this discussion here? My poor brother would not have wanted it.’ He padded toward the center of the room, where sweets and savories lay in large clay platters. He began passing them around. Next he poured out warm Pepsi, explaining, ‘Without water for tea, it’s the best we can do.’ Daanish’s stomach turned; it was barely ten in the morning.
His chacha turned to him again. ‘Today, it’s Daanish who will talk!’
Just a hop across the ocean, thought Daanish.
‘You’ll be a better mold of me,’ the doctor had said. The test had begun.
‘But what do you want to know?’ Daanish asked.
‘All that you’ve seen these three years!’ they replied.
He shrugged. ‘In many ways things are really different, but in others, they’re not.’
‘Tell us what’s different,’ said his phoopa. ‘We don’t care about the rest.’
‘Yes,’ said another man Daanish did not recognize. ‘We don’t want same same.’
‘Well,’ Daanish shifted. ‘It’s hard to explain.’
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