Children of Dust

by Ali Eteraz

  “This means he has authority over matters of her marriage,” Ammi added.

  “Fine. I’ll talk to him myself.”

  “Won’t matter,” she said, waving her hand as if to brush the issue away. “You need to understand how these things work around here. A few years ago one of Dada Abu’s more distant relatives passed away and left a bunch of children in your grandfather’s care. He became responsible for raising them and getting them married. Nyla is already promised to one of them.”

  “Which one?”

  Ammi named a distant cousin I’d met many times.

  “Him? He’s illiterate!”

  “He’s not illiterate,” Ammi countered. “He’s mentally slow. But he’s gone to school every day of his life. Probably still does just because he likes it.”

  “So this college-educated girl is going to marry someone ‘slow’?”

  “That’s her kismet,” Ammi said.

  “You have to do something to stop that,” I argued. “You keep saying that you’re a feminist. How can you support a marriage like that?”

  “I’m an Islamic feminist,” she corrected. “But I can’t do anything anyway. This isn’t my family; it’s your father’s. Just understand that there’s a path that women follow. Girls get married. They get worked to the bone. They produce a baby every year—though God knows what the use of that is. Who’s raising the children? No one. Raising themselves. They’re like weeds. That girl Nyla won’t last. She’s too skinny.”

  I was stunned into silence. None of this made any sense to me. This was an Islamic country, and Islam was supposed to be about justice. Perhaps Nyla didn’t have to end up with me, but it was downright unjust for her to end up with the neighborhood idiot.

  “Pakistan was founded as a haven for Islam,” I protested, my voice raised.

  I’d hoped for confirmation from Ammi, but none was forthcoming. She had stopped listening.

  I suddenly felt as if my wings had been chopped off.

  11

  Unwilling to stay housebound, given the torment I felt in proximity to Nyla, I disregarded Dada Abu’s edict and headed out to visit the men of the family at the bazar. My beard had started to come in, though it was far from robust, and I put on a pale yellow topi. Wearing dusty sandals and an old shalwar kameez, I could pass as a native. If I didn’t say anything in my English-accented Urdu, no one would distinguish me from anyone else on the street.

  When I got to the mouth of the mohalla and went past the mosque, I heard a yell behind me. “Hey, bhai. Wait, bhai!”

  I turned and saw a guy about my age with a beard but no mustache running toward me, his hand holding on to his topi. He had a desperate look on his face. I thought I recognized him as someone from my extended family, but when he came closer I realized I didn’t know him.

  “You came from America, right?” he said. “You just got here a few days ago?”

  I nodded, apprehensive because he seemed to know so much about me. He picked up on my unease and flashed a big smile.

  “You don’t remember me, do you? I know you haven’t seen me in forever. I’m surprised you forgot me, though. Tell me: who did you use to play with when you were little—before you left and became an American?”

  I jogged my memory, trying to place his face. Suddenly I remembered the cut of the jaw, the shape of the lips, the excitable eyes, and the broad-shouldered build. It was Ittefaq, one of my buddies from the madrassa years! He was older, weather-beaten, more muscular, bearded, and taller, but it was definitely Ittefaq. I said his name out loud and he happily shook my hand. Then we gave each other an awkward hug.

  “I heard that someone came to town from America and wondered if it was you. I’ve been hanging outside your mohalla ever since, hoping to meet up with you.”

  The revelation that he had been watching for me struck me as kind of strange, given that we hadn’t told anyone we were coming and that I hadn’t ventured out of the house at all. I told myself that I was being too Western in my suspicion. After all, I knew that Pakistanis liked to stare at one another, which was something people never did in the States. Perhaps Ittefaq’s willingness to wait for me was just another traditional Muslim custom that westoxification had caused me to forget.

  “The bazar is still that way, right?” I asked, pointing.

  “The bazar? Yes. You’re going to the bazar right now?”

  “I’m going to Dada Abu’s shop. That’s where all the men are.”

  “The men leave early in the morning,” he said, as if to imply that I was less than a man for waiting this long to go join them. His comment stung.

  Wanting to establish my masculinity, I pounded him on the back—harder than I needed to—and then gestured with my head. “Walk with me,” I invited.

  As we walked I asked him about what he’d been up to all these years, but he ignored my questions and kept asking me about America. Where did I live? What did I do there? What was it like? Did I go to school? Was I forgetting much of the Urdu language? Did I practice Islam? He asked that last question in an accusatory way.

  “Of course I practice Islam!” I said emphatically. The force in my voice seemed to catch him off guard—and this pleased me.

  He grinned apologetically. “I was just asking. Just making sure you weren’t a CIA agent!”

  He said it in a joking way, but I didn’t think it was funny. I glared and looked away. First he had implied that I was womanly, and now he was essentially calling me a traitor to Muslims.

  However, along with my outrage, I also felt insecurity. Ittefaq and the people of Sehra Kush represented the traditional Islamic life that was impossible to attain in the secular West, which made them purer than me, and if they thought that I was lacking in some way—if I wasn’t man enough, if I wasn’t trustworthy enough—then the presumption went against me and in their favor. I told myself to show a little more humility going forward.

  As we continued toward the bazar, Ittefaq dug into his pocket and produced a little card. With an eager smile he handed it over.

  “Check this out,” he said. “It’s something else.”

  I took it and inspected it. It was a stamp-sized picture of a topless Bollywood actress. Her mouth was in a sensual pout, her breasts large and glossy.

  I admired her for a moment and then handed the picture back to him. I tried to indicate by my expression that I wasn’t interested whatsoever.

  “No!” he insisted. “It’s fine. You keep that one. I’ve got more—many more! Put it in your wallet.” He opened his wallet to show me that he’d done the same.

  Not wanting to make a big deal about it, I shrugged and tucked the picture into my wallet as suggested.

  Together we walked into the bustling bazar. There were hundreds of fruit carts and vendors and guys selling roasted corn and sugarcane juicers with windmill machines and little boys squatting at the street-side faucets washing pots by hand. Letting memory lead me, I walked toward Dada Abu’s shop.

  Ittefaq put his hand on my shoulder. “I have to go see my uncle,” he said, pointing in the other direction. “You come with me. Let’s go to his shop. There’s chai and food there.”

  I didn’t want to start exploring the city without touching base with my relatives first, so I asked him for directions to his uncle’s shop. “I’ll come there after I go and sit with my grandfather.”

  He nodded reluctantly. “Make sure you come,” he said. “We’ll eat and drink.”

  After saying my farewells, I pressed through the crowd to Dada Abu’s store. I found him sitting in the back of the shop. He smiled when I arrived and pulled me into his sitting room by my wrist. After getting me a cup of chai, he began asking me questions.

  “Why didn’t your father come with you to Pakistan?”

  “He had to work,” I explained. “He gets only a certain amount of time off.”

  “He’s always worked hard,” Dada Abu said nostalgically. “When he was a child, he was the only one of my sons who was serious about st
udying. He was an example for everyone, but not everyone followed his example.”

  “He still likes studying,” I said, recalling the way Pops had pored over his residency books.

  “He must make you and your brother study hard.”

  “Oh, he does!”

  “That’s good. Very good. You must know that I’m an illiterate man. I only know business. I can sell anything, but being a salesman is low-class. Your father did right. He went and became a doctor.”

  I nodded.

  “What do you want to be?” asked Dada Abu, looking at me intently.

  “I want to be an Islamic scholar,” I said.

  “No,” he said, “for your profession. A man needs a profession. Everyone can study Islam.”

  I tried to explain to him that I would get an advanced degree in Islamic philosophy and become a professor. Dada Abu shook his head.

  “Not a good idea,” he said. “Mosques and madrassas are good for worship, and it’s good to be a Muslim scholar, but a man can’t make money from Islam. That’s not allowed by God. You can’t use the religion for money. So I ask you, what will you do for money?”

  “I’ll study law,” I said, hoping to reassure him.

  “Yes!” He nodded eagerly. “Yes, that is an honorable profession. Allama Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah—founders of Pakistan. They were both barristers. Gandhi was a lawyer also.”

  Satisfied with my answer, he leaned back and lit his hooka. Then he closed his eyes again, gripping the nozzle of the hooka with his left hand. He smoked the bitter tobacco, causing it to smolder. The water gurgled softly. I leaned against the far wall and relaxed. A soothing tedium buzzed in the air, and the noise in the bazar sounded far away, a distant din of clattering feet and murmuring voices. As I looked through the shop toward the bazar beyond, I could see the hot loo—the infamous wave of noontime desert heat—emanating from the pavement; it gave the atmosphere a shimmering quality.

  I finished my cup of chai and headed up the street.

  In an alley in the bazar a sugarcane juicer’s cart had been upturned and the vendor was rummaging around trying to contain the mess. First he bundled the big green sugarcanes; then he took care of his jugs and finally his machine. Although he was swearing loudly, invoking all sorts of incestuous relations and fecal matter, he seemed to be talking to the ground. Certainly he wasn’t swearing at the culprits who had overturned his cart and now stood all around him.

  A group of six or seven bearded men, their pants hiked up above their ankles, and checkered scarves worn over white topis, stood in a half-circle around the cart. In a restrained voice the leader of the group told the juicer to shut his mouth and stand up.

  “I told you I’ve got nothing!” the juicer pleaded. “You think I’m making any profit here? These bastard shop owners don’t pay me a thing!”

  “You’re avoiding your duty toward God and the Prophet,” the leader replied.

  “What’s happening?” one passerby asked another.

  “They’re collecting ‘donations’ in the name of God,” the man said sarcastically, as if this happened often.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. The idea of religious men—men garbed in the clothes that pious people wore—extorting money from a defenseless and impecunious sugarcane juicer struck me as impossible. Good Muslims didn’t do things like that, and everyone could see from these men’s beards and wardrobes and the way they hiked up their pants that they took Islam very seriously; you could even hear it in their Arabized inflection.

  No. There had to be a reason unknown to all the onlookers that had prompted the maulvis to accost the juicer. Maybe the juicer was peddling some form of immorality, for example. Or maybe he was a cheat who defrauded the patrons. Maybe he used bad merchandise. It had to be something like that which brought this punishment upon him; it had to be something un-Islamic.

  The juicer fumbled through his pockets. He lifted the cushion on which he customarily sat and looked underneath. He lifted a corner of the straw mat on which his sugarcanes were spread and peered beneath. He was checking all the places where he might have kept money.

  “See? Nothing—I have nothing!” he said to the men surrounding him.

  One of the maulvis struck the juicer for failing to pay, knocking him to the ground. Another man delivered a kick. I didn’t want to question these men who talked in the language of Islam, so I turned away.

  When I arrived at Ittefaq’s uncle’s shop, a pair of boys were unfurling huge rolls of cloth for a customer. The brightly colored fabrics lay crisscrossed in front of the potential buyer, who rubbed his fingers on each sheet and then inquired about the price. Every time he demurred, Ittefaq’s uncle stepped in and explained the type of cotton he held in his hand and why it was the greatest in the world. When the patron still continued to dither, the uncle calmly asked one of the boys to bring tea for the guest. Such hospitality put additional pressure on the reluctant patron. Once the chai arrived, the sale was put on hold temporarily. Ittefaq took advantage of the pause to introduce me to his uncle and his cousins.

  As soon as Ittefaq mentioned that I was from America, everyone, including the customer, swiveled around in their seats, making me the center of attention. The customer, a clean-shaven man in his early thirties wearing a T-shirt and jeans, pointed his finger at me.

  “Why did your Clinton shoot all those missiles!” he demanded.

  He was referring to President Clinton’s use of Tomahawk missiles to strike militant camps in Afghanistan.

  “Do you know that some of those missiles landed in Balochistan and killed children?” he continued, his tone suggesting that I was equally responsible. “Your Clinton is killing innocent Muslims!”

  I looked to Ittefaq for support, but he was completely, perhaps purposefully, oblivious to me. Everyone else jumped in with pointed comments linking me with Clinton. I felt besieged. I tried to think of the reasons that Clinton had used to justify the missile strikes, but I couldn’t remember a single thing. My mind went completely blank.

  Somehow I needed to change the subject away from missiles toward something, anything, that might earn me some good graces in the eyes of the hostile gathering. “After the Soviet Union fell,” I improvised, “America needed an enemy. It has targeted Islam.”

  I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d heard this idea discussed, but I recalled reading that a professor named Samuel Huntington had said something similar. My comment silenced the group, so perhaps my strategy was working. Imagining that I could turn the hostility around so that these people would trust me, wouldn’t think I was a CIA agent but would see that I was a good Muslim, I went further. “America wants to be the world’s only power. Just as the British took over the world centuries ago, now America is doing the same.”

  I was surprised at how easily these thoughts came to me. Feeling encouraged and powerful, I kept going. I recalled a particular e-mail I’d once received that had listed all the times the United States had invaded a foreign nation or supported covert action or engendered a coup d’état, and I did my best to echo its contents to the group. I started with the Spanish-American War and cited examples all the way up to U.S. sanctions against the regime in Iraq. Recalling my political science classes, I marshaled the views of Francis Fukuyama, who had declared that the West represented the end of history, and Kissinger’s realist school of foreign policy, which said that all countries were enemies to the United States. Speaking forcefully, I explained that America was on a mission to turn Islam into its enemy.

  Having exhausted my argument, I took a deep breath and paused, waiting for the frowns to turn into smiles, waiting for someone to say that it was nice to see an American helping Islam.

  Yet no such recognition came my way. The men kept on chastising Clinton and Madeleine Albright and American foreign policy and me, as if I’d been a member of the president’s Cabinet. Using some of the facts I’d told them, they made me feel as if it was my fault that Muslim children in Palestine and Ka
shmir and Iraq were dying.

  I decided that leaving the shop was the best thing to do. Sidling out while the attention was focused on another speaker, I headed out.

  “Where are you going?” Ittefaq asked, running after me and grabbing me by the arm.

  I yanked myself away. “I’m going to the mosque.”

  Worship was my refuge. If I could go to the mosque and put my head to the floor, at least God would see that I loved Islam, would see that I wasn’t, as the men in the shop had implied, a part of a massive American conspiracy against it.

  “I’ll come with you,” he offered.

  “Suit yourself,” I said curtly, upset with him because he didn’t seem to understand why I’d snuck out of the shop.

  We took a circuitous road that led around the two gol dairas back to Dada Abu’s mohalla. Suddenly Ittefaq grabbed my arm and pulled me around a corner toward a row of single-story cement homes in a narrow alley.

  “Where are you taking me?” I demanded.

  “Just come with me,” he said cheerfully. “I have to make a trade.”

  “Trade what?”

  He smiled wickedly and patted the porno cards in his pocket.

  Heaving a deep breath, I followed him out of necessity, uncertain how to get home from there.

  We entered one of the houses without knocking. Ittefaq’s familiarity with the place made me wonder if it was his home, but I seemed to recall that his family had lived on the other side of town. I followed him past the empty verandah and into a bedroom in the back.

  When we entered, I saw three older guys in shalwar kameezes. They had big beards and wore large turbans and the sort of vests preferred by mountain men. I stood near the door and waited for Ittefaq to complete his deal. After a moment’s conversation, however, Ittefaq sat down and made himself comfortable. The largest of the men turned to me and glared while his associate reached around me and closed the door.

  “I want to ask you about America,” the big man said, looking over at Ittefaq as if for his okay.