Godsend

by John Wray

  They must have been seen approaching along the footpath because when they reached the farmstead a man in a headscarf and eight children stood assembled to receive them. The man pressed a palm to his chest and greeted each of them in turn. He said that his sons were at work in a barley field seven miles distant and that he himself was little more now than a minder for their children. Hayat answered that this was a reward justly earned and the man smiled and confessed himself delighted with the arrangement. They spoke measuredly in Urdu, pausing often to regard each other, and Ibrahim Shah translated for her in his elegant Arabic. Their host showed only a polite interest in his foreign visitor but the children studied her with grave determination. The youngest was a girl of four who took her by the thumb.

  After this welcome their host led them through the gate and across a wide flagstoned courtyard to a low and shuttered room gone blue inside with smoke. A young man lay on a rope bed at its center and watched the people gathered at the footboard without any sign of interest. The lids of his half-closed eyes shone as if they’d been painted and she thought at first that he was wearing kohl. When his father spoke to him he turned his loose-skinned and birdlike face away and she understood that he was close to death.

  A stool was brought to the bedside and Hayat lowered himself carefully onto it and spoke in a hoarse uneven whisper to the son. Though everyone kept silent the mullah’s words were plainly for the dying man alone. At times she imagined that he was speaking Arabic but it was possible that he was speaking Urdu or Pashto or some local language she had never heard. After a time he turned to Ibrahim Shah and made a small urgent gesture and Ibrahim Shah took her hand and guided her back out into the light. She felt the son’s eyes on her as she stepped across the threshold but she told herself that the son’s eyes were already focused on the other world. And in fact as she stood blinking in the daylight a sudden keening sprang up in the house behind her. She fought the urge to look over her shoulder.

  The children had been waiting for her in the courtyard and in a few short steps she found herself surrounded. They seemed to take no notice of the keening. The elder among them held their siblings at bay but still they managed to catch at the tails of her shirt as they jockeyed among themselves for her attention. Her right hand was commandeered once again by the girl in the yellow kameez. Ibrahim Shah interpreted each volley of questions and the answers she gave without the least impatience. He seemed as eager as the children were to hear what she would say.

  —You drink milk in America? Milk with chocolate powder?

  —Sometimes, she said. —When the weather is cold.

  —And on holidays, one of the older boys added. —And when you have rupees.

  —And a cow for the milk, said another.

  —That’s right. But not so many Americans have cows.

  The boy nodded sympathetically. Even in Pakistan, he informed her, many families had no livestock of their own. Then he turned to Ibrahim Shah and announced that he himself had eaten chocolate: he had been to Peshawar the year before, for Ramadan. A gaunt girl behind him asked Aden what had happened to her skin. Ibrahim Shah answered sharply in Urdu.

  —Beg pardon, the girl said, reddening.

  —That’s all right.

  —How did you get your hair to turn black?

  —I was born with dark hair. Many people there have hair like mine.

  —Have you made many children, said a grinning, lisping boy.

  She shook her head. —No family. No wife.

  —No wife yet, said Ibrahim Shah, smiling at her over their heads.

  —That’s right. No wife yet.

  There followed more questions about food and English and air travel and football and videocassette recorders and she answered each as accurately as she could. It occurred to her that they were striving as much to make sense of the world of adults as of the faraway place of which she was an emissary and this lent a private sweetness to the game. It was obvious that Ibrahim Shah was embellishing her answers and she felt grateful to him for it. She had never had a gift for public speaking.

  —You are here for jihad? said the boy who’d asked about the chocolate milk.

  —Brother Suleyman has come to us to study, said Ibrahim Shah. He said it quickly, both in Urdu and in English. —His jihad has been his journey to the Faith. His jihad has been his pilgrimage to us. To make his safar.

  —I don’t know that word, said Aden. —What is that?

  —Safar, said Ibrahim Shah, nodding. —The word means ‘journey.’ Among other things.

  The boy watched her closely. —Safar? he said. He squinted at her. —Mujahid?

  As she made to answer she heard a bellowing sound and Ibrahim Shah took her by the shoulder. A man of perhaps thirty staggered out of the house, dragging his right foot, beating at the air as if pursued by wasps. He stopped short with a jerk when he noticed the children, then howled again and forced his body forward. It was a great and stooping body and reluctant to obey. He looked enough like the man on the bed to be his twin but for his eyes which were pale blue and wide-set and staring. They rolled back in their sockets when he caught sight of her like the eyes of a terrified calf. The children covered their mouths with their hands as he shouldered his way past them and brought his flushed face close to hers. Ibrahim Shah’s grip on her shoulder tightened.

  —You have no cause to fear, Suleyman. Keep quite still.

  The man’s eyes were so blue as to look almost white, to seem flat and occluded and blind, and as they widened she could see her cropped dark head reflected. His breath was a cow’s breath, grass-smelling and damp. He let out a soft cascade of moans as he observed her. The children had fallen silent and were waiting for some wonder to transpire. The idiot shut his foam-flecked lips and stopped his moaning, wavering on his feet, bobbing his head as if in time to music. Then he pressed a heavy palm against her breast.

  —He means no insult, Suleyman. You are something new to him. He means no harm to you.

  She clenched her fists to keep herself from cowering and stared into those shallow panicked eyes. Her chest was firmly bound beneath the cloth of her kameez but there was knowledge in the way his great hand gripped her. She’d almost forgotten that she had a body. She saw herself now as she looked to the children, how the two of them must look in their unnatural embrace, and though the blood rushed to her temples she felt calm and unafraid. What set her apart from him, from all of them, was also her protection. She was hidden by her clear and perfect strangeness. Her strangeness was itself a burqa that withheld her likeness from them.

  Ibrahim Shah was pulling her gently free when Hayat and the farmer emerged from the house. Others soon followed—far more than the smoke-filled room had held. A cloth was spread over the paving stones and food and tea were laid out by two young men with downy beards who made her think of Decker. The children remained whispering raptly together but no place was set for them or for the old man either. Hayat ate hurriedly, immodestly, barely answering the questions of their host. The farmer sat very straight with his hands in his lap and watched the mullah eat. She wondered what his family would have for dinner that night, or the next night, or the rest of the week. Surely not pilau with almonds and raisins and tender chunks of slow-cooked lamb.

  She sat with Ibrahim Shah at a small remove from the older men and ate with great deliberation, taking care to savor each succulent morsel, mindful of the weeks of bread and dhal to come. It seemed shameful to her to be eating so well not ten steps from the sickroom but perhaps it was the custom. She was frightened of asking. She did as Ibrahim Shah did, taking fistfuls of pilau into her palm. She made a game of it. She took rice whenever he did and she drank each time he drank. He seemed not to notice. Between mouthfuls he asked how she’d come to know Brother Ali.

  —Mu’allim Hayat asked me the same question.

  —And how did you answer?

  —We met on the street in the town next to mine. I was wearing shalwar kameez and he came up to me and asked me w
hy.

  —Ah! said Ibrahim Shah. —I was told that you met in a mosque.

  —Who told you that?

  —I don’t seem to recall. Perhaps Ali himself.

  She said nothing to that.

  —Ali told me there was an engagement.

  —A what?

  He sipped from his teacup. —Ali has said there was an engagement between you, Suleyman, and a member of his family. At times these are difficult matters.

  She set her plate down carefully on the multicolored cloth. —I still don’t understand.

  —You changed in your feeling. You devoted yourself to your studies.

  —Ali is mistaken. There was no engagement.

  —I see, said Ibrahim Shah. —I have misunderstood.

  He bent forward and scooped up a fistful of rice. She watched him contemplate the food in his hand, as if weighing its merits, then raise it to his lips. This seemed to demand the whole of his attention.

  —It was a mistake to let him bring me here, she said. —I know that now. I should have come alone.

  He ate in silence for a moment, his expression abstracted. —It is true that of our students, Brother Ali is not among the most devoted. He has his thoughts, you might say, fixed on other pursuits. Especially since the arrival of his friends. He dreams about the fight across the border.

  —He and I are different people.

  —Of course, Suleyman. That is perfectly clear.

  * * *

  She slept heavily that night on account of the meal and arrived late to prayers the next morning. She felt her way blindly out into the yard, finding a place to kneel just past the concrete steps. The ash-colored sky to the east gave off just enough light to disclose the grid of bowed and huddled bodies. She had the sense of something massive rushing toward her, something heavenly and final, and felt serene and wide awake and filled with faith. Morning prayer had always been dearest to her and she knelt and touched her forehead to the night-cooled ground and listened to the imam call the whole world into being. She brought her attention to bear on the noises around her. The coughing and sighing and heavy-voiced chanting. The rustling of garments and creaking of bones. She took in the noises and asked God’s forgiveness. She mustered her courage. When at last her eyes came open it was day.

  Altaf and Yaqub sat not ten places from her and a man she’d never seen before knelt gracefully between them. Though his eyes were blue or green his face and neck were darkly weathered and his thick unparted hair was darker still. She stopped praying and watched him. He was older than Altaf, perhaps twice Decker’s age. He kept his gaze on the mullah and his hands at his sides. She had never seen Yaqub or Altaf before the midday meal and she noted the newfound dignity with which they said their prayers. They gave the kneeling man as much space as the crowded yard permitted. His hands shook very slightly. When the prayer was done he was the first to rise.

  At midday she found the man sitting where she herself had sat two days before, under the windows of the recitation hall. The same bolt of plastic-backed cloth had been unrolled along the wall and he was pouring cups of tea from the pitcher with the tortoiseshell handle. She watched for a time from the top of the steps. He seemed to know many of the students and he greeted Ibrahim Shah courteously when he walked by. Decker sat directly across from the man, shoulders slouched, barely touching his food.

  Altaf rose and beckoned to her as she came down the steps.

  —Brother Suleyman! Come sit with us.

  —There’s no room.

  —We will find room, he said, taking her by the arm. —You may sit in my place. I have eaten.

  She let herself be pulled forward, averting her eyes, as bashful and demure as any virgin. The empty place was next to Decker and she glanced at him as Altaf steered her downward. His hands lay folded in his lap and his expression was one that she seemed to remember. He was either exhilarated or afraid.

  —This is the boy, said Altaf, crouching just behind her. —Suleyman Al-Na’ama, from California. His father is a mullah in that country.

  Even now Decker refused to look at her. He’d seemed almost a man when they’d first met in Santa Rosa, one year and seven thousand miles from the baking gravel yard where they now squatted. It was hard to imagine. He fidgeted and chewed his lip and blinked down at the cloth beneath his feet. God alone knew what else he might have told them.

  —California is not a country, Brother Altaf, said the man.

  She glanced up to find his eyes on her. She’d mistaken their color: they were like two chips of sandstone. The urge to look away was overpowering but she was not a timid child like Decker was. A coward might look away, or a girl, or a person with something they hoped to keep hidden. She kept straight-backed and still and returned the man’s stare. She studied him as she was being studied.

  She was dimly aware, as she sat thus observed, of Altaf protesting that he knew perfectly well what California was. It was a portion of the United States of America. The portion to the south, against the sea.

  —Is this so, Brother Suleyman? the man said to her.

  —Near enough, she heard a voice reply. Her own voice or the voice of the boy she pretended to be. To her relief it sounded confident.

  —Tell us more about your country, brother. We hear many things, of course, but most of it is little more than gossip. None of us have the privilege of visiting, you see. To us you are something like a merchant—a very young merchant, and a brave one—come back from the empty places on the map.

  Her Arabic was not so good that she could pinpoint his accent but she knew that it was different from the rest. If not for his eyes the face would have been unremarkable. The eyes of a sniper, unblinking and sure. When he raised his cup she saw that two of his fingers ended at the second joint.

  —Some children asked me the same thing yesterday, she said. —We had a discussion about chocolate milk.

  —You take chocolate with milk? said Altaf. —In suspension?

  —Ah! said the man. —We’re no better than children ourselves, Suleyman, as you see. You come thousands of miles and we ask about milk.

  For a time no one spoke. She tried to make sense of Altaf’s obvious excitement and of Decker’s sheepish silence and failed on both counts. But she guessed that the man was the reason for both.

  —Brother Ali can tell you everything you want to know about our country, she said finally. —He’s older than I am.

  The man shook his head. —We want to hear your answers, little brother, not those of your friend. We hope you won’t deny us.

  —I’d consider it a privilege to answer your questions, she said. —But first I’d be honored to know who you are.

  The man raised his eyebrows. —Have these colleagues of mine made no mention of me? My name is Ziar Khan. I was born in this village.

  She nodded gravely, with a thoughtful air, as she’d seen the others do at introductions. —Ziar Khan, she repeated. —And what is the name of your father?

  —You know his name already. He smiled. —My father is the master of this school.

  * * *

  Ziar Khan was the mullah’s firstborn and sole surviving child and the woman who had borne him was long since dead and seemingly forgotten. He’d been sent to Yemen after his mother’s death to be fostered by a relative whose husband was a kindly and God-fearing man, a scholar of scripture and an engineer. At the age of fourteen he’d been brought back to the madrasa, from one day to the next, to learn the Recitation from his father. He’d begged to be allowed to stay in Yemen but the mullah had insisted. He often dreamed, even now, of his foster parents and the yellow room he’d slept in. His clothing and his manner and even his way of speaking Arabic served to emphasize the breach between his father and himself.

  All this Ziar told her, in fragments and snatches, in Arabic and English, over the course of the eight days that followed. His curiosity about her seemed boundless, inexhaustible, and the fictions she invented were as much to please him as to keep the truth obscured.
Never had she been listened to so closely. She told him about childhood fights and football games and girls she’d tried to kiss under the bleachers. She availed herself of every possible preconception and cliché. He accepted all she said without suspicion, shaking his head in innocent delight, and with each detail her story became more real. This was the first gift he gave her: to bring the character named Suleyman to life. More than his authority or his grace it was his belief in her that held her so beguiled. In spite of all the lies she told—because of them, she sometimes thought—she felt herself becoming understood.

  Each morning she reminded herself of the risk. It was rare that he answered her questions directly, at least when she first asked them, and she took careful note of each of his evasions. She never learned why he was sent away or how he came to be called home a decade after. He never spoke of motives. He showed none of the distrust that Altaf had shown, certainly not toward her, but he was secretive by temperament and custom. He would walk away abruptly in the middle of their talks, often before she’d finished speaking, and be gone for the remainder of the day. But the next morning he’d repeat the things she’d told him word for word.

  He carried a cellophane-wrapped picture of his mother in a plastic frame, the precise size of his inner jacket pocket, and on the fifth day brought it out for her to see. Its subject stood by the roadside, in the shade of a cypress, staring straight into the camera. She was light-skinned and slender and the smile on her thin lips was cautious, the smile of someone who smiled only rarely.

  Ziar allowed her to hold the photograph for the space of a few breaths, rubbing his fingers together nervously, then took it back.

  —At one time I was dying, he told her in English. —And I prayed to this woman. This girl. He smiled to himself. —Which is maybe a sin. I hoped not to die, which is also a sin. Maybe so. I was thinking this girl, she must be high in Heaven.

  —High in Heaven?

  He nodded. —Maybe even at the ear of God.

  * * *

  She had looked for Decker more than once to tell him what was happening but now Decker was rarely by himself. He kept his distance from her, or was kept at a distance: she couldn’t tell which. She had tried to talk to him regardless, first in English and then in Arabic, and he’d told her in a wooden voice to answer Ziar’s questions. By then she’d come to understand that the answers she gave were being checked against those that Decker himself had given but somehow this knowledge caused her no alarm. He seemed more frightened than ever but she had no interest in sharing his fear. Not with regard to Ziar. She answered every question that was put to her.