One Amazing Thing

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  “Well, then,” Cameron said, “let’s start a story.”

  “I want Tariq to be next,” Lily said. Tariq looked startled and not particularly pleased. Uma was sure he would say no. But he nodded at Lily and cleared his throat.

  “Excuse me,” Mr. Pritchett said, jumping down before Tariq could begin. “Back in a moment.” He took the pencil light—very dim by now—that Cameron handed him. He was glad he hadn’t had to tell a lie about the purpose of his trip. He did not like lying. He sensed Mrs. Pritchett’s eyes on his back as he made his way through the icy water. Did she guess? When he thought he was out of the range of Cameron’s big flashlight, he put his hand into his pants pocket and caressed his lighter. He had almost reached the door to Mangalam’s office when he heard a splash. He turned and saw that Mangalam, too, had climbed down. “Wait for me,” he called as he hurried toward Mr. Pritchett.

  Mr. Pritchett felt a futile fury surge through him. He rubbed his thumb against the serrated wheel of the lighter as though it were a magic lamp and tried to come up with another plan. Failing, he offered the pencil light to Mangalam. “You go first.”

  But Mangalam, who had plans of his own, gestured solicitously and said, “No, no. After you, please.”

  Mr. Pritchett walked into the bathroom and pushed the door through the water until it closed. He had to use all his self-control to keep from slamming a fist into the wall. He grabbed the edge of the sink in both his hands and held it tightly, trying to decide what to do. Could he take the chance that Mangalam wouldn’t smell his cigarette when he walked in here? No. No amount of deodorizing spray could disguise the odor of burned tobacco that quickly. Would Mangalam report him to Cameron? Very possibly. The visa officer seemed to hold the sergeant in some awe. What could the sergeant do to him, though? What could any of them do?

  Nothing, Mr. Pritchett said to his sallow reflection. At most, they would confiscate his cigarettes, but he had already hidden a few. If they took the lighter, he could sneak a book of matches. He took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips, his hands trembling from anticipation. He could already taste the smoke.

  A knocking on the door made him jump. Voices. Mangalam—and someone else. Their words were unclear but insistent. One of them jiggled the handle.

  Mr. Pritchett cursed under his breath and stuffed the cigarette back into its packet, hoping he hadn’t injured it. He splashed his face with water, gasping at its coldness, and pulled the door through the water.

  Cameron was standing there, his hand on the doorknob. “Are you okay? Mangalam said he called you a couple of times, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I’m fine,” Mr. Pritchett said. He knew he sounded snappish, but he couldn’t help it. How much time had he spent in there? Cameron stared at Mr. Pritchett’s dripping face. Mr. Pritchett pushed past the two men into the dark. Behind him, he could hear Cameron telling Mangalam, “We’ll have to insist that people not lock the door when they go to the bathroom.” Hah, thought Mr. Pritchett. Insist away, Sarge. I’ll do what I need to. The smell of bourbon seemed to be all around him. Was nicotine withdrawal messing with his senses? In his hurry he banged his hip into something hard and metallic. Pain shot through him. He stumbled and felt one of the men grab his arm.

  “Careful, buddy!” Cameron said. “The world has handed us enough problems already.”

  Hadn’t he said almost the same thing to his wife a while ago? Mortified, Mr. Pritchett trudged to his table. But he wasn’t too mortified to decide that while everyone was eating, he would try his luck again.

  11

  When Ammi called on my cell phone, I was sitting out on the quad with Ali and Jehangir, watching the girls walk by in skimpy outfits. It was the first warm day in weeks, with the sun out, and the girls were making the most of it. We were, too. Truth to tell, I didn’t enjoy girl-watching as much since Farah and I had become close. But I didn’t say this. Already my buddies teased me about her, though it was gentle compared to the things they would have said if I had been going with a girl who was non-Muslim and non-desi.

  Farah? She’s my mother’s best friend’s daughter from India. She spent a semester with us last year. More about her later.

  Out on the quad, we were ranking the girls one to ten, with ten for the hottest. For us, “hottest” meant the ones that we thought would end up in the hottest circle of Islamic hell. The things we considered were: how much of their bodies they exposed, how much makeup they wore, how loudly they laughed, and how much public display of affection they allowed. I felt guilty about this, too. If Farah knew what we were doing, she would have been mad. Though she was serious about her religion, she believed in live and let live, and she didn’t appreciate crude comments about women. I consoled myself with the thought that the white guys I used to party with earlier would have said cruder things.

  I’m not sure when I stopped paying attention to the girls and began daydreaming about Farah. We had kept in touch through e-mail since she left last year. She was a good writer, not like me. Her notes brought the smallest aspects of her daily life alive: the posters of Indian art that she had put up on the walls of the bedroom she shared with her sister; the roadside stall in Nizamuddin East that sold the best kebabs in Delhi; the intercollegiate debate where she presented arguments against the Narmada Dam Project and won a trophy; a visit to her grandmother who lived in their ancestral village where you had to hand-pump water. I had to admit that the India of her letters sounded pretty interesting.

  Farah’s sister was getting married in a couple of months, and her mother had invited us to come and stay with them for the week of festivities—and for as long afterward as we could spare. Ammi was dying to go. She hadn’t been part of a traditional wedding in years. I agreed to accompany her, though I didn’t let on how excited I was at the thought of being with Farah again (and seeing her wear the zardosi lengha she had already bought for the wedding). Ammi had a tendency to jump to conclusions and then share those conclusions with the world.

  Ammi had been trying to persuade Abbajan to go with us, too. His assistant manager, Hanif, she pointed out, was very trustworthy, and anyway, business was really slow. She was right. Jalal’s Janitorial Services, which my father had built from scratch into a flourishing enterprise, had lost many of its biggest customers since 9/11. Though no one came out and said it, people weren’t comfortable having Islamic cleaners going into their offices when they weren’t around. It didn’t matter that the same men had been cleaning those offices for over a decade. Abba was too proud—or maybe too hurt—to try to persuade his clients to change their minds.

  Out on the quad, when the phone rang and I saw that it was Ammi, I didn’t take the call. It was almost time for my Calculus class. The professor took off points for lateness, and I couldn’t afford to lose any points. Ammi called me almost every day, usually to ask me to pick something up from the grocery, and if she got me on the line, she would talk for a long time. She had become used to Farah’s company and was lonely now with no one at home. I figured she could leave me a message with her shopping list.

  But Ammi didn’t leave a message. She hung up and called again. This was so unlike her that I answered. She was crying hard; I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Finally, I figured it out. Four men had come into Jalal’s this morning and taken Hanif and Abba. They hadn’t even let them make a call. Musa from the bakery next door had seen the whole thing happen and had phoned Ammi. He told her the men were dressed in suits and drove a black van; two of them were white and two were African American; the whole thing was over quickly. No, he didn’t think to write down the license number. He was too scared. No, they hadn’t hurt Abba or Hanif, not from what he could see, but they had been gripping them firmly by the arm.

  I couldn’t afford to panic—Ammi was upset enough—but my insides felt frozen. We’d heard about things like this. Government agents, some said the FBI, would pick up people from our community. Sometimes there was a reason; often there wasn’t—at least n
ot anything that was explained to the detainees. Some were released within a few days. For others, it took much longer. We knew men who had been deported, along with their families.

  I told my friends what had happened, and Ali said right away that he would skip class and come with me. I was in no state to drive. Ali took me home. We picked up Ammi and went on to Jalal’s. Musa was waiting for us, but he didn’t have any new information to give. We went inside the office. Everything was in its place (my father was a tidy man); there was no sign of the upheaval that had turned our lives upside down.

  We phoned friends, and friends of friends—anyone we could think of. They were shocked but not of much help. A few, I sensed, were afraid of getting too closely involved, as if our bad luck might be contagious. Finally, someone put us in touch with a lawyer who specialized in such cases. He had a hefty fee, though at this point we didn’t care. Abba still hadn’t phoned us. I gave the lawyer all of Abba’s documents that I could find. One of Ammi’s cousins came to stay with us because Ammi was getting hysterical, banging her head on the floor, calling on Allah to spare her husband, and I didn’t know how to stop her.

  Maybe the lawyer had friends in high places, or maybe the men who took him realized that Abba was innocent of whatever they had suspected him of doing, or maybe my mother’s desperate prayers worked. After three days Abba was returned to Jalal’s—with no more explanation than when he had been taken. Musa saw him sitting on the pavement beside the locked door of the office and called us. On Abba’s face was the vacant expression of the men who sleep on the streets. By the time we got there, Musa had taken Abba into the bakery, had helped him wash his face, and had given him a glass of lime water. But Abba just sat holding the glass. I was afraid that Ammi would go to pieces, but although her face got very pale, she drew on reserves of strength that I didn’t know she possessed.

  Over the next days, she remained close to Abba. She ran her hands over each part of his body to make sure he hadn’t been injured. She talked to him about old times—their courtship and marriage, the first house they had lived in, my antics when I was little. She sang children’s lullabies. She assured him that we loved him and would take care of him. She told him he didn’t have to talk about anything he didn’t want to, and if he preferred to forget the last few days, that was all right with her. She would forget them with him. I don’t know what a Western psychologist would have made of her methods, but my father responded to the constant flow of her soft voice. In a few days he was moving around the house, impatiently telling us he didn’t need babysitters. One evening he even helped Ammi roll out chapatis like he used to. We thought the worst was over.

  Then he had the stroke.

  It happened when he was alone in the family room, watching TV. When Ammi found him, he had slipped to the floor, unconscious. By the time the ambulance arrived, parts of his brain had shorted out. When we brought him home, after a lengthy and expensive hospital stay, he couldn’t move his left arm and leg.

  AMMI AND I WENT BACK TO THE LAWYER; HE ADVISED US TO let things be. There were no signs of physical torture on my father. There weren’t even official records of his having been arrested. Who would we go to, asking for reparation? It was a bad time for Muslims in America. It would be best if we didn’t stir up trouble. Besides, we were better off than many. Take the case of Hanif, who hadn’t been returned at all. No one knew where he was, or if he was alive.

  To my mother, he said, “Sister, I tell you this not as a lawyer but as a fellow Muslim. What use is it to say, we are in the right and they are in the wrong? I could take your money and start a case, like I’ve done for several families. But all the cases are dragging on, with no end in sight. Better, if you have friends and family in India, to take Jalal-Miah—and your son, if he is wise—and retire there. The dollar still goes a long way back home, and you can get servants to help with Miah’s problems. Best of all, among thousands who look like you, you’ll draw no attention. Here, you are on their radar. For all you know”—he looked pointedly at my beard—“they’re watching your son right now.” He shook his head in a way that frightened Ammi.

  When Ammi returned home, she requested her closest friends—a handful of people I had called Uncle and Aunty since childhood—to come over to the house; then she asked them what she should do. My father, who had always been fiercely independent, lay helpless in his bed upstairs. The thought that we were deciding his fate twisted my heart.

  At this meeting, there were arguments and raised voices, cursing and tears, and contradictory counsel. But at the end our friends admitted that given my parents’ situation, retiring in India wasn’t a bad option. They didn’t think my mother and I could keep Jalal’s Janitorial going on our own. News of my father’s “arrest” had already caused more customers to cancel their accounts. Abbajan’s medical insurance covered many things, but there were still a lot of expenses that we had to handle. I didn’t have a job—and even when I finished college, it was unlikely that I would get a good one right way. There wasn’t going to be enough money for my parents to keep living here.

  “Don’t expect it to be easy,” they warned her. “You enjoyed your visits to India as a rich NRI, with your pockets full of dollars. But living within modest means, with servants who don’t show up in the morning and bribes that have to be paid to the right people in the right manner, is a different matter.”

  The uncles and aunties were not sure what I should do. They felt I wouldn’t fit in in India after having been raised here. I had the same doubts. Apart from lifestyle differences, there was another issue: This was my country. I was an American. The thought of being driven from my home filled me with rage. Then again, if I stayed in India, it would be a great support for my parents. Already Ammi looked at me with longing. Farah would like that, too. Conflicting loyalties warred in my head, keeping me awake at night.

  UMA THOUGHT SHE HEARD A SOUND ABOVE, AS WHEN SOMEONE turns over in an old, creaky bed. She stiffened and looked around, but the others were engrossed in the story. You’re imagining things, she told herself sternly. She forced her attention away from the ceiling’s mutterings and to the painful inevitability of Tariq’s tale.

  WITHIN THE WEEK, THOUGH I WARNED AMMI NOT TO RUSH into decisions, she put our house up for sale and asked Farah’s mother to find her a small ground-floor flat not too far from their house. After the phone call, Ammi spent a long time in the bathroom and emerged with red eyes. Hard as it was for me to see the house I had grown up in on the market for uncaring strangers to walk through and comment on, it was harder for Ammi. The daily chore of taking care of my father—of assisting him into bed and out, placing him in his wheelchair, helping him to the toilet—was taking its toll on her body, too. My father didn’t make it easier. Always a sweet-natured man, he now developed a terrible temper. I was having problems of my own: everywhere I went people seemed to stare at me. Once or twice, I thought a black van followed me off the freeway into our neighborhood.

  I e-mailed Farah, and she wrote back with concern, urging me to move. She would make sure I settled into India. But her replies didn’t satisfy me. Living halfway across the world, Farah couldn’t understand my frustration. The only person I could talk to was Ali. Ali listened patiently to my rants. When I broke down and wept, he wasn’t embarrassed. In Eastern culture, he told me, it was okay for men to cry. He told me that to run away to India would be cowardly. I should help my mother with her move, then return to America. Bad things were happening here to our people, and we needed to fight them. He and several other young men rented a house, and they could fit me in, if I didn’t mind sharing a room. He worked part-time at an electronics store. He could talk to his boss and maybe get me a temporary job there. He was more optimistic than the uncles and aunties about finding employment once we graduated. There were important people in the Muslim community, he said. People with pull. People who believed in helping their own.

  I liked Ali’s house, though it was in a bad neighborhood. It was an old Vic
torian with high ceilings and bay windows that looked out on an overgrown garden, very different from the cookie-cutter suburban development I’d lived in all my life. The living room was filled with pamphlets and handmade signs.

  TARIQ’S VOICE WAS DROWNED BY A CRACK THAT MADE UMA jump.

  “She’s coming down,” Cameron shouted. “To the doorway!”

  There was a panicked milling. Uma realized that Cameron hadn’t planned which doorway each of them would go to; that frightened her almost as much as the disintegrating ceiling. His asthma must have become worse; maybe it was impairing his thinking.

  She ended up in the bathroom doorway with Malathi and Tariq. The water licked the tops of her calves and was, if possible, even colder than before. There was another crack. The walls shook. They were showered with plaster.

  “Cover your heads,” Cameron urged. “Don’t breathe through—” His words disintegrated into a fit of coughing, which he tried to contain.

  This was it, Uma guessed. She hoped it would be quick. Malathi was gripping Uma’s good hand with both of hers. Uma gripped back. Tariq was praying, his eyes closed, his face unexpectedly serene. Uma wanted to pray, too, but all she could think was that if she had to die, she was glad she had someone’s hand to hold while it happened.

  It was not the end, however. After a few more cracks and a huge crash that made the floor shake, there was an eerie quiet. They stood in their respective doorways, breathing carefully through their teeth. Uma’s tongue tasted of chalk. She was hallucinating. In her hallucination, a ray of light came down from the sky, like in biblical movies, and illuminated the desks where they had been sitting. Any moment, a booming Old Testament voice would bring them tidings of joy.

  “Is that sunlight?” Lily whispered, her face full of wonder.