by Chaitali Sen
John asked Malick if he was going to pursue the research in the greenstone belt in Luling.
“I presented it to my graduate students,” said Malick. “They weren’t interested. It’s such a small area. I don’t think it will turn up much.”
John had been thinking about this challenge. It was true there wasn’t much to work with. The earth had sucked up most of what they needed. But in geology, there was this problem of scale and perspective. Every piece of surviving Archean rock that was scattered around the globe needed to be studied. It was the only way to get a full picture of the planet’s evolution. There were studies on impact spherules already underway in Australia and South Africa that were run by scientists with more money and resources, but John was here, and he was interested in pursuing a study in Luling. Now that his dissertation was finished, he wanted a new focus. He wanted something that could put him on the map and he wanted Malick’s help.
“Forget it, John. I don’t have the money for it and Presidency won’t fund it. It’s a waste of time. Do something practical and get out of here. Go to America or Europe and you’ll be able to do whatever you want.”
“Don’t talk to your students about it. At least if you’re going to ignore it, give it to me.”
“I’m not going to give it to you. If you do it, I do it with you.”
“Then let’s do it, Malick.”
Malick made a strange sound and rubbed his sternum. “You’re causing me a heartburn, John. I thought this research was only an excuse to come to English Canal and see your old sweetheart.”
Suddenly John felt panicked. He’d been trying to take everything in stride but now he could see that his future was utterly bleak. He told Malick about Copenhagen and Mariam’s passport, about Nehemia’s warnings, and even if Mariam got a passport tomorrow, she would be reluctant to leave her parents behind and then there were visas and prolonged separations and why should he be forced to leave his own country in order to pursue significant research? He was bitter toward these old-timers like Nehemia and Malick telling him he had to leave. They hadn’t been forced to make that choice when they were John’s age, which was ironic to him because things were much worse then.
“Most people your age can’t wait to leave,” Malick remarked.
“My circumstances don’t allow that.”
“Let’s see how things develop,” Malick said. “I’ll keep an open mind.”
John wasn’t satisfied. He dropped the subject for the moment, planning to take it up with Malick again the next day, and the day after that. They went back to Mariam. They spent another hour there, talking about nothing of importance.
Nehemia’s replacement came at the end of the summer. He had spent the last ten years at the University of Vienna Center for Earth Sciences and evaluated his new department by coming upon people unannounced and asking them difficult questions in German, what he called the true language of science. No one’s German was good enough. Most of the faculty was sacked within the first three weeks, including John, meaning they would finish the entire academic year and then look for jobs elsewhere. So there was time, at least, to come up with a plan, and also to spend the year working in a department they now hated. John was fired in German with a phrase that was difficult to translate: Hier muessen wir wohl die grossen Jungs mit ganz anderen Waffen auffahren. Here we probably have to mount up with the big boys all other weapons. He had no idea what it meant. He went looking for Vic, whose German was better than his. Vic didn’t know what it meant either.
Vic had been put in a bad position too. He finished all of his coursework and was supposed to begin working on his dissertation topic, but he had no faculty advisor. He didn’t do well with this kind of instability. In the past few weeks he’d lost an alarming amount of weight. He seemed wired in a way John hadn’t seen since college. He tried to get Vic to come eat something with him, but Vic was pacing, working on something, he said.
A few days later, Mariam called John in his office. Vic had shown up at their apartment, shouting and making a scene. She was calling him now from the bedroom with the door locked, and Vic’s voice, coming from another room, transmitted loudly over the receiver. He had to have been causing a disturbance with the neighbors. “How long has he been yelling like that?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“What is he yelling about?”
“A lot of things. Food. Poison. John, I think I should go calm him down. What if someone calls the police?”
“Is he threatening you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Mariam, I think you should stay in the room until I get home.”
“Can’t you call his parents?” Mariam asked. “How many Aroras can there be in the directory? I would do it myself but the book is in the kitchen. Do you know his father’s name? I could call the operator.”
“I’ll call. Just stay where you are until I get home,” he told Mariam. “Don’t unlock the door.”
He hung up the phone and went to the department secretary. First, he asked her if she happened to have a number on file for Vic’s parents. “Why would I have something like that? We’re not a primary school.” Then she looked suspicious. “Has he lost his marbles? We’ve all been wondering.”
“I need a phone book for Alexandria suburbs,” he said.
“In which direction?”
He didn’t exactly know. “Give me all of them.”
She got out of her seat in very little of a hurry. “They’re out of date. If they’ve moved in the past three years you’re out of luck.” She took three books off a low shelf and carried them over to him. He ran with them back to his desk. There were no Aroras in the first two but there were five in the third one. The first number didn’t turn up Vic’s father, but he knew the number and gave it to him. John couldn’t believe the luck. He dialed it and a man who must have been Vic’s father, sounding frail and ancient, answered with a slight accent John couldn’t place. John told him who he was and explained the situation. His father sounded truly distressed, but there was a lack of urgency. “I have to wait for my friend. He’ll bring me.” Vic’s father didn’t have a car and wouldn’t take a taxi, even when John offered to pay for it. He insisted on waiting for his friend who would give him a ride. “Vic won’t hurt you. He loves you like a brother.”
“It’s just that he’s home with my wife and someone might call the police.”
“He won’t hurt anyone.”
“We may have to call an ambulance.”
“But he never hurts anyone. I’ll come right away.”
John needed to get off the phone and go home. He repeated his address twice and still didn’t feel confident Vic’s father had gotten it.
He ran home as fast as he could. From the stairwell, he expected to hear Vic’s voice, but right up to his door it was eerily quiet. He opened the door in a panic only to find Vic and Mariam sitting on the couch together, holding hands. John searched Mariam for signs of injury. She looked fine. Pained and uncomfortable, but not hurt. He didn’t know how she’d managed to get Vic to stop yelling. He wasn’t yelling now but he was still talking without stopping, and Mariam was nodding compulsively. John said, “Hi Vic,” but Vic talked over him, taking little notice of him.
“Can I sit down?” John asked.
Vic still didn’t stop. John was trying to track what he was saying but he was talking too fast. He sat down and Vic took his hand, gripping it tightly. He changed topics and once John’s ears adjusted to the speed of Vic’s speech, he was able to pick up some of it. Not all of it sounded crazy. His fractured mind still had some sense of scientific conceit. He talked about pesticides for a long time. Then he said during his military service he’d been recruited to develop a poisonous compound from the bonding of chlorine and neon. He was held in a high-security facility, forced to conduct experiments at gunpoint, and he only managed to escape by befriending
a janitor from Ethiopia. Now John and Mariam were able to ask him some questions, which Vic seemed to enjoy. Mariam asked him the janitor’s name. John asked him how he conducted the experiments. He was impressed with Vic’s elaborate explanation.
John looked at his watch. It had been more than an hour since he’d called Vic’s father.
“Why did you look at your watch?” Vic asked.
“I was checking the time.”
“Why?”
“I like to know what time it is.”
“That machine is controlling you.” He tapped the watch face. “Take it off,” he ordered, relentlessly tapping the watch like a crazed woodpecker. Finally John took it off and Vic snatched it from his hand. He stomped on it until it shattered. This was John’s grandfather’s watch under Vic’s foot. It had been running more or less reliably for over half a century, the finest watch of its time.
Vic sat back down, took Mariam’s hand and put his other hand out for John. He wasn’t bothered by John’s refusal. He tapped John’s thigh like a drum and went on talking.
It was a long time before they heard someone on the landing, outside their door. John shot up and ran to let him in, ignoring Vic’s howls for him to come back. The man in the doorway was tiny, hunched and wrinkled. John didn’t understand how he could have spawned a giant like Vic. Stepping over the threshhold, the old man nodded a silent greeting and limped into the living room. There must have been something formidable about him. Vic stared at his father as if he’d returned from the dead. “Abbajaan,” he said, awestruck.
Vic let go of Mariam and she stood up. She came to John’s side and they watched as the old man spoke softly in a language John had never heard, and Vic, still staring, was soothed. His father looked back at them and made a gesture. He needed a glass of water.
Mariam hurried to get him a glass of water. Vic’s father coaxed him to open his mouth. He placed a pill on his tongue, put the glass to Vic’s lips and tilted it, gently holding the back of Vic’s head with his other hand.
His father sat next to him while Vic’s eyes went dull and his posture weakened. His father accepted a glass of water for himself, his eyes sadly skimming the splintered watch on the floor.
“It was an accident,” John said.
He gave John a half-finished smile of gratitude, at last revealing some physicality that resembled his lumbering son. The old man took hold of Vic’s hand and stood up. It was a good time to go, he said, and Vic followed him obediently in a quiet departure.
John and Mariam couldn’t talk for a while. They stood over the shattered watch staring at it. She held his hand. His body felt waterlogged, swollen with loss and failure. He couldn’t remember ever being gripped with such abject terror.
He would have recovered if things didn’t continue to get worse. They met with their lawyer after Mariam’s passport application was denied again. This time they said she needed to get her citizenship status changed separately from her passport application, so now they had to start her application for citizenship, which John had always thought they should have done in the first place. Mariam wanted to know everything about the process. What kind of questions would they ask in the interview? How thorough was the background check? Would they interview her parents? Could her parents be punished? John listened to all her questions and the lawyer’s answers and imagined them turning in one application after another for the rest of their lives.
Then in December a bomb went off on a train as it was pulling out of a station not far from Presidency College. Mariam couldn’t stop staring at the television, where the news was unfolding around the clock. Besides the carnage, which was horrifying, there were a number of so-called experts blaming rebels in Sulat for the attack. The conflict in the north had been escalating in the past month and rebels might have been studying tactics from the IRA and other separatist groups around the world that concentrated their campaigns in the capitals. It turned out they got it all wrong. By the end of the day they knew who was responsible. It was a nineteen-year-old suicide bomber whose father had been taken to Menud Fort five years ago and was never seen again. Then the news was all about Menud Fort and everyone forgot about Northern Sulat, as if they hadn’t just implicated without cause a group of people who turned out to be innocent. Mariam had been paralyzed with fear and worry and when they spoke about the boy who strapped a bomb to his chest, she fell across John’s lap and wept, her whole body shaking with grief. He tried to soothe her even though his own spirit was breaking. He couldn’t allow this to continue. He had been sitting around waiting for their troubles to simply disappear and he should have known that wasn’t how the world worked.
He put Mariam to bed and stayed up all night, thinking. He must have needed something drastic to happen, something that could dislodge the obstruction in his imagination. A plan was taking shape. His cells fired up again, his vision righted itself. He would take Mariam to a place where they didn’t have to beg for anything. He woke Mariam and described their new life to her. “It will work,” he swore, and she didn’t doubt him.
He called his father and told him he was going to sell the apartment because he needed the money. The fact was the apartment was given to him and it was only a courtesy for him to tell his parents.
“What’s going on?” his father asked.
“We can’t stay here. I’ve been fired from my job.”
His father didn’t sound concerned. He had news he had been meaning to tell John too. His sister Sonya’s husband had been granted a work visa to America, and they would be moving there in a few months. His younger sister Theresa was unhappy at Mount Belet and wanted to apply to an American college. His parents wanted to go too. They were tired of everything, the traffic, the bureaucracy, the economy, and now being afraid to get on a train. They wanted to go but his father especially didn’t want to leave his only son behind. “We’ll go when you’re ready. We’ll wait for you but we want you to hurry.”
“Don’t wait for me,” John said. He almost laughed. “Absolutely, don’t wait for me.”
PART THREE
Luling Province
TEN
It took Arifah three days to write her instructions to the nurse and show her where everything was, with Omar shuffling along behind them. She had been preparing him for her departure, reminding him frequently that she was going to see Mariam. He asked more than once, “Where are you going?” with the exaggerated inquisitive intonation he had learned in his therapy. Arifah realized, later, that he had not meant to ask the same question again and again, but a different question, the why and how, words he couldn’t recall at the time. As he watched her pack her suitcase, he labored to say the word “train.”
“Yes, I’m taking the train,” she said.
There was no train to Mariam. As a civil engineer, one thing Omar had known intimately was the country’s transportation grid. She should have told him the truth, that she was getting a ride from Malick to Luling, where she would see Mariam.
“Mariam needs me,” she said, her hand on her stomach for emphasis. “She needs me,” she said, and Omar became still, his eyes intent on her belly. “Poor Mary,” he said.
She hired a pretty nurse, sturdy, with an athletic build and easy smile. Arifah could see that he was pleased with her choice and another moment of understanding passed between them. She remembered the man he once was. She stroked his hair and gave him a light kiss on the lips, and she took her small suitcase and waited at the end of the path. She was never outside at this hour, before dawn, though she was always awake. She looked back at the house. Her husband was there at the window, looking for her, and she was surprised at the ache she felt in her bones at seeing him there. He watched her until the taxi came.
The taxi took her to Malick’s house. Only when she saw him standing by his van did she realize the sun had come up. “Have I caused a delay?” she asked.
“Not at all. We’ve ju
st finished loading.”
He put her suitcase in the back and helped her up into the passenger seat, and they were off in a caravan, two cars full of students and camping gear in front of them. She had been looking forward to the drive, six hours to do nothing but relax. It started out pleasantly enough. For an hour they coasted southeast along the Sulat Highway, heading toward a green wall of forested hills. Omar, and Malick too, in fact, had been involved in the building of this highway twenty years ago, part of a gift from the central government to rebuild the infrastructure of the province after the war. It was supposed to stretch from the remote southern regions to the militarized zone in the far north. Omar’s dream was to complete this highway, to sew one seam along the entire length of the province, but it was never finished and now it ended abruptly at a narrow road that wrapped around the pinewoods forest. Here the drive became more harrowing, as they had several near misses with large trucks racing around the bends. The constant jolting made Arifah dizzy, and involuntarily she began clenching her fists and squeezing her eyes shut. Frequently Malick looked at her instead of the road. “Would you like some soft music?” he asked. “Shall I stop?” She told him she was fine, but he kept trying to distract her.
“Is it like this the whole time?” she asked.
“Not the whole time,” he said.
They pulled into a roadside stop to have lunch. It was nothing more than a covered patio with picnic tables and an assembly line of men skewering meat and cooking it on a number of charcoal grills, with the wide ancient trunks of forest pines in the background. Because she could not guess where these men used the bathroom or washed their hands, she did not dare eat anything though she was terribly hungry. She had to look away from Malick’s students, who ate kabobs and chicken rolls as if their stomachs were meant for storing caches of food. There were three of them, boisterous young men who talked easily to each other, every now and then pulling Malick into their conversation. They took no notice of Arifah, except to comment on the absence of food in front of her. She wondered if these students had been to Luling before, if they paid as little attention to Mariam as they did now to her.