“Like Basima and Sudana, they just love her,” she said, as though the Ghazzali women were competing with her for her mother’s love.
“Oh.” The sudden tension in my chest was released.
“So stop asking about people and come home already,” she said.
“I will.” But I didn’t want to let on that it would be this week, just in case anything happened as the professor had said. “I’ll be home soon, Naja. inshallah.”
“There is one problem around here though,” Naja began whispering.
“Tell me.”
“It’s Basima,” she said, referring to Mr. Ghazzali’s eldest daughter. “I think she is in love or something.”
“Are the Ghazzalis planning a wedding?” I asked.
“Nope, there’s not going to be any wedding around here,” she said quietly.
“Come on, Naja. Get to the point. What happened?”
“Basima loves a boy who goes to her college. He’s going to be a doctor just like her,” Naja explained slowly.
“So what’s the problem?” I pushed.
“He’s from south Sudan and Mr. and Mrs. Ghazzali are from the north of Sudan. So Mrs. Ghazzali doesn’t approve of their love.” I didn’t say nothing. Then Naja asked, “Our father is from the south, right?”
“You already know,” I told her firmly, aggravated by the ongoing senseless conflict between the north and south of fucking everywhere.
“Umma says, ‘People in southern Sudan are just as good as the people of northern Sudan and that some of the southerners are even better!’ So Basima loves Umma a lot. The boy Basima loves—”
“The man Basima loves, Naja. He is a man, not a boy,” I told her.
“Does Mrs. Ghazzali know what Umma thinks?” I asked, gathering all the information I could from Naja’s perspective.
“Nope. Umma told me that me and her should stay quiet and not tell anyone our thoughts.”
“So how does Basima know what Umma thinks?” I asked her.
“Because one day Basima was down here crying over the boy, I mean the man, and I guess umi just got feelings because of Basima’s tears and she said those good things about the north and the south and Basima’s man. I guess umi just wanted Basima to be okay.”
“I see. Where’s Umma now?”
“She’s in the shower. Should I go get her?” Naja asked.
“No, tell Umma don’t worry. I’ll call her back tomorrow before she leaves for work, early morning.” I hung up.
Uneasy, I called the lawyer who has the keys and paperwork for our new house in Queens. I knew it was late in New York and that no one would pick up. I just wanted to leave a voice message. I told our lawyer that I would pick up the keys to our new house on Saturday. I would buy the tickets home for Akemi and me this week.
People who didn’t come from countries where it is normal for people to talk about politics every day, to care about it and have a definite opinion about it, will never understand how these kinds of situations escalate and then fall apart. Between men they are sometimes even fatal. I didn’t want Umma to be uncomfortable reliving something that she had already lived, survived, and won, the north versus south of Sudan conflict. Umma had told me in great and specific and clear details about her and my father’s love story. Because of this, I knew that one day soon, her thoughts and emotions about Basima’s dilemma would mix with her own feelings and burst into the Ghazzali home. Then Umma would potentially become an unwelcome guest or worse, an intruder in their personal passionate matters.
I would settle and secure my Umma in a place of her own, the one we had both worked so hard for, the one that was now vacant, paid for, and ours.
At the travel agency I researched and reserved two tickets for Akemi and me, leaving Seoul in three days, the evening flight. The agency gave me twenty-four hours to pay for them. Since Akemi had her passport on her, I would pick the tickets up the following day. By tonight my wife and I would know what happened with her grandmother.
Chapter 15
WAR
I caught a cab to Itaewon. I told the driver to pull over on a long, tree-lined block with well-kept lawns. There was a Howitzer rocket launcher sitting out there on the grass, besides a huge tank as well as American-made fighter jets. The scene reminded me of a talk my father had with me when I was young, introducing me to all types of guns and weapons of war. My father was breaking down for me which countries were manufacturing and selling these weapons. He wanted me to know that in war there is always a handful of businessmen sitting at the top hoping that at least two groups of people, sometimes more, would destroy one another. These businessmen, my father explained, would come walking into someone else’s land after the north and south had burned, raped, and crippled one another. Then they would use their poor condition against them both and seize power over their land, government, banks, and schools and women. I wanted to see what this display was all about. I paid the driver and jumped out.
Homemade meals were being eaten on benches and picnic blankets while young children climbed in and out of tanks and were allowed to enter the cockpit of real planes parked in the grass. As I walked by checking it all out, I quickly learned that this place was a “war museum.” It was an entire complex dedicated to commemorating the Korean War.
If there was any way to kill somebody, this place had the weapons on display. After checking out the heavy machinery, I climbed the stairs into an outdoor courtyard lined with huge slabs of black marble with perfectly precise rows of Korean hangul letters. Out of habit, I counted. As my eyes moved down from the top to the bottom, I realized these were the names of men killed in the Korean War, the north versus the south. There were 1,500 names of war dead on each marble slab. Where I was standing there were fourteen slabs. That’s 21,000 dead, I said to myself. But as I left that area, I entered a new area and there were fourteen more slabs times 1,500 war dead. The slabs of the dead continued all the way around and up to the second floor. On the third floor, I stopped counting. Mixed in with their dead were slabs listing American soldiers whose lives were lost in the war fought in Korea. There were 34,000 men listed here, but who knows the real number? I thought about the cats from my Brooklyn block who got gone at age eighteen, deployed around the globe to fight. Was having your name printed on marble at a museum better than having an RIP graffiti mural on the wall on your block? I thought about what felt better to a young man like me—merking someone who disrespected your mother, or killing a whole bunch of people across the globe who you don’t know shit about?
As I examined the surface-to-air missiles and rocket launchers, submarines, and even war robots, I thought about what a man or a nation had to do wrong in order for it to be justifiable to drop a twoton bomb on them. My thoughts raced and intersected. Did the Koreans and the almost two million men sent to fight in Korea, as it said on the wall I was standing there reading, all believe the words of the Quran that imply that a murder is justifiable when a man is spreading corruption, vice, or mischief in the world?
What about the innocents? How many innocent people could be murdered in pursuit of the actual guilty parties? When America was flying over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, was it to punish a small crew of wicked men, the Naoko Nakamura type? Or his father, Hasashi, the ammunitions dealer? If these men deserved punishment because of their corruption and excesses, did that mean that everyone else living in their country deserved the same?
Heavy thoughts were marching through my mind. I questioned who exactly was responsible for all this stress and destruction. More importantly, I wondered why the wicked had been so successful all over the globe.
As I walked down the cool corridors, that brought up a nice breeze and break from the warmth outdoors, the gun room caught my eye. I had to squat low to look up close on a gun developed by the Koreans called the Corner Shot. This bad-ass weapon was designed for a soldier of urban warfare. It was curved so that the shooter could assassinate someone hiding around the corner. It could clap you as fa
r as fifty meters away and weighed 4.4 kg, according to the label. My eyes damn near pressed up against the glass as my mind wandered into how this weapon would impact my hood, where somebody was always hiding around the corner. I saw a set of lips on the other side of the Corner Shot. I’m not a lip-reader, but I could see the formation of the words “so fucking cool.” My body jolted. I stood up and looked over and down. It was Chiasa. Those were her lips and her words. Standing tall behind her while she was still squatting was her father, the general.
Mine and the general’s eyes locked. Chiasa stood, saying, “Daddy …” It must’ve been the look in his eyes that caused her to turn swiftly. She saw me.
“Ryoshi,” she called me, like she was suddenly out of breath. Her eyes revealed her genuine surprise. She put one hand over her lips and held it there. She let it drop and turned to her father and said, “Daddy … he is the one who …,” and then she paused and tried to readjust her true emotion, maybe because of her father, or maybe it was because she felt bad that I had not contacted her even though she had waited so patiently, for so long.
Meanwhile, the general was checkmated into silence. He was probably unfamiliar with the words “You win” and was calculating how to cheat me.
“How are you, sir? It’s good to meet you,” I said, stepping from my side and extending my hand to him. Chiasa’s eyes were watching her father for a reaction.
“I’m good, son. Just enjoying my day with my daughter.”
“She’s so beautiful, sir. I wish she were mine,” I said, looking into Chiasa.
“Ryo …,” Chiasa said softly, and her eyes lost the barrier of defense she had thrown up and her emotions seeped through.
“Chiasa is a daddy’s girl,” her father said proudly.
“You’re right, I’m sure, sir. Until the right man comes for her, she’s a daddy’s girl,” I said solemnly.
“Let’s go, baby,” her father said.
Swiftly, I interrupted. “Chiasa, where are you staying?”
“Oh, at the—”
Her father cleared his throat.
“Tell me where you are, Ryoshi,” she asked me.
“Hyundai Suites, here in Seoul,” I told her. “Akemi said she wants to meet you.” Chiasa searched my eyes. I knew what she wanted to know: What about you, Ryoshi? But of course she didn’t say that out loud.
“How long will you stay in Seoul?” she asked.
“Not long, maybe two days. Then we’ll go back to New York,” I said. Her father smiled at the news.
“Oh, I … see,” she said.
“Let’s go, Chiasa,” her father said with his heavy hand on her shoulder. She left with him, but I knew she didn’t want to. I watched as they walked away. She turned and looked back at me.
Chapter 16
OASIS
It was on the walk out of the war museum, less than a mile down, that I saw it, another American military base. Tossed behind a wall that spanned three or four blocks. That explained it.
The walk through Itaewon was nice. There were all cultures and races of foreigners. When I saw the Arabic letters looming large above my head in the corner spot of an elevated winding road, I felt good. It was only 4:30 p.m. There were two more hours to sunset.
In a row of jewelry stores I sifted through the junk. My eyes were keen for the real thing and I would know it the moment I saw it. If it wasn’t there, I wouldn’t buy anything.
“You are looking for diamonds, yes?” A short man from Namibia offered to show me a private collection, since I had “a good eye for gems,” as he put it. I guess he based the observation on the fact that I hadn’t bought anything so far and I had been searching for more than half an hour.
At 5:30 p.m. I phoned Umma. I would catch her before she left for work in Mr. Ghazzali’s taxi. She picked up on the first ring, expecting me.
“Umma!”
“Are you okay?” she asked me in Arabic, concerned over me when I was concerned over her.
“How about you? I’m coming home,” I rushed to say before she could answer my first question.
“But how is our Akemi? Have you visited nicely with her grandmother?” Umma asked, knowing only that we were visiting Akemi’s grandmother but not the whole reason why or any of the details, purposely.
“Almost,” I said, being vague.
“Almost?” she repeated in Arabic. “I know Naja has spoken to you about Basima. If this is the reason that you are hurrying, then don’t. People have had these bad ideas about one another for so many years. If you come in three or four days, or even two weeks later, their thinking will be the same. Even fifty years from now, they will be the same,” Umma said.
“I’m not thinking about them. I am thinking about you, Umma. Our house is ready for us now. I mean it is vacant. I still have to prepare it for you,” I said.
“How do you know that I have not already prepared it for you?” she asked coyly.
I was quiet now on my end. After thinking, I answered her. “Because you are working so hard that you haven’t had time to prepare it for me. Because I know that you wouldn’t have gone to the lawyer alone or to Queens alone. And I know that you wouldn’t have given anyone else our address or showed them our place. Since I know my mother so well, I know that you are only now thinking that you will rush over there and prepare it for me, so that I won’t rush back to you before Akemi is feeling comfortable with her grandmother.”
Now she was quiet on her end.
“Umma, no one is better than you,” I said, feeling moved in my heart suddenly. “How are you really feeling these days? How are the Ghazzalis treating you? Tell me honestly,” I said.
“I have no other way to tell you except honestly, my son. I am being treated very well every day. I am being taken care of in the exact way that my son had provided that I should be taken care of. I am content almost every day and grateful to Allah every second.
“Sometimes there is a sadness that comes over me. But it is not a sadness that anyone can cure. Sometimes I am missing the Sudan. All the time I am missing your father. Sometimes I want to pack every thing and return there, no matter the troubles. What can they do? They can only do what Allah will allow to be done. And whatever Allah will allow must be done. I have decided that finally, after all these years,” she spoke softly and thoughtfully, filling me with emotion.
“I can take you home to the Sudan, Umma. Now I’m a man. I can do that for you.”
“Even when you were a boy, you were a man! I knew that you would take me to Sudan when you grew up. I used to worry over that. I knew that you would grow to be the same as your father. This is what worries me most.”
“Why?” I asked, not understanding.
“Because in your father’s heart, and in yours also, is a special thing, an abundance of love. Neither of you can be happy unless you are sharing and expressing your love abundantly. Yet you are both surrounded by people who are not the same as you in their hearts. You two are the givers. The others are the takers. You two cannot stop giving. The others will not stop taking. After a while, it wears you down.” She paused.
“That is why I worry over you, because of the love that lives in your soul. Because of the love that does not live in the other souls. Because of what they might do. People envy people who love. People who love like you and your father expose the people who do not love much or at all, just by your being alive. Then those people say, ‘We have to destroy him because of what he can do and what we cannot do. If we destroy him, no one will ever know that we cannot love. No one will ever know what’s missing.’ ” Umma was going in deeper and deeper in her words and thoughts. I wanted to change the direction of our talk before it caused her tears to fall.
“I’ll bring you home an abundance of love, Umma. I’ll bring you so much love you will be swimming in it. I have a lot of surprises for you, Umma. And when I return to you, I’ll work very hard. In one year, I promise, we will visit Sudan. We will feel it out. If you want to stay there, then that’s wh
at we will all do. So don’t feel sad, my beautiful umi, please.” I could feel her smiling. I could hear the difference even in her breathing.
“Alhamdulillah, son. Please be well and let Akemi be well. And don’t trouble yourself to rush. You have already paid for the month and you really do have almost two weeks remaining. I’m fine, and again, nothing will happen that Allah does not allow to happen.”
When I hung up, I weighed her tone and words carefully and compared them to what Naja had described. Then I separated both of them from my own thoughts. I wasn’t one hundred that “nothing will happen that Allah doesn’t allow to happen.” Maybe that was a woman’s mind, I considered.
Men have to make things happen. When men make moves, something happens, good or bad, right or wrong. Somewhere along the line, some man is responsible for whatever went down. I wondered if Allah actually weighed in on every single detail of each life and soul anywhere and everywhere in the world. Or if Allah ruled in general and gave man free will as his test, the Holy Quran as his guide, his soul as his score card, and heaven or hell as his verdict?
What about those wars and bombings? Had Allah granted permission for all that? Or had the men responsible just hidden their trail and hands and faces so well that they escaped responsibility?
Shockingly, as I began to walk, I could hear the calling of the adhan off in the distance. For seven years living in New York, I had not heard the call out of doors and in the open atmosphere drifting through the breeze. Now Seoul had moved my soul and allowed me to hear it and feel it also. I picked up my pace and began moving in the direction of the call. As I rounded the corner, there was a hill, of course. It was not nearly as steep as any of the hills I had climbed and traveled up so far in Korea. It was a simple hill. I moved past a Salaam Bakery: just the name of the place made me feel good. I walked through a row of halal restaurants. I turned another corner; another hill appeared, not so steep, and at the top of the simple hill sat the mosque. I moved uphill with a wave of people.
Midnight and the Meaning of Love Page 59