Beneath the Same Heaven Page 3

  She shivered despite the warm air and pulled the sheet up over her shoulders.

  “I remember my mother saying to my brothers and me that if a mob ever came to attack our home, the women in the house would take the gas cylinder for our cooking range and blow it up. They would kill themselves, but also take out some of our attackers. Then my mother told me and my brothers, ‘You boys will run away, survive however you can, and grow up to take revenge on those families that tried to kill us’.”

  “Your mother said that?” Kathryn, horrified, couldn’t imagine her own mother delivering such deadly instructions to her as a young girl in their suburban home.

  “My parents lived through Partition. In 1947, when the British pulled out and Pakistan was created, their families were living on what became the Indian side. Until now my father won’t talk about the killings he saw when they crossed over to Pakistan.”

  “Was his own life in danger?”

  “Of course,” Rashid said, almost angrily. “Exactly when my grandparents crossed the border, they were taken in and protected by two brothers, Pashtuns who worked as drivers for a rich family. They hid my father, his brother, and their parents in a car in a garage for three days, until they could move safely to relatives in Lahore.”

  “The Pashtuns were Muslims?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they were showing loyalty to their greater clan.”

  “You understand.”

  She let out a long sigh. The heavy story crowded out the previous week’s lightness, as if she had been playing jaxx at a funeral, a childish girl ignorant of the suffering around her.

  “Hold me?” she asked quietly.

  He put out his arm and she rested her head on his chest. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to him.

  “We won’t live in Pakistan.” He tried to reassure her. “This isn’t your history, not your issue. Just respect my parents, that’s the only loyalty they’ll expect from you.”

  Rashid’s middle brother, Majid, opened the car door for Kathryn, and held out his forearm for support. She climbed into the seat, gathering up her flowing kameeze and chunni.

  “Thank you,” Kathryn said.

  Majid’s wife, Aisha, giggled. “Americans, always you’re saying thank you. Are people in your country so selfish you must show gratitude for every tiny thing?”

  Before Kathryn could answer, Rashid pushed in beside her. “Make space,” he said as the driver started the engine. She scooted closer to Aisha as Sabeen and her husband Riaz piled into the front seat.

  They lurched into the lane, the brothers continuing a spirited conversation. Unlike their sweaty bumpy rickshaw ride in, Kathryn now viewed the farms and farmhouses speeding by from air conditioned comfort.

  “What are you talking about?” Kathryn asked Rashid.

  He laughed, still gesturing to his brother Riaz. “I told him he has crores of rupees, he’s rich, but still lives like a country boy. He loves his cows more than his cars.”

  “Shoukart, what is a car for?” Riaz asked the driver, who only shrugged. “A car is only a vehicle for bringing you from one destination to another. A cow? Now a cow makes you milk, makes you money, keeps you company, maybe even takes you from one place to another.” He looked out the window. “Of course I care more about my cows than my cars.” He turned the air conditioning down from full blast. “I’m not like our brother Majid,” he said with finality.

  “Why isn’t Majid with us?” Kathryn asked.

  “He took his new car because he has to stop by his office for some business,” Aisha explained. “He’ll meet us at the gold shop.”

  As they reached the outskirts of Lahore, the smells of charcoal and grilled meat, spices, rotting fruit, car exhaust, and incense all seeped into the car.

  Kathryn could barely process the dizzying array of street vendors, small shops, apartment buildings they passed.

  “Let’s stop for samosas, or pani poori,” Rashid told the driver.

  Riaz shook his finger. “No snacks until after we arrive to the gold shop. I know you,” he turned to look at his brother, “I have to impose the discipline or we’ll never get everything done.” He turned back to the driver, “Shoukart, to the gold shop directly.”

  “Han ji,” Shoukart affirmed.

  They turned down a small lane and then another and another, seemingly lost. Then without warning, Shoukart stopped the car and everyone piled out.

  Through a dingy door and up a set of old wooden stairs they arrived at the shop. Brightly lit glass cases sat atop marble tiled floors. Mirrors lined the walls and bright yellow gold jewelry sparkled from every surface. A man in a beautifully embroidered silk kurta greeted Riaz warmly. Majid stood up from where he had been drinking tea with the shop owner.

  Riaz introduced Rashid to the shop owner, who turned to look at Kathryn. “And you beta, you are the lucky bride marrying into this family?”

  Kathryn smiled. Rashid glanced proudly at Riaz.

  Sabeen and Aisha moved toward the front of the store to inspect the ornate gold necklaces. Rashid thumped Majid on the shoulder. “You got here so quickly?”

  “You know, younger brother,” Majid said, “I like to drive my car, I don’t waste any time.”

  Sabeen led Kathryn to a glass case, “Which styles do you like?”

  Kathryn, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gold, tried to discern the differences between them. “I guess the shorter ones.” She pointed to a few studded with emerald and ruby colored stones.

  “Don’t go for stones,” Aisha said quietly, “they sell the gold by the gram and the stones are never worth as much as the gold, so the value is not good.”

  “Can I ask to try them on?” Kathryn asked Sabeen.

  “Of course madam,” the shop owner said in a deeply resonant voice. “You should see what you will look like as a Pakistani bride.” He motioned to a young man behind him who brought a tray with six small cups of tea, and then to a slightly round middle-aged man who joined them from behind the counter. He aimed a remote control at a wall mounted television, generating sound and color as if to make them feel at home.

  “Which ones madam?”

  Kathryn, teacup in hand, tentatively pointed to three different necklaces. Sabeen took each one in turn from the salesman and placed them around Kathryn’s neck.

  “I think I like this one best,” Kathryn said, fingering the clusters of small gold beads clustered amidst the intricately filigreed designs. “How much is it?” she asked Aisha.

  Aisha, the practiced wife of a businessman, motioned for the salesman to weigh the gold piece. “Today’s gold price is a little lower than usual, and this shop’s making charge is always fair.” The salesman tapped his calculator and presented a price.

  Kathryn gasped. “It’s almost five thousand dollars!” she said to Aisha. She took Sabeen by the arm to whisper into her ear. “I don’t need such expensive jewelry just for the wedding. Is there a gold set in the family that I could just borrow for the day?”

  Sabeen stepped back and looked at Kathryn as if she had asked to wear fur in the middle of a sweltering Lahore summer. “Someone else’s gold? But you must have your own gold. It isn’t just for your wedding day. It’s your insurance. If your husband dies or you need money for an emergency you can sell your gold. No, you can’t borrow it, and you should choose as heavy a piece as Rashid is willing to buy.”

  Kathryn looked up toward Rashid, saw his face light up. “Samosas!” Shoukart, the driver, handed him a little bag fashioned from last week’s newspaper, the contents already making big greasy spots over the photos of local politicians. He turned to Kathryn. “We have snacks. Now you can shop as long as you like.”

  The television blared a Pakistani film song—a young man crooning wistfully, intercut with shots of a girl seen through a soft filter.

  The store attendant appeared with small plates and paper napkins and the three brothers gathered around the snacks, greedily dipping the deep fried po
tato dumplings into sweet tamarind sauce. Rashid raised his hand, calling over to Shoukart to join them. “Aja virji, come brother, you were clever to buy so many.” The Pashtun driver who had stood quietly deferential, easily joined and engaged in their banter.

  Rashid watched the television distractedly. The song had ended and a newscaster described the American military presence in Afghanistan, with footage of Bagram Air Base. American soldiers had been accused of forcibly searching Afghan homes, aggressively touching women, even shooting a man when he brandished a dagger in his own home. Shoukart shook his head. “How do they think they can occupy Afghanistan like that?” he spoke in Urdu. “The Americans don’t understand us Pathans, they will never escape our badan, our justice.” Rashid’s brothers nodded in sympathy. “Every one of us knows the Pashtunwali, we are bound like brothers to take revenge.”

  At the jewelry counter Aisha turned her back to the salesmen, spoke in low tones to Kathryn. “You should tell me what you like, but don’t let the shop owner hear. We won’t buy today, you can tell him you’re not fond of his designs. Then I’ll ask Majid to bargain with him later, on a day when the gold price is more down.”

  Kathryn discreetly reached toward the necklace still on the gram scale and nodded to Aisha.

  “And the matching bangles and earrings, they are fine for you?”

  Kathryn wobbled her head affirmatively. “Sir,” Kathryn asked the salesman, “can you show me plain gold bands for my husband? The jewelry set is your tradition,” she smiled to her future sisters-in-law. “A ring is my tradition.”

  She picked up a simple, wide band. “Can you engrave the inside?”

  “Of course,” the salesman said. “Whatever you like.” He offered her a piece of paper and a pen.

  She wrote, Beneath the Same Heaven.

  Chapter 3

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

  Six years before the bombing

  * * *

  Kathryn raised a glass of dark beer to toast Sameh, a colleague at the Chamber who translated all of her articles into Arabic. “To your mother’s visa.”

  “To my mother’s visa,” he raised his glass to hers, thick drops of condensation falling in the hot evening air of the outdoor beer garden. “You can’t imagine how many hours, how many days I spent going from one ministry to another here. The Emirati officials wanted so many papers, everything from Iraq, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, property certificates. After two wars, those papers don’t even exist any more in my country, or if they do, no one can find them. But finally, I convinced them to let her come. So soon you’ll meet her.”

  “Al-hamda’allah,” Kathryn said, smiling at the irony of thanking Allah, in a Muslim country, while drinking a beer with an Iraqi man, now working in the UAE as a naturalized citizen of a distant Nordic country. “When will she arrive?”

  “My younger brother is traveling from Sweden to Baghdad to help her and my youngest sister pack their things. Then I have to arrange for a bigger flat here so they’ll be comfortable. I think maybe three or four months until they are here.”

  “But at least she knows it will happen.”

  “Yes, she tells me everything’s fine and not to worry. But I hear news from their neighbors; a bomb landed down the street, or someone’s uncle was kidnapped, or their sister-in-law raped.”

  Kathryn wrapped her hands around her glass, uncomfortably. “I can’t help but feel some responsibility for what’s happening in your country.”

  He looked in her eyes, leaned back in his chair and laughed with surprising force. “Responsible? How are you responsible?”

  “Well, we elect our leaders and they have invaded your country—again—causing this chaos.”

  “Do you really think you have any influence on any of that? You Americans, sometimes you really do believe you are powerful. My friend, governments are governments, people are people. You’re not responsible. I worked as a government translator during Saddam’s time. But I certainly don’t feel any responsibility for what Saddam Hussein did when he was in power.”

  She raised an eyebrow, nodded her head in concession, a shade of embarrassment rising in her cheeks. “Perhaps it’s all just an illusion that we have any influence on our leaders, but we are raised in America to believe we do. So, how about this? I’m terribly sad for what my country has done in your country.”

  “Me too,” Sameh sighed, “me too.”

  A waitress arrived, asked, “Anozher beer?” with an Eastern European accent.

  “Not yet, but soon,” Sameh said with renewed enthusiasm. “But please—French fries.” He drank again. “Now, let’s talk of something happier, you just returned from Pakistan, now you’re married.”

  “Oh, the wedding,” Kathryn smiled broadly. “I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in my life. When Rashid comes back onshore, you should come over and look at the wedding album. The whole event was just so big, so over the top,” she gestured widely with her hands, forty red and white bangles that marked her as a new bride jingling along her forearms.

  “And your parents came?”

  “Yes, I was so proud of them. Especially my mother, she never once complained about the heat or the filth, she just danced and ate and laughed with Rashid’s family like she had known them all her life. My father tried a couple of times to talk foreign relations with Rashid’s brothers, but they were always interrupted by some fun before it got serious. And the mehendi,” she rubbed the faded henna designs on the backs of her hands, “the henna party was so fun. The mehendi artist worked for almost eight hours straight covering all the women’s hands, even my mom. He didn’t realize until almost midnight that I was the bride. By the time he finished almost everyone was asleep, there were people on blankets and little sleeping mats everywhere.”

  The fries arrived, Sameh chuckled.

  “And the extended family…Rashid was the last son to be married in his family, so relatives came from all over, even some cousins from London, and an uncle who had been estranged from Rashid’s father over some business issue. And the most amazing to me, a Pashtun man came all the way from the frontier territories near Afghanistan. He was their driver’s father, he’d helped Rashid’s father to safety when they crossed from India during Partition.”

  “Why was that amazing to you?”

  “I guess because he hardly knew Rashid, and he certainly didn’t know me.”

  Sameh grinned, “But a wedding in this part of the world isn’t really about you.” He took a long swig of his beer, “It’s about the extended family, the clan, affirming alliances. That Pashtun man wasn’t coming for you or Rashid, he came out of loyalty to your father-in-law and his clan. And you know the Pashtuns, they are the most loyal people in the world.”

  She reached for a few fries. “I guess that makes sense, it’s just such a different way of thinking than how I grew up.”

  “Well, you should get used to it. You’ve married into that world now.”

  “Yes, but I have the benefit of being the outsider. I can sort of pick and choose about how much their norms apply to me. And Rashid’s company will transfer him to the U.S., so by next year we’re planning to leave this part of the world.”

  “Maybe,” he fiddled with his coaster, a cardboard disc with a beer logo and a promise of a better time, “but lots of things in life are our naseeb, they are written, already chosen for us.” He drew his finger across his forehead.

  Chapter 4

  Los Angeles, California.

  Five years before the bombing

  * * *

  “Dinner’s ready, Kathy,” her mother called out. “Do you want us to start, or should we wait for Rashid?”

  “Let’s wait,” Kathryn said. “He said he’d just pick up coffee and cereal, I don’t know what’s taking him so long.” She carried a couple of moving boxes from the living room of their newly rented apartment to their bedroom, and sat down on the bed, letting out a long sigh.

  The front
door opened with a bang.

  “Amazing!” Rashid said. “All of this stuff from Walmart for less than a hundred dollars.”

  “You were gone a long time, we’ve moved all the boxes into the other rooms so you and Kathryn can unpack them. Everything all right?” Kathryn’s mother asked.

  “Great. Everything is better than all right.” Rashid set his shopping bags down on the counter. “The place is huge. They have everything. I was looking at watches, and camping equipment. I spent an hour just to find the coffee. I have more bags in the car.”

  “Robert,” Kathryn’s mother called to her husband, “can you help Rashid with the bags?”

  “Coming,” Robert called back from the hallway as the front door slammed again. “Kathryn,” he stopped at the bedroom door, “are you all right?”

  “I guess,” she looked up from the bed. “I just feel like Rashid is different here.”

  Kathryn’s father took a step into the room. “How so?”

  “I mean, he’s clean-shaven, he’s wearing a baseball cap and jeans. You heard him going on about Walmart. He seems so…so American,” she picked up a framed wedding photo from one of the open boxes. “Hard to believe we are the same people.” From behind the frame Rashid smiled in his starched silk kurta pajama, she looked irrepressibly happy in a traditional red wedding dress and chunni, light glinting off the gold thread and beadwork along the border.

  “Life changes,” her father said simply.

  “It’s so strange, I feel almost homesick, but I am back in my own country.”

  He smiled, “Not strange, that’s just reverse culture shock.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. I felt it when I came back from diplomatic postings.”

  “Does it pass?” she asked.

  The front door banged again.

  Her father smiled ruefully, “Everything passes. But for now let Rashid try out being American. He’s just doing what you did in Pakistan.”