Beneath the Same Heaven Read online

  Lahore, Pakistan.

  Months before the bombing

  * * *

  Rashid emerged from the air conditioned chill of the flight, felt the warm air of Lahore envelope him. The world appeared to him as if through a scrim. The blazing afternoon light only revealed the ugly surfaces around him, the cracked asphalt of the runway, the crumbling concrete surrounding the airport. The light did not penetrate to reveal anything of the city he had loved. He urged the taxi driver to speed him to his mother. This was no longer his country. Without his father to bless him on his arrival, this was now barren land.

  Rashid paid the driver with an American $20 bill. The driver raised his eyebrows in surprise, held the bill to his heart in gratitude. Rashid, oblivious to his overpayment, looked to the locked gate, the silent courtyard of his father’s house. As the taxi returned down the gravel road, Rashid banged the metal latch against the gate, called out for his mother.

  After a few moments, his mother’s elder sister, his apa walked to him, wordlessly opened the gate. Instinctively, he reached down to touch her feet in respect, she set her hand on his head in blessing.

  “Come, beta,” she said, “your mother’s waiting.”

  He followed his aunt, the white salwar kameeze that marked her grief hung limp around her flesh. No breeze animated her tunic, nor the sheer cloth of the chunni covering her head. Rashid stepped out of his shoes on the steps before the door, left his single bag in the courtyard.

  As his eyes adjusted to the shadows inside he did not recognize the woman hunched on the charpoy before him. Without the bustle of the family around her, in the absence of her husband, Rashid saw his mother for the first time as a little old woman.

  Rashid’s apa said quietly, “Didi, Rashid puta is here.”

  His mother lifted her head. Her steely gaze caught him off guard, he stood momentarily paralyzed. After a long moment she inhaled, lifting her shoulders, raising her chin until she appeared again as he had known her, her spine erect with pride and power.

  She nodded her head, motioned with her hand for him to come to her. He obeyed quickly, touching her feet to seek her blessing. He then lifted his arms to embrace her, to offer her comfort. But before he could draw himself close, she reached out for his shoulders. She held him at arm’s length.

  “It’s good you’ve come, you are the one we’re depending on.”

  “Yes, Mummyji, I came as fast as I could. I’ll stay as long as you need me. Tell me, what do you need?”

  She let her hands drop into her lap. “You are the one, you will take action to relieve our grief. We will be avenged.”

  He had known she would remind him of his responsibility. But the smell of his American wife still lingered in his clothes, the image of his American sons hovered in his mind. They would discuss it later. There was much to know before he had to face it.

  “Where are my brothers?” he asked to change the topic.

  “Your brothers have gone to be with Shoukart’s father to bury the bodies.”

  “Bodies?” Rashid held his hand to his breast. “How many were killed?”

  “At least a dozen, more were injured. Even Shoukart is gone, and the younger son’s bride. Not even a day together as husband and wife.”

  “Shoukart is gone?” Rashid raised himself to sit next to his mother. His apa came from the kitchen carrying a tray with tea cups. Distractedly, Rashid reached out for the hot tea, thinking over the years he has spent with Shoukart. The same age as Rashid’s eldest brother, Riaz, Shoukart had often restrained Rashid from mischief. They had shared tea and snacks on countless occasions.

  The house was eerily calm. “Where is everyone else?” he asked.

  “I sent them to the masjid, the mosque to pray,” his mother said.

  “So only you and apa are here? It’s not safe for you two women to be alone here, especially when people learn that Daddyji’s… not here.”

  “It’s fine, I knew you were coming.” She reached out and patted his hand, looked in his eyes for a long time, as if searching for something, perhaps some trace of her husband, perhaps some strength on which she could draw. He held her gaze.

  “Well, let’s not waste our time here, we need to go. I was waiting for you to travel.”

  “Where?”

  “To the Lak-e-Gar, to the Northwest Territories. I need to see for myself where our family was attacked.”

  Chapter 7

  Los Angeles, California.

  Months before the bombing

  * * *

  Rashid turned the key in the lock, expected Kathryn and the boys to be sleeping at this early hour. The smell in the apartment, a combination of coffee and baby’s skin, mother’s milk and laundry detergent, struck him as impossibly innocent, naïve, in contrast to the smells of the Lak-e-Gar; dust and cooking fires, grilled meat, death. He closed his eyes, covered his nose, trying to hold onto the memory of those smells.

  He set down his bag, took off his shoes and walked across the Persian carpet to the bedroom. He heard a faint rustle as he opened the door. Kathryn lay in the middle of the bed, her breathing regular. Michael slept curled up next to her. The baby blinked as a shaft of morning light sent a long finger of brilliance over the bed. Andrew’s little feet and hands moved whimsically in uncoordinated directions. Occasionally a smile passed over his tiny face. Rashid knelt down to lay his head next to the baby. The baby turned as if to look his father in the eye. Rashid smiled, a rueful smile of gratitude and sorrow. His father would never know this child. And this child might never understand his place in the family, Rashid’s responsibility to their clan.

  The baby whimpered, his little forehead wrinkling in discomfort. Kathryn stirred, turned on her side and reached for the baby with her eyes still closed. Rashid watched as she pulled open her night shirt, revealing the curve of her breast and her nipple which disappeared into the baby’s mouth.

  Rashid raised himself onto the bed, finding just enough space to lie next to the baby. He reached out to stroke Kathryn’s other breast, to reach across her body and lay his hand on Michael’s head. But the seed his mother had planted in his heart had already taken root. He closed his eyes and saw the rubble of the wedding, the stains of blood on the bricks. The pain returned just as powerfully as when he had first seen the evidence of the killings. He pulled his hand back, closed his eyes on his American family.

  Rashid shot up to sitting in the bed, disoriented, sweaty, painfully hungry. Kathryn had closed the drapes to keep the daylight out, but the afternoon heat penetrated. Perhaps only a dream had awakened him. Persisting at the fringes of his consciousness he heard the cries of children, of old women and helpless young men. He saw an explosion and rather than shrapnel hurtling away from the point of impact, the gold and brilliant red of a bride’s clothes seemed to hang, suspended in the air, shattered into a thousand distorted shapes.

  He stepped out of the bed, angrily pulled the drapes open. Across the street a woman walked a dog dressed in a green sweater and a rhinestone collar. He resisted the urge to bang on the window and curse at her for her unholy affection for the dog, and then he remembered, here in America dogs are like children, free to enjoy luxuries undreamed of in Pakistan.

  Slowly, stepping back from the window, he sought out some relief, something to tame his anger. He went to the bathroom, ran cool water over his hands, splashed his face, breathed deeply into the towel.

  He paused before stepping out in the living room, tried to create some wall of separation in his mind, some sense that this American fantasy could be held in suspension away from what he knew he had to do. Rashid watched Kathryn preparing food in the kitchen, pulling square packages from the freezer and pressing the buttons on the microwave oven. When Michael saw Rashid, he ran to his father, abandoning his complicated plastic building blocks. Rashid opened his arms, received the boy who held him in a vice-like grip. Michael unleashed a flurry of questions about Pakistan, followed, without pause, by a flurry of statements about what had ha
ppened at kindergarten during Rashid’s absence. When the child finally stopped, he thumped his father on the shoulder and demanded: “So? Tell me!”

  Rashid carried Michael to the kitchen and reached out to embrace Kathryn with his free arm.

  She looked up at him, fatigue had darkened the pale skin around her blue eyes. “It’s good you slept,” she said. “Let me get some food ready for us and then we can talk about it.”

  Rashid, grateful to remain silent, walked to the sofa where Andrew slept on an impossibly soft baby blanket.

  “Please don’t wake the baby,” Kathryn called from the kitchen. “I want to at least feed you before I have to nurse him again.”

  “Daddy, Daddy,” Michael peppered the air with requests and retellings that Rashid could barely decipher.

  “Beta,” Rashid said wearily to Michael, “please just sit quietly with me. It was a long journey and I’m not completely here.”

  Michael’s expression grew serious and he put his hand on top of Rashid’s. “Where are you then? Still in Pakistan?”

  His son’s sensitivity gave him pause. He put his other hand to his heart. “Exactly, beta. Part of me is still in Pakistan, with my family. I don’t know, maybe part of me will always be there.”

  “Well, can we bring that part of Pakistan here, so all parts of you can be here with us?”

  Rashid gently placed a hand on Andrew’s back, felt the baby’s lungs expand and contract. “I don’t think it’s possible, but maybe we can figure out something else.”

  Kathryn set plates on the table—simple, unspiced dishes of vegetables and chicken—that struck Rashid as ingredients for a curry she had yet to prepare. “Come, let’s eat,” she said. “You can start to get back to a regular schedule at least with your meals.”

  She placed a few vegetables and a bit of chicken on Michael’s plate. “Sit up. Roll up your sleeves before you eat.” Michael did as he was told. She scooped larger quantities onto Rashid’s plate. “Tell me, how is your mother? How was the trip?”

  Rashid looked up at Kathryn, shook his head, poked at the food with his fork. “How can I tell you? It was awful. Worse than I expected.”

  “In what way?” she felt her chest tighten.

  “The attack was horrible. It wasn’t just my father, but the bride, old women, children, even Shoukart, our driver. Fifteen people dead, sixty wounded. Only worth a few seconds on the news here. But the village, the families of the dead, my mother, how can they ever forget that attack?”

  Kathryn glanced at Michael, concerned about upsetting him. “How is your mother coping?”

  He paused, how could he possibly translate his mother’s reaction into a language that Kathryn would understand? “She responded how every Pakistani woman would. She’s strong. Too strong.”

  “What do you mean? Are there any rituals, a way that Islam helps her get through her grief?”

  “There are codes,” he said vaguely, “but they’re not really about Islam, they’re based on our families, the way we protect ourselves.” He reached for a glass of water, his throat constricted.

  As Kathryn cocked her head and began to ask a question, Andrew let out a low pitched cry, almost a growl. “Hold that thought,” she said to Rashid as she stood up from the table and whisked Andrew from the sofa to the bedroom.

  “What’s your code, Daddy? You mean like a secret code that helps you get the bad guys? I saw a movie where they used a secret code to blow up a building with bad guys in it.”

  Rashid stabbed a piece of broccoli with his fork. “No, our code is like a set of rules that a family should follow. We call it izzat or badan. It might have to do with bad guys, but it isn’t secret.” He slowly bit into the broccoli. “When you’re older, you’ll understand it better.”

  Kathryn returned to the table holding the baby and attempted to feed herself with her free hand. “I’m thinking about calling my contact at the International Human Rights Commission, or maybe the ACLU. Something. We have to bring a lawsuit or lodge an international complaint about the bombing.” The baby kicked his feet, nearly knocking her plate over. She reached down, irritated, and restrained him. “I just haven’t had time to do anything, but we can’t keep quiet about this, we have to do something.”

  He raised his eyebrows skeptically, “You think the U.S. military listens to the ACLU or the international organizations? What do they care about an old man in Pakistan?”

  “It’s not just one man, not just your father, we’re continually launching these drones, predators, whatever they are, and attacking Pakistan, a country that’s supposedly our ally.”

  “We?” Rashid shoved his chair away from the table. “For sure I didn’t do this. I didn’t vote for this president, ask for this fucking government.” He stood up and walked out of the room, leaving a chill to settle over the table.

  Michael looked from his mother to the empty seat and back. “Mommy, we did this? What’s an ally?”

  She brought her free hand to her head, pressed her fingers into her temples. “No, of course we didn’t do this.” Any possible reply to his second question disappeared in her long low sob. Kathryn’s expression of pain silenced the little boy into fear.

  Kathryn woke with the first light, next to an empty space in the bed. “Jet lag?” she called out as she walked into the kitchen. But Rashid was not there. Nor was he in the bathroom, nor anywhere else in their home. She stood still in the middle of the room, wrapped one arm and then the other around her torso, a lonely, one-person embrace. She picked up the phone off the kitchen counter and dialed his number.

  The phone vibrated silently in Rashid’s pocket. He didn’t answer it, tried to focus his thoughts on his prayers as he raised his prostrate torso back to upright. The inside of the mosque retained the night’s darkness in the grey early morning light, the unmistakable rumble of the freeway coming from just beyond the building’s walls. The few men around him demonstrated the same quiet, humble demeanor as those in Pakistan who typically rose before dawn for the first of the daily prayers. In unison they held up their hands in supplication. In unison, they repeated their holy words. Rashid very carefully attuned his heart, trying to perceive the presence of his father. He searched vainly in their collective breath, for the familiar sound of his father’s contented exhale.

  “What happened?” Rashid said, opening the door to see Kathryn sitting on the sofa.

  “You tell me what happened,” she said, letting her hands fall limply into her lap. “You leave without saying anything, and then you don’t answer your phone. Where have you been? How long do I have to handle all this by myself?”

  “I was at the mosque,” he said simply.

  “The mosque?” She paused at his unexpected statement. “What for? You haven’t been to the mosque since we came to America.”

  “I miss my father. I’m trying to sort out some things in my head. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Of course I won’t understand if you don’t even talk to me.”

  He sat down next to her, hands in his lap.

  “And what, you won’t even touch me? I’m your wife. What’s happened to you? I’m so sorry your father is dead, but the boys and I…we’re alive.”

  He looked up, as if seeing her for the first time since he had returned. He gently drew her into an embrace until he felt her shoulders release their tension. He ran his fingers down her hair and allowed her to weep. She spoke through her tears, a tumble of clipped and muffled words.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You are?” she drew back to look at him, incredulous.

  He pulled her back in, unable to speak. He let his body take over from where language failed him. He enveloped this woman, holding onto the body that had given him his children. He kissed the face that years ago had attracted him. He caressed the breasts that continued to inspire him.

  “Rashid, the children,” she started to protest.

  He walked to the bedroom doorway, inside both boys slept peac
efully on the big bed, so much bigger than the bed where he had slept with his parents as a child. He closed the door, already reaching for his belt buckle, and returned to her.

  She submitted to him, unable to resist his touch, his smell, the generosity of his movements. They made love wordlessly, the physical overpowering the contradictions of their minds. She felt each moment a respite from the roles and responsibilities to which her life had been reduced. She relished the process, even as she rushed to finish before the children might interrupt them.

  When he separated from her she simply watched as he walked to the bathroom, washed himself as he always did immediately after sex. She felt as if she had just witnessed some natural phenomena, a storm passing through their home, a perplexing sun shower that somehow makes no sense, brings relief and foreboding in equal measure.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  Rashid inspected the contents of his bag again: his fire retardant coveralls, his steel-toed boots, his radiation exposure badge, the company’s security identification card, and the necessary toiletries—industrial strength soap, toothpaste.

  “Glad to be going back to work?” Kathryn asked from the bed.

  “It’s a small job, shouldn’t be difficult.” He slipped a bottle of men’s perfume into the bag. His perfumes always surprised her, the incongruous luxury of the complex masculine fragrance amidst the austerity; the perfume a legacy of his time among Arabs who never left their homes unperfumed.

  He zipped up the bag, picked it up, checking the weight. The work would be a relief, a reassurance that everything was normal, that he could just continue in this American life, that the people he met in Pakistan and their plans were no more than a dream. He climbed into bed next to her. They entwined their limbs as they had done for years—he was unable to sleep in their bed without touching her—and she quickly succumbed to her exhaustion. He lay there, unable to sleep for his swirling thoughts, listened to her regular breathing, inhaled her sweet maternal smell. He watched the rise and fall of her delicately beautiful chest next to his, and tried not to think about her origins, her allegiances, her identity.