Beneath the Same Heaven Read online

  Kathryn shifted the car into neutral just outside the school. Andrew made happy gurgling noises from his car seat behind her. Occasionally she made a noise in reply or chirped out a happy string of words just to reassure him she was there. She did not rush through this errand today. She relished this brief opportunity to wait for Michael in the middle of the day. In a few days she would be back at her office, Michael would stay in the afterschool program, and Andrew, her beloved baby, would spend the day in the nurturing care of professionally trained strangers.

  The school bell rang and moments later the double doors at the front of the school burst open. She scanned the children—little girls in pink t-shirts, boys jumping in mock karate poses—for Michael. Only after nearly every car had pulled away, their young charges safely collected, did she see the familiar beige skin and dark hair of her son—his gait uncharacteristically slow, his expression glum.

  She opened the door and stepped out, meeting her son as he reached the sidewalk. She knelt down and hugged him, his arms hung limp at his sides.

  “What’s wrong?” her voice pitched with concern.

  He looked up at her and then looked away into the distance. “Nothing.”

  She hugged him again, guilt rising, certain he was already sad knowing she would soon be back at work. “Come,” she held his hand, “say hello to your baby brother, he’s so happy right now.”

  Michael dutifully climbed into his car seat, allowed his mother to fasten the buckles he could easily handle himself.

  “Would you like to have some ice cream? We can stop at the grocery store on the way home.”

  Michael nodded.

  She returned to the driver’s seat, looked back. “What flavor? You choose.”

  “Rocky road,” he looked up at her expectant expression and promptly added, “please.”

  Michael ate his ice cream with gusto, while the baby lay in the middle of the carpet and played with his fingers and toes. Kathryn unloaded the groceries. The phone rang. She set it on speakerphone so she could keep working.

  “Hi darling,” she said.

  “Hey. What’s happening?” Rashid asked perfunctorily. They discussed the status of his job, the errands of her day. He had a habit of divulging very little over the phone, he had grown up requiring face-to-face conversations for almost every purpose, no matter how trivial. But after a day or so on a rig, he always missed the sound of her voice, the reassurance of her domestic activity, so he called, usually every day.

  Michael licked the last bit of Rocky Road from his bowl and then picked up the phone. “Hi Daddy.”

  “Hi Michael, how was school today?”

  With a melodramatic frown he said, “Bad.”

  “Bad? Why?”

  “Somebody hit me.”

  Kathryn looked up, surprised. “Hit you? Who?”

  “One of the bigger kindergartners. He wanted to play with my ball and I wouldn’t give it to him.”

  From the other end of the phone line Rashid wished he could summon up his son’s face. “Did you hit him back?”

  “No,” came the tiny voice through Rashid’s phone, sounding so much younger than Michael did in person.

  “You need to hit him back, nobody can disrespect you that way,” Rashid said matter-of-factly.

  “Rashid!” Kathryn’s scandalized voice cut through. “You can’t tell him that.”

  “Why? That’s what my father taught me. After the first time I hit the bully in my school, he didn’t dare touch me again.”

  “But if he does that here he’ll be punished by the teachers.”

  Rashid sighed, recalibrated. “All right Michael, listen. If that happens again, first you tell the kid never to hit you again. If he doesn’t stop, next you tell your teacher. If he still doesn’t stop, next you tell us. If we can’t stop him, then…you hit him.”

  “You hear that?” Kathryn asked Michael. “You do everything you can and get the grownups to help you before you even dream of hitting someone back.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t just nod your head, tell your father you understand.”

  “Yes Daddyji,” came the dutiful response.

  “Ok, beta. I’ve been up for thirty hours on this job. I’m going to get some sleep now. I love you.”

  “Love you too, Daddy.”

  “I love you, darling,” Kathryn’s voice was warm and full, she must have moved the phone next to her ear.

  “You too.” He closed his phone and dropped it in his pocket. He walked under the bright afternoon sun to the metal box structure that served as crew housing on the rig. He lay down in the bed in the tiny cell-like room and stared at the ceiling, a bit of rust eating away at one corner where the welding had proved pervious. The effects of the caffeinated energy drinks that powered his erratic work schedule would take some time to dissipate. He heard crew mates in the break room across the walkway playing video games and watching pornos.

  He lay down on the bed and dialed a long series of numbers and waited.

  “Majid…yes, it’s Rashid….Fine. And you?”

  He fidgeted with the zipper on his coveralls, listening to his brother’s questions in Urdu. “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk about,” he said in English and then slipped into Urdu. “I think I can’t follow through with…with…with what we had discussed with those people. My life is here now. Kathryn. The boys. My job. Everything is fine for me.”

  Nervously, he pulled the zipper up and down, again and again. “No, not nothing. I will do something, something better. We know some people here who can bring revenge through the courts.”

  He held the phone away from his ear as his brother’s voice rose loudly.

  “It’s not the same here. There are better ways. You have to trust that I know what I’m doing.”

  He moved the zipper faster. Listened. Disconnected the phone without saying goodbye.

  He stood up, agitated and walked back outside, wanting some distraction. Maybe he should eat. Maybe he should join the other men with their videogames and porn. His feet followed the steel railing and he looked out at the blankness of the water. He stood, tapping the railing, humming, trying to block out thoughts of Majid’s words. A familiar melody from his childhood came easily to his ear. The words drifted through his mind several times, unsung, before he realized his brother’s words had triggered this melody, this memory. Jay na Doger mareya, Maura rehna nakk nahin. Duniya uttey rehan da fer sadda haqq nahin. If Doger, our traitor, is not killed for revenge then our pride is tarnished, and without pride we have no right to live.

  He shook his head, trying to break the loop of his thoughts. He dialed Kathryn again.

  “Hi…yeah, I’m OK. So…I’m thinking…I want to talk with you about the lawyer you mentioned, the one who could bring a law-suit…yes, it should be big… OK, let’s talk more when I get home.”

  Kathryn set three bags next to the door. In the morning she would drop off one bag with each child and then take the last one with her as she returned to her job. She looked forward to returning to the journal. Editing the chronicles of politicians, economic trends, and the upheavals of places distant—but familiar in the abstract—seemed easily comprehensible.

  Michael startled her, appearing like an apparition in the middle of the room, pajama-clad, but clear-eyed.

  She knelt down in front of him, held his arms and looked into his eyes. “What is it, beta?” the Urdu word for child now part of her native tongue.

  “I’m thinking about Babu.”

  “What are you thinking about him?”

  “I’m thinking about if he is angry with us.”

  Kathryn inhaled deeply, took Michael’s hand and walked to the couch sitting him next to her. “Why would he be angry with us?”

  “Because our country killed him. Do people feel angry after they die?”

  Her mind skipped over a dozen possible answers, knowing Michael would remember and likely repeat her words. “I think when people die, they’re freed from h
aving to feel anything. They go beyond anger and pain and happiness. They experience something like peace, freedom.”

  “Really?” Michael wrinkled up his forehead. “If dying is so wonderful, how come nobody wants to do it? And why does Daddy feel so angry that Babu died?”

  “Did Daddy tell you he’s angry? Is he angry with us?” She felt a tightening in her chest.

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know he’s angry?”

  Michael looked down at his hands, looked back into his mother’s pale eyes. “I heard him on the phone, talking in that language,” he hesitated.

  “Urdu?”

  “Yeah, Urdu. And he sounded angry and I heard him say Babu a bunch of times.” He pursed his lips, picked at the cartoon fire trucks printed on his pajamas. “I’m afraid about what Babu might do from heaven if he’s angry with you because you’re American,” he blurted.

  “Oh beta,” she said, pulling him tightly to her. “Babu won’t do anything from heaven, and he was a very wise man, wise enough to know that I didn’t have anything to do with his death.” She held Michael again at arm’s length and looked into his eyes. “You know, I’m also sorry about what happened to Babu.”

  “I know, but what if Babu doesn’t know?”

  “Do you think we should tell him?”

  Michael nodded his head earnestly.

  “All right,” she held Michael’s hands in hers, “let’s close our eyes and imagine he’s here and talk to him.”

  They sat, the room silent, save the hum of the refrigerator.

  “Do you want to start?” she said.

  “What should I say?”

  “Whatever you think he should know, whatever you want to say.”

  He inhaled, sat up straighter. “Babu, we’re all very sorry about what happened, even baby Andrew, but he can’t say anything. Please don’t be angry, and tell Daddy not to be angry. It’s not Mommy’s fault about the bomb. She’s really nice, and makes good Pakistani food, even if it’s not perfect.” He looked at her, eyebrows raised in question. “What else should I say,” he whispered, as if Babu might not hear.

  With eyes closed, as if in prayer, she whispered back, “How about, we send out our best prayers and thoughts to your wife, our Biji, and to the rest of the family.” She hesitated, waiting for Michael to repeat her words. When he didn’t she added more loudly, “especially Rashid, who means the world to me.”

  Kathryn opened her eyes to see Michael staring intently at her. He smiled and nodded. “Do you think he heard us, Mummy?”

  “I think so.”

  He threw his little arms around her waist and nestled his head in her chest. She stroked his hair and looked around the room. Everything appeared the same as it did just a few months ago; a blend of Eastern and Western photos, music, paintings.

  Yet as she and Michael walked to the bedroom across the Persian carpet—Rashid had haggled over it with an Iranian trader on a bright winter afternoon in Dubai—she hesitated over each step as if any of the stylized flowers beneath her feet might explode like an unseen landmine.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  “Fuck, I’m hungry,” Rashid’s crewmate, Jerry, complained from the passenger seat as Rashid inserted his security card in the truck’s dashboard tracking system. “Let’s stop at Dos Amigos and get a dozen tacos and some margaritas.”

  “Can’t,” Rashid said.

  “Oh that’s right, you fuckin’ sand niggers don’t drink.”

  “Fuck you,” Rashid said casually, “bastard, you know I’m Pakistani not Arab.”

  “Same shit. At least let me buy us some tacos. That rig food always sucks.” Jerry pulled off his grimy company cap and ran his hand across his forehead.

  “Can’t. We got the source on this truck.” Rashid pointed up, to the ends of the 20-foot cylindrical tools just visible over the truck cab. “Gotta go directly back to the base or they’ll fuckin’ write me up for a diversion.”

  “Like whadda they think we’re gonna do with a thimbleful of radioactive shit at a taco place anyway?” Jerry grabbed his stomach as it growled.

  Rashid envisioned the source safely ensconced in its long pipe-like tool, lowered into a well, sending out energy to map the surrounding geological formations like an upside down periscope. Rashid marveled at the mind that engineered a tool like that. “Jerry, go buy yourself an imagination.”

  “What the fuck for? Least drive fast and then we can get tacos after we drop the tools in the base.” Jerry set the cap back on his head, pulled it low to cover his eyes so he could nap.

  Rashid drove precisely the speed limit, scanned his rear view mirrors every few seconds, just as he had learned from the Department of Transportation commercial driving safety course. He checked the odometer, estimated an hour and a half until they would reach the base.

  The rocket launcher—as they fondly referred to their truck—followed the curves of the freeway climbing into the mountains north of Los Angeles. An endless parade of big cars, trucks, and even big rigs passed him, barreling along at gas-guzzling speeds.

  As the monotony of the drive wore on, Rashid craved spicy food, sex, and a good sleep in their big bed. He checked the date on his watch. Almost forty days since his father had been killed. His brother had said they should take action within six months, not to wait too long. Majid had never been to America, what did he know of life here, of how much Rashid could enjoy, how much he could lose?

  As he passed a sign displaying food, fuel, and lodging available at the next exit, he wondered if Kathryn would have any spicy food ready in the refrigerator, or if he would have to settle for hot sauce on whatever he could find.

  From a billboard, a woman, grotesquely feminine, displayed her barely covered breasts to advertise a nearby casino. The West knows nothing of the value of the hidden, the power of mystery he thought.

  Against the backdrop of the hillsides beyond his windshield, he saw Kathryn. He saw her learning to make rotis in his mother’s kitchen, slapping the dough back and forth in her hands, the way Mexican women here made tortillas. He saw her slipping into the all-black costume of the women in the Gulf, wearing the abaya and shela as an experiment, so she could know directly how it felt to be a covered woman. He saw her hailing a taxi to take her to her office, saw her dancing in nightclubs, saw her observing Ramadan with friends in their parents’ village in Oman. She could do anything. Why couldn’t she also help him take his revenge, in the American way? She would call her contacts.

  “We need an international perspective for this piece,” Kathryn said. She doodled in her notebook as one of the journal’s contributors responded through the phone. “Yes, I know there’s the comment from the professor at the American University in Beirut. But can you find someone who might have a more contrasting opinion? Maybe a Persian intellectual or what about some of the young thought leaders in the Gulf?” She paused, clicked at her computer. “Let me see if we have someone in Iran in the database. And see if you can get some leads from the energy policy guy at the Center for Near East Policy or even the Farsi language department at Georgetown.” She picked up the pen again as she listened. “OK, cool, we need to make sure we aren’t just quoting expat American intellectuals. See what you can get in the next twenty-four hours, otherwise we may have to hold the piece for the next issue.”

  She hung up and turned around at the sound of the Asia editor’s voice. He stepped into her office.

  “Now that you’re back,” he did not bother to welcome her back from maternity leave, “I’m thinking we can move ahead on the series about the Saudis funding Islamic schools in Asia.” He pulled at his mouse-like chin.

  “What’s your angle?”

  “I wanted to focus on Indonesia, start with Jakarta and the Saudis’ interest in East Timor. Some of my old Bangkok friends have been checking out the schools.” He pushed up his sweater sleeve to glance at his watch. “But let’s talk more after the Thursday deadline,” and he darted back into the corridor.<
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  Kathryn stood up and stretched her arms as she walked out to the secretary’s desk.

  “…and then the parking cop won’t even look at me as she’s writing up the ticket. I mean the dog’s in the backseat barking like crazy…” the secretary prattled on about her crisis du jour to the Korean-American Pacific Rim freelancer.

  “Welcome back,” the freelancer greeted her warmly. “How are the babies?”

  “Good, the older one doesn’t seem like a baby anymore.”

  The Europe editor glanced up from his desk as Kathryn passed on her way to the bathroom. He smiled, raised a hand in greeting.

  The bathroom door squeaked open in exactly the same way it had before Andrew was born. The exchanges with her colleagues could have been prerecorded, not a single person paused in their work to ask about her father-in-law. We are all intelligent, well-traveled, well-intentioned professionals, endeavoring to educate influential policymakers, she thought, could it be that no one here knows what has happened in my family?

  Rashid repeated his prayers at the mosque. How hollow they seemed with no one else who knew they signified the passing of forty days of mourning. Baba, he asked silently, what should I do? You were proud of me, loved my wife, our family. Be patient, we will take our justice. He touched his head again to the floor and stood up, prayers finished, and walked back to his shoes with a dozen other men.

  “You are thinking of your father?” a young man asked over his shoulder.

  Startled, Rashid looked up, questioning.

  “I think of my father too when I come to the mosque. He was killed. The Americans and their Israeli lapdogs bombed our neighborhood.”

  Rashid put his hand to his heart in sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

  The man looked at Rashid intently. Without a word, he seemed to look not just at Rashid’s appearance, but through him, into his thoughts, into the confusion in his heart.