The Sweetness of Tears (16 page)

“Yes?”

“I’m still making inquiries. But I’ve got nothing for you, yet.”

“Oh.”

“They’re being impossible, Jo. It’s like playing Go Fish. ‘Have you got a two? No, go fish,’ if you get what I mean. But I’ll keep my ears and eyes open. Keep talking to the other habeas lawyers, trying to see if anyone—uh—if—oh, what the hell!—if anyone’s heard of him. Or takes his case. I’ll let you know if I get any information.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There have been some releases. Your guy could be one of those. But they don’t give those names out, either.” If someone
was
listening in, I don’t think Cheryl was fooling anyone.

“Well, keep in touch. I’ll keep you posted. And I’m really looking forward to working with you, Jo.”

“Me, too.”

“Sooner, I hope, rather than later. It all depends, though. These are strange times we’re living in. Tragic times for anyone who gives a damn about the Constitution. Are you okay? For money? ’Cause this is going to be a long haul. It could be a year or more before I can use you. I could give you an advance.”

“I’m good for now. Thanks for everything, Cheryl.”

A
ll the code stuff was to let me know that she hadn’t been able to trace Fuzzy. I hoped he was one of those sent home. He should never have been taken to begin with. One of the reasons I’d taken the job with this lawyer—had offered my services as a translator for her and any other of the habeas lawyers who’d been fighting tooth and nail, with no success so far, to get into Gitmo to meet with clients that the government said had no right to lawyers in the first place—had been Fuzzy. Not just him, of course. I wanted to go and try to help undo what I’d helped to do—because I was no longer willing to pretend that doing the right thing could involve doing anything wrong. Somehow, Fuzzy had become the face of the salvation I sought. I thought about it for a long time. Then I pulled out my laptop and did a search that I’d tried already, after my encounter with Fuzzy. As easy as it had been to find Sadiq in the white pages years before, Googling him now was proving to be fruitless. Well, there was another way to find him. A way that would take me back into his story—the one I’d run away from before my life had become so diverted off the path I’d planned to take—from another angle. Something I had to try, because Sadiq’s story had become weirdly entwined with mine. At least, that’s what I had to assume, based on what I knew about Fuzzy, which wasn’t much and which still could turn out to be a smaller coincidence than it seemed. Not the same person at all. Just someone with a similar story. Who’d been taken care of by another man named Sharif Muhammad, not the man who was Sadiq’s driver.

I went to my bookshelf and pulled off my copy of
Pilgrim’s Progress
. Tucked into the back pages was a Christmas card from Todd Rogers. He still sent them. One for each of his children now—for Mom and Uncle Ron—always, with that same return address in L.A. where Mom had found him. Uncle Ron had met him a couple of times, over the years. Not Mom, though. I wasn’t planning to, either. My destination was the house across the street from his—a house my mom had described as yellow with white trim. I hoped she still lived there. Sadiq’s mother. Deena. The grandmother I’d never met.

Deena

See what the drop must pass in order to become a pearl,

The open mouths of a hundred crocodiles,

circling a trap with every wave.

Ghalib

I
almost didn’t answer when the doorbell rang. I was making a grocery list.
Halal turkey, croutons for stuffing, mushrooms, celery, marshmallows, yams, cranberries
—a list of ingredients that no recipe I had learned at home ever called for. The first few Thanksgivings that we celebrated, when Sabah was young but old enough to want to celebrate with turkey, I had cooked it into a
salan
—pieces of turkey, not the whole thing at once—curried with spices I knew: red chili powder, garlic paste, ginger, saffron, cumin, and coriander. We had rice instead of stuffing and
cachumber
instead of salad. The meat of the turkey was tough and stringy and I could not understand why Americans would eat such an unappetizing bird. Later, when we began to have an “American-style” Thanksgiving, at Sabah’s insistence, I grew to like it—the blandness of the meal made a nice change and I found it easy to prepare, cleaner, without the mess and fumes of
masala
frying that our normal cooking required.

I made the list, but I didn’t plan to go grocery-shopping until night, after opening my fast. Going shopping for food in Ramzan, during
roza,
is not a good idea. The cart quickly fills with all kinds of unnecessary treats, which end up going mostly uneaten. Ramzan makes your eyes grow and your stomach shrink. I sighed. Ramzan and turkey. Culinary culture clash. I wondered if fruit
chaat
would be okay to serve. How about cranberries in the
chaat
? Mmm. I was feeling my
roza
and hoped the resulting menu wouldn’t be too strange for Sabah’s latest boyfriend. The last one had been adventurous, even eating the
achaar
I had served when she’d brought him home to meet us last Christmas, picking up the pieces of unripe mango, richly marinated in spices, with his fingers, gnawing his way through the sour flesh and olive-green skin of the fruit. The one before, not so much. He’d turned red and coughed with the first bite of chicken
khorma
. But then, I had stopped accommodating the delicate taste buds of these guests long ago.

Umar had said, “As if it isn’t bad enough that we have to meet a different man every season. We have to suffer through spiceless food, too?”

It was a joke between us. That first bite the poor boy took. How long would he wait before reaching for the water? Umar and I made bets.

“Two bites for this one.”

“No, this one looks like he has some balls. Five bites at least,” we would whisper to each other in the kitchen, while Sabah did the usual tour of the house, sneaking up to her old room to smooch.

Later, when dinner was served and the boy reached for his water, Sabah would say, in the same way I used to, “No. Water will only make it worse. Have it with yogurt instead,” making me laugh. It’s always a little strange to hear your child voice the old lessons you have taught them.

In Sabah’s case, I think that is the only thing she ever learned from me. The things I have put up with for that daughter of ours—from birth to breast-feeding to boyfriends and beyond! Every moment of it has been a joy. But I hope that this one sticks, I thought to myself. My lap is aching for a grandchild.

The doorbell! Yes—it rang, and I almost didn’t answer it. Who would be so rude as to come unannounced? Only a salesperson or a Jehovah’s Witness, I was sure. Back home, unannounced visits were the only kind ever paid. Though that changed for me. No one ever came to visit in the last years I spent in Pakistan. Here, in the very beginning, I used to answer the door always. I even invited many of those Witness people in. But it became a nuisance. Anyone who is so very sure of themselves and their beliefs runs the risk of being a nuisance. I admit, I admired the tenacity of those people, who must know that everyone groans when they see them through the peephole and yet go on anyway—pushing doorbells, knocking away—knowing that the only people who will welcome the sight of them will be those desperately lonely enough to be even more of a nuisance than themselves.

Then I thought, it might be a package. Amazon.com has given new clout to doorbells.

There was a young woman standing there. No package in her hand. No uniform or clipboard for me to sign. No pamphlets, either. But there was something about her that made me relax the air of dismissal I had quickly cultivated in light of the absence of these things. She was not here to sell me anything. She was here to receive.

She told me she was Angela’s daughter, hesitantly, with a question mark, as if she doubted I would remember who Angela was.

“Angela’s daughter?! Oh! Come in, come in,” I said. Angela. I knew there was something familiar about her.

She told me her name. Jo. And then said nothing more, expecting me to fill the space of her silence.

I obliged, pretending not to notice the monosyllables of her replies—that is, when she replied with words at all. She was staring at me and looking around the room, making me feel very uncomfortable. “How is your mother? She’s well? She was such a nice girl. So sweet. Did you come to visit your grandfather? Across the street? No? You’ve come to see me? How nice!”

I invited her to sit down and said, trying to hide how annoying I found it that she only nodded and hardly said anything at all, “Your mother was my good friend. I still remember her, every time I go to the library. Did you know that she worked there while she lived here? You did? She told you that? Yes, she was my friend. Will you have some tea? Yes? Your mother told you about my tea, huh? Let me put the water on. You sit. I’ll be right back.”

In the kitchen, I filled the kettle, wondering at the uneasiness of this unexpected visit. I had not invited her into the kitchen, something I normally would have done. Most of Angela’s time in this house had been spent here. But there was something about this girl, Jo. From the moment I opened the door, I felt under inspection—my words assessed and analyzed. I didn’t think it was conscious, the watchful, wary distance she maintained. But it was strange. She had knocked on my door, saying she came to visit me.
Why?
Who am I to her?
I asked myself, lingering in the kitchen without realizing that I did. Boiling the water, simmering the tea, taking my time, leaving my guest unattended—something that was against the rules of etiquette I normally followed.

When I took the tea out to her, I didn’t tell her why I wasn’t having any with her when she asked. I said, “No, I’ve had mine already.” It would not have been proper to tell her that I was fasting, to make her feel strange about my abstinence. It would have lengthened the distance between us, I thought. Which was strangely long enough already.

I said, “You don’t look like your mother.” As soon as I did, I realized how odd this was, that she had looked familiar to me and did not look like her mother.

She took a sip of her tea and said, “No. I look more like your son.”

It was a good thing I was fasting, that I had no cup of tea in my hand. Else I would have dropped it, letting it clatter to the floor loudly, like a melodramatic character in an Indian movie.

After a long, long moment, a moment I spent remembering—Sabah, at eight, telling me that she’d seen Sadiq get into a car with Angela, something I had found curious at the time, because neither Angela nor Sadiq had ever told me of their friendship—I asked, “Does Sadiq know?”

“I went to see him a few years ago,” she said.

“He didn’t tell me.” That was a silly thing to say. As if he would have. As if I was someone he would have ever confided in, the son whose name made my heart ache, still, at the memory of leaving him behind. Our relationship is perfunctory at best—which is better than it once was.

The girl, Jo, said, “He was going away when I saw him. Do you know where he is?”

“Going away? Yes, he is always on his way here or there,” I said, “rarely staying in one place long enough to know where he is himself. But I spoke to him last month. He was here, in the States. In Boston. But on his way back to Pakistan in a hurry. His grandfather has had a stroke.”

“Oh.”

I tried not to stare, but couldn’t help myself. There was no doubting the truth of what she said. It was clear, in her eyes, in the line of her jaw and chin. “You’re looking for him? You want to see him again?”

She nodded.

“He—he welcomed you? When you went to see him before? He spoke to you?”

She nodded again. “Yes. He told me about his childhood. About his life with you—the house you lived in with him, the terrace and the fruit tree. And the story of the monkey and the crocodile.”

“Oh? He did? I thought those were things he had deliberately forgotten. I thought his memory of life began when we were separated.”

“He told me about that, too.” Her voice was soft, gently nudging. “Why
were
you separated from each other? What’s the story behind that?”

This was an unsettling question—one Sadiq himself had never bothered to ask, one that had undermined my faith for a time. I asked, “You want the short version or the long?”

The girl closed her eyes, which struck me as a strange thing to do. She tilted her head and then opened them again. “The long, please.”

“That will be very long. You have time?”

“As much as you’re willing to give me,” she said.

I tried to think of how to begin. And then seized on the most innocuous of the references she had made.

T
he monkey and the crocodile. My father used to tell me that story when I was very young. But the version he told me was different from the tale I told Sadiq. In my father’s story, the crocodile is put up to the betrayal of his friend, the monkey, by his greedy wife. She deceives him, feigning illness to get him to do what she wants—to bring back the monkey’s heart for her to eat so that she might become well. Same ending, though. When I was eight or nine years old, older than Sadiq was when he was taken from me, I told my father that I didn’t like his story.

I said, “That’s not right. The crocodile himself made the decision to kill his friend. Why should his wife be blamed? Women are always the ones being blamed for everything!”

My father laughed. “Oh? So this is a subject you’ve given some thought to?”

“Yes. When a man is bad to his mother, it’s his wife’s fault. When a man is bad to his wife, it’s his mother’s fault. When is a man ever responsible for himself?”

“Hmm. This is a very good point.
People
tell stories. And
people
listen to them. The way a story is told says something about the one who tells it. And the way it is understood, the lesson drawn from it, tells something about the one who listens. How would
you
tell the story, Deena?”

“Me? I would say that the crocodile himself was greedy. That he was never really the monkey’s friend. He only liked her for the fruit she gave him.”

“Ah. But I don’t like your version.”

“You don’t?”

“No. For me, the beauty in the story is that the crocodile and the monkey were able to be friends, even if for a brief time. That they rose above their own natures and the way they had been taught to live—to live by fear or to live by greed—and became friends in spite of it all.”

“But their friendship didn’t last.”

“No. That doesn’t matter. They were friends for a time. For me, that is such an important part of the story that I’m not willing to change it.”

I was quiet for a long time. Then I said, “All right. What if it’s the crocodile’s brother who tempts him?”

“His brother, eh? All right.
That
I’m willing to accept. That is the new tale of the monkey and the crocodile. Deena Iman’s version.”

“And yours.”

“Oh? You’ll share credit with me? So kind of you, little Deena. All right then, Deena and Iqbal Iman’s version of ‘The Tale of the Monkey and the Crocodile.’ Shall we tell it together? Yes? I’ll begin . . . Once upon a time . . .”

And so it began. My father and I, together, gave each other permission to change old stories, to challenge old ways of understanding. Monkeys and crocodiles. Fear and greed. Who hasn’t succumbed to those old temptations? And how many can claim to have risen above them?

When I was nine years old, I used to spend time on the terrace of our house. There was a
jamun
tree in the neighbor’s garden. You are nodding. Sadiq told you about the tree? Well, remember, I am speaking of a time long before he was born. The tree was younger then, not so tall, its branches not so wide, as when Sadiq knew it, its fruit spread from branches that shaded one corner of the terrace, within easy reach for him as it was not for me. When I was a child, the top of the tree was level with the top of the low wall of the terrace. To get any fruit, I had to lean down at a dangerous angle, to reach for the one branch that stretched out to meet my grasping hand. That didn’t stop me. The fruit was tasty enough to make the risk worth it. One day, when I had already consumed all of the fruit from the tip of the branch, I leaned farther than I should have, too much of my weight hanging over the wall, and gravity had its way. As I lost my balance, in the second before I fell, I heard someone call, “Look out!” A child’s voice, from the garden below. The voice of someone who was there—in the right spot at the right time—to break my fall and save me from certain death.

He was a boy, only two years older than myself, who sat, playing near the base of the tree, and looked up in time to shout his warning. I literally fell on top of him, felt him flatten as he absorbed the shock of my impact, the wind whooshing out of him, the sound of bones snapping with painful pops. Members of his household came running and screaming. His mother shouted, “Umar! Umar, my son! Wake up!” Someone pulled me off him and I saw that he was unconscious, his leg and arm twisted behind him at angles that looked painful. They rushed him to the hospital, after checking to see that I was all right, sending me home with a servant, where I wallowed in miserable guilt, thinking the boy must be dead for sure. He wasn’t. He came home in a few hours, his leg and arm in casts. My father went to see his parents, to offer his apologies on my behalf.