Trespassing

The cook licked his lips and thought seriously for a while. He scratched the white wisps of hair that puffed up around his head like down and hesitated, mumbling again, ‘The dead will be watching.’

‘Tomorrow, I promise, a lot more yogurt,’ Dia urged.

He whispered the scheme in her ear.

DAANISH (#ulink_75a80784-90db-5722-bf25-74d770d3c6f8)

1 Toward Karachi (#ulink_61d4408a-dcf5-5a17-a805-b06fc7645125)

At the time the cook plotted against him, Daanish awoke some thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic. Once sleep receded, he returned to his earlier occupation of churning over the same conundrum as Dia: the passage of time. Neither would ever know they churned simultaneously. He didn’t know her. He could hardly say he knew himself, strung as he was atop a plump canopy of clouds that glittered red and gold, the sinking sun bobbing along beside. Below, hidden from view, tossed the ocean once before traversed, in the opposite direction. That had been three years ago.

Twenty-one hours earlier, he’d been boarding the Peter Pan bus from Amherst to New York City. Liam had seen him off. He’d said, ‘Going home’s jarring enough for me and mine’s just a few hours away.’

Liam was not given to gloom and Daanish wished he’d bid a more reassuring goodbye. ‘You sound like the angel of fucking death.’

This elicited an equine grin. ‘I mean: going home means facing you’ve changed. Listen to yourself. You never swore before coming here.’

‘I did. You just didn’t understand.’ Daanish nudged him fondly and saluted farewell.

‘Write if you can. Don’t be a stranger.’ Liam stepped back as Daanish mounted the bus. ‘And,’ he caught Daanish’s eye, ‘I’m really sorry, man.’

On the ride to Port Authority Liam’s counsel wove in and out of the dogwood branches lining the interstate, the square suburban yards dotted with plastic bunnies and dwarves, the stores with names like Al Bum’s and Pet Smart, the clockwork efficiency with which passengers embarked and disembarked. Don’t be a stranger, said the disheveled porter who shuffled after him on to the frenzy of 42nd Street. Don’t be a stranger, frowned the driver of the taxi Daanish flagged down halfway to Grand Central. Don’t be a stranger, repeated the manhole covers bouncing under the weight of the fastest cars Daanish had ever seen: Mustang, Viper, BMW, Lexus. And when he finally reached his terminal at Kennedy Airport, the rows of angry travelers turned to him and gestured, Don’t be a stranger. The flight is twelve hours delayed!

Khurram, the passenger assigned the seat next to his, returned from the toilet. He reeked of in-flight cologne and other treats. ‘Luckily, not too bad,’ he exclaimed, beaming. He was referring to their prior discussion of whether, nearly seven hours into the flight, the toilets would be tolerable. Normally, within the first hour, they became open gutters in the sky. The toilet vomited chunks of brown, yellow and red, with the flush serving only to chop up the chunks. Reams of toilet paper poured out of the waste disposal and twisted across the cabinets as if the passenger who sat on the toilet seat had suddenly discovered graffiti. Used diapers filled the sink. However, those who braved this torture could always be assured a generous supply of cologne.

‘I think it’s Givenchy,’ Khurram continued happily, patting the fragrance deeper into his round cheeks.

He must have poured an entire bottle on himself, thought Daanish, feeling his chest contract. ‘You mean you think it was Givenchy.’

In the aisle seat sat Khurram’s small, self-contained mother, with feet neatly tucked under her kurta. The son, easily twice her girth, leaned across Daanish and pointed at the sun bleeding scarlet over the world. ‘So beautiful,’ he shook his head approvingly. ‘You getting best view.’

Was this a hint? Should he offer to swap? And be wedged between a bursting rumen and piercing female eyes? Not a chance. He looked out the window and said, ‘Somewhere in the world, the sun is just waking up.’

Khurram leaned further and raised a hand as if to exclaim, Wah! Just imagine!

Daanish was thinking that there were some people who rode the subway all day simply because they had nowhere to get off. He was beginning to enjoy the length of his journey. He was afraid of landing.

Had his father ever felt this way on one of his numerous voyages around the world? Had he dreaded returning to his wife and son? Did travel do that? Daanish couldn’t say. He’d become a traveler only three years ago and then been grounded: classes, work-study, papers, girlfriends. Now he was jolted again. In eleven hours, he could have all that he’d left behind. No, not all. Not his father.

Down in Karachi, at this moment, was the Qul. Perhaps his father’s spirit dwelled among the scarlet clouds, and would drift through this very plane. The inch-long plane bang in the middle of the Atlantic floating in the screen of the satellite monitor. Daanish was inside it too. He could wave to himself. He did.

Khurram looked up and grinned genially. He was happily consumed by a slew of fancy gadgets purchased in the land left behind: a discman, hand-held Nintendo, mobile phone, talking calculator. He warmly demonstrated the marvels of each invention. The talking calculator in particular amused him, so Daanish punched numbers and a deep voice announced them legato for all those too moronic to know any better: one-thou-sand-nine-hun-dred-and-nine-ty-two mi-nus one-thou-sand-nine-hun-dred-and-eigh-ty-nine e-quals three.

‘Well,’ smiled Daanish, ‘I’m glad someone else can verify how many years I’ve been away.’

He was offered the discman and pocket disc album. Most of the CDs were country, a few pop, and one rap. He pictured Khurram first in cowboy gear, then gyrating with Madonna, then dissing mother-fuckers. He laughed. Don’t be a stranger. Well, Khurram in costume was no stranger than American yuppies chanting Hare Krishna, or smacking the sitar like a percussion instrument. No stranger than Becky inviting him to a party because he made her look ethnic. ‘My friends think it’s about time an exotic face entered our circle,’ she’d casually explained. No stranger than Heather and her girlfriends dancing around corn crops to beckon the earth-god, ‘just like the American Indians did’. She was an atheist, she equated his religion with fanaticism, she could not explain the origins of the name of her home state, Massachusetts, but she really understood those Indians.

‘Your choice?’ he enquired of the Ice-T record.

‘Oh no, my niece’s. She said it is very good and I would like.’ As a second thought, he added, ‘My mother and I were visiting Bhai Jaan in Amreeka. He has a business. Very successful.’

‘What business?’ asked Daanish. But Khurram, lost in his toys, didn’t answer.

The satellite monitor showed Daanish in a bean-pod gliding over the Bay of Biscay. He looked out the window but it was too dark so his full-grown self had to believe the miniature self.

His father had flown over this very shore nine years ago, to attend a medical conference in Nantes, France. He’d spent his last hour there doing what he always did on a visit to any coast: combing the beach for Daanish’s shell-collection. He’d not found much: a few painted tops, limpets and winkles. The real treasures came later, on his trips to the warmer Pacific. Some of those beauties were strung around Daanish’s neck. He twirled them in a habitual gesture Nancy likened to a woman playing with her hair. The larger shells he’d left in Karachi. In about ten more hours, he could see them again. This filled him with more joy than the prospect of uniting with anything else at home, even Anu. Then it terrified him. He’d hold his shells in a house that no longer held his father and where he’d hold his mother for the first time since she’d become a widow. He feared she’d cling.

He tugged at the necklace. Khurram’s mother, with a face as crumpled as a used paper bag, leaned across Khurram exclaiming that the shells made beautiful music. Daanish unclasped the necklace and offered it for her inspection. The woman’s thin, serrated lips sucked and pouted while she fingered the shells as if they were prayer beads.

When she paused at a tusk-like one Daanish told her a story about a diver who’d been paralyzed by the sting of a glory-of-the-seas cone, shaped just like the orange cone she was rubbing. Seventy feet beneath the surface of the sea, he’d hovered in total darkness, knowing he could never kick his way back up to life. When the body was found the oxygen tank was completely empty. Daanish tried to imagine the terror of hanging in a frigid dark sea without air. As if watching myself diminish, he thought. As if the dying could actually see their fate: it could shrink into a two-inch cone in their hands. He shuddered, wondering what his father had seen in his last hour.

The woman was nodding sagely. Her fingers wrapped around each piece, the grooves of her flesh searching new grooves to slide along.

He offered her names. ‘That one that looks cracked my father found in Japan. It’s a slit shell. Those two dainty pink ones are precious wentletraps. They used to be so rare the Chinese would make counterfeits from rice paste and sell them for a fortune. But now the counterfeits have become rare.’ Daanish had been given both the real and the false. He asked the woman to tell them apart.

She smiled but wouldn’t play along. Daanish’s names and histories mattered little to her. It was enough that the shells felt good and made beautiful music. After rubbing each one, she returned the necklace and abruptly asked, ‘What do you do in Amreeka?’

‘I study.’

‘Are you going to be a doctor or engineer?’

‘Um. I don’t know.’

Her shrewd eyes darted across his face. Then she turned away, back to her silent place. Occasionally, she looked around the plane and boldly examined the others as if chairing a secret inquisition.

It would have served no purpose telling her he wanted to be a journalist. She’d question the profitability of his choice. He’d been questioning this himself. Like Pakistan, the US was not the place to study fair and free reporting. In the former, he risked having his bones broken. In the latter, his spirit.

But journalism intrigued him for the opposite reason his other passion, shell-collecting, did. One kept him in tune with his surroundings while the other demanded dissonance. One was beautiful on the outside while the other insisted he probe into the poisonous interior, like a diver. He’d tried to explain this to a father who’d grown increasingly unhappy with the choice. In one of their last discussions, Daanish retorted that the profession was in his blood.

His soft-spoken, introverted grandfather had been the co-founder of one of the first Muslim newspapers in India. The paper had played a major role in advocating the cause of the Pakistan Movement, and been praised by the Quaid-i-Azam himself. Daanish was taught early that in British India, when it came to the written word, Muslims lagged far behind the Hindus and other communities. Prior to the 1930s, they didn’t own even one daily newspaper. His grandfather had helped establish the first. As its maxim, it quoted a member of the All-India Muslim League: To fight political battles without a newspaper is like going to war without weapons. The paper sharpened its weapons. The British responded by banning it, imprisoning Daanish’s grandfather, and leaving the rest to the Muslims themselves: the co-founder was shot dead by a fellow-Muslim in his office.

After Pakistan’s birth, his grandfather was released and the family moved to the new homeland. But ten years later, for reproaching the country’s first military coup, he was again imprisoned.

Decades later, in his last letter to him, Daanish’s father wrote, ‘Do you want to throw away the opportunity to educate yourself in the West by returning to the poverty of my roots? You will fight Americans, only to find you also have to fight your own people. This is not what your grandfather languished in jail for. He once warned me, “Only the blind replay history.” Think.’

Daanish hadn’t answered him. He hadn’t explained that when it came to a Muslim press, it wasn’t just the subcontinent that was impoverished. He had only to dig into the reporting on the Gulf War to know it was won with weapons that exploded not just on land but on paper. Yet few fought back.

Next to him, Khurram snored. His Nintendo showed a score of 312. The discman was turned off. Daanish considered borrowing it, maybe listening to Ice-T. Freedom of Speech … Just Watch What You Say. When he’d first heard those words he knew they must reach Professor Wayne. So he included them in a term paper. Wayne slashed out the citation in thick red lines and added no pop references. Daanish argued that the coverage on the war was at least as pop as a rap song. Later, foolishly, he wrote about it to his father. The doctor advised him to change to medicine or risk a life of regret.

They were entering Germany, journeying through a tunnel of shifting darkness, now black, now thin sepia. Frankfurt in twenty minutes. The ladies and gentlemen of the bean-pod were requested to kindly fasten their seatbelts and extinguish cigarettes.

‘We’re landing,’ Daanish’s companion awoke and beamed.

‘Sleep well?’ asked Daanish.

‘Oh yes, I always do.’

The bean-pod slanted downward. Daanish’s stomach lurched. The lights of Frankfurt danced outside his window. Mini-wheels grazed the runway. Lilliputian engines slowed, and then there was another announcement. Only those ladies and gentlemen holding American, Canadian, or European passports could disembark for the duration of the stopover. Those naughty others might escape, so they must stay on board.