Children of Dust (21 page)

Having exhausted my argument, I took a deep breath and paused, waiting for the frowns to turn into smiles, waiting for someone to say that it was nice to see an American helping Islam.

Yet no such recognition came my way. The men kept on chastising Clinton and Madeleine Albright and American foreign policy and me, as if I’d been a member of the president’s Cabinet. Using some of the facts I’d told them, they made me feel as if it was my fault that Muslim children in Palestine and Kashmir and Iraq were dying.

I decided that leaving the shop was the best thing to do. Sidling out while the attention was focused on another speaker, I headed out.

“Where are you going?” Ittefaq asked, running after me and grabbing me by the arm.

I yanked myself away. “I’m going to the mosque.”

Worship was my refuge. If I could go to the mosque and put my head to the floor, at least God would see that I loved Islam, would see that I wasn’t, as the men in the shop had implied, a part of a massive American conspiracy against it.

“I’ll come with you,” he offered.

“Suit yourself,” I said curtly, upset with him because he didn’t seem to understand why I’d snuck out of the shop.

We took a circuitous road that led around the two
gol daira
s back to Dada Abu’s
mohalla
. Suddenly Ittefaq grabbed my arm and pulled me around a corner toward a row of single-story cement homes in a narrow alley.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded.

“Just come with me,” he said cheerfully. “I have to make a trade.”

“Trade what?”

He smiled wickedly and patted the porno cards in his pocket.

Heaving a deep breath, I followed him out of necessity, uncertain how to get home from there.

We entered one of the houses without knocking. Ittefaq’s familiarity with the place made me wonder if it was his home, but I seemed to recall that his family had lived on the other side of town. I followed him past the empty verandah and into a bedroom in the back.

When we entered, I saw three older guys in
shalwar kameez
es. They had big beards and wore large turbans and the sort of vests preferred by mountain men. I stood near the door and waited for Ittefaq to complete his deal. After a moment’s conversation, however, Ittefaq sat down and
made himself comfortable. The largest of the men turned to me and glared while his associate reached around me and closed the door.

“I want to ask you about America,” the big man said, looking over at Ittefaq as if for his okay.

“What do you want to ask?”

“It is not possible to be a Muslim in America!” It was a declaration and not a question. He had clearly already made up his mind about the subject.

“I am a Muslim in America,” I replied.

“You aren’t allowed to practice Islam in America. They don’t let you grow your beard. They make you shave it off.”

“You can grow your beard in America! No one stops you.”

“America is not a religious place.”

“That’s not true. There are many Islamic scholars in America,” I assured him.

“Those aren’t real scholars,” he objected.

Now I was stumped. When dealing with Muslims in America, I had always found that appeals to scholars settled disputes. Now, having been told that even the Islamic scholars in America were illegitimate, I found myself in a difficult position.

Before I had a chance to say anything further, my interrogator pointed his finger at me and shouted, “You are a CIA agent! You are a traitor to Muslims everywhere!”

I didn’t know how to respond to this sudden accusation and stammered.

Upon seeing my weakness, one of the other men jumped into the conversation: “If you give allegiance to America you can no longer be a Muslim. Giving allegiance to anyone but God is
shirk
; it is the highest form of idolatry. We all know the punishment of those that leave the religion.”

I felt myself blanch. He meant death.

“Wait. No. That’s not—” I wanted to fight the direction this conversation was taking. I wanted to resist being cast out of Islam and rendered an apostate.

Fortunately, the second man changed course himself. “America is a nation of weaklings,” he said in disgust.

“I exercise and lift weights,” I offered, only to realize that he was talking about another kind of weakness.

“Americans are too cowardly to face Muslims on the ground!” he said with great passion. “They shoot bombs from far away. If they faced Muslims on the ground, they would certainly be crushed!”

The third man, who hadn’t spoken yet, raised his voice. “Americans think they lift a few weights and this is training? When
mujahideen
train in Afghanistan, that’s real training. I know about this. They are given nothing to eat and made to climb up mountains, barefoot with no warm clothes, and with nothing but a hunting knife to keep them alive. That’s the kind of exercise that makes you tough and wiry and strong. Your stomach becomes taut and you become indestructible!” He smashed his fist against his stomach.

When I didn’t respond, he continued with his bombast. He discussed the
mujahideen
from around the world that were flocking to “Shaykh Osama”—who apparently sat on the floor with all his soldiers in the spirit of Islamic equality—and he talked about how one day Osama was going to liberate the Muslims of the world. He went on to tell me that while America could send a thousand missiles, it wouldn’t make a dent against those who were determined to bring America to judgment. He was convinced the
mujahideen
were invincible.

I couldn’t understand why these men felt compelled to make such a presentation to
me
. Suddenly I saw through Ittefaq’s friendliness: he was in with all these people, and he’d set me up!

He must have told them that an American he knew was coming to town, and they’d all gotten together and planned how to insult me. I thought back to the porno trading cards and realized that I’d been duped. Ittefaq must have figured I’d trust him more if he showed me nude women—and in fact he’d turned out to be right! Using the pictures, he’d been able to lure me away from my family and take me places where I’d be alone and without protection. Now he and his friends had insulted and degraded me, and when I went away they’d laugh about how “that American” was so gullible that he fell for the naked girl trick.

It dawned on me then that I hadn’t been brought here to answer questions about the state of Islam in the West. These people didn’t care
about any of that. They only wanted to air their grievances against the West and to tell me that they supported bin Laden.

In other words, I, Abu Bakr Ramaq, descendant of the first Caliph, promised to God at the Ka’ba, in search of a pious Muslim wife, was a stand-in for the entirety of the infidel West. To be more blunt: I was
not
a part of the
ummah
, the universal brotherhood of Muslims. The realization of having been constructively excommunicated left me feeling sick to my stomach.

Yet the anger I felt wasn’t directed at Ittefaq and his associates. It was directed at myself. I had been tested by an offer of pornography, and by accepting it I had essentially conceded that I was impious. No wonder they didn’t respect me. No wonder they didn’t consider me anything other than an extension of America. No wonder they didn’t let me be part of Islam despite all the love for the religion in my soul. My sin was my indictment.

I pulled out my wallet, threw the picture toward Ittefaq, and excused myself.

T
he next morning Ammi woke me up by shaking my shoulder and yelling, “Get up! Someone is trying to kill your grandfather! He already has a heart condition. Those animals!”

I ran downstairs and saw that Dada Abu hadn’t gone to work, nor had the other men. They were all inside the house with the gate locked. Dada Abu looked worried—his skin had taken on a darker hue of concern and he was shaking at bit—though he was clearly trying not to show his fear.

“He was sitting on the porch this morning, up the street near his brother’s house,” Dadi Ma said. “Two young men on a motorcycle drove by and slowed down in front of him. They pointed their guns at him and pretended to shoot. After driving to the end of the block, they turned around and made another pass. That’s what happened, right?” She looked at her husband for confirmation.

Dada Abu nodded.

Speculation began as to who the assailants might be. The first theory was that it was thieves, but everyone knew that common thieves didn’t intimidate. Another theory was that it was someone with a personal grudge against Dada Abu, since he’d recently been involved in some litigation about a piece of land.

“They told me they will be back,” he said. “That’s the last thing they said.

When he revealed this fact, everyone began chattering and gesturing.

“In all these years, no one has shown such blatant disrespect to an elder,” Uncle Tau said.

“My father is a wise
buzurg
,” my younger uncle said. “These people have no shame.”

“Respect is dead,” Dadi Ma concluded. “This is not the country it used to be.” Spreading her
jai namaz
, she began making prayers to ward off the devil. She extolled everyone to pray, saying it was the best defense against aggression.

Ammi, meanwhile, tried to persuade Dada Abu against going to work. She didn’t want him going to the mosque at night, either.

“I’ve done those things my entire life,” he responded. “I’m not going to stop now.”

“But your life is in danger,” Ammi said.

“A Muslim that is murdered is a martyr. I am assuredly a sinful and hell-bound man. This will give me a shot at Paradise.”

I wanted to laugh at the joke but couldn’t.

Nor could Ammi. In fact, she began crying.

Once Dada Abu and the men had left for work, the women began to entertain the vague hope that the drive-by was just an act of random belligerence. That hopeful theory evaporated when strange phone calls started coming in during the day.

“I picked it up,” Dadi Ma said after one such call. “I just heard breathing on the other side. There was obviously someone there. It wasn’t just a wrong number.”

“I had the same experience,” Aunt Tai said. “If you don’t hang up, they’ll just stay on the phone and breathe.”

“Just let the phone ring,” Ammi said. “We don’t need to pick it up.”

“It’s no use. They’ll just make it ring ten or twelve times and then call back.”

I wondered if we needed reinforcements. “Should I go to the
bazar
and tell them what’s happening?” I asked.

“No!” said Ammi, grabbing my arm. “It’s not safe for you to go outside.”

Around midday prayer there was a lull in the phone calls. Ammi used the opportunity to call Pops back in the States, concerned enough about the situation that she didn’t mind waking him up. Afterwards we went outside and sat down with the women, who were still trying to figure out who might be behind the intimidation. I had rarely felt so weak and useless.

“Is someone around here involved in drugs?” Ammi asked.

The women shook their heads.

“Who knows what it could be,” my grandmother said.

Just then the phone started ringing again. I told the women to stay put and went to get it. Before picking it up I stared at it for a few seconds, letting the bell drill into my head. If the drive-by and the phone calls were related, then by picking up the phone I’d be putting myself in the middle of it all. Finally I summoned the courage to pick up the receiver.

“Hello?”

There was a pregnant pause on the other end. I heard breathing but it was sporadic, as if the person was surprised by my voice. After a moment or two there was a reluctant reply.

“Hello.”

It was a young man’s voice, but a single word wasn’t much to go on. I tried to open up a conversation.

“Who is this?” I asked. “Are you looking to talk to someone at this number?”

Immediately the caller hung up, and for the rest of the afternoon no one called back.

I remained inside after the call and tried to think with a clear head. Wasn’t it the case that the drive-by and the strange phone calls had started after I’d had my run in with Ittefaq and his aggressive friends? That was definitely a young man’s voice on the other end. Couldn’t it be Ittefaq himself? He had lured me out before; maybe he was now at the center of another, more nefarious game. It seemed like a plausible theory, but it didn’t exactly explain why they would intimidate Dada Abu in the morning. I wanted to go out and share my theory with the women, but I decided against it because I didn’t want to cause them panic.

In the early afternoon Dada Abu and the men came home. When the women told them about the strange phone calls, they didn’t seem overly concerned. Their attention was consumed by something they’d heard while at the
bazar.

“Somebody is planning an attack tonight,” Dada Abu said.

“Here? At the house?” Ammi asked.

Dada Abu nodded. “That’s what I heard. I can’t know for absolute certain, but we’re going to have to take precautions.”

“Why is this happening?” Ammi asked. “What does it have to do with us?”

Dada Abu didn’t say anything. He left the house to consult with his brothers about getting some protection for the night and didn’t return for quite some time.

A meeting of all the family men had been called for that evening, and they met in the sitting room. I joined them.

“I’ve asked my friend Majid’s sons to come over for the night,” Dada Abu said. “They have weapons.”

“We’ll post the three of them on the upper walls,” Tau suggested.

“Do
we
have any weapons?” Dada Abu asked.

“Just this,” my younger uncle said, putting forward a revolver. Then he cracked it open dejectedly. “But I think the bullets are wet, so there’s no way to know if it fires.”

Dada Abu took it and turned it this way and that. “Hopefully we won’t have to use it,” he concluded.

“I have a sword at my house,” my polygamous uncle said jokingly.

“You better hold that instead of one of your wives tonight!”

Instructions were given to all the men: lock up your house early, and don’t let anyone visit.

“You,” Dada Abu finally said to me at the end of the meeting. “Take your brother and mother up to the second roof. Put your
charpai
s in the center, nowhere near a wall.”

This was explicit confirmation that the assailants were after me, or someone in my immediate family. When I told Ammi about Dada Abu’s instructions and the implication that we were the targets of the attack, she took it in stride.

“I know. I heard from one of the milkboys,” she said. “It’s one of the Islamic groups. They’re coming after us because we’re American.”

I nodded and then hung my head. So Ittefaq had ill intentions after all. He and his friends really did hate me. They didn’t care how much love for Islam I had in my heart. I was just an American to them. I was just someone to be abducted. I had come to the desert in search of good Muslims—the sort I hadn’t found in New York or Karachi—and I had instead been greeted by Islamic thugs.

N
ight fell and we took our
charpai
s up to the second roof. Dadi Ma and Nyla bravely came to join us.

Majid’s sons showed up soon after. They carried huge assault rifles and wore holsters with heavy pistols; bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossed their bodies. Two of them took a position on the ledge hanging over the main wall of the house to prevent anyone from climbing over and jumping onto the veranda. A third son went up to the first roof and sat in a chair. He couldn’t be seen from the outside but could pounce on anyone trying to climb up the back of the house. His position seemed the most important, since he could see up and down the street as well. He was given a flask of tea to keep himself awake. My younger uncle and Tau paced up and down the staircase running from the veranda up to the second roof, where we were located. Dada Abu sat downstairs holding the revolver that might not work.

As the sky darkened, I lay down with a knife under the pillow. I had walked around the house to see how exactly the defenses might be breached. The most likely plan by the assailants would involve coming over with seven or eight men. Two or three would directly engage Majid’s sons at the front while a couple went to the back and tried to clamber up. A lot depended on how the assailants wanted to attack. If they wanted to do things secretly, it would be a bit difficult for them, but if they were willing to shoot they could simply blast the door open and overrun Dada Abu. Trying to remain calm, I stared at the stars.
They were bigger and brighter in the desert, and they made different patterns than they did in America.

It struck me as absurd that someone was willing to go through all this effort just to get to me—insignificant little me.

Then I fell asleep.

W
hen I woke up it was still dark, and the house was quiet. I worried that the guards weren’t doing their job. For a moment I imagined that everyone else had been quietly killed and I alone had been spared. I got up and ran upstairs to check: there was the guard, sleeping with the Thermos in his hand. After shaking him by the shoulder, I ran downstairs to see if anyone was on the veranda.

Everyone, I discovered, was accounted for and alive, and nothing untoward had happened thus far.

I was settling back on my
charpai
when Ammi started me by whispering a greeting. She had been awake the whole time, she said, taking care of a few things and reading from the Quran. She gave me a comforting smile and I relaxed and soon fell asleep again.

I opened my eyes when the
azan
rang out in the morning. That call to prayer signaled a cessation of anxiety. A ripple of muted jubilation passed through the house.

As I rubbed my eyes Ammi threw a bag in my lap.

“Get up,” she said. “We’re leaving.”

“What?”

“We’re leaving. Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

“Lahore. Karachi. Islamabad. I don’t know. Just away from here.”

“What do you mean?”

“We can’t stay here one more day. I already called your father to let him know we’re coming.”

“How will we get though town without trouble?”

“With the commandoes,” she announced.

“What commandoes?”

Then I heard the loud rumble of a Humvee in the alley.

T
he previous night Ammi had managed to get in touch with Uncle Saad in Karachi, and he had called out a contingent of army Rangers to drive down from Pindi and escort us out of town.

When I went downstairs I saw that the entire family was awake. Children ran excitedly from the house to the Humvee and patted it with awe in their eyes. A pair of toddlers pulled at a stoic soldier’s legs and tried to undo his shoelaces. A pair of well-armed Rangers walked up and down the alley to make sure everything was clear.

Ammi had already made her haphazard goodbyes and sat firmly in the backseat, yelling at Flim and me to hurry up. I hurried out to join her, sadness coursing through my body as I realized that I hadn’t been able to accomplish any of the things that I’d come to the desert to do.

It would have been nice to get a wife, but the more important thing had been to find out my family history and get the genealogical tree that linked me back to Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq. I never even got an opportunity to sit down with Tau and have him go through his files. Nor did I get to go to the
madrassa
and impress all my former instructors with my newfound intellectual understanding of Islam. I had dearly wanted to corner Qari Jamil and impress him with the finer points of Islamic law.

I thought about my aged grand-uncles, the pillars of permanence from my childhood. Living just down the street, they had been spared all the commotion of last night. In fact, I’d hardly seen them since we got to Sehra Kush. Now we were leaving, and they would stay here with all the secrets of my family history—the stuff about the Partition, the difficult journey across Pakistan since then, the entirety of the 1990s, all of it still lodged in their big hearts. I felt overcome with a desire to go and say goodbye to them. It was the respectful thing to do, especially since they would probably pass away before I ever returned.

Ignoring Ammi’s calls to hurry, I ran over to their room. When I entered the tiny space the three brothers shared, they were unwrapping their turbans and making preparation to lie back down after prayer. Their white beards seemed richer and cleaner in the morning light.

“Circumstances require that I leave,” I said loudly, knowing that they were hard of hearing.

All of them turned to me.

“You just got here!” my oldest grand-uncle said sadly.

“We didn’t even get to talk,” said another.

“Trip is over,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come back one day.”

Then I went back into the street and walked to the Humvee. On the way I said hasty goodbyes to various aunts and to the little kids, and I hugged Dadi Ma. Then, full of shame and apology, I approached Dada Abu and excused myself.

“You have to go,” he said stoically, “so don’t make explanations. Just go.”

There was both accusation and resignation in his voice. On one hand, I could tell that he thought I was running away. That was the loving part of him, the part that wanted to sit and talk with a grandson whom he hadn’t seen for a decade. On the other hand, he knew that my departure was the right thing. That was the protective part of him, the part that wanted to keep me safe. As we hugged chest to chest, I realized that he wasn’t as sturdy or as powerful as he used to be. I could feel Time hovering over him in that moment, weakening him with its invisible fingers.