“I told him not to go,” my mother speaks to no one in particular. “I told him the frontier areas are too dangerous for a moderate modern man like him.”
I sit in the middle of the train berth, between my mother and a young man from Karachi. His five relatives occupy the rest of the berth with their loud banter and piles of pre-packaged snacks.
“He smiled and patted my hand and told me life is dangerous,” she continues. “‘Even in our home’ he said, ‘we keep men with rifles stationed at the perimeter of our lands, bring extra guards for our weddings. I shouldn’t let danger keep us from our ties of loyalty.’ You know,” she looks at my hands, “he felt he owed Shoukart his presence at his son’s wedding. After Shoukart’s father had provided refuge for your father and his brother during those mad days of Partition, he has felt bound to their family.”
Her Punjabi sounds so formal, absolutely devoid of the English loan words and Urdu slang that pollutes the Punjabi I grew up speaking. She looks out the window, seeing something beyond the Lahore train station outside the window, past the mass of people on the platform.
“Mummyji,” I say, calling her back into the train, back to the present, “you did the right thing. You tried to warn him.”
She looks at me directly and I see the milky whites of her eyes, the graying edges of her irises focused with a steely intensity. “The people in the tribal areas have always been difficult to control. The British tried and failed to tame them, the Pakistanis have known enough not to try to occupy their valleys. Don’t the Americans know their war in Pakistan is pointless? Every person they kill just creates more enemies, more people hungry for revenge.”
I close my eyes. I used to love train rides, I remember befriending berth mates every time we traveled to Karachi for my father’s business, or to the mountains for a holiday. But this train ride will bring us only to the scene of a crime, not to a carnival or a market.
I look out the window as we wait to leave the Lahore station which the British built more than a century ago. Men dressed in kurta pajamas carry satchels and balance boxes on their shoulders, tightly coiled Sikh turbans occasionally bob through the crowd, a few women with brightly colored headscarves drag children almost invisible among the legs of their elders. Amidst the swirl, a man stands still, like an island, in his military uniform, rifle slung over his shoulder, he watches for any unusual motion, any suspicious packages. A group of three tribesmen, their turbans wrapped like birds’ nests atop their short hair, the end of the cloth tailing over their shoulders alongside their long beards, garner the soldier’s attention. Even from a distance I can sense the energy between them as they pass, the soldier unyielding, slightly narrowing his eyes as he scans their bodies for evidence of malintent.
The unspoken tension—not just the rush to find a seat, to adhere to the schedule, to pay the ticket taker the petty bribes he is due—but the uncertainty of the crowd, the potential for a backpack to blow up, for a scuffle to escalate into a riot, all of the simmering energy only accentuates my fatigue. I close my eyes and try to focus on the smells, the grilled meats and potato cutlets of the platform vendors, the diesel, my mother’s familiar rose fragrance.
I never left, I lie to myself. I have always been here with my mother, my family, my clan. I never abandoned them for the clean surfaces and right angles of the West. London, Dubai, America, these places are all just dreams. This is where I belong. As the train engine heaves to pull us out of the station, I hear the call to prayer projected through some distant speaker, distorted at maximum volume over the din of the platform.
After some hours, the train pulls in to Shahdara station and passengers depart and arrive in the shuffle to and from the branch lines that reach out to the east and west. We do not speak over the activity. As the train slowly pulls away again to the north a chai wallah makes his way down the aisle. He stops to dispense sweet milky tea into little paper cups from a spigot in the stainless steel drum he carries slung against his torso. My mother pulls two coins from her purse and presses them into my hand, just as she did when I was a child. I hail the chai wallah and hold up two fingers.
“For the lady,” he passes me a cup, respectfully looking at me rather than her. “And for you, sir.” He hands me the second, his arm motions displaying an efficiency born of years of repeated effort. He will likely move up and down these aisles, slowly wearing down the car’s wooden floors until he is too old to carry the drum, or until he can pass it onto a younger relative who will provide him a small daily commission for the privilege of the profession.
I can see my mother’s shoulders relax with the habit of the tea. She begins to talk of the family businesses; the lack of rain and how Riaz worries about the cost of diesel for our tractors, Majid’s dealings with both Chinese and Korean manufacturers for our family’s trading business. She falls into these conversations as though I had never been away. She asks me my opinion on small questions about the price of commodities, and the trustworthiness of certain of our neighbors in comparison to others. She never refers to my wife or my children, she does not ask about my life in America. And I follow her lead, answering her questions, acting as if her topics fill my life like they do hers.
After we stop in Gurjanwala the railway porters serve dinner; little steel trays with naan bread, a portion of daal, and sterilized water in a flimsy plastic bag. We eat quickly. Our trays are empty when the porters return to collect them, and then lay out the stiff white sheets and pillows on the berths. By Wazirabad station, most of the passengers have settled into their berths, their shoes stowed under their luggage to deter petty thieves. I help my mother onto the top berth and settle into the middle berth, listening to the congested breathing of the young man from Karachi beneath me.
The rhythm of the train, the syncopated clatter of wheels against rails, the creaking of the car couplings transports me not only toward my brothers and their angry grief, but back to my traditions, away from the adoptive life, the hybrid culture I have carved out of the larger outside world.
I can imagine how this story plays out. I have seen enough Lollywood films, I have seen our clan-based culture projected onto makeshift screens of white sheets strung across fields in our village. The family will not rest until they achieve justice, fortified by the crowd of villagers who gather around the offended hero. But in these simulations of our tradition, the antagonist always has a face, a recognizably malevolent expression, usually with a scar around his eye or across his cheek. The antagonist in my reality does not bleed, does not scowl or speak, he did not look my father in the eye before pulling a trigger, before thrusting a knife. My father must have appeared as nothing more than a small circle seen from above, a shadow of electrons moving across a distant screen in some military operations room.
I wake just as we arrive in Rawalpindi, the sun breaking over the horizon. I can see men on the sidewalk with prayer rugs tucked under their arms answering the first call of the day. I remember my father’s comments about such men, ‘In heaven, Allah will reward their discipline for sure. But here on earth, I enjoy the reward of a bit of extra sleep.’
My mother is awake already, her grey hair combed, her headscarf gracefully draped over her head. She looks down at the cell phone in her hand, typing out a text message. “Your brothers will meet us with a driver in Peshawar,” she reports from the phone. “I have let them know the train is behind schedule. Pakistani Railways saves petrol by running the trains slower,” she clucks her tongue with disgust. “Your brothers will have one of Shoukart’s relatives drive us to their village in the Khyber Agency. And I checked in with Jagdeep, he will keep watch on the rest of the servants and workers.” I haven’t thought about Jagdeep in years. Our Singh we used to call him. My father had trusted him since they were in school together. Jagdeep wore his turban proudly, upholding the Sikh reputation for honesty and hard work with unfailing sincerity.
“The body,” I ask, “where is he buried?”
“I suppose next to Shoukart and his family. With only one day to get the body in the ground, we aren’t able to choose.” She tucks the phone into her purse. “But I need to know where it is. I don’t know when I’ll be able to make this journey again.” She closes her eyes and pulls her lips shut tight. I can see she wants to cry.
I stand there, next to her upper berth, her grown child, and rest my head on her knee. She places her hand on my head and we both weep silently.
After the tedious final leg of the train journey to Peshawar I am relieved to step out onto the platform. My brothers are waiting with the Pashtun driver who stands pulling at his beard. We greet each other with handshakes and hands on shoulders. The driver takes our bags and says he is sorry for our loss.
“How was the train ride?” Majid asks.
“We’re here aren’t we?” my mother responds.
“Well, be prepared for the rest of the way.” Majid smiles ruefully. “The roads aren’t like Lahore, and the car’s nothing like my Mercedes.”
I squeeze into the middle of the backseat—even as an adult, I still have the status of the youngest.
After an hour or so, Peshawar’s brick buildings give way to the Afghan refugees’ makeshift villages. The mud, plywood, and metal constructions rise up from the side of the road like dusty extensions of the earth itself. At a non-descript fork in the road, the driver points to a sign, slightly bigger than a man, amidst the jumble of border-style commerce, Entering Khyber Agency, Keep Left. Just next to it, practically on top of a halal butcher’s stand with three dangling goat shanks another sign warns, No Foreigners May Enter Beyond This Point. We haven’t discussed this yet. I have tucked my American passport in a hidden pocket in my bag; opting to carry my Pakistani passport with me, even though it has expired. A Pashtun with a weathered face and pie-shaped woolen hat doesn’t bother to raise the rifle slung over his shoulder. He peers into the backseat through the open window.
The driver speaks in Pashto. Although I understand only some of his words, his intent is clear. “They are Lahoris, but their man was killed by a drone this week in Dargalabad. They came for mourning.” I wait for the driver to turn around and request our identification.
But the Pashtun briefly touches his hand to his heart in a gesture of sympathy. “Then in grief they are my brothers.” He steps back to let us pass. “American bastards,” he says loud enough for all of us to hear. Although he raises his fist in solidarity with us, I can’t help but feel his words condemning me.
The narrow, potholed road and the din of the car engine prevent us from discussing anything on the way to Dargalabad. We pass through treeless terrain before climbing up the mountain and down into the valley through a series of switchbacks. I feel as though I am not actually present, just observing. I grew up only a day’s journey from here, but I’ve never seen this world. My stomach turns with each rotation of the steering wheel. I am in my own country, but in a foreign land. I am a foreigner approaching the village of a man who was like my brother, the place where my father was killed, but this is not my place. I feel lightheaded. I close my eyes and my body seems to disappear. The breath moving in and out of my lungs is only the flimsy tether of fate pulling me along to a place I cannot resist.
The car stops. A disorderly flow of humanity and livestock pass in front of us. “This is the main road in Dargalabad,” the driver says. “We are near.” We slowly advance into the moving mass. At the intersection a traffic sign commands travelers, Yield in English, Urdu, and Pashto. A vandal has amended the sign, writing in a defiant English script, NEVER.
The driver navigates past small blocky buildings, houses surrounded by high walls, and the occasional tree. Abruptly he pulls up at an unmarked wall, indistinct from any of the others we have passed. An old man opens the wooden door in the wall, quickly moving to embrace my brothers and me. I assume he is Shoukart’s grandfather. He beats his chest and speaks in a torrent of Pashto sprinkled with Urdu. He offers his condolences, welcomes us to his home as family, as honored guests. “Your father’s death,” he cries, “pains me even more than my grandson’s death, he was our guest.”
I stand mute, uncertain how to react. My brothers seem to understand this ritual better. They touch their hearts in gratitude for his hospitality, they reciprocate condolences for his loss. Riaz places a calm hand on the old man’s shoulder and suggests we go inside. The old man steps aside and looks to the ground as my mother passes inside, “Um Riaz, mother of Riaz,” he says respectfully, “Please be in your own home here.”
I follow as we pass through the walled courtyard, a carefully tended apricot tree spreads its delicate branches in a small circle of shade where several chickens scratch in the still moist ground where the tree has been watered. At the threshold of the home’s inner rooms, we step out of our shoes. I place the black sandals I had borrowed from my brother’s closet in Lahore next to two other similar, but worn, pairs. Outside the door, the earth has been beaten smooth. Inside, the floor is covered in thick felt carpets. A small, deep red carpet, covered in a tribal design of orderly guls, marks the center of the room. A young girl steps silently from behind a curtain which divides the room, and sets down a large brass tray with tea and bread.
Instinctively the men sit down in a circle. Several of Shoukart’s male relatives gather around his grandfather. My mother ducks inside the curtain and I hear the voices of the women consoling her, welcoming her. She returns and sits next to me as the young girl pours tea for all of us, hot liquid steaming up from the spout stained by years of use.
After several minutes of formalities over the tea, the distribution of bread and apricot preserves, we finally turn to the matter at hand.
“I had just gone down the road,” the old man says, his voice reedy with age, “I wanted to replace the string of electric festival lights we had in the courtyard, because they weren’t working properly. I went on my bicycle, it should’ve only taken a short time.” He took a sip of his tea. “Your father was with my grandson. We’d recently come back from the mosque, the marriage contract signed, the mullah had given his blessing. We had everything ready for the celebration. The girl’s relatives were here with us, the food was all ready.” He pauses, looks at the teacup resting on his palm. “I didn’t hear the drone. We never hear the drones.”
“Have there been drones before?” I ask. Perhaps I should not have interrupted.
“Of course,” he looks up at me. “The young men with good eyes and lenses see them a lot, at least once a week. Like hawks, so high I cannot see them. Sometimes they just go back to the Afghan side. Sometimes…”
We all look down at our teacups.
“The Americans think that anyone with a turban or a beard is Taliban,” one of the younger men practically spits out his words. “So even if we come together for a wedding party in a courtyard, we are a gathering of the Taliban.”
“There are no Taliban in our village,” the old man speaks again. “But if today they came asking for fighters, I would join them before I even finish this tea. As sure as your father is in the ground, I am now an enemy of America.”
The sweetness from my tea dissolves in his vitriol. As I sit here and share his grief, his hospitality, and his love for my father, do I also share his hatred? I hate the drone, I hate the men who sat behind some screen and engineered my father’s death, I hate the generals and policy makers who treat foreign lives as trivial. But is that my America? Is that the America of my wife and children? Of me?
He continues, “Have you thought how you will avenge his death? We also have many lives to avenge, but he was the head of your family. This kind of offense cannot remain unanswered.”
My brothers turn to look at my mother. “Not only have we been deprived of our man, but since he died far from his home, we were deprived of the funeral,” she says, counting the offenses as she would tally up the mustard harvest. “All of our relations, all of the people who are close to our families and our farms have not had a chance to pay their respects.”
“You are correct,” the old man shakes his head, “and masha’allah, God willed it, there should be hundreds of people who must come for a man like him.”
“The problem, of course,” Riaz begins, “is that the killers are not here. We cannot satisfy our grief in Pakistan.”
“Yes,” nods the old man. “If that were possible, I myself would seek revenge to uphold your family’s honor. I expect we’ll have to cross over the border and look for a target in Afghanistan. We have relations on the other side…”
Majid looks briefly at me before interrupting the old man. “We do have a different advantage.” The old man raises an eyebrow, curious. “Rashid. He has an American passport, he has no difficulty entering America.”
My brother is careful not to call me an American. The old man and my mother both nod. “Because of his work, he has experience with explosives, he has high level security clearance.”
I start to correct him, to explain that my hazardous materials commercial driver’s license isn’t the kind of security clearance they imagine. But my mother joins my brothers in extolling my qualifications as an avenger. “My youngest son is also very clever, and can easily mingle with Westerners, he will not arouse suspicion.”
I want to protest, I want to tell them there is no way we can fight the U.S. military. With a rush of adrenaline I want to leave the room, to run away from the future they are planning for me. I uncross my legs to stand but my mother sets a hand on my forearm. The strength of her grip compels me to recross my legs, to sit down, listen, obey.
The young girl steps around the curtain with a large copper bowl of curry. She pauses to catch the eye of the old man. He nods at her, beckons her with his hand. “Let us eat. Decisions are always easier on a full stomach.”
“Mummyji, I have a family, children,” I whisper to her. “This is not a simple matter in America.”
She squeezes harder. “We all have children. It’s because we have children that we must not allow others to come into our lands and destroy our families.”
The girl offers me a large oval shaped naan, then ladles a portion of curry into the center of the bread, leaving three hefty chunks of goat meat befitting my status as an honored guest.
The old man breaks his bread and dips it into the curry, raising it to signal for us to eat before he will. “The women of my brother’s house make a beautiful curry. I wish I could host you in my own house, but it is rubble now.”
“Uncle, you will take my youngest brother to see it?” Riaz asks.
“And he needs to see where our father is buried,” Majid echoes.
The old man nods somberly.
The conversation pauses as we concentrate on our meal. A child cries in the other room. A woman tries to comfort him.
“Virji,” I whisper to Riaz, “we need to talk about how we will seek revenge. This isn’t something I can do in America. I have obligations to my family.”
My eldest brother wipes his mustache with the back of his hand. “Rashid, we all have obligations to the family,” he says sternly. “Majid and I stayed here and married the girls our parents chose for us. Our wives have cared for our parents. We’ve handled the farm and the trading business. Daddyji indulged you.” He looks to Majid for confirmation. “He gave you the opportunity to go abroad. He did not object when you chose an American woman. But you cannot avoid your responsibility now.”
“I’m not avoiding my responsibility.” I say sullenly. I lower my voice so the others cannot hear. “I’ve always sent money home. I was the one who sponsored Daddyji to go to Hajj.” I cannot offer any defense about my wife. No matter how she has tried to understand and accept our culture, she will never be one of us. The food is warm in my belly, but my heart burns with the understanding that she is of their tribe, she was born in the same nationality as the cowards who killed my father. I clench my fists. The gold of my wedding ring presses into my flesh. I hide my hand in the pocket of my kurta, as if this could obscure my alliance by marriage with America.
The old man and his relations sit back and rub their palms together, pressing any grease from the meal into their dry calloused hands.
Riaz looks up to see that everyone will listen to his words. “Rashid, if you are truly our mother’s son, you will understand what you must do for the family.”
This line, this taunt to action I have seen dozens of times in films. How much more serious it sounds coming from my brother’s mouth. Does my face redden with this challenge? Instead of the dramatic music which would heighten the moment in a film, I hear only the clink of teacups being washed behind the curtain. The men around the room sharpen their focus on me. They will all hold me to this moment, to know if I am a man, to look for proof that I deserve my family’s name. I choose to respond in the most honorable way I can. I say nothing.
“We will go now?” the old man asks. We all push ourselves up to standing. I step into the courtyard. I feel the cool air dissipate some of the smoldering heat in my body. At the far end, near a small opening in the wall that leads to a gutter, flies have gathered around a puddle of blood. Our hosts must have slaughtered the goat for our meal earlier in the day, the cries of the animal were already silent before we arrived.
My mother steps out over the threshold.
“You will want to stay here?” the old man asks.
“No.” She is firm. “I will see as well. I’ve already come this far.”
We sit in the car. The squeak of the car door hinge sounds like the first few notes of a song I remember. As we drive through the village, and past farms green with mustard and melons, the memory of the melodic line of a dance tune from my time in Dubai echoes through my head. My mind seizes it, works to remember the lyrics.
Eventually we arrive at an abandoned lot. Piles of trash and debris have been separated into their constituent parts. A mangy dog licks a stained brick.
We all step out of the car, an acrid, smoke-scented breeze confronts us. I hold out my hand to help my mother to her feet. The old man walks into the lot, narrates the space with his hands. “This is where my house was. You can see the outline of the courtyard here.”
My eyes start to notice the patterns in the disorder. What I had taken for rubbish are the remnants of the house. The walls toppled into piles of bricks. What must have been a bookshelf, reduced to piles of fluttering papers. The stain on the bricks—I realize with horror—must be the blood of the wedding party. The guests. My father.
“This is where everyone was gathered, outside.” The old man’s face glistens with tears. One of his relatives, a nephew, I assume, rests a comforting hand on his back. “The lights I had gone to replace were going to hang from the wall to this tree.” He points to a stump. He continues to tell the story, his words coming faster, his tone increasingly shrill.
I separate from my mother, walk among the piles, stepping over a brick, a piece of burnt and melted plastic. I lift up a broken wooden beam with my toe. A swarm of flies swirls out from under the beam with the metallic smell of blood. I see a tangled clump of hair, black with strands of silver grey, matted into the ground, a small piece of flesh still attached.
My stomach churns. I turn around, looking for a place where I can retreat. I see fragments of red cloth with gold embroidery—the bride’s dress—a tiny boy’s shoe next to a twisted shard of metal. I see the memories of things that were only recently intact. I double over and wretch, trying not to draw attention to myself. The remnants of my goat curry will decay here in this place of death.
I hear a vibration in the sky and I look around trying to identify the source. From behind our heads we see a dark shape in the sky, like a giant metal hawk. As the shadow of an aircraft sweeps across the jagged edges of the ground around us, my mother reaches down and grabs a broken brick. She throws it into the sky and screams. She curses the machine with a string of profanities—sister fuckers, dogs, sons of bitches—the likes of which I have never heard from her. She reaches again and again for bricks, rocks, sticks, anything she can throw into the sky. Her headscarf falls back, exposing her silver hair. Her voice loses its power as her projectiles fall back to the earth just a few feet in front of her.
My brothers and I, stunned, do not move. We feel her rage, understand her need to act. But we cannot recognize our proud strong mother in these childish gestures. Only when she collapses to the ground, spent and shrieking, do we all rush to support her.
The old man, suddenly agitated, frantically herds us back into the car. “Sometimes a drone will follow a plane. We won’t be able to see it, but we should take cover, they don’t like it when people make rash motions or fall to the ground.”
Back in the car, we move quickly, the nephew, slightly older than me, is driving erratically, peering his head out the driver’s side window, trying to spot any danger from above. My heart is beating so loud I think I can hear it over the engine. I place my arms over my mother’s head, as if I could protect her.
Once we turn on to a bigger road, and join a steady flow of cars crawling along, the nephew seems to relax. The old man turns around, “Please forgive me for frightening you. We can never be too careful. And I should never forgive myself if your mother were harmed while she was my guest.”
“Thank you for your care, brother,” my mother says, lowering my arms without looking at me. “I can only imagine how you suffer with this kind of fear.” Composed again, she raises her hands to include the whole dangerous sky. “I am a woman, all I can do is throw stones.” She sets her hand above mine, making a fist. “But my son can accomplish much more.”
“Insha’allah, God willing,” the old man says, “insha’allah.”
The gravesite is unremarkable; a patch of disturbed earth, small piles of stones above the mounds that cover the bodies. We do not speak as we get out of the car. My brothers have been here before, they were here to lower the plain wooden box into the ground. Later I will ask them about the condition of my father’s body.
My mother walks unsteadily toward the mound that the old man indicates is her husband’s grave. I follow, hold her arm and shoulders to support her.
“Husband,” she says quietly. “You were a good man. You raised your sons well. And your daughters. We will carry your name with pride, uphold your honor.” She steps toward the grave and squats down, running her right hand in the dirt. I can hear her whispering, but cannot make out her words. I watch her hand moving gently over the ground, as if she were caressing him through the soil. She looks down and then up into the sky, perhaps she is trying to locate his spirit, to know where she should send her words.
I remember when my grandfather died. The old man had a heart attack during Ramadan. My father had spent the whole day after Babu’s death holed up in the little booth in the phone store down the lane, his voice growing hoarse as he called our relations. Never once did he break his fast or ask for water. I was a teenager, my voice just starting to change. We buried Babu at the far end of the mustard fields, at the top of a little rise. My father said even in death, we should understand that Babu would watch over the farm. The whole village came, as did all our relations who were within a day’s train ride. My mother had arranged for the washing of the body and all of the food and drink we would need prepared for the hundreds of mourners to break their fast after the sun set. We found comfort in the sheer mass of people who supported our family in our grief. Of course I felt the sadness, but even as we repeated the solemn burial ritual, I couldn’t help noticing a girl across from me. She stood out in my mind as she was my age, with beautiful cheekbones, a lustrous sliver of her hair left uncovered before her headscarf. As the breeze blew, the thin cotton of her kameeze blew against her skin so I could discern the outline of her firm breasts, and I wondered about the rest of her body.
I close my eyes as my mind returns to the sight of my father’s grave. Stones crunch underfoot as my brothers and Shoukart’s relatives move gently around me. A car passes along the road, a lone bird cries out in the distance. What do I say to my dead father? How do I thank him for his care, his guidance, his wisdom to send me abroad? How do I repay the pleasures I have enjoyed, the expanse of the West that I have known because of his decisions? I simply say, “Peace be upon him,” the same words I have repeated after the name of the Prophet.
Riaz steps close to me, so that I can feel the heat of his body. I long for the crowd of mourners that should hold us up, that should remind me of the continuity of our community, despite the interruption of death. I reach out for Riaz, grateful for his masculine arms encircling me.
“I have called some people who can help us,” says a young man I hadn’t noticed earlier. He is slim, his beard carefully trimmed, his eyes reflecting a clear intelligence.
Shoukart’s grandfather leans back on a bolster inside his brother’s house. “Help us in what way?” he groans with an ache in his bones.
I accept a cup of tea from the young girl who had served us earlier, feel the adrenaline of the afternoon dissipating, leaving a hard anger. “Help us to take our next steps,” the young man replies crisply.
Three men appear at the door, simple wool shawls draped around their shoulders. Shoukart’s grandfather begins to rise. The men gesture for him to stay where he is. Speaking in Pashto, they lean over, grasp his hands in greeting. They make their way around the room, greeting other relatives, the young man, my brothers, me.
“They are my brother’s neighbors,” the old man explains, “they have come to share condolences with you.”
They sit, drink tea, the hardened and stained soles of their feet poking out from under the billows of their pants.
The young man continues, “I have called Abu Omar because he knows how to plan things, he knows people.”
Majid sits on the floor, hunched over his tea cup. “I don’t know how much planning we need. I think if we could bomb the ring road in Los Angeles, we would make our point.”
“There is no ring road in Los Angeles,” I say quietly, “it’s a network of freeways.”
“So pick one,” Majid shoots back.
“It’s not that simple,” I tell Majid.
Another group of men arrive, repeat the same ritual as the first group of neighbors.
Shoukart’s grandfather rubs his shoulder. “They say that Abu Omar is the lion of Afghanistan, he knows how to strike at the Americans. He will chase them out of the country…or kill them.”
The young man nods. “He has had very good training, he has friends abroad, he can make things happen.”
A few of the strangers continue the conversation in Pashto. I follow some of their words, they mention the Americans in Afghanistan, the CIA in Peshawar.
Again, a few more men step inside the room. I move closer to my brother and a guest who had arrived earlier moves closer to me to make space. A water pipe appears and the smells of sweet tobacco smoke and sweating men fill the room. One of the neighbors, or relatives—I can’t really keep straight who is who—points at me. The others begin talking more quickly. I lean over to Majid, “Do you understand what they’re saying?”
“They’re talking about what you can do in America, what Abu Omar can do to help arrange things for you.” He pauses, “I’ve told them how smart and capable you are.”
Majid’s compliment catches me off guard. My middle brother has spent a lifetime demonstrating all the ways in which he has surpassed me.
A few men push themselves up off the carpet and make space for new guests. Now familiar with the ritual, I greet them, thank them for coming, nod at their curses for the Americans, their calls for justice.
The young man continues in English, “If we took action in Los Angeles, we would be staking out new territory, no one has touched the American west coast yet.”
“But innocents would be killed,” I shudder thinking about my wife and children.
“Innocents!” the young man roars, “Tell me brother, wasn’t your father innocent? Shoukart? The bride? Do you think for a moment the kafirs, the infidels flying the drones wonder about the innocence of our women, our children, our fathers?” He opens his arms to include the other men in the room who nod in somber agreement. “Do they wonder about our innocence when the drones come and drop bombs on the people who gather to bury those they have already killed in an earlier drone attack?”
An indignant murmur ripples through the room.
“Because we are men with beards, because we are Muslim, because we believe in the honor of our families, we are all guilty in their eyes. Even you,” his eyes narrow as he points at me, “even you, brother, with your American passport and liberal ways, are an enemy the Americans would kill if they could.”
An older man, stoic and quiet stares at me from just a few feet away. I stare back, clench my fist to hold back tears, to hold back my anger. Finally he speaks, almost a whisper. “It’s good you have come back to your country, to sit among your brothers. We’ll help you accomplish a great thing. The Americans need a reminder, a prick in their side. You can help to protect us.”
I wrinkle my eyebrows in question.
The man passes me the hose of the water pipe. I take a long draw, wait for the feeling, the lightness in my head.
“Look at us,” he continues, “we are men in a poor country, every day we fear what will drop out of the sky. Look at you, you live in America, you are rich, accomplished, intelligent.” He moves closer to me, sets his hand on my shoulder. “We need men like you to carry our message, the memories of our dead, of your father.”
My brothers nod. I look around the room, recognize shadows of my father in the faces of the men who have come. I see the intelligence of my father’s eyes above the beard on the young man’s face, see my father’s long sharp nose in a man with a deep scar across his cheek, see the roundness of my father’s lips in a wizened old man who scratches his beard with mangled stumps where his first two fingers should have been.
“We understand your suffering,” speaks the old man, squeezing my shoulder. “All of us have lost someone, or have been forced from our homes. I have seen my own children bleed because of the Americans.” He looks up, turns to the others, “Yes?” Around the room, I see men nod, tears sparkling in the eyes of a few. He looks back at me. “Your father would help us if he could. He would ask you do to the same…” My mother peers out from the kitchen curtain, nods forcefully at me. “…if they hadn’t blown him to bits.”
The image of burned flesh rises again in my mind. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, try to block the vision. And I cannot hold back any more, tears come. My lungs gasp for breath. I have lost my father. This single death has blown my world apart, ripped away my future. I open my eyes to see every man in the room touching the shoulder of the man in front of him, all hands reaching out in a web to this man who has set his hand upon my shoulder. He draws his forefinger across his forehead, then across mine. “It is written.”
I nod. It has been written.
After all the men leave, save the young man with the neat beard, my brothers and I stand with him at the door. I want only to collapse right there and sleep. I suddenly remember his first words of the day. “You said Abu Omar would come, he could help us. When will he come?”
The corners of the young man’s mouth turn ever so slightly, “He was already here.”
I feel disoriented. “Who? Which man? Why didn’t you introduce him?”
“You will know all in due time.”
I wish for another draw on the water pipe, for the patience I feel with the smoke in my lungs. “And brother, I didn’t properly hear your name.”
Again the corners of his mouth turn up. He nods deferentially. “I am Omar.”
He embraces me and turns, walking away without another word.
I stand silent under the stars, trying to think back on which of the men I saw today could be his father, Abu Omar.