Preparing to leave for a rig, I repeat my tasks in the workshop as if I had never left. My muscles seem to remember the feel of the tools, the rhythm of the jobs. After the funeral, and these subsequent days of idleness, I am glad for the work, the illusion of purpose. I pack a three-foot steel canister with small explosive charges. I methodically count them out…sixty-five…seventy…seventy-five. We will be perforating the cement in a section of a newly prepared oil well at a depth where we have confirmed the presence of oil. The perforations will allow the oil to seep into the well, the rocks will hemorrhage their fluids to be pumped to the surface. The small charges, half-moon metal spheres the size of marble shooters are designed to start oil production. They will only create pressure, poking holes painlessly, through rock. The smooth, harmless looking objects are not designed for destruction, they are not like the pyrotechnics or the ammonium nitrate bombs or any other kind of explosive I had to study to receive my blaster’s permit when I came to California. I have never actually seen dynamite explode above ground. Perhaps the drone operator who killed my father hadn’t seen real explosions either. How could I find him? Would he be the responsible one? Or was he just carrying out a job, taking the orders of the government as I take the orders of the oil companies? Maybe there are hundreds, thousands of people who are responsible for the campaign of drone attacks in Pakistan.
A heavy metal door bangs, breaking my train of thought, and my superior—a Norwegian man recently transferred from our base in Nigeria—bears down on my work table. “Come on, we need to get these tools out in the next fifteen minutes or we’ll miss the ferry. I don’t want to have to pay for any lost time.”
I look up and catch the eye of my Lebanese colleague. As our Norwegian engineer moves to inspect the truck we will take to the rig, my colleague approaches me, whispers, “Nazel, asshole, he only thinks about his job bonus. You should fuck him up, mispack the tool. When it fails and he has to repeat the job you can see him cry about lost time.”
I know his expletive well, used it daily when I was in the Gulf. But I don’t respond, I am not interested in the petty divisions and allegiances my Lebanese colleague fosters within our base. I finish packing the charges and load the tools on the truck. I am just doing my job. I don’t want to draw any attention to myself.
The ferry pulls away from the shore delivering me again into the familiar culture of the rig. The Norwegian supervisor makes small talk with me, comparing his current posting with his experiences in Nigeria, Sakhalin, Bakersfield. The company moves its employees every three years, developing a community of workers and their families loyal to company over country.
We arrive before the sun is overhead. I go through the motions of the job. We trigger the charges as planned, the tool performs without error. The engineer is able to tell the company man that the well is producing, we perforated at the correct depth. I wonder sometimes about these places my tools travel. Do borders exist in those places? Does it make any difference in the darkness of the geology tens of thousands of feet below us which company, or country, or culture penetrates from the sunlit surface to extract the remains of what was living millions of years ago? Do the ghosts of the dinosaurs care what we do with their decomposed bodies?
The sound of the motor that drives the winch blocks out all other noises, and thousands of feet of cable coil on a giant spool, retrieving our tool from the depths—the explosive charges spent. I know how to drive the winch now, taking care not to go too fast. When I was training in the Gulf, I saw a guy drive the winch too fast, when the tool got stuck on the way up the well, he didn’t realize it. The gears pulled on the cable until it snapped, the spool spun too fast and the frayed end of the cable flew out of the well, severing the winch driver’s arms. It occurs to me now that perhaps the ghosts of the dinosaurs took their revenge with that cable—punishment for stealing, Saudi-style. In the Gulf, the Arabs sometimes claimed jobs went bad or accidents happened because of djinns, the spirits that dwell on the earth with us, making mischief and interfering in the lives of humans. If only I could call on a djinn to avenge my father for me, to take from me the anxiety of making a plan, to protect my wife and children from the blowback of whatever I determine I must do.
As if on cue, my phone vibrates in my pocket. Once the tool is back up on the rig floor, I pause in my work, unlocking the phone to see the message. When I was in the Gulf, Kathryn sent me messages everyday, carefully composed missives, sometimes humorous, sometimes erotic, often bordering on poetry. Since the arrival of the children, those kinds of messages have almost completely disappeared. This one is from my brother Majid, asking me to call.
I secure my tools, complete the paperwork recording the number of charges we have used on the job, and head to the doghouse so I can rest and call my brother.
I lie down on the bed and dial a long series of numbers and wait.
“Majid…yes, it’s Rashid….Fine. And you?”
He speaks to me in Urdu, asking about what I am doing, how I am planning. “Well, I’d like to talk about that,” I say in English before slipping 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.”
I pull the zipper on my coveralls up and down, again and again as I listen to him. “No, not nothing. I will do something, something better. We know some people here who can bring revenge through the courts.”
I hold the phone away from my ear because Majid is shouting now.
“It’s not the same here. There are better ways. You have to trust that I know what I’m doing.”
I move the zipper faster. Listen.
I disconnect the phone without saying goodbye.
I dial Kathryn’s number. “Hey, what’s up…so I was thinking, when I get home, I want to talk some more about the lawyer you mentioned at the Civic Union…yeah, the Civil Liberties Union, whatever the name is. Let’s see what they can do…OK, I’ll let you finish that…I love you too.”
I close my eyes. Maybe if we are smart about this, maybe if we use America’s own tactics against herself, maybe we can bring the whole band of people ordering these drone attacks to justice. I think of the old man in Shoukart’s brother’s house. Maybe he was right, maybe men in a poor country do need a man like me to help protect them. I scratch my forehead. But maybe he didn’t really know how my future is written.
I must doze off because when my phone rings again, I open my eyes disoriented, confused about why I am sleeping in a cell-like metal room. I answer the phone, my heart racing. “Who?...Majid…fuck, you scared me…Yes, I know today is Tuesday…Really? Already almost forty days? Yes, of course I can go for that.”
I hang up. So simple, next week I will go to the mosque to mark the forty days since my father’s death. I will observe my culture’s traditions and use this country’s legal traditions for my advantage.
I touch my forehead to the floor, the green color of my prayer rug momentarily filling my field of vision. The chanting of the imam, the men murmuring prayers around me, gives me comfort. I think of my father, hope his spirit has settled wherever it has gone. I feel my own spirit settling after the roller coaster of these forty days as well. Kathryn and I sat together when I returned from the job. We took notes about what I had seen of the attack in Pakistan, I showed her the website with the map filled with the red dots of past drone attacks. She has scheduled an appointment with the ACLU lawyer. The process is starting. I continue with the prayers, hold my hands out to receive, I will call Majid when I leave the mosque, tell him I have completed the prayers as he requested. Everything will be fine.
I roll up my rug and step out with the other men as we return to our shoes.
“Salaam, brother,” a young man to my right greets me brightly. “You are new to the mosque? I haven’t seen you here before.”
I shake his outstretched hand. “Yes, I am relatively new to the mosque.”
“And new to the country?”
“No,” I say quietly.
“How long have you been here?”
“A long time, maybe too long.”
He responds with a little snort of understanding. “I am Ali, from Palestine.”
“Rashid, from Lahore, Pakistan. And how long have you been here?”
He runs a hand over his beard, “Since before my father was killed. I mean about two years. Now I am measuring everything as either before or after his death.”
I am stunned at his answer. “I’m sorry for your loss. How was he killed?”
“Israelis,” he says as if the word itself were a mode of killing.
I incline my head, waiting for more explanation.
“Somebody from our neighborhood planned a bus bombing. Killed a couple of Israeli people on the bus. They traced the bomber’s family back to our neighborhood. So they shelled us one night, killed a dozen people sleeping in their flats,” I can see his face flushing with anger, “even some kids.”
“You weren’t there?”
He shakes his head. “I was here, at university.”
I wait for more.
“I was studying at Long Beach State, I had a scholarship through an organization of American Jewish people trying to improve Israeli-Palestinian relations.”
I raise my eyebrows at the irony.
“I quit.” He notices I have yet to put my shoes on. “Do you want tea? We can talk more outside.”
“Is there somewhere nearby?”
“An American restaurant a couple of blocks away is twenty-four hours. The food is not good, but they serve Lipton tea.” I can picture the tea label clearly, the symbol of quality that seemed to appear in every restaurant in Dubai.
“Sure. Should I drive?”
“La, la, no, no,” he says slipping for a moment into Arabic as he shakes his head. “Let’s walk, I will have to come back here for catching my bus.”
He reaches down for his shoes, a pair of expensive tennis shoes, now shabby with wear.
Outside the sidewalks are empty, cars queue up at the stoplights waiting for permission to approach the droning freeway. We pass three blocks of small businesses, shops, car dealers not yet open for the day’s business.
“What were you studying?”
“Civil engineering. I was thinking to work to build infrastructure, roads, bridges, aqueducts.” He points down to the sidewalk and motions out to the street, “America has beautiful infrastructure, and still people only complain about the traffic on the freeway. They’ve never spent three hours trying to pass a checkpoint.”
At the restaurant we seat ourselves on the orange vinyl upholstery of a corner booth. A waitress comes to the table, “G’morning, what can I get you?” She stares at her order pad.
“Tea, please. Two teas,” Ali orders.
She looks up, “No food?”
“And two eggs,” I tell her, “scrambled with tomato and onion.” She scribbles on her pad. I look to Ali, who seems unexpectedly quiet. “I’m paying. Tell her what you’d like.”
“The same as my brother, please.”
“And do you have cilantro for the eggs?” I ask.
The waitress raises an eyebrow and shakes her head.
“Mint for the tea?” Ali asks.
She shakes her head again. “We got parsley if you want.”
Ali shakes his head. “Only the eggs then.” She walks away and he turns to me. “Can’t put parsley in my tea,” he says derisively. “Do you know how many attacks the Palestinians have endured?” He launches into what sounds like a prepared monologue, indignantly enumerating deaths and dates faster than I can process them. He repeats the word Palestinian in almost every sentence, until they seem to populate the whole world.
When he pauses for a breath, I interrupt. “It is not only the Palestinians.”
“Of course not!” He says in agreement, “All Muslim lands are under attack.”
“America’s at war with Afghanistan,” I say, “but Pakistan is supposedly a U.S. ally.”
Ali shakes his head sympathetically. “But the drones don’t stay on the Afghan side of the border.”
“No.” I tighten my fists until my knuckles turn white.
“And they kill our people…your father.” He looks at me with an expression of naked compassion.
I look up stunned. “How did you know?”
“It is written…all over your face.” He takes a moment. “Masha’allah, God willed it. We are brothers in this way.”
The waitress comes, setting down coffee cups on saucers, teabags still in their packets, a flimsy metal cream pitcher. Relieved at the distraction, I pour cream until the cup overflows. Ali grabs a bundle of sugar packets pouring the contents of one after another into his tea. As he stirs I reach for the sugar, finding only a single packet left among the saccharine.
“Was your father Taliban?”
“Ali!” I take offense. “Look at me. Do I look like my father might be Taliban?”
“Al Qaeda?”
I shoot him an angry look, won’t justify his question with an answer.
“Don’t look like that. You’d be surprised what Al Qaeda look like. Doctors, engineers, people who have money and influence, people tired of fighting local conflicts and who want to make a bigger impact.” He holds the cup Arabic style—at the rim rather than with the handle—and slurps. He glances up to gauge my reaction.
I sip my tea. Not sweet enough—the kind of tea that would have caused my father to scold the maid for being so stingy toward him.
“My father was just an innocent person also,” Ali continues, “PLO, intafadas, Fatah, none of these things he ever paid attention to.” He takes another sip and the hard edge of his prior monologue crumbles. “He always said he just wanted to raise children and olives. He used to say the Israelis want to raise children and olives too. Even, he admired the drip irrigation they invented and their crop breeding programs. He thought when there was peace, the Israelis would teach us to grow olives as good as they did.” He folds a used sugar packet in half over and over again, unable to make it small enough to disappear. “Look at me, he allowed me to come to America on Jewish American money!”
I think of my own father proudly sending me off to the West to study. Perhaps our fathers would have felt comfortable with each other, would have shared a cup of tea as Ali and I are now.
“He didn’t even hate America.” Ali unfolds the sugar packet, flattens the white paper against the Formica tabletop. “But now I do. How can a country like America, a powerful country, support a government that kills innocent people as my father, as yours?”
I clasp my hands together. I have not allowed myself to think that I hate this country, only that I owe my mother to take revenge against it. But how can I deny Ali’s question?
“The good thing about America,” Ali says, the hard edge creeping back in, “is that once you are inside her borders, you can do almost anything. There is money here, and powerful systems, you can get on the freeway and drive all the way across the country without a single checkpoint. Now that I’m here, I’ll use what America offers, let her know that she can’t just kill innocent people around the world. What will you do?”
The waitress arrives with two servings of eggs. “Eat your eggs, Ali,” I say as I would to my little son when I run out of answers to his questions.
Ali smiles, seizes his fork and scoops up the eggs in great hungry portions.
In the evening I call Majid, to let him know I have made the prayers he requested for our father.
“Good,” he says. “And did you meet Ali?”
His question leaves me speechless as I try to trace the connections that might link Ali and my brother.
“Ali,” Majid repeats, “the Palestinian?”
“Yes,” I say slowly, “how…?”
“Abu Omar has many friends around the world. I hear Ali is very interesting, you will want to get to know him better.”
“Why?”
“It’s always good to have a brother near us. Riaz and I are far from you. Please, think of Ali like one of us.”
The idea surprises, then comforts me. I have never associated anything in America with my brothers, have always felt isolated—though independent—in this other country. But a brother, a man who understands something more of my culture, the structure of my family, this could reconnect me to the community I felt in Shoukart’s grandfather’s home.
“Sure,” I say quietly, “I’m sure I’ll see him around.”
Ali comes to the mosque every morning. If I have arrived first, he always places his rug next to mine. The other men in the mosque will nod their heads, greet me politely, but Ali always talks to me, puts his arm around my shoulders, offering a warmth that satisfies a deep hunger.
On Saturday morning Ali is already sitting inside the mosque when I arrive with Michael.
My son silently turns his head back and forth to take in the surroundings. Everything will be unfamiliar to him; the Arabic calligraphy, the lacy latticework designs painted around the perimeter of the ceiling, the old men with orange henna camouflaging the white of their beards. We move to sit next to Ali. I instruct Michael to sit and I move his hands to rest properly in his lap. I told him in the car not to talk and to follow all of my movements.
As the imam leads us in the prayer, the familiar Arabic words settle into well-worn routes through my memories. I don’t remember how old I was when my father first took me to the masjid in our village, but it would not have been an unfamiliar place. I heard the call to prayer every day, the radio and the television always broadcast the Friday afternoon sermons—thankfully after the Star Trek episodes we watched religiously—the Koran with its elaborate calligraphy on the cover always rested on a carved wooden book rest in a nook in our hall. The masjid and the prayers were only a natural concentration of the Islam that permeated our everyday lives, the religion and culture that gave rise to our nation partitioned from India, separated from the Hindus with their pantheon of gods who looked down on us as if we were second-class citizens. But here in America, I have distanced myself so much from my culture that I have not even given my son the most basic introduction to Islam. My father would not mind Michael’s ignorance of the Prophet, the Pillars, and the guidance of the Hadiths, but perhaps he judges me for ignoring the food, the art, the sense of history and hospitality that made us Muslims as much as any doctrine.
In unison, the men around us bow down and we touch our heads to the ground, the sound of our collective prayers muffled by our closeness to the earth. I feel my son follow, a beat behind. My chest fills—almost painfully—as I shepherd him into this community. Anywhere in the world he will be welcomed in a mosque as part of the umma, part of the global community of Muslims. When my father made the Hajj, fulfilled his obligation to travel to Mecca once in his life, he returned not with a renewed sense of religiosity, but awed at the spectrum of the faithful, people of every color and culture, almost every language who endured the trip to participate in a massive display of common beliefs.
Michael understands nothing of the implications of his actions. His only motivation is to win my approval. So when we stand and turn to leave through the back door, I pat him on the head, tell him he has done well.
Ali is ahead of us, following a man dressed in a perfectly tailored dark suit, their shoulders touching repeatedly as they walk to their shoes. I cannot hear their words, Ali is unusually quiet, almost deferential to the man, whose thick, wavy black hair, softens to salt and pepper grey in his neatly trimmed beard. The man does not look back at me or anyone else. He slides his feet into a pair of immaculate leather wingtips. He moves to leave, pausing only to kiss Ali’s cheeks with four alternating kisses. I have intentionally unlearned this kind of physical intimacy, broken the habit I had of holding my male friends’ hands, resting our arms on each others’ shoulders when we walked to our classes, habits too easily mistaken for homosexuality in this culture.
Ali approaches us as I kneel down to help Michael into his shoes, pulling the Velcro straps closed. “Brother, introduce me to your son,” he says.
“This is Michael, my eldest son. Andrew is the baby.”
“Michael, like the arc angel.” Ali squeezes my son’s shoulder in greeting. “That makes you Abu Michael,” he says to me. The Arab custom of referring to a man as father of his eldest son feels contrived with my son’s American sounding name.
Another man, perhaps an Egyptian, approaches us, his new leather jacket pulled tight around his barrel-shaped belly. “Glad to see you bring your son.”
“The child is lucky enough to still have a father,” Ali’s retort is surprisingly bitter.
“We all lose our fathers,” the man says in return. “Mine is gone too,” he says as if picking up on an earlier conversation.
“But you lost yours to old age. We have lost ours to the infidels,” Ali shoots back indignantly.
“You don’t need to call them infidels,” the man says, “they were Israelis. You Palestinians need to learn to stop stirring the pot. When you kick a giant, he’ll always kick you back.” He turns to me, “Was your father also killed by the Israelis?”
“No,” I say quietly, “the Americans.”
“How? You are Afghan?”
“No, Pakistani. My father was killed in a drone attack near the Afghan border.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, his Arabic accent caressing the r’s. “Very unfortunate. For me, I love this country, she has given us much opportunity.”
“And in return, you have become stingy with your fellow Arabs.”
I am uneasy at Ali’s rudeness.
“Ali,” he says as if reprimanding a child, “be a man, take care of yourself. Once you have a family you’ll see the world is more than just politics and Islam.”
“And maybe you’ll see that America is the enemy, but she is blinding you with money and profit.”
The Egyptian releases a string of words in Arabic which I understand only in tone. Ali responds in kind, animating his words by rubbing his fingers together to indicate money. Perhaps Ali asked the man for money in the past.
The older man places his left hand on my shoulder, shakes my hand with his right. “I have argued enough with this young man on other days. I only want to say you are welcome, and of course your son is most welcome.” He turns to Michael, “You’re very handsome with your fair skin. Do you take after your mother? Where is she from?”
Michael, pleased to be included in the adult conversation, rushes with his response. “She’s American,” he says smiling.
Ali turns away.
“Very good, young man,” the Egyptian smiles, almost gloating. “You see Americans are modern tolerant people.” He pats Michael on the head and leaves.
“Salaam aleikum habibi,” Ali greets me affectionately through the phone.
“Hi, Ali,” I respond, intentionally avoiding the basic Arabic that I know well.
“My cousin is planning to get married next week. They’re spending a fortune on the wedding hall, they’re planning to have two live bands, one to play Arabic music, one to play rock ‘n roll. Can you imagine! What do they need rock ‘n roll for, can’t we even get married in our own tradition, without bowing down to Western style?”
“Ali,” I cut him off, before he can launch into a full-blown tirade about the evils of cultural hegemony. “What about your friend? I’m calling about your text,” I hold myself to American-style directness on the phone.
“Yes,” he says, “my friend. We need a photo of you, a passport-style photo. But listen, you cannot go to just any passport photographer. We have our own photographer. He’s in Glendale, a Syrian guy. You just go and tell him your name is Ibrahim. He’ll take your photo and keep it there, and then my friend’s contact will go and pick it up. You don’t take it with you.”
“Wait, who is your friend? What does he do? You said in your text you have a friend who could help me.”
“He’s the uncle of a man who comes to the mosque.”
I remember the man in the wingtips.
“The uncle can help with passports, visas, these things.”
In Pakistan I always knew somebody who could forge certificates from colleges, technical schools, universities. These were the currency many of my impatient or poorly connected classmates used to apply for jobs abroad, the credentials they gave to labor agents. My father disapproved of the forgeries, not on principle, but because he had seen misfortune or even disaster follow everyone he knew of who used them; the job would be lost, the man would be injured, his wife would miscarry while he was abroad. In one case, we even heard of a young man who was stabbed and killed in a London pub after he went abroad with fake certificates about his education. But Ali’s connection is not trading in shortcuts to jobs.
“What for?” I ask. “I already have a passport, two in fact, if you count the expired Pakistani one.”
“He helps the organization move people around.”
I don’t know which organization. I am afraid to ask.
“Blacklists can cause problems sometimes.”
“But Ali, I don’t need to travel anywhere.”
“I knew of a man who planned an action on a bus in Israel. He sent his ID and his father’s dagger with another man who actually carried the explosives onto the bus. The neighbors identified the dagger on the dead man to the intelligence people. Those fuckers left the planner’s family alone, because they thought he was already dead. But actually he fled to Morocco.”
“So?”
“So when the investigation died down, he called his wife and children to him in Morocco where they were reunited and lived together.”
I am silent trying to understand how this story relates to me.
“We both need to make a point to this country,” Ali speaks as if he were explaining something to a child. “You have a wife and children. I don’t.”
“I’m not ready for this. I’m still thinking about what I need to do. I don’t need a passport.”
“Not yet.” Ali pauses for effect. “But you don’t know what is written for you. And when you do understand, you won’t want to be waiting for this detail.”
I absorb his words. He seems to know more than I do. What could be the harm in taking a photo? “What will it cost?”
“If you wanted to buy a passport this good, from a good country like Canada, the black market could charge you maybe six, eight thousand dollars. But this is my friend, he’s interested in your situation, he’ll provide it to you, no cost.”
Labor agents in Pakistan also promised people fabulous opportunities for no charge up front. But I knew laborers in Dubai who had not seen their families for three years because they were paying off their labor agents for ostensibly free visas rather than buying tickets home. I switch the phone to my other ear.
“Then what’s my obligation? What’s his interest?”
“His interest is the same as yours. He believes that this bitch of a country can’t go around the world killing our people without any consequence.”
I bristle at his words. “I don’t know. Not now.”
“The Syrian is at Yerevan Travel in Glendale.”
I laugh. “Yerevan, the capital of Armenia? The Syrian’s geography isn’t very good.”
“No one notices him in the Armenian community, you know the Armenians run everything in Glendale. Anyway, the shop is on San Fernando three blocks west of Brand Boulevard.”
“I’m going to sleep, Ali. I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Damam, fine.” His tone softens, and his voice fills with warmth. “Whatever is written will happen. Sleep well, my brother.”
I walk in the store telling myself I will buy milk and bread and coffee, and maybe call Kathryn to see what else she needs. I don’t get more than a few steps down the center aisle before I stop, close my eyes, and breathe deeply of the smells of dried thyme, walnut, and pomegranate. By blocking out the view of all the looping Armenian script on the labels, my olfactory memory tells me I am at the Lebanese grocery in my old neighborhood in Dubai. A long ago habit compels me to look for small bitter green olives and hard salty haloumi cheese for frying with tomatoes and onions, and then go next door—as if I was still in Dubai—to the Afghan baker where I will leave my coins on his counter and hold out my newspaper to receive the hot flat circle of bread he will retrieve from the intense heat of his clay tandoor.
I must look strange in my paralysis of memory. The Armenian butcher behind the counter asks me if I need help. I shake my head and the force of my current reality causes me to stumble. I reach out for the shelf to steady myself, stare at a jar of pistachios packed in honey.
I will buy my things and go home. This is just a side trip into Glendale, I just wanted some imported foods, I tell myself. I make my way around the store, quickly placing items in my red plastic basket. I buy Palestinian olive oil, imaging that the Armenians must be sympathetic to the Palestinians in their struggle for their own state. I pay for everything with cash, rather than my bank card—no need to leave a record that I was here, I tell myself.
In the parking lot, I will myself to walk to my car. I am going home, I assert in my mind. But my feet will not obey, they carry me into the storefront three doors down. A small bell clangs as the door of Yerevan Travel closes behind me. It is written.
I lay in bed with my sons. I murmur lines from the Koran about a father’s love. I hope that on some level these lines will lodge in their memories, that should they suffer in the future, these verses will remind them of the intensity of my love.
I can hear Kathryn in the other room, finishing with the dishes, packing the children’s things for the next day. I will not think about the way we argued on another night about revenge, about the things I could only say to her with alcohol again in my system. She is a strong woman, responsible. If only she were Pakistani, she would understand my situation. But if she were Pakistani, we might not be here, I might not be the one chosen by my family as most qualified to assuage our grief. But it was written that I should marry her. It was written that I should suffer this way.