The air hostess pantomimes the safety procedures, points to the emergency exits with practiced boredom. My foot shakes, almost uncontrollably. I remind myself the foot is not mine. I am no longer Rashid Siddique. The foot belongs to Srabjeet Dhillon, Pakistani-born Canadian citizen. This flight will return me to my “home” in Vancouver and then I will take a connecting flight to Dubai.
We taxi down the runway and I force myself not to look out the windows. This is not my city, not my country, no longer my home. I reach for the in-flight magazine, flip through the pages without seeing any of the images. The plane accelerates and lifts off the ground, I feel the invisible tether that holds us to the earth strain and then snap against the force of movement. For a moment I am weightless, homeless, disconnected from both the head and tail of my family. I must think only about myself during this trip, I must be alert to any commotion, any security alert, or unusual announcements from the pilot. If someone comes to me to ask questions, I must have my answers, my story ready. I close my eyes, I will stay alert with my ears. The woman next to me chats to her husband about who will pick them up from the airport and then about the grocery shopping they will need to do. I resent the triviality of their lives, then envy their connection to each other, to the person who will deliver them from the airport. I wonder about Kathryn and the children. Exhaustion overtakes me and I drift into a black sleep.
I hear a question, once, then repeated, twice, three times. “Sir,” the woman is starting to sound agitated. I open my eyes, scrambling to remember how I will answer questions, which pieces of false information I will provide. “Sir, do you want anything to drink?”
I exhale, letting my shoulders drop. “Water, please.” She hands me a plastic cup and I pour the water into my mouth, feeling only a void where my body should be. Trapped between the other passengers, I fear the flight crew. Can they tell what I have done? What in fact did I do? I took revenge. I honored my family, I tell myself. Maybe Ali pulled me through what was written for me, to take a stand against an aggressive and inhumane military. Innocent blood shed for innocent blood.
Paralyzed with anxiety, I do not leave my seat during the flight. So once the plane lands and I walk the jetway unmolested, I dart into the nearest restroom. I relieve the pressure in my bladder, only to understand my vulnerability as soon as I leave the stall. I pull the wool coat out of my bag, pull up the collar against a phantom cold and join the flow of people on the concourse. Without speaking to anyone, I check in for my flight to Dubai at the electronic kiosk. Without baggage to check, I proceed directly to the security line. I resist the urge to seek out a television screen, to stand before it and wait for the ticker line at the bottom of the screen to tell me about what I have set in motion.
I look at the floor as I pass through the metal detector. I wish to be invisible against their eyes. So many ways they have to look into my physical presence. But this will give them no clue of who I really am, the history of my family and my actions. I must shield the contents of my heart and my mind, protect my memories so they will not betray me.
I brace myself for the pressure of a guard’s arm, for the sternness of an alerted voice. But only the usual irritated flurry of the airport surrounds me. Within minutes I am on another airplane, strapped into a seat. The plane ascends into the sky and as if my heart felt only the decreasing pressure of the atmosphere outside, it expands, almost to bursting. I am filled with a giddy lightness. I have done what was written for me. Somehow I have accomplished my mother’s wish and have escaped not only the country, but the continent of those who murdered my father. I look at my hands, press them into fists and open them again to expose my palms. They are copies of my father’s hands. When I was a child, I wondered at how big his hands were, the flat nails and calluses, always clean, despite his work. I touch each of my fingers in turn. Perhaps my father was working through them. Perhaps he recognized them as his own and took control of them. I interlace these fingers, his or mine, I can’t be sure, and rest them in my lap, closing my eyes to pray for my father’s soul. May it rest now.
When the meal comes, the man in the next seat passes me the little plastic tray, making an opening for conversation. He asks if I have been to Dubai before. I begin to answer yes, but then catch myself. Has Srabjeet been to Dubai before?
“I flew through on my way to Canada.”
“I have not been before,” he says, a faint roll on his r hints at an Arabic accent. “I flew from Beirut directly to Montreal when I emigrated.”
I nod my head, hoping to end the exchange, but he continues. “I will be teaching Islamic history in Dubai. Well, not exactly in Dubai, but nearby, at the American University of Shaharjah.”
“Sharjah?” I ask, correcting him.
“Yes. I meant Sharjah. How do you know it?”
I shouldn’t have said anything. I shrug my shoulders, allowing for the possibility that the name is common knowledge.
“Well, I understand it’s a very good university. I’ll be teaching about Islamic history, you know, the time when we dominated the world because of the power of our collective intellect, our grasp of mathematics and astronomy, poetry and geography. We could, of course, return to that golden age. But we are continually disgraced by a small group of radicals. You know, people with narrow minds, bent only on showing the West they have devised clever ways to surprise and kill people, like those crazy people in Los Angeles.” He takes a bite of his food. “You are a fellow Muslim, yes?”
I shake my head. No. My stomach turns at this small act of renunciation, this denial of my identity. I push my food away. “Good luck with your teaching.” I say to close the conversation. I push my seat back and shut my eyes against his opinions.
On the screen of my mind I see an endless series of images. The helicopter’s view of cars on the freeway, the aluminum trays in Ali’s kitchen, Michael explaining the lions in the movie, Ali bowing down in the mosque, my mother throwing stones at the sky. I am not one of those radicals. My reasons are my own. My father was killed. And before that our family was nearly decimated in the Partition of India, and before that the Hindus treated Muslims as worse than the Untouchables. And still the West fights wars in our lands as if they were entitled to our resources—the oil, the water, the territory—then they leave our people in poverty. Only the very smartest, the very richest leave to join the West…as I did. Stop thinking, I tell myself. Do not recriminate yourself for obeying your mother, for trying to protect your wife and sons, for following your fate. None of this would have been possible if I had not come to America, if I had not met Kathryn. Perhaps this was all part of my fate, which only now I recognize.