America the
Great Equalizer

At first Biks, too, hadn’t understood what the fuss was all about. The guy had robbed a store. Biks had seen the grainy video in which he had shoved the Indian shopkeeper out of the way and walked away with the cigars. Even in that video he appeared mean and scary looking. Why were people now going on as if he were a charming, dimple-faced young boy who got shot by a racist cop?

He said so one evening in a Nepali gathering in Skokie, and he found many in agreement with him. “These blacks,” said a girl who worked at a computer firm and made tons of money, “they’ll cry racism at the first opportunity they get.” There were a chorus of yeses, and an elderly woman said, “They play the race card, ke, race card. Bujhenau?” It was obvious she relished saying “race card.” Others gave examples from their own lives about how the kaleys were lazy, took advantage of the system, and possessed criminal minds.

Biks became silent and watched them. Half of them were very dark people themselves—As dark as I am, thought Biks, self-consciously—yet they referred to the blacks as kaleys. The computer girl was darkish. The fat married man from Bhairawa and his silent wife and two children were so dark they looked like some ancient aboriginal people. The young engineer wearing the i love nepal T-shirt was dark.

Yet here they were, calling other people dark. Of course, they were using kaley as a racial identifier, not merely as “black skin,” but it still sounded hilarious when dark people from one part of the world used “darkie” to put down people from another part of the world. When he’d started the conversation about Michael Brown, he’d not anticipated that it’d so quickly devolve into talk about the inferiority and criminality of blacks.

Fools, he’d thought, all of them, people who had no sense of history. Biks knew this history; he’d studied it. Over the course of the evening, as he heard his compatriots speak as if blacks didn’t deserve this country into which they’d been brought as slaves, in chains and packed together like sardines in ships, a type of understanding dawned on him. The smaller truth might be that Michael Brown was not a victim, but the larger truth was something else.

That night he called Seema. It was early in the morning in Nepal. A man picked up the phone, presumably her father. Biks hung up. He checked her Facebook page. She’d never been a heavy Facebook user; her last entry was three months ago when she’d written about a social activist who’d passed away. Biks had offered his condolences beneath her post, but she hadn’t “liked” it, so he’d sent her an email, knowing she wouldn’t respond, just like she hadn’t responded to the other emails he’d sent.

In the past, after failing to reach her at home, he’d tried her mobile, but a woman’s annoying automated voice always informed him that the number was busy: “Tapailey dialgarnubhaeko number ahiley byasta chha.” It did the same tonight, so he tried the home number again.

A woman picked up after a number of rings. It sounded like Seema. His heartbeat quickened. “Seema?” he said.

There was a pause. “She’s not here.”

It was Seema, he was certain, but then he thought the voice could belong to a servant. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Don’t know.”

He waited, hoping she would talk more so he could ascertain her identity, but when the voice said nothing further, he said, “Could you tell Seema that Biks called and tell her that I need to talk to her? Either on Skype or on the phone? Here, take down my phone number.” He paused, then said again, “Seema?” But the other side had hung up.

Fall semester started. He began getting into heated arguments at Nepali gatherings. “You all are racists,” he told them.

Now every time he spoke, he imagined Seema watching him, like an eye hovering above him. The third eye. What would she think of him now, getting all riled up about this thing? She’d probably say, “What’s wrong with you, Biks?” He imagined her thinking, You’ve turned into a loser.

Yes, I might be a loser, he answered her back in his mind, but what’s going on is also not right. What all these people said about blacks was not right. They feared blacks, discriminated against them even as they themselves were targets of discrimination in the white world where they worked. A middle-aged woman who worked at Jewel Osco complained about her white customers yelling at her because they couldn’t understand her accent. “You come here and take our jobs,” her customers said, “and you can’t speak English.”

A young man who sold used cars in a dealership said that he was the constant butt of jokes of his white colleagues. They mimicked him, sometimes feigning “bad smell” when he was near them. The manager once told him, “Maybe that sales pitch works in the Third World—don’t use it here.”

“You all are immigrants,” Biks told his compatriots, gesticulating with a beer in his hand, “and you’re prejudiced against people who’ve lived here for centuries.”

“You arrived here yesterday,” someone said, “and you judge us.”

“I may be a newbie,” said Biks, who was a second-year graduate student in political science at Northern Illinois University, “but I know more about this country’s history than all you yokels. Slavery doesn’t matter? All that lynching doesn’t matter? Have you hillbillies heard about Jim Crow? Segregation? You think all of this is happening in a vacuum?”

Biks recalled his early days at Northern Illinois. In the cafeteria, he’d find himself sitting next to students who were Pakistani or Indian, sometimes with the occasional Nepali. The white students sat by themselves, and the black students formed their own clusters. A couple of times, he’d sat at the black table, but it had been an uncomfortable experience. It seemed like the black students didn’t know why he had joined their table. He thought he heard someone mutter “faggot” under his breath, and he saw a couple of them kicking each other under the table. He exchanged a few words with the student next to him, but the student had a smirk on his face, and the others said something to him, something Biks didn’t catch, in rapid English—some sort of a black dialect, Biks had thought at that time. The experience had left him slightly depressed and insecure.

“I don’t need your history lesson,” said a restaurant owner from Des Plaines to Biks. “I’ve lived in this great country for twenty years.” He put out his hands in front of him. “See these? All these burns and cuts? That restaurant I built with my own two hands.”

“And you’ll take my restaurant only from my cold dead hands,” said a young man whose hairstyle could only be described as a mohawk.

The restaurant owner held up his hand to quiet the laughter. “That so-called Michael Brown was a thug, like most of these kaleys are. I know because I’ve tried working with them. It’s in their genes. And I’m glad he got shot. End of story.”

“Khel khattam paisa hazam,” someone else said. “But look at them, acting like animals, robbing and looting.”

They sympathized with the Indian store clerk who had been manhandled by Michael Brown, even though Indians often didn’t feature well in the conversations at these gatherings. “These kaleys don’t want to work, but they rob decent people like us who want to work,” someone said. Another person expressed irritation with “all this talk about race-face” and suggested that they play cards. A group immediately sat down on the floor and began to play Flush, and the hostess hurried to make tea, and someone opened a second bottle of whiskey.

Biks went to a corner with a beer. Purushottam Uncle came up to him and said, “What has happened to you these days? Why do you get so agitated? I thought there was going to be a fistfight.”

“I was ready for a fight. We all need to fight ignorance, Purushottam Uncle, don’t you understand?”

“There’s slavery in Nepal, too,” Purushottam Uncle said. “Isn’t our kamaiya system of bonded laborers slavery? Why do you have to talk only about American slaves?”

“Oh, so because slavery is still alive in Nepal, it’s okay?”

“Let it go, Biks,” Purushottam Uncle said. He taught English at a community college but still carried a pronounced Nepali accent. Biks had often wondered if his students made fun of him, like students did of Chinese professors at NIU who taught math or computer science in incomprehensible accents. A relative of Biks’s mother, Purushottam Uncle was a green card holder who’d lived in Chicago for years, and had promised her that he’d look after Biks in America. “I need to talk to you about something,” Purushottam Uncle now said. “In private.”

The two pushed the screen door open and went out to the deck. In a corner, a couple of girls and a boy huddled together, but when they saw Biks and Purushottam Uncle, they quickly disengaged and went down to the large backyard, leaving behind them a waft of marijuana smell.

“This new generation can’t party without ganja,” Purushottam Uncle said in dismay. “Hettiraka! What has this world come to?” He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Biks. “One of those girls”—he pointed to the group that was now smoking near the bushes—“her father is Dr. Gupta, that neurosurgeon, but look at her, smoking ganja and whatnot. I hear she is . . .” He looked at Biks meaningfully, but Biks ignored him. He was still thinking of retorts he could have used on the restaurant owner.

The two smoked in silence. Finally Purushottam Uncle said, “So I’m assuming you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“I thought so.”

For a moment Biks wondered if something had happened to his mother—an illness, hospitalization, discovery of cancer. He hadn’t called her in a couple of weeks. “What, Purushottam Uncle? Why are you being so secretive?”

“I’ll tell you, but remember, Biks, okay, don’t kill the messenger.” He said “don’t kill the messenger” in English, raising a finger as though he were admonishing school students back in Nepal.

Biks took his last drag and threw the butt toward the lawn. “Just say it. I need to go home soon.”

“I’ve heard that she got married.”

Biks put his hands into his pockets and stared into the darkness.

“It’s a recent thing.” When Biks didn’t respond, Purushottam Uncle said, “Biks?”

“Who is your source?”

“Why implicate people with names? My source isn’t the type to spread rumors.”

“Okay, thank you for letting me know,” Biks said. “Thank you,” he added for mock emphasis and went back inside. Standing against the wall, he watched the card game, taking long swigs from his beer. Purushottam Uncle also came back in and stood in the corner, watching him.

“Aren’t you going to play Flush, Biks?” the hostess asked.

“He’s still worrying about slavery,” a player said.

“Fuck you,” Biks said to him, but he sat down to play. He played hard, taking risks he normally wouldn’t. At one juncture he tried to bluff his way through a lousy hand, but the other person wouldn’t relent, and at the end of that round he lost about fifty dollars. Soon he got up and left the party, catching a ride with someone who was headed in his direction, to the house he shared with two Indian roommates on the edge of the campus.

He called Seema that night. He first tried the home number, then her mobile number. No answers. Marriage preparations, he thought. He thought of the banker, the one he’d seen at the hotel where she worked. Biks had gone to her hotel one day to surprise her, and there was a tall, handsome man in a suit chatting with her near the reception. The man was laughing and leaning close to her, and Seema was smiling. The man caressed her arm. She saw Biks by the door to the lobby, and an expression of alarm passed through her face. Later he learned that he was a successful banker, the son of her father’s colleague.

Biks called Ira, Seema’s friend. Ira had occasionally hung out with Biks and Seema, and Biks had her mobile number jotted in his address book.

“Arre, Biks!” Ira said when she picked up, sounding pleased. “Long time no hear. How is America?”

After some chitchat he asked about Seema.

Ira became quiet.

“So what I’ve heard is true,” Biks said.

“What can I say, Biks?”

“Did you go to the wedding?”

“I’m finding it difficult to talk about this with you.”

“Nothing difficult. It can’t be that hard to say whether you went to the wedding or not.”

“Yes, I went,” she said, barely audible.

“How was it?”

“Biks.”

“Please, Ira, tell me how was the wedding?”

“You want to punish yourself? It was bhavya.”

“Bhavya?”

“The grandest wedding I’ve attended.”

“Where was it held?”

“At the Hyatt Regency, in Bouddha.”

Ah, of course. Seema’s parents wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Who did she get married to?” Then, before Ira could answer, he said, “Wait, don’t tell me, but do tell me whether she looked happy?”

Ira didn’t answer.

Something changed in Biks after that night. It was as if he stopped caring about the world or his place in it. Things no longer made sense. He stopped going to classes. It was very hard to get up in the morning. When his roommates tried to wake him up in the morning, Biks curled over to the other side and waved them off. Around noon he got up, drank some coffee, then smoked a joint, after which his thoughts became manageable. He watched TV for an hour or two, first CNN, then FOX, then CNN again. News about Ferguson saturated everything. Racists, all of them, he muttered to himself.

Toward late afternoon, after the effect of pot wore off a bit, he drank some beer. As part of his graduate assistantship, he had evening duty at the media center, where he worked for a few hours. But he stopped going to his job, too. There were phone calls. A secretary from the department called and left a message on his machine, asking him if he was sick, if everything was all right. He didn’t respond to any of them. His money was running out, but he no longer cared about that. When Purushottam Uncle called, he pretended he was too busy with schoolwork.

Rich girl. Pretty girl. Fair Seema. No wonder she had rejected him. Not only was he very dark, his hairline was already receding. He thought of the word rejection when he realized what she’d done, and it generated in him a feeling of shame and anger. For the first time it occurred to him that she had rejected him not only because his family wasn’t as established and wealthy as hers but also because of the color of his skin. The realization startled him, for he had not thought this way before. She had never given him a reason to think this way. In fact, she had always professed that she loved his dark skin. She’d run her finger over his face and say, “My kalu Biks, how I love you so.” In the past he’d loved to hear her say, “My kalu Biks,” but now he recalled a teacher from the seventh grade who’d always demonstrated antipathy toward him.

The teacher would run his index finger down Biks’s cheek, then inspect his finger and say, “This one is such a darkie, I’m afraid I’m going to get coal smeared all over my finger.”

Watching the anger over Ferguson brought back the memory of his first day on American soil, an incident he’d discounted until now as part of the ritual of entering America. At Chicago O’Hare airport more than a year ago, the immigration officer had looked at his passport and asked, “Is Nepal an Islamic country?” Biks said no. “Then why does your passport have a green cover?” The officer repeatedly looked at the passport and the I-20 and at Biks’s face. “Do you have relatives in yo-yee?” When Biks expressed confusion, the officer said, speaking slowly, with controlled hostility, “UAE. United Arab Emirates. I’m asking if you have family in UAE.” When Biks said no, the officer asked what the purpose of his visit to Dubai was. The Dubai trip was for a conference paid for by the travel agency in Nepal where Biks had worked. “What type of travel conference?” the officer asked. Biks couldn’t think. Much of the time he’d spent at the hotel pool, drinking beer, talking to Seema on Skype. The officer waved over a second officer, who escorted Biks to a room in a corner of the immigration area.

After half an hour, he was escorted farther inside and grilled by a woman officer with high cheekbones: “Are you of Arab ancestry? Do you have a criminal record in Nepal? What’s your father’s occupation? What was the name of the hotel you stayed in Dubai? Do most Nepalese look like you, with curly hair? Don’t they have, uh, different skin color?”

He’d become afraid that he’d begin to speak to the interrogating officers in Nepali, as if he were addressing cops in Nepal: Ke ho yesto? Timiharule jathabhavi garna pauchau? America jasto thauma pani yesto annyaya? Instead he said in a calm voice, “The American consulate in Nepal checked all my documents and gave me the visa.”

The officer interjected and said she had the right to deny him entry. “I have the power,” she said. He was escorted to the outer room again and asked to wait. Biks noticed other passengers in the room: a red-faced white man who was speaking fast to a teenager in what sounded like a European language; a family of small-bodied Muslims, the woman in a burqa, the man wearing a skullcap, with two children, one of whom was watching Biks with her thumb in her mouth. Biks observed the baggage claim area through the glass windows and didn’t recognize any of the passengers from his plane, which meant that they had all left. From a corner of the terminal came a crowd of new passengers, and workers in loud voices directed them to proper lanes.

After an hour the officer returned, handed back Biks’s passport and documents and said, “Welcome to America.”

In mid-September Biks ran into Saurav when returning from a bar, The Thirst, one late afternoon. Saurav, who was active in a Nepali organization in the Chicago area, was the first Nepali Biks had met when he landed. He had picked Biks up from O’Hare and had helped him get oriented those first few days. Then they’d lost contact.

“What’s up with the beard?” Saurav asked.

“Just like this, yaar,” Biks said, caressing his bushy growth.

“Diusai dankayera ayeko jasto chhani, ke ho?”

“Just a glass or two, yaar. At The Thirst. I was feeling bored.”

They ended up in Saurav’s apartment that evening, drinking. Lisa and her baby had gone to her mother’s house in Toledo for a couple of days. Saurav was pursuing his PhD in physics at Northwestern, had been working on his dissertation for years now. He’d met Lisa in a bar. Lisa had told him she couldn’t be sure who the baby’s father was.

Biks finally told him that he’d quit school and was now short on funds. He told him about Seema. Saurav sympathized, kept saying, “Tragedy has befallen you.” But it was not good, Saurav said, that Biks had abandoned his studies. “That might be a bigger mistake than the tragedy that has befallen you,” he said.

Biks said he agreed, but that there was simply no way he could focus on academics right now. “I don’t know where life is going to take me from here,” he said. As they got drunker, Saurav made an offer: Biks should move in with him and Lisa. They had a room meant for the baby, but the baby slept in the same room with Lisa and Saurav anyway. When Biks said that Saurav should first consult with Lisa, Saurav dismissed his concern. “Maybe you can help with the groceries,” he said.

“But I don’t have any money,” Biks said.

“I’ll get you a job,” Saurav said. With an exaggerated accent that could have been Middle Eastern or European, he added, “You will be rolling in bread, my dear friend from the mountains.”

Lisa wasn’t pleased when she returned to find Biks occupying their spare room. She and Saurav argued behind closed doors in their room while Biks sat in the living room with a beer and the TV on, watching protestors shout “Arrest Darren Wilson” at their elected leaders in a county meeting in St. Louis. His phone buzzed. Another text from Purushottam Uncle: everything okay? why aren’t you picking up the phone? Biks didn’t respond.

The argument inside seemed to die down, and Biks heard the bed creak and Lisa moan softly.

“She thinks I’m going to marry her, Biks,” Saurav said a few days later when Lisa was out. “She wants to go to Nepal. Wants to have a Nepali wedding there. What do you think, Biks? Should I take her to Nepal, introduce her to Pitaji and Mataji? Ask her to do pranam to them?” He pressed his palms together and bowed.

“You’re not serious about her?”

“I’m a playaaah,” Saurav had said, but Biks knew that he liked Lisa, more than he wanted to admit. Saurav just couldn’t imagine taking her to Nepal, especially to his aging parents who lived in a village in Parbat. His uncles had homes in Kathmandu, but even they would be aghast if he brought back a bideshi, not to mention an unwed bideshi with a baby whose father was unknown. Sometimes Saurav acted out the chaos that would ensue: his aunts, all super religious women, in a tizzy; his older uncle advising him in a grave voice that a liaison with a kuiriney would never work; his younger uncle, himself a Don Juan known for his extramarital affairs, telling Saurav laughingly what a fool he was for not understanding that these goris were good only for fun and not for marriage.

Saurav got Biks a job at a gas station about a mile from his apartment. Saurav knew the Indian owner, but Biks soon discovered that Saurav knew everybody and everybody knew Saurav. The Greek manager of Town Market where he bought groceries greeted him by name. The Vietnamese butcher gave him the special cuts of goat meat he liked. The Somali car mechanic did his oil change for free.

The gas station owner was a paan-chewing middle-aged man with a beer belly who called Saurav “dada.” Biks was employed for the evening shift; he’d get paid six dollars an hour, which, Biks was told, was not bad for an illegal.

This is what my life has come to, Biks thought the first evening at the job. There I was in Nepal, dreaming about spending my life with a woman as beautiful as Seema, and here I am working illegally in a gas station owned by an Indian whose mouth is always bulging with red-juiced paan. How could I not have seen my life’s trajectory?

His college friends in Nepal had been surprised when Seema fell for him. When she started coming to Biks’s house, Mamu, an educated woman who taught school, had said, “How fair Seema is. Biks, how did you manage this? She is so fair and beautiful, she looks like a model. She’s not going to end up deceiving you, is she?”

He’d scolded his mother for her questions but he’d also understood where she came from: she herself was a dark-skinned woman who’d faced taunts and comments, often from her own mother-in-law, who, Biks remembered in stunned moments of rage, was an illiterate hillbilly who had to sign documents by dabbing her thumb in ink. But he also knew that Mamu approved of Seema not only because she was gori-ramri but also because she came from a well-to-do family with old money. Mamu went out of her way to cater to and please Seema. Biks had thought it was a bit excessive, Mamu’s fawning, but he had also been secretly pleased. Once he and Seema got married, he’d mused, there’d be no friction between his mother and his wife.

But that time never came. Now it became clear to him that Seema never had intentions of introducing him to her family, let alone make a case that she ought to marry him. No wonder she’d not objected when he’d initially talked about his desire to go to America for further studies. Not only had she not objected, she’d encouraged him to apply. And he had assumed that his going to America was part of their future together, perhaps even an investment in it. He’d imagined that even if he were to go alone, she’d soon follow him within months, and they’d solve the problem of potential irreconcilability between their two families. What was America if not the great equalizer, the eraser of differences, of caste and creed?

By the end of the first week, Biks had come to hate his job. There was a pervasive smell of gas that infiltrated his nostrils even when he was inside, behind the counter. He made mistakes when he sold lottery tickets. The customers became irate for small reasons: for the store not carrying their brand of cigarettes or beer, for it not having an air station for their tires, for the line at the counter being too long. Whenever a cop car showed up, Biks felt like he should duck or go into the back room, but that’d have made him look even more suspicious.

As the days started getting colder, he became convinced that Seema had rejected him because of his dark skin more than because of his family status. “Do you want to live with someone as dark as him for the rest of your life?” he imagined Seema’s mother saying to her. Her mother would stroke Seema’s hair and say, “Such a fair, beautiful daughter I have. I can’t think of someone this fair and beautiful with someone like him.” Seema’s father would be somewhere in the background, mumbling about dark men and their dark hearts. “Look, chhori,” Seema’s mother would say. “The banker is tall and handsome. And look how goro he is, totally matching your skin color. You two would look so good together. Plus he’s successful, has a name, comes from such a reputable family.”

This was all too exaggerated, of course. There were moments of inactivity at the gas station, especially after ten at night, and Biks’s mind went off on a spin. He got off around midnight, walked back to the apartment and curled into bed. He slept until noon, woke up depressed, then drank some cheap beer.

One day Purushottam Uncle showed up at the gas station, and there was a mild argument as Biks served customers. Purushottam Uncle said that Biks was ruining his life, and Biks said that he was an adult and didn’t care for Purushottam Uncle’s guidance. Purushottam Uncle appeared hurt. “Your mother,” he said, “has faith in me, that I’d keep an eye out for your well-being. How can I fulfill my duty if you don’t even talk to me?” Finally Biks promised him that he’d keep him updated, and that he’d also call his mother regularly. In return, Purushottam Uncle sadly and reluctantly agreed not to inform Biks’s mother that he was now an illegal.

In October, Ferguson exploded around him. It was on the news all the time. Of course, of course, he thought. This has been going on for centuries.

“This country is hopeless,” he said once at a Nepali party. His beard had grown so much that Saurav now called him a bushman. The gas station owner had asked him to at least trim his beard so that the customers wouldn’t think he was a terrorist. “Arre, dada, you’re looking more and more like Osama bin Laden,” the owner said.

Go fuck yourself, thought Biks. A type of recklessness had come over him. These days when he crossed the street, he did it slowly, causing irate drivers to honk at him. Once he was taking his time crossing the street on his way to work when a group of young white men with crew-cut hair—possibly frat boys—shouted, “Move it, nigger,” and sped past, laughing.

At home, when he caught his reflection in the mirror, he didn’t recognize himself. You look scary, nigger. He wondered what Seema would think of him now. He imagined her running her fingers through his beard, saying, “So sexy, Biks.”

As November rolled in, everyone was discussing what the grand jury decision would be for Darren Wilson. It’s a white man’s world, was the refrain among his black customers. “That white cop was acquitted even before he shot Michael Brown,” one customer said.

In the apartment, it was exactly the opposite. “That habsi robbed a cigar store,” Saurav said one Saturday. He was rocking the baby in his arms. “You don’t think that’s relevant?”

“Yes, he was no angel himself,” Biks said. “But did he have to die? If he were a white boy, he’d have spent a night in jail, then let go. But no, a black man has to be put down. We’re all niggers. That’s how this system is. This is the history of colonialism. Coolies. In India, in Africa. That’s what this uproar is all about.”

Lisa came from the kitchen, shaking a baby bottle. “Do you know how dangerous these blacks are?” she said. “My uncle was a cop in Memphis. Every time he went into a black neighborhood, he didn’t know if he’d come back out alive.”

Biks was going to respond, but now Lisa had taken the baby and was trying to feed her. The baby was gurgling and squirming in her arms, and it seemed wrong to have such a heated discussion with a mother feeding a hungry baby. But it was Lisa herself who continued railing against blacks, or “African’ts,” as she derisively put it. She blamed affirmative action, which she said discriminated against whites. She said that she had attended a mostly black school in Gary and had been constantly harassed and taunted for her skin color. “By the time I graduated, I hated who I was,” she said as she rocked back and forth to calm the baby. “It wasn’t until I went to college that I finally came to terms with being fucking white.” She pointed a finger at Biks. “You’re speaking out of your ass.” The baby, mouth and throat moving as she sucked the milk, was watching her mother intently. “You didn’t grow up here. You’re clueless.”

“And you’re an ignorant white—” Biks stopped himself before he could complete the sentence.

“White what? White what?” The baby still in her arms, the bottle still in the baby’s mouth, Lisa moved toward him threateningly. “Spit it out, motherfucker.”

“Lisa,” Saurav said.

“You say one word defending him,” she told Saurav, “and I’ll kick both your asses out of this house.”

Biks went to his room and shut the door.

A couple of hours later Saurav knocked on Biks’s door and asked him if he wanted to go to The Thirst. At first Biks said no, but Saurav persisted, and the two friends went to the bar. After a couple of beers, Biks asked Saurav what attracted him to Lisa.

“Come on, let it go, yaar,” Saurav said.

“No, no, I’m just curious, that’s all.” And it was true: Biks had often wondered about it. Saurav the physicist, who with his advisor had co-authored an article for the American Journal of Physics, who was referred to as “brilliant” by many, both Nepalis and Americans. And Lisa, who had barely passed high school, whose idea of reading was flipping through Vogue magazine, who called Obama a Kenyan, a Muslim, a communist, a community organizer, always referring to him by his full name, “Barack Hussein Obama,” with a long hiss on Hussein. She listened to Rush Limbaugh on the radio in the afternoon, volume high, more often after Ferguson, more often now as if to taunt Biks.

“Tell it like it is, Rush,” Saurav sometimes said more out of amusement than any conviction as Limbaugh’s hectoring voice filled the house. One time, when Limbaugh made a derogatory comment about a caller with a pronounced Indian accent, Saurav laughed and, when Lisa was out of earshot, said to Biks, “Isn’t he such an idiot? Maharushi!”

“Lisa’s easy to be with,” Saurav said now. “I don’t have to prove myself with her.”

“Prove what?”

“Prove anything.”

“What are you going to say to your parents? To your uncles?”

“About what?”

“About Lisa.”

“I’m not going to say anything.”

“You’re going to keep her hidden?”

Saurav laughed.

“For how long?”

“As long as I can.”

“And? Once it’s out in the open?”

“Dekha jayega.”

“You’re going to declare your love for her?” Biks asked.

“I’ll have her do pranam to my family, like this.” Saurav put his palms together in obeisance and bowed. “Pranam, Pitaji. Pranam, Mataji.”

“I can’t see Lisa doing that,” Biks said. “She’s too . . .” Biks sucked in his breath.

“Too what? White trash?” Saurav laughed.

Biks kept quiet.

“She is foul-mouthed, but I like her. I like her honesty.” Saurav studied him. “What about you, muji? You’re always judging me and Lisa. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you going to sit around moping, saying, ‘My Seema, my Seema, why hast thou forsaken me?’” He was quite drunk by now, glassy-eyed, swaying a bit on the barstool. “Or are you going to call her and tell her you don’t need her? Call her and say, ‘Timijasta ketita yoh americama katti katti. Fairer than you, prettier than you.’ Tell her that.”

Yes, I might, Biks thought. I might tell her that there’s plenty of fish in the American sea.

Later, as they made their way drunkenly out of the bar, Saurav slapped Biks on the back and said, “I’ll ask Lisa to find someone for you. A whitey. Raaaamri, ok? Goooori, okay? Someone just like Lisa. That’ll serve you right.”

Biks started drinking right before he walked to work. Two or three beers, and he’d feel all right. You’re all right now, he’d tell himself. He was especially chatty with his black customers. “Hey, brothah,” he’d say. “Whaz happenin’?” The black women and girls who came in for a purchase he referred to as “sistahs.”

Some of his black customers talked, some were surly, some gave him quizzical or bemused looks. One man in John Lennon glasses and tight jeans and a goatee, who Biks learned was a professor, paused with the change he’d received from Biks in his hand and asked tensely, “Am I your brother because we have the same mother, or am I your brother because you’re African American?” Then he laughed and said he was just giving Biks a hard time.

One afternoon two white cops came into the gas station, and Biks heard them talk near the toilet. They were speaking in low voices, but he could tell that they were discussing Ferguson and he heard the word “Negro,” which made him alert (Who says “Negro” these days? he thought); then he realized that it was said sarcastically. “The Negroes are up in arms,” then a chuckle. The cop who said it happened to look toward Biks, and their eyes met. When the cop held his eyes, Biks looked away, heart hammering, convinced that his illegal status was about to be uncovered.

“Hey, boy,” the cop shouted. “Don’t you carry Minute Maid juice?”

Biks shook his head.

“This brand you got here sucks,” the cop said. “Tell your manager. Or whoever the fuck is in charge.”

“His dad,” the other cop said, and they left.

Only after they left did it occur to Biks that the cop had called him a “boy,” and he didn’t know whether to feel angry about it or relieved that he’d not been taken away and deported.

Biks usually brought up Ferguson with his black customers. “This is outrageous,” he said. “Look at that Darren Wilson’s face. He was itching to kill a black man that day.”

His customers usually nodded. Some said, “Yeah, post-racial America.” Some eyed him warily, as if they thought he was trying to trap them.

He struck up a friendship with a black man named Jacob who delivered soft drinks in a van at night. After Jacob restocked the drinks, the two stepped outside to smoke. Jacob was getting married in a couple of months and was eager to start a family. “I love kids, man,” he said. He hadn’t finished college but was into philosophy and was familiar with Hinduism and Buddhism. He listened attentively when Biks described Nepal to him. “I’d love to go see them temples,” Jacob said and recited the names of Hindu gods: “Sheeva, Vaishnu, Ganyesh. Maybe you’ll invite me when you get married?” He punched Biks on the shoulder. “You got a girl back in Naples, man?”

“Nepal,” Biks corrected him.

“Yes, yes, Nepal. Well, do you? Have a girl?”

Biks smiled. “Maybe.”

“Look at you, all smiling and shit. What’s her name?”

“Seema.”

“Seema,” Jacob said dreamily. “Is she hot?”

“Very hot. Boiling hot.”

“I bet. Indian women are so sexy.”

“I’m not from India. I’m from Nepal.” Biks pointed a stern finger at Jacob. “Don’t ever, ever call a Nepali man Indian. We were never colonized by the British.”

“No kidding!”

“And don’t ever tell a Nepali man that Buddha was born in India. Unless you want to be lynched.”

Biks cursed himself for saying “lynched,” but Jacob laughed. “All right. You’re funny, man.” He asked if Biks had a photo of his “fiancée.”

Cigarette in mouth, Biks took out his phone and showed Jacob Seema’s photo. He had taken it in a café long before he boarded the plane to America, long before things went wrong between them. It showed her flashing a V with her fingers, looking with a half smile at the camera, her dark hair cascading down to her waist.

“Damn!” Jacob said and, looking away, stomped his feet. Then he grabbed the phone from Biks’s hand and peered at the photo closely. “You’re one lucky dog,” he said. With an embarrassed but pleased smile, Biks snatched his phone back.

“You’re bringing her over here?”

Biks nodded.

“You should get married here so I can come to the wedding.”

A customer pulled up in her car, so Biks had to go into the store to attend to her. The conversation with Jacob had strangely buoyed him up, and he sported a silly grin.

He showed Seema’s photo to new people he met at Nepali parties, saying she would soon be joining him. He did so when Purushottam Uncle wasn’t around. One time, around mid-November, he and Saurav had taken a couple of new arrivals from Nepal, Jivan and Umesh, to the Indian district in Devon. They were sitting in Sukhadia, drinking tea. Saurav had gone to the bathroom when Biks, out of the blue, showed Seema’s photo to Jivan and Umesh. They oohed and aahed. He told them that he was bringing her to America and they’d be married in the Hindu temple in Lemont.

When Saurav returned to the table, Biks changed the topic and began talking about the great sweets that Sukhadia had. “They taste better than Aangan in Kathmandu,” he informed the newbies.

Later, when the four of them went to Navy Pier for an evening stroll, Umesh ended up mentioning Biks’s soon-to-be-bride coming over from Nepal.

“There’s no bride,” Saurav said. “I’m trying to find a white dulahi for him here.”

“But he showed us the photo in the restaurant.”

“What photo?”

Biks took out his phone and showed Seema to Saurav. “This one, nigger.”

“What is this nigger-nigger?” Jivan asked. “Isn’t that a bad word? Used for kaleys?”

“We’re all niggers,” Biks said. He pointed at Jivan. “You’re a nigger.” Then at Umesh. “And you’re a nigger.” At Saurav. “And this one is a full-time nigger. But he thinks he’s white.”

“Why?” asked Umesh. “Because he’s shacking up with a white girl?”

That evening in the apartment Saurav confronted Biks. “What was all that about?”

“What?”

“That I think I’m white.”

Biks said nothing. He felt bad about what he’d said earlier in front of Jivan and Umesh but wasn’t ready to take it back.

“It’s not good, Biks, it’s not good,” Saurav said. Looking at the carpet, he shook his head as if he were contemplating a crop that had gone bad. “You think you’re so progressive, enlightened, but you’re no different.” Lisa was in the next room with the baby, so he lowered his voice. “I know you don’t like her, but you have to understand you’re a guest here, and she is the host.”

“I don’t give a fuck who is a guest or who is a host. You think I give a fuck?”

Saurav watched him in dismay. “What’s the matter with you? You’ve become so aggressive these days.”

Biks waved his hand imperially in the air.

“And what is this nigger business? Why are you going around calling everyone nigger? One day these kaleys will beat the crap out of you.”

“Chances are,” Biks said, “I’ll get shot by a white cop.”

Saurav shook his head slowly, sadly.

“Yes, I can see myself getting shot by a white cop,” Biks said. “Will they shoot me because I’m a black nigger or because I’m a Nepali nigger? Or perhaps”—he caressed his beard—“a Muslim nigger? A terrorist, perhaps?”

On the evening it was announced that the grand jury had decided not to indict Darren Wilson, a group of high school-aged white boys dawdled by the counter at the gas station, using the word Apu in every sentence as they inquired of one another what they should buy.

“What about Starbursts, Apu?” one said.

“We need some Doritos, Apu,” said another.

“Apu, Apu, what should we do tonight? Should we go to Steve’s place, Apu?”

“Apu, what’s your wife’s name again? The one with the large eyes and the dot on her forehead?”

The boys were clearly making fun of him, but Biks couldn’t tell how. The name Apu sounded familiar. A tune coursed through his head, then the singsong-y “The Simpsons” popped into his head, and it clicked. Apu, the Indian store owner with the pronounced Indian accent.

The boys—there were four of them—had put their purchases on the counter for Biks to ring up, but Biks pushed them to the side and said, “Sorry, you can’t buy here.”

“What?”

“I can’t sell you those.”

The boys turned quiet. Then one of them laughed and said, “Dude, you’re not refusing to sell us things, are you? Why? Because we’re white?”

Biks was feeling hot and cold at the same time. “You’re disrupting the peace,” he said, then immediately felt foolish. He felt like he could no longer speak English.

“Disrupting the peace?” They were doubling up with laughter.

“You fucking crackers!” he said. He didn’t know where the word came from; he didn’t know he even knew that word.

“Crackers?” one said.

“You mean honkeys?” another said.

They were laughing, jabbing one another.

“Oh, I’m so offended,” one said. “Who you calling honkey, Mr. Curry Breath?”

“Where are you from?” another said. “Afghanistan?”

“He’s Taliban,” another said. “The beard. It’s a dead giveaway.”

Biks had a vision of himself coming out from behind the counter and fighting with these boys. He’d taken some karate in Nepal, and he wondered if the moves would come to him. But it was all so ridiculous. They were barely past their teens, even though all of them were bigger than Biks.

He rang up their items, and they paid him, not letting up on their mockery. “Thank you, Apu,” they said. One of them put his palms together, bowed, and said, “Arigato, sensei.”

After they left, he bolted the door from the inside and put up the closed sign. He grabbed a beer from the cooler and sat on the floor, drinking, hidden from the door. Every now and then he was aware of customers jiggling the doorknob, then voices. “Why is it fucking closed?” he heard a man say.

After three beers, Biks took out his phone and dialed Seema’s mobile on a lark. A female voice picked up at the other end. Seema. Or it could be a servant. “Seema?” he asked.

There was a pause, then, “Biks?”

He closed his eyes. Things were moving inside his body, like ants. “How are you?” he finally asked.

“I’m fine. How is America?”

On TV they were showing explosions in Ferguson. The police—or was it the army?—in riot gear faced the protesters. A woman was shown ranting into the night. “My studies are going well,” Biks said. “I’m preparing for my exams.” He kept going. “It’s not easy here. You have to study hard. You have to write papers. You have to participate in class discussions. Expectations are high.”

“Are you happy in America?”

“What’s not to be happy about? How can anyone not be happy in America? This is America, not some piddly-ass Third World country.”

She gave a soft chuckle. “Listen to you, sounding so American.”

After a pause, he asked, “Are you—? What can I say? I’ve heard things.”

There was silence at the other end. Momentarily, he panicked, thinking she’d hung up. “Seema?” he said.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Such is life.”

“Such is life,” she said.

“But you’re happy?”

“I’m happy,” she said, softly but firmly. “Very happy.”

“Ah, you’ve always had a good attitude.”

On TV, Sean Hannity was going on about the mob in Ferguson: “What about the dangers to our cops? What about the risks they literally have to take every day when confronted by these thugs?”

“I’ve grown a beard now,” Biks said.

“Really?” Then, gently, her voice filled with sympathy, “Why? Has some tragedy befallen you?”

“I now look like a terrorist,” he said. “They’ll soon take me to Guantanamo Bay.”

She gave a soft chuckle at the other end, and then they got disconnected.

He didn’t want to stay in the gas station, hiding. And it had also become clear to him he could no longer work at this place. This was not the life he’d envisioned, being taunted by teenagers, called “boy” by white cops, trying to be blacker than blacks—“Blacker than thou,” he muttered to himself—when his history didn’t compare to theirs, the brutality, the dehumanization, the violence. He was a fraud, trying to pretend to be someone he was not. Perhaps Seema had sensed that in him. That’s what Saurav, too, was trying to convey, although Saurav came with his own set of problems. “I am a pretender,” Biks said to himself. “A poseur. An impostor.” He sighed. “An impossible impostor.”

He left a note for the manager, who usually came to open the station in the mornings. Dada, salaam! he wrote, and continued writing in Romanized Hindi, borrowing the overly dramatic language from Hindi movies: Aaj mai aapsey albida mang rahahoon. Mujhe maf kardena, Dada Don. Mai aapka pau ka dhool bhi honai ka laik nahin hoon. Albida! Albida! Albida! —Apka namakhalal Biks.

Seeking goodbye, please pardon me, I am not worthy to be even the dust at your feet. Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye! —Your backstabber, Biks.

He turned off the lights, locked the doors (he’d hand over the keys to Saurav) and was on his way out when a semi truck pulled into the station. The station wasn’t very large, so usually big trucks avoided it. The driver leaned out of the window and asked, “Is there a bathroom here, man?” He had a long brown beard running down his chin, like one of the guys from ZZ Top. He was even wearing dark glasses at night.

Biks was about to say no when ZZ Top said, with an impassive face but in a voice that broke, “Need to pee real bad.”

Biks unlocked the gas station and got the key that opened the bathroom on the side of the building. As he waited for ZZ Top to come out, he lit a cigarette. Then he noticed the license plate on the truck. It said missouri.

It made sense that he’d end up in Ferguson that night, at two o’clock in the morning, bleary-eyed yet insanely alert, as though someone had jolted him with an electric rod. ZZ Top had dropped him by the side of the road on I-270, in Florissant, near a high school. “No way in hell I’m going in there,” ZZ Top had said, pointing toward Ferguson. “That place is burning tonight. I’d say it’s about a thirty-minute walk from here. Use Google Maps on your phone if you get lost.”

Biks thanked him.

“Well, best of luck, buddy,” ZZ Top said, and zoomed off.

So here he was, Biks, in Ferguson, after an hour walk in the dark through what appeared to be a largely residential area, wondering if a cop was going to stop him. Or a redneck in a pickup truck, elated by the grand jury decision, who might decide to take it out on a lone darkie who looked like an “Eh-rab.” At one point in a street that was less well lit than the others, he had become anxious that he’d be lost and would have to spend his night roaming around these neighborhoods. Or, irrationally, that he’d be mugged. What the hell, Biks homie, he’d chided himself. Where do you think you are? New York City? Then, he heard voices and saw figures in the distance: people moving toward the action. Soon, he was no longer a solitary figure, and there were people, a pizza shop, Walgreens, a church, brighter street lights.

Now he was smack in the middle of the madness. There was a palpable, unpredictable energy in the air. People swarmed around him. A young woman wearing a colorful headscarf met his eyes and said, “It’s so fucked up!” He responded, sickened by the wisdom in his voice, “Tell me about it.” He noticed a few white people in the crowd, and some with Oriental features, but no one who looked South Asian. He almost expected someone to get into his face and shout, “What the hell are you doing here? This is not your fight!” It was irrational, this feeling, yet it had returned, the earlier sense that he was an impostor.

In the distance he saw a large building that had been set on fire—it was glowing, bubbling. He moved toward it as though it were his lodestar. A group of people huddled near a grocery store whose windows were shattered: they were burning the American flag. A strong smell hit Biks’s nostrils, as though flesh had been singed. “I’m tired, I’m so tired,” a middle-aged black woman wailed as she crouched on the ground near Biks, her fists bunched in front of her.

Police in riot gear approached from the next block to meet the protesters.

The city exploding—the burning, the anger, the screams of murder and helplessness—was, in a way, like home. He could, if he wanted to, start shouting slogans in Nepali. So he did, gently mouthing, “Police atyachar, murdabad, murdabad. Peace and justice, paunai parcha, paunai parcha.” He giggled. This could work.

The woman in the colorful headscarf was next to him, looking at the police with piercing eyes. “Damn!” she said. Some of the younger men around them were hurling stones and bottles at the cops, who were shuffling toward them in a tightly knit formation, flanked on both sides by what looked like small tanks. “You go home!” the protesters shouted at the cops. A series of small explosions sounded, like firecrackers. But Biks was entranced by the woman’s earrings. Long and dangling down almost to her shoulders, they were made of tiny black and white beads that stitched together resembled dancing skirts. He was certain Seema had worn the exact same earrings one afternoon when she’d come to visit him. Well, I’ll be damned, thought Biks now, and he nearly reached out and touched them. The woman noticed him staring at her and, with rolling eyes, moved away.

What craziness. Here he was, in the thick of it, and he was checking out a girl. This will not do, my friend from the mountains. A glass shattered, and suddenly a flurry of bodies hurtled toward him, chased by the police, and he was pushed to the ground. He struggled to get up, but his every attempt was thwarted by people trampling him to get away. There were clattering and clanking noises, then hisses. “Tear gas!” someone shouted.

Then it was as if Biks’s chest had caught on fire. He nearly clawed his eyes out—that’s how badly they burned. A searing heat entered his lungs, and he hacked and coughed and doubled over on the ground. He writhed, made “hah” sounds with his breath, called out his mother’s name.

But even in the midst of this ridiculous pain, he knew ultimately nothing would happen to him, that he’d come out of this fight unscathed, at most only bruised. This realization brought some solace, and he closed his eyes tightly, feeling tears running down his cheeks. Do it, he told himself. With a concentrated focus, he encouraged his mind to rise above his body, and it did, bit by bit, until he was so high up that he saw himself like a tiny rag doll below, with other small figures running about, small globs of fire exploding here and there.

But he was already on the move.

Now he was sitting on the roof of his house in Kathmandu. It was evening time. He could hear the sounds of pots and pans one floor below in the kitchen, where his mother was cooking dinner. On the horizon, rising above the city’s clutter, were those brilliant white mountains. He was sipping tea, with a strong flavor of fresh ginger, just the way he liked it.