We Are Not in Pakistan (30 page)

“Manmohan Singh.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Any relation?”

“No, all Sikhs are Singhs.”

“Oh. Anyway, after that she convinced herself I needed to look you up. But not till she was gone. She'd decided she was going, and when. Couldn't get her off of it, so I promised.”

“Well,” Karan says with a smile, “I'm glad you keep your promises.”

Uma thinks a Leinenkugel would taste much better than the orange juice right about now. But her dad is saying the only beer he has is Kingfisher. She's not in the mood to try it.

So many books in one room, and it's not even a library. Ma kept five or six for show in the living room. Karan's are spread face down all over. One is marked up, highlighted, indexed and footnoted in tiny precise writing:
The Trial.
Tom Cruise could play the guy on the back cover, Joseph K. Maybe Sean Penn — no, he's too old.

It's going to be fine. Uma can just flow into Karan's life. She'll start from babyhood. Tell him how she won a swimming trophy at twelve, was captain of the Lush League softball team last year, and how she's been to Windsor, Canada, and seen their cute coloured money. He'll place his hand on her shoulder. She'll tell him how she hoped he'd walk in one day and rescue Ma and her, and Ma would get better and all of them would live … oh, sure.

Right now if she were dreaming there would be a dad who'd say what Ma did: Kid, you done good. You couldn't have done more than you did. Can't he say that just once?

But she doesn't know this guy. No clue where he's coming from.

So what? He's still her dad. She has a dad.

Part of her is trying very hard not to get mad. Why did he not know? Wasn't there some kind of father's intuition? How come he didn't figure out Ma was pregnant? Why didn't he call Rita at least once if he was still in the States or Canada? Ashley's parents are divorced but her pa calls her ma sometimes. And he
always
calls Ashley for her birthday.

That's because he knows when Ashley was born — he was there when Ashley was born.

Pretty mean of Ma, telling her Karan had gone back to India and she didn't know where he was. One time, when Uma asked too many questions, Ma hinted she didn't contact Karan when she found out she was pregnant because she thought he might kidnap Uma and take her back to India with him. And that night Ma rented the movie
Not Without My Daughter.
Uma got the message.

Karan has pulled out photos. In colour. How come she'd expected them to be black and white, or even sepia? Maybe cause the eighties are in the last century. All of Ma in colour, taking up most of the shot. Karan smiling over her shoulder, like he's hiding behind her. They don't look like enemies. But they don't look in love, either. He put in his two years and then split. Kinda like going in the army. Well, Ma was great most of the time, but often so pig-headed German that you had to find a lot of love to put up with her the rest of the time.

Maybe Ma put in her two years and was ready to split too?

Was it worth it? She really needs to know.

Karan hesitates a long time before answering, “In the beginning.”

He could mean it was worth it only while he and Ma were married, or that he thought it was worth it for a few years and now he's not sure. She tries to read his face.

It's harder to read a brown face. Especially one you don't know.

It was worth it while he and Ma were married. She's sure of it.

She needs another smoke, but he says it's against his religion. That's gotta be bullshit — she's never heard of a religion that forbids smoking. But then he's born into a religion that says no cutting your hair. Even women? What do Sikh women do about underarm hair? Do they shave their legs? Can't ask a guy something like that. It'll be on the net somewhere. But even if your religion does forbid smoking, can't you have an ashtray for guests? Can't you just do it anyway — like Catholic girls do the Pill?

He's off lecturing again, telling her his ancestors — and hers — once lived together in a haveli, a mansion with suites of rooms that opened onto verandas and courtyards. Generations rubbing up against one another, the young educating the old, the old receiving respect and ruling with iron authority over the young. And then.

He pauses dramatically.

And then came Partition.

“It was a vortex of violence. Every man became aware of himself as animal, every breath became a gift of Ram, Allah or Vaheguru. Some escaped on trains to places where they had family ties, marriages made as alliances were now called to account. The old haveli fell to the battering ram of Islam, and its occupants took every possible transport and fled from blood and slaughter as far and wide as they could.”

Now her relatives wander in London and Winnipeg, in Fiji and Hong Kong, in Sydney and Singapore. And some remain in India. Karan shows her wedding pictures of two “aunties” in Delhi — Aunty Gagan and Aunty Minni. Much younger than Karan. Only a few years older than her. They don't wear turbans. Uma does look a bit like them. And she doesn't — they're beautiful.

“We're a globalized family,” he says and laughs.

Uma isn't sure what the joke is, but laughs because he does — like she does with customers sometimes.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

Does she? There was no parting screaming match last year. No tears. Will came in one evening when she was bartending and made a long loud speech about Indians draining away a call centre job that should have been his. And an immigrant who took the other one he'd applied for. Said he was ready to join the Minutemen and police the border. Uma told herself he was just tired of troubleshooting for folks who didn't know enough to reboot their PCs.

“Not right now,” she says to Karan. Because after Will's tirade she no longer felt anything pour in and overflow inside when he kissed her. And every time she went out with him she wondered how she'd ever loved a guy who could hate so many people, how she could have missed the clues, and if there had been any clues.

“My father is from India,” she told him the last night they were together. “That makes me an immigrant's daughter. And if you're not Native American, you're descended from immigrants too.” Will never apologized.

Karan asks —
finally!
— about Ma. First he wants to know what Rita told Uma about him. Then what happened last year to make Rita break her long silence. So she tells how Rita made her promise to look him up. He says he's glad she keeps her promises.

An hour later, he asks how Ma died and was she buried or cremated. And Uma is trying to explain, describe, tell him how it was. How Rita just decided one day — no more dialysis. And how Uma had to let go, give Rita permission to die. She's ordered the headstone for Ma's grave. It'll be ready when she gets back.

She's describing a woman performing Uma's life. Someone without her light-headed sense of unreality, without her anger at
unfinished conversations. Someone without the ripples of panic that flow through Uma at the thought of moving on without Ma.

“I am so sorry you had to experience that,” he says.

He's not real interested in Ma or her final days.

But when he asks, “What are your plans now?” he leans forward, giving her answer his utmost attention. “Back to bartending next Tuesday.”

Suddenly that didn't sound like fun. Especially without Ma to come home to.

“Have you ever thought of doing something else?”

“I could maybe get a job at the auto plant. Keep bartending on the side.”

That didn't sound like much fun either. It sounded as if she was heading for the Bermuda Triangle.

“You could — no, never mind,” he says.

“Did you ever think of doing something else?”

“Oh, yes. After my PhD I tried to join the army.”

“The army? Why would they need economists?”

He laughed. “Oh, it wasn't that they need economists, but the army is, well, sort of a traditional occupation for Sikhs.”

“No kidding? I'm trying to picture my aunts in camouflage helmets.”

“No, no, just traditional for Sikh men. Though there are women in the Indian Armed Forces … Anyway, my uncles kept saying I should join.”

“You mean the army in India?”

“No, the US Army — it would have been a way to get my citizenship.”

“Jeez, you'd be in Iraq right now.”

“True, except that the US services didn't allow turbans. Not allowed today either.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs. “Ignorance.”

“And you wouldn't wear a hat? Oh, I get it, it's like when Grandma wanted you to take it off.”

He gives her a nod and a wry smile. “Their loss, really. Sikhs are either the bravest or the foolhardiest chaps, depending on one's point of view. “

Chaps, meaning guys.

Could be he doesn't notice how people talk in America. Or he hangs on to old words the way Ma used to hoard clothes that didn't fit anymore.

The photos in the box dwindle. Karan turns on a lamp.

He putzes in the kitchen and brings two mugs. “Orange pekoe tea” he says, as if it's special. And some cookies he calls rusks.

Uma watches TV as she sips and nibbles. He seems so pleased that she likes his tea.

What's a father supposed to be, anyway? Teacher, coach, older brother, friend and boyfriend all at once? And if she wasn't the kind of daughter he wanted, then … ?

She's still hungry. But for details, or food, or for something else this guy can give her?

Karan can't find the right pots and pans; he says he has to take Uma out to dinner.

“Suits me,” says Uma.

She'd have chosen any place where they serve chips with salsa or where you can get Singapore noodles, but he's paying so he gets to choose. She doesn't know restaurants and their prices in this city anyway.

A few miles out of town she follows him into Bistro Balti, a restaurant that could be a transplant from Detroit — it's just like the one Ma sometimes called for delivery. Takeout menus on a
sign behind a counter, only two other couples occupying dinerstyle tables and booths. Incongruously, each table has a white tablecloth.

Karan asks for the owner and he comes over, a slight, dark man with a moustache but no turban, dressed in a tuxedo with a purple cummerbund, like he's just come from a wedding.

“Sat Sri Akal, Doctor-sahib!”

“Salam Aleikum, Nadir!” Karan rises for a half hug and shakes hands.

“Nadirji is from Karachi,” Karan says. “Excellent squash player. Has to play very hard to work off his wonderful meals.”

Karachi — where has she heard of Karachi?

Nadirji laughs and pokes Karan in the stomach. “I say, eat much and you'll keep playing as well as you do!”

Karan is smiling and talking in Indian. Obviously explaining who she is. Nadirji's eyebrows jerk up and down and he glances at her uncertainly a few times.

Daniel Pearl, the journalist, was beheaded in Karachi. Karachi is in Pakistan, not India. And there's going to be a movie about it.

And what does any of that have to do with this man? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Nadirji says, “Dr. Karanbir has told you how we met? At the courthouse — we were being fingerprinted together. All day we sat there waiting, waiting. So we started talking. Do you know, we found out both our grandfathers are from Gurdaspur. Only mine fled to Karachi, his to Delhi. At least they chose the capital cities of the time.”

He laughs and slaps Karan on the back. “Dr. Karanbir said Partition was all because of economics. I said, Rubbish! All because of religion. So we started arguing and arguing. So then this Homeland Security guy, he comes up, says, Hey, are you fighting? So Dr. Karanbir says, No, no, sir! This is my friend.”

Nadirji beams.

Karan asks about Nadirji's younger brother — is he back in Karachi?

“Oh no,” says Nadirji. “Still he's sitting in the Detention Center in New Jersey. But they're saying they will send him back to Karachi any day.”

“And his wife?”

“She's here only, in San Diego. Still calling me every day — do something, call his lawyer. Call Homeland Security. Don't we know anyone with a relative working there? Talk to them in English. I tell her I
have
called, but they don't even take messages on their voice mail. So every week I'm sending the lawyer more money — what I can. And every week I'm giving her advice how to run my brother's appliance shop. But I too have a family.”

Jeez! Does he ever, and Karan's like a doctor, asking about the health of each one. Didn't he say he met Nadirji for squash last week? Brothers, parents, uncles — it's a friggin' assembly line.

“… and your cousin-brother? The one with the PhD in architecture?”

“Subhanallah! He found a job. Temporary, and he's only drafting, not designing, but it's a job.” For Uma's benefit, Nadir explains. “He was laid off after 9/11 — his boss told him he was scaring the clients. But he's tip-top in drawing with the computer. He has a wife and child to feed. So. Very difficult.”