We Are Not in Pakistan (33 page)

A flutter of black ash. A beam shifts and thuds in the debris.

What's left of Karan's belongings lies bare, cardboard boxes in
each room having capitulated to flame and smoke. The Gandhi slippers are a smudge soldered to the remains of the coffee table. Moldy smell of wet charred books. Impotence rebukes him, leaves the odour of humiliation. He replays the moment when the kid smirked and everything clicked into place.

He flexes his hands. Detained or not, he will add the fire to the other incidents logged in the Sikh Coalition database. He'll donate more to the American Civil Liberties Union. Some of this failure is his — he should have been more cordial. Should have introduced himself to the family next door, to all the neighbours. He could have held a housewarming party. Explained, wooed, befriended, charmed the kid and his friends.

He can't imagine doing any of that — he's always lived separate in every city, except when he lived in Madison with Rita.

And would it have made a difference?

Thanks to the quick response of the firemen, the Toyota is damp and soot-speckled but miraculously intact in the garage. A wash and day with the doors open to the sun — that's all it needs. The other salvageable item is the steel file cabinet containing the folders for his taxes.

Uma tosses the remains of her tapestry bag back on the rubbish heap. She's been sifting ash, searching for the shoebox of photos and her CD player, but she hasn't found them.

Karan cannot believe he is still here. Each limb feels thick and leaden, and he hasn't found his passport.

Maybe Uma didn't report what she knows to the police because they didn't ask her. She never said she wouldn't. If she lets it slip, even inadvertently … he cannot think of that now.

“What will you do?” says Uma. “I mean, if the judge lets you off.”

Karan sinks to a squat, picks up a stick and jabs at the debris. His blackened frying pan shakes loose.

“I've lost relatives and friends before now. These are only
things. This is nothing! Nothing! My grandfather — your greatgrandfather — survived Partition. And this is not as bad as the Delhi riots in 1984 — fires everywhere, then. Three thousand Sikhs slaughtered.”

“What's any of that got to do with this? You need to leave this area. You can't wait till it gets as bad as — whatever. Or until thousands of people are killed. Thousands!” She stamps her foot. A cloud of ash rises, starts her coughing. “Jeez, if it happens to one person, it's too much!”

If the judge issues a deportation order, the insurance company will low-ball and stall, knowing Karan won't be around to sue. And Karan won't have much time to sell the plot before he's sent away somewhere. But if the judge believes Karan or the fire inspector's report points to the kid, Karan can press his claim. Then the insurance will pay and Karan will replace this home.

He won't buy or build right here, but close by. Nothing and no one will decree his self-elimination.

Uma is stomping and shouting. “Shit, you should go teach in some other university. You could move to Detroit.”

The books. Some irreplaceable. His marginalia — gone. These ashes will someday mingle with the Pacific.

Karan rises to his feet. “I am where I am supposed to be,” he says. “Why should I walk away from what I've built because of one halfwit American? Why should
I
be the one to leave? How many places can I leave?”

“You can leave this one, anyway. Oh, you're as pig-headed as Ma!”

He looks at her, wounded. “No, I'm not. Unlike Rita, I continue learning. That's what being a Sikh means.”

“Learning what?” says Uma, obviously exasperated.

At this moment, speaking feels like trying to paint darkness.

“I've been focusing on aggregate data; I've never truly understood till now how a man feels when his slum home is bulldozed.
How a villager feels when they build a new dam and flood his home. And tsunami survivors — how must they feel?” Uma runs a hand through her hair.

“You're pretty crazy, aren't you? How about taking that turban off, or at least wearing a cap?” She sounds scared. Even worried. Didn't she say, It would be too much — both of you? And just now, didn't he hear, You could move to Detroit?

She's thinking about her own welfare, isn't she? Self-interest — the American creed.

“No,” he says. “If not my turban, people like that kid will find other things to hate or envy. This is about economics and power. The rest — just cover.”

“So how will you fight it?”

He sighs, “One person at a time, Uma, one person at a time.”

Two days later, Karan drops Uma at the main entrance of the train station, then goes to park. Walks into the station, glances around, consults the schedule. Uma's is the last train of the day.

There she is, sunflower sandals crossed one over the other. Beside her, the new bag he bought her.

“Want coffee?” He strives for nonchalance.

“Sure. I'll get it.”

His hand extends a five dollar bill, like a ticket-spitter.

She returns from the coffee kiosk carrying a cardboard tray. Two cups.

“Orange pekoe,” she says.

Uma thought of him. Beyond emergency assistance, voluntarily. Optimism shakes loose, like snow-melt from a mountain, pours into Karan's empty space.

He cannot demand love, anyone's love. Like oil, it's in limited supply. But there's always hope for equilibrium.

Is it better for Uma to be with him or on her own? The answer to that question will drive her.

He slips his kara from his wrist and holds it out.

“A little gift,” he says. “It's the steel bangle Sikhs wear to remind us of birth, death and rebirth. And karmic justice. You should have one.”

She slips it onto her hand, twirls it on her wrist, then slides it up her forearm.

“Rebirth?

“Rebirth? Cool,” she says. “And that's what you believe will happen? Like, to Ma?”

“I'm sure of it,” he says. “She's probably a baby yelling her lungs out at this very moment, driving her new mom and dad insane.”

That's uproarious. He's laughing. And Uma is laughing. Now he's doubled over, laughing. Can't stop. He trades a glance with Uma and she starts up again. Her laughter circles and sidles around him, twining itself about his thrumming heart.

People are staring — let them. He is accustomed to being their education, and if Uma plans to see him again, claims him after this weekend, she will need to become inured to stares.

The train to LA is announced.

“Hey,” she says, boxing his arm lightly. “Just so you know — I wouldn't say nothing to a goddamn soul about your green-card wedding. That would be like saying Ma was a prostitute.”

“No, no. Don't put it that way,” he says, with a twinge of hurt for Rita but relief, all the same, for himself.

On impulse, he holds out his arms. She comes into them. Her scent — so different from his own. Then the solidness of her arms closing around his waist.

“Call me when you get to Detroit,” he says. “Then the distance between us won't seem so much.”

She nods. “You be careful, will ya? Let me know what the judge says. Don't you get sent off someplace without me knowing.”

He takes a place in line with her, hands her bag up once she's climbed the steel steps. He watches till she's seated inside. The train begins to move.

Is that her bare arm waving? He can't be sure.

But her hug still tingles through him.

Outside the station, the sheen of a rain-scaled night. Smudged silhouettes dart to and fro at the fringes of the street.

The spot where his Toyota should be is empty. Could he have forgotten where he parked? He walks up and down the aisles, retraces his steps.

Not a familiar tail light in sight.

It's gone. Stolen. His rusty old Toyota. Goddamn bastards, whoever they are this time.

Let them have it.

Karan is not going to report it. The police didn't believe him after the fire. He'll be like the Pakistani chap Nadir told him about. The one who was attacked, robbed and stabbed three times, but when the police came, he told them he had stabbed himself. That's it, Karan robbed himself!

Half an hour later, a security guard volunteers a simpler explanation: the Toyota was towed. Hauled away. “Either you didn't make your car payments or you didn't pay your parkin' tickets.”

Parking tickets.

Meteors rush past in dyads — the receding tail lights of cars heading toward the mountains.

Car-free, Karan follows on foot in what he hopes is the right direction.

These stories began in the creative spaces provided by the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, and Redbird Studios. For their time, attention, and comments as they matured I thank Edna Alford, David Baldwin, Elaine Bergstrom, Brian Brett, Judy Bridges, Annie Chase, Stefan Honisch, Olena Jennings, Bisakha Sen, Ena M. Singh, Gurdip Singh, Alexander Yaroshevich, and Theresa Yaroshevich.

“Naina” received a prize in
Prairie Fire's
prose competition when it was published in 2000. It was translated for the
Belles Étrangères
anthology (Philippe Picquier, 2002) and anthologized in
The Harper Collins Book of New Indian Fiction,
edited by Khushwant Singh (Harper Collins India, 2004). “The View from the Mountain” was published in
The Capilano Review
(spring 2006) and reprinted in
Asia Literary Review
(fall 2006).

Among many sources, I acknowledge and recommend
Ablaze,
by Piers Paul Reid;
Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth,
by Alla Yaroshinskaya; Discovery Channel's
The Battle of Chernobyl; Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope,
by Francine Du Plessix Gray;
Tangled Routes: Women, Work and Globalization on the Tomato Trail,
by Deborah Barndt; and
The Subcontinental,
1:3. Taras Schevchenko's poems are quoted from translations by John Weir and Vera Rich.

For expert advice, research assistance, and background interviews,
I am grateful to Dino Aguilera, Ilena Burshteyn, Dr. Kimberley Chawla, the late attorney Earl Hagen, Mavis Hubbard, Indira and Jit Pasrich, the staff of Froedert Hospital in Milwaukee, and the many dedicated librarians of the Milwaukee Public Library.

My editor Laurel Boone shared my vision for this book, and I thank her. Many thanks also to my agents: Bruce Westwood, Natasha Daneman, and Carolyn Forde.