The professor went back to his research, waiting for the next earnest student to knock at the door. His main project these days, at least officially, was in something known as “computational neuroscience,” which focused on the algorithms of the human brain. It was hopeful and uplifting, the idea that computers could mimic the processes that took place in threads of neurons, and in that sense it was a relief from the other work that Dr. Omar hid from everyone. He had told his contacts at the Military College of Signals in Rawalpindi, who reviewed his work, that computational neuroscience was the future of warfare, because it would someday drive robots. They liked that, and approved a handsome grant.
Dr. Omar kept his hand in computer security, too, to make everyone happy. He wrote occasional papers, and did consulting abroad, and gave lectures in Rawalpindi at the MCS when they asked. His original work as a graduate student had been in a specialty known as “pseudo-randomness,” a technique that used algorithmic techniques to produce numbers that were indistinguishable, in a technical sense, from random values. Dr. Omar had always been fascinated by numbers, ever since he was a little boy in Makeen when the solutions to number puzzles used to light up in his head like the display on a carnival arcade.
It had turned out that this topic of “pseudo-randomness” was a very hot one when Dr. Omar had gotten his doctorate in the late 1990s. A team at Stanford was doing similar work, and they had invited Dr. Omar to give a paper on his research. That was how he had met the Californians, and a lot of other people, too. The visiting analysts sitting in the back of the lecture hall had studied the Pakistani’s formulas, and found uses for them that were far beyond what the young man had imagined.
Omar al-Wazir, nicknamed “the Waz” by an Indian friend he met that summer, stayed in Palo Alto for a month. He lived in a suite in the graduate student housing behind the law school, but he spent most of his time in the computer science library in the Math Wing of Memorial Hall.
When Omar went to Peet’s Coffee amp; Tea nearby, the California girls often tried to pick him up. He was tall and exotic-looking, and he had the endearing manner, even then, of a young professor. A girl named Debbie finally succeeded in taking Omar home to bed. She lived in a big California ranch house on Page Mill Road. She had the biggest breasts Omar had ever seen or could imagine. They made love every day after that until it was time for him to fly home. She said she would write, but she never did; he was a summer romance.
Omar made many other friends that month in Palo Alto, who did stay in touch and continued to ask about his research. The Pakistani authorities queried him when he returned home, but they were proud of him, too. He did some consulting for the government, and as he began to be invited to conferences abroad, he always reported back on them-not all the details, and not every conference, but enough to keep everyone satisfied. Because of his tribal upbringing and his gentle ways, Omar al-Wazir was regarded as a man above reproach.
There had been a time several years ago, before the disaster in Makeen, when the Inter-Services Intelligence had invited him-commanded him, in fact-to pay them a visit in Aabpara. They were summoning a lot of professors in those days.
He was quizzed by an unpleasant man who called himself Major Nadeem. This interrogator took him through all the byways of his life.
“Why did you go to Cadet College at Razmak?” the major had asked.
“My father sent me. He said I would be useless as a hunter or a fighter, because I was always thinking about numbers. Don’t ask me how, but I knew which ones were primes and which ones were divisible by nine, or twenty-seven, or one hundred twelve. My father decided it was a gift, although a strange one. He said I should go to a real school. Here, you can call him and ask him.”
Dr. Omar had handed the major his cell phone.
His father was still alive then, a craggy old man trying to survive in a South Waziristan that was becoming, more each day, a shooting gallery.
The major shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to an old Pashtun grandfather living among the rocks.
“What did you do at Razmak?” the major had demanded.
“I studied math and engineering. I won all the prizes there, two years before I was supposed to, so they got me a scholarship to study at the University of Peshawar, where they had a computer science department. I lived in one of the hostels and joined the Khyber Islamic Culture Society. You can check.”
“Did you know any Americans then?”
“No. I wanted to. I had a picture on my wall of Bill Gates when he was young. He looked no better or smarter than any of the Pashtun boys in the hostel. We all wanted to be like him.”
The major nodded. Bill Gates was acceptable. He asked about the Stanford trip. Who had been interested in the research?
“So many people, I did not know them all. They studied my work. They asked me questions. I told the ISI about it when I got home. A major like you, he was. You can check.”
The major did not want to make more work for himself. And it was true, the story as it had been narrated and understood was all in the files.
“Why did you go back to America?” he demanded, looking at a sheet of paper.
“I was invited to present a paper at a conference that was cosponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It was a great honor for me, and for my university. You can ask them.”
He held out his cell phone again, so that Major Nadeem could make a call to verify, but the major shook his head.
They spent several more hours like this, going through the major episodes of Dr. Omar’s career. When they came to his most recent work on computer-security algorithms, Dr. Omar apologized that he could not talk about this work in any detail because it had been classified as “top secret” by the Pakistani military.
The major found nothing of interest. Dr. Omar was very careful, then and always. The major asked him to sign a paper, and to report any suspicious contacts, and Dr. Omar assured him that he would. The Pakistani authorities never came after him again. That was three years before his world went white.
Omar al-Wazir had multiple binary identities, it could be said. He was a Pakistani but also, in some sense, a man tied to the West. He was a Pashtun from the raw tribal area of South Waziristan, but he was also a modern man. He was a secular scientist and also a Muslim, if not quite a believer. His loyalties might indeed have been confused before the events of nearly two years ago, but not now.
Sometimes Dr. Omar grounded himself by recalling the spirit of his father, Haji Mohammed. He remembered the old man shaking his head when Omar took wobbly practice shots with an Enfield rifle, missing the target nearly every time. The look on the father’s face asked: How can this be my oldest son, this boy who cannot shoot? But Haji Mohammed had taught him the code of manhood, just the same.
Omar had learned the catechism from his father: Wars begin with badal, an assault on a man’s honor and self-respect. A proud man must avenge this insult, measure for measure, or he would suffer the greatest shame. That was why there were ceaseless wars in the tribal areas, Haji Mohammed had explained. It was the Nang-e-Pashto, the tribal code of honor, which required people to seek vengeance for the injustices inflicted by their cousins, neighbors, rival tribes, foreign invaders. A man would vow to sleep on the ground, or eat with his left hand only, until he had taken revenge, and only then would he let himself relax.