“And Azad? What will I say to my brother Azad?”
“Tell him anything. That you carried out the deed. Or that the person you were pursuing wasn’t the right one. Or that he went off to another country, in an unknown direction, to hell. Or that he died. Or anything! Or tell him the truth about your new conviction. Indeed, you could even try to persuade him to stop the series of his acts of vengeance and reprisal. The principle of an eye for an eye is bitter, Dad. It’s true that we’re the ones who established it, but humanity’s subsequent experiences have shown that applying it will, in the end, leave us all blind.”
“It’s not that simple, Saleem. I’ve piled my hatred upon this person for all these years. How could it be possible for me to rid myself of all that in a moment?”
I was silent for a little while, conscious of how the speech had poured from my tongue and how easily the wisdom had come — if it is permissible for me to describe it in this way or to ascribe such a thing to myself.
“In order to get it all off your chest, I think it would be good to call him right now on the telephone. Make him hear everything you want to say.”
I got up and took hold of the telephone book, flipping through its yellow pages, while he looked on with a grave expression. The cigarette was never far from his mouth, and a cloud of smoke wrapped around his face. Then I heard him say, “I have his name and telephone number.”
He pulled out of his pocket a small address book and opened it up. He held it out to me, pointing to the name and number.
Without looking at his face, I began to turn the dial of the telephone, and when a woman’s voice answered, I asked her to connect me with the person in question. “Please, it’s important.”
She said, “Just a moment, please.”
I held the receiver out to my father and began to watch him. His hand was trembling, his lips quivering. After some short moments of waiting, he burst out in a loud, choked voice, “Why?” Then the awful shout poured out of him to the point of shaking his whole body, “Why?! Why have you done all this to us, you criminals?! You ignoble pigs! You bastards! You—”
Through the phone’s receiver, I heard the other line being cut off, then the dial tone came on. Meanwhile, my father continued shouting, “Why? Why?”
I fell upon him with a hug as he broke into tears, gasping like a slaughtered bull. Rosa burst in anxiously. She embraced us both together, asking desperately, “What happened? What happened?” Then she hurried to the kitchen, coming back with a jar of water, which she used to wash my father’s face and give him something to drink.
After some time — I can’t say how long exactly — of this burning rage, the likes of which I’d never known in my life, and which I doubt I will ever witness again, my father calmed down more than we expected. He was like someone who had vomited out the poisonous food that was hurting him, as though the “why?” was a hurt that had been eating his heart. Little by little, the pallor in his face subsided.
At that point I said to him, “What do you think about us going together to the mosque today for Friday prayers?”
I read a sort of relief in his features, and he nodded to me in agreement.
“In that case, I’ll go home now while you shower and eat something. I’ll come to get you.”
I kissed him and went out. Rosa’s glance followed me, filled with gratitude and questions. She still had one arm hooked around my father’s neck and was holding a jar of water in her other hand.
CHAPTER 16
After we left the mosque following last Friday’s prayers, my father shook my hand. “May your prayers be acceptable in God’s sight!” he said, giving the customary blessing. “Thank you, Saleem.” After he was quiet for a while, he added, “I didn’t expect to find so many Muslims here, or this beautiful mosque.”
He was calm, as though his heart were made of still water. A halo of spiritual contentment clearly enveloped him. I felt at the time that I had regained my father, finding him much as I remembered him to be. So I decided to stop digging up whatever he was hiding. I would stop wondering about it entirely. I would forget. Or, to be more precise, I’d pretend to have forgotten it all, especially everything connected to how Grandfather died. And I wouldn’t ask if he had given up his goal of fulfilling his oath, or whether he had only delayed it and would carry it out without my knowing.
I reinforced this resolve with what the mosque’s preacher said, even if I was only using it as an excuse: “O my brothers, God says in the Qur’an, Don’t ask about things that, if they become clear, will hurt you. It is not necessary to know everything. If sometimes there is a comfort in knowledge, at other times ignorance and forgetting have a comfort that is even greater.”
I felt a certain satisfaction as I recalled my sense in recent days that the details of my life were coming back under control. I painted the walls of my living room, covering the nail holes with white. My father dyed his hair black. Fatima said that her family had agreed to her marrying me.
“All that’s left is for us to inform your father!”
My father and Rosa, after having confirmed that everything was ready for the party that night, were sitting harmoniously in front of us on the other side of the bar, looking very elegant. My father said to me with a laugh, “Your hair has gotten long. Do you want me to cut it for you again?”
My father hadn’t stopped drinking and smoking, but more than once he had mentioned his intention to cut back. I remembered how he had said to me a couple of days earlier, “I think that it would be good for us to try to go to the mosque every Friday.” He raised the glass that was in his hand and added with a smile, “At the very least, in order to cut back on our sins!”
It was evening, and just the four of us were in the club. The two Spanish waitresses hadn’t arrived yet. My father and Rosa were whispering together happily. Fatima murmured to me, “Come on, let’s tell them.”
“Dad, Rosa. Fatima and I have something we’d like to tell you.”
“We have a surprise for you too.”
“What is it?”
“No, you two go first.”
“Fatima and I have decided to get married.”
They leapt up together out of their seats, joyfully congratulating us and reaching across the bar to grab our heads and kiss us. Then they said to pour us all something to drink, and we began clinking our glasses and exchanging celebratory toasts. “We’ll put on a huge party for you here!”
In the midst of the jubilant commotion, Rosa asked, as any woman might, “And what will you name your children? I mean, for instance, if the newborn baby is a girl?” This may have been her way of creating a greater sense of familial intimacy and letting us know the extent of her hopes. Or maybe she said it because she found in us a way to experience vicariously her unrealized dream of being a mother.
Giving me a significant glance, Fatima responded, “I know what it is.”
My father said, “And I know too.”
“What?” Fatima asked him.
My father looked at me and said, “Aliya.”
Fatima jumped up, clapping for him, “That’s it! That’s it!”
We clinked our glasses again, joining their music with our laughter. After a pause, Rosa said, “And if the child is a boy, I would suggest that you name him Noah.” Her hand massaged the back of my father’s head.
But he interjected with a tone that was meant to be ironic, “No; that’s a bad omen. What sin has the poor little one committed to deserve our making him carry my misfortunes?” His smile widened, and he stared at me, sure that his irony would strike home this time when he said, “We’ll name him Sirat.”