Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

I remember now a summer day at that Vermont camp, whose days strung together made up the long vacation in my American years, when Crane and I, out in the woods on a trek with the counselor, along with three other boys, aged eight, broke away from the rest, Crane diving into the undergrowth and I following, a follower even then, for an adventure, he said, though I could see it in his face that breaking away was the adventure itself.

Oh, look, I said, there’s a hidebehind.

Where?

Right behind you.

Crane turned and of course he couldn’t see it. My father had told me about the lesser spotted hidebehind, a bird with one wing, which therefore flew in clockwise circles around your back and was really, really hard to see, he said, so you had to be quick like a mongoose, which I knew had to be really, really quick, even if I didn’t know what a mongoose was. My father laughed his face off as I spun on my heels trying to take the bird by surprise. The hidebehind carried on in my world for a while, because I wanted it to, even after my father gave the game away.

It’s gone, I said. No wait, there it is again.

Hey, looky here, Crane said, stopping. He was peering over a patch of dirt.

I’m no fool, I thought, but coming closer I saw the object of his attention, a chipmunk on its side, twitching, and I knew, as did Crane, that the creature was wounded or sick, that the animal was dying.

We should put it out of its misery, he said.

Even though I didn’t know what that meant, there was a part of me that sensed the awfulness of it. It sounded like something a grown-up would say, and I looked at Crane with admiration.

Then Crane lifted his foot and placed it above the chipmunk’s head, letting the sole hover in the air above it. My stomach felt bad. Slowly he brought his heel down, grinding it into the dirt is how I remember the sight, and I can hear now the skull cracking, like peanut brittle. When he removed his foot, the creature lay in a distorted shape, its head sunk into the earth, and, nestled in the dirt and fur, was the ball of an eye.

* * *

At the time, any onlooker might have concluded that I was being raised as an American. American is in fact what I was and what I continue to say I am if pressed on the matter. I have an American passport. This point, if I state it matter-of-factly, seems to close out the persistent questions of Europeans.

I know, however, that when I say I’m American, I don’t mean much more than that I hold an American passport. I’m entitled to a Pakistani passport because of my parents, and though I obtained a British passport in order to ease travel within Europe, I otherwise travel on the U.S. one. But such patriotism as there is in me really goes no further: I am not moved when I hear “The Star-Spangled Banner”; I do not feel the urge to leap to America’s defense when I hear Europeans castigate the whole country (despite the obvious foolishness of regarding as homogeneous a continent that runs from California to New York and Montana to Texas — it was put well by a friend, a New Yorker born and bred, who lives there still, when he said that America was fine to visit but he wouldn’t want to live there). Perhaps the closest I come to feeling myself American is when a U.S. immigration officer snaps the navy blue passport shut and hands it back with a smile and with the greeting “Welcome home.” At that moment, I have felt to varying degrees the sensation of a breeze kissing the back of my neck, which might very well be called patriotism. It might ultimately be rather trivial. But I know that such things, small as they might seem to me, are far from trivial to others.

In New York, all those years ago, in another conversation as we idled about in Greenwich Village, I mentioned to Zafar my experience on being handed back my passport at JFK the day before. His reaction startled me. Before I could ask what was going on, he had turned on the sidewalk, hailed a cab, and was climbing in. My friend directed the cabdriver to take us to lower Manhattan, where we caught the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. He said he wanted to show me something there, and since I had only ever seen the statue from Manhattan, I went along with his sudden impulsive turn.

As we pulled away from the port, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center loomed up, and then, when the ferry heaved farther into the bay, with the Manhattan skyline receding in that picture postcard image of New York, I began to feel the combination of romance and longing that such a sight is, I think, bound to arouse in native and visitor alike. The sun was high and the city’s glass skyline gave off specks of dazzling light. The water was calm and it seemed as if lower Manhattan were floating on the surface of the sea. At the stern of the ship, hoisted on a pole leaning toward the foamy wake, was the flag of the United States of America.

I felt no tie to America at that moment, as I might have done, nothing in the way of being at home, but instead I stood there as a witness to the overwhelming idea of America, as Zafar has described it.

On Liberty Island, Zafar showed me what he wanted me to see. Engraved on a plaque is the famous poem written by Emma Lazarus and donated to an auction to raise money for the construction of the statue’s pedestal. Fragments of the poem were familiar enough, but when I stood beneath the statue of Lady Liberty, the embodiment of the hope of freedom, when I read its famous message in one unbroken whole, as if this were where it had first been written, I felt again the tingle I had felt the day before at JFK, and that I feel now from time to time, when an American immigration officer, a Hispanic American or Korean American immigration officer, says, “Welcome home.”

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I heard Zafar read those words, softly but just audibly enough above the shuffle and murmur of other visitors. When he finished, he looked at me and, in a voice that I am convinced bore a hint of accusation, he said: If an immigration officer at Heathrow had ever said “Welcome home” to me, I would have given my life for England, for my country, there and then. I could kill for an England like that.

Years later, I would understand what I had not understood then, that in those words there was not only reproof — that was obvious — but there was also a bitter plea. Embedded in his remark, there was a longing for being a part of something. The force of the statement came from the juxtaposition of two apparent extremes: what Zafar was prepared to sacrifice, on the one hand, and, on the other, what he would have sacrificed it for — the casual remark of an immigration official. Hyperbole perhaps, but only if hyperbole means the beating heart taking charge of tired words.

So now I ask myself this: Can it really be true that everything that was to follow might have been averted by one kind remark from an immigration official?

At Liberty Island, however, I found myself explaining to Zafar that the U.S. immigration official probably meant nothing very much and that the remark only demonstrated empty American friendliness. Even as I said this, I could hear the ludicrousness of my attempt to apologize — though quite what I was apologizing for, I can’t say.

Zafar was silent for the next half hour. Back on the ferry, we stood side by side, watching the Statue of Liberty fall back against the New Jersey shoreline. The day was waning and the sun had lowered. Against it, my friend looked possessed of a simplicity unfamiliar to me. I had the feeling of wanting to help him, without any notion of what that meant and paying no heed to his limitless self-sufficiency.