Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

Which used to be India, right?

Correct, I replied.

The head continued nodding, just enough to be sure of being noticed while I was cutting tomatoes with a kitchen knife. My guess, borne of more verified guesses than I’d ever wish for, was that in Tomaso’s mind the boundary between India and Bangladesh, however it might be drawn politically, was not sufficiently hard in culture, in the imagination, in rightly guided imagination, to warrant note.

I looked at the tomatoes I was cutting.

What’s this I hear, Emily? Tomaso asked. Apparently, you’re going to work at the UN.

Emily smiled at Tomaso. Her smile was engineered, machined into her countenance, an embossed symbol rather than an emotion. To Emily, that smile was somehow enough of an answer to all manner of questions, even when it was no answer at all. It earned her time. But when, more often than not, no further comment came from her, you did not press her. Somehow, to do so felt inappropriate.

I used to marvel at the skill of it, until it dawned on me that what I saw was not the exercise of skill but the expression of a character habituated by the behaviors of a family that threw the cloak of secrecy over everything it did, an act of prudence, as if to smother every trace of some pestilence threatening to escape. She behaved as a body conditioned to respond to a certain stimulus of the senses.

When do you leave? he asked Emily.

He glanced back and forth from me to Emily. He was probably a good journalist, I thought. He did not ask me what he must have wanted to ask. Or was that my own insecurity? And what would I have told him, if he had? That she would go to the UN, cross the Atlantic, with my blessing, for I never wanted anyone else to think that I had held back a woman, I never wanted anyone to house me any deeper in the pigeonhole of a South Asian male?

There are a few hurdles yet, she replied to him.

Tomaso sat down and, turning to me, asked, Do they make olive oil in India?

I’m sorry. Where?

In India.

I believe they do, I replied. I turned to Emily and reached for the bottle. Let’s use Tomato’s olive oil, I said.

Tomaso’s, said Emily, correcting me.

It must have seemed an easy mistake to make; I was cutting tomatoes, after all.

Tell me. Is it true that Indians believe the earth sits on a giant turtle?

Time came to a brief halt.

Are you asking me ?

Yes.

In some cultures, a rainbow is a symbol for the refraction of light.

Now what does that mean?

And Reno is west of L.A., Rome is north of New York, but do you speak African?

I beg your pardon?

Beg all you like. You’re not getting it.

Excuse me?

Yes?

Tomaso shook his head. He looked exasperated.

So?

So, what?

So, is it true? In India, do they believe the earth sits on a giant turtle?

Do you know which country has the largest Muslim population in the world?

I do know. Indonesia.

Indonesia is the largest officially Muslim state, but the country with the largest Muslim population is India, which is a secular state.

Right. But you haven’t answered my question.*

Are you a Catholic?

I am.

So you believe in the transubstantiation of a wafer?

Well, I’m not sure I subscribe to the whole theology.

Likewise, I don’t know if all Hindus, or even some, believe that the earth rests on a giant turtle.

Then why are you talking about Muslims?

I can safely say that two hundred million Muslims in India — if they are Muslims in more than name — don’t believe that the earth rests on a giant turtle. Muslim ontology is not so far from Christian and Jewish ontologies. So to answer your question, there are many they in India who do not maintain that the earth rides on the back of a turtle.

I see, he said. He seemed to consider this.

I returned to the salad I was preparing.

Do you go back often? he asked.

Sorry, are you talking to me ?

Yes. Do you go back to India often?

I’ve been there a couple of times, I said, pouring olive oil into a jar.

It must be very hard.

Why?

They’re so poor.

Yes, Tomato, the poor have it hard.

I shook the jar of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. This time there was no doubt. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. I wasn’t making a mistake with his name.

Why are you so British? he asked. The man stood up. In his hand was the glass of red wine. Why can’t you be more Indian? he continued. You have such a fine tradition and culture and history but you’ve become an Englishman.

Now you’re insulting the whole of England.

The name’s Tomaso.

You say potato.

You’re nothing like my Indian friend at Oxford.

How many times a day do you forgive someone his ignorance?

Is that an apology?

I’m sorry, Tomato.

And at that, Tomaso emptied his glass over my shirt. He thrust it in my direction and the wine came flying out. A few drops made it to my face.

That was unnecessary, I said.

You asked for it, he replied.

I wish I could tell you I had a witty comeback. The ones I formulated came too late and they weren’t so witty after all. I suppose I could have tried to justify myself, but where to begin? And why bother?

I looked down at my shirt, looked at Tomaso, looked at Emily. Somewhere in the room must have been Tomaso’s girlfriend.

Silly me. I’ve spilled wine on my shirt, I said and left the room. When I returned, the two of them had gone.

* * *

If Zafar’s story had meant to convey what it was he liked about Emily, I didn’t get it. Searching now for clues, I find myself asking if he had meant to suggest that there was a certain romance about being with her, the Tuscan hills, making love under the stars, the remove from his childhood, a certain glamour in a certain life. It sounds shallow to me, too shallow for my friend, I would have thought, but my instincts settle there. Perhaps he himself saw a shallowness in that, and that is why his little aside never meets the mark of answering my question. I did in fact press him on the point, though his answer seemed to me a touch disingenuous, which only returns me to my own conclusion.

Good times, he said, are interesting times.

By such a standard, the incident with Tomaso, I said, must have been a great time.

His answers were unsatisfactory, but I left it there. And then there was the sex. Of course, I was uncomfortable listening to this — for reasons I’ll come to very soon — but what struck me above all else as he discussed the sex was that he was prepared to do so. Men don’t talk like that, not the men I know. And perhaps because of that, I had the thought that Zafar would not be staying very much longer. I had the thought that such openness evidenced a disconnection with the regular world, that he had abandoned the cultivation of a self to suit the society of his fellow men. I looked at him and saw that he would never have a job again, never return to the treadmill, never pay a mortgage and make a home and raise a family. He had slipped off the wheel.

Whenever he related his experience with Emily, Zafar’s demeanor changed and a darkness gathered about him, so that age and weariness showed in the features of his face. More or less everything he told me about his time with her was news to me. Sometime in 1997, we began to meet less and less frequently and, since the period coincided with a substantial increase in work for me — business in the mortgage market spiked, and the prospect of making partner quickly loomed in sight — our friendship waned. Time then seemed to move so quickly that I did not gauge the absence of friendships very well. Meena was also busy; having found her feet in finance, she’d set off at a sprint. I believed our relationship was content and strong and we could draw on that contentment to sustain us through the long working days of separation.