Michael Gruber - The Good Son

“You have no fear of the Hell that awaits you?”

“I do fear it. I have done wickedness and I will be punished for it. But I look forward to at least one pleasure in the next life, which will be to see you roasting below me in a far hotter fire.”

“You really are a ridiculous woman, you know that? I am a mujahid and a leader of jihad, and God’s word assures me a place in Paradise. I will be interested to see if you speak so brazenly after you have condemned your friends to death, when you are the last one and the knife comes for you.”

“Not the knife, Alakazai: even you would not be so foolish as to behead a woman. But, as Rahman Baba says, ‘All the world travels to the grave, as the caravan heads homeward; death reaps all souls, as the farmer cuts the ripened grain.’ None of us can say what God has in store. You may kill me or you may not. For all you know, at this very minute a drone missile is being targeted on this house, or perhaps, since I am an important CIA agent, they are waiting until I leave.”

She observes this last remark strike home: a little flicker of doubt, some fear in his eyes. She has spent much of her life reading the expressions on faces, in therapy and, before that, on her travels, when mistaking an expression, missing a lie, could be fatal. She is quite good at it, and even in this short interview she has learned more about her captor than he knows he has revealed.

He recovers his aplomb, makes a whisking gesture with his hand. “I assure you there is no chance of that; you will surely die, and your bones will be left to the dogs and birds. That will be your end. In the meantime, go and have your conference. There is little entertainment for a man such as myself in this place, and I look forward to seeing you perform.” He speaks an order to the guard, who walks over and pokes Sonia in the ribs with the barrel of his AK.

“Out,” he orders.

“I can’t walk. Look at my feet.”

“Crawl, then,” he says, and pokes her again, harder.

She slides from the charpoy and crawls. Behind her she hears Alakazai laughing.

S o what happened after that?” Gloria asked.

“You really want to know this? My war stories? Why?”

“It’s interesting,” she said. “Like I told you, most guys are totally boring. Your life is like a movie.”

“You think? Okay, where was I?”

“Your grandfather and your sisters got blown up.”

“Right.”

And it happened at the worst possible time, not that there ever would have been a good time, but my mother was in Zurich. My uncle Nisar was studying in London, but it was some school break and he was off in the country with friends, out of touch for weeks. My uncle Seyd was with the army on maneuvers in occupied Kashmir, so he was also more or less out of the picture for days afterward. My aunt Rukhsana was a kid, although I have to say she paid more attention to me than anyone else. My father, who should have taken charge of the situation, he just collapsed, became practically catatonic, and had to be hospitalized, or so I heard later on. My grandmother didn’t bother looking for me. She was probably already plotting to get Farid a new wife to replenish the gene pool.

Anyway, when the bomb went off I ran and hid in the storeroom. I wanted to be near my mother’s tin trunk. Wazir found me there on the night after the disaster. When I saw him I started bawling and he told me to stop crying, and when I continued he slapped my face. He said, “Be a man! A man doesn’t cry like a woman. If a man is injured he seeks revenge.”

I stopped crying. I asked him against whom I should seek revenge and he said, “My father knows, and he is planning his revenge this minute.”

I said, “It’s my grandfather who was killed and my sisters. I should have a part in the revenge.”

So he took me to his father. Gul Muhammed agreed that I should have a part, and he told me the story of why my grandfather had been assassinated. There was a zamindar, a wealthy landowner, who was cheating his peasants-which is to say he ate food, drank water, and breathed air-but in this case the peasants had somehow found the courage to bring a lawsuit against him, the case landed in the courtroom of Laghari Sahib, and Laghari Sahib had refused the customary bribe and given justice to the peasants, at which point the zamindar, Babur Amir, threatened him aloud in his own courtroom, and Laghari Sahib had thrown him in jail-five days-for contempt of court. Babur Amir had waited and plotted the death of Laghari Sahib. There was a man who worked for Babur Amir and did his dirty work: beatings, shootings, and also bombs, because he had been with the jihad in Kashmir and understood explosives. This man was Salim Malik.

I asked Gul Muhammed how he knew this and he said, in the way you explain something to a young child, “Everyone knows this. There would have been no point to Babur Amir’s revenge if it were not known; also, having it known shows that Babur Amir has no fear of the police or the courts. Thus he can act after this with impunity, and no peasant will ever challenge him again.”

Then I asked why the police didn’t arrest these men for the murders, and he said, “Because Babur Amir is well with the government of Zia, and the government of Zia hated Laghari Sahib so they will do nothing.” He made a gesture encompassing all of us. “But we will not do nothing, oh, no!”

He thought for a while, tapping his bearded chin. “You must stay here in my quarters and keep hidden.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I say so. Wazir will bring you food. I leave tonight, and while I am gone you must not by seen by anyone but him. Say that you understand and will obey!”

I said this, happy to have someone strong in charge of me.

He smiled and patted my head. “Good. When you are older you will know why I do this.”

The next morning, he was gone, Wazir did not know where, except that he had packed his pistol and his Enfield rifle in the sidecar of his ancient BSA motorcycle. A week and a day later I was sleeping when Wazir slipped into my room and awakened me.

“What’s happening?”

“Quick. Get dressed. Wear your Pashtun clothes and take anything you want to take, but make sure you have blankets and warm clothes. One small bag only. We leave tonight.”

I dressed in a black shalwar kameez and put a felt Pashtun hat on my head. I packed a bag: underwear, socks, sweater, a lined rain jacket, boots. And my mother’s knife.

Gul Muhammed was waiting in the courtyard with his motorcycle. He pushed it out into the street and cranked it up, a sound shockingly loud in the night air. I climbed onto the pillion and we were off, through the warren of Anarkali and then past the Mayo Hospital and out onto Railway Road. We crossed through the deserted Landar Bazaar and by a tunnel under the tracks entered a part of the city I had never been in, an area of hulking godowns and small repair shops. Gul Muhammed threaded his motorcycle slowly through alleys where men pounded metal by the light of buzzing fluorescents and hissing gasoline lanterns; the work of Lahore never ends. At last he stopped in front of a godown. He unlocked and lifted a corrugated steel door, walked the idling motorcycle up a ramp, and closed the door behind us with a clang that echoed through the vast inner space of the warehouse. By the light of the motor-cycle’s headlamp I could see towers of crates and jute bags strapped to pallets. He steered the bike through the aisles of merchandise, the thumping motor sounding like a beating heart.

He stopped. Against the wall I could see the bound and gagged figure of a man. Gul Muhammed said, “Babur Amir is dead. I went to his haveli in Gulberg. He was well guarded. Three hundred meters from this house I found a tall tree, a cedar, that provided a view into the courtyard of the haveli. I climbed it and waited. Three days I waited, until Babur Amir came out to kick a ball around the courtyard with his sons. It was a long shot, but I didn’t miss. This animal is Salim Malik, who set the bomb.”