Michael Gruber - The Good Son

Customs in Lahore gave me some heat about the Scotch, but since I have a pale skin and spoke perfect Urdu (and had the booze license) the guy figured I was connected to the elite and let me through. My Auntie Rukhsana was waiting for me outside passport control, and I got a big hug from her, followed by a flood of tears-Oh, your poor mother, you poor boy-and so on, and I thought it was a little extreme, it’s not like either my mother and I were the center of family life among the Lagharis. She asked me with a kind of hungry desperation how our plan was going, and I said it was going as well as could be expected but the thing now was to find out where the hostages were being held and I had to be here to do that, and she asked me how I was going to proceed, all business now, the tears dried, and I said I still had some contacts and I’d ask around. She pumped me a little then, like the good journalist she is, but I put her off, like the good secret agent I am, and at last she quit and flashed me a smile. “Little Theo, all grown up!” she said. “We’re having a party for you tonight. I hope you are not too jet-lagged.”

“Not too,” I said. “I’m used to traveling. But I’m not exactly in the party mood.”

“Yes, I understand, and we all, or almost all, feel the same way. But here the family is the most important thing; whenever something happens in your life, good or bad, the family gathers and we all eat, eat. You don’t understand that maybe, but I think we must have such a gathering, because I think you will need our help in what you are going to do. So it is, in a sense, part of why you have come.”

“Okay, got it,” I said. I’m nothing if not culturally flexible. “Who all is going to be there?”

“Oh, just the immediate family, Jafar and our children and Nisar and his wife and children. They are dying to meet you.”

“And Seyd? He’s not coming?”

She made a face. “Oh, Seyd! That’s all we would need, an ISI-wallah and you in the same room.”

“Why not? I’m sort of an ISI-wallah myself. We could have an interesting conversation.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” said my aunt darkly, and then turned to snarl in Mahji dialect at the beggars and porters who had surrounded us as soon as we left the terminal building. Another sign I was back home, people willing to carry heavy loads for a few cents, and other people treating them like dogs, and me as one of the non-dog higher beings: the feelings connected with that, and the near-solidity of the humid air, a sticky sludge of diesel, sewage, and hot spicy oils.

We got into her Mini and Rukhsana gunned the engine and pressed the horn, trusting the dog people to scramble out of our way, which they did, apparently without resentment, and she whipped us out into the exit road traffic.

I said the expected “Lahore Lahore hai,” and she laughed and replied in Mahji Panjabi.

“Yes, and can you still speak your cradle tongue, or have you forgotten?”

I answered in the same language. “I have not forgotten, Auntie, although I think that even you are more comfortable in English or proper Urdu.”

“Yes, but I am part of the cosmopolitan liberal elite that will be the ruin of pure Islamic Pakistan, according to my brother Seyd. I believe he has stopped using English entirely.”

“Then, we’ll have to speak Urdu when we meet.”

“You intend to visit Seyd?” She seemed astounded.

“Sure,” I said. “I need to find out what ISI knows about the kidnapping. I’m assuming he’ll be forthcoming. One of his relatives by marriage is among the hostages.”

“Whom he has always despised. Honestly, Theo, you cannot be so naïve. Don’t you understand that the people who did this atrocity are ISI pawns? I would not be surprised to learn that ISI arranged the whole affair.”

“Why would they do that?”

“A number of reasons. To embarrass the new government, who perhaps are not as bloodthirsty or purely Islamic as they would like. To discredit anyone working for peace with India. To curry favor with the mullahs. For money.”

“How money?”

“Well, if you have kidnapped one of the richest men in the world, I assume there will be money involved. I have heard rumors of negotiations. I have heard of lunches up in Pindi between businessmen, strangers, and high officials of the military and Inter-Services Intelligence. Something is going on. It is well known the whole country is for sale, so why shouldn’t our terrorists be for sale as well?”

“If that were true we’d have bin Laden by now. No one’s collected the twenty-five million.”

“Oh, well, those are Pashtuns. In any case, betraying a leader is a different affair entirely to selling a hostage.” Then she yelled, “Get out my way, you shit-eater, go rape your sister!” out the window at a multicolored bus as she whipped across several lanes to make a left turn.

“You’re not going to Model Town Park?” I said, as we changed direction.

“Oh, no, we are too fine for Model Town Park now. We have a house in Gulberg, which would have been quite convenient when the children were at school, but now we float around in it like fish in a tank. We have fifteen marlas, can you imagine?”

“That’s a good-sized house,” I said, falling easily back into the traditional calculations. A marla was 272 and a quarter square feet, so fifteen marlas was a big house for urban Pakistan.

“You must be doing very well, Auntie.”

“Oh, well, I am working and the children are grown and Jafar was made head of his division, and we did well on the Model Town house and some investments. You know, most people have small houses full of elderly relatives so we all take one another out to restaurants. When you are able to entertain in your own home that is a big something.”

“Yes, Auntie, I know. I was born here.”

“Of course, I know that, but you look like such an American now. Anyway, it is now considered more chic to have others to one’s house, and that was one reason we bought it. You’ll see. Of course, it is not old Lahore, not like my father’s house, but Gulberg is not nothing either.”

She sounded sad when she said this, and I asked her, “And do you entertain very much, Auntie?”

“No, we do not, or rather not for some time, because when one is promoted to head of division one has no time for such things anymore. He is in Kahuta half the time, and I am by myself. And even when we did entertain it was all very stiff, the women on one side talking children’s accomplishments, the men on the other talking office politics. No conversation that any civilized person would recognize as such. Oh, Theo, do you remember those nights at my father’s house? People from every part of Lahore, faquirs and generals, merchants, chemistry professors, journalists, ministers, and that wonderful music, with the ghazals floating up through the colored lanterns on strings. What happened to that world, that is what I want to know? We are richer than ever we were then, but somehow the taste has gone out of life. Or am I just getting old?”

I had nothing to contribute in that department, so I asked how her kids were doing, always a safe subject for a Punjabi woman, even a modern one, and she told me about Shira, who was in the foreign service, a diplomat, if you can imagine, and Hassan, who was prepping for Cambridge, and the baby, Iqbal, not such a baby anymore; he is mad for computers and doesn’t want to go to college but open his own software business, and Nisar is encouraging him, offering investments, and his father is going to shoot both of them; and we talked and argued about stuff like that for the rest of the trip to Gulberg.

The house was a new one, two floors, tan stucco, and a lot of sheet glass, with little Islamic details so you knew you weren’t in L.A. My aunt showed me to a guest room and told me dinner would be at eight, she would be out and about getting ready, and if I wanted anything just ring.