Streams of Babel (19 page)

"Beth Israel? It is a Jew hospital," I breathe in confusion.

"It's a
great
hospital. You have to stop thinking like that. We're all mongrels in America. The Jews will not poison your medicine. Everyone will give you good care. Your health insurance as an intern will pay the bills ... It's all good. Okay?"

I had not intended to make a negative comment about Jews—only a curious one. I had never met one to my knowledge, and it had been on the top of "My List" to do so when my father left Pakistan. He and I each had a "My List" that I had entirely forgotten about, until Hodji just brought up a Jew hospital.

It makes my lips smile a little more as I remember hazily some things: Visit Disney, see Miss Liberty, and see Yankees were at the top. But there were smaller things we had much fun thinking up: Buy Gap jeans, eat Kentucky Fry, stick our heads
in a cathedral and see if the incense really can make you dizzy, walk up beside a Jew and see if they really do stink. This could be my chance to see if some rumors that circulate in my village have any basis in fact. I am curious, not meaning to harm.

But I can't help asking Hodji: "Those doctors ... will they smell?"

It is our joke sometimes that Americans, the white ones especially, can smell of something I cannot find words for. Perhaps it is ... yogurt.

"They might not think that
you
smell so hot." He lifts his freshly showered armpit and sticks it in my face with his vulgar, American laughter. "Smells like a rose, you see?"

He smells of strawberry, plastic, and yogurt, that is what I think. "They stink like this?" I ask.

"Only it doesn't stink. You'll get used to it"

I don't know. Our village is clean. Our home is ceremoniously clean for the sake of my asthma. I think of my aunt Hamera and her two sisters, and how they fold their garments beneath their knees for pads as they scrub and scrub. But for us, ammonia is enough, and bar soap is enough. We are more simple than what I see on the Internet and what Hodji and Father often described. In America, there is a different soap for everything—one for your hair, one for your skin, one for your shaving, one for your clothes. There is one paper to blow with, one to make with in your toilet, one to put to your mouth while eating. In our village, we have only the toilet roll. Hodji has told me I can use the toilet roll to blow with, but if I bring said roll to the table and wipe my mouth, that is very bad manners. I don't see why I can put roll paper to my nose but not my mouth. I don't see why I should be forced to eat with wiping
paper in my hands, as if I were a small child. It is very confusing, and with all these soaps Hodji uses every day, I will stink like a nasty bouquet.

I turn only my eyes sideways to glare at him. He is a big and powerful American who can write his own definitions of normal. A revelation rises up slowly from my feet.

"You say I have been working hard for the Americans lately? I have always worked hard. I worked hard for my
father.
Not for America."

If my father's Internet business with Uncle were to continue operating successfully after my father went to New York, it required my staying. I did not protest. I didn't like the situation, but there was never an e-mail request from my father in New York that I didn't fulfill. If he wanted programs or hacking or v-spying or technical advice, I completed all. He would send me some of his pay for helping him or teaching him. Programming—and hacking—came as naturally to me as breathing and scratching and learning the languages of others.

"I worked for
him.
Even after he died. I just think of that. That and how ... I really feel nothing about this place."

Hodji doesn't take it as badly as I think he might. "Well, it's good you're finally thinking about it. You've got nothing to do for a long transatlantic flight but think, and if you want my honest opinion, it's about time. You can't hide behind work forever."

He looks at the rising sun over the red roofs of Karachi. He is Catholic but polite. "Did you come to speak to Allah?"

I feel I would like very much to speak to Allah, and I say yes quickly.

I watch him trudge cautiously across the sand, knowing he will be half watching me. He is probably hoping I will think of
the many pictures my father sent me by e-mail that I used to treasure, plus the fun we had looking at the world on our screen before he left the Karachi police force. Our early trips across the Internet were more than just America; my father wanted to see the whole world. Of that, I am triply sad.

Computer screens in 1996 were slow moving. But to us, each download was like a page of a gigantic magazine, filled with all the adventures he wanted to take:
Experience our Italy ... stay in our Viennese golden hotel ... climb our majestic Swiss mountains ... swim in our Mediterranean seas ... run with our Australian kangaroos ... frolic with our Polynesian fish ... taste our rich Dutch chocolate ... see Disney!

"So, what do you have now, Father?" The beach becomes blurry as my eyes fill. I have rarely spoken directly to my father since his death. But I see the truth about my father plainly for once. "Father, you got to see
one
country! You fell victim to the men you chased."

The sun bobs ahead in its red richness, but I do not play up to him.

"And you ... you used to belong only to me, and now you are quite selfish!" I don't know quite to whom I am speaking—my father, or this enormous sun of early morning, to which I used to say, "You are all mine; you belong only to me."

I stop seeing my father's favorite downloads of Vienna and Polynesia and Brazil and I see something plainer. Once he got to America, my father's most beloved view—even more than Miss Liberty—was of the busy streets of midtown, the multiplicity of souls who had come to seize back their royalty. People in the photos he e-mailed me of Union Square were "speckled," like many litters of puppies. Brown, yellow, bronze, freckled,
red, white ... They were tall, squat, pale, dark, bald, bearded, skinny, fat, tired, scared—

"—and great, Shahzad. They came to the universities, the community colleges, the job placement programs, the classified advertisements. They worked with sweat, strength, grunts, and groans, and always, Shahzad, with their dignity. To be paid fairly for your effort is a magical force, a declaration of your self-worth to a world that tends to shred and devour."

I want to say something to Allah, so I face the east. "Perhaps I am a coward, Great Allah," I whisper. "Perhaps I should feel ready to reach past the Internet and mere images of reality. So if you please, maybe I would like to be a bigger part of reality, as my father would have wished. Perhaps I would like to taste a ballpark frank, view a cathedral, use chopsticks, visit a theme park, wear Gap jeans, smell a Jew, go to school, see a good doctor, eat Kentucky Fry, watch the Yankees, own an ATM card, touch a piano, read the Shakespeare in the English...

"I would like to remember my father's dreams without anguish. I would like to find his courage and take up his course. I would like to visit for him the Angolans, Algerians, Nigerians, British ... Spanish, South Americans, Icelanders, Swedes ... Finlanders, Poles, Norwegians, Russians, Canadians, Texans, Brazilians, Argentineans, Afghans, Australians ... Or perhaps you can supply me with the courage to go to the one place on Earth where they all converge. I suppose that in your ironic ways, Great Allah, you have fulfilled my father's every dream when he went only to one country.
Allahu Akbar...
"

I raise my head, but in a trance. The great sun is still not mine, though I sense a bigger truth—it belongs to everyone, which might be why I picture it shining brightly on this far-off
bad dpi, which contains the fragmented pixels of courage from every country on Earth.

"Great Allah, my father is a fallen, precious memory. Our dreams are in the recycle bin. But if you would be pleased to recover them ... Though there is one other thing: I would like to live to be old.
Amin
..."

SCOTT EBERMAN
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 2002
6:30
P.M.

AS DOBBINS PULLED into my street, I decided to stop at the Steckermans' to get Rain a toothbrush. I could see a lot of lights on inside their house. In fact, four cars lined the driveway, which I'd have thought were people coming to my house, except for one thing. They were all say-nothing cars—the types so devoid of personality that they have to be airport rentals.

"What the hell..." I stared. "Those cars belong to USIC people. From, like, Washington or..."

I grabbed the door handle as Dobbins parked.

"I'm going in there. You better let me go by myself," I said. Maybe I could find a way to get info if we didn't overwhelm them. "Go over to our house and tell my uncles I'm right behind you. We'll take this night one step at a time."

Dobbins whisked the keys into his pocket and we headed in separate directions. From the Steckerman porch, I saw maybe six silhouettes behind the drapes in the living room. The front
door was locked. I banged, and Alan came so fast that I almost clanged my fist in his noggin. He stepped out and asked what was wrong.

Big secret meeting, yup. I was trying to look after his kid, like I didn't have enough on my plate, and he was acting like he didn't want me in the house.

"Rain wants me to get her something to sleep in. What, do I have to know the USIC secret handshake?"

He looked sheepish as he stuck his head back inside. "Friends! I'd like you to meet my neighbor from across the street!"

He spoke loudly, as if it were a warning, and this houseful of people turned quiet as I came in. They were all dressed in suits. I shook hands numbly all around when Alan introduced me, and I accepted their condolences, which let me know that at least the name Eberman was clear in their minds. I counted six faces, heard one or two more voices in the kitchen, and spotted a man sitting at the head of the dining room table, surrounded by papers. He was talking on two cell phones at once in what sounded like a different language for each phone. He had hair that seemed almost too blond for an adult's, so I leaped to the conclusion he was speaking something like Swedish and Swiss.
Sophisticated,
yee.

"Sorry to disturb you. I'm collecting a toothbrush and a pair of sweatpants." I clomped up the stairs, went into Rain's bathroom, and grabbed her toothbrush. But before I could come back downstairs, Alan met me in the hallway.

"Scott, if Rain is asking to stay with you guys again tonight, I feel like I ought to say no. You probably need some sleep."

I wasn't sure of how much to say. "It's fine. She keeps Owen sane."

"Well, some of these people might be here until all hours, and she could actually get more sleep if I just leave her alone. How is she right now? And what's happening over at your house?" A look of concern wafted through his general distraction. But I called him on it.

"What's happening at
your
house?"

"I was supposed to be at a meeting in New York today, but with Rain sick and your mom's service tomorrow, I had them do some flight rearrangement."

My heart melted slightly.
Just a routine meeting.
So, why the frosty reception?

I rambled, "Look. I know next to nothing about your job, Alan. But if you and your, uh,
friends
have any idea how some bizarre sickness could take my mother, bounce over nine houses, get the Holmans, then jump back and make Rain and my brother sick ... I think I'm entitled to know."

"Your brother is sick?" Alan forced his fingers through his hair. "Did you see Charlie O'Dell? He said he was going over to your house today."

"He's sending Dr. Godfrey over later, though he's not taking it as seriously as I am. I'm
trying
to think of the half the town that's been in my house for the past three days without even a snivel. I'm
trying
to tell myself that two neighborhood deaths of brain aneurysms with flulike symptoms is a coincidence. And most of the town remaining perfectly healthy—that's the evidence. But ... it doesn't make sense."

He put a hand on my shoulder and urged me down the stairs with him. Part of me wanted to take him by the throat, shake him, and scream,
What the fuck are all these suits doing here?
But the presence of USIC, if related, made even less sense
than the presence of an emerging infectious disease. Diseases can't reason. They show up where they show up. And if it's true that terrorists are not exactly psycho, then they would have to understand that Trinity Falls would be a goddamn stupid place to terrorize. If they wanted to start poisoning people with slow-working germs, there would be more satisfying targets up in central Jersey, with its dense New York suburbs and huge industries. South Jersey was crude in comparison—little more than the Pine Barrens, beach sand, and meadow grass stubble.

I wandered back to the living room as Alan went to get Rain's clothes. The blond-haired man at the dining room table was exchanging cell phones with a woman in a blue suit, as if he were finishing one of his calls and jumping right into a third. Another man dropped a cup of coffee on the table in front of him.
Sophisticated and important,
my local-yokel mind rolled, especially when the cell phone he'd handed to the woman started to ring, and she answered it, saying, "He's talking to them now overseas."

A man came out of the kitchen who hadn't been out here for my introduction, but whose face I recognized. The guy had been standing behind Alan at the televised press conferences about the water-tower testing back in January.

I said, "Imperial ... James Imperial. You're the new director of USIC in Washington."

He shook my hand with polite disinterest. "But we haven't met."

I told him I remembered his face from the television two months ago, and he grinned. "Your memory is that fine-tuned? You want a job?"

I wasn't in the mood to joke around. Alan came back,
handed me a bag of clothes, and said, "James, Scott's mother is one of the two women on the street who died."