The Lost Pearl (2012) (17 page)

I felt empty and worthless, like a forgotten suitcase in an old closet. My mother was appropriately worried about me. I had told her that I wanted to share something with her and that I had never been more happy in my life. And now I had become the epitome of grief. My eyes were always swollen from crying, and I never smiled. I spent most of my time in my room, immersing myself in my books. I made myself part of every story so I could forget my own. I continued to work on my 9/11 documentary, editing out all that seemed redundant. Only Ahmer could have given me the feedback I needed to smooth out the rough edges and to make everything come together and fall perfectly into place. But he was gone.

My misfortunes had hardened me, yet they had failed to strengthen me. Instead they had made me brittle, and I felt broken into a thousand pieces. I had not spoken to Ahmer, although he had been quite persistent and continued to call and e-mail me. The bitter, angry, and rebellious person within me had reemerged,
and reconciliation did not seem feasible. I deleted his e-mails without reading them and erased his messages without hearing them—all except the first one.

“I will always love you, Sana. You are the best thing that ever happened to me, and I will be right here waiting for you,” he had said.

I saved it and listened to it sometimes, shedding endless tears over my lost love. It was not his fault whose son he was, but he had hidden the truth from me, and that had cost us both so much. The truth was more valuable to me than the most exquisite jewel. My father had always attached so much emphasis to the truth and had so rightly opposed covering up the truth. Hadn’t those been Ahmer’s own sentiments? Truth had been important to Ahmer, but perhaps not as much as it had been to me. I had spent six years of my life loving the wrong person. If I had known the truth about him, I would never have spoken a single word to him. Perhaps he was just like his mother in character as he was in appearance; perhaps he hadn’t inherited his father’s evil. But no matter how I looked at it, the picture was bleak, and making things work out between us seemed impossible.

After reliving all our memorable moments and mourning the tragic ending of our love story, I realized that it was not fair to my family to see me withering away. I decided to tell my mother that I was willing to marry Zain. It would be no less than a self-inflicted punishment, but maybe that would be my atonement and my mother’s compensation for what she had endured on my account. I could not love again. But I needed to live again. In order to do that I had to do what I should have done years ago: meet the person who had ruined my past and, in a peculiar twist of fate, ruined my future as well.

My hatred for him had mushroomed over the past few days. I would go to meet him, but I would have to do it discreetly, without involving anyone else. I had been thinking about this since I was nine years old. I had to see him, look into his evil green
eyes, and ask him why he had, for things and money, taken away my entire universe. I needed to remind him that he had taken away a little girl’s smile, and replaced it with cries of deep sorrow. How would he know if I didn’t tell him, that years later, that horrible moment still came to haunt me every night and stayed with me every waking hour.

The drive to the prison was long and the roads were unusually deserted. Gray clouds blanketed the sky. I felt my hands shaking and my heart skipping several beats as I got closer. I felt cold on this hot summer day. I felt giddy from the humidity as well as my lack of sleep and exhausted from the plethora of thoughts running through my mind. I had covered myself with a large white scarf—a
chaadar
. I was afraid to enter the high-security prison unaccompanied. I did not want to attract any attention and wondered what my mother would think about my daring move. I was sure she would disapprove vehemently and declare it unsafe for a girl to go alone to such places. That was why I had not taken her into confidence; this was something I had to do alone. My alibi was that I was going to different parts of the city to conduct interviews for my documentary, which I had been working on. My mother had opposed that idea as well, due to safety issues, but had ultimately given her reluctant permission.

As I approached, I saw two guardsmen standing on either side of the black prison gate in perfect symmetry. Their khaki uniforms camouflaged them effectively, so they appeared to be part of the brown walls adjacent to the gate; if it were not for the rifles slung across their shoulders, they could easily be completely invisible.

It was a long walk across a large expanse of land that had occasional patches of grass burnt yellow by the sun. The fields were surrounded by silver fences that were mostly coated with rust and topped with coils of barbed wire. It started to drizzle, and not having an umbrella, I was grateful for having the
chaadar
and used it as my shield against the unexpected weather. Through the fence, I saw a group of uniformed inmates marching and singing a patriotic song in unison,
“Ai Watan Kay Sajeelay Javaanon”
(O brave soldiers of the nation), an old classic by Noor Jehan. A bird hummed a sad tune on a breaking branch of a weeping willow.

After being cleared through security, parting with my cell phone, and taking several deep breaths, I walked slowly through the dimly lit corridors. The walls were covered with yellow paint that was peeling off and decorated by graffiti that had been penned by countless inmates over the years. Patches marked the ceiling where water had leaked in monsoons gone by. Even now, there were several buckets lined up to collect water from the day’s downpour. My shoes made a splashing sound as they hit the wet floor. From the corner of my eye I saw an aged prisoner with a white beard and long white hair crouched in a corner mumbling inaudible words; he seemed to have lost his mind. Somewhere in the distance there appeared to be a commotion related to an internal dispute that was breaking out among the inmates. As I continued my walk into the high-security area, a deafening silence ensued. I felt frightened by the realization that I was amidst the worst form of humanity. The portion of the prison that I was walking through housed people who had killed in cold blood. The air felt thick, as though it were carrying the heavy burden of sin.

I had been granted fifteen minutes for this meeting, and Shehryar Khan had been informed of my arrival. How would I be able to tell him everything I had planned to tell him for more than fifteen years in fifteen minutes? How would I convey in a brief, timed conversation, the sorrow of a lifetime? But the moment I had been waiting for had finally arrived. I wondered how I would feel after the meeting. Would it give me some relief and some closure, or would it simply reinforce my anger and make my wounds raw again? For a minute I hesitated and considered
retracing my steps. But that would make me a coward who could not face her fears. I knew this was going to be difficult, but I also knew that if I did not go through with this, I might regret it for the rest of my life. Maybe that was why fate had brought me to Ahmer—so I would stop procrastinating and finally face the harsh reality of my father’s murder.

A thin policeman in a navy-blue uniform greeted me. His manner was cold, and his voice was punctuated with irritation as he escorted me to the cell. He seemed both annoyed and amused that a woman had interrupted his important schedule.

“This is Shehryar Khan,” he scornfully mumbled, leaving us to talk through the metal bars. I had promised myself I would not cry, break down, or show any sign of weakness. This was not like a college presentation I had practiced for a few days; this was the centerpiece of my life. This was the meeting I had dreamed of for sixteen years. I had been rehearsing it since I was a child. Yet I had delayed it, hiding behind a shield of sorrow, and my affliction had grown. I would say what I was there to say, release the venom that was within me, and leave immediately after, without giving him a chance to beg for mercy. I was afraid of what he might say if I gave him the chance. Would he try to defend such a crime? Would he try to justify killing my father for money and a watch, claiming that he was poor and needed to feed or educate his family?

I felt my lips tremble and was unable to look at him right away. I stared at the mosaic patterns on the floor. I looked at the fly that buzzed aimlessly from one side to another. I gazed at the decades-old gray clock that reminded me that only fourteen minutes remained. I was face-to-face with my enemy and was prepared to make the most important speech of my life. I hoped that I would walk out of this prison cell with my head held high and the weapon to eradicate my sorrow finally within my reach.

“Ahmer has told me so much about you,” he said, startling me. “I was expecting both of you to come together, but I am so
happy to see you, Sana. Ahmer has said such wonderful things about you.”

I had heard his voice; he had said my name. It made me shudder. I still could not muster the courage to look at him. “We are not getting married,” I said coolly. “Asad Shah was my father.”

It came out as a plain and simple fact, clean and sharp as the edge of a new razor blade. And then I looked up. Standing before me was a man who appeared defeated, a man who had suffered and lost. His prisoner uniform hung loosely from his thin frame. He was a man who had grown old before his time, who had lived through great pain and misery. His hair was an unevenly trimmed mass of gray, as was the stubble that covered his chin. Through it I could still see the barely visible dimple that he had passed on to Ahmer in its exact form. And then I looked at his eyes. Their lids seemed heavy from having carried the weight of sorrow, exhausted from years of looking at metal bars and unchanging walls. They appeared weathered from endless tears that had soaked their edges. I looked again to be sure. They were kind and forgiving. Yes indeed. They were generous and caring. They were listless and lifeless. But most importantly, they were the darkest shade of brown.

In an instant, I felt all the blood inside my body rush to the bottom of my feet. The bars behind which Shehryar Khan stood blended into one another as everything seemed to swirl around me. I felt as though I was standing on quicksand that was sucking me in. Before I could bring myself to speak, I turned around and ran. All the words I had rehearsed went up in smoke. The floor was wet from the rain, and I lost my footing and fell. It was a minor fall, but inside I had fallen to the deepest crevice in the ground. My shoe had come off, and my ankle was sprained and aching. I slowly steadied myself, put my shoe back on, and walked out with my head bowed lower than that of the worst prisoner I was leaving behind. In the background, I could still hear the old hunched man talking to himself. He was banging his head against the hard surface of his prison cell. My throat felt dry, and my hands felt cold and numb. The air felt even thicker, and it seemed impossible to breathe.

They had the wrong man. The wrong person was in prison for my father’s murder and had been there not for a few days, or months, but for sixteen long years. This had been the meeting I had been anxiously awaiting for more than half my life, hoping to bring closure to this awful tragedy. Instead I was faced with the revelation that an innocent man was behind bars for no fault of his own and the real killer had gone free. How could I have never questioned the authenticity of the investigation? I was a child, but how could none of my family members have known? I, the truth seeker, had hidden the truth about what I had seen, and so many lives had been destroyed as a result. Had I listened
to Papa’s advice, his last words, his last pearl—silence can be golden, but it is as bad as lying if it is used to hide the truth—this never would have happened. If only I had told someone what I had seen and simply described the face of the man outside the window, I would not be here today. I would not be feeling trapped in an armor of my own guilt or feeling suffocated by the thick smoke of a truth left untold. It was as if Papa had known the future, as if his sixth sense had come forth in those last hours, letting him know how limited his time was and how urgent it was to share his wisdom.

In a way, the words my father had spoken on the last day of his life would have given him justice in death, if only I had listened. I wish I had held on to his words more tightly than all the grudges in my heart. If only I had understood and remembered his advice more clearly than every lecture at Stanford. If only I had not carelessly let that last pearl fall from my clumsy hands. If only I had put the seashell to my ear and heard the ocean, rather than putting it away in a jar of worthless collectables, Shehryar Khan would be a free man. I limped slowly toward the car, wincing a little, and drove home.

The wind was gaining momentum, and the rain was pouring undeterred, slamming uninterrupted against the windows. It was as though the sky were shedding a thousand tears. This innocent man who stood behind iron bars had not seen the light of day for a decade and a half simply because I had kept silent. He had not been there to raise his son. He had not been at his wife’s bedside when she had died a painful death. He had lost everything, all because of a girl who had decided to bury the past. Had I told someone what I had seen, the right person might have been behind bars today and this innocent man might have been spared a life of incarceration. He might have been free to raise his son, free to see the world, free from the permanent impact of a ruined reputation and liberated from questions of ‘what if’ and ‘what could have been.’