Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [8]
“Do you know why you’re getting this piece of paper in your left hand?” she asked.
“No.”
“Because of Islam.”
“What about Islam?”
“On the Day of Judgment, when Allah raises mankind from their graves and decides who goes to Paradise and who goes to hell, everyone will be gathered under the Throne. Then a quick breeze will blow and it will deliver a piece of paper into each person’s hand. If the paper is in the right hand it means the person will be bound for Paradise. If the paper is in the left hand it means the person will be bound for hell. What hand is your paper in?”
“Left.”
“Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes.”
“Now go and write your punishment.”
Until that moment I hadn’t assigned any significance to what had happened with Sina. Now, with the introduction of Allah’s judgment, with the introduction of penitence and forgiveness and apology, with the threat of hell hanging over me, the entire sequence of events took on a dark tinge. I could feel gunah creeping on my skin like a lizard on a hot summer wall. I had done something that Allah didn’t like. He would find me impious and unvirtuous and punishable. He would lean forward upon the kursi and look at His angels and say, “That Abir ul Islam really wasn’t worthy of his name!” The angels would agree. Then they would revoke my membership from among the meteor-hurlers. Suddenly I couldn’t bear how full of gunah I was and began crying. Then I wrote each word individually down the sheet:
I-I-I…
ask-ask-ask…
Allah-Allah-Allah…
for-for-for…
forgiveness-forgiveness-forgiveness…
As I finished my hundredth petition, I began loathing girls. Being nice to them upset Allah, and upsetting Allah’s rules was not something becoming of Abir ul Islam.
5
My family had ended up in Lahore because we couldn’t get into America.
When I was an infant, Pops was a zoology professor at a university in Saudi Arabia. It was a good job that allowed him to buy a Volvo and send money to his parents in the village. But Pops dreamed about being a true medical doctor—and not in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, but in America, where his children could grow up and become someone without having to pay bribes. So Pops left that job and moved us all the way to the island nation of Dominican Republic, where he enrolled in medical school. People said it was easy to get into America from there.
We lived among hefty Dominicans, suave Lebanese émigrés, vacationing Castilians, and a small contingent of sweaty Pakistani students who were following the same path to America—the state of salvation. With his feet in many jobs and a bottle in my newborn brother’s mouth, Pops graduated and started looking into moving to New York. But when he filed his papers, he learned that due to immigration quotas we couldn’t get in. Ammi also filed for immigration—this time through her brother, who already had American citizenship—but she was told that it would be seven to ten years before her name would be called if she followed that channel.
Out of ideas and in search of a job, Pops sent the three of us back to Pakistan. Then, with our last eight hundred dollars in his pocket, he went to Italy, hoping to gain admission in a medical fellowship. Less than forty-eight hours later he was conned of all his money by a Muslim. He had to call back to relatives in Pakistan to have money wired to him so he could buy a return ticket.
He joined us a week later.
We stayed with Beyji at her fine bungalow for a little while and then moved to a tiny apartment on a noisy lower-income street choked by smog and trash, with a thick carpet of dust lapping against our door. Every day Pops would get on his bike and ride around the towns encircling Lahore, seeking a place to launch a medical practice. After a while, a small-time feudal landlord who lived in a red haveli, a mansion left over from colonial days, invited him to open up a clinic in one of his buildings.
It was a tepid practice: the patients came rarely, and when they