Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [98]
“No,” I said dispiritedly.
“Why not?”
“Well, I never got hold of our family tree.”
“You didn’t ask your Uncle Tau?”
“I never got a chance.”
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “what are you looking for? Maybe I know.”
Ammi, who was at lunch with us, spoke up. “He’s trying to find all the connections to the Siddiqui name.”
“I have the names going back four generations only,” I told him. “That’s all Pops remembered.”
I took out my notebook and set forth my research. Uncle Saad read through it carefully.
“So you want to go further back than this?” he asked.
“I have to,” I said. “I’m trying to get all the way back to Abu Bakr Siddiq, the first Caliph.”
Uncle Saad stopped eating and looked at me quizzically. “The Abu Bakr Siddiq?”
I nodded eagerly.
A big smile spread across his face—a sardonic one. Soon it became a snicker.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” he said, stifling another snicker. “I wish you the best. I do.”
“No. Tell me right this instant,” I demanded. “Tell me why you’re laughing.” My ears were hot with embarrassment.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes,” I said, though I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
Uncle Saad glanced at Ammi, then turned back to me. “That Siddiqui thing isn’t real,” he said, no longer smiling. “It’s a joke. No, it’s not even a joke; it’s a forgery. No, it’s not a forgery, because that implies an intent to cause harm. I don’t know what it is.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” I asked, the castles of pride in my mind crumbling.
“It’s all an accident,” Uncle Saad said. “The reason that we’re named Siddiqui is because a couple of centuries ago one of our ancestors, a man who converted from Hinduism to Islam—his name was Savekhi—opted to take on a name that sounded close to his original name when he became Muslim. That’s really all there is to it. Savekhi became Siddiqui.”
“Hindu?” I said, my throat choking up. “Convert?”
“Is this right?” Ammi asked, jumping back in. “My husband told me the thing about being Siddiquis. He thought it was true.”
Uncle Saad nodded. “When your father was growing up, we were new to Pakistan and had nothing. Dada Abu probably let him believe we were connected to Abu Bakr Siddiq to make him feel good. It was a convenient lie, since the actual Abu Bakr was a migrant and so were we. Or maybe it wasn’t Dada Abu who told those tales. Maybe these stories were passed around by the government.”
“But Uncle Tau has a book,” I objected. “Pops said it has the family tree.”
Uncle Saad waved a dismissive hand. “You can buy a hundred books like that. There are a million forgers who will happily tell anyone on the street that they’re related to the Holy Prophet. Then everyone runs around calling themselves Syed or whatever. Biggest fraud there is.”
Abu Bakr Ramaq, purported heir of Islamic royalty, descendant of pure Arab blood, child of Islam’s greatest leader, started to tremble. The revelation entered my bloodstream, inciting an insurrection of rage. That rage was quickly followed by the hollow void of defeat. Images of tall Arabs in fluttering white robes, riding fast camels across vast deserts before settling in the alluvial fields of Punjab, leaving behind the Mongol savages—those images all disappeared in an instant. The luminosity of my fantasies, which had given those images their exalted flavor, turned to darkness. The vivid colors ran into my blood and become a blurry, indistinct mess. Everything threatened to tumble out of my tear ducts, but I held back by sheer willpower, unwilling to give up my last vestiges of pride.
Now the ancestor I saw in my head was a muddy, lungi-wearing farmer who was short and round and bald. Carrying a puny scythe, he squatted in a rice field, working for a Muslim feudal lord among a group of sweaty Sikh and Hindu men, all of whom were illiterate and dark-skinned. Perhaps there was a dot on his head from some pagan ritual; perhaps when he went home he ate a bland dish of rice and vegetables without any meat; and perhaps when he walked he was such a coward that he wouldn’t even dare kill an