Homeland Elegies(14)

As Latif served himself a second helping, he and Father traded news about their families back in Pakistan, bantering in the fluid admixture of Punjabi and English that was my parents’ usual lingua franca. It was while talking about his brother (Manan) in Peshawar—a city close to the Afghan border—that Latif first alluded to wanting to go back to Pakistan:

“They’ve been fighting Russian tanks and missiles with pistols, Winchester rifles. But Manan says the Americans are helping now. Bringing money, bringing weapons. Finally. They see that if Afghanistan falls, Pakistan will be next. That won’t be good for anyone. On Sundays, Manan said Americans are pouring out of the church in Peshawar. The city is filled with them. They’re opening camps to train jihadis—in Swat, in Waziristan.” Latif’s sons—Yahya and Idris—were listening, rapt. “It makes you wonder what we’re doing here when there’s so much more we could be doing back home.”

“Doesn’t make me wonder,” Father said, an ankle bone to his mouth. Anjum, too, seemed less than impressed.

“I don’t know why you keep harping on all the work to be done there,” she said to her husband. “There’s work to do here, too.”

“It’s not enough just to send money anymore.”

“I’m not talking about the mujahideen, Latif.”

“Right. But I am.”

“So the only solution is to go back?” She sounded exasperated; it was clearly not the first time they’d had this conversation.

He didn’t answer. Beside him, his daughter Ramla was looking down into her plate.

Anjum turned to my parents: “We’ve been here twelve years now. I don’t know how it is for you, but it’s just not the same when we go back. It’s not home for us in the same way.” She turned to her husband again: “Even you say the same thing every time we’re home. How much you miss it—”

“Air-conditioning, Anjum. Air-conditioning. That’s all I miss.”

“The fishing, the ocean…”

“They have ocean in Karachi.”

“Karachi?” Anjum snapped. “Is that near Manan in Peshawar?”

“No ocean in Peshawar. Other end of the country,” Father gibed gently.

Latif sighed, and all at once, his defensiveness was gone. He looked almost fragile: “The longer we’re here, the more I wonder…who I’m becoming.”

“You’re not the only one,” Mother said with a consoling tone. I could feel she was taking his side against the others. “It’s not our home. No matter how many years we spend here, it won’t ever be our home. And maybe this brings out things in us that were never meant to be brought out.”

“Like what?” Father asked.

“Like regret.”

“You’re saying people back home don’t have regrets? Is that it?”

“I’m saying you can only regret what you chose not to do.” Her eyes stole a look at Latif. Anjum noticed. Latif looked away. “When we leave home, there are so many things we don’t have the luxury not to choose anymore. That’s a different kind of regret. A sadder, more hopeless kind.”

“Speak for yourself,” Father said. “I love it here. Like I never loved being in Pakistan.”

“They have whiskey in Lahore, too, Sikander.”

Father’s reply was swift and curt: “Fatima. Please. We have guests.”

I looked at Latif. He was chuckling. My parents’ testy dynamic was nothing new; it wasn’t even the first time I’d seen him appear to enjoy it. “Of course there are the comforts here,” he said, looking at his own wife now. “The freedom, above all—if you have money.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have money here,” Father said.

“Doesn’t hurt?” Latif repeated. “This country makes you a criminal for being poor. I see how the blacks are treated here. I see what they have to go through. It gives you a different picture of this place.”

“It’s true. It’s not easy if you don’t have money, but at least you’re free to make it here. As much as you can. As much as you want. And without cheating anybody to do it.”

“When I see what’s happening to our brothers in Afghanistan, freedom to be rich is not enough.”

“It’s not only money,” Father said. “The work I’m doing here I can’t do back home, you know that. We don’t have the labs. We don’t have the mentality. Back home, if it’s not already in a book, people don’t think it exists. No creative instinct.”

Latif nodded: “But I’m not in research. The only good I’m doing is for those poor people in Pensacola.”

“What about your children?” Anjum asked with sudden intensity, releasing the question like a rock from a slingshot.

Latif held his wife’s gaze for an uncomfortably long moment before replying, calmly: “They’ll do as well in Pakistan as they would do here. Better, even. Less confused.” Anjum looked away, her tongue playing along the inside of her pursed lips.

The younger daughter, Hafsa—who was nibbling at the plate of Kraft macaroni and cheese Mother had made for her—piped up: “I like Pakistan. Everybody looks the same. They look like us.” My parents laughed. I looked over at Ramla. A thin tuft of her brown hair was poking out from one side of that green head scarf. She was sitting back in her chair, away from the table. Father turned to her as well: “What about you, Ramla, beti? What do you think? How do you feel about living in Pakistan?” Her face filled with alarm, her lower lip now trembling. She looked at her mother, helpless, and suddenly erupted, screaming: “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!”