So I adapted. I developed a taste for subtlety, for the micro-ripples that are the tsunamis of a reduced-stimulus environment.
I learned to appreciate a smile, a brush of the hand. I studied eyes. I chose my words carefully and savored those I was given.
And it was with this, the heightened sensitivity born of necessity, that I found myself standing at Baba Shah Jamal only three feet from a woman my age. Her veil covered her throat and the rear hemisphere of her head like a motorcycle helmet with the visor up. Her clothing was as loose as love, enough to make a full body slim and a slender one curve. It swelled at her chest and hips.
I watched her pick her nose delicately with her thumb. She noticed my gaze, and we both turned to look ahead with the self-conscious expression of people whose attention is centered in their peripheral vision.
It was hot.
And together, we sweated.
I felt myself shiver as my pores opened, gaping fish mouths on a desert beach. Warmth issued from my body. Perspiration gathered in the close-cropped hair at the bottom of my scalp.
The unexpected fingernail of a trickle followed my spine, and my guts tightened, a quick exhalation at the shock. Her face had begun to shine. She wiped her mouth with her wrist. I felt another caress along my ribs, touching the damp flesh of my flank. My thoughts expanded into the air and condensed on her skin. A slow lick descended from my armpit.
Together, we surrendered to it, the wet stroking of our bodies building as we stood quietly apart. Beneath us men whirled in ecstasy. Shutting her eyes and looking up, she displayed the underside of her jaw in a mating dance as old as time, a peahen glancing coyly at the hip-flashing merengue of a peacock.
Thick drops slid down my belly like errant salmon roe.
I risked a smile at her with my eyes fixed on the scene below. A sly glance only half blocked by my nose revealed the side of her mouth responding, stretching out toward me in langorous recline.
There is a simple code about these things: your intentions must be honorable. To go any further, you should have love on your mind. We didn’t, so we didn’t.
But we sweated, and when she left without a word, I was not ungrateful.
(2001)
2
International Relations
THE PASSPORT I hand through the slit in her glass shield runs suspiciously backward, the right-hand cover its front, and above the curved swords of its Urdu lettering she reads, “Islamic Republic of Pakistan.” Words to make a visa officer tremble.
The scene is the Italian consulate in New York, the back entrance, a subterranean room staffed by three polite sentries. They are charged with the defense of a wall that runs around wealthy democracies, and their post is less tense than many because it lies inside the fortifications of an ally.
I am well dressed. A navy suit, pinstriped, three-buttoned. White shirt, blue tie, brown face, brown eyes. I shaved this morning but missed a patch beside my chin. The stubble there, though short, is dense. Fundamentalist stubble. Ayatollah, Hezbollah stubble. Fighting in the heights of Kashmir stubble. But just a hint.
In uncalloused hands, marred only by cuticles in need of a lesson, I hold my remaining documents: letter from employer, bank statement, proof of insurance, recent pay stub, airline ticket, hotel booking. A mother could arrange a marriage with less information than I am asked to present. My eyes are shadowed with stress or lack of sleep. I am sweating slightly, despite the coolness of this day, and my scalp glistens where the hair has forsaken it.
My smile is dishonest, the smile of a man who hopes his smile will make it easier for him, insincere as attempts at sincerity tend to be. She is almost friendly in return. We are both young, after all, healthy members of the same species and of breeding age.
There are only a hundred and one points to the inspection a Pakistani must pass to be deemed travel-worthy. I fail — because I have succeeded in the past. I have traveled to Italy too often.
Why so many trips over so short a period? she asks.
Love, I say. My girlfriend is Italian.
She pauses, not eager to do this. But she must: it is her duty. The wall is only as strong as its weakest gate.
Yes, that is a very good reason, she says. But I am afraid we will need proof: a notarized letter and a copy of her passport.
You need a letter from a woman confirming our relationship? I ask.
The visa officer is human. Humane. She blushes. I am afraid so, she says. But I will approve your application now so you do not have to make an extra trip. Just bring the letter with you when you come to pick up your visa. Please do not forget: you will be asked for it.
I know I am fortunate. She could, at her discretion, have turned me down. Other visa officers in other consulates regularly reject my kind for far less. Still, I am not pleased.
My colleagues in our business-casual office were amused that I wore a suit that day, but I was ashamed. It tacitly acknowledged an accusation I would have liked proudly to ignore. But what exactly is the accusation?
Race has become too clumsy a shorthand for the legal boundaries that divide liberal democracies such as the United States. Nationality, unless overcome by wealth, is a far more acceptable proxy. Nations deemed prone to poverty and violence are walled off to consume themselves, to fester. And nationality-based discrimination has taken its place alongside racial discrimination, denying both our common humanity and our unbelievably varied individuality as it frisks us at the border.
Here, in cosmopolitan New York, I am able to reside only at the sufferance of my employer, halfway through a six-year H-1B work visa, which binds the legality of my presence in the United States to my job. The Department of Labor and the INS are kept so understaffed that it currently takes several years for most green card applications to be processed. I could face eventual deportation even if I submit my petition today. Like much of the indentured work force, I feel insecure. I must produce notarized love letters at checkpoints. My category is not a desirable one.
But I do as I am told, and I am given my Italian visa.
I get into a cab and head back to my office. My driver looks like a terrorist: steady eyes, thick beard, the reserved watchfulness of the devout. A verse of the Koran dangles beneath his rearview. He could be my uncle.
Where are you coming from? he asks me in Urdu.
I was applying for a visa, I tell him.
You have had a hard morning, brother, he says, turning off the meter. This ride is on me.
(2000)
The Countdown
MY PARENTS WENT out for dinner in Islamabad the other night. They sat among tables of foreign journalists who chatted about the war they had come to cover. My mother was frightened. She told my sister to consider leaving Pakistan. My sister refused.
She just graduated from college in June, from NYU as a matter of fact, and she loves her job. She does not intend to give it up. She is working on a television promo for the South Asian Federation Games, due to be held soon in Islamabad. The games may now be canceled, but in her office people are still trying to stay on deadline and on budget.