Once the last of them disappeared from view, he whispered, maybe to me, maybe to himself, “I can’t breathe here anymore.”
And just like that he was decided. We would leave Pakistan.
—
Almost no one took my father seriously when he said he wanted to leave Pakistan. For one thing, Imtiaz Faris was simply not the kind of man whose resolutions people believed. For another, leaving the country of one’s birth isn’t an easy thing. Not only do you have to leave everything you’ve ever known—family, friends, streets littered with memories of your childhood and homes that had walls imbued with memories of generations—behind, you also have to find a place willing to take you.
It is a difficult business, uprooting yourself from the soil in which you’ve been planted. Few trees try it and more than a few never bloom again when they do. Everyone, especially my mother, knew that Imtiaz Faris was likely to wither in the face of such emotional, financial and filial trauma. So, she only nodded complacently as he explained that he had a school friend in California, a man he called Shah, who had his own business and who might be interested in hiring my father on a work visa.
“Do whatever you think is best,” she said for perhaps the last time in her life.
When the process of immigration first began, with nothing more alarming than new passport-size photographs, the only person taking it seriously aside from my father was Aamir. I didn’t realize he was actually worried about the prospect of moving until he brought it up while we were waiting our turn to bat in an impromptu cricket match boys in the neighborhood had put together at Kokan Park.
Kokan Park wasn’t much of a park at all. In fact, we called it Kokan Ground, which was a much more accurate description of the barren, grassless piece of empty land surrounded by a wall a few feet high. There was a concrete patch in the middle of the property, which served as a cricket pitch, but the rough, sand-covered lot had little else to recommend it as a playing surface.
Of course, since our only other choice was to play on the street and stop the game every few minutes to allow cars to pass, we were happy to claim it for our own when older kids weren’t monopolizing it.
Just then, we were definitely not supposed to be there. A paiyya jam had been called by the opposition party, probably because of some outrage or slight committed by the government. It was, essentially, a cross between a traffic jam and a general strike. No tires were allowed to roll—they were jammed, hence the name—which meant that the powers calling for these demonstrations didn’t want anyone on the roads.
Obedience to these calls for civil disobedience was secured, at times, in the most uncivil of ways, that is to say, with violence.
These strikes had become ridiculously common over the last few years. We missed a lot of school because our parents didn’t want to risk sending us out into the world when a hartal was in effect. They wanted to keep us safe, but we still snuck out to play cricket because safe was boring.
I was next up to bat, so I was paying pretty close attention to the game when my brother started talking. “Aren’t you going to miss cricket?” Aamir asked.
I looked back at him. He was leaning against the rusted gate that let visitors onto the ground, and that had probably never ever had occasion to actually be locked. “What?”
“They don’t have cricket in America, do they? They’ve got baseball.” He made a grimace. “That’s like cricket, I guess, for people who don’t know what cricket is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“California, Anvar. What do you think I’m talking about?”
I shrugged. “I never know. Anyway, don’t worry about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is like the time Dad wanted to start changing the oil in his own car, or when he decided to learn how to make proper Hyderabadi biryani. It isn’t going to happen. Remember when he thought carrying a cane made him look like Charlie Chaplin?”
“Like Fred Astaire, I think,” Aamir said.
“Doesn’t matter. My point is that he’ll be tired of it in a month. In two months he’ll forget all about it.”
“It’s been six months now.”
“Fine. Worry if you want.” I picked up one of the spare balls that was lying next to me. It wasn’t made for cricket. It was a tennis ball covered with white electrical tape. The tape was meant to dull the bounce of the ball on a concrete pitch, letting it mimic how a proper cork ball acted on grass. It was almost as good as the real thing, except it didn’t sound right when you played your shots and the weight was wrong, so you always knew that you weren’t playing with the genuine article.
I rotated the ball in my hands, looking for flaws in the way it had been wrapped, or for cracks in the tape, which often broke down after the ball was thrashed around the park by a good batsman. This one looked pristine. I dropped it back to the ground. “But I think everything will be fine. Then again, I’m a total optimist.”
Aamir snorted. “You are not. You just don’t care about anything.”
“Whatever. Stop worrying so much about Dad. Even if he’s serious and we really leave, we get to go to California. Do you know what they have in California that they don’t have here?”
Aamir shook his head.
“Blondes. There are a lot more blondes in California than there are in Karachi.”
“Astaghfirullah. You’ve got such base thoughts.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure. Because I’m the one who watches Baywatch when Ma and Dad aren’t home.”
“That was one time,” Anvar said. “I thought it was a show about exploding boats.”
“Uh-huh.”
Aamir glowered at my disbelief. Then, displaying that widely praised maturity of his, he changed the subject. “You can pretend it doesn’t bother you, but there are things you’d miss if we left Karachi.”
“Like what?”
He gave the triumphant smile of someone who is about to win an argument. “Like Naani Jaan.”
“True,” I said. “I’d get over it though. Because blondes.”
“I’m telling Naani Jaan you said that.”
“Of course you are, you—”
A cry of “how’s that?” went up in the field before I could make things worse for myself. The batsman playing had been given out, and I was called to take my place at the center of the field.
—
Aamir had a bad habit of doing what he said.
The next time we visited Naani Jaan, he told on me. He was good at telling. It was the one thing that was true about him. He was obedient because he was taught to be obedient, and he studied hard because he was supposed to. Yes, he prayed a bunch and liked to spend time at the mosque, but if he’d been born in another part of the world, or even in a different family here, he’d have gone to temple or to a gurdwara or anywhere else he was supposed to go. Everything Aamir did, he did because people wanted him to do it.