Chapter 14 Musharraf
Musharraf
I am the firstborn child and only son of my father.
It is my job to drop the first shovel of dirt on his body.
In America, people are buried in coffins.
But here, we place our dead at the bottom of a hole in the ground.
I had forgotten how tall my father had been.
It is my duty, as the only male child, to wrap him in his burial shroud, but I don’t know how, and as I look down at the outline of his body, I can see that he lies at a strange angle, hollowed from age and disease, the end of his sharp nose looking like it might poke through.
The end comes quickly. Only a few hours before, I had washed his cooling body, already starting to shrink, with warm, soapy water. All those years of strict bodily privacy, and at the end, it is all laid bare. The thick, snow-white chest hair telegraphed what mine would look like in the future.
I lost my mother when I was still a boy. My father told my sisters and me to look at her face and remember it because that would be the last time we would see her. I wondered who had cleaned her body and felt tears prick at my eyes.
Before I returned, I thought that I was the same person that had left Pakistan.
But as I stand at my father’s grave, my feet half off the edge—men I remembered as my father’s friends and acquaintances from the congregation rushing to stand next to me and the imam who kept asking me if I was ready—I realize they see me as American.
I am only a guest. Not someone who belongs here.
Surprisingly, I feel the same way. This is not my world, not my community. But if not here, then where?
We made it back to Pakistan in time to be berated by my father for having been gone for so long.
I knew it had been hard for him and my sisters without my help.
I felt guilty after we moved to America.
I really did. But I never looked back. They say to not speak badly about the dead, but I cannot lie.
My father was a tyrant, a farmer with a strong arm and nothing to his name but me and five daughters.
Once I was as tall as him, he left me alone.
But he was always so terrible to my sisters.
Impatient and demanding. A slap on the back of the head if dinner was too salty.
Sometimes, softly criticizing that his clothes weren’t clean and, other times, yelling so loudly the neighbors could hear that he was cursed by so many daughters.
Always keeping us all uncertain and off-kilter.
I waited to marry until each of them was married off.
I helped save money for their dowries, and to protect them.
I wondered if he gentled with age, but when two of my sisters didn’t show up at the end, I understood he had remained stubbornly the same.
I am also the father of a disrespectful and rebellious daughter.
I can’t help but compare Asma to the women I see all around me.
My nieces and women here are different. They cover their arms and their heads.
They are quiet and don’t create scenes. They are respectful.
It’s not like they aren’t going to college and getting an education.
They just understand the rules. How good girls should act.
What would my father have thought if he had been in that audience?
I wished Asma one day in the life of my sisters.
I take the blame. I let it happen. I should have taken a firmer hand with Asma when she was little.
I should have handled her the first time she stepped out of line instead of leaving it to Sadia.
She has no idea how to raise children and has taken an American attitude in raising teenagers, making excuses for their behavior and disrespect.
She changed the moment we landed. I thought she might revert to that shy, scared, immature young girl she had been when we left years ago.
But no. She acts like an entitled American, pushing her way to the front of lines, demanding air-conditioning be put on in cars, and acting like an ingrezi with my sisters in their own homes.
She talks here much more than she ever does at home.
I hear her talking softly under her breath, almost like she’s saying her prayers, but then she laughs or pauses and responds like she’s talking with someone.
She talks nonstop about how we never should have left, how good it feels to hear our language, to hear the azan in the air.
She talks nonstop about how the girls here are so proper and devout.
She talks nonstop about moving back. I asked her if she could see Asma and Salma in Pakistan, the thought shocking and appealing at the same time.
There is no doubt that if we had stayed in Pakistan, everything would be different.
We wouldn’t have these problems. There would be no short hair—the thought of what the men at that funeral would have thought about Asma, about me, made my insides curdle.
She certainly wouldn’t have been on a stage.
She would do what was expected like her sister.
Our life would be so much easier if she was more like Salma.
But raising the girls would be the only thing that would be easier.
So much can change in twelve years when you are not there to not notice the changing.
It is impossible to imagine raising a family in Pakistan.
Making a living is hard enough. Who needs uncertainty in every small daily act?
Nothing is predictable. To get a plot of land for my father’s grave required talking to three layers of people, giving each a bribe, and even then, I wasn’t sure that the grave would be dug by the time we showed up with the body.
The man at the bank acted like my father didn’t have an account there, even after I showed him his papers, until I acted like an American and asked to speak to the bank manager in English.
How did I forget the children begging on the side of the road, their tattered clothes and hollow eyes?
How did I forget the hassle of buying food and other goods at the market—the long negotiations and the constant effort of pretending like you didn’t need the item being sold and walking away, just to be called back and negotiating some more.
How did I forget the disfigured people with leprosy living in the shadows of bridges left to die?
For so long, for so many years, my only focus has been on supporting and taking care of others. Providing for my sisters. Providing for Sadia and the girls. I have never considered what would come next, who would drop clods of dirt on me.
I went to America to give my girls opportunities.
Wouldn’t most fathers, even American ones, have been upset at seeing their daughter doing that on a stage?
Why did she tell us to come? We taught Salma and her the same, yet Salma didn’t have any problems doing the right thing.
But Asma, she says, “You didn’t tell me I shouldn’t do that.
” Did she need to be told to not lie that she is spending the night at her friend’s and then go to a dance?
Did she need to be told to not wear a dress that shows half her body naked?
Did she need to be told to not kiss a boy?
Did she need to be told to not do sex with an American, pretend or real?
On a stage? In front of hundreds of people?
I scoop some red dirt with my shovel, surprised at how heavy it feels, and tip it into the grave. I move the shovel so that the thud of soil meeting body sounds different as it hits different parts of my father’s body. Heavy as it hits his head, feathery and light as it moves down to his feet.
But there is something else. Something I can barely face.
Every time I think of it, I have to push it away.
But now, in this moment—I am just so tired—I don’t have the strength.
Yes, I was angry at Asma, but I should never have hit her.
That was wrong, no matter what the imams and religious teachings say.
It was wrong. I felt it in my bones. Instead of saying the funeral prayers for my father, I ask God for forgiveness.
There is so much about Asma that I am proud of. Look at where she got into school. Look at her scholarship. Look at her intelligence and focus. Her words come back to me. Yes, this is what opportunity looks like.
I feel uncertain about everything. Why doesn’t Asma turn to me for guidance? I still have things to teach her. I am being strict because I know what is best for her, because I love her. America is a dangerous place, and men, left unchecked, hurt women. I am protecting her.
I had sworn that I would be a different kind of father than my own.
And in some ways, maybe I have been. I gave my girls a better life than my sisters had gotten.
A better life than I had. But in other ways I haven’t.
When they were very little, I used to carry them.
I stopped when we came to America. Did I think that was Sadia’s job?
Did I think it would spoil them? Was I just doing what I had seen my father do?
I ask God for forgiveness for maybe going too far. I ask for his guidance to help me see the way. I plead with him to help my daughter.
As I pass the shovel to the next mourner in line, I know that I want my girls at my bedside at the end of my life.