A Sister to Honor (16 page)

“You must keep up your strength, Gus,” Afia said now, eager to agree with his mother.

“Really?” Gus said. “For what? For the squash match I'll be playing against Harvard?”

Afia reddened. Her eyes traveled to the floor.

“I'm sorry, M'Afia. Honey? Don't cry. I'm just pissy,” Gus said. “They keep asking me how fast I was going. Jesus. I
know
how to drive in snow. I was doing maybe forty. I wanted to get to
you
, not go ass up in some ravine—”

“Gus, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry that this happens.”

“Just come here, okay? Here.”

He held out his arms. Frightened to touch him in any setting but his garage, Afia turned to Mrs. Schneider. But Gus's mom was looking away, at a magazine in her lap. The door to the room stood ajar. Quickly Afia leaned over the lunch tray and let Gus kiss away the tears gleaming on her cheeks.

Midway through the afternoon, Mrs. Schneider left. While Gus was wheeled out for tests, Afia wrote notes from her organic chemistry textbook. She tried to puzzle out her
Introduction to Thermodynamics
, though it gave her a headache. She turned to
Jane Eyre
. Jane had been rescued by the Rivers sisters, but now they were leaving her alone with their brother. When Gus was wheeled back, she played games of hangman with him. She had never played hangman before. It was just a spelling game, she knew, but the way Gus drew
X
's for eyes and a tongue lolling out of the mouth of the hanged stick figure gave her chills.

“You should head back,” he said when he'd finished an equally bland supper—lasagne with a sweetish tomato sauce, pale salad, chalky brownie. “I'll call Afran or Carlos, they can give you a ride.”

“No, no,” she said. The idea of being left at the garage by one of Gus's teammates terrified her. “I like to walk.”

“Afia, it's below freezing outside.”

“I have my boots. I will be fine.”

“Well, okay. Look, maybe my mom can pick you up tomorrow, and you can sneak Pearl in. She needs to be handled.”

“I—I can handle her.”

“Afia, you hate touching her.”

“I fed her a mouse this morning.”

“Thank you.” He reached out his hand, and she took it. Still holding on, he said, “I might sleep now.”

“You should do that. I will stay, a little bit.”

As he drifted off, his hand slipped away, and she tucked it under the blanket. She took up
Jane Eyre
. Now and then, she looked up to watch Gus's face in sleep, its creamy skin with freckles like clusters of cinnamon.

“How's he doing?” came a familiar voice.

Quickly Afia closed the book. With a glance at Gus, she started to stand.

“Sit down, sit down.” Coach Hayes, from the squash team, stepped into the room. She looked inquiringly from Afia to Gus asleep.

“He—he has been really brave,” Afia said. “Just to move, it pains him.” Then she remembered. “How was this match? Against Trinity?”

The coach forced a smile. “We lost. But we'd have lost anyway.”

“You mean if Gus could have played.”

“I mean if Shahid could have played.”

“Ah.” Afia concentrated on her hands. Her fingernails were chipped, the cuticles torn from absentminded picking. “Coach, that has been my fault, I—”

“Don't you say a word. Your brother's a responsible young man. He'll learn to manage sports and personal life. Now, what's happening with your guy?”

Relieved not to speak of Shahid, Afia nodded toward the charts at the foot of the bed. “The doctors do more x-rays,” she said. Anatomy: this much, she could speak of. “They say T-9 and T-10 vertebrae are fractured. Also they find two cracked ribs. So they build him a brace, and they are watching the nerves also. They give him medicine, for sleep.”

Coach Hayes pulled up the second chair, the one Mrs. Schneider had used. Her eyes assessed the bruise on Gus's forehead, the bandage wrapping his left elbow, the stiff length of his broken leg propped by pillows under the sheet. “How long will they keep him?”

“They say two more days.”

“Have you been here all along? I haven't seen you.”

That, Afia reflected, was because she stepped out whenever she knew someone from Enright was coming. She took her books to a waiting room in another wing and stayed there until the visitor had left. Gus thought this was stupid. “Mostly,” she admitted now.

“Has Shahid come by?”

Back to Shahid, again. Afia clenched one hand with the other. She could not tell this woman what she feared Shahid had done. At the same time, Coach Hayes knew Shahid better than anyone else in America. She was the closest thing either of them had, within thousands of miles, to a mother. “Shahid,” she confessed after a long silence, “is angry with me.”

“Because of Gus?”

Afia nodded. “I am engaged now, to be married.”

“So I've heard. Who is this fellow, in Pakistan? Do you love him, or—”

“Love!” As tears started into Afia's eyes, she tried to laugh them away; it came out as a kind of snigger. “Coach Hayes,” she said, her words trying to reach across the wide gulf of Gus's bed, “this is not for love. This is for family. You cannot understand. Shahid says I must go home.”

“But you love Gus!”

Oh, this coach. She voiced what should have remained silent, waded in where the current ran strongest. Shahid marveled at her. Afia was a little horrified. She turned her gaze away, to Gus's sleeping form, his unruly hair and injured arm, the awkward angle of the bound leg. She could not speak.

A nurse appeared in the doorway. “Five minutes,” she said.

Afia sat very still, waiting for the coach to leave. But when she had gathered her things, the coach said, “Afia? Do you have a car?”

“No, Miss Hayes.”

“Well, then . . . how are you getting home? Do you have somewhere to stay?”

Afia blushed. The coach might say that she loved Gus, but for her to think she was sleeping in Gus's sheets—that went too far. “I will be all right.”

“No, you won't.” This was emphatic. “Why don't you come home with me?”

“I . . . no, Miss Hayes, that will not be necessary.”

“Ah.” The coach took her seat again. Gently she said, “How about I give you a ride to Gus's place?”

“Miss Hayes, I would not want you to think—”

“Afia, please. It's a good idea. At least for the weekend. You're feeding his little zoo, right?”

Afia nodded. A hum of assent made it past her closed lips.

“Come on, then. You look like you could use some sleep.”

They spoke no more of Shahid as they left the hospital. Mrs. Schneider was at the nurses' station, arguing with one of the doctors; her hefty arms gestured one way and then the other. Afia saw the nurse behind her roll her eyes. Coach stepped over to speak with them. As Afia waited in the bright light of the corridor, the nurses glided past her with their rolling carts, their clipboards. If she ever became a doctor—and how unlikely that seemed, now!—it would not be in one of these immaculate hospitals, with their precise machines, their flower paintings. Mrs. Schneider waved at her as they turned for the elevator, and she waved back, grateful to be so gently dismissed.

W
hat he had done to Gus struck Shahid to the bone. But what choice had he had? The call from Baba, six nights ago, had been unequivocal: Afia had gone too far. Khalid had shown Baba the photo he'd downloaded from the old Smith homepage. Then he'd told him about the new one, of Afia on a man's shoulders, her knees splayed, pinned up for all the world to see. How had Khalid known about this other photo? Shahid had demanded, but Baba couldn't say. Khalid was claiming that the men he trained with knew of these photos. They were all over the Internet. It was only a matter of time, and not much time, before Zardad's family found them out. That would end the engagement, and with it all hope of a future for Sobia and Muska. As to what would happen to the Satars' cotton business, who could tell? Afia had to be controlled. This man—Khalid had said he was a Jew—needed to be gotten rid of.

“Your family is bleeding, my son,” Baba had said. “Do you understand? You've got to staunch this.”

Next day, Monday, the guys had kept looking at him. In the dining hall, in class, at practice. Even Coach Hayes. As if they knew. Not about Gus but about Afia. What she had done to him, what he had let her do to him, degraded him worse than anything he had ever known. It was awful, Afran had agreed when they talked in the locker room. A shock. He'd thought that Facebook photo was a fluke, some random girl's boyfriend hoisting Afia. A girl like Shahid's sister, you think she's got her nose in a book all the time. And Afran had promised not to say anything to anyone, but Shahid couldn't blot out the impression that there wasn't anything to tell—because Afran had already known, everyone had known except Shahid. The way Afran acted during practice, like there wasn't any deference he had to show to Shahid anymore. They could talk all they wanted, in this country, about the tough time women had in Shahid's culture. Shame was still shame, and left him whose honor had been pulled out from under him drowning and all alone. Packing his squash bag, he'd seen a call on his mobile from Nasirabad, but he couldn't bear to answer it.

Instead he'd spotted Gus, leaving the building. Stop him with words, that was his first instinct. He'd tucked the mobile into his pocket and jogged to catch up. Gus was hitting better, he'd remarked as they walked across the cold campus. He, Shahid, had told Coach to move him up a spot in the starting lineup. Gus had thanked him, said flattering things about Shahid's game, asked how Shahid's break in Pakistan had been. It was cool, Shahid had said, my sister got engaged to this chill guy. He had watched Gus's reaction, the slight stutter in his compliment to Shahid, the disingenuous question about what year Afia was in now. They had reached Gus's garage by then, and Shahid had followed him in.

The place smelled much like the dorm room Shahid had shared with Gus that first semester: of lizards and cat litter. Shahid had wondered at first if all American students lived with animals. But Gus had made him promise not to tell the RA about the pets, and in exchange, Gus had helped him with how to dress, how to act around American girls, how to manage the food they served on campus. Now the smell brought back to Shahid how he had told Gus about his plan to bring his sister over, how he'd shown Gus the only photo he had, then, of Afia, from her O-levels class, in the pale blue uniform with the white sash.

“You need something, man?” Gus asked.

“Yeah. A word with you.”

Gus's shoulders had lifted and lowered, like he knew this was coming. He didn't look at Shahid. His mobile rang with the opening chords of “Stairway to Heaven,” but he ignored it. He shooed two cats off the bed—a queen-sized futon, Shahid noted, with a quick, jagged memory of the one night he'd spent with Valerie, last spring, in her narrow dorm bed.

“Sit down,” Shahid said, and like an obedient puppy, Gus dropped onto the bed. He was a midsized, broad-shouldered guy, with freckles and a short nose, not especially Jewish looking. He wore contacts and blinked a lot. Shahid pulled over Gus's desk chair and sat backward on it, facing his teammate. “I want you,” he said very slowly, making sure he had the guy's attention, “to stay the fuck away from my sister.”

Gus had chuckled nervously. “I got nothing special with your sister, Shahid.”

“Lie one more time and I'll break your arm.”

Gus had started to laugh again, but at the look on Shahid's face he went pale. “Since when do you own her?”

“When were you going to tell me? Hm? When you graduated and she moved in with you? Do you any idea what that would do to her? You fucking moron. Why do you think she wanted to keep your little—what, relationship?—a secret?”

“Because she's scared of
you
, obviously.” Gus cracked open a Gatorade from the stack by the side of his bed. He offered one to Shahid, who shook his head. “You gotta let her go, man, she's a big—”

“Listen.” Shahid grabbed the Gatorade from Gus's hand and tossed it across the room, where it spilled blue onto the industrial carpet. He leaned over the back of the chair. “Repeat after me,” he said. “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his last Prophet.”

“What are you, insane?” Blinking, Gus rose and retrieved the half-empty bottle. Shahid rose, too; he needed to stand taller than this guy, be clear he was a threat. “Your religion,” Gus said, “has nothing to do with this.”

“That's how you convert to Islam. And if you convert, and you don't touch her till after the wedding, I might be able to pull a magic trick and keep us all alive.”

“Yeah, well, I tried that, and guess who didn't want it? M'Afia. Afia, I mean.” Gus went to the door, opened it. Shahid shut it again.

“You don't plan to marry my sister,” he said. “You want to use her, like a dishrag, and throw her away when she's dirty and you're done.”

“Man, it's not like—”

“Don't lie to me. I warned you.”

“This isn't Pakistan, okay, Shahid? You can't go around threatening to blow yourself up in front of people because you don't like the way they dress. Or the way they touch your sister.”

“It's not about me, goddammit.”

“Good. We're agreed on that.” Gus had opened the door again and gone onto the rickety wooden porch someone had nailed up to pretend this was a carriage house. “You don't scare me, Shahid,” he'd said. “This thing with Afia is between me and her. The only one who tells me who to sleep with or not is whoever I'm sleeping with.”

Sleeping with.
The words had been a sock to the gut.

Two nights later, dressed in black, Shahid had slipped down Gus's driveway, taken a flashlight below the belly of his car, and drained most of his brake fluid. Not to kill the guy, only to warn him. More important, to warn Afia; to put her into a frame of mind that would make home and safety, an honorable marriage, the best and only choice. When the job was done, he'd cut across campus, tossed his tools into a dumpster, and, before he'd even showered the grime off his face and hands, gone online to buy Afia a one-way ticket to Nasirabad. He'd used his father's credit card. When it was done, when Afia was on her way safely home, he would make the call, confess the expense, tell Baba when to expect his daughter.

That night he'd slept fitfully. Before dawn he woke in panic from a dream in which he was chasing Afia down a series of corridors that echoed the layout of the airport in Doha where they transferred to Peshawar. Trembling, he'd punched in his uncle Omar's number.

“Are you not in training?” Omar had asked after Shahid had explained the photos, his father's phone call, the ticket home. “Do you not have important matches ahead?”

“Trinity this weekend, yes,” he said. “Harvard next week. If we beat Harvard we have a berth in the nationals.”

“And for you, personally. The individual championships.”

“Yes, Uncle, yes. But that's not why I'm calling. It's Afia—”

“A troublesome girl. I counseled against letting her go, you remember. Nothing but an impediment to you.”

Shahid recalled the conversation over winter break.
Let her be engaged. Married as soon as possible.
“My point, Uncle, is that I'm not sure I trust her to change planes properly, at Doha.”

“And if she doesn't get on the plane to begin with? Then you miss more training? It's unacceptable. She must be got rid of without disrupting you.”

“Got rid . . . Uncle, you are jumping to conclusions. I have a responsibility to my”—he started to say “sister,” but reached higher—“my father. I have his instructions.”

“Your stepfather is a great man,” Omar pointed out, “but he has not funded your career. Have I wasted my money? My concern? My love?”

“No, Uncle, no. What I was thinking”—Shahid began to feel the hopelessness of his appeal—“was that you might forward me enough funds to go as far as Doha with her. To see her onto the plane to Peshawar. Just so everything's safe. Then I'll be able to concentrate better—”

“It's a twenty-hour flight to Doha!”

“Seventeen, actually. And there's a return flight just seven hours later. It would cost me less than two days, and the trouble's over.”

“Two days! And you say you have this Trinity match—”

“This weekend, Uncle. Afia doesn't fly until Monday. I've worked it all out.”

“There must be another way. I did not support ten years of training to have one wayward girl—”

“Yes, Uncle. And I am so grateful for your support. But if I am to buy this ticket, I must do it today.”

“Then find another backer.” He could see Omar waving his hand in the air as if batting a fly. “You are my dearest nephew. I want the best for you.”

“I understand, Uncle.” Shahid shut his eyes. He knew better than to press. If he couldn't get the money from Omar, he would try borrowing from Carlos. Carlos's family had Venezuelan oil money. Or Tom; Tom came from wealth. “Don't tell my father I rang. Please. I don't want to bother him right now.”

“And I don't want you distracted by some shameful mess. Is that clear?”

It was clear, Shahid assured him, though there was no way to avoid the guilt and grief. Guilt for his failure to protect Afia's
namus
; guilt for crushing her hopes of becoming a doctor; grief at this loss that felt like a death, Afia's quick blue eyes that would dull, her happy step that would slow, her wit that would sour.

That was Thursday. He slept through his classes, ignored the calls to his mobile, and shot off an e-mail to Carlos about the money.
Family emergency
, he wrote, figuring Carlos was Latino; he'd get the gist. At practice he heard the news on Gus. An awful accident, he agreed. Thank God he'll be all right in the end. The others had been to the hospital already. He'd had the flu, he'd said; he'd slept solid for two whole days.

“Well you should get to the health center,” Coach had said. “And you're out of the Trinity match.” She'd leveled her round eyes at him. “And I want you to get some counseling. Seriously, Shahid. You and I know it's not just your health. Go to the center tomorrow. I want proof of two sessions before we play Harvard.”

It was a blow, but he could absorb it. In the locker room Carlos put Shahid's bank account number into his smartphone and promised to put through a transfer. He didn't ask what the emergency was. If Shahid didn't repay it on time, he said, he'd take it out in coaching sessions. Oh, and he'd better not fuck up the Harvard game.

It was okay, Shahid had told himself as he raced from campus to the hospital. In a month he could find the money, and everyone saw Harvard as a crapshoot.

He'd known Afia would come to the hospital. He'd known she would suspect something. That was why he'd done it, wasn't it? To scare her, just a little. To make her safe. But what he didn't know was how the brakes would haunt him. What he might have caused to happen; what, but for kismet, would have happened. That night, after facing down his sister, he dreamed himself a passenger in a car driven by his father. As they rounded a bend, snow pelting down, the brakes gave, suddenly there were no brakes, and the car swung wide, wider, right through the guardrail . . . and he woke. Sweating, his heart banging.
Inshallah
, he whispered to himself in the dark,
Inshallah he will be fine, he will forget, he will never know
.

•   •   •

E
arly Saturday, the team left for Hartford without him. Hoping against hope, he'd suited up and gotten as far as the parking lot, where Coach Hayes held the line against him in front of the whole team. Humiliated, he watched them load into the van. Back in his room, he found the number online, the office of Dr. Ethan Springer. If Afran could talk to the guy, he supposed, he could too. And the doctor was married to Coach. If he saw that Shahid was sorry about the practices, that there was nothing seriously wrong, he might persuade Coach to let him play Harvard even if he missed a couple more. By then Afia would be gone, would be on her way to marriage.