The Lost Pearl (2012) (13 page)

Neither could I. The sun seemed to dim and the moon became gray in his absence. Songs sounded less melodious and the sketches in Jennifer’s gallery seemed to lose their luster. The walks from home to college and back seemed endless, and the few remaining magnolias lining the path seemed less fragrant, as if Ahmer had taken their scent with him. I tried to bury myself in writing articles for the paper and for the college newsletter but could only seem to come up with unsatisfactory drafts that appeared amateurish and inarticulately written. Some days I would write for hours, reconstructing sentences and rearranging paragraphs, but was never satisfied with the finished product. On other days I would simply stare at the linear shadows on the carpet, cast by the blinds, struggling to overcome my writer’s block. The redwood trees outside my window appeared haggard, their dark brown barks wrinkled and peeling as if they had suddenly started to show their age. Life seemed to have lost its joy and its spirit.

I was counting the days until his return and had started marking my calendar. I missed him tremendously. I told him I would pick him up at the airport, but later he decided it would be too early in the morning. Besides, I had a class that morning and was scheduled to give an important presentation. He was flying to San Francisco, and would take the BART from there to Palo Alto.

“After my class, we have to go celebrate your return and your big achievement working with such an honorable firm. I am proud of you,” I said.

“I am all yours as soon as I land in California,” he replied.

Distance had served to bring us closer, and I was beginning to realize the magnitude of the effect Ahmer had on my being. His words greatly influenced my thoughts. He made me realize that I was indeed a good person inside—a person who my father would have been proud of—but that I needed to remove the bitter layer that defined my exterior. I loved him and had also started to love and rediscover myself. I had seen friends with broken hearts from ruined relationships and had always tried to protect myself from such betrayal and hurt. Ahmer understood that about me and was very respectful of the emotional distance I wished to maintain, treading slowly and cautiously. He knew that he was the source of my happiness but that there was a sad part of me that he might never reach.

“If only I knew how to wipe away your last tear, I would,” he would say. “But I can’t. It made me feel helpless before, but now I have learned to accept that tear as part of you. I just want you to know that I will always be there for you, and your happiness means the world to me.”

He’s coming tomorrow, I thought with a smile. I had made plans for a sumptuous lunch at his favorite restaurant, followed by dessert, ice cream perhaps. I thought I might finally be able to order blueberry ice cream, a flavor I had abandoned since February 11, 1987. I thought it might actually taste sweet again.

I went to bed early, but a nightmare woke me up. It had come back again after quite a long interval and was more disturbing than ever. Ahmer was in it. He was running toward me and was covered in blood. I was screaming and then suddenly woke up. My shirt was drenched with sweat. It was three in the morning, and I was horrified by Ahmer’s appearance in my nightmare; it was so frightening and unnerving. I went back to sleep, my alarm set for seven-thirty, but I was awoken abruptly by the ringing of the phone before my alarm went off. I glanced over at the clock and saw that it was seven o’clock. Ahmer must have boarded the plane by now, I thought. Maybe his flight was
delayed or something. Maybe my mother was calling from Pakistan and had not realized it was so early here. Perhaps Sahir had a problem he wished to discuss with me right away. It was an unrecognizable number. I picked it up, and it was Jennifer, who had been visiting her father in Michigan for the fall. The instant I heard her voice, I knew something was wrong.

“Were you up yet?” she said, her voice was quivering.

“I was about to wake up. What’s wrong? Are you OK?”

“A lot has happened in America this morning, Sana. Please stay calm and turn the news on. Two passenger planes have crashed into the Twin Towers. They are saying it might be a terrorist attack. I wasn’t sure what Ahmer’s plans were so I called you. Don’t be alarmed. I’m sure he’ll be all right.”

I could not believe what I was hearing. This could not be happening. Ahmer was not supposed to be at work that day, but his flight had left that morning. I was assimilating all the information that Jennifer had given me and simultaneously tuning into CNN.

I did not know what to do at first. I was panicking, and I could feel my heart racing faster than ever. I jumped out of bed and called Ahmer’s cell phone, but there was no answer. I called several times in quick succession. Then I realized he must be on his flight and could not possibly be available to answer his phone. The video of the planes crashing into the towers was being replayed again and again, and each time it seemed so unreal. If Ahmer had been in his office that day, he might be among those hundreds of people who had lost their lives to these senseless attacks.

News continued to pour in about a third plane that had crashed into the Pentagon, and within minutes there was news about a fourth plane that had crashed into a hillside in Pennsylvania. I felt reassured that Ahmer could not have been on any of those flights but then wondered if it was selfish of me to want nothing more at that moment than for Ahmer to be alive and
safe. What about all those people and their family members who were trying to come to terms with this awful tragedy? My heart was crying for each and every one of them. But if anything were to happen to Ahmer, my heart would surely stop beating. I could not possibly go on with my life. I went over to the kitchen to get a glass of water from the refrigerator, and Jennifer’s sketch of the towers caught my eye. I looked away and went back to watching the television.

Within minutes, more details started pouring in. The plane that had crashed in Pennsylvania was United Flight 93, which had left from New York and was headed to San Francisco. Headed to San Francisco. This morning. The glass of water dropped from my hand, and tiny pieces of glass scattered all over the floor. Faster than lightening, I went to pull out the piece of paper from my drawer where I had casually scribbled Ahmer’s flight details. I remembered the airline, but not the number. Please God, please don’t let it be 93. Anything but 93, I silently pleaded. Ahmer, you have to live a long life. You have to live for me.

My head was pounding, and my hands were trembling. My forehead was covered in a cold sweat. I thought of the dream I had had a few hours before and Ahmer’s role in it; he had been covered in blood. I felt a knot in my stomach and a heavy weight on my chest, as if a sandbag had been tied around me. My throat was burning, and I wanted to scream, but my voice was gone. The memory of the worst moment of my life returned, like a vivid flashback, and I wished that I was not alone. For what seemed like the longest three minutes of my life, I could not find the paper. I quickly threw out all the items from my drawer, but it was not there. I soon remembered that I had taken it out of the drawer and placed it in my purse a few days before. It had to be the black purse, as I had not used the beige one in a week at least. I wished I had inherited some organizational skills from my mother.

Oh, why did it have so many compartments? A front pocket and a side pocket? And why had I not cleared it of all the
unnecessary paraphernalia? I emptied the contents all over the bed. As I sifted through them, I felt the knot in my stomach grow tighter. Among the items on the bed were my car keys, my lipstick, my sunglasses, a receipt from Safeway, a Stanford student coupon for the Jing-Jing Chinese restaurant that Ahmer and I frequented, an unused tissue, a black ball-point pen, notes from the first draft of an article I had just written, my wallet, and a pack of chewing gum. I did not care about any of these things right now. Finally I found what I had been looking for. I said a prayer, opened up the crumpled paper, and there it was, written in dark black ink that had smudged a little, partly encircled by a stain from the bottom of a cup of tea:
United Flight 93
.

I let out a loud scream. Ahmer was dead. This had to be a nightmare, part of the horrible dream I had been having some hours ago. Please, someone wake me up. Wake me up to a reality that is beautiful and a life that includes a future with Ahmer. I looked up at the clock and fumbled for the phone as the blaring television continued to relay the morning’s tragic events. I called United Airlines to check the passenger list but was put on hold, so I placed it on speaker.

Was this how short-lived my happiness was going to be? If, by some miracle, he had not boarded that plane, he would have called me to tell me he was alive. So it was over. My father had lost his precious life to greed, and Ahmer had lost his to violence and insanity. Why had I come into this world? To love and to lose? Was that the purpose of my life? I could not live anymore. What had I done that had been so wrong, so deserving of such a cruel punishment? First God had taken my father away. It had taken me fourteen years to be able to say his name without shedding a tear. I had not recovered yet from the first tragedy of my life and was finally getting to a point where I had allowed myself to be happy again. It had taken me years, and now I was dead all over again. Ahmer had been my lifeline, my golden ray of hope in the blackest dark.

Ahmer was in the prime of his life with a bright future before him. How could this be? He had never been to New York before and was there because of his outstanding academic achievements; his brilliance had put him there, on that plane. My prayers had put him there. If only I had not spent so many days praying for this selection, if I had just prayed for whatever was best. Why did I always wish for the wrong things? But inside a voice was telling me that my faith dictated to accept that God had decided when we would leave this Earth. Ahmer’s time had been three minutes past ten o’clock, Eastern Standard Time, in the morning on September 11, 2001. I had to accept it. I would never see him again or hear his voice again. If only I could hear his voice one more time. If only I could have said to him what I had felt for him.

“Take care of yourself” had been his parting words to me, as if he knew it was a final good-bye. But I don’t want to take care of myself; I don’t know how to anymore. I want you to take care of me, Ahmer. I picked up my cell phone and listened to his saved voice message from two days before.

“I looked through the windows of one of the towers and saw many pretty faces. But the prettiest one is thousands of miles away.”

News kept pouring in about who was behind this. The phrases “intelligence failure,” “security breach,” “Muslim extremists,” and “Osama bin Laden” were repeated by newscasters and terrorism experts from around the world. This was not religion. This was not Islam. This was insanity.

“All forty-four passengers aboard Flight 93 are presumed dead.”

“Remains of the victims…” they said.
Remains
. So that’s what it was going to be. There would not even be a body to bury.

Jennifer kept calling me and leaving frantic messages, but I did not have the courage to talk to anyone. I sat motionless on the couch for an unknown duration. I stared blankly outside the
window of my apartment. Everything seemed still, as if there was fear in the air. A dewdrop sat hesitantly at the edge of a leaf like a newly formed tear too scared to fall. I had the urge to shut off the television, as if not hearing the news would somehow save me from the reality I was struggling to deny. I turned it off for a few seconds, but the silence was unbearable and the thirst to know unquenchable, so I switched it back on.

I thought of calling Phuppo or Ammi, but how could they feel my pain when they did not even know who Ahmer was? The moon would never shine bright on me again. I would never feel the warmth of the sun or smell the fragrance of the flowers again. All the melody in my life would disappear. The symphony that I had compared my life to would be reduced to the lowest octave and become unharmonious, unchanging, and mundane. I was in a state of shock and for a moment contemplated jumping out the window. But not only was suicide selfish and cowardly, it was also sinful. The ringing of the doorbell suddenly interrupted my thoughts. I ran toward the door and stepped on a piece of broken glass on the carpet but did not feel the pain of the bleeding cut on the sole of my foot because when I opened the door, a miracle greeted me. It was Ahmer standing in the doorway.

God had been kind to me. God only gives us as much grief as we can bear, it is said, and in that moment I believed it with all my heart. I would not have been able to recover from a second loss so utterly devastating.

Ahmer had taken an earlier flight. He had actually flown in the night before so he could see me sooner. He too had been asleep in the morning and had not heard the news or the ring of his cell phone. When he finally woke up, he learned what had happened and immediately walked over. He tried to call but was unable to get through because both my phones had been on hold with United Airlines. No words can describe the degree of relief and gratitude I felt. Ahmer had changed plans, or perhaps God had changed his plans for him.