The Lost Pearl (2012) (21 page)

“I let hatred grow inside me until it became so strong that it was like a volcano. Over time, your father became everything I had wanted to become and more. He received the best education and the best guidance from my father. He did not miss a day of his affection. He never knew what it was like to have your life taken away from you like that. I could have had the same opportunities had I allowed my father to be part of my life. For several years, I was consumed by the hard labor on the farm and factories. I had to work extra shifts to pay the expenses of the facility that housed my psychotic mother. After she passed away, I got married and had a son. I spent so much time and energy hating your father that I neglected my own family. I had promised to always be there for them, unlike my father, but I was so determined to hate and avenge that I failed to fulfill my promise.

“Many years went by. One day I was looking at old photographs of my father and me, and my son, Taimur, who was seven at the time, began asking me questions about him that I could not answer. Finally the volcano erupted. I had a gun, which I loaded, and set off to kill my own brother. This would be the ultimate revenge, the most severe punishment for my father, even though he had long been in his grave. I was sure I would get caught, given the high security and the social importance your father enjoyed. I thought I would be put to death and that would end my misery. I did not think at that instant of his family, his wife, and his two beautiful children, nor did I think of what my actions would do to my own family. I had completely lost my senses. Not a moment
goes by that I don’t regret what I did or that I didn’t get caught. What happened to me was far worse than that. That is why I want you to hear the rest of my story.”

He turned a bit, clutched his abdomen in some pain, coughed weakly in an attempt to clear his throat, and resumed. “I saw your father sitting in his study, and the broken window between us. As soon as I let the bullets escape, I felt the shame of what I had done. I grabbed the watch and the wallet, because they were within my reach. My impulse was to take them so it would seem like a robbery. But as soon as I saw him lying there, I regretted my actions. I felt as if I had died. Shame and guilt are horrible things; they can eat you up inside until there is nothing left. I stopped for a moment and then I ran. What I did was unforgivable. I don’t expect you or God or anyone to forgive me. But it never was about money; it was about my father’s love. I ran because I wanted to run far away from myself; I wanted to run into another world where all this wasn’t reality but a horrid dream. Surely they would find me, I thought, and justice would be served to some degree. It never occurred to me that they hadn’t come searching for me because they had already put someone else in prison. I came home a changed man.

“It is said that justice is always served—if not in this life, then in the hereafter. But I was punished. Not in the traditional sense of being put in prison, but in a worse way. I was tormented the whole night, unable to sleep, and at about six o’clock the next morning, I had finally closed my eyes for a brief moment when I heard a loud bang that was as loud as the bullets I had fired the night before. In the trance that I had been in, I had left my loaded gun sitting on the chair. Taimur had thought that it was a toy gun I had brought him as a present from the city, and had accidentally shot himself. My son bled to death before my eyes, and there was nothing I could do to save him. It was as if I had killed him myself.”

He paused to wipe his tears before continuing, “After burying him, I came home a nearly insane man. I wish I had gone completely insane like my mother so I wouldn’t feel the pain. But the pain remained, and to this day I feel it deep and fresh, like it just happened a moment ago. My wife could never come to terms with the loss, and after a few months, she left me. I live with what I have done every minute of my life. I have been punished for it. I now have pancreatic cancer, and the pain is so unbearable, it’s like a gnawing bullet in the pit of my stomach. But this bullet does not kill so easily. It is a slow, painful death.”

“By the time the diagnosis was made, it was already too late; it had spread to my liver and lungs. I did not want chemotherapy or even the treatments to alleviate my pain. I wanted to suffer and I wanted to die. I wanted to pay for my sins. I had promised to be a better father to my son than my father had been to me. My father had only left his son, but I had killed my son; he was dead because of me. I had a loving wife and a wonderful son who could have helped me forget my past and build a new life, but instead I let my hatred ruin it all. Now I have no one. The lady who opened the door is a maid. She is here because she gets paid to make my meals. Death is near, Sana, and there is no one even to bury me.”

He looked up, and I saw that the glassy look in his eyes had been replaced by an earnest plea of mercy from a dying man.

I felt a new kind of sadness overcome me. The anger, the hatred, and the desire for revenge had suddenly shrunk. For years I had desperately wanted my father’s killer to suffer and to feel the pain my father had felt when he had lost his life. But at that moment, I felt pity for the dying man lying helpless before me.

It was a relief to me that my father’s death had not been about money or about things, because it had always bothered me that my father had lost his life to such trivial matters. It had not been about material possessions at all; it had been about love. It had been about a father’s love that was snatched away—a cord cut suddenly and brutally—an emotion that no one understood better than I did. He had let hatred and resentment become the center of his life, as I had, and his anger had destroyed him.

Soon another thought entered my fatigued mind. Had I spoken the truth right away, the police might have caught him and taken possession of his gun, and perhaps the little innocent Taimur’s life could have been spared. I wondered if the responsibility of his accidental death also rested on my shoulders. Could I carry such a heavy burden for the rest of my life? If he was dead because of me, this had not been the revenge I had desired. It was the ultimate revenge, the ultimate punishment for my worst enemy, yet it did not appease me to see this man’s pain or hear the narration of his unthinkable, incomparable loss.

Slowly, hesitantly, I held out my hand to my uncle and said, “I am so sorry for your loss.”

I could never have predicted the words I was saying to my father’s assassin. “I can never forget the pain of my father’s loss
and I will never be able to justify your actions. I miss him every single day. When you were missing your father, I wish you had considered that the person you were killing was a father as well. But in order to move ahead with my life, I must forgive you. And even though I had wanted the worst for you, it breaks my heart to hear about your boy. And you are not alone.”

He looked up at me, his green eyes full of sadness and defeat, albeit a different one from the one I had seen in Ahmer’s father’s eyes. This was a greater defeat: that of a life lost, but also of a spirit lost.

“You have a very big heart, like your father’s,” he said. “I know why death had not yet come to me; it was because I needed to hear your forgiving words in order to have some peace before I die.”

The weapon to heal my sorrow was in my hands at last.

“I just need you to do something for me.” I said.

“Anything,” he replied.

“I need you to give a statement of confession to the police so that an innocent man can be exonerated. He has suffered enough.”

My uncle was unable to travel, so I arranged for an officer to go over to record his confession. His possession of the watch gave further credence to his story.

When I delved deeper, I discovered that Ahmer’s father had actually met Papa on the dreaded day. He had wished to inquire about the process of taking his wife to America for her cancer treatment, and a common friend had referred him to Papa, who knew well the details of obtaining visas for medical reasons. Since he had been the last person to meet my father outside the family and his fingerprints were on the paperwork that Papa had taken home, he had been an easy target for a forced confession. It had been a high-profile murder, and the police department had been determined to show that they had caught and punished the killer. The designated lead investigator’s promotion had depended on it.

In a matter of days, Ahmer’s father was released from prison. I watched from my car, which was hidden behind the bushes so no one could see me. I needed to witness this magical moment, even if I could not participate in it. Ahmer walked toward the black iron gate, eager and expectant, and his father walked away from it, dressed in civilian clothes—a white-collared shirt and a pair of striped brown trousers. He walked with his head held high, leaving behind the walls that had punished him, harassed him, confined him, and disgraced him for sixteen long years. His gait was like that of a child who had just learned to walk; reluctant, yet simultaneously unstoppable in his newly discovered world. He was clean-shaven, with the dimple in his chin now clearly visible and his gray hair evenly trimmed and meticulously combed. It was as though he had prepared himself to confront the new Universe. Despite all the lines that years of anguish had ruthlessly drawn on his face, a glimpse of youth emanated from his being. From a distance I could make out his eyes as he squinted and turned away slightly from the brightness of the blazing sun. He inhaled deeply the fresh air, not noticing the smoke and dust that clung to it, gracefully welcoming all aspects of his new found freedom.

Father and son hugged one another for several minutes, holding on tightly and allowing tears that had accumulated for a decade and a half to fall to the ground. They did not place their palms on their faces to halt them or use a tissue to dry them. They did not pretend that the wind had blown sand into their eyes. Ahmer looked at the gate with one final, accusatory, unforgiving look, but his father did not turn to look back. He looked only at his grown son standing before him, his eyes filled to the brim with the utmost gratitude for this reunion. It was the profound moment when Ahmer found an expanse of peace and I a morsel of atonement.

The court had decided not to pursue punishment for my uncle in light of the fact that his oncologist had given him a life
expectancy of less than a month. He passed peacefully at his home the day following the release, as if he had indeed been holding on to his last breath to meet me. What if he had died before I had been able to discover his identity? Then I would have never had the chance to bring closure to my lifelong ordeal, and Ahmer’s father would never have been a free man. I had been reckless in my procrastination, but God had been kind. He had been kind to a girl who had needed to know the truth. He had led me to Ahmer, and through him, I had learned of everything that had been hidden from me. The dream I had had about Ahmer, with him taking me on horseback toward a bright rising sun, had materialized. He had helped me overcome my fear and anger and had led me to the light, which had symbolized the truth. In the process, however, I had lost Ahmer himself. But while I had lost my love, I had won something much greater than the fulfillment of my own dreams.

I had called Phuppo and convinced her to plan a trip because I really needed to meet her. My mother, brother, and aunt had been in the dark until the day of the confession, when I finally called them and asked that we all meet. I told them that I had something very important to share with them. They expected it would be something about my broken engagement and definitely had not expected something as consequential as the truth I was about to disclose. They all believed that my father’s assassination was buried in the past. By now my brother was far older than I had been at the time of my father’s death, and I was sure that letting him in on this secret would no longer be considered a betrayal of the promise I had made to my mother. I also believed it was important for him to hear the truth, so he could understand me better. Maybe now he could answer the question he had asked me many times before: Apa why did you leave? He needed to know what secret I had carried with me as a child and how heavy the burden of that secret had been on my young shoulders.

My mother was shocked to hear everything. On the night of the murder, she had been so overwhelmed with grief that she had not realized that I had witnessed the shooting or that I had been there before her. She had been too distraught to appear in court for the arraignment. And later she had been so wrapped up in her new family, putting every morsel of her being into making her second marriage work, that she had never questioned the authenticity of the investigation surrounding my father’s killing. She reassured me that I was not at all to blame for the chain of tragedies that followed. I was a child, after all, and she was the adult. I was a child, after all, and a traumatized one at that, and she was the adult.

Several days later, Sahir said, “Apa, even if Ammi forbade you to tell me something, you should have shared it with me, if not immediately then maybe a few years later. You are the one who always told me that sorrow is halved when it’s shared, just as happiness is doubled. How could you keep all this inside you for so long? And I might have never known if it hadn’t been for all these coincidences that brought everything together.”