Trespassing (15 page)

Wayne leaned back into a swivel chair. A sign in his office read:
Trust your choices. Everything is possible.
There was an identical one in the classroom where he lectured. Tilting his chin he regarded Daanish from down the length of a thin nose. ‘I merely suggested you explore different avenues. Good journalism is snappy and digestible. You’re an amateur. Your writing style is ponderous and, well, pretty emotional.’

Daanish studied the page he’d written in the journal students were required to keep. Each week, class discussion revolved around the most popular subject, with tips on how to gather more information and how to beef up its selling points with eyewitness-type phrases and expressions. ‘Interviewing witnesses,’ Wayne loved to say, ‘is key. Make your audience be them. Make ‘em gasp, make ‘em drool.’ The last class discussion was on the removal of various vitamins from
store shelves. The mass media reported that the decision had resulted in more protest letters to the government than on any other issue in history. In class, students voiced their outrage on the infringement of the public’s right to choose their product. Small groups compared the various articles on the ‘crisis’, and a consensus was drawn on which report best served the interests of the oppressed people. Some articles interviewed those who no longer had access to their favorite vitamin. It made readers gasp. It made them drool. It made the students want to write like that.

The week before, the topic had been a certain museum’s refusal to exhibit nudes. ‘Censorship,’ Wayne had said, ‘is our worst enemy. Let’s not forget that it’s almost the two-hundredth anniversary of the First Amendment to the Constitution, the right to free speech. Today we’ll examine the many ways the media has asserted it. But first,’ he raised a finger and his voice began to fill the auditorium impressively. His lower lip plunged into the upper in a passionate pucker. He bounced. ‘Remember that as guardians of the press, as those who’ll go forward into the world with four years of meticulous training, as those who’ll be eyewitnesses of the vast turbulence around us, it’s our role to speak the objective truth to those who stay behind and depend on us!’

It had been six weeks since Iraq invaded Kuwait. Not one class discussion had addressed the attack, let alone its reporting. No one mentioned the international sanctions against Iraq or the freezing of its assets. Without oil exports, the nation was unable to import food. Daanish had found nothing in the US media about the effects of those sanctions nor about the peace settlements he knew, through the international press, were ongoing. Americans had been told little besides the fact that 40,000 US troops had been sent to Saudi Arabia. They’d been told the deployment was defensive, even though it was as large as the one in Vietnam.

Daanish spent hours in the library, searching and delving
through the less influential American and foreign papers. What he found led to the writing of the following entry in his journal:

After eight years of fighting Iran, Iraq needed to rebuild its economy. It needed oil money. However, the day after the Iran-Iraq cease-fire, Kuwait began increasing oil production, in violation of OPEC rules. Oil prices were cut in half. By the following year, Kuwait was producing more than two million barrels of oil per day, much more than its OPEC quota. To make things worse, it began extracting this oil from an oilfield on the disputed Iraq-Kuwait border, a border created by the British. It did this with US approval. After all, the US supplied the technology. Some lesser-known newspapers, at great personal risk, are reporting that during the Iran-Iraq war, Kuwait was actually drilling the oil on Iraq’s side of the border. Since Kuwait was one of the biggest Iraqi creditors during the war (an amount exceeding thirty billion dollars), this could mean it loaned Iraq its own product! Now, after the war, it has been demanding the debt be paid, while simultaneously increasing production.

These are events not mentioned in the more popular newspapers and magazines, but in light of Iraq’s invasion, I believe they ought to be. All angles of the situation ought to be examined, all parties ought to be included in the debate and the debate ought to be made available to the public. But why is the public not being told what the UN, US, Iraq, Kuwait and other relevant Middle Eastern nations are discussing? Does the US have other plans?

Perhaps. We need to also examine how the American government dealt with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq crisis, when it was taken off the ‘terrorist’ list. Compare this with what happened immediately after the cease-fire. Practically overnight, it was again declared a threat in a document with a name worth noting, War Plan 1002–90. Why the about-face? It was the same Iraq, the one that had been funded and armed
by the US during the war. Mirroring the government’s shift, the US media also began to portray Iraq differently. It was no longer an ally. It had become the enemy.

The American public has been told that the 40,000 US troops currently stationed in the Saudi desert are there to protect Saudi Arabia from the 120,000 Iraqi troops moving into it from Kuwait. Why haven’t we been shown these Iraqi troops?

A good student of journalism should not accept statements as true till hard evidence is available, particularly not on the brink of war. So an in-depth discussion of the circumstances leading into Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait must be had. We should read the smaller publications that dare to exercise their right under the First Amendment. These might be the ones that are better – as you yourself have said – ‘guardians of the truth’.

‘This is a perfectly reasonable entry,’ mumbled Daanish, looking up from the journal. In red ink, Wayne had written, A
weak analysis. Choose another topic. Explore other avenues.
‘What do you mean by exploring other avenues? That’s what I’ve done. No one else in class has touched the topic, though it’s a lot more important than vitamins.’

Daanish was pleased with himself for remaining calm. Though he wrote boldly in his journal, he rarely found the courage to confront Wayne in person. So far, he was doing well.

‘Look,’ said Wayne, shutting the journal abruptly. He leaned forward, fixing him with icy blue eyes. Daanish forced himself to glower back. ‘I can understand how upsetting this must be for you. Miles from home, nostalgic perhaps. Lonely. You’ve done well to get this far. I’m proud of you. Really, I am. It’s good to take pride in your own.’

Daanish was aghast. ‘Pride in my own?’

‘Well, you being an Arab and all, these events …’

‘I’m not an Arab,’ Daanish retorted, before his lips snapped shut. Not this, he thought. Wayne had never accused other
students of being swayed because of their backgrounds. But Daanish’s had become a weapon to silence him with, though Wayne couldn’t even get the details right. He opened his mouth before knowing how to say this, and, with the same scorn that he heard in Wayne’s voice, said, ‘Arabs comprise less than thirty per cent of Muslims.’ But this was not his most important point. He sat quietly, listening to his heart race.

Then: ‘I’m a student of journalism. My journal has nothing to do with my religion.’ The next sentence hung on the tip of his tongue: Have I ever questioned
your
skills based on
your
faith? He swallowed it.

Wayne leaned back into the swivel chair again. He looked at his watch. ‘Well,’ he shrugged, ‘your role as a budding journalist is to understand that all media persons deal in facts, not opinions. Fact: Saddam invaded Kuwait. We cannot change that by asking why. You’re free to speculate,’ he rotated his arms in a magnanimous gesture, ‘but your speculations are not news. Your opinions have no place on the front page.’

This time Daanish did not pause. ‘But that’s
all
that’s
on
the front page! What do you call this?’ He pointed to a page in his thick stack of articles. ‘Headline:
More Than a Madman.
Are you telling me that’s a fact? And what about him being called a Hitler? They’re actually trying to prove that he’s some reincarnation of him! Did they learn to report in such a
factual
fashion in college?’

Wayne smacked his fleshy thighs, making to stand up. ‘You’re going to get nowhere by siding with Saddam, young man.’

‘I am not siding with him.’ He was shivering. It wasn’t cold. ‘It’s a sign of my professional commitment that you’re unable to detect my true feelings for the man.’ He paused, determined to let that sink in. His head was pounding now. He’d never stood up to a teacher before. Vaguely, he worried that he was pushing himself off a cliff.

‘I’m asking if the media is presenting us with facts or, or
mere labels. Something easy to latch on to so that if there is a war – and would it go through all this trouble if it didn’t know the administration intended one? – there’ll be too much hatred against the “enemy” to question its destruction.’ Yes, he had definitely pushed himself off. His organs swished under his skin. Still he kept on. ‘Who is really being brainwashed? The irony is that the top of this article begins with a photograph of school children in front of a photograph of Saddam and the caption reads:
From birth, Iraqis are taught to obey their supreme leader’s every command.
The caption could easily read: From birth, Americans are taught to obey their ruling troika: the White House, Pentagon and the Media.’ He sat back, shocked at himself.

Wayne marched toward the door. He waited for Daanish to do the same. ‘I did say you were likely to get emotional. Uh! Uh!’ He held his hand up in a restraining motion. ‘Just listen. I’ll tell you what, you mull over it. The vitamin story may seem mundane to you, but perhaps there’s a lesson here. You’re only a sophomore.’

Now Daanish’s courage did fail him. His voice sank to the bottom of his pants. He bit on his belt. His words were not in his throat, they were in his hands, but as he rolled off the cliff, he let them go.

Another professor passed by the open door.

‘How’s it going?’ Wayne cheerfully greeted her.

They walked away, leaving Daanish in the corridor. He could hear them discuss the venue for the next board meeting.

Daanish stood at the window. His head was leaden with yet another night of intermittent sleep. Every morning since his return to Karachi, he’d given up the fight for rest soon after dawn, when the builders arrived next door. He watched now as a bare-footed, bare-chested old man climbed a bamboo ladder, balancing a cement bucket on his feeble head. His hair was dry and bleached, like sugar-cane husk. Between the first two toes of his right foot he carried a trowel. The bucket on his head, and two more in his hands, wavered. With the heel and toes of his free foot, he pressed the sides of the ladder till it steadied. In this way he arrived at the top rung.

The old man handed over the buckets to a younger worker hunkered on the roof. Wiping his face with a wrinkled cloth, he then lit a cigarette, savoring it as though he was the one indoors, standing aimlessly at the window like Daanish.

The sky was a peach-gray pierced by dish antennas, sooty rooftops, telephone wires. There were hardly any trees.

Beyond, but invisible to Daanish, was the sea. Like him, it lapped different shores. On this one, the old man was born on the wrong side of the belt. Here, Daanish could scribble slander on a napkin and hurl it his way. Here, he never had to scrub pots the size of church bells, or clench his jaw in the presence of Kurt or Wayne. If he wanted, he could step outside and lord it over anyone. Simply by crossing an ocean, his place in the universe changed.

The laborer tossed away his cigarette. A figure walked toward him. It was Khurram’s driver, carrying an aluminum pot. He’d seen him at some point every morning, when Khurram’s family did not need him. As on the day he’d driven him home from the airport, Daanish was struck by his good looks.

After the girl in the blue dupatta left the caterpillars, Daanish had asked his uncles what they were but the men brusquely recommended destruction. ‘Forget about that rude incident,’ his chacha had advised.

He couldn’t. So he decided to slip outside with the three fat slugs and ask the construction workers. They passed on the inquiry till it reached the driver, who knew immediately.

‘How?’ Daanish asked, holding the larvae in his palm.

‘My sister works on a farm where they’re bred,’ the man answered. His face was forever expressionless, as if it had simply been jammed.

‘What do you know about them?’ Daanish pushed.

The man moved to Daanish’s other side and asked him to repeat the question. Then he replied, ‘Feed them a lot. When they’ve spun their cocoons, if you want the thread, boil them.’

‘That’s a bit extreme,’ Daanish mused. ‘What do they eat?’

‘Leaves. There’s a large mulberry tree in the empty plot at the end of the street. They’ll eat lettuce but they prefer the leaves of that tree, especially if chopped.’

The builders were pleased to take time off and chat with the boy from Amreeka. Though Daanish was pleased to get away from the mourners, he soon tired of being asked for a visa.

‘You should see how I’m treated at their Consulate! I’m nothing to them! I can’t help you!’

They hadn’t believed him.

Daanish turned away from the window and looked in one of the drawers where his shells had been. They were gone now. His temper began to rise. For the millionth time, he opened the door of the new closet and rummaged through the pile of clothes Anu had stacked. His beautiful shell boxes had been stored in the old closet. They too were gone. He slammed the door shut.

Anu was the only one who could have gone through his things. Yet she denied it. He shook his head: the doctor would
never
have invaded his privacy. It had to be her. Why? And it seemed she was still at it: his books and the envelope full of photographs were also gone. So was his bloody camera!

This was not how he remembered her. She’d changed. He did not want her to. She ought to be steady, like the boulder she sat on while he and his father went exploring. They’d been a piece, like a vase of cut glass, with her the light from the back and his father the glowing foreground. With the front gone, she was strangely like a gaping well. He was afraid of peering in too far.