Sometimes I think the cubicle wall between Scott and myself is not high enough. He is a sweet man, to be sure. But he is TOO LOUD. I hear all the details of his teleconference and cannot hear a word of mine! While I struggle to understand our client statisticians from Nigeria and Taiwan (and their English is no good even if they do not realize it), I press my finger to my ear so firmly that my earrings hurt. My project is a clinical drug trial run by a big pharmaceutical company called GSL. I am the computer programming lead and I manipulate a team of three programmers for this project. Scott’s project is tiny in comparison. He works alone, and the client is American and speaks English like he does. My client is mad with us, and he is laughing with his. I promise to punch Scott in the arm once for every scratch he puts in my ear.
I hang up so loudly my bracelets clatter. I am aggravated not only at him, but at Tariq, my cubicle-mate. He is from Pakistan, like me, but not from a big city like Lahore. Who does he think he is? I am not appointed lead on his project one week and already he commences backbiting. I say to him, “Tariq, please do not derive variables in the table programs. Please do this in the datasets,” and he argues with me on every point. Every point! Our guidelines say I am right, and he still argues. I have tried speaking nicely. I have tried addressing him properly in Urdu, okay? And nothing! I have to intervene with Dan our manager to get him to do these things. Sanjay and Colin never need to do this. So why do I? Because I was promoted and he was not? Because I am a woman? Does he not see how humiliating it is?
Now I am doubly mad at him. I take a deep breath and adjust my hijab before turning to face him. Ours is an open cubicle which two people share back to back – our own little Pakistan inside America. “Tariq—” I say, dispensing with niceness like I do when my six-year old Omar whines for more candy, “do you know why I just spent a half hour in teleconference with GSL mad at us?”
I know he hears but he pretends to hear his iPhone instead. “Tariq,” I repeat, “Do you know why I spent a half hour in teleconference with GSL mad at us?”
He turns slowly and does not even do me the courtesy to remove his earphones. “How could I, Missus?” he says. He calls me ‘missus’ just to aggravate me. “I wasn’t on the phone with you.” He smiles like he just solved another one of his chess puzzles. He has a mathematics degree from back home. He thinks he is intelligent because he was the only mathematician in his village and can recite mathematical terms and because he waited five hours in queue for his fancy iPhone. He is tall and strong and he thinks he is good-looking. So what if he is!
“You should, Tariq. I told you to derive exact confidence intervals for the efficacy tables. And you said you did.”
“I never said that,” he says.
“You did too, man!”
“I said I would think about it, and then decided that normal confidence intervals were better.” He shrugs and smiles. Of course he can do these things. He does not listen to GSL yell at him in bad English for half an hour.
“But GSL statisticians say they want the exact, Tariq. They agree to me on this. And they know more stats than you.”
“You should not talk to me that way, Missus,” he scolds. “No matter what you say, you are still stupid!” He spits this last word at me and does not even pronounce it right.
I cannot believe he says this. “What?” I say.
“I said you are stupid!” he repeats. Allah forbid! I have not seen such a look except on my father when we lose a cricket match to India.
Scott gets off the phone and I can tell by the way he whistles that he is very happy. He walks past my cubicle, and I stand and stamp my foot. “You!!” I say. “I can’t hear a word of my teleconference with you shouting in yours!”
He stops and is really sorry. He is a tall, handsome American that everyone likes. He is a good programmer too. He just cannot control himself sometimes. “Oh no!” he says. “Really?”
I laugh. It is fun to play with Scott. I shake my fist at him because he knows I only kid. “No! But do it again, you get this!!”
He holds up his arms, pretending to protect himself. “I better keep quiet then!”
Tariq begins his strange grunting laugh. “Hey, Scott. What you should do is hit her with this,” he says, holding up the heavy metal pen holder our company awarded us on the New Year. It is curved and shiny and has sharp corners. He waves it over his head like a club. “You can really brain someone with this thing, man.”
“And you!” I say. “Speak English correctly! Brain is NOT a verb, it is a noun!”
“No, I’m afraid Tariq is right, Aliyah,” Scott says. “To brain someone means to–” He smacks himself in the head. “Bash his or her skull in. Not to say I don’t deserve it for disturbing youÉ” That Tariq! Always trying to impress Americans with his American English. Who cares!
“But what can I do, Scott?” I ask. “I tried IM’ing you. I tried email.”
He taps my shoulder and says, “I’ll show you,” and then runs around to his cubicle where I cannot see him. Soon his hands grasp the top of the wall. I am truly alarmed because he seems about to shake it down, and these are the tallest cubicle walls I have seen in any office. Then his feet climb the desk, and his head appears over the top between his hands, scaring me almost out of my hijab.
He puts his finger to his lips and says, “SHHHHH!!!!” shaking his head like a clown. Scott is always joking.
He stops and looks down at my desk. He is not joking anymore. “Aliyah, what happened to your mouse pad?”
I look at my mouse pad. Because of the teleconference, I had not noticed it all morning! On it was a picture of Omar, barefoot, in his cute salwar kameez right after his fourth birthday. And someone wrote a mustache with eyeglasses on him!!
Is this a joke? Who would do this to my poor little Omar? By the time Scott runs back around to my cubicle, I am almost bumping my back into Tariq’s chair. Tariq and Scott investigate the mouse pad, and I walk up and take it. The person wrote big thick eyebrows on him too!
“Do you know who did this, Aliyah?” Scott asks.
I scoff at him in Urdu. “Of course not! Who would do such a thing!”
Scott seems perfectly shocked, but Tariq begins again with that horrible laugh. “Hey, maybe someone was using facial identification software!” he says. We both look at him, flabbergasted. “You know, when police make a lost child look older so others can recognize him.”
The dunderhead is still laughing! He does not realize how inappropriate he is.
“This isn’t funny, Tariq,” Scott tells him, getting a little angry on my behalf. “This is defacement of property. This is illegal. Not to mention someone is mocking a child here!” Tariq apologizes and returns to his desk with his iPhone back on. I want to strangle him with those headphone wires.
I cannot bear looking at my Omar dressed up like that anymore so I put him to my chest and hold him tight. My bracelets clink and clank. “We gotta tell Dan,” Scott says. I shake my head. He looks at me twice. “Aliyah, at the very least this is harassment. Of course we should tell Dan. Come on, now!” He is getting loud and manic again, with his hands going every which way.
I take a deep breath. I can be a very calm and controlled person when I want to. “Scott,” I ask, “may I see you please in the library?” The library is a small room a few meters away with a door. We walk in, and I close it. Normally, I would never be alone with a man in the library with the door closed. But Scott is such a sweet man, with a wife and three kids of his own, I pretend I don’t remember this.
“You will not tell Dan anything,” I say.
“Why not?”
“Because I know who did it.”
“Who?”
I look at the door to make sure it is closed. “Tariq,” I whisper.
Scott frowns at me like I am speaking Urdu. “How do you know?”
I shout at him through my whisper. “Because he HATES me! I am made lead on his study, and what does he do? He insults me. He ignores me.” I point to the mouse pad. “This happened before I arrived this morning, Scott. And he was first in the office! Who else could it be?”
“But shouldn’t we still tell Dan?”
“I do not want to get Tariq in trouble, okay? He has two little ones at home. I know his wife.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No more words!” I say. “This will solve everything!” I open the supply cabinet and find some cleaner. I spray it on the mouse pad and wipe it off with tissue. It is good like new. “See?”
I start to open the door, but Scott shuts it. “Yeah, I see,” he warns. “But remember that anyone capable of defacing property is capable of destroying it. By not telling Dan, you run the risk of it happening again.”
I smile at him. Such a sweet man. “Thank you, Scott,” I say as I return behind the tall walls of my cubicle.
***
I dare not tell my father about this. He is visiting from Pakistan when this happens, and still I whisper the news to my husband Ibraheem while Father plays outside with Omar. Ibraheem laughs like it is only a joke, and I see how it can be a joke too. Tariq was making fun of me through Omar. Okay. I can see this. Scott was wrong.
The evening is no different. We eat, we pray. Ibraheem plays his stock market on the internet while I drill multiplication tables with Omar and then bathe him and read to him and put him to bed. It is almost eight when I walk in the neighborhood with Father.
Next to the dentist he sees every time he visits, there is very little about America Father approves of. He is not terribly old. He was five when Partition happened. Old enough to have memories that he never wants to discuss. He was one of four people from our village in Kashmir to survive those years. Mother once told us of all the family he had lost. Not when. Praise Allah, not how.
I know it was horrible. It WAS horrible. His face tells it all. My brothers try to discuss these political things with him, and his eyes shrink and his mouth tightens and his breathing goes crazy and he is only capable of anger and not listening. My sister Fatima once tried to find the three other surviving members of our village, and when Father learned these things, he would not speak to her for six months! She had a miscarriage during this time, poor thing, and no, no, no! That was all he could say!
Perhaps I am his favorite because I don’t tell him these things. I don’t say how much I enjoy my Hindu co-workers, my Jewish manager, or my American neighbors. Not for fear of what he will do to me, but for fear of breaking his wonderful stubborn heart. Because the same blood that pumps through his heart also pumps through mine! I cannot get angry the way he does, but I dislike India too. I try, but I cannot help feeling these things. And America! I do not like its television and movies and music. I do not understand the fashions for women. The crime. The schools. Without saying, Father and I understand the moral superiority of our people and what a slight it is to Merciful Allah that we are treated as we are. I have been in America for three years and have not once shared a meal with any of my co-workers or neighbors even though they ask on numerous occasions.
I call my father ‘accha,’ which means ‘good’ or ‘sweet’. It is the pet name our mother used to call him. I began calling him this after Mother died five years ago. Some may not think it is proper for daughters to address fathers this way, so it is our big secret. I thank Allah every day for the sweet men in my life who keep ME a big secret! For every improper thing I say and do, I would be in big trouble if not for them.
Two girls jog past. They are neighbors attending the nearby university. They are nice girls. Pretty American girls. They wear short shorts and bikini tops. They wave and say hi even though I dare not raise my eyes at them. Father acts like he smells rotting meat as they jog past. He stiffens and lifts his chin and looks askance at them. His mouth is tight. He is breathing crazy. His eyes are filled with fear, pain, anger, and I do not know what else. I touch him gently on the arm. I call him my Accha. A man like this should never know what happens to little boys on mouse pads.
***
The next morning I discover my Omar cut into many pieces on my desk! Some pieces are not even there anymore. As usual, I am the second person in the office. Tariq is the first. He does not even notice. He is listening to his iPhone and working. I see scissors on his desk.
A knife to my heart! It HAD to be Tariq. My heart races. My feet and forehead sweat. My hands shake when I remember I am alone in an office with the man who does this to my son. I gather the pieces of mouse pad and am ready to take them home and never come back, when, praise Allah, I see Dan and Sanjay coming down the hall.
I cannot begin to tell how sweet everyone is to me about these things. Dan calls HR. He writes a company-wide email threatening to expulse anyone caught doing this. He gives me two paid days off, besides this one. Scott, the poor man, pumps his fists like he wants someone to punch. He even tries searching for the lost pieces of mouse pad. How I should have listened to him! My Indian friends Mamta and Sushmita never leave my side the whole time. Thrice they let me cry in their arms. Ibraheem arrives and consoles me. He sits with me and Dan and Dan’s boss Rebecca and a person from HR. They answer all his questions, and we leave knowing my company is treating this as an especially important matter.
The only bad thing, besides the VERY bad thing that started these things, is when Tariq wants to speak with me alone in the library. Dan had just called HR, and I am returning to my desk when Tariq asks to see me. It is not eight-thirty. Almost no one else is in the office yet. Why does he want to see me in the library? And the way he speaks, like master to servant, I cannot say no, even though I am so scared my chin starts to shake. As we walk I feel his hand on my back pressing me forward. My eyes close. I imagine being led to suttee. Such ghastly things!
He shuts the door. I do not realize I am backing away from him until I strike the small refrigerator and knock over plastic soda cups. He steps forward, and I am CENTIMETERS away from screaming. He puts his hand on his heart as I put mine to my mouth.
“I know what people will say,” he says, “but I did not do this.”
I grow brave when I realize he has no intent to harm me. I do not believe him. “Did you not call me stupid, Tariq?” I accuse to him. “Did you not instruct Scott to beat me with a heavy metal thing? How to believe you!”
He blinks. He mouth falls open. “By the Prophet, Aliyah,” he whispers, “I am innocent.”
“Hah!” I say, and I scoff at him in Urdu before leaving. I promise never to be scared of him again. For the first time I am grateful to be in America. I am Tariq’s equal by law. He cannot hurt me without hurting worse. Such relief! I can blame him without shame.
As Ibraheem and I leave the building, fast footsteps come behind us. It is Scott. He says he thinks Tariq is innocent and he has a theory on who the REAL criminal is. I am not interested because my mind is made up already, but Ibraheem is interested. Scott tells us that Tariq could not have written the mustache and eyeglasses and eyebrows on Omar because these things are a famous face of a long-ago movie actor named Groucho Marks. Tariq only watches modern action films, he says. He does not know this Marks person. Neither do Ibraheem and I.
So Ibraheem asks him about his theory, and Scott says he thinks it is someone from the call center who works at night. At the other end of the building, we recently employed phone operators to answer calls from clinical trial sites in Europe during Europe’s working hours, which start at night here. He says one of them must be a racist committing hate crimes!
“But what about Kelly?” I say, “She has pictures of her children on her desk too.”
“Yes, but Kelly is black,” he says to us, out of breath and manic. “Black people aren’t typically foreigners in America. Maybe this lunatic has a beef only against foreigners and took it out on Omar simply because he’s a foreign-looking kid in view in an open cube!”
Ibraheem still finds the theory interesting. I do not. “But what I like about this theory,” Scott continues, “is that it’s testable. We should get all the foreign women in the office to put up pictures of cute foreign-looking kids and wait for this nutjob to do it again. Then we’ll know!”
Scott has worked himself up almost until I think he’ll have a heart attack. I want to put my hands on his shoulders to calm him, but I cannot do that with Ibraheem watching and should not do it anyways. I sincerely thank him for his concern and his interesting theory, and my husband and I go home.
***
Well, Tariq was moved to the third floor with the statisticians because everyone knows I would never share a cubicle with him again. Tariq is more interested in statistics anyways. I take a week off and come back. A big homecoming! People are so glad to see me, even Kelly and Colin who I almost never work with. Scott gives me a new mouse pad with a picture of Omar that I emailed to him months ago. They almost make me forget these things, and for once I relent and let them take me to a restaurant for lunch. It is a bread and kabob place owned by a nice Afghani man Ibraheem knows. How I cry in front of everybody! Why am I so like my father? Why do I so distrust things foreign? The one person from home I work with who shares my culture and my religion does horrible things to me, and here are these people, they have never been to Lahore, they have never been inside a mosque, they are white and black and Hindu and Chinese, and they are all being so sweet to me! Do I truly deserve these things?
I think Allah listens to me that afternoon because work gets better right away. Kelly replaces Tariq on the GSL project, and it ends well. They even use the normal confidence intervals like Tariq said they should. Soon, I am working with Scott and Sanjay and Colin on a bigger project called Phillips-Meyer, and the work is so challenging and fast-paced that two months go by fast. I am so absorbed in adverse events and concomitant medications and demography tables that I almost forget what had happened before. And it is such an important project I agree to come in on weekends while Father and Ibraheem watch Omar.
It is mid-morning on a Sunday. I promised to meet Scott to go over some of the vital signs tables, and I arrive before he does. The building is quiet. I preoccupy myself so much with work I forget to be scared. I forget to remember that this was where Tariq had mutilated a picture of my son! I come in the side entrance and see that the lights are on. But Scott’s car is not in the parking lot. I walk quietly towards my cubicle because I think I hear something there. And I do! I do hear something. I can hear scissors. Someone is using scissors at MY cubicle!
It is Tariq, I know this. I move fast to catch him, but he hears me and runs around the corner to the cubicle where Scott sits. He had been cutting THIS mouse pad too! Oh, my poor Omar! I am so angry at Tariq. I try to see him over the cubicle wall, but it is too high, and I am too short. He runs to the exit, and instead of following, I turn the opposite direction to meet him there in the hall. He hears, and runs back into the cubicles. I follow him in.
I am determined to see him and blame him and shame him for these things! Cubicles at our office are like a maze of gray walls and I follow him by his breathing and his footsteps with only one wall of cubicles between us. But every corner I turn he is not there. He moves deeper and deeper into the rows of cubicles and away from the exit. I am certain I have him now! Soon his back will be to the windows and he will HAVE to admit that I caught him. The stupid woman he used to work with!
Suddenly, I think, how childish! Playing hide and seek games in a place of work. Ibraheem does these things with Omar, and Omar does it with his friends. It is not something for adult people. “Tariq!” I say. “I know it is you, man! Come out and say what you did!”
The person on the other side makes a gasp, and I realize at once that it is NOT Tariq!! It is a man, but that is all I know. And by speaking, he now knows I am a woman. A woman who is alone and defenseless in an empty building.
He laughs. It is a slow, confident laugh in a voice I have never heard before. I feel all hope sink from me like water down a drain. My heart pounds, and my forehead and feet sweat, and something sharp in my mind tells me to scream. I thought I was frightened of Tariq in the library! By merciful Allah, I did not know fear. I did NOT know fear.
I run down my row of cubicles to the exit, but he runs in the same direction to meet me at the corner, just as I had done to him. I stop before he gets there, and go in the opposite direction, and so does he! Soon I am going back and forth in my cubicle row trying to get to the corner before he does, but he is always right where I am on the other side of the wall, going where I go. It is my shadow I am trying to escape.
I start to cry as I feel myself getting tired. I cannot run like this forever! Soon he will beat me to the corner fast enough to catch me! I try again, but he follows closely. I turn the other way and he is still right there with me. He will never give up. I know this now. I stop in the middle of my row, my hijab falling off me, my bracelets clattering, and my blouse wet with tears.
He is breathing heavily as well. He stops, and then suddenly, he moves! He does not run in either direction this time. This time he moves directly to me, as if through the cubicle wall itself!!
I back into the cubicle behind me, bumping into the chair and then the desk behind it. What is he doing? My hand touches something cold and smooth. It is the heavy metal pen holder our company awarded us on News Years. Suddenly, I know what he is doing! He is going to climb OVER the cubicle wall. I hear his feet on the desk. I know I have only seconds to act. Shaking, I remove the pen and take the pen holder and run towards him. Just as his hands grasp the top of the wall I swing the pen holder down like a club between them. It brains him in the head just he as appears over the top!
The man cries and falls, and I drop the pen holder and run to the exit. I hear the door open. It is Scott. Finally! I am no longer frightened. I rejoice at the sight of this man. I feel my long hair in my face as I jump into his arms. No man besides Ibraheem and my Father has seen me without my hijab since coming to this country, but I do not feel ashamed now. In an instant I look into his strong, clear, American eyes and know that, if not for Ibraheem and my beautiful Omar, this is the man I could abandon everything for, may Allah forgive me please. At once I feel both sad and grateful that these things can never be.
The man appears from the cubicles and sees me with Scott. I say, “He is the one! He cut up my Omar. He attacked me just now!”
“He’s the one?” Scott repeats, and then looks at him with a fiery look I never thought Scott could make. I finally notice that I HAVE seen this man before! He IS one of the call center people. He is middle-aged and slender with red hair and a big mustache. Usually, he is well-dressed but today he is slovenly in a T-shirt and shorts. “Don’t move!” Scott says to him, pointing. “Aliyah, call 911. Now!”
I do as he says while the man realizes that he is no match for Scott. He backs away to the other exit as Scott runs after him. Scott subdues him by grasping him from behind and throwing him to the floor. Then, quite unnecessarily, Scott begins punching the man in the head while he is helpless! The more punches Scott throws, the angrier he gets, using language I never thought I would hear from him. The man’s head bounces off the carpet as he tries to protect himself with his hands. It is the last horrible thing I remember before my eyes again fill up with tears.
***
The police and the paramedics arrive. I replace my hijab and answer all their questions. I tell them all these things, and they believe me. Ironically, the paramedics spend more time with Scott than with the man since Scott had hurt his hands on the man’s head. Scott lies to the police, saying that the man had put up a great fight, and that is why he had to subdue him with so many punches. They believe him as well.
Despite being brained with the pen holder and punched by Scott, the man is not bruised or bloody. As they lead him to the exit, I suddenly want desperately to see him up close. Who could do these things to my sweet little Omar?
They say no at first, but relent when I beg and cry. The man sees me coming, and stiffens and lifts his chin and looks askance at me. His mouth is tight. His breathing is crazy. His eyes are filled with fear, pain, anger, and I don’t know what else. I cannot believe it! I have seen those eyes. It is as if I KNOW those eyes!!
“Why did you do these things?” I whisper. I do not understand it, but suddenly I feel almost as if I had betrayed HIM!
He looks at me. His voice is rough and weak and bitter. He says, “You want to know why? Because! Every! Day!” he spits these words at me, the police must hold him back, “every day, I think about those people jumping out of those towers!”
I touch the poor man gently on the arm. “Oh, Accha,” I say. “So do I.”
