One Amazing Thing (3 page)

The man did lean over the counter, though he did not reach for her. He was saying something, but panic had siphoned away her English. He repeated the words more slowly. The syllables ricocheted around in her head, unintelligible. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine the beauty shop, with herself safe in its calm center. But the floor rose up, the mirrors cracked and fell from the walls, and the ground was full of shards like those under her hands.

Behind her she heard Mr. Mangalam’s door open. Glass crunched under his unsteady shoes as he walked toward her and the black man. Though she had not premeditated it, she found herself flinging herself at him and pummeling his chest, crying out in Tamil, “It’s our fault! It’s our fault! We made this happen!”

When the earthquake had hit, Mr. Mangalam had ducked underneath his desk. Subsequently, the desk had slid to the other end of the room, trapping him against a wall. He had pushed and kicked
for several minutes before managing to extricate himself. When he rose to his feet, disconcerted by how badly his hands were shaking, his eyes had fallen on his prize possession—no, not the photo, which lay on the carpet smiling with sly triumph, but the sandalwood Ganapathi that his mother had given him—
to remove all obstacles from your path
—when he had left home for college. The desk in its journey across the room had dislodged the deity and crushed it against the wall. He had felt a dreadful hollowness, as though someone had scooped out his insides. He, too, had been brought up with a belief in karma. Accusations similar to what Malathi was currently sobbing against his shirtfront had swirled like a miasma through his brain. No matter how resolutely he pushed them away as superstition, wisps kept coming back, weakening him.

Mr. Mangalam did not have any prior experience of earthquakes. He had, however, dealt with hysterical women before. He took hold of Malathi’s shoulders and shook her until she fell silent. “Don’t be stupid,” he told her in Tamil, using the icy tone that had worked well in past situations. “It was an earthquake. Earthquakes have nothing to do with people.” In English he added, “Pull yourself together and listen to what this gentleman is asking you.”

Cameron didn’t like how the officer had shaken the woman and wanted to say something about it, but there were more pressing issues. “Do you have a first-aid kit?” he asked again, enunciating the words as clearly as he could. “A flashlight? How about a radio with batteries? Tylenol? Is the phone working?”

“I checked the phone in my office,” Mr. Mangalam said. “The line’s dead.” He repeated the other items for Malathi, substituting terms she would be familiar with—
torch, Anacin, medicine box
—until she nodded uncertainly and wandered off into the shadowy recesses of the office.

Dazed as she seemed, Cameron didn’t expect much from her.
But in a few minutes he saw a bobbing circle of light moving toward him. She placed the flashlight on the countertop, along with a plastic Walmart bag that held two batteries and a white metal box painted with a large, red cross. Inside he found alcohol swabs, a few Band-Aids, a bottle of aspirin, some cold medication, a tube of antiseptic ointment, and a container of dental floss. It was better than nothing, though not by much.

He tried to order, in his head, the things that needed to be done. He had to check all areas of the room to determine if there were other possible exits. He had to check if anyone else was injured. He had to find out who might have food or water with them, and then persuade them to give it up. Were there bathroom facilities? If not, alternate arrangements would have to be made. He would have to walk around the room to see if there was a spot from which his cell phone worked. He would have to ask others to do the same. He would have to try to open the door, even though it might cause them to be buried alive.

His chest was beginning to hurt. The dust wasn’t helping any. Soon he would be forced to use the inhaler.

It’s too much, Seva, he thought. I can’t manage it all.

Behind him he heard a swishing. He swung around, aiming his flashlight like a gun. Malathi had found a broom and was sweeping up some of the debris. He was not able to catch her eye, but at least she no longer seemed terrified. That was good, because soon he would have to ask her to do something she would hate him for.

He allowed his mind to move away from the demands of the present, to follow, gratefully, the rhythm of the broom, which sounded a little like something his grandmother, who had grown up as a house servant in a Southern home, had described for him: a woman walking down a staircase in a long silk dress.

U
ma looked down at her hand, which was so swollen that she could no longer make out the wrist bones. Cameron had given her three aspirin tablets, which she had forced herself to dry-swallow, almost gagging in the process. They did nothing for the pain, which throbbed all the way up her arm into her shoulder, and which she could not separate from her fear. Under her skin, something jagged was grinding into her muscles. She imagined a bone—or maybe several, ends cracked and sharp and uneven, stabbing her flesh from the inside. She wanted to escape to something outside this dreadful prison of a room—the ocean, her parents, the pad Thai noodles that she had been planning to make for dinner, Ramon bringing her jasmine tea in bed—but she was unable to squeeze past the panic. Could one die of internal bleeding in the arm? By the time they were rescued, would her arm have to be amputated? She had believed herself to be the kind of person who could handle a crisis with cool intelligence. Now she was abashed at how quickly pain had eroded her resources.

Everyone was huddled in the center of the room, where Cameron had summoned them. Everyone except the bearded young man, who was still lying where he had fallen, although he was conscious
now. He had turned onto his side so he could watch Cameron. His unblinking eyes were like black glass in the glow of the flashlight. His head lolled at an uncomfortable angle. When a wave of pain receded, Uma would think vaguely of placing something under his head, her backpack maybe. Then the next wave of pain would break over her and she would lose track of the thought.

Cameron was checking people for injuries. They sat in a chair, their faces docile and tilted up like children’s, while he ran his pencil light over them. Almost everyone had cuts or bruises. The old woman had a nasty gash on her upper arm that was bleeding copiously. He handed swabs, Band-Aids, and the antibiotic cream to the older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Pritchett, and told them to do what they could to help those who were not too badly hurt. People had stammered out their names by now, all except the bearded man. But they knew his name anyway, because while he had been passed out on the floor Cameron had asked Mr. Mangalam, and he had asked Malathi. It was Tariq. A Muslim name. Uma wondered if that had anything to do with his violent outburst; then she was ashamed of such a stereotypical thought.

Cameron called the granddaughter, Lily, to hold the large flashlight for him as he cleaned the old woman’s wound and pressed gauze on it. Uma could see Lily biting her lips as red soaked the gauze, but the girl did not look away. Cameron frowned as he worked on the wound. He had to use all the gauze before he could stop the bleeding. (
Who would have thought the old woman to have so much blood in her?
Uma longed to say to someone who would recognize the allusion.) Finally, he tore a strip off the bottom of his T-shirt and bandaged up the old lady’s arm. He instructed her to lie down and keep the arm as still as possible. Then he lowered himself heavily onto the ground. Uma felt a stab of anxiety as she saw him lean his head against the customer-service wall and close his eyes. He
fumbled for something in his pocket, held it to his mouth, and squeezed. Was he ill?
Be strong
,
be strong
, she thought between the bouts of pain that pulsed in the bones of her face.

In a while, Cameron pulled himself up and examined the back area for a door or window that might form a possible exit route. Perhaps a ladder that they could use to climb up to the large air vent near the ceiling? Failing to find anything, he deployed people with cell phones to move around (but carefully) in case they could catch a signal. Mangalam was put in charge of checking the office phones at regular intervals. Nothing there either. Cameron waited for the realization to sink in: they were stuck here until a rescue team arrived or until they decided to take the risk of pulling open the front door. Then he instructed people to pool whatever food or drinks they had, for rationing.

A reluctant pile of snacks formed on the counter, along with a few bottles of water. Uma, who did not have anything to contribute, felt improvident, like Aesop’s summer-singing cricket. (But she was suspicious, too. Had people squirreled things away at the bottoms of their purses, deep inside a coat pocket, in their shoes? In their place, she would have done it.) For a moment she heard her mother reading her that old story, her voice indignant as the ant sent the cricket off into the winter to die. Right now, half a world away, her mother lay asleep on her Superior Quality Dunlopillo mattress, ignorant of her daughter’s plight. But hadn’t her mother always been that way, oblivious to trouble even if it lay down in her bed and placed its head on her pillow?

“Does anyone have pain medication with them?” Cameron called. “Something prescription strength? This young woman, Miss Uma, her arm is broken. I’d like to give her something before I try to set it. Legal or otherwise, I don’t care.”

But no one admitted to possessing anything.

Cameron turned to Mangalam. “I need some long strips of cloth for bandages and a sling. We’re going to have to use her sari.” He gestured with his chin toward Malathi. “You’ve got to explain it to her.”

But when Mangalam spoke to Malathi, a rapid-fire set of staccato sounds that Uma did not understand, she retreated behind the counter and folded mutinous arms across her chest. “Illay, Illay!” she cried in a tone that was impossible to mistake. She continued with a wail of unfathomable words.

“She says it will destroy her womanly modesty,” Mangalam reported. He looked flustered. Uma suspected that Malathi had said something more, something he was withholding from them. Then another wave of pain struck and she was no longer interested.

“Ma’am, you have to cooperate,” Cameron said. “We’re in a situation where the regular rules don’t apply. I can’t help Miss Uma here unless I have enough cloth.” But Malathi had backed into a narrow space between two file cabinets at the far end of the room.

With her uninjured hand Uma groped in her backpack and pulled out a sweatshirt. The pain had taken over her head by now, making her dizzy. She walked unsteadily to the file cabinets and raised her swollen arm as best as she could for Malathi to see. The skin was turning a sick purple, visible even in the gloom. For a long moment Malathi did not move. Then she shot Uma a look of hate, snatched the sweatshirt from her hand, and retreated into Mangalam’s office. A few seconds later, the blue sari came flying through a gap in the door. Uma heard the click of a lock.

The pain of setting the arm almost made Uma faint, but once her arm was stabilized—the enterprising Cameron had used two rulers to make a splint—and placed in a sling, she felt slightly better. She took two more aspirin tablets from Cameron, picked up her backpack, and made her way to Tariq. He accepted the tablets she
held out and gave a nod of thanks. Then he grimaced and clasped the back of his neck.

“Does it hurt a lot?” she asked.

He gave a bitter bark of a laugh. “What do you think?”

“I’m sorry about what happened.”

He shrugged. “I’m going to kill him.”

His tone startled her. It was so casual, so chillingly certain.

“Don’t talk like that,” she said sharply.

She would have said more, but Mrs. Pritchett joined them. The older woman turned her body as though she did not want the others in the room to see what she was doing. From a bottle in her hand she tapped out two pills that glowed like tiny oval moons. “Xanax,” she whispered. “Maybe they’ll help.” Tariq looked at her palm disdainfully. Uma, however, picked them up. She was hazy about what exactly Xanax did, but from where she stood, it could only improve things. She thanked Mrs. Pritchett, who gave a smile of complicity and took a pill herself. The pills glided across Uma’s tongue with ease. She was getting better at this. She wished she could have had a sip of water to wash away the aftertaste, but Cameron had said that they should wait a few hours before eating or drinking, and she did not want to make trouble for him.

“I’m going to lie down,” she announced to no one in particular. Cameron had used chairs to cordon off the area to the right of the customer-service cubicle, where the ceiling sagged open like a surprised mouth. Uma wandered to the other side, where the old Chinese lady was stretched out on the ground. Elsewhere the flooring had cracked into chunks and torn its way up through the carpet, but here it was fine and free of glass. She maneuvered herself into a prone position, placing her backpack under her head, where it made a lumpy pillow. After what the Muslim had said, she wasn’t going
to share anything with him. She should have told Cameron about the threat, though the man probably had not meant it. When people were angry and hurting, they blurted out all sorts of things that later made them feel sheepish.

In any case, it was impossible to summon the enormous energy she would need to get back to her feet. The pills were dissolving inside her, sending out little tentacles of well-being, jellying her muscles. Bless you, Mrs. Pritchett, unlikely angel! Cameron was crisscrossing the room very slowly, his cell phone held out like a divining rod. Uma angled her head so she could keep him in her line of vision. There was a restfulness to him. But a vast, misty lake had opened up around her. How enticing it was. Drifting onto it, she promised herself that she would warn Cameron as soon as she awoke. By then, most possibly, their rescuers would be here, and it wouldn’t matter.

TARIQ HUSEIN SQUINTED AT THE LIGHTED DIAL ON HIS WATCH.
It was seven p.m., past time for the sunset prayer. He had already missed the noon and afternoon prayers. The second time it was because the African American had attacked him from behind, the coward, and knocked him out. The memory made rage undulate in his stomach. Rage and futility, because if the bastard hadn’t stopped him, they might all be outside by now. However, missing the Dhuhr prayer earlier was no one’s fault but his own—Tariq was honest enough to accept that. His own weakness had kept him from pulling out the prayer rug and the black namaz cap from his briefcase and kneeling in the corner of the room, because he had not wanted people to stare. He would make up for it now.

His beard was itching again. He forced himself not to scratch it. He had abominably sensitive skin, easily inflamed, and he did not
want to have to deal with that additional problem now. Ammi, who blamed the beard, was always asking him to shave it off. He smiled at the irony of that. For years Ammi had begged him to get more serious about his religion, weeping and praying over his bad behavior in high school—his drinking and fighting and getting suspended. But when he did change, his mother was too anxious to enjoy it, because America had changed, too: it was a time when certain people were eyed with suspicion in shopping malls and movie theaters; when officials showed up at workplaces or even homes to ask questions; when Ammi gave a rueful sigh of relief and told her friends when they came over for chai that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing her son was so westernized.

The first sign of Tariq’s change was arguments with friends (at that time, most of them had been white) about what had led to the attacks on the Towers, about the retaliatory bombings in Afghanistan, about what Muslims really believed. To argue better, he started reading up on these things. He visited websites with strange names and seemingly baffling views and stayed up into the small hours of the night trying to decipher them. He started e-mail conversations with people who held strong opinions and presented him with facts to back them up. Mostly as an experiment, he quit drinking. One day he rescued from its wrappings a salwaar kameez outfit his mother had bought him from India—and which he had promptly tossed into the back of his closet—and wore it to the masjid. He liked the glances he got from the young women, especially a certain young woman, and did it again. Yes, he might as well admit it: women had as much to do with his transformation as his political beliefs.

When Ammi was advised by friends to stop wearing the hijab, he sat her down on the sofa and took her hands in his. He told her she must do what she believed in, not what made the people around her feel better. And most of all, she must not act out of fear. It did
not work. She folded the head scarves and put them away in a drawer. Still, sometimes he would catch her watching him adjust his black cap in the mirror before he set off for Friday prayers. Pride would battle with astonishment in her face. At unexpected moments, he would be struck by a similar astonishment. What made him change? Was it 9/11, or was it Farah?

Farah. The thought of her pulled Tariq off the floor. He tried to stand tall, but pain shot through his neck, making him curse the African American. He put the anger away in a small, dark closet in his mind. This was not the time. He needed to purify his heart now, to praise Allah, to ask for help, to request blessings, particularly for Abba and Ammi, may the angels enfold them in their protective wings. He groped through the darkness until he found his briefcase, still standing upright where he had set it down beside his chair, though the chair was gone. A small miracle whose meaning he would have to ponder. He unrolled the rug, pulled on the tight cap. He tried to ascertain in which direction Mecca lay, but he was confused by darkness and fear. (Yes, stripped of pride in front of God, he admitted to the fear that ballooned in his chest every few minutes, making it hard to breathe.) Finally he chose to face the door he had been prevented from opening.

“Allahu Akbar,” he whispered. “Subhaaana ala humma wa bihamdika.” He tried to feel on his tongue the sweetness of the words that had traveled to him over centuries and continents. Against the reddish brown walls of his eyelids, he tried to picture the holy Kaaba, which one day, Inshallah, he hoped to visit. (Sometimes the image would come to him clearly, edged with silver like a storm cloud: a thousand people kneeling in brotherhood to touch their foreheads to the ground in front of the black stone, fellowship like he longed to know.) Today, all he could see was Farah’s face, alight with the ironic smile that, at one time, used to infuriate him.