A Guardian and a Thief

The depth of night always felt adjacent to real life, a fourth dimension of the world that allowed the honesty and courage that daylight forbade. Perhaps it was that the moon and stars reminded people of their finite lives in the margins of the universe’s story—what did it matter what human beings did or didn’t do? Or perhaps it was only the clock losing its tether to the day’s routines and yielding to pure time.

This was the city he believed in, the city in which knowing somebody once was knowing them forever. The city in which knowing somebody meant laying claim to their time, and expecting them to lay claim to one’s own time. Everything beautiful, and everything useful, about the city could be found in these relationships of dependence—with one’s barber, one’s rickshaw driver, one’s editor, one’s neighbor. How had Dadu forgotten that?

The pride of having immigrated was also, in truth, the wound. Didn’t they understand that? Didn’t they understand that he wanted every opportunity to examine the wound?

He was too old to commence life in a new country. In America, he knew, he would be a diminished version of himself—uncertain of social mores, unaccustomed to the accents, wary of car culture. There would be nobody in that place acquainted with his boyhood self. Was such an escape rescue or its own ruin?

Perhaps the true adventure was not only in seeing the world but also in seeing the versions of one's own self that the journey revealed.

Perhaps it was the strange distortion of the crisis, or perhaps it was simply human nature, that the pain of others was never as acute or compelling as one's own pain.

He understood, from everything he had endured in his own life, that the worth of honesty, presented as noble before schoolchildren, was itself a lie. The honest souls who paused to deliberate on morals found, when they made their choice, that the treasure was gone. What was absolutely true and right, and what was absolutely false and wrong, and how could any sane person live without crossing the borders every day? Lies were the lifeblood of the world.

What was the point of adventure if you didn't take those you love with you.

But pity was not a relationship. It was the rejection of a relationship.

Enjoy the phone, pickpocket! Enjoy the ten thousand pictures of a child you’ve never met! Ha ha!

Perhaps it was the strange distortion of the crisis

Didn’t Boomba’s family deserve the smallest part of such a life

Dadu had hoped, against all logic, that Mishti would return, someday, and live in this house, in the grand new city of the future where (and here his imagination had failed to conjure anything truly new, anything that hadn’t already been beautiful once) flower markets lined the riverbank again and neighbors shared limes from their balcony gardens and mansions hosted film shoots. Dadu, she knew, could not bear the thought of the city surrendering to the river and the bay, his beloved house losing its bones to storms and intruders, and for what? For Mishti to live, riven from her past, in America, a country that was half dreamworld, half hell?

She was leaving in seven days. Only seven days: It was close enough on the calendar to cast its glow over the whole week.

But the needs of others were always smaller than the needs of one's own child. Perhaps it was the strange distortion of the crisis, or perhaps it was simply human nature, that the pain of others was never as acute or compelling as one's own pain.

Other Americans had gathered at their home airports, urging politicians to reverse the measure, to allow lifesaving flights to continue, to think of the families awaiting reuniting, to think of the pain of children who were waiting to see their mother or father. These Americans urged their representatives to remember that all immigrants underwent thorough background checks; that applicants supplied stacks of documents to prove who they were and what their life had been; that the consulates examined bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs, employment history, education history, family history, property ownership; that they were fingerprinted, and their eyes scanned; that nobody who had even dreamed of violent behavior was issued a visa. But it was a time of anger and outcry, not of reason, nor compassion.

Maybe, if he had had somebody caring for him in the city, he would not have surrendered his bicycle and his money so easily to the policemen or the robbers, whoever they were. Now he felt ashamed, and resentful. Where was the new person he had vowed to be, mean and free? He had retreated, conceding to the person he always had been, gentle and grinning, baffled before the barbed edges of the world. That person would not survive in the city.

Away from his parents and his brother, he could be anybody. He could be, temporarily, free of his wrongs, and free of his guilt. He did not have to cower in shame. He could be prideful, or harsh, or aloof, or a person others listened to. Upon those others he could release the anger he had for himself. Perhaps the true adventure was not only in seeing the world but also in seeing the versions of one’s own self that the journey revealed.

The thief stole from us, so we stole from him. Tit for tat.

There could yet be notes of adventure in his journey of survival.