The Lost Pearl (2012) (18 page)

I remembered my father once talking about a man who had been wrongly accused of a crime and later vindicated, saying, “A ruined reputation is like a broken mirror: it can be repaired, but the crack always remains.” My father had been proud of me. If he knew the damage my secrecy had caused, his spirit would feel pure agony. He had said I would do great things. Instead, not only had I failed myself, but I had also profoundly failed my father.

The gentleman who had stood helplessly imprisoned across from me had not ruined my life at all. On the contrary, I had ruined his. And here I was, attempting to excel in a career in investigative journalism. I studied about finding the facts and seeking the truth. Never go by what’s on the surface. Always dig deeper. Dig until you find the truth. Hadn’t those been the words of my learned professor? And I had never questioned the legitimacy of this conviction in a country where corruption was rampant and accountability nonexistent. How could I have been so naïve? Countless times I had thought of meeting this man to confront him but had simply not followed through. I felt like a complete failure. Not only was an innocent man behind bars because of me, but a murderer was free. The little solace I had felt all these years knowing that my father’s killer had at least been punished, that he had spent several years behind bars, that he had suffered and repented what he had done, was reduced to nothing. He may have committed more crimes, killed more people, and ruined more lives. Was I to blame for those as well? He was not the prisoner, I was; a prisoner isolated from the world, from those I loved as a consequence of my actions.

My thoughts raced as I questioned who the real killer was. Who was he and where was he? The man who I had spent more than half my life hating, the man whose face was more vivid in my memory than the sequence of the alphabet? I did not know and feared I never would.

I thought about Ahmer and how he had given a new meaning to every dimension of my life. He had understood me like no one else had and had made me realize that despite having experienced tragedy at such an early age, I still had so much to be grateful for. He had truly made me realize that life was a gift to be cherished and to be lived to the fullest. Looking back, I realized that I could have been killed that day if the assassin had seen me. This life was very precious indeed, and I could not waste it wrapped up in bitterness and self-pity. He had brought me closer to my mother and brother, because everything he said had made so much sense to me. I had finally been able to forgive my mother and look beyond the anger I had felt over her second marriage. I was able to at least cross part of the bridge that years of separation had built between my family and me, and it was all because of Ahmer. And what had I done to him and his family? I had put bars of steel between his father and him, which neither of them could break. I had created grounds between them, which neither of them could cross. His father had spent years of his life in a cell that was smaller than my closet.

Ahmer had made me see the good in everyone, including myself. I had evolved from a quiet, introverted girl into a self-confident, cheerful, likable person who had achieved apparent success in every sphere of life. Most of who I had become I owed to Ahmer. He had taken the bitterness from inside me and turned it into sugar. I had been a rock, hard and impenetrable to light, and he had transformed me into a prism, clear and beautiful, one that could allow an entire spectrum of colors to pass through it. Ahmer had given me a new life, not knowing that I was the one who had taken his away.

He had always been so elusive about his past and was such an avid listener that I did not realize how little he had really told me about himself. I always poured my heart out to him, leaving out nothing but the details of my father’s demise. He spoke volumes about his mother but seldom mentioned his father. His
frequent trips to Pakistan, he said, were to visit his ailing aunt, who had also been diagnosed with breast cancer. It seemed a good enough reason for him to go frequently, so I had never questioned him. Little had I known that although his aunt was a major reason for those visits, his imprisoned father had been the stronger pull. Now I understood the faraway look, the shadow that often darkened his face, the one look that was like a single word from another language that I simply could not read.

I wondered what Ahmer must have gone through when his father was arrested—the pain, the hurt, the humiliation. He may have been present when his father was unjustly put in handcuffs and dragged heartlessly away. I wondered how he must have felt about not being able to hold his father’s hand or share stories with him about his days at school or his cricket matches. He must have longed for his father’s support during his mother’s prolonged illness and painful death. He had likely hoped against hope that one day his father’s sentence would be overturned and prayed that someone who knew the truth would come forward. That was what his whole life had probably been about: becoming a lawyer to prove his father’s innocence and to have him absolved of a crime he had not committed. What if he had been tormented all his life by the question of whether his father was indeed innocent? The thought of his hurt and what would go through his mind when he found out the truth filled my eyes with tears.

I looked down at my hand and the gold ring I had placed on my finger when I returned home. I slipped it off and placed it on the dresser, realizing that I did not deserve to wear it. What had I done? God had saved Ahmer’s life for me, but I had pushed him away and lost him all over again. I did not want anyone at home to know what was going on in my life just yet. I knew my mother and Sara would notice, and since it was all so complicated, I would not know where to begin. I had to get out of the house. Everyone was accustomed to my unpredictable actions by then,
so I was rarely questioned about my whereabouts, although my mother was always frantic with worry.

By late afternoon, there was no hint of the heavy rain that had fallen earlier that day, except the muddy puddles on the uneven streets. I drove to the beach that evening to collect my thoughts, to mourn my lost integrity, and to appease the storm that was brewing inside me. The waves of the ocean had always been able to bring about a sense of peace in me. I descended the rocks with some difficulty, owing to my sprained ankle, and sat on the sand gazing at the sky and watching the sun go down, slowly and silently. Hues of red and gold appeared before me, blending in smoothly like watercolors on a canvas. The clouds were low and stood out against the clear sky, like the finest strokes of a paintbrush. The tide was high, and the sea was unpredictably rough, a flawless reenactment of the turmoil I had experienced earlier that day. The turbulent waves were interrupted by rocks that lay in their path, becoming calmer, gentler, and more beautiful as they retreated. For the turbulence in my life, Ahmer had been my rock, and now that rock was gone. He had been like the dam that stood unflinching between a dreadful storm and me. Now there was nothing to stop the turmoil and no one to halt the water flowing from the high tide. I witnessed the evening dissolve into a dark, starless night.

I drove home, listening to the Faiz by Abida CD in my car.

When I reached home, I went to my room, buried my face in my hands, and sobbed, just like the nine-year-old girl had on that night in 1987.

I woke up the next morning with my head pounding so hard I thought it would explode. I had spent nearly all night awake, trying in vain to bring a pause to the devastation inside me. I had barely fallen asleep when my dream returned; in this one, there was blood and I was trying to escape, but this time my ankle was bound by a rusted silver metal chain. When I tried to move, I was unable to break free. Every time I tried to loosen the chain, I heard the loud clanking of metal, and in the dream, the sound became progressively louder until I was jolted awake. As the
Fajr Azaan
approached my ears, I realized I was perspiring, and my ankle hurt when I tried to get out of bed. I had not slept well in years, often tossing and turning restlessly in bed, thinking of the past and struggling to find peace. But this was a new kind of insomnia.

I had always read stories about how the guilt of a bad deed could torment a person and how remorse could take over and destroy a whole life. I thought of Mr. DeWinters in
Rebecca
, and Amir in
The Kite Runner
. But it was now that I truly experienced the stab of a tarnished conscience and deeply felt the weight of guilt. I had turned in bed for hours, my feet bathing in sparkling sateen sheets, my head embedded in a soft down pillow, the cool air of the air conditioner blowing in my face. All night I thought of Ahmer’s father, whose bed was a concrete floor in a hot prison cell, his food a meager consortium of lentils and onions, and his companions cruel policemen who spat in his face. In a place where spending an hour would be hard to bear, he had spent sixteen long years.

I remembered the time long ago, in second grade, when I had been punished for talking too much in class. I had not been talking but happened to have been sitting next to the girls making noise, and I had been erroneously included in the punishment. The crime had been minor, and the penalty was that I had to write one hundred times “I will not make noise during class again.” Nevertheless, every word of those one hundred lines had been painful to write. My encounter with a false allegation had been brief and superficial, with the only consequence perhaps being an improvement in my handwriting. Yet so many years later, I still remembered how terrible it had made me feel. I could not imagine what feelings a false accusation of murder must have evoked.

I swallowed two Tylenols with a cup of hot tea, hoping they would relieve my headache if not my ankle pain, and started figuring out what to do next. This secret could not remain undisclosed any longer; the truth had to be told. I was not going to hold any false hopes about Ahmer. I had to accept the fact that our friendship would have to become my cherished memory. Ahmer would always be a part of me, and I would never cease caring for him. But there was no way we could build a life together on the backdrop of such a tainted past. Even with the most harmonious colors, a beautiful painting could not emerge on a ruined canvas.

I knew that regardless of all the obstacles, I had to get his father out of prison. I wondered what—if any—connection he had with my father and why he had confessed to a murder he had not committed. I was not going to entertain any unrealistic expectations of ever being able to learn who had taken my father’s life; that only happened in books and movies. In reality, countless criminals remained unpunished in this life. We lived in a world of injustice. I could not take away the pain and suffering that sixteen years of incarceration had caused Ahmer’s father, but I also could not live in peace if I did not get him out of there soon. I was accountable for every single minute he was spending
in jail now. I knew he was not the killer, but who would believe me? Who would believe the testimony of a witness who was only nine years old at the time of the crime? Who would believe me after sixteen years had elapsed? And who would believe it if they found out the connection I had with Ahmer? I had no proof; I only had a picture in my mind, which was clearer than crystal but which tragically no one else could see.

Regardless of these difficulties, I owed Ahmer and his father the truth. If Ammi took my word for it, we would at least be able to have Shehryar Khan exonerated on grounds of mercy and pardon. I had to confide in my mother or Phuppo. My aunt was far away, but I talked to her often over the telephone. Owing to the innovative technology of Internet and calling cards, long distances no longer seemed that far. I had told her about Ahmer before, carefully deleting the part about the proposal and disclosing only that I had met someone and would tell her more soon. She had been comforted to see me happy but understandably apprehensive about my choice. However, I had been confident of her approval, which was as important to me, if not more so than my mother’s.

I called Phuppo, because I thought she might be able to guide me, and give me sound advice regarding the optimal strategy to break this news to my mother. She was not home, so I hung up without leaving a message. As I was putting my thoughts together, I left my room and walked into the sitting room. I saw my mother seated on the floor amidst countless brown cardboard boxes. The sight and smell of them took me back several years to the time that our home had fallen apart. Brown boxes had become a symbol of something being taken away, pieces of me, bit by bit, and their smell made me nauseous to this day. There were still a few weeks remaining before the final move, but the tedious process of categorizing and discarding had begun. It would help get my mind off things, I thought, even though I had to face them and conquer them, rather than putting them away
with the miscellaneous boxes. Procrastination, which had cost me so much, could no longer be my way of life.