Conversations with the Indignant Dead

His hand cupped around a shot glass of Johnny Red, sitting

Indian-style on the floor, as they used to tell us in KG,

Indian-style next to the coffee table, in front of the television,

one hand cupped around a shot glass of Johnny Red, the other

precariously dangling a cigarette between the index and middle

finger, Marlboro, a cigarette that needs to be ashed, NOW,

wrestling on the tube, the way his father (1), immortalized in a garlanded living room portrait that he painted, the way his father used to watch before the heart attack, before the ambulance took forty minutes to get to their little

corner of existence in the Bronx, near the last stop on the Lexington Avenue

IRT, a scowl on his face as he brings the Johnny Red to his non-red lips, his

wife telling him to put out the cigarette, dammit, he'll get cancer,

C-A-N-C-E-R, and does he want to die? she asks in Urdu, and he ignores

her, but not quite, because to spite her, he lights another, and his eldest walks in with a girl, looks at his father sitting Indian-style and his mother pouting and wrestling on the tube and he nods at his father the way you nod at a

co-worker to whom you’ve already said "Good Morning," and he introduces

Shazia(2), who says, "Howdoyoudosonicetomeetyou," and they walk out, his

father trying to rise to see them off, but his back hurts, so he cups the shot

glass of Johnny Red, scowls, and asks his wife to get him some ice, and she

says no, she’s working the graveyard shift at the hospital and she has to go to

sleep and his youngest(3), who is so smart and so sweet, walks in and nestles

her head on her father’s shoulders and pats his bald head and gently takes the

cigarette from his hand and puts it out and he smiles at her and lights another,

and she takes her head from his shoulder and her hands from off his head and

lifts the Holy Koran from the coffee table and there’s a roar from the

television as a wrestler wins and she turns the tissue thin pages trying to

decipher Arabic, and he takes the Holy Koran from her and asks, "Did you

wash your hands?" because he had found religion, after a childhood,

adolescence, youth, of not quite evil but pretty close, as he nears death(4), he

has found religion, bismillah, praise be to Allah, A-min.

(1) I remember two things about my father before he died. Well, he didn’t

die, really. I mean, he’s dead, but he didn’t die. He shot himself.

I remember two things about my father before he shot himself. Before he

wrapped his lips around the muzzle of a .38 special he stole from our

neighbor, one of New York’s finest, and pulled the trigger. This released the

hammer to strike the cartridge primer, detonating the gunpowder and initiating

a focused explosion that sent a 110 gram round nose projectile through the

barrel at about a thousand feet per second. The bullet pierced the roof of his

mouth, obliterating the hypothalamus (which controls emotion), exiting the

back of his skull via the parietal lobe.

He was a painter, so he placed a blank canvas behind his head when he did

it. I assume he wanted to capture, as an artist, the moment of his death. Plain

old red paint, I guess, is too coarse for the high metaphysical endeavors, but,

then, who am I to question the methods of art?

Anyway, the experiment was a smashing success. The blood and neural

matter and little pieces of skull splattered everywhere in the studio we lived in

including that goddamned canvas. Air oxidizes the iron in hemoglobin, causing

blood to rust, so instead of the cherry red rivers I’m sure my father had

hoped for, his masterpiece consisted of random shit brown pools. Ma had it

incinerated once the cops were through with it. The world’s loss, since he

took care to sign it, the canvas, lest it be mistaken for someone else’s blood

brain skull.

For no good reason, I imagine he would call the painting, as it were,

Conversations with the Indignant Dead.

I remember two things about my father, the artist, before he shot himself. One

thing was we were walking through the Village, on our way to this flea market

off Christopher Street.

I’m five or something, and it was snowing. My father held out his hand and

said, gently, "Is there anything as ephemeral as a single snowflake in New

York?"

He probably didn’t mean for me to hear, but I copied him and stretched my

hand out too. I didn’t figure out exactly what ephemeral meant, though, until I

read Le Petit Prince in high school French.

Sure enough, the flakes melted instantly on my hand, tiny domes of water on a

tiny palm. I didn’t have my gloves on. Maybe that’s why we were going to

the flea market.

The second thing happens a few days before he shot himself. I’m six now,

and we’re getting kicked out of our apartment. I remember Ma slowly but

deliberately putting her nursing books in cardboard boxes. I think she’s

crying. I don’t know for sure, but my mother is always crying. I assume she

was then, too.

I’m listening to Nena on the radio. I loved that song, 99 Red Balloons.

And here is a red balloon

I think of you and let it go

I must’ve been annoying Ma, so she makes my father take me to

McDonald’s, the one on Broadway near Washington Place. I get us a place

to sit while he orders. It was next to the bathroom. Left to my own devices,

I’d prefer being near a pot.

He never said much to me, my dad. He must’ve been too busy thinking. But I

was an insightful little fuck; I could sense the conversations he had in his head.

He’d be silent and play with his hands. Or he would intensely study something

small like his shoelaces or the buttons on his cuff. Right now, he’s staring at

this French fry.

Finally, he said, "Sheheryar, don’t ever expect too much from life. That way,

it can’t disappoint you." The fluorescent lights in the joint made everything

look severe as my father imparts to me his ultimate advice with the same

profound look he gave the French fry.

"That way, you won’t seem ordinary."

It’s a rotten, rotten thing to say to your kid a few days before you’re going to

shoot yourself in the head. Shaz tells me now that if her father had done the

same thing, it would have saved her a lot of grief. Doesn’t do me much good,

though.

(2)This is how I would write about Shaz if I could write:

You first noticed her eyes. Billi aankhen, tiger-eyes, tiger, like the one in

your name. Ma told you that:

"Sheher," she said, "means tiger in Urdu."

You protested. "Doesn’t it mean poem?"

"What would you rather be? A tiger or a poet?" She paused. "Your father

was a poet."

"Then I’m a tiger."

It was outside the China Club, the new one near Times Square. The streets

were slick with rain, and the bright lights of the big city reflected off the

concrete; thousands of moons illuminating the night.

She looked like the picture you had in your mind of the sprites from

Midsummer Night’s Dream. Almost too fragile size. Dishwater blonde hair

parted down the middle and tucked behind her ears, framing a small and

sensual mouth. A sharply defined jaw with angles you could measure.

Symmetry.

That’s it. That’s all I can write, I mean. I must have writer’s block. I guess it

was love at first sight, but what nobody ever tells you is that shit isn’t enough.

See, love at first sight is romantic, it gets all the press, it’s what people write

songs and novels and TV movies about, but the real thing takes time. Like,

there’s a fondness that grows and everything, until you get to the point where

you imagining yourself without her is impossible. I’m lucky. Most people get

one or the other, but I got both in Shaz. If you asked her, I’m sure she’d tell

you the same thing.

(3) Shaz tells me I’d make a great brother, whatever that means. Ma never

remarried, of course, so I never got a chance to find out. I’m sure it would be

nice, though, taking her to school and teasing her and spoiling her and being

protective of her and everything. I could probably get used to it.

(4) I’ve thought about suicide. Up here on the 33rd Floor of the office where

I work, when I go out on the balcony to have a smoke.

(…I wish you could see me, dad. I have a finance degree and I eat yogurt

and I know what LBO means and I drink with colleagues at sports bars and I

commute on the subway and I follow the Knicks and I read the Journal and I

use a stairmaster and…)

I imagine what it would be like to climb on top of the railing. It’s pretty cold

up here. I don’t have my jacket on. I try to keep my balance, looking down

on 8th Ave.

I go over my options. I can impale myself on a parking sign. I can land on top

of a foreign car. Aim for that chick in the brown coat. Maybe put a canvas

down there. And sign it.

Finally, in my mind, I let myself fall fall falling…

In love.

To death.

(…there is a difference, isn’t there?)

Like Prufrock, I’m not one to be satisfied with decisions. I flail my arms,

trying to fly; my last few seconds on Earth like the rest, a desperate struggle

against the inevitable.

I finish my smoke and, flicking it over the balcony, condemn the cigarette to

my probable fate. I’d do it, too, if I were sure, one hundred percent sure, that

death is the absolute end. I’d write Shaz a note and everything, but I’d do it.