After the newspaper article about the human heart found in the salt pile,
there was no point staying on in Southampton. The isolation seemed to
make Maryam’s anxiety much worse.
We returned to New York, seeking solace in the routine of work.
Maryam buried herself in her grind at the hospital. I went back to Tiger
Corp and worked late into the night on the West Side Project; it had been
fast - tracked, and the first three towers in the western quadrant had broken
ground. I gave Abbas regular updates, but he rarely came to Manhattan
anymore, and so we usually talked on a video call, which usually de volved
into him yelling and me reassuring him that everything was fine, under
control.
So when my assistant, Angie, told me that he wanted to meet in person,
at Sher Khan House, I tensed, sensing that a huge meltdown was coming.
But I told myself that I knew how to handle Abbas — the key was to let him
rage, uninterrupted, till, like a storm, he blew himself out, and to ke ep the
whole episode short, I’d take the helicopter out to Long Island. With Abbas
missing from the Tiger Corp office, much of his authority had accrued to
me, and none of the cousins challenged me when I began to commandeer
the chopper for my personal use.
Still, I couldn’t help feeling anxious on the flight over. What the hell was
Abbas upset about now? The architect’s changes in the glass cladding? The
recalcitrant formwork subcontractor? Any damn thing could set Abbas off
these days. I spent the whole flight there staring blankly at my laptop and
barely noticed the view of the harbor.
At Sher Khan House, a Land Rover met me at the heliport and drove me
the short distance to the house — and to my relief, the chauffeur was not
Barey Mian. It was a hot, glaring day, but when I entered Abbas’s study, all
the shutters were closed, and the room was illuminated by the diffuse light
of a green - shaded banker’s lamp. As always, the air smelled thick, of old
cigar smoke, but today something else had been added to the mix, the
sweetish, musty odor of the sickroom. It took me a second to spot Abbas
lying on a high - backed Victorian couch, ashen faced, eyes tightly shut.
Catching one of his catnaps, I thought, but his eyes snapped open, and
he instantly sat up. “Ali,” he said in a hoarse voice, “I heard the chopper.
You’re not in a hurry, are you? Stay, have tea.”
“Unfortunately, I have to head back soon. Endless team meetings. You
know how it is.”
Disappointment flickered across Abbas’s face. I expected him to shift
into his usual expression of control — chin tilted up pugnaciously, shoulders
pulled back — but instead he remained unsettled, tentative.
Confronted by Abbas in the flesh, I always had to do a mental dance to
s eparate out the man in front of me from the monster who had caused the
death of five girls — but that day, it was not required. The Abbas on the
couch was uncharacteristically disheveled, and I felt a stab of concern,
followed by alarm. I’d heard from Maryam that Abbas was suffering from
intermittent angina, but I hadn’t realized he was so diminished.
Today the great Abbas Khan was not wearing a dark tailored suit, which,
I now realized, provided him an armored carapace. No, he was barefoot —
and in pajamas. Not just any pajamas — sky - blue broadcloth Brooks
Brothers pajamas with black piping on the collar and cuffs — but pajamas
nevertheless. His hooded eyes, normally watchful, were bleary. His bald
head, usually freshly shaven, was shadowed by stubble.
Abbas noticed me staring and hastened to explain. “Damn fool
cardiologist. Says I have a dicky ticker, have to rest up.” He flapped a hand
at me. “So, what’s up? Are we all set with the groundbreaking? Is that idiot
architect behaving?”
I sat down across from him, took a de ep breath, and launched into a
detailed account of the architecture firm’s foibles — which were many —
including the architect’s insistence on a very expensive and heavy custom
glass cladding. Usually, Abbas would have p eppered me with a thousand
questions — “What is the cost overrun?” “What is the track record on this
cladding?” — but today, to my surprise, he seemed distracted, uninterested.
“Well.” He cut me off. “I’m sure you’ll handle it. From all accounts,
you’re doing an excellent job.”
“I learned from the best,” I said, trying to hide my confusion. If Abbas
didn’t want to hear a project update, why had he summoned me all the way
to Long Island? Was he upset about my use of the chopper, perhaps, or
some other malicious gossip fed to him by one of the cousins?
We sat in silence for a few minutes, and I tensed, waiting for Abbas to
explode. Instead he stared out of the window at the formal gardens, the
hedges immaculately trimmed, the raked white gravel pathways shining in
the summer heat.
“I’ve been thinking,” Abbas said slowly, “about home. I miss it, you
know.”
For a moment I was confused — was he referring to Queens? — but then I
realized that the old man meant India. I said I missed Mumbai too, and he
corrected me.
“Bombay. It will always be Bombay to me, never Mumbai. A stupid
thing, to change the name of a city, isn’t it? Imagine if they would rename
London ‘Londinium’? I’ve been thinking about Bombay, and you know
what I realized? I miss the street noise. There was always a radio playing or
some tradesman calling out — the knife - sharpening man, the guy who
restuffs mattresses. Cars honking, motor scooters be eping, bicycle bells. I
miss that chaos.”
I was stunned. The man who had restored an estate in a remote corner of
Long Island — who lay de ep within it, entombed in silence — wanted ...
noise? But I knew what he meant. For someone who has grown up in
Mumbai, America will always be eerily silent.
“I miss the crows,” I added. “There was one guy, every morning he
would sit on my balcony and caw. I woke up every day to that racket.”
“Yes.” Abbas nodded. “Crows. Why are there no crows in America?”
I was nonplussed, but Abbas wasn’t expecting an answer. He rambled on
about the Bombay of his memory: The salty sea air. The taste of fresh
bhelpuri. Picnics on Juhu Beach. Trips up to the cool, crisp air of Lonavala.
Walking out to the shrine of Haji Ali at low tide.
In all our time together, Abbas had never once professed any
homesickness — but today it was pouring out of him, nostalgic memories
tinged with regret. Half an hour later, he looked exhausted, and his eyelids
had begun to droop. “Damn medications,” he whispered. “Just temporary.
I’ll be on my feet soon. I want to know everything. Son, ke ep me updated,
okay? You’re the one I trust.”
Despite my knowledge of Abbas’s heinous past, I could not help thrilling
at his words: He trusted me. Me.
“Well, rest up.” I stood up and buttoned my suit jacket. “I’ll let you
know how it goes.”
Abbas held out a hand, and I shook it, feeling how weak his grip had
become. He insisted on standing up and seeing me out. My last glimpse of
him was a shrunken pajama - clad figure framed by his study door, one hand
raised up in a paternal gesture of farewell.
Ten minutes later I was on the chopper, winging my way back to
Manhattan, ruminating on the hour I had spent with Abbas. I had flown all
the way out to Long Island to talk about ... crows?
It was only later that I was to understand the subtext of our conversation.
Right then I had a lot of work to do, and as the chopper clattered across
Long Island Sound, I started to return all the calls I had missed.
All of July, New York City was stifling.
The asphalt, steel, and glass soaked up the summer sun and radiated
heat. The air was thick with humidity, and the days began to blur: hot,
joyless, hopeless. It seemed like it would continue like this forever, but then
everything changed.
Even now — so many months later — I remember it clearly.
It was a Monday, almost two weeks after my trip out to Long Island to
chat with Abbas. Just ten in the morning, but I had already sweated through
my blue button - down shirt. Big Mike, Kyle, and I were out on the West
Side Project for a purely ceremonial visit, a photo op: Construction had not
started on our last tower, but as was the custom, the general contractor, an
experienced Italian American builder, had created an elaborate one - story
mock - up of the tower facade, and the Swiss architect was here to inspect it
and sign off.
But instead of lavishing the mock - up with praise, the architect blanched
and said that the custom glass cladding was the wrong color. The contractor,
turning red, r eplied, “No, the glass was exactly as specified, down to the
last detail.” The architect admitted that, why yes, this was the old glass he’d
specified, but he’d changed his mind, and what had happened to the new
glass?
Our project manager scrolled through his i Pad and pointed to a list of
documents — and I instantly saw what was wrong: The new specification
had languished on Abbas’s desk, but no decision had been made, and so the
general contractor had gone with the old one. A huge, completely avoidable
screwup.
We had many qualified project managers, but Abbas had inserted
himself into all the crucial decision pathways — and his inattention was
causing havoc. Now we had to trash an expensive mock - up, and I mollified
both the architect and the contractor by saying that Tiger Corp was
responsible for the confusion, and we would eat the cost of fixing it. I
st epped away, embarrassed, to confer with the project manager, and just
then my cell phone rang.
Oddly, it was Barey Mian, and I felt a chill. What did he want?
My impulse was to let his call go to voicemail, but maybe he was calling
on Abbas’s behalf, and I could not snub the old man. Steeling myself, I
answered.
“Please. Ali Sahib.” Mian’s voice was shaky. “Come quickly, there is a
big problem. I tried to call Maryam Memsahib, but she isn’t picking up. I
need someone in the family.” A de ep breath. “Now. Right away.”
Something about Mian’s voice frightened me. I told Kyle to take over,
and he looked at me curiously but held his tongue. At the time, I thought
that he was getting used to working for me. After I became his boss, he’d
been rude and uncooperative, but recently, he had knuckled under and was
working without complaint.
It took me forty minutes to get to the address Mian had texted me, an
apartment in a decaying old building on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx
— but part of my mind was still wrapped up in the failed mock - up, the mess
Abbas had made, how much money it would cost us. I had not — by an order
of magnitude — absorbed the enormity of what was happening.
The nature of crucial moments like this one is that they are only
identified in retrospect. As I drove up to the Bronx, Abbas was still alive in
my mind: A monstrous father who had pushed his daughter to an
unthinkable act. An old man messing up what I had come to think of as my
project.
I did not know it, but the world had already changed.
A week later, Maryam turned to me in the car in tears. “I should have
picked up when Mian called me. I should have picked up, and maybe I
could have...”
Maryam’s tall, elegant frame was now gaunt, and her eyes de eply inset;
she hadn’t sl ept since Abbas’s funeral. She rested her forehead against the
car window, and her reflection merged with that of the skyscrapers
flickering by.
I had been against Maryam going to the family board meeting, held
downtown at One World Trade Center. With Abbas’s demise, a new CEO
had to be appointed, and it was a slam dunk for Big Mike, because
everyone would vote for him: Within the family, Farhan had four votes, but
she had vanished. Coco had four votes too, but she was still unreachable at
the Zen Cliffs monastery — she would not emerge, not even for her
husband’s funeral, and definitely not for a board meeting. Maryam had four
votes and had inherited another four from Abbas, so her decision would be
crucial — and of course the cousins, who had a single vote each, would fall
in line and stand behind Big Mike.
Maryam could have easily called in and voted over the phone — but she
insisted on being at the meeting in person. As Abbas’s sole heir — she had
inherited everything and Farhan nothing — she felt it was important to rally
the family.
“I feel so terrible,” Maryam said for the millionth time as the car
speeded downtown to the board meeting. “If I’d taken Barey Mian’s call,
maybe I would have been able to save Papa’s life.”
I reached out and took Maryam’s hand, chilled despite the summer heat.
“It wouldn’t have helped. The heart attack killed him instantly. C’mon,
we’ve been through all this before.”
“You’re sure? Ali, you’re sure?”
I nodded, exhausted. I’d retold Maryam about the events of that day
many times, and I couldn’t go through it all again: My dash through the
overheated streets to the apartment building in the Bronx. My discovery
that the elevator was broken and having to huff up endless flights of stairs
to the ninth floor. The doorway to an apartment there was wide - open, and I
found Mian sitting in the corridor, hugging his knees to his chest and
rocking back and forth. I was badly winded from the stairs and could barely
speak, but I managed to ask Mian what this place was and what was wrong.
Mian ignored the first part of my question. Wiping tears from his eyes,
he said that Abbas Sahib had insisted on climbing all these stairs and that he
was tired and had gone into the bedroom to rest. “An hour has passed, but
he is still sle eping,” Mian blurted out. “Help me, Ali Sahib.”
I ran past Mian, through the cramped living room painted a de ep navy
blue and hung with exquisite small abstract paintings. Neat floor - to - ceiling
bookshelves were full of hardback novels with sun - faded spines and rows
of VHS movies. An old person’s apartment, then. Someone with great taste.
Another, shorter corridor led to the rear of the apartment. The first
bedroom I passed had clearly been used as a study — the walls were lined
with empty document boxes, and a desk showed a faded outline where a
desktop computer had stood — but it was bare, cleaned out, and discolored
rectangles on the walls indicated where frames had once hung.
Only much later did I realize that the complete lack of clutter reminded
me of Epps’s apartment. At the time, I was intent on finding Abbas.
He was in the rear bedroom, sitting upright in an armchair, which was
positioned to face a large bed with an iron bed frame. That day he was clad
like a British banker in a double - breasted gray pinstriped suit and an ocher
silk tie. His eyes were closed, his chin rested on his chest, and he seemed to
be napping., exactly as I’d found him at Sher Khan House. I told myself
that he’d hear me approaching, and at any moment his hooded eyes would
snap open.
I walked slowly, not wanting to startle him. It was an odd experience,
tiptoeing across the worn Persian rug, because the bedroom was vast, with
fifteen - foot - high ceilings. Oddly, a large, cast - iron chandelier hung over the
bed, and it took me a few seconds to realize that a single massive apartment
had been chopped up to create two or three smaller dwellings — and that this
bedroom had been, at one time, the original living room.
I reached Abbas and stood over him, confused.
The figure in the chair seemed like a wax effigy of Abbas, vacant and
lifeless — but I refused to believe my own eyes. The old man was such a
tough, willful bastard. Was he toying with me? Surely he’d jerk awake and
bark at me, Have you solved the problem with the architect yet?
Minutes passed, but Abbas did not move. If this were a movie or a
television show, I would have felt for Abbas’s pulse and uttered a soft “oh
no” — but in reality, I did not dare to touch the old man. I whispered his
name, then ended up foolishly yelling into his ear — but of course there was
no response.
I stood beside Abbas’s corpse, and it dawned on me that this event was
not as unexpected as it seemed. Abbas must have known for some time he
was dying. That is why he had summoned me out to Sher Khan House, to
revisit the Bombay of his youth; he knew that I, too, loved the city and
would understand his emotions. He was also — in his own oblique way —
bidding me goodbye.
Yes, the old man was a monster, but just then, I choked up; there was
something indescribably sad about Abbas dying so far from India. Despite
his best efforts to restore Sher Khan House, at the end of his life, he’d been
homesick for his true home, Bombay. He’d missed traffic honking, the cries
of the tradesmen, the cawing of crows.
Is this how I would feel when my end came, here, in this foreign land,
far from my beloved Mumbai?
My face was wet with tears. I went back through the living room into a
small galley kitchen, wiped my face with a paper towel, and composed
myself. Only then did I call for an ambulance.
I had recounted this sequence of events to Maryam many times — editing
out my thoughts on homesickness — and her first question was “What was
Papa doing out in the Bronx?” I answered with the explanation that Kyle
Nowak — who had handled much of the subsequent logistics — had given
me: that the building was a rental, owned by Tiger Corp, and the apartments
were destined to be renovated before being put on the market as high - end
condos. Strangely, Abbas had taken it upon himself to conduct an
impromptu inspection, but the elevator had been out, and instead of
admitting to his cardiac problems, Abbas had insisted on climbing all nine
floors. His heart must have given out soon after he sat down in that
armchair to rest.
“Nine floors! Madness!” Maryam had wailed. “He knew his heart was in
bad shape!”
What could I say? That Abbas was a stubborn old man? That he would
not admit to any vulnerabilities? We knew all that already.
The news of Abbas’s death sent the whole Khan family into profound
shock and grief — but they were also unwilling to admit that he was really
gone. Even after the funeral — Abbas was buried within a day, as was the
Muslim custom — many of the cousins continued to refer to him in present
tense.
Also, Tiger Corp was besieged with media. The New York Times ran
Abbas’s obituary, faithfully recounting his rise from rags to riches, his
vision for New York, his philanthropy, the restoration of Sher Khan House.
Paradoxically, all the media attention made Abbas seem more alive than
ever. It became hard, with each new laudatory article, to think of him lying
in a freshly dug grave in the Muslim cemetery out in Queens.
All of which increased, in Maryam’s mind, the importance of the family
board meeting. The appointment of Big Mike as the new CEO would signal
to the world that the torch had officially been passed — and that Tiger Corp
was pr epared to move on.
Our car pulled into the basement parking garage at One World Trade. The
board meeting would be held high up in the Khan family’s lawyer’s office,
and these were my concerns: to get Maryam through this process as fast as
possible so she could get home and rest — and to quickly issue a press
release that Big Mike had been appointed as CEO.
We rose up in the high - speed elevator, and our ears popped. The
seventy - third floor was flooded with sunlight, and Maryam quickly
vanished into the ladies’ room, leaving me a few minutes to take in the view
of the 9/11 memorial: the tree - lined plaza and the square pools that mapped
out where the original World Trade Center towers once stood. The irony of
the moment was not lost on me. Here we were, a thriving family - owned
Muslim company, at the site of a horrible terrorist attack that had been
carried out in the name of Islam. It was an important moment, and I wished
I had my camera to record it. Instead I took a few surr eptitious snaps on my
cell phone, turning the plaza far below into abstract geometry.
Maryam finally emerged from the restroom, and she had put on makeup
to conceal the bags under her eyes. We joined the rest of the family, already
assembled in a long, glass - walled boardroom: All of Abbas’s siblings,
nieces, and n ephews were there, anyone with voting power.
As Maryam and I walked in, there was a stir. The presiding lawyer, a
stocky man with horn - rimmed glasses, seated Maryam at the head of the
table, with a view of the door. I was not officially a Khan, and I had no
vote, and after escorting Maryam to her seat, I headed out of the
boardroom. I was walking with my head down, checking my phone — and
just as I exited the room, I almost ran into a woman and a man.
Kyle was grave and self - assured in a new dark blue suit that smacked of
British tailoring. The woman on his arm wore a shark - gray business suit
and six - inch lacquered red Louboutin heels. She was pale and sharp - faced
with platinum - blonde hair in a short, layered pixie cut. I did not recognize
her at first, but the slightly blurred red lipstick gave her away.
Farhan sw ept past me without any acknowledgment and walked into the
boardroom.
A collective gasp went through the room. Through the glass walls, I saw
several cousins rise up in surprise. Maryam ran over to Farhan and hugged
her, saying, “Oh my God, oh my God,” crying and laughing at the same
time, an odd, mangled sound.
Then something dawned on Maryam. Rearing back, she raised her hand
and slapped Farhan across the face — the sound rang out like a shot — and
screamed, “How could you do this to us? How could you?” Maryam
slapped Farhan, again and again, and it took three of the cousins to pull her
off. By then Farhan’s cheeks were crimson, and her hair was mussed.
The odd thing? The thing that made my blood run cold?
The whole time Farhan was being assaulted, she was smiling — a fixed,
hard smile. After the fracas was broken up, she took her seat, right next to
Maryam, calmly and without any fuss, as if Maryam — and not she — was
the insane, deranged, violent one.
Maryam and I emerged from One World Trade Center exactly forty - three
minutes later.
It was the same humid day. The sun beat down relentlessly, the tourists
swarmed across the memorial plaza. It was the same day, but it had an
ersatz feeling, as if reality had cracked open, and we had entered a second,
parallel universe.
That is the only way I can express it, that mixture of shock and unreality.
The reappearance of Farhan — it was Farhan, no doubt, with her
swe eping gestures, her dark eyes, her loud voice — was undercut by her
strange platinum - blonde hair, her chiseled face, and her new slim, hard
body. I had to leave the boardroom — and could only see the proceedings
through the glass walls, in dumb show — but Maryam later told me all about
it: how Farhan conducted herself with supreme confidence, calmly
proposing that Kyle, and not Big Mike, be nominated for CEO. She
methodically laid out Kyle’s qualifications, and soon her proposal was
seconded by Hamza — that traitor — and his mother, Fauzia, Abbas’s younger
sister.
Then came the unreality of the vote: Farhan cast her four votes for Kyle,
and oddly enough, Coco emerged on a speakerphone from the sanctity of
the Zen Cliffs monastery and, in a soft, apologetic voice, added her four
votes for Kyle. It was a close call, since Maryam countered with her eight
votes, but it turned out that Farhan had done a lot of behind - the - scenes
persuading, and several of the other cousins backed Kyle, too. Farhan won
by a margin of just two votes.
In the stunned silence afterward, Maryam shouted, “This is not right!
This is not what my father wanted!” The family’s lawyer adjusted his hornrimmed
glasses and said that it had all been done by the book, and that the
vote was indeed binding. After that, Farhan and Kyle quickly left the room,
and I noticed that several of the younger cousins — treacherous swine —
rushed after them to offer their congratulations.
Maryam and I took the elevator down in stark silence. In the car she
turned to me and said, “Farhan has been missing for over a year — and now
she just waltzes in like this? Where has she been? Has she been planning
this?” Her face contorted with disgust. “Farhan and Kyle, a couple, can you
imagine! You work with him, don’t you? Did you see this coming?”
I said that I had no inkling of the relationship, but Maryam didn’t listen
to me and k ept on talking. “That bitch. Pretending she’s dead, torturing us
— and now she breezes in and installs Kyle on the throne! And how did she
get Mama to vote against us?”
I just shook my head. Right then I was as baffled as Maryam was, but
later on I pieced it all together: Farhan had managed to get in touch with
Coco at the Zen Cliffs monastery and promised her that if Kyle was
installed as CEO, Tiger Corp would renovate the aging building pro bono.
In the end — despite Coco’s professed unworldliness — she had her price.
As we drove away, Maryam’s voice grew uncharacteristically shrill. “We
have to fight this! Big Mike should be CEO — as a placeholder — and then
you. Papa told me that was his plan.” She turned to me and grabbed my
forearm. “Say something, Ali. Tell me what you think.”
I felt the intense grip of Maryam’s fingers but there was nothing I could
say to help her.
I thought about the twenty minutes that Kyle and I had just spent
together. Neither of us were voting members, so we left the boardroom and
waited together in a sunny lounge, perched on those tubular steel and
leather chairs that are so ubiquitous in corporate environments.
Kyle leaned in and spoke in a soft voice. He said that Farhan had told
him everything: How I, Ali, had embezzled a million and a half dollars from
Abbas’s slush fund accounts. How I’d transferred the money to an offshore
account in the Bahamas.
“That’s not true,” I started to say, but Kyle cut me off.
“It doesn’t matter what actually happened,” he said. “Have you heard of
forensic accounting? When I’m CEO, I will have an audit done of all of
Abbas’s secret stashes — and this audit will reveal that you used your log - in
to siphon off a huge sum of money.”
I tried to interrupt again, but Kyle waved me to silence. “Do you want to
go to jail, Ali? Even a white - collar jail in America is very unpleasant. Look:
Here’s what you do, okay? You do not, in any way, mount a challenge to my
position as CEO. You ke ep your mouth shut and persuade Maryam to
support me — and I’m willing to forget your swindle. Hell, with some
creative accounting, I’ll make it go away.”
I had to sit there and listen passively to Kyle, because there was nothing
I could do — exc ept curse myself for having let Farhan use my log - in.
Now, sitting next to Maryam in the car, what could I say? Sorry, I’m
completely compromised, I can’t help you? Instead, I said, as calmly as I
could manage, “I know this is a total shock, Farhan turning up like this, but
maybe it’s for the best. Kyle knows the business inside out, and he’s a street
fighter. He’ll be a better CEO than Big Mike — and certainly better than me.
I really don’t have a head for numbers...”
Even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized that I couldn’t have
said a worse thing, and Maryam — who had always been the paragon of
politeness — went red in the face.
She yelled into my face, spattering it with spittle. “Spineless coward!
Did they castrate you at birth?” She punched my arms and chest, her fists
sinking into my flesh. “What is wrong with you? Are you fucked in the
head? Have you ever fought for anything?”
Maryam’s obscene words hurt more than her blows. I tried in vain to
calm her down, but she raged on and on, till she finally slumped, spent and
red - eyed, into a corner of her seat. I deserved the abuse — Maryam was
right; I was a coward — but the abrupt change in her personality was
alarming. It reminded me of Abbas, the way he would snap and then
explode violently, spewing curses.
At the time, I made excuses for Maryam: Her father had just died. She
was stunned by Farhan’s reappearance. In fact, I convinced myself that her
outburst was a sign of health: Maryam should have been angry after what
had just happened. It was normal, wasn’t it?
We drove back uptown in silence. By that evening, Maryam’s punches
had done their work: My arms and chest were bruised and purple and hurt
like hell.
I told myself that things could not get worse.