ALI AZEEM, DECEMBER 2016 – JANUARY 2017
Outside Sher Khan House, a cold, stinging rain is falling.
A chopper is parked on the helipad, not the usual bulky Sikorsky S - 76
but a smaller, mosquito - like model with no doors.
“This is the present?”
“No, silly. Relax, we’ll soon get to it.”
Two crew members in flight suits appear and help me into a bulky down
coat, a safety harness, and a headset. Maryam gets the same treatment, and
after we belt into the helicopter, she leans forward and whispers to me, “The
weather is clearing up. Right on schedule.”
The rotors start up with a whine. For a few minutes I have a clear view
of the ste ep roofs of Sher Khan House, but then it vanishes into the
blackness; we are flying blind through a layer of clouds, and a light rain is
sprinkling into the open body of the helicopter. It’s freezing cold, and
Maryam hands me an insulated flask. At first, I wave it away, but I
eventually give in and take a de ep pull, tasting rich bitter coffee laced with
whiskey. I scald my mouth, but it instantly warms me.
Soon we have cleared Long Island. The sun vanishes below the horizon,
and just like that, it is night, thick and velvety. We fly over New York
Harbor, and below us is the Statue of Liberty, spotlit from underneath,
looking like a scale model — and then we are flying toward lower
Manhattan, so brightly illuminated that it gives off a glow.
Battery Park City passes beneath us. Then the Financial District. We
follow the lit river of Broadway across the crazy weave of downtown, and
then Broadway bends, and the grid becomes more coherent. Below us, the
streets are clogged with the red taillights of stop - and - go traffic; it is New
Year’s Eve, and the city is out, celebrating. We soar higher, over the tops of
skyscrapers, red warning lights blinking at their pinnacles.
It should be dark, but the lights of the city reflect off the low - hanging
clouds, creating a phosphorescence. Landmarks are scattered here and there
— the st epped limestone monolith of the Empire State Building, the dark
rectangle of Bryant Park, and then the dazzling, lit canyon of Times Square.
The helicopter turns east. We are flying down 57 th Street, and I can see
directly into the row of supertalls: Inside the lit apartments, New Year’s
parties are in full bloom. Men in black tie and women in backless dresses
sway to music, clutching flutes of champagne.
They have their champagne, and I have my flask of coffee laced with
whiskey. I sip it to stay warm, aware that I am becoming tipsy.
The helicopter — as light and agile as an insect — skims through the
darkness. We cross into the shadowy expanse of Central Park and the nose
of the helicopter dips alarmingly. My harness strains, and I try to jerk back
— Oh God, are we about to crash? — but Maryam puts a steadying hand on
my forearm.
The helicopter tilts some more. I am thrust forward, and my feet dangle
over the edge, hang into sheer air. A terrifying thought crosses my mind:
Now that Maryam has triumphed, is she trying to kill me?
I’m shivering with fear, my eyes closed tightly, but Maryam’s voice
comes clearly over my headset. “Ali, I’d never ever put you in danger.
You’re my husband. The father of my children.” She nudges me and hands
over clear goggles. “Don’t be afraid. Lean out, it’s safe. This is your
present, sweetheart.”
It is the unaccustomed “sweetheart” that reassures me. With shaking
hands, I pull the goggles on, let my body go slack, and lean into the
gravitational pull. I am half hanging out of the helicopter, and gradually my
fear recedes. Being up here has all the exhilaration of being out at sea: the
buffeting of the wind, my face frozen but innards warmed by alcohol,
caffeine racing through my veins. The glitter of the lights, the speed of the
helicopter, the clatter of the rotors, all form a jittery jazz, and I find my
sour, defiant mood dissipating, becoming wilder, more expansive.
Maintaining its tilt, the helicopter begins to rotate — as if around a
celestial pivot — and I glimpse, at the western edge of the island, the dark
tangle of the West Side Project, dotted with the skeletal frames of halffinished
skyscrapers. The helicopter spins some more and now I see
Abbas’s glass edifice at Columbus Circle. The chopper ke eps turning and
here are the supertalls again, no longer ungainly but lit up like giant
primeval beacons, their tops vanishing into the clouds.
It is like being thrust into a three - dimensional video game but also
terrifyingly real. At any second, I could slip out of this harness and plummet
down to my death — but for now I am up here, in the slowly spinning
helicopter, and Maryam’s voice comes over the headset, “Take a good look,
Ali: This is our city. Ours.”
In that moment I realize this is more than a jaunt. Abbas is dead. His
vision — vast, glittering, expansive — resides now with Maryam, and she is
infecting me with it. I realize then that the shock I felt at Maryam’s betrayal
of Farhan will fade, but that I will always remember this New Year’s Eve.
When times get hard — as they inevitably will — I will return to this moment,
hanging half - frozen, high above the city, because the trick to surviving
adversity is having visions like this, to which one can retreat, and restore
oneself.
An eternity passes. The helicopter finally stops re volving. It levels out
and speeds across the darkness of the park, and once again, I am not a god,
just a freezing mortal. I tilt my head back and drink the hot, burning dregs
from the insulated flask.
Maryam’s dark, questioning eyes are fixed on my face, and I nod slowly,
reluctantly: Yes, I understand.
That night we return to the Apthorp and have sweaty, silent sex in front of
the fir eplace. I am acutely conscious of the taut curve of Maryam’s belly,
but she says, “Don’t worry, you won’t hurt me.”
Afterward, we curl up together on the couch and pull a blanket over our
fevered bodies. Worn out by the long day, I fall asle ep instantly, and at some
time in the night I begin to dream.
It is a sizzling hot day, and I am walking through Jackson Heights,
nodding and smiling, but the shopke epers turn away from me, their faces
twisted in disgust. Ah, here’s someone looking kindly at me, a young
woman in a bright red salwar kameez. Do I know her? I’m trying to place
her when another woman strolls past, and then another, eight women in
total: tall and short, plump and slim, with different hairstyles — long,
lustrous plaits; ponytails; demure French braids — but all are young and
smooth cheeked. I’m admiring their beauty when the last woman to walk
past casually lifts up her kameez: Her ribs are cracked open, and there is a
ghastly, wet gaping cavity in her chest ...
I wake with a yelp. I’m sweating profusely, my heart is thumping, and I
have to remind myself: It was just an illusion. My brain playing tricks on
me. Maryam sle eps beside me, and I snuggle into her, but sle ep will not
come. The air in the room — carefully calibrated to sixty - eight degrees,
Maryam’s preferred temperature — has taken on a knife - edged chill.
I prop myself up on an elbow and stare down at Maryam: Her chest rises
and falls with de ep, unhurried breaths, and an arm is curved across her
belly, as if to protect our unborn children. It is a timeless image — sle eping
pregnant woman — packed with hope and vulnerability.
And yet. And yet ... What Maryam did is amoral, isn’t it? Even evil?
“Evil? Why look for it outside ourselves?” Abbas once said to me during
one of our discussions. “Evil exists inside each and every one of us. It just
takes the right conditions to bring it out.” And Abbas was right: He’d done
awful things to protect the business he’d created. Farhan — who only wanted
to be cherished and acc epted — was capable of two murders. And look at
me, mister nice guy, with the blood of two men — George and Kyle —
spattering my hands.
But Maryam? She was given the world on a platter — but she wanted
more. Wanted it all, at any price: For decades, she fooled her father.
Betrayed her sister. Manipulated me.
The Khan family is full of vicious, immoral people.
But the real killer in the family is Maryam Khan. She is capable of
anything.
Just then, the twins flutter like fish — Maryam utters a soft ooh — but her
eyes do not open. I pull away from her and lie on the far side of the sofa,
chilled to the bone.
I lie wide - awake, listening to the thudding of my own frightened heart.