Chapter 20: Two Pakistani Men at the Bar

When his older brother walked through the doors in a suit and a wrinkled trench coat and squeezed his way between the pressing bodies on the dance floor, Mustu knew that he wouldn’t be too happy to see him. His older brother’s brown, pudgy face hung heavy with a five o’clock shadow that hinted at too much work for too little pay. Add to this a delayed and uncomfortable flight out of Newark, and Mustu could see that it wouldn’t be a very pleasant visit.

Mustu, as usual, had found himself in an awkward city with awkward friends who were now as equally broke and drunk as he was. Shabbir took the bar stool next to him, as Mustu had been reserving it for him. His older brother looked like the family man he was meant to become. Shabbir had married a Pakistani woman and had a couple of bright brown Pakistani kids to match. He worked for the State back home as a Medicaid fraud investigator. He was the pride of the family ever since Mustu, the younger, had fallen into prodigality and spent his time and money at nightclubs and casinos in Las Vegas. He couldn’t say what Shabbir had heard about him since he left home. He didn’t know if he really knew his older brother at all anymore.

“Well, at least you’re not dead yet,” said Shabbir, ordering a beer.

“Why would I be dead? I’m a survivor,” said Mustu, nursing his cocktail.

Shabbir looked at Mustu squarely and said, “judging from the telegram you sent, we all thought you’d wind up dead out here. You asked for too much this time. Dad won’t have it anymore. You should let him retire in peace.”

“Just a few thousand is all I asked for.”

“Well, it was a few thousand too many. What the hell are you doing out here? You’re not a kid anymore. You can’t go around like some Middle Eastern playboy and spend all of Dad’s money. We’re not that rich. You should get a goddamned job is what you should do.”

“Thanks for the advice, but go ahead and take a look around you. Just take a good look.”

Shabbir rolled on his bar stool and faced the crowd. Most of them were young exquisite women in their college years wearing low-cut, skimpy dresses, their blonde skins exposed to the multi-hued lights of the dance floor.

“They’re the beautiful people,” said Mustu proudly.

“And? What does this have anything to do with getting a job?”

“I’m trying to marry one of these women, Shabbir. That’s why I’m here – because I’m in love with blonde American women now.”

Shabbir shook his head and laughed. “You mean to tell me that you’ve been chasing women down here to find one to marry?”

“You got it.”

“At least you’re in much better health by the looks of things. I’ll give you that. You must have dropped fifty pounds since I last saw you.”

“You wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to go through though. Why do you think I haven’t come home yet? I’m here to find my American bride.”

“You haven’t been home in ten years,” said Shabbir. “Ten fucking years. If it were meant to work out with an American woman, it would have happened by now.”

“But I’m almost there. I think I’ve finally unlocked the code.”

“The code? What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s the code. Don’t you see? I’ve almost cracked the code.”

“You’re not making any sense right now.”

“I can explain. It’s really very simple.”

Shabbir ordered another beer, as he knew he needed one. Why his younger brother had to disgrace the family had been reduced to the logic of this one tidy explanation. He hoped his brother would finally make some sense.

“Please continue,” said Shabbir, rolling his eyes.

“Okay. Remember when I was overweight?”

“How can anyone forget. You ate fast food, you smoked, and you drank too much. We all thought you’d have a heart attack. That or type two diabetes would have taken you.”

“An American friend of mine told me that the reason why I wasn’t getting any of the women to go out with me was because I was too overweight. I was too obese for them, in other words.”

“And now you’ve lost all that weight.”

“But it wasn’t that simple. Do you know how hard I worked to lose this weight? Every day I had to avoid cookies and snacks and sweets and cakes, and then I had to go out walking, then exercising until my legs fell off. Do you know how painful and ludicrous these things are to Pakistanis?”

“I commend you, Mustu. You’ve done a good job in losing the weight.”

“I’m as fit as a fiddle right now, but all of that sweat, labor, and starvation didn’t crack the code. It was only the first part of the combination – and a lengthy process it was just to get through that initial stage. The next part involved losing my politics as well.”

“What you mean?”

“You know, my need to save the world and rid it of poverty and disease?”

“Oh, yes. I remember,” said Shabbir. “This was right after college. You were quite the left-winger. You wanted to be a martyr for the poor, and you hated that our father wanted to be rich. Who could forget that period?”