“Nothing makes any sense if you look at it that way,” she said, when I’d laid all that out. “Why are we here? Why is there air? Is that where you got this scar?” She stroked it gently.

“No,” I said. “Tsawkey’s on the other side. That’s a shrapnel wound.”

“Is there another story?”

“Yes, but even I’m getting bored. And it’s not very interesting. It was near the end of the war, a big operation. I was hiding behind a wreck. I shot a rocket at a Russian tank; the tank shot back. I should’ve died, but I didn’t. I was out for ten days and woke up in a hospital with Gul Muhammed and Wazir holding a hand each. They told me I had been dead but came back to life according to the will of God, and I said God can do all things and asked how the battle had turned out. Gul Muhammed said it had been a great victory, with the greatest loot ever captured. The Russians were pulling out.”

“And that was it, huh?” she said. “The end of the war. Or that war. How did you get back to the States?”

“That’s another story,” I said. “Time to sleep.”

“Time to go,” she said, hopping out of bed.

“You’re not staying?”

“No, I have a shift that starts in about four hours. I’ll barely have time to shower and change. Call me a cab, will you?”

I did and watched her hop into her clothes, all business now; whatever intimacy we had generated with our bodies and our talking was gone. It was an American hookup, about as serious as having a pleasant seatmate on a long-haul flight, and I’ve never gotten used to it.

Why don’t you look at me properly?

Why do you magnify my suffering?

The torturer flays for a reason.

What’s yours, beloved?

Ask your fierce eyes

Why they cut me to pieces.

Rahman Baba. We used to sing that one in the jihad as we marched through the dry hills. This came out of a culture where marriages are arranged and women are cattle. It makes you think.

After Gloria left, I slept for a few hours and then washed and dressed in my traveling clothes, packed up a small bag, and went downstairs.

My father was in the kitchen in white shirt and tie with the Post and a cup of tea. He must have heard me moving around upstairs because he’d made me a cup, strong, milky, and sweet.

I sat down and he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket where it hung behind his chair and handed me a thick envelope.

“Here is your ticket and your Pakistani passport and enough cash to keep you for a few days. You can always get more from Nisar.”

I stowed it in my bag and said, “How are we doing?”

He removed his horn-rims and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired but brighter somehow, like he was plugged into a higher energy channel.

He said, “Well, we have laid the bait, as you know. The calls have been fabricated as we discussed.”

“Jafar went for it?”

“No, of course not. I wouldn’t dream of involving Jafar. He is a government man, and only family by marriage. No, Rukhsana sent her eldest to Kahuta and he borrowed his father’s cell phone and made the call to her.”

“This is Hassan?”

“Yes. He’s turning out to be quite the conspirator. A very credible imitation of his father’s voice.”

“Who’s in on it?” I asked.

“Just Rukhsana and her boys-and Nisar, of course. And us.” He gave a sigh and put his glasses back on and looked at me through them, his owl look. He said, “I will tell you, Theo, if a month ago you had told me I would be involved in such a conspiracy, breaking the laws of my own and my host nation, with the intent to bring about a military invasion of Pakistan-well, I would have called you a lunatic. And now I have done these things-me, Farid Bashir Laghari, full professor of law, LLD, by God.”

“Why are you doing it then, if it bothers you?”

“You ask me why? You, who wept like a child in my arms when you thought she was in danger, who has not wept in my presence since you were small enough to carry? Because your mother makes me insane and has since the moment I first laid eyes on her in Central Park. Who could have known I would have such a weakness? I was always a good boy, studious, obedient-my God, how obedient I was! Nisar was always the rascal and Seyd was the spoiled baby, and I was the model son, I assure you. And suddenly, in this foreign park I am in the midst of a ghazal, I am Háfiz, I am Mir,” and he recited in Urdu:

“From the instant of the heart’s creation,

the body has been tinder,

so fell this spark,

the mantle burst into flames,

now like the light of the full moon

the fire has spread all over me.”

I said in the same language, “Wracked with madness, the only sound the rattle of my chains,” which is a line from the same poem.

He smiled. “Yes, and I thought I could become sane again, by bringing her into my home. I had a fantasy, a fantasy that by some miracle she might become a good Muslim wife.”

“That was always a long shot.”

“Yes, but hope is a mighty drug. You know the line-the same poem, in fact-about ridding the terrified gazelle of wild despair? Those who tamed her had done a miracle. I thought I had done it. We had a son, you, and I thought she was settling in. I knew she didn’t love me as I loved her, but I imagined that as we grew older-”

He stopped and looked away from me. Maybe he was stunned by the memories. I was stunned myself; I’d never had a conversation like this with my father.

I said, “But she ran away.”

“Yes. Can you imagine what it was like for the son of B. B. Laghari to have his wife run off and travel across half of Asia with that faqir? And then to write about it? My mother absolutely commanded me to divorce her. As you know, divorce is very easy in Islam, you say a few words, and it is done, and there is no question that it is the father who gets the children, but I could not. I simply could not do it. It would have strangled my heart. And so I waited and thought evil, unworthy thoughts. I prayed she would get into trouble out there and I would get a frantic call at three in the morning, Oh, Farid, come save me with your law books and your money! But the call never came, and then she became famous out of my disgrace, and then she went away again, on the haj, and this time she did something that scandalized even my father. Traipsing around Central Asia disguised as a man was bad enough, but on the haj! She had endangered the position of the whole family, so my father sent her into exile. And finally came the bomb and the catastrophe and I broke down and you vanished and what did I do? As soon as I recovered I could think of nothing else but finding her.”

“In Zurich.”

“Yes. Isn’t it remarkable that we have never discussed these events, as father to son? I am ashamed of myself, but you know, Sonia draws a pall of secrecy behind her like a dark cloak.”

“Yeah. I’m not entirely sure how she managed to find me. She was always pretty vague.”

“Well, I can barely help you there. I was not a party to those doings; I was only the father, after all! But it happened very quickly. After I found her, I begged her to let me stay with her, I was pitiable, crying and all that, I said that I had lost everything; was she going to abandon me as well? And so on. Pitiable! My mother, you can imagine, was insane with fury. She cut me off entirely. I could not work in Switzerland, but Sonia still had some money left, so we were not absolutely destitute. We had a flat in the Kreuzstrasse, we took the trams in the morning, she to the Jung Institute, I to the Zentralbibliothek to do research for an article on international law I was trying to write, and we existed that way-I won’t exactly call it living-like the war refugees you see on television. I did all the shopping and the housework, me who had never made a bed in his life! I made her tea, I massaged her feet, I thought if I turned myself into a servant she would acknowledge me, she would see my suffering and turn toward me with love. It was all I could think of doing.”