The Good Son by Michael Gruber Read Free Book Online Page B

Quakers, who had worked to end the conflict in Angola and written some important books on nonviolent political change; and Karl-Heinz Schildkraut, from Zurich, an old friend of hers and a psychotherapist with a long-standing interest in the history of India and Pakistan.
    When the funding came through, Sonia had called her sister-in-law. Rukhsana would be a good choice for the conference rapporteur and could also help Sonia back into the good graces of the Laghari family. Rukhsana had suggested another invitee, Harold Ashton, an Englishman, a former foreign service officer and an expert on the diplomatic history of the subcontinent, who also accepted. Sonia drinks her tea, when it comes, and reads the papers prepared by the attendees until jet lag seizes her and she sleeps.
    She awakens three hours later to the sound of the
azan
, the call to Maghrib, the prayer at sunset:
    God is great God is great God is great, I attest there is no God
but God, I attest Muhammad is the messenger of God, make
haste to prayer, make haste to welfare, there is no God but God.
    The wailing song floats in from a nearby mosque loudspeaker and cuts through the international air-conditioner hum. She has not prayed as a Muslim for a considerable time, but after hearing the azan she finds herself almost reflexively reciting the
du’a
, the supplication before prayer, and then she ties up her hair in her scarf and goes to the bathroom andperforms the ritual ablution, washing her feet and her hands and arms and running her wet hands over her face.
    She takes the prayer rug the hotel provides and arranges it to face the qibla. Silently she goes through the proper intention for the Maghrib prayer and then enters the prayer state easily, without friction, the ritual words and the prescribed movements, the hands up next to the face, the hands folded, right over left on the belly, the kneeling, the full prostration, the cycle of one
raka’ah
after another until the three ordained for the sunset prayer are done. Sonia has always been religious in her own fashion. In America, she attends a Catholic church in whatever neighborhood she finds herself, as her mother trained her to do. In Muslim lands she follows her adopted religion. In Europe she presents herself as an adherent of Carl Gustav Jung. Nor is it hypocritical, she thinks, not merely a case of When in Rome. She doesn’t see why her worship should be restricted to one faith, especially as she is devoted to all of them and believes that God understands this peculiarity and approves.
    Now it is time to get ready for the reception. She showers, washes and dries her hair, dresses in her best shalwar kameez, a black number shot with silver threads, and arranges a black silk scarf over her short hair. The wall mirror shows her a thin, slight woman with graying black hair atop a deep-tanned face out of which shine dark, bright eyes. She thinks she looks like an American in costume, so she takes a breath and shifts the tension in her muscles, especially the muscles of her face. She looks again and smiles shyly for effect. Now she is a Muslim lady, probably a Pathan, at home in Pakistan. She is very good at this, and it gives her an absurd and infantile pleasure.
    The hotel has provided a small room set up with a large round table and a bar. As she enters, Sonia sees Rukhsana speaking to a couple of men. One is a slight elfin figure in a cheap tan suit, his blue eyes bright and cheerful behind rimless glasses, his narrow skull clothed with a thatch of sand-colored hair going gray; the other towers over him, a really huge old man, his face decorated by a noble nose and a white brush mustache. Rukhsana gestures her over and embraces her; Sonia can smell liquor on her breath, although the glass she is holding appears to be fruit juice. Rukhsana introduces the smaller of the two as Father Mark Shea, S.J.
    “And of course you know Dr. Schildkraut.”
    “My dear Sonia,” Schildkraut says, embracing her. “You