In evening as the dusk shadows got longer, Nusrat took his dog out for a walk to East beach. The sun set over the mountains and not the ocean, because the coast faced south. It colored the sky and clouds different hues of red and orange and was impossible to ignore. Many folks came from up and down the coast just to walk on this beach and enjoy the easy-going atmosphere. The palm tree lined beachwalk saw a variety of people- kids on skateboards, full grown men on cruiser bikes playing loud music, students from the local college, and others like Nusrat out for their usual evening walk.

The whole dog walking ritual might have mistaken the casual observer into believing that Nusrat was American. A more astute observer could have surmised that his ethnic roots lied somewhere in Middle-east or South-east Asia. In fact, he was Iranian, and had only been in the States for two years. He did not advertise this fact; it felt like a crucial piece of information that needn’t be disclosed until absolutely necessary. In America everyone is assumed to be American, one way or the other.

Out of the hundreds of sunsets Nusrat had seen here, this one felt unusually significant. Right before coming here, he had received an inexplicable phone call from his doctor as he was locking the front door. The man had been diagnosed with a rare nervous system disorder that resulted in loss of communication between parts of his body and brain. In other words, pretty soon he would perhaps be unable to control his hands or his feet, maybe even his tongue. Nusrat had gone in a day before for an inspection of his left foot, which had mysteriously fallen asleep when he woke up that morning, and he had been dragging it along ever since.

Nusrat’s reaction to this news had been far from usual. He put his phone back in his pocket, locked the door and continued forth as if nothing had happened. Jimmy, his dog, tugged at the leash and they were off on one of his usual evening strolls. Except the fact that he had to trust his eyes to guide his left foot which lacked sensation alltogether, he couldn’t complain. The sunset looked as enchanting as it always did. Why should he give weight to the doctor’s diagnosis, when all he perceived in his body was a frozen foot?

And yet, Nusrat was worried. He himself was a doctor (but of a different kind), so even though he tried to be dismissive, he couldn’t shrug off the terrible news. The human body is complicated, all those tangles of nerves shooting signals back and forth like a bioelectric machine. What if some wire got disconnected somewhere, or some pathway got short-circuited? If the body was like a city rigged up by wires, then a malfunctioning power grid could result in a power cut in some sectors. And unlike a power grid, there wasn’t any easy way to repair damaged nerves, so the doctor had said. No way, in fact.

Well, no reason to panic just yet, he thought, and focused his energy on descending painfully down a few hundred steps to one of his favorite spots on the beach. It was one of those spots where the coast made a steep inflection and the bluffs jutted outwards. At the bottom he located a natural cave cut into the bluff by the ocean, and sat himself down with Jimmy. He thought back to the previous week, a point where everything had seemed to come together, before it all began falling apart.

After a few moments the hypnotic effect of the coming and going of the waves began drawing out his inner torment. He had waited a long long time for the news. His wife had given birth to a healthy baby girl back home in Iran. The girl looked just like her mother. They were both staying at his wife’s parents home. Nusrat had broken into an impromptu dance upon hearing the news. He couldn’t wait for his wife and baby girl to come and join him in the States.

The following day he had sent an email to his lab group, announcing the birth of Meesha. Congratulations poured in from all sides. He took the day off and went on a long drive in the mountains, stopping at tiny towns for a snack, then retreating into the comfort of the cruise and talking to himself, recounting all the anxious nights awaiting this news. He had practically been a nervous wreck all of the past year, having decided to move to the States to further his career, lhaving to see his expecting wife go back to Iran, unable to rise up to his own expectations and doubting his own choices. At work, he would constantly go to the urinal to relieve his anxiety. Once, after driving a long way for a business trip and unable to find a restroom, he had lost control and peed inside his pants. There were days when he felt like running away from everything and becoming a hermit. Nobody knew that he was so troubled, and he hardly acknowledged the fact himself. He simply acted the way he was supposed to and prayed for the best.

But the coming of his daughter had erased all doubts from his mind. For her, he would go to the ends of the world, and nothing that anybody said could trouble him.

Even though he had never held his baby daughter in his arms, a strongly felt emotion connected him to her all the while, even before she had been born. His wife, Farida, had been quite reluctant to carry the child, but knew that she must do it before it was too late. Her career as a marine biologist in the States was all the more important to her. Her decision to go ahead with it came after a really long and sustained period of family pressure. Her parents, retired after long careers in goverment service, had been initially anxious to see their daughter married off. Nusrat and Farida had met at a reunion of their alma mater, Tehran University, around that time. Farida, who was already working in the States, saw an opportunity in Nusrat, who had recently obtained a Phd in Physics and was planning to move there for a postdoc. Thereafter, they had met each other every day for the three weeks Farida was back in Tehran, going through the phases of flirting, attraction, probing, lust, sex, and companionship in quickfire succession. It was Farida who had suggested that her parents wanted her to marry as soon as possible. Nusrat, who was the kind of guy women had flings with and never expected more than that, had been pleasantly surprised. He hadn’t wanted to let this chance at something bigger slip past him. More than anything, Nusrat had of late started feeding a fantasy that he’d be the father of a cute little girl one day. And for that he needed the girl’s mother, and that would be Farida.

It didn’t take long before they met each other’s parents, then their parents met each other, and they got wed in December of that year. It was a quiet affair, a few close friends and family members saw them both become husband and wife on a cold winter’s day. They went to Europe for their honeymoon. Two long weeks, where they visited Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Bern, Interlaken, Geneva, Chamonix, and Zurich, travelling on the scenic German and Swiss Bahn. Little did they know that these two weeks would be the only two weeks of their married life that they’d actually enjoy. Everything that came afterwards was not unlike work, it required conscious effort and communication to make decisions about shared goals. And in reality, the only goals they shared were to make it in America. Make it like everybody else.

Nusrat got a postdoc position in the university that was in the same coastal Californian town where Farida worked. She had been there since two years, before which she had gotten a Masters degree from another Californian university. She brought Nusrat up to speed with Californian lifestyle. Or tried, at least. Nusrat couldn’t care less about the bloated culture that assimilated ideas from all over the globe, reinterpreted them for American consumption, and distorted them beyond recognition. The snowballing effect of American culture took time to latch on and spin him along like everybody else. And when it did, it gave rise to a kind of chimera, that would be hard to find anywhere else except that country.

Nusrat disliked the hordes of people that came to work there from every country. It meant being a part of a group of people he’d never wanted to be. All the sympathy he might have had for them was wiped out by an elitist notion of who should belong there and who shouldn’t. The transmigration into America mirrored the migration of people from rural areas to urban ones in his own country. It was uncanny being a minority whilst having enjoyed the majority all along.

He had the most intense feelings for his own country folk living in America. The idea of sticking together had never appealed to him, for he’d always been a lone wolf. But even if he did try, he could never dismiss the discordant note of competition and disguise from other Iranians. He saw himself avoiding the game of cultural integration that everybody was playing. It mattered little to him. It wasn’t something he could do consciously. But it would be fine if it all happened subconsciously.

Farida and Nusrat got a pet dog soon after moving in. It had been Nusrat’s idea; the dog would be the natural precursor to the baby girl. The dog added a lot of uncertainty and drama to their marital household life. In contrast to the dog’s childish temperament, their adult personalities shined out distinctly. None of them had ever had a pet before. Nusrat naturally softened and pampered the dog, while Farida saw his attention for her waning. Her motherly instincts were overshadowed by her wifey expectations. She kept up a good pretense of enjoying, but internally hoped for it all to change.

And it did change, because Nusrat wanted more, Farida’s parents wanted more. Even though she wasn’t ready for it. Farida still had a lot of soul searching to do. But her parents were the orthodox kind. In this regard, Nusrat was understanding, urging her to wait until the right moment. And yet, Farida reasoned it was better to bite the bullet now rather than keep the gun to her head any longer. So she submitted. 

So it was that after little over an year of married life together, Farida got pregnant. The news had a profound effect on them both. For her, who felt the physical burden, and responsibility, it was a wake up call. No amount of preparation could have braced her for this job. She disliked everything about the baby, the part where she had to be the one to carry it, miss out on pleasures she took for granted, and postpone her personal goals. And Nusrat, who so far had been quite supportive, began cold shouldering her. The fact that he would actually be a father soon drove him nuts. If it had been all over in one tumultous day then he could have taken it, maybe even enjoyed it. But the fact that he had to wait so long for the baby to arrive, brought all his insecurities to the forefront. He didn’t know how to answer the questions people put him, and it felt like everybody knew more than him about kids and marriage. At some point, both began to feel that they didn’t know what or why they were doing this.

And so it was decided that the best course of action would be for Farida to go back to her parents home in Iran until the baby arrived. It was a welcome relief for Farida, but Nusrat’s fears doubled. Was it because she and her parents felt that he was incapable of supporting her, that he was incompetent? Left all alone in the big apartment with the dog, he got distracted and acted randomly. His first reaction was to find someone to have a fling with, but he gave up soon due to little success. His second reaction was to work obsessively, and that took him in a strange direction.

His work so far since moving to the States hadn’t been anything more than ordinary. He didn’t get along well with the Phd students he was guiding, all of whom felt like overconfident and cocky youngsters in their early 20s. They in return felt that he was too controlling and demanding. Most of the papers from his collaborations were rejected multiple times, but it had mattered little to him. His attention had been directed to his marital life, which he’d really wanted to succeed at. If he could be a king in his home, how did it matter what his colleagues thought of him?

Now deprived of the adoring eyes of his wife, Nusrat reoriented himself with work. He found many details he’d overlooked so far, saw how far others had taken ideas he’d simply given up on, and tried to keep up with the pace of newly emerging research. This was when his anxieties reached their peak. In the middle of live meetings, he would have to excuse himself to go to the urinal. Even while talking at stretch with his wife, he would have to put her on hold and take a piss. While working at his computer, he would go to the urinal after every little piece of progress. He had never felt this way, and his reaction had been to simply ignore it all.

His bond with the dog had strengthened in this time. They’d go for a walk in the mornings and evenings, it became a nice routine. He would be talking to the dog about all sorts of things, making jokes, and for all he knew the dog really got him. And he completely forgot about his wife. Even though they talked on the phone all the time, he could no longer imagine that routine of living together that they’d had. Unsurprisingly, the voice on the other side of the line seemed to convey something similar.

He remembered all of this as he drove that day through the countryside. It left him feeling vindicated; the coming of the baby girl meant the anxious wait was over. He imagined looking at her as he woke up every day, lying comfortably and snug in her blanket, and looking at her when he came back from work. He imagined being there with her in all the phases she’d go through, being her best friend throughout life.

And so for two days he’d lived a very peaceful and contented life. Until his left foot went to sleep and never woke up. The doctor’s diagnosis had confirmed his worst fears. Sitting there beside the ocean, he felt robbed. Here he’d been so close, to a life he’d dreamed of since many years. Without the use of his hands and feet, he could hardly support himself, let alone a wife and kid. Farida would have no trouble in finding a new husband, and this stung him even more.

Here it was, the American dream turned into a nightmare. He tried hard to find a silver lining, but there wasn’t any. Maybe the worst wouldn’t happen, and he’d be left with some feeling in a few fingers or toes. Maybe Farida would take pity on him and save him from this pit. Maybe he could still come up with great ideas and pass them onto enterprising Phd students, and have a successful career. A man cannot be deprived of hope, just as he cannot be devoid of fear.

The next morning Nusrat woke up to his mobile ringing. His wife was calling him. He tried reaching out with his left hand, but it wouldn’t move. He tried with his right, but it wouldn’t move. His feet wouldn’t move. He shouted to the voice assistant, “Pick up the phone, and put me on speaker”. It worked, Farida came online, “Are you still sleeping? How will I deal with two babies hun?”. “No, it’s not that. I can’t move. The doctor told me yesterday …”, he tried to finish the sentence, but his jaws collapsed shut.