Running a little late, I rushed to the cafe at the address that my sister had given me. I thought I knew the place as I knew the area well once upon a time. I remembered that the cafe wasn't a cafe before; it was one of those places from my childhood, like an alternative bookstore, or a second-hand record shop, those emblems of a bygone innocent age that were long gone; those kinds of institutions to adolescence didn't seem to exist anymore here, records and record stores were gone, bookstores were now big chain stores, the little mom and pop diners replaced by uniform brand-name coffee shops.

Things changed. I remember back when I was first leaving New York and telling my sister that I felt like I might be missing out on something. She said not to worry, that in the city nothing really changed, that the only thing I might miss was the opening of a new restaurant, the closing of an old one. But walking through this area, it saddened me to think that in a blink, a place could become so unfamiliar. The old grunginess was replaced by potted shrub, clean exposed brick, and fine rich wood mouldings with straight, aligned edges of a quality that I just hadn't been used to in a while, just as I had not been used to smiling friendly hostesses coming up to me asking if I would like to be seated or if someone was waiting for me. I told her that I had come to meet my sister and she practically sang back as if in an operatic recitative, "why yes, there was a pretty young girl who came in who looked just like you."

She escorted me through the cafe, which seemed dark and cavernous in comparison to the bright, late day sunlight, into a garden courtyard surrounded by brick walls where my sister sat, reading a newspaper, sipping on a drink she told me was called a frappuccino, her hair back to its natural color, making evident our family resemblances. She glanced up, looking lovely exactly as I had always remembered, to the detail, except for something that I couldn't put my finger on. She stood up to kiss me on both of my sweaty flushed cheeks. Panting, I apologized for my lateness. "I had a bad day," I said and retold her about my day with mother, still fresh on my mind, in detail.

"That's pretty typical of her," she chuckled. And with the retelling, it struck me that there was nothing so unusual about this episode with my mother. But I told my sister I was surprised. After all, I hadn't been home in over a year. "You'd think I'd get a bit better reception than that," I said

"At least you're only dealing with it once a year," she said. "You've probably just forgotten how she is. Why are you speaking so loudly?" The whole time I was talking, I didn't realize that I was speaking so loudly. I suppose it was because in the city I always felt like I was trying to speak over all the noise. There, it's so quiet -- you hear everything, I told her. I told her of how in the mornings you can wake up and you hear nothing but stillness and the scratching of the bristles of the brooms against the pavement, by the ladies who sweep the streets in the morning. You can hear chickens and roosters from blocks away. There was a time, right before the 1999 bombings, before it was banned, I was told, you could even hear the muezzin's cry calling the faithful to prayer from the mosques at the edges of the city, at all five prayer times of the day.

"Chickens and roosters? I thought that you were living in a city?" She asked. But it was so hard to explain what kind of city this was. It wasn't like New York City or any other city we knew. It was the kind of city where people in some districts kept farm animals, where traffic sometimes could be brought to a halt by an old cow or goat or sheep crossing, where I shared dirt sidewalks with sheep.

"Sounds exotic," she said. "By the way, we heard you on the radio the other day -- when we were in the lab, with my labmates. We have a nickname for you -- 'America's sweetheart.'"

"People actually listen to my broadcasts?" I asked, "that's a pleasant surprise."

"People seem interested about where you live since 9-11; at least now they've heard of Uzbekistan. At least in my lab they do, because we keep the radio on national radio and when they pick your reports up, they listen. They're always asking about you. Always think that you're in some kind of danger. And we have such a distinctive last name, that people I know, or old friends come out of the woodwork who hear your reports always call and ask, if they don't know already, if we're related, and if they do know, they ask if you're ok, if you're safe. And just a week or two ago, I was waiting on a line for an Iranian movie that was reviewed on the news right before, right before you came on, and the people in front of me were talking about your report and so I told them that you're my brother."

That was somewhat reassuring. All this time I'd been away so isolated and removed from home, to think that people at home might be thinking about me. "Don't you want to come home, though?" She asked, and I couldn't help but detect a judgemental note; maybe I was being hypersensitive.

"I don't know," I said. I hadn't really thought about it much. "I suppose I'm enjoying it now and when I start thinking about coming home, then it's probably time to come home."

"So, what's new with you?" I asked.

"Well, Anton and I are moving in together."

"Wow," I couldn't believe it. They had met almost a year before I had left the country -- both worked together in the same office, where they had a romance that they hid from the rest of their colleagues. Then she changed her job. "That's a pretty serious step...Where? When?"

"Next month. We're moving to Brooklyn. Both of us live in apartments the size of shoeboxes, so we figured we needed something bigger. And it's gotten so expensive in the city to rent or buy, so we were just thinking about something with some space to grow into. Dad helped us find it."

I genuinely happy for her, I liked Anton. He was brilliant, he had a kind nature, and he seemed to genuinely love my sister. But of course, I thought of some of the dreaded reprecussions. "Does mother know?" I knew she'd disapprove since Anton was not Jewish. Mother was very disappointed at the time she started seeing him, since she had broken off her relationship with the Jewish doctor to do so. She was so excited about potentially being the mother-in-law of a Jewish doctor, she would tell me. And I would tell her that I didn't trust him -- he had a wandering eye; but mother wasn't hearing it. Months after the doctor was out of the picture, mother would make phone calls to me in Tashkent, telling me that I should call my sister and advise her, as a big brother, that she is doing the wrong thing. Usually, because she didn't pay attention to the time difference, she was calling me at some ungodly hour in the evening, and I would use that as an excuse for needing to get off the line. "But you will talk to her, won't you?" She would say as I got off the phone. I always wondered how she could ever expect me to stand in the way of my sister's happiness. I wondered if she was trying to have my sister make the same kind of choices that she made, and possibly, the same mistakes.

"I haven't told her."

"Probably a good plan," I said. Though we both knew that eventually, there would be a noisy scandal that we just didn't want to deal with, not now, not ever. And so I changed the subject. I mused about Brooklyn. My sister loved living in the city, she loved going out at night, going to the theater, to the ballet, trying new restaurants. "I always thought of Brooklyn as where my friends, couples usually, disappeared to when they dropped out of city life, to quiet streets, family neighborhoods, never to be heard from again."

"I'll miss the city, having everything conveniently right outside your doorstep."

"Don't forget, there is life outside of Manhattan. I'm living proof. I never imagined it, but I'm happy. At least Brooklyn is in the same time zone, and only a subway ride away. And, it's a very nice place."

"Of course...and I'll be with Anton. That's what I want."

Labels: Sister

  ¶ 1:53 AM