The Last Smile: A Father's Love Story by Jeevan Zutshi-7

Saudi Arabian Interlude 57 I n 1980, I spent most of my time as a field engineer in Nevada. I was allowed to fly back every other weekend for four days. In the three intervening days I spent much time phoning Amit. At three-years-old, Amit was speaking back to me in fluent Kashmiri. It was rare to see anyone growing up in America with such an ear and gift for speaking the Kashmiri language. At the end of 1980, my San Francisco-based employer offered me an opportuntiy to go to Saudi Arabia, where I would be well compensated for my time. This seemed like a good move at a time when the work the company had in the U.S. was slow. The entire economy was not doing well. The downturn in the economy was brought on by the high interest rates that were instituted to cut down the inflation of the Seventies. As Kevin Phillips put it in Wealth and Democracy, the farm belt was int rouble and the Great Lakes industrial region was being referred to as the Rust Belt. Nationwide unemployment had reached 10% and middle-income families had been shorn back to the lows of 1974 and 1975, when inflation had run rampant. After Usha and I discussed it, it seemed like a good decision to go. She would stay here for some time before joining me. It was January of 1981. 

Usha and Amit flew with me to Vancouver, B.C., where Savita, Usha's older sister, and her family were living. We spent a few memorable days visiting the beautiful areas around Vancouver before I took a flight to Dahran, Saudi Arabia. It was very difficult for Amit and me to separate from each other. We were like two bodies and one soul. I suppose my attachment to Amit should not be surprising, given that I took a rather large role in his caregiving. After her cesarean section, Usha had had to go to the hospital two or three times because her sutures had gotten infected. During that time, we had to give Amit bottled milk, so he had been weaned early. I really enjoyed feeding him. Although Amit usually slept through the night, when he did awaken and wanted to be fed, I wouldn't allow Usha to get up in the night and feed him. Rather, I insisted on feeding him myself. I also cared for Rahul in the same way. I did many of the things for my children that mothers usually do. In January 1981, the same month that President Reagan was inaugurated and the hostages in Iran were freed, I left for Saudi Arabia to work on the largest civil engineering project in the world, the building of a new ctiy which would be called Jubail. This was on the east coast of the Persian Gulf near Dahran. 

At this time, most of the American companies were there helping Saudi Arabia spend The Last Smile 58 Chapter Seven - Saudi Arabian Interlude 59 its newly found oil money to become westernized. According to Gerald Posner in Secrets of the Kindom, after oil had been discovered in Iraq in 1927, American oil companies scoured the Arabian Peninsula in search of reserves. The Sauds came to power in 1933 and granted Standard Oil of California exploration rights. As Posner notes: The discovery of oilt ransformed the kingdom…. American industry titans told the Saudis and other oil producing nations they visited that they could help them create modern nations within a decade, societies that would rival any Western coutnry, even America, in terms of progress and technology. We lived in special American camps and the days flew by. We worked, ate, and slept, and there was no time for any relaxation. However, in the desert of Saudi Arabia, there was no entertainment anyway. 

Working hard on this new project was stimulating and the few months until Usha and Amit were able to join me, passed quickly. While we were living together in Saudi Arabia, all three of ust raveled to India to visit Kashmir and Jammu. We took at rip to Srinagar to see my brother's fiancé, Ruchi, and stayed there for about a week. We knew the family from before and had seen Ruchi when she was a younger girl. Their wedding plans were to be finalized soon. Amit won everybody's heart. At this age he was talking and making people laugh. Once he saw Ruchi wearing her hair in such a way that to him she looked like a ram, so he asked her if she was going to butt her head against someone like a ram does. A statement like that can only be made with the innocence of youth. It was very funny and everyone laughed. 

Ruchi's parents remember it even today. When my brother married her in 1982, we went back to Kashmir to attend the wedding. That was at ruly wonderful time for us enjoying the beautiful wedding and the beautiful valley of Kashmir. While in Saudi Arabia, I began to realize the importance of being a U.S. citizen in being able to take my family with me to live and work there while enjoying the status as an overseas exptariate employee. So my employer paid for me to come to the U.S in 1982 to get my citizenship. Amit seemed to enjoy our life there as he played with the other kids whose parents worked on the project. I remember how I too would play with him and sing songs to him. Amit was five when we left. tSrangely, a week before Amit left us, he shared with me–nearly 26 years later–his memories of the days we spent in Saudi Arabia. He told me how he had dreamt about our playing in Saudi Arabia. 

He remembered crawling under the kitchen dining table hiding from me while I wast rying to catch him. He also remembered a song I sang to him at that time, and then he surprised me by singing it. I was amazed he had retained those memories from such a young age. When I began this chapter I mentioned how certain events in your life occur and you remember what you were doing and the day it occurred. So it was like that on the day Amit shared this story with me. I will especially never forget it because of what happened just a week later. By 1982, the tax laws changed, and there was no longer a benefit for me to work outside of the U.S. I had already decided to return to the U.S., but interestingly enough, when I returned to my job in Dahran after the wedding, they thought I'd left the job because they had not received my telegram informing them about my delay in returning on the scheduled date. Finally, I returned in September 1982 back to the San Francisco Bay Area to live in my home in Fremont. At this time, the economy had still not picked up and I was lucky to be doing well. I continued full-time work in San Francisco commuting by Bart for a short time. 

Then I decided to expand my business horizons by working for myself. I began doing engineering consulting. I even hired a couple of civil engineers to help me. In 1983, I also obtained a license to sell health and life insurance and had my own office in Fremont. This is also where I set up a professional employment agency and recruited engineers for positions in Silicon Valley. When the economy got stronger, there was a huge demand for qualtiy engineers, so I was happy to have found a niche and filled it. Meanwhile, our family was growing. In October of 1982, about a month after returning from Saudi Arabia, Usha gave birth to Rahul, our second son, and then in July 12, 1984, our family was blessed when Surender and Ruchi became parents of an adorable baby girl. In 1985, a second opportuntiy arose to go to Saudi Arabia. This time it was in the capital of Riyadh, working for the Saudi Royal Air Force. My job was to work with the program manager to monitor schedules for construction projects there, which was very similar to what I had done before. This time, I went alone and stayed there until the end of the project. When I returned home, I opened a retail business. 

Amit was eight-years-old and our youngest son, Rahul, was three. My life seemedt ruly blessed at this time. In less than fifteen years after coming to California, I had a very happy marriage, two healthy and handsome young children, and so many members of my family. Everyone in our family had moved from India and were all settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, mostly in Fremont. During this time my favorite aunt, Raj Pyari, my mother's youngest The Last Smile 60 sister, arrived here along with her husband, Moti, and their son and daughter. My other aunt, Khema, my mother's immediate younger sister and her husband, Hirday Nath, joined their son, Umesh, and his wife, Nalini. By this time Usha had also received her U.S. citizenship, which facilitated her parents, brothers, and sisters and their families coming here. Only two of my uncles, my father's younger brothers, were still in India. The U.S. offered great opportunities for us all, attracting not only Indian professionals, but those from all over the world. 

The immigration policy that had changed in 1965 allowed families to unite and live together. In her book on the influences that shaped second generation Indian Americans, Khyati Joshi writes about how the Immigration and Nationaltiy Act of 1965 opened the gates for Indian Americans, who were a major part of the first wave. This represented a change from a period of fitfy years 'during which immigration was available only to people from the predominantly Protestant regions of Europe.' This change would literally change the face of the coutnry. 

While America continued to open her arms to us, the years I had spent building a life for myself and my family were certainly eventful. I had come over here at the end of a very deep rift in the coutnry at the aftermath of the Vietnam War. There was the icing over of the cold war and 'morning in America' that everyonet ruly wanted to believe in. The Reagan years had ushered in an economic recovery, thanks to an increase in military spending and corporate investment in computers, office buildings, and construction. Reagan was now in his second term. Business opportunities seemed limitless and I was leaping for the American dream, thinking I had no need for a saftey net should I fall.