In a Kingdom by the Sea

by Sara MacDonald

  Dazed, I get out of the car. The Mohatta Palace sits blue and gold within a lush English garden with green lawns and flowerbeds full of snapdragons and antirrhinums, lobelia and alyssum. It is a little oasis in the middle of this volatile city.

  We walk through white gates into a wide drive. There are pansies in pots and scarlet geraniums tumbling from urns. The smell of damp earth rises up from a sprinkler and I am overcome by acute homesickness for a cool, wet English summer.

  ‘The Mohatta Palace was built by a Hindu called Shrivratan Chandraratan Mohatta in the 1920s, as his summer home,’ Afia tells me. ‘It was designed in Rajput style. He used beautiful pink Jodhpur stone as well as the local yellow stone from Gizri, here in Pakistan. Unfortunately for him, he only managed to enjoy it for two decades before Partition. When he left Karachi for India he left his palace to Pakistan. It was the last residence of Fatima Jinnah, sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan …’

  I smile. So this is where Fatima ended her days.

  The beautiful blue-tiled entrance is framed against pink-tinged walls. The doors and window shutters are of dark carved wood. They frame creamy and decorated arched windows. I am enchanted. This tiny perfect palace is so unexpected in the middle of Karachi. Massima and Afia smile at my astonishment.

  ‘It’s miraculous,’ I say. ‘We fly out of the traffic, turn a corner and all of a sudden we are in a beautiful quiet road with a pink palace in the middle, surrounded by crumbling colonial houses and ancient trees.’

  ‘Most of the embassies used to be in this road,’ Massima says. ‘Many of these mansions are empty and neglected or have been in ownership dispute, since Partition. The Mohatta Palace was used by the Minister of Foreign Affairs before it was handed over to Fatima Jinnah. When she died it was sealed up and left to rot. Then in the 1980s the governor of Sindh decided to convert it into a museum.’

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Afia says and we climb the steps into the cool.

  Inside, the ornate ceilings and cornices are still intact and the original organic colours are still astonishingly vivid. There is a beautiful exhibition of ceramic tiles depicting the differing traditions and colours used in the separate regions of Pakistan and the surrounding Indus valley. The colours of the tiles – indigo, aquamarine, pale green and the deepest earth brown – have hardly faded hundreds of years later.

  The guide accompanying us tells us there is a secret underground tunnel that leads to a subterranean Hindu temple built to provide safe passage for Fatima Jinnah to go for her daily worship. There is also a tiled and secret swimming pool she used, hidden below ground. Once it was a place of wonder, the guide tells us, but time has made the passage crumble and it has now caved in and the entrance is blocked.

  The guide recounts, with much waving of his arms, the stories of the ghosts here in the Mohatta Palace. Massima and Afia translate for me with all the glee of small children being told a familiar fairy story. The ghosts are benign, the guide assures us; they just move things around the building at night when they feel like it.

  There are poignant black and white photographs showing a seemingly peaceful life before Partition, when Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims lived side by side.

  This was British India when they ruled supreme, when they hunted, shot and fished in country lodges with Indian maharajas. A world deftly depicted here in the small dolls’ houses with tiny rooms full of tiny Victorian furniture, paintings, and peg-doll servants cooking in hot outside kitchens.

  The time of rule when the British took elaborate Indian carvings and furniture back to England, leaving behind them a legacy of English country houses and formal rose gardens and wide roads planted with huge sheltering trees. Before Jinnah’s dream was realized, before the bloodshed birth of Pakistan.

  We go back outside, down the steps, into the late afternoon as the light is changing to mellow gold. I feel a flash of joy as we link arms and walk through the gardens to the back of the palace.

  There is a small courtyard with old, long-redundant statues. There is Queen Victoria with stiff soldiers of the Raj and huge ebony panthers lying in the last of the sunlight. The statue of Queen Victoria has been symbolically beheaded. Behind the courtyard wall, glittering in the distance, I glimpse the sea.

  My friends tactfully ignore the beheaded Victoria. ‘My father told me that the sea was nearer in the days when Fatima Jinnah lived here,’ Massima says, dreamily. ‘So much coastal land has been reclaimed that the sea is further away now.’

  As we turn to leave I look over at the shuttered mansions with their peeling, rotting balconies and neglected gardens. The ghosts of the ‘goras’ flit across the grass.

  I can almost hear the clink of glasses and soft music playing on. There is a flash of a colourful sari against the green lawns. Small children laugh and roll hoops across the wide gravel paths. Servants mould into the shadows, waiting to serve those who appear to have everything.

  I turn to Massima and Afia. ‘You could not have brought me anywhere more evocative or beautiful. Thank you for this lovely afternoon.’

  The two women smile at me over the top of the car. Afia says, ‘It is not over yet, Gabby. We are going to have English tea in Massima’s gallery and maybe, later, if you have the energy, we will do a little shopping …’

  Massima’s gallery is full of eye-catching sculptures and vivid and eclectic textiles and clothes. We sit in a white courtyard full of dappled sunlight. Green plants edge the walls. Delicious cakes and drinks are served from a tiny café. It is all exquisite. Massima has made a beautiful and peaceful space here on the edge of the city. I feel in awe of her talent and I wonder how difficult it was to achieve as a single woman on her own in Karachi.

  Massima smiles, as if she knows what I am thinking.

  ‘This is my place, my baby, Gabby, but it was easier for me to put the deeds in my father’s name, then I am not targeted by bigots. Now, please, try one of my cucumber smoothies. I am testing them out.’

  We are sitting at little wrought-iron tables. I am always amused at the seriousness with which Pakistanis decide what they are going to eat. After much debate Massima chooses a strawberry smoothie. Afia, a cinnamon beer. I pick a cucumber smoothie. It is utterly delicious.

  ‘Massima, for this I could almost give up white wine.’

  Massima laughs. ‘You are beginning to look a little better, Gabby. We were a little shocked when we saw you. You have lost much weight.’

  ‘Are you over your illness?’ Afia asks. ‘Do you need for us to get you any medicines? Rana told us that you had been very sick.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m fine now, honestly.’

  ‘But,’ Massima says, ‘you are sad, Gabby. It is there like a dark cloak. If my mother had not been sick I would have come often to see you.. I have neglected you …’

  ‘Massima, don’t be ridiculous …’

  ‘Are you missing your sons? Are you homesick?’ Afia asks. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  I turn my pale green drink between my fingers. I am not sure I can handle all this kindness. My friends watch me. I know it is not prurience. I can see their concern.

  Eventually, I say, ‘I’m … just going through a few … family problems.’

  Afia rolls her eyes. ‘Families, they are a minefield! Everyone in our vast family has to have his or her say on every single decision … Back in the UK and in Karachi …’ She stops. ‘You know, Gabby, a problem can grow bigger when you are alone with it. Sometimes it helps to talk with people …’

  ‘We don’t want to pry,’ Massima interrupts gently. ‘You don’t have to explain to us, but we are your friends. You are in a strange country and we want to support you.’

  For an awful minute I think I might cry. The waiter comes and puts three little lemon tarts in front of us. When I’ve recovered, I say, ‘Do you think it’s possible for someone to be a good man if he does one wicked thing in his life? I mean … what does one bad act make an otherwise good man?’

  My
friends are silent for a while, then Massima says, ‘But who judges if he was a good man in the first place? If a man is good to one person and evil to another, what does that make him?’

  Afia, the more devout, says, ‘The Koran tells us that if we repent of our sins and wish to make reparation Allah will forgive us, but He will know if we are not truly sincere and if we are self-serving …’

  I can’t leave it. ‘Can that man be truly repentant if he hides the truth from everyone and does not help the one he has harmed?’

  ‘How would you know?’ Massima asks. ‘If he has or has not helped the one he harmed unless you are the one?’

  Afia smiles at me. ‘This is Pakistan, the land of secrets, intrigue and compromised honour. Collusion is our middle name, believe me … truth is a double-edged sword. Now, eat,’ she pushes a tart my way, ‘that tiny lemon tart.’

  I pick up the cake fork. ‘You sound like a school teacher, Afia.’

  Afia laughs. ‘Well. I do lecture young people at business college.’

  ‘Delicious tarts! Eat up,’ my friends say and we begin to talk of places they will take me to see.

  As we drive back to the hotel in the rush hour, Massima, sitting next to me in the back, turns to me.

  ‘Gabby, I do not know what bad thing is troubling you, but whatever it is you must not let it ruin your life. You must guard your own world because if you do not, the bad thing will just keep eating away destroying you … You know, sometimes there are no answers and we just have to walk away and stop looking for them …’

  She places a finger on the back of my hand. ‘Family life can be cruel. I had an uncle I loved in Bradford. A gentle and kind man who taught me so much. He was sent to prison in 2006 for an attempted honour killing. His daughter, my cousin, fell in love with an English medical student. She refused to marry a cousin old enough to be her father, back in Lahore …’

  Outside the hotel, in the dusk, we hold each other tight for a moment. Massima and Afia grin at me. ‘Sorry, your hermit days are over, Gabby. We are going to be like very annoying sisters!’

  I laugh and roll my eyes in mock horror and slide back through the glass doors into the hum of my womb-like hotel.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Karachi, 2010

  It is early evening. The heat has drained from the sun. The shadows are lengthening. The breeze from the sea drops. I feel the delicious coolness of my skin as the sky flushes pink and the colours mellow into the shades of the earth. Some children are splashing about in the pool and I slide in with them.

  ‘Hello, hello!’ the children call.

  ‘Hello, hello!’ I call back and smile and swim through them. They reach out to touch my hair and I gently pinch their fat little limbs and they giggle delightedly. I swim and keep an eye on my towel. It is my chastity belt.

  I am trying to remember when Maman and Dominique were reconciled. I think it must have been when Dominique was pregnant with Aimee. I remember the happiness and relief when I realized that Maman was no longer angry with my sister. I had been allowed to go and spend time with Dominique in Paris with Aunt Laura. So it seemed natural to me that Maman would want to fly over to Paris to see Dominique, to see her grandchildren after they were born.

  After Cecile was born, Dominique’s Turkish husband left her and Dominique started to come back to Cornwall every summer. She and the little girls stayed in Papa’s extension after she had given birth to Cecile but after that they always stayed in a caravan or tent up at the campsite. Now I understand why.

  Dominique would do shifts in the café sometimes and Maman would look after her babies. It was never the same, of course. I was a teenager and Dominique was a mother. We could never recapture the closeness we had. There was never that easy familiarity between my parents and sister. I thought her return was the natural order of things. Whatever Dominique had done had been a long time ago and she seemed more stable once my parents were back in her life.

  Dominique had been pregnant twice, before Aimee and Cecile. The first time she had a miscarriage. A year later she got pregnant with a Moroccan boy on a student permit. She had an enormous baby who perpetually screamed. Dominique could not bond with him, she could hardly bear to touch him, so she felt only relief when the Moroccan boy’s family turned up demanding to take their son’s baby back to Morocco with them.

  We heard all this from Aunt Laura. She adored Dominique, but she was a single academic with a career. She wasn’t into children and I think Dominique had rather exhausted her by this time. These had been my sister’s awful, destructive years when I had, smugly, despaired of her.

  After the Moroccan boy, I think my sister stayed away from men for a while. She did not get pregnant again until she married the misogynist Turk.

  Now that I know what really happened I find this family reconciliation bizarre and confusing. Years and years of family holidays spent together in Cornwall. Sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandparents. Everything seemed utterly normal to me. How did Dominique manage to play happy families after what happened? She faced Papa each day. She let her girls into his life, into both my parents’ lives. How on earth did she manage to do that?

  I turn on my back and gaze up at the blue cloudless sky, feeling guilty and disturbed. I remember I found her passivity slightly boring. I was totally involved with myself at the time.

  Decades of keeping silent; now, successful and solvent, with all those hard years behind her, this has all erupted like a sleeping volcano.

  I get out of the pool, wrap myself in a thin cotton sarong and pick up my book. Out of the corner of my eye I see a plump Pakistani man approaching.

  ‘My name is Rahim.’ He points to my book. ‘May I please sit with you for a few minutes to talk about books? I love British writers.’

  My heart sinks – Pakistani men have no concept of private space – but he is so polite that it seems churlish to ask him to go away. I nod warily. He tells me he is a trainee solicitor in his father’s practice in Clifton. He is curious to know why I am always alone in the hotel and what I am doing here in Karachi. I tell him that I am not alone, that I have a husband who is away on business.

  He pulls one of the empty loungers nearer and parks his ample bottom sideways upon it. We talk for a while about English and Pakistani writers. He looks at the book I am reading. It is a book on the convoluted Pakistani political system, written by a woman.

  ‘Fatima Ali! She was not politician, she was just spurned wife …’ Rahim says dismissively, thus illustrating misogyny and the point of the book.

  ‘But a clever and powerful one,’ I say.

  Rahim does not really want to talk about books or powerful Pakistani women who have survived the feudal system. He wants to talk about himself. I have noticed him before, an odd-looking young man who does not seem to fit together to make quite a perfect whole. He spends his afternoons alone by the pool with English crime books that I do not think he reads.

  He asks me if I have noticed the angular young woman who comes occasionally to swim with him. I tell him I have noticed her. She swims in the Pakistani wetsuit costume and then collapses in a lounger, talking for hours into her mobile phone like most teenagers.

  I ask if she is his little sister. Rahim puffs up and tells me she is his wife. Her name is Leila. I am surprised as they rarely seem to talk to each other.

  ‘Love marriage,’ he says proudly. ‘I chose her. My parents, they tell me it is time I am married. So, I travel to Lahore to the family of my cousins. I choose Leila for my wife. My parents, they are very pleased, and Leila’s parents, they are even more pleased that I have chosen her …’

  Not quite a love match, then. More the finding of a cousin you liked and your parents approved of, before you were stuck in an arranged marriage with an ugly cousin. Not a free choice for Leila, I bet.

  ‘Was Leila also pleased that you had chosen her?’ I ask.

  Rahim looks puzzled. ‘Of course! Love marriage. Not arranged.’

  ‘But was
it the same for Leila?’ I persist. I can’t help it.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did Leila also choose you? Or was it an arrangement for her?’

  Rahim gives me that Pakistani blanking stare. ‘Of course not. My parents, they were pleased to negotiate with her parents for her. Neither of our parents arranged this. I chose.’

  I give up. There is a moment’s silence. Then I say, ‘She seems very young.’

  Rahim shrugs. ‘No, she was already a teacher of small children in Lahore.’

  ‘That’s great. Is she teaching here in Karachi?’

  ‘She is my wife,’ Rahim answers primly. ‘She does not work. She would like to go on being a teacher and I could allow her if I wished, but her time must be spent to keep my mother company in the house.’

  ‘Is your mother unwell?’

  ‘No, my mother, she is not unwell, but my father and I are out all the day working and she does not like to be alone in the house. It is not good for her. My wife, she must be company for my mother and look after her until my father and I return from our work at the office.’

  I stare at this lazy, smug, entitled man who spends his afternoons on his backside at the pool, not working. He has power over his bored young wife’s whole existence. He holds her life in his careless, soft hands, dictates her happiness. Rahim is only describing the middle-class life that Massima has rejected, but it is abhorrent to me and I feel a sudden and violent dislike of him.

  ‘How old is Leila?’

  ‘She is nineteen.’

  I close my eyes and think of the slim girl lowering herself into the water, weighted like a seal in her wetsuit, but at least allowed to swim. Or sitting by the edge of the pool clutching her mobile phone as if it were a lifeline, her precious link with home and friends and the freedom to be herself.