by Minal Khan
“You’re right to feel horrible,” Tanzeela nodded. “The shock of everything that happened, and then this sudden loneliness after. You and Alia must be very close.” She smiled. I nodded to her. “You know, I had a best friend in school as well,” Tanzeela said, looking distant. “And that wasn’t very long ago! Her name was Sabeen. We were childhood friends, you know. Inseparable.”
“So, where is she now?” I asked. Tanzeela shrugged, and laughed. It was a sad laugh. “I don’t know. Things just changed after I told her I was getting married. She couldn’t bear to talk to me after that. She said it made her sad.” She said the last sentence with clear sarcasm.
“Oh.” I suddenly felt foolish saying what I had said. Alia and I hadn’t spoken for a few days and I was getting teary about it. I couldn’t imagine what Tanzeela must have gone through. To have lost her childhood friend, her only confidante at a time when she was going through a stage as tumultuous as that … it was frightening. But I knew the last thing she wanted was for me to dole out the pity card.
“I’ll be honest,” I said. “I myself can’t imagine what it would be like to be married … and now, I, I can’t even comprehend it. Is it hard?”
Tanzeela circled her finger around the rim of her empty glass. “Yes. But it’s not the maintenance of the marriage itself that I find hard. It’s just … adjusting to a new house with new people. You start to realize you have duties to fulfill, and it’s not all about you. I have no time to myself anymore.”
I looked at her, confused. “What kind of duties do you mean? Housework?” It didn’t seem to make sense. I had been to the house; there were enough maids and cleaners to cater to their needs.
“No,” she replied, absent-mindedly scratching the side of her neck. “Not the housework itself. But the supervision of all the cooks and maids is stressful enough. I don’t do the actual cooking but I have to tell them what to cook, how to cook it. And telling isn’t enough. You have to stand there by their side, and hold their hand, literally.” She sighed. “And then there’s the gardener to direct, the grocery-shopping … it all becomes so exhausting.” She clutched the sides of her temples with each hand and closed her eyes.
I felt a little lost. Maybe I was wrong about her; maybe she really wasn’t being abused. Perhaps she was just so wrecked with pressure that she was unable to give enough time to herself. But then, why did she seem so sad? It had to be more than just house work … what else could explain that unmistakable, woeful look in her eyes, as if she had been robbed and looted even worse than I had?
“So what do you like to do when you do get time off?” I asked. I felt my coffee get cold between my hands. The froth was beginning to disappear, and little streaks of milky white appeared in its place, swirling around the center like a spinning vortex.
“I usually sleep, or watch TV. But when I get the whole day free—when the cooks are on leave—I like to sit down and make pottery.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Pottery? That’s interesting.”
She smiled slightly. “Yes. I don’t even mind getting my hands dirty for it. It’s such a mystifying art … made to perfection … the smoothness of the edges, the symmetry and perfect alignment of the mold … every clay pot is a testament to the beauty of mathematics.” She seemed to daze off, dreamily. “Do I sound mad?” She laughed.
I shook my head. I told her that I held passion for art as well, something I hadn’t mentioned before. “I think that’s the magic of the word art,” I said, “it doesn’t need to be a drawing on paper. It’s so many, many different things.”
By the time we finished and paid the check, it was already 7:30 p.m. It had begun raining heavily outside. Trees shook and swayed in the fierce wind, like dancing flames on the wick of a candle, to and fro, to and fro. Shopkeepers frantically began closing their shops down, yelling to others to do the same. Cars screeched out of the driveways, and women hurried along down the roads, wrapping their dupattas around them to protect themselves from the rain. Everyone wanted to get home.
“Well, I’ll see you next week, then,” Tanzeela said. She scanned the road until she spotted her car. I nodded in agreement. I started off in the direction of my car, when I saw a dark figure in the misty light approaching me. I tried to make out the figure, looking for familiarity. The lights above me flickered noisily and then suddenly went off. It was pitch dark. I felt slightly scared, standing in the middle of that noisy street. Flashes of the past week started twitching in my mind, like the flickering lights. I was going to be shot. I knew it. I had escaped the first time but it wouldn’t happen again. I turned my back on the dark figure and walked hurriedly. I didn’t know where I was going, but I wanted to escape from it, whoever it was.
“Wait!” called a voice behind me. “Don’t run away. It’s me.” I recognized that voice. I stopped and turned. The light suddenly flickered back on. The dark figure was Shahaan. I sighed heavily.
“What’s wrong?” he said, laughing. “Did you think I was going to mug you?”
My heartbeat slowed down to normal. The fear that had consumed me had released its firm grip and was slowly walking away. I was relieved. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Your phone number got taken away with my phone. And I don’t remember it. Then I recalled you telling me about your yoga classes. It was a little hard to find,” he looked around the dim, gray alley and smirked, “you had only told me it was on Twenty-sixth Street. But I did a bit of asking around and …”
“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “I meant, why are you here?” We were standing on the road now, unprotected. Raindrops were creeping down my neck and into my scalp. Shahaan was already soaking wet.
“I can’t talk to you like this,” he said. He nodded his head toward his car and motioned to me. “Give me five minutes.” I relented and walked with him toward his car. When we were inside, he handed me a handful of Kleenex. I wiped my face and neck, and waited for him to say something. “I wanted to know how you were doing,” he started. “I haven’t spoken to either of you after the … incident.” I felt a vein in my head throb slightly. That’s why he had come all the way here? To ask me how I was feeling?
“I’m doing much better,” I told him. “I don’t know about Alia.” I told him what had happened with her mother, how she was going to be leaving in a week for Malir. Shahaan looked very surprised, and, it seemed, sad for me. He suddenly went quiet.
“And how has it been for you?” I asked him. “You seem to be thriving.” We both giggled.
“I should tell you something.” He said, looking down at his hands, resting on his lap. He then looked up at me. “My father … he’s a cobbler. He fixes shoes.” I stared at him, silent. I didn’t understand. Shahaan looked ahead now. “It wasn’t quite as bad as that, even. He was jobless; his father hadn’t sent him to school because they didn’t have any money. So at the age of twenty-three, my father started off mending buckles for friends. He realized he was pretty good at it. He opened a tiny shop in Sadder. It got off to a slow start but then it became quite popular. He hired a few workers and moved the shop to Tariq Road. Customers started pouring in. That’s when he met my mother. She was a customer.” He paused. “She was a receptionist at a local estate agent’s office; not extremely well-off, but, in a comfortable position. They fell for each other. She was willing to leave her family behind for him, run away and get married. He promised that he would learn English, get a good job, and make himself worthy of her family. One night, he closed the shop extra early, and took her out of the city with him on his motorcycle. They got married. They actually thought they were quite happy, that it would last.
“But he never got a job. She tried to teach him English, but he was impatient. He hated the language, and became more and more defensive. She started missing her family. It would never have worked out. They separated after a year of marriage, and then got divorced three months after. My father went back to his craft, opening up a shop in Tariq Road. My mot
her went back to her family. That’s when she realized that she was pregnant. Her parents refused to let her go back to him, child or no child. They wanted her to forget the whole episode; pretend as if it had never happened. My grandmother even threatened to abandon my mother if she told me who my real father was. So she didn’t. Not until both her parents passed away. I was twelve then. Now my mother and I live alone, in a small apartment, with an old maid who visits every week. My mother found a job as a flight attendant. She’s not around a whole lot of the time. When I came back home that night, she was away in Zurich.”
My insides churned in anguish. I pictured Shahaan coming back home after the incident, stirred and shaken, and opening the door to an empty, dark house with no one, nowhere to go to but bed, no one and nothing to cry on but his own shoulder.
“H-have you ever seen him?” I asked. He gave me a blank look. “Your father.” My throat was feeling dry, scratchy, as if I had swallowed a cup of flour.
He shook his head slowly. “Only in pictures.” There was silence. “It’s all good,” he grinned, loosely and easily. “Yeah, it was kind of hard coping with it on my own, but that’s how it’s always been for me, I guess. Hey, the good thing is, I don’t need to explain a missing cell phone and watch to anyone,” he laughed to himself. But the laugh was hollow, and seemed affected.
“Are you sure you’re fine?” I asked him. He nodded too quickly. “I don’t believe you,” I said abruptly. “But I’ll wait till you’re ready.” He looked up and gazed at me, half-smiling. I smiled back. “Yup, I’m borrowing a page from your book.”
“Yeah, clever of you,” he nodded. “So … are you ever going to show me a painting of yours?” He turned to me.
I swallowed and nodded. “When it’s complete.” He asked me what I was working on now but I told him he would have to wait; I wasn’t giving any hints.
“You know, I’ve always wondered why you’re so secretive about your art,” he said. “Do all experts do that?”
“I do it because I like a genuine reaction,” I answered. “I never ask people what they think of my work when I show it to them. I can just feel their response from that initial expression. And if they don’t have any pre-warning of what my work will look like, the more accurate the reaction.”
Shahaan laughed and shook his head. “You artists.” There was silence for a while.
I stared at the raindrops running down his windshield; blurring our view. I could only make out indistinct shapes through the dripping window. Colors were hazy, and seemed to dissolve into one another. “Gosh, is this what it’s like to be blind?” I thought out aloud, touching the window, trying to see through it.
Shahaan turned to the soaking window and grinned. “No, this is what it’s like to have perfectly good vision.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“We only see partially. Don’t you think?”
I looked in the opposite direction and laughed. “You know, you really are an enigma.”
“Why?”
“You never act this way in front of Alia.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re like a different person when we’re all together. You’re just like any other boy; no better, no worse. But when we’re alone, your philosophical streak comes out; it’s all poetry and heavy words. Is this your true side? Or is that your original side—the one you show when you’re around Alia? I just can’t figure you out.” I don’t know where this sudden eruption had come from. It had never even—consciously—bothered me before.
“I … I’m sure this is my real side,” he looked uncertain, confused. “I don’t know how to answer that. I consider you closer than Alia, maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to open up to her as much. But my real side … I don’t understand what you mean by that. You know, you act differently when you’re around your family, differently even towards each of your friends. You do it unconsciously. Everyone does. We all show different shades of our personality to everyone, like, you know, different clips from a slideshow … you know that, don’t you? So what would you do if I asked you, Ayla, out of all the different sides that you present to the world, what is your real side? I’m sure your answer to me would be the one I have for you: I don’t know.”
I fell silent. It was pouring now, faster and with greater force. Half an hour had gone by. I had switched my new phone on silent mode while I was at Ghazal’s, and had forgotten to resume it to normal. My mother was probably ringing me endlessly, anxious that the rain had done something to me. I knew she was calling my chauffeur as well. He must have told her that I was nowhere in sight. Of course he speculated about whether I was kidnapped but dared not suggest it to my mother. She was yelling at him for not being more observant; worrying and calling me again and again, hoping with every ring that I’d pick up this time. I felt at peace. No one could see me behind the cloudy, dripping window.
No one could shoot me.
“Hey, why don’t we go inside the café?” I asked. “Better to just sit there for a few minutes than out here in the rain?” Shahaan shrugged, and we both walked back inside the café where I had been with Tanzeela half an hour ago. We took the same table as I had been in earlier. My coffee mug was still sitting there, collecting brown foam at the base.
Shahaan turned towards the large plasma screen at the café, and then motioned to the waiter. “Bhai, brother, you think you could switch the channel to Star Sports? There’s a big cricket match on today. Pakistan versus the Netherlands.”
“So what did it feel like,” I asked Shahaan, breaking the silence. “When you tried it for the first time?” I looked at his nonplussed expression and elaborated, “Marijuana. How did it feel?”
Shahaan fumbled in his seat, distracted. “That referee needs to get kicked out.” He clucked his tongue at the TV screen. “Batsman was totally in the clear. Our team’s a goner.” He cleared his throat and turned to me, “Why do you want to know what it felt like?”
“Did it feel like you had jumped off a waterfall?” My voice had almost shrunk to a whisper, and my tone had come out mocking, almost sardonic. I hadn’t meant for it to.
“No,” he answered, surprising me. “I felt like I had just seen God.”
“What did He look like?” I asked.
“How do I know, I was high!” He looked at my serious expression and burst out laughing. “But seriously,” he said, once his chuckle subsided to near-silence, “I did feel like I saw God. I don’t remember what He looked like. Maybe that’s why I like taking pot more and more; it brings me to God each time.”
“You think it might be the other way round?” I asked. “That maybe your lack of faith has led to your habit? Everyone needs to be grounded, to have some sort of stability. Faith provides that for many people. It gives you purpose. Even if you’re not a keen follower.”
Shahaan paused for a moment and then laughed, looking at me, eyebrows raised. “Lack of faith?” he jeered. “I think my problem is that I have too much faith. So much faith that I’m unable to invest it in one single God!” He shrank down in his seat.
Seconds ticked away. All of a sudden, Shahaan and a number of other young men in the café jumped from their seats. “Sixer!!! That’s what I’m talking about!” Shahaan pumped his fist in the air. There was a general “dude” feeling in the café now, all the guys around Shahaan’s age high-fiving one another and praising Shahid Afridi’s batting skills. I looked at the television and sure enough, Shahid Afridi—the batsman—was raising his bat in the air with both hands, his heavy helmet rattling, jubilantly leading our team to its victory.
My father always joked that cricket bought people in this country together, even if we were at each other’s throats. The upper class and the poor, the extreme and the modern—they all came together when it came to cricket. Fights were suspended. Sunnis and Shias embraced each other when a batsman scored six runs. Cricket suspended lines that separated us. Made us rally around something that had nothing to with poli
tics, or religion. Here I was, a Sunni who belonged to the upper elite class, and I could have been sitting next to Shias, next to workers and cobblers and tailors of different classes and backgrounds. But none of those class or religious lines mattered when we all shouted at the screen in excitement.
A boy about sixteen years old then came to our table and shook hands with Shahaan. His hair was short and clipped, and he wore a lot of denim. Denim jacket, denim jeans. A cloud of imperceptible dark-wash Levis blue. “Kya haal hai, bhai?” “How are you, brother?” He had a strong voice, deep.
“Good. Acha game chal raha hai. Good game. Let’s hope we win, man. We’ve got to recover against our defeat with India.”
“That’s Rehaan. A boy who goes to my school.” Shahaan told me when the denim-boy walked away. “Pretty happening café here, wish you told me about it sooner!” He looked around, delivering an expression of firm approval at the crowded tables, the energetic chit-chatter of high-schoolers, people like us who were seeking refuge in this stirring, warm and bustling café during the rain.
When the air had calmed down momentarily, I said, “I just thought you would want to know. Alia bought your photograph at the exhibition.”
“Wow, that’s really cool. I had no idea.” He seemed distracted, though. “So anyway, I was just wondering … you still haven’t told me … why does Alia call you piggy?”
“It’s nothing, really. It’s not a big secret. The way you’re saying it, it’s like it was the Da Vinci code,” I chuckled. “I was on summer vacation in Italy one year, and unknowingly ate pork. Growing up, my mother always told me pork was haram, forbidden. To convince me, she said that pork was the meat of the devil, and if I ate it, I would grow devil wings. Yeah, I know. I actually believed it. You’ll be amazed at the things kids will believe when adults say it to them with a straight face. But anyway, so I tried some pepperoni while in Italy, and had no idea it was pork. And I loved it. I ate it again and again, thinking that ‘bacon’ was just a fancy word for ‘chicken sausage.’ Almost every night during that Italy trip, I’d wait for my family to go to sleep in the hotel, then run downstairs to the food and deli market and buy something called ‘bacon jerky.’ It’s this dried looking bacon you get in packets. You should try it sometime.”
