Out of the Silence

by Owen Mullen

  Logan smiled. ‘My pleasure.’

  In Lahore, I realised how much of that applied to me. How had I got here? How had it come to this? I knew some of it, the rest was a nightmare. Changing the speech, probably the last good decision I’d made.

  No, not probably, definitely. From then on it had been one shit move after another.

  -------

  The phone call came out of the blue. Would I meet her? Reluctantly, I agreed.

  She was early by ten minutes and it was easy to understand why. A woman who looked the way she did didn’t need to set up her entrance. Any time was the right time. Doctor Simone Jasnin walked without hurry across the hotel atrium to the bar. I saw her take in the unshaven face, the unwashed hair and clothes that cried for an iron.

  She was sleek, manicured and stylish, in a maroon and grey silk sari; elegant and fragrant in an unforced way. I guessed she was single through choice. My head ached. I managed a wisp of a smile and stood to greet her. ‘Doctor Jasnin?’

  ‘Mr Buchanan.’

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Sparkling water, no ice or lemon.’

  I caught a waiter’s attention and ordered; water for her, Chivas Regal for me. I’d no use for small talk, even on a good day, and her perfection made me edgy. Or maybe it was the alcohol from the night before. ‘So, what can I do for you?’

  ‘I’d like your help.’

  I studied her; the hair, the eyes, the mouth. This was a beautiful woman. In the past, I would’ve chased her until she let herself be caught. ‘You’d like my help with what exactly? How can I help a doctor?’

  She bristled. ‘As I told you when I called, my name is Simone Jasnin. I work in rural areas. I lived here when I was young. My father was Pakistani. After he died my mother moved back to France. I decided to return and make a contribution to my father’s country. It’s my country, too.’

  She stopped. The waiter placed our drinks in front of us, arranging the white paper coasters in a tiny performance of gentility. She’d paid no attention when I ordered, now her eyes lingered on the double whisky as the doctor in her observed me.

  ‘You’re half French?’

  ‘And half Pakistani. But Pakistan is my home. I think it always will be. I love her. That’s why I’m here, Mr Buchanan.’

  ‘Because you love your country? And you believe there’s some way I can help? Why me?’

  ‘I asked around. I was told you were good. You may know little about medicine, though MEDICAL might disagree if they still had a business worth having, but you do know about injustice, and that’s why I need your help…to bring a gross injustice out into the world.’

  I listened, more interested in her than her words. ‘And this injustice is?’

  ‘The treatment of women in Pakistan,’

  I finished my drink and searched for the waiter. She hadn’t touched hers. I didn’t offer another. ‘The treatment of women almost anywhere is an injustice.’

  The waiter interrupted my platitudes and went into the same ritual, this time adding a bowl of nuts to the table-top choreography. ‘Would you like me to explain the conditions many women endure in Pakistan?’

  ‘Of course, if you want to, though I doubt there’s any way I can help.’

  She stood. The coloured silks of her sari fell in an elegant cascade. I saw the depth of her brown eyes and realised I’d said the wrong thing. She looked at me and at the glass I was holding. ‘I’m boring you, I’m sorry.’

  There was a time when I would have handled this meeting effortlessly, committed myself to nothing, and still be taking her to dinner this evening. The woman in front of me was a medical professional, her tone clipped. ‘I’m disappointed not to have been able to interest you in the plight of millions of people. Perhaps it wouldn’t have made a big enough story for you.’

  ‘Doctor Jasnin…’

  I’d reaped as I’d sown and it didn’t feel nice. She cut me off. ‘No matter, I’ll look for someone else to help with the problems that concern me. You have your own I see.’

  The remark caught me off guard. ‘What problem?’

  ‘The one in your hand, Mr Buchanan.’

  I watched her go, angry with myself and her. After a few steps, she turned and spoke. ‘Actually, I lied a moment ago. I wasn’t told you were good. I was told you used to be good.’

  Chapter 18

  There were easier ways to go about it but this was the way he preferred. Three nights a week he made the journey, always on foot. He didn’t visit the same places at the same times, for what would be the point of that? The element of surprise was important if anything was to be gained. Gulzar Hafeez was his father and he’d taught his son all he could, including his cardinal rule: stay in touch with what’s going on in the business.

  ‘Tell me what you see.’

  ‘Everything, I can see everything.’

  ‘So can I, and that’s why I sit here.’

  ‘So you can see everything, I understand.’

  ‘And so that everyone can see me seeing everything. Do you understand that?’

  But insight couldn’t be got at a distance; it needed to be gathered first hand. There were many things to know and learn: about the food, the suppliers; about the customers who visited the restaurants and the people who worked in them. Trading, profit and loss sheets gave up their truths to anyone able to interpret the columns of figures and percentages. That kind of knowledge was invaluable, of course, and could be mined without leaving the office. Yet it didn’t hold the essence. It had no smell, no feel. It was the mechanics of business – no substitute for instinct. Real success was achieved by watching and listening. Management by walking about the business gurus called it in their books. Jameel’s guru had known what they preached before they’d even been written.

  Gulzar was wistful. ‘How I wish I could teach you everything, Jameel, but some things are beyond words. They have to be discovered. Uncovered. Little pieces that cannot be given away.’

  ‘So I’ll never be as good as you. If you can’t tell me everything you’ve learned, then something will always be missing.’

  ‘True, but not true.’

  Jameel remembered tearing some bread, bracing himself for another of Gulzar’s riddles. ‘True that I cannot teach you to be me. And why would you want to be me anyway? Not true because I can show you where to find what I cannot tell you.’

  ‘Where?’

  Gulzar pointed to his belly. ‘In here, in your gut, Jameel, that’s where the truth whispers to us.’

  At the time, the idea repelled him. Now a wiser Jameel smiled.

  ‘The heart is a poet’s notion of things. A romantic falsehood used to wrap our emotions and sell them to us. Feeling is in our core.’

  His explanation sounded hollow, inadequate, and he realised it. ‘What I’m trying to say is simply this. Most often – almost always in my experience – if something feels wrong, it is wrong. If I begin to suspect a manager of stealing from me, even though I have no proof, I know that man is a thief. And how do I know? My gut tells me. Then I only have to watch and wait until the proof arrives, and it always does. It always does.’

  His conviction was absolute.

  Jameel stayed silent. A lifetime of experience and wisdom sat across from him eating a chicken leg, fresh from the tandoor.

  ‘Instinct, intuition, feel, the name doesn’t matter. I’m getting old, and old men are allowed to be vulgar once in a while, it’s expected of us, so I call it my gut. The part that cannot be taught is what your gut tells you. Learn to listen to it, hear what it says and believe it. When all else fails, when the best advice has been sought and weighed, give an ear to your inner voice, wiser than any expert, more reliable than the closest friend.’

  Jameel had heard him struggle to pass on the best of himself, willing his words to find their mark. And they had. Whenever his gut spoke, he listened. Nothing would be gained by the boss taking his ego for a stroll, frightening the managers, casting
a perfunctory eye across his empire; deaf to the voice.

  Over the years, Jameel hadn’t wasted his time at his father’s feet. He’d learned. Become a man. And not just any man: tall and handsome, confident and assured, Jameel Akhtar Hafeez, adopted son of Gulzar, was the managing director of Ravi Restaurants. His education, begun with Pir, was completed in the workplace. Gulzar had given him more, handed him pegs to hang a philosophy on, bit by bit, and, in conversations too many to count, had helped him fashion the pieces for hanging.

  Jameel had fallen on it, devoured it whole, hungry for more. The love between them grew until Gulzar was his father, though not because it said so on a piece of paper buried in a filing cabinet somewhere.

  Their relationship was no one-sided affair. Neither would have wished for that. His nephew’s unexpected arrival brought a new purpose to the older man’s life. The zest that had fuelled his success in business returned, rekindled, burning brightly to help the boy from Mundhi. But which one? They were both that boy.

  Each presented the other with an opportunity, and each had maximised the chance. Mundhi was where they’d come from and no trace remained, in the father or his son, except in the deepest part of them.

  Jameel was to be recognised by the Chamber of Commerce as the newest and youngest star in the sky. Gulzar was proud and silly with it. He had done his work well.

  Tonight, as usual, his son walked through the cascade of bodies, unfazed. “Why don’t you let me drive you?” How many times had Ali asked? He didn’t want to be driven, he wanted to walk, like the first night when Ali led the way and he’d followed with no idea where he was going. Walking put him in touch with the feeling of adventure he’d felt, and reawakened his gratitude.

  There had been other outcomes for Jameel Akhtar’s life, very different from how it was, so he stopped and started, changing his path every few strides, dodging right then left, on through the masses. As complete in himself as anyone on the street.

  Mazur, the lorry driver who had given him a lift, had told him to walk straight and tall and he did, so long as thoughts of Afra stayed away. Jameel still saw her face and heard her voice. She was always with him. There was no escape and he wanted none.

  wherever you are I am. And wherever I am, you are too

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  ‘Good-evening Mr Hafeez.’

  ‘Good-evening to you, Tariq.’

  Jameel allowed himself to be led to a table set for four far from the main dining area. He wouldn’t see much from there and suspected that was the hope. The manager interrupted a waiter on his way into the kitchen. ‘Coffee for Mr Hafeez.’

  Jameel frowned. Lateef was new to this level of dining and it showed. The man had done well in other places where the approach was more casual, in Jahan’s things worked differently; the customer came first, even before the boss.

  The coffee arrived. Lateef moved off. Jameel hoped he wasn’t hiding in the kitchen. He made a note to have a chat with him, one-to-one. The assistant manager had promise that required nurturing. And that was his job: his and Ali’s. He sipped the coffee – a prop to justify taking up table space while he studied the operation.

  Lateef was back at the centre of things. Perhaps he was being hard on the man. Jameel lived in a black and white world. Gulzar had tried to persuade him there was plenty of grey in between.

  The laugh cut through the hum of conversation like a cry in a library, harsh and unexpected. He followed the sound to a man sitting across from a female, and froze.

  The customer clicked his fingers – a waiter hurried to respond – asking for his bill, no doubt. His companion was young, seventeen maybe, and very good-looking. They gazed at each other, heads bent close in the language of the intimate. When the waiter brought the bill, the man barely glanced at the amount and laid money on the table. Jameel saw him and remembered the sleek German car stranded on the baked earth. Eight years earlier their eyes had locked across the dusty compound. It could have been yesterday

  Unforgettable – the face of an enemy.

  The couple rose to go. He let the woman leave first, his delicate manners at odds with bawdy laughter and clicking fingers. They passed within feet of Jameel and he saw the girl was a fresh-faced beauty. In contrast, her companion was lined, a hooked nose hanging above a sensual mouth, thick and definite like sculpted clay. Time had added threads of white to the hair and moustache, but the eyes remained the same; hooded and cold.

  They swept out, unaware of Jameel’s scrutiny, impervious to his shock. He asked a waiter if the assistant manager was available and tried to make sense of what had just happened. ‘You wished to see me before you go, Mr Hafeez?’

  ‘Yes, Lateef. I have a question for you. Tell me, the man who just left, who is he? He was at table four.’

  ‘Table four,’ Lateef looked back into the restaurant. ‘Table four. That would be Mr Dilawar Hussein.’

  ‘Dilawar Hussein. Does he eat here often?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir, Mr Dilawar Hussein’s a regular customer of ours.’

  ‘And the woman?’

  ‘The woman I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you seen her before?’

  ‘No, never, she’s one of many.’

  ‘Many?’

  ‘Mr Dilawar Hussein always has glamorous company. He’s a very lucky man.’

  Lateef disappeared, happy to escape before the questions became more difficult. Jameel felt light-headed. He joined the tide of people out on the street and headed for home, drifting at the speed of the slowest pedestrian.

  A regular customer, usually accompanied by a glamorous woman. One of many.

  The core his uncle called his gut told him to be careful. Dilawar Hussein liked good food and good-looking women. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all except he was Afra’s husband. Perhaps they were divorced or separated. Muslim men were allowed more than one wife, then again maybe he was an unfaithful spouse, or maybe Jameel’s lost love was back in Mundhi.

  Maybe? Maybe? Maybe?

  Questions without answers. Tonight he’d seen the man who had taken his childhood sweetheart looking prosperous and well. He’d been with a woman. But the woman wasn’t her.

  The past was in the present and he was her protector again. Voices whispered to him, one louder than the rest. Over and over asking, where was Afra?

  Chapter 19

  Staff moved between tables, refilling glasses, mostly soft drinks or water. I thought about The Dorchester: my night. The comparison was easy to make though this hotel was in Lahore and I was a spectator instead of the star.

  Today someone else had landed that role.

  Seven foreign journalists shared two translators, one into English the other into German. Without them, I wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes. My attention span, indeed my ability to stay interested in anything or anyone for very long, had diminished in inverse proportion to my drinking: the more I drank the less able I was to concentrate. I had little to say to the others who probably assumed I was a snooty bastard. The truth was something else. My silence wasn’t assurance, it was the opposite. High flying, can-do, award-winning Ralph Buchanan had become an insecure actor playing the part of himself to an audience who couldn’t care less.

  Of course, once the alcohol started to work, that changed – for a while anyway. The cocksure guy who travelled on his own opinion and trammelled others into the ground in manic pursuit of ‘the story’ returned. Anyone who came near me wished for the taciturn aloof Buchanan, or better still, neither.

  Today was a sober day. Not stone cold – no day was quite that. At the main table, the end of the chairman’s introduction signalled sustained applause. I scanned the assembly, no different from any collection of businessmen anywhere. Apart from a scattering of tunics and turbans worn with one end starched and sticking up like a fan, most were dressed in Western-style suits, shirts and ties. Clouds of smoke hung in the air from after-lunch cigars and cigarettes. It seemed that every man in Pakistan smoked. Hands beating in acclaim made
the wispy air drift as all eyes went to the figure standing at the microphone: Businessman of the Year, Jameel Akhtar Hafeez.

  Jameel nodded as the clapping rolled around the room. If he was nervous, it didn’t show.

  His story was legend. He’d arrived penniless from the country and found his only living relative. Gulzar Hafeez took him in, adopted him and fitted him to run his businesses. The transformation was remarkable, and the boy had talent. Six restaurants had grown to fourteen. In Karachi, Islamabad and here in Lahore; a rags to riches tale, and not over yet. Rumour said the Hafeez family was looking for a suitable partner to take a stake in several hotel projects they were planning. The father was getting old; the driving force was his adopted son. I might be able to write something interesting about Jameel Akhtar Hafeez.

  He smiled at the people who’d voted for him. ‘Mr Chairman, fellow LCOC members, thank you for this award. It hardly seems real to be standing in front of so many friends today. It’s one of the proudest moments of my life.’

  I caught a waiter’s attention, pointed to my empty glass and considered what I might say about this guy.

  ‘When I came to the city, I had no idea what lay ahead. I believed everyone kept money in their shoes.’

  He waited for the sophisticated group to laugh. They did, of course.

  ‘Since then I’ve had worse ideas than that.’

  The lunch guests laughed again. Jameel glanced at his prompt cards, looked out across the cream of the Lahore business community and said, ‘I had three pieces of great luck in those early years. First, to have found my uncle Gulzar and my friend, Ali Kamal, my right hand in business.’

  He pointed to a table where a man older than his years sat next to another in his early thirties and began to applaud. ‘Gulzar Hafeez and Ali Kamal, gentlemen.’

  The room took its cue from the speaker and clapped. ‘The second was who my uncle turned out to be. Not just a well-respected man, a great man; kind and wise with a vision for himself, and for me. He became my teacher and my guide. What I am today is because of him.