by H. M. Naqvi
The voice, its timbre, the monologue, apologue, comforted. I made appreciative noises. As advised, I would walk the streets later that day till my feet were sore. I would return to my room, full of the world.
“Listen, I’ve got to go,” the voice was saying. “I’m sure I’ll see you one of these days. I’ll tell Mini to call you back.”
That Sunday I was invited to Mini Auntie’s for dinner, where I would meet one Ali Chaudhry in the flesh for the first time. This Sunday I was going to tell Mini Auntie that her brother was in jail.
When the door opened, I expected to relate the news to Mini Auntie immediately. I had rehearsed what I would say as I walked the length of East 86th, staring at the sidewalk—Something bad has happened … I think you should sit down … Please just listen to me—and continued rehearsing while I loitered outside the wall of Carl Schurz Park, peering inside. The trees twittered and trilled with night birds, and through the thicket, I could make out the grove of purple pansies, a tidy patch of serenity in the dark. Just beyond, a stairwell wound up to the promenade along the East River, where we often strolled. On nice summer evenings, there would be others out, parents pushing strollers, trailed by pattering infants, pointing out a tugboat effortlessly pulling a massive barge. The park would be closed at night, but you could scale the wall, scamper across the grass, and then clamber over the balustrade to sit, smoke some weed, and watch the sky and skyline shimmer in the water below. And if you squinted after a hit, you would have the sensation of teetering on the edge of the world and being privy to what’s beyond.
A gentleman in a pinstripe suit and a cerise cravat let me in. “Welcome, young man,” he intoned in a tenor that suggested he was the master of ceremonies. Later I would learn that he was known as Haq. “You must be the mystery guest!” he continued. “You must be Late Latif! Ha! Well, don’t worry, you’ve arrived in time. Mini hasn’t served dinner yet, and we’ve been imbibing since, well, half past eight. What’s your poison? Let me guess, you’re a gin and tonic man. Ha! I can tell from the cut of your jib. But before we raid the bar, we must have a sober chat about what you do and what your plans for the future are. I take a great interest in our young generation.”
“I, sir … have been a banker—”
“No less than a master of the universe!” he proclaimed, slapping me on the back. “Mergers and acquisitions! Aggressive growth! Buy low, sell high! Ha! Come, come! Let’s drink to that!”
The gentleman climbed the narrow carpeted stairwell sideways, avuncularly proffering his free hand. At the entrance to the spacious drawing room, he announced. “We are honored tonight to host the who’s who.” Fifteen or twenty people stood conversing in groups inside. They seemed, at a glance, well spoken and well dressed: the men in dark blazers, the women in ankle-length shalwars, skirts, and pleated trousers. An elderly American couple stood in the midst, nodding to some dulcet-voiced ghazal singer, and in a corner, a tubby character in a Nehru jacket stuffed hors d’oeuvres into his mouth from the small silver trays that were lazily making the rounds. Mini Auntie had arranged striking bouquets of chrysanthemums around the room in flamingo-shaped vases that created the salubrious ambience of a garden party. She, however, was nowhere to be seen.
“What is your good name?” Haq inquired. “Whose son are you?” Although neither reply seemed to register, it did not seem to matter because when he ushered me in, he announced, “Do you know who this is? This is Bano’s son! The Pakistani J. P. Morgan!”
A few heads turned to smile in acknowledgment. Suddenly I became conscious of my criminal appearance, of the odor of caked sweat wafting from my body. Stiffening, I tugged at the ends of my collar and brushed the stray hairs from my forehead with a flick of the hand. It was too late to dart into the nearby bathroom to clean myself up, perhaps even shave with a discarded razor and cocoa butter as I had once before, because just then a fair, smallish lady raised a beckoning arm. “Ha!” exclaimed my voluble host with a gentle shove. “Somebody was bound to know you, young man. You know Niggo?”
It turned out that Niggo, like Mini Auntie, was also Ma’s classmate from the Convent days. Ma seemed to be connected by degrees to everybody in Pakistan because of Our Lord and Savior. After graduating from Convent, Niggo had become the wife of a big besuited man whom she pointed out behind some foliage. A federal minister in Musharraf’s cabinet, he was en route to Washington, D.C., for consultations with the State Department. “I’m just tagging along,” Niggo said. “But tell me about your mother. How is she? Where is she?”
“She’s well,” I said, lying, “very well, very happy.”
“You know, you look just like her. Your mother was stunning. She had these typically classical features: delicately curved mouth and big almond eyes—eyes, mind you, that stopped boys dead in their tracks. And such a good student, she was! Always first in class. I remember we were always copying her homework. I think we all secretly wanted to be her. We thought she was perfect. We thought she would—”
Niggo stopped short of whatever she was going to say. She merely locked her fingers and smiled. I noticed the edges of her small mouth were wrinkled and that her round visage was basted with foundation. I didn’t like the way she spoke about Ma in the past tense, the tragic subjunctive. Ma remained stunning. As I stared past Niggo at a tray of sashimi, an argument erupted between her husband and Haq. Apparently, Musharraf had finally addressed the nation.
“Many on the left and right,” the former was saying, “have been maintaining that we should have held out, bargained, what have you, but Musharraf has joined the coalition at considerable personal and national risk. Mark my words: Al-Qaeda will never forgive him. Al-Qaeda will never forgive us.”
“But how can you defend a dictator?” Haq cried. “That’s the problem with you Pakistanis—”
“And what are you, my friend?”
“Address the question, sir! You are not addressing the question!”
“Okay. I will. Do you remember the state of our country two years ago? The PM—the democratically elected PM, I might remind you—went after every institution that challenged his … his absolutism. He deposed the president and the army chief. Then he sent thugs to raid the supreme court. They climbed up the walls and clamored for justice! Journalists were yanked out of their beds at night and imprisoned. And you will remember, my good friend, that just before he was forced out, he was set to pass legislation that would make him the Commander of the Faithful! Imagine that! The man who would be king!”
“Yes but he wasn’t a dictator, sir, as Mugabe and Pinochet—”
“When a democrat behaves like a dictator and vice versa, the difference between the two becomes semantic. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter to me whether President Musharraf is a dictator or a democrat, whether he’s left- or right-handed, colors his hair or is kind to small animals. What matters is whether he’s able to deliver a few fundamental things: honest governance—Musharraf is not corrupt at all; law and order—barring exogenous shocks, there’s been peace in the country; and economic development. There’s macroeconomic stability and development in a country that had all but two weeks of reserves left. We were two weeks away from hyperinflation, two weeks from hell …”
“You, sir, gloss over freedom! If there’s an elixir to life, it is freedom! Freedom is the bedrock on which civilization was founded! Whither freedom—”
“You’re a self-proclaimed political scientist, friend. You should know political enfranchisement follows economic enfranchisement. People want food on their table. You can’t eat freedom—”
Niggo’s husband was cut short by a stern voice that rang like a ghazal singer hitting a high note: “That’s enough, gentlemen!” Standing at the top of the stairs with her small hands resting on her wide hips, Mini Auntie wore a sequined pistachio chemise and her hair in a loose bun. “Dinner is served,” she announced. “Please leave your politics in the drawing room. Only small talk is permitted downstairs.”
As she turned to descen
d, I leaped after her but was cut off by Haq, who palmed off a glass of gin and tonic to me as he toasted “Liberté, egalité, fraternité!” and, it would seem, himself. Taking a perfunctory sip, I excused myself and made a beeline across the room. Following the exquisite aroma of fried onions down the stairs, I found Mini Auntie in the kitchen surrounded by several ladies, stirring an industrial capacity pot with one hand and fidgeting with the microwave with the other. “Oho,” she fretted, “the chapatis are too dry. These chapatis from Little India always turn out too dry.”
One of the ladies—a busty divorcée who was a regular household fixture—said, “I have them made fresh, Mini. I have got a man who comes in once a week who cooks—”
“Will you do me a favor,” Mini Auntie asked her, “and put in another batch? The guests are coming down, and I’ve to attend to the baghaar.”
The thought of the oily, garlicky patina over a hot glob of lentils made me dizzy. I could have had the whole pot to myself, like Amitabh in that classic Bollywood flick. Dinner, however, would have to wait. “Mini Auntie?”
“Well, well, well!” Continuing to stir furiously, she asked, “Where’ve you been child? Your mother’s been worried sick about you. And where’s that good-for-nothing brother of mine? Or maybe I shouldn’t ask. Don’t I don’t know about all the naughtiness you boys get up to.”
“I’ve something to tell you—”
Turning to get a good look at me, she cried, “Hai, hai, hai! You look like a mangy puppy, child! I want you to go to the bathroom this instant and wash up. And don’t use the hand towels. Use the bath towel.”
“But Mini Auntie—”
“No buts, child! We don’t sit at the dinner table in this state. Chop, chop!”
The women observed me pityingly as I limped out of the kitchen, but I heard Mini Auntie say, “Such a sweet boy …”
Setting the gin and tonic on the granite counter, I regarded myself in the mirror. I looked like the waking dead. The shadows beneath my eyes lingered even in the hard white glare of the tube light, and up close I couldn’t distinguish the leathery purple bags from my bruise. I could, however, perceive fear in my eyes, fear of what would happen tonight and tomorrow and the day after; I feared for my friends, feared telling Ma that I had been fired, jailed, and had to flee; feared for my sanity. Unable to face myself, I undid my trousers and settled on the cold, smooth toilet seat, holding my head, massaging my eyelids, hunched over like Rodin’s Thinker considering the casual freedom of sitting on a functioning pot.
Dinner had commenced by the time I emerged. Three round tables had been organized like vertices of an isosceles triangle, each adorned with flickering white candles and flower arrangements that obscured the faces of different diners at different angles. Ensconced between the Federal Minister and the venerable American gentleman, Mini Auntie instructed me to sit on a chair wedged between two people I did not know on the other table, the Young People’s Table.
The Young People seem to comprise the sons and daughters of the guests and Puppies, Pakistani Urban Professionals. They were earnestly discussing the logistics of organizing a charity ball for a leprosy center back home at the once-storied Roosevelt Hotel. Apparently the manager had offered them a discount, but the ballroom wasn’t suited to accommodate functions of the size they were planning. “You have to see all the angles,” somebody declaimed.
Slipping into the vacant chair without introducing myself, I helped myself to the lukewarm dishes without delay. There was saffron rice with peas, fried okra with tomatoes, potato cutlets, meatballs garnished with fresh coriander, and in case the menu was in any way deficient, some sort of lamb curry to boot. A cup of diced tomatoes, onions, and coriander in vinegar made its way around the table. It was a royal feast. Piling a hill of rice on my plate, I picked four of the largest meatballs, three of the remaining cutlets, and dug in like an anteater snorting entire teeming colonies of red ants. I popped the cutlets in my mouth and sipped spoonfuls of the thick gravy, and splicing the meatballs open, I unearthed a stuffed core of diced onions and mint.
The conversation had shifted to some engagement party video that featured, toward the end, the belly of a stunning girl dancing in a pink sari. Apparently nobody seemed to know the identity of the girl or the cameraman, personae of certain mystery and diligent speculation. The adults had returned to politics after the imposed hiatus, except for the tubby fellow in the Nehru jacket, who was flirting with the busty divorcée as if his life depended on it. When he paused for breath, she said, “You certainly are a wily one,” before blowing smoke into the air.
When I finally looked up, I noticed that two boys, whose floppy ears indicated kinship, had watched me wipe my plate clean. “Hungry?” one of them asked. Reaching for the folded napkin beside my plate for the first time that evening, I dabbed the corners of my mouth in response and slid into my chair. Suddenly, and quite desperately, I needed a cigarette.
Since it would have been ill-mannered for me to disrupt the proceedings to ask around for a smoke, I excused myself with a cough. Discreetly skirting the tables, I jogged down the corridor and scaled the stairs like a ninja, searching the surfaces, drawers, and cabinets for a stray pack. I even lifted the pillows of a chaise, an exercise that yielded eyeliner and an archaic five-paisa coin. The guests were unusually fastidious that night because, save a quarter-depleted Dunhill, stamped with lipstick on the lip of an ashtray, there were no cigarettes to be had. It would have to do.
As I slunk downstairs, I heard somebody saying, “We’ve suffered a singular calamity. Thousands of innocents have died in the most cruel and most spectacular way. Now, we need to take the fight to them. We have to secure our borders and our way of life …” Cupping the cigarette behind my back, I followed the voice back to the dining room. It belonged to one of the floppy-eared brothers. “We need to seek the terrorists in our midst, and if they happen to be Muslims, Arabs, or South Asian, so be it! Security is our inviolable right!”
The audience processed the discourse without protest, but I felt compelled to speak up. I felt hot and bothered. “Every state has the right to security,” I averred. All heads turned to me: Mini Auntie, Busty, Tubby, Haq, Niggo, the Federal Minister, the American couple, as well as the Young People’s Table. “The point is how do you go about it? In the name of national security, states commit crimes—”
“What crimes?”
“You threw a hundred thousand Japanese into camps, whole families—women, children, old people—because they posed a security threat. That’s not right. That’s wrong. And now it’s us. It’s me.” Fueled by adrenaline, I continued, “I’ve been in jail for the last forty-eight hours. I was humiliated, starved, physically and mentally abused. Mini Auntie’s brother, Ali, is still inside. We’re not model citizens—I’m not a citizen at all—but I can tell you this much: we’ve done nothing wrong. This is no way to treat human beings, and this is no way to achieve security!”
There was pin-drop silence for a few moments. Then Mini Auntie rose. “Why didn’t you tell me, child?” she asked, embracing me in a bear hug.
“I, um, tried—”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, I’m sorry.” I should have said, I’m an idiot, but didn’t.
We repaired to the kitchen where, among open pots, greased pans, and dirty china and cutlery, she asked me to relate the events that had led to our incarceration, “slowly and clearly,” as if she were enjoining an alarmed patient. As I narrated the story—minus the cab, the kidnapping, and the porn watching—Mini Auntie listened, arms folded, interrupting once or twice to clarify this or that detail, and when I finished, she hung her head in thought.
I braced for a tongue lashing: Who told you to go to Connecticut? Who do you think you are? Saviors? Adventurers? The Three Musketeers? This is not cops and robbers! This is real life! Instead she opened the fridge, scooped a generous helping of homemade mango mousse, and served it to me in a bowl. “Eat, child, eat.” Swallowing a mouthful, I tasted
the sharp tang of guilt. While I was footloose and fancy-free, savoring mousse and meatballs, AC was being treated to interrogations and a meager dollop of prison gruel.
“Go upstairs,” Mini Auntie instructed. “Call your mother. I’m sure she’ll be delighted.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go to this Metropolitan Detention Center.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not, child.”
“Yes, I am,” I protested.
Raising a reproving eyebrow, she persisted in her famous no-bullshit tone. “You’re going to finish your dessert, and then you’re going straight home. To bed. Doctor’s orders.” She added, “If you like, we can call your mother together.”
The threat worked. I licked the bowl clean, put it in the dishwasher, and wiped my face with a paper towel. Outside, a hush fell over the dining room when I appeared. Blushing, I escaped upstairs.
It was already tomorrow in Karachi, already morning and, at nine, probably already hot. The monsoon having passed, the Indian summer would be in full sweaty swing. Not that the weather ever slowed Ma any: she would have said her prayers by now, oiled her hair, lapped the roof in shalwar and sneakers, and bathed, humming, as she was wont, tunes from the Golden Age. She might have been sipping a cup of tea in the veranda or picking at lightly salted pomegranate seeds with the Dawn spread out before her. I imagined she would be in her contagiously sunny morning mood. Clearing my throat, I picked up the receiver and dialed. The phone rang once. “Hello?” I called.
“Shehzad beta,” Ma replied flatly, an acknowledgment of fact. I couldn’t tell whether she was groggy or it was a bad line. I waited for her to ask how I was, where I’d been, why I hadn’t called, but she said nothing.
