Broken Verses

by Kamila Shamsie

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Foreword

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2005 by Kamila Shamsie

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Shamsie, Kamila, 1973–

  Broken verses/Kamila Shamsie.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Harvest original.”

  1. Women political activists—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 3. Missing persons—Fiction. 4. Letter writing—Fiction. 5. Young women—Fiction. 6. Pakistan—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9540.9.S485B76 2005

  823'.914—dc22 2004021330

  ISBN 0-15-603053-5

  eISBN 978-0-547-53782-5

  v1.0513

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and events are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the Arts Council for a fellowship to the Santa Maddalena Foundation during the writing of this book—and Beatrice Monti della Corte for her extraordinary hospitality at Santa Maddalena.

  For Herman Fong and Elizabeth Porto

  . . .

  The Minions came again today.

  That sounds like a beginning.

  What else to say?

  Can it be you, out there, reading these words?

  I

  The old dream, once more.

  I stand in a beach hut, looking out. The window frame in front of me reduces the world to a square of sun and sea. Into that square a woman falls, her arm drawn up in front of her face. She splashes into the water. I run out. Her body is caught in the surf, a dark tumbling shape. Above, there is nothing but sky. The waves recede, leaving her on the sand. I rush down, see scales where I expect legs. I have seen a mermaid once before, spent hours splashing water on to it to save it from dehydration. I remember the ache of my arm from the effort, but not whether I saved the creature. It is evident nothing will save this one. I turn towards the hut to see why people are shouting, and when I look back she is gone, only her impression remaining. I know what is necessary. I must cut out the sand which is imprinted with her body, lift it up, and bury it. But the sea is coming in again and I know that, faster than I can respond, waves will wash away the contours of her body, the graceful curve of her tail.

  When I awoke, this line came to mind: Dreams, sometimes, are rehearsals.

  I sat up in bed, scratching the faded scar which criss-crossed my palm, and a shark lunged at my shoulder. I really had to do something about these walls. The bedroom had been a children’s nursery when the previous tenants lived in this flat, and the walls were covered with water-colour paintings of sea-creatures: jellyfish, turtle, barracuda, flying fish, octopus, swordfish, angel-fish, shark, sea-horse, and a mermaid sitting on the back of a manta ray. I couldn’t look in the full-length mirror without some creature extending tentacles, fin, snout or tail towards my reflection. If it were a fixed image it would be easy enough to get accustomed to it, but the mirror was attached to the closet door which opened and closed with any gust of air, and the angles of the room shifted even as I stood still looking into the mirror. Even so, occupying this room was preferable to moving into the master bedroom—directly across from a mosque which, my sister had warned me, broadcast fiery sermons just before the dawn azaan. ‘If you sleep there, you’ll wake up angry every morning,’ Rabia had said.

  I stepped, naked, out of bed and belted on my dressing-gown. Then I remembered: I’m living alone. I shrugged off the dressing-gown and for a moment I was giddy with imagining all the flats around me that might be filled with single occupants wandering nudely around their homes. But you can really only imagine people in states of nudity for so long before your internal censors step in and relieve you of the images. For me, it was the image of the madman of 3B doing push-ups on the hideous beige carpet I’d seen through his window which made me cast about for other things to fill my brain.

  But what other things?

  I stepped into the kitchen, and ducked right out again. There were no blinds over the kitchen window. So much for my one-woman nudist colony.

  Minutes later, I was back in my dressing-gown, sipping a cup of tea and wondering whether to go next door and steal Rabia and her husband Shakeel’s copy of the morning paper. I had told them earlier that I didn’t want a subscription—what was there in the news these days that I could possibly benefit from knowing?—but I hadn’t contended with the sheer boredom of waking into an empty flat. If this persisted I’d have to take up yoga, or morning television. Or both. At the same time. I’d have to start watching morning yoga programmes.

  Clever Beema, I thought.

  My father and stepmother weren’t flying out to Islamabad until that evening, but my stepmother—Beema—had still insisted that I move into this flat a day before they ‘migrated’, rather than spending one final night in the bedroom I’d occupied my entire life. ‘Because the house will be in turmoil with everything being packed up,’ Beema had explained, but I knew now that she hoped this waking up into silence would convince me to have a last-minute change of heart about staying in Karachi instead of going with them.

  Looking around into the emptiness, I had to admit her hope was not without foundation.

  You’re a grown woman, I told myself. Behave like one!

  Assistance came in the form of a ringing telephone. I picked it up with gratitude and an unfamiliar voice on the other end said, ‘Aasmaani Inqalab?’

  Aasmaani Inqalab—my first and middle names, self-important trisyllables that long ago pushed my shorter surname off everything except the most official documents. My mother’s choice, the name. My mother had made all the important choices regarding my early life; the only thing she left to Dad and Beema was the actual business of raising me. Aasmaani Inqalab: Celestial Revolution. Such a name never really admits the notion of childhood. But Beema used to whisper in my ear, ‘Azure.’ Aasmaani can also mean azure. An azure revolution. Like Picasso’s Blue Period, she’d say, without the gloom.

  Picasso never had a period, my mother replied once, when she was around to hear Beema. Men know nothing of inevitable pain.

  I wish I could say she had been attempting humour.

  The unfamiliar voice was calling from Save the Date studios—fondly known as STD—to tell me my afternoon interview with the CEO had been moved up to the morning, so could I come to the studio straightaway.


  ‘With bells on,’ I said.

  ‘Belzon?’ echoed the voice, with a hint of panic. ‘I think you’re expected alone.’

  One of the only fortunate things I inherited from my mother was the ability to be entertained by a mediocre joke for a very long time. I was still chuckling over Belzon when I got into my car to make the short drive over to STD. And when I pulled up outside the startlingly yellow house which had been converted into the STD studio a few months earlier the thought of encountering the voice behind the joke brought on a fresh bout of laughter which I had to try to suppress as I slid out from the passenger-side door of my car to avoid the gaping manhole next to which I had parked, walked up the palm-lined driveway, gave my name to the armed guard sitting on a fold-up chair near the front door and was ushered into reception.

  Reception was a desk and unoccupied chair at one end of a long, freshly painted white hallway which led to offices, smaller hallways and—at the far end—an imposing staircase with rosewood banister leading both up and down. Two twentysomethings in jeans and short kurtas were walking down the hall, one saying, ‘What do you mean they don’t want any two-shots?’ and the other one shaking her head, ‘Yaar, celebrities, yaar.’

  Standing there—seen but unnoticed—in a shalwar-kameez with a dupata tossed over one shoulder, I felt instantly old. They had that light in their eyes, those girls did, of believing they were a part of something bigger than their own lives. They were going to beam youth culture, progressive thought, multiple perspectives, in-depth reporting to a nation which until so recently had only known news channels which spoke with the voice of the government. 2002 would be remembered as the year of the cable TV explosion in Pakistan, and these girls were right bang in the middle of it, making history happen. For a moment I tried to step into their minds, to remember what it was to be that hopeful.

  Poor, enviable fools.

  I looked around for something that wasn’t younger and more stylish than me, and found a painting of a line of Arabic on the wall behind me. The repeating line from Surah al-Rahman, beloved of calligraphers for its variedness and its balance.

  Which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny?

  When my mother—in one of her attempts to give me career advice—told me that I should learn Arabic in order to translate the Qur’ān into both English and Urdu, in versions free from patriarchal interpretations, the Poet said, ‘And translate Surah al-Rahman especially for me.’

  ‘Because you want to know all about the virginal houris who await the faithful in heaven?’ my mother teased. ‘You want to know what you’ll be missing?’

  The Poet shook his head. ‘Not that part. “He created man and taught him articulate speech. The sun and the moon pursue their ordered course. The plants and the trees bow down in adoration.” I want to see how Aasmaani tops that with her translation.’

  ‘It is beautiful,’ my mother acknowledged. ‘But don’t forget the warnings of the Day of Judgment that follow. It’s not all order and adoration.’

  The Poet held his hands in front of him as he always did when quoting words that moved him, as though weighing them in his palms. ‘“When the sky splits asunder, and reddens like a rose or stained leather—which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny?”’

  The sky as stained leather. It was almost enough to make you desire the end of the world.

  A middle-aged woman with a nose which changed character halfway down its length walked out of one of the offices and smiled at me. ‘Are you here for Boond?’

  I shook my head, more than a little regretfully.

  Boond was a much-hyped, multi-part television drama which had fallen into a deep crisis the previous week when one of the lead actresses was fired, six weeks before the show’s premiere, because her newfound antipathy to bougainvillea made filming outdoor sequences impossible. There was talk that the whole show would need to be cancelled, and speculation about how much of a financial setback STD would suffer, and then, in a stunning coup, one of the STD newsreaders had announced, in the headlines of the 9 o’clock news, that Shehnaz Saeed was going to take on the role of the lead actress.

  I was listening to the news when the announcement was made and, I swear, I gasped out loud when I heard it. Shehnaz Saeed! If I’d heard that the ghost of Marlene Dietrich was taking on the role I suppose I would have been a little more surprised, but only because Dietrich didn’t speak Urdu.

  Shehnaz Saeed had been the darling of the theatre and the small screen, an actress of amazing range who had retired at the peak of her career fifteen years earlier in order to devote time to ‘preparing for and raising’ the children she was planning to have with the man she had recently married. Her son from her first marriage was raising hell at university by then, telling anyone who would listen that all mothers should stay at home with their children, otherwise the children would grow up like him. I had never met the first-born son, but I disliked him intensely for being the person who convinced Shehnaz Saeed there was a choice to be made between acting and motherhood. I had seen her on-stage for the first time when I was about eleven, in an Urdu translation of Macbeth—it was the Poet’s translation—and I swear there was not a man, woman or child in that audience who would not have plunged a dagger into a king’s heart for her. She never actually had any children with the second husband—the gossipmongers said he always timed his frequent business trips abroad so that he would be away while she was ovulating—but though rumours surfaced intermittently that she was considering an end to retirement, she hadn’t so much as made a cameo appearance since her swansong—a one-woman show in which she played six different roles; it had been a one-night-only performance, sold out before the box office even opened (the leading newspapers ran editorials of protest).

  It was to confirm that the newsreader wasn’t on drugs that Beema rang an old schoolfriend of hers, whose brother-in-law was the CEO of STD (that he was a noted philanderer made the title hilarious to both Rabia and me); at the end of the call she didn’t just have confirmation of the news, she’d also set up a job interview for me at STD. I had just quit working at the oil company and was having trouble figuring out, what next? So I thought I might as well go along with Beema’s plans.

  The woman with the extraordinary nose turned away from me to flag down a man with gelled-back hair. ‘It’s all a disaster,’ she said. ‘We have to rewrite the entire role.’

  ‘Everyone is doing too much drama,’ he said. ‘She’s just a has-been actress.’

  The woman jerked her head in disgust, and turned to me. ‘You. Tell me something. You planning to watch Boond?’

  ‘Isn’t everyone?’

  ‘OK, so here’s the thing. This role—this role Shehnaz Saeed is doing—she plays the ex-wife of a wealthy industrialist. They’ve been divorced for years. Now he’s getting remarried. The drama starts with the proposal scene. His new wife, much younger, is completely and without reason insecure about the ex-wife. OK? So, the thing is this. The ex-wife becomes important eventually but she’s supposed to play a totally minor role in the first episode. How do you feel about Shehnaz Saeed returning to the screen in a minor role? Don’t answer! Your face has answered.’ She turned to the gelled man. ‘Look at that! Look at her expression.’ I ran my palms along my mouth and forehead to see if my facial muscles were doing something of which I was unaware, but they seemed to be utterly in repose. ‘I don’t know if I can do it. Every idea I have for that first moment she steps on to the screen is inadequate. A nation’s expectations are sitting on my bony little shoulders.’

  The woman stopped speaking and turned sharply towards me.

  ‘I just realized who you are,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if...?’ Before I could say anything, she stepped forward and held up her hand to cover the lower half of my face, so all she could see were my eyes—grey with a starburst of green in the centre—and my high forehead and straight, black hair.

  ‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that amazing?’

  What was amazing w
as the way women in Pakistan took one look at me and assumed they were entitled to instant familiarity—as though I were the one who had sat in jail cells with them or knelt beside them in cramped railway carriages writing slogans on banners.

  An office door a few feet away opened and a man in his mid-thirties stepped out. He saw me, and his face became bloodless. I stepped away from the woman, revealing my long nose and sharply angled jaw, and the man blinked, put his hand up to his eyes and rocked back on his heels.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman was saying. ‘That was presumptuous.’

  But I wasn’t paying much attention to her any more. I knew the man, just as he knew me. Even if Beema hadn’t said he was working here and was the reason Shehnaz Saeed had agreed to do the show, I think I would have recognized him immediately. Those curved eyes straight out of a Mughal miniature, that sensuous mouth. How strange that they should be so masculine on his face, even while marking him clearly as the son of the most beautiful woman in the country. In sober tie and an obviously expensive shirt he looked nothing like the imagined hooligan in my mind who had forced his mother into retirement fifteen years ago.

  He saw that I realized who he was and a look came upon his face which I recognized—a mixture of panic and self-deprecation allied to an acknowledgement of failure.

  He stepped forward and held out a hand. ‘Mir Adnan Akbar Khan,’ he said, in mock-grandiose tones. ‘But my friends call me Ed.’

  ‘Nicknames and friendship rarely go together,’ I said, taking his hand, and trying not to show how startled I was to have found a stranger wearing an expression I thought of as mine alone. He seemed to have no desire to let go of my hand, and as I pulled my fingers out of his grasp I wasn’t sure if that was flattering or sleazy. He was one of those men who straddled the line between dazzlingly sexy and somewhat repulsive. All due to the heavy hoods of those Mughal eyes. ‘My name is Aasmaani Inqalab. My friends call me Arse-Many Inflagrante.’