At length, I sat back and pressed ‘PLAY’.
And there you were.
Don’t ask me to relive what I felt. I cannot separate the emotions into discrete words. Three of the Minions looked away; they couldn’t watch my emotions spilling on to the floor.
Sweet, sweet torture, that’s what it was. I never realized until then how much my captor hates me. Nearly seventeen years locked in here, you’d think I wouldn’t be left in any doubt about that. But I’d begun to believe he just thought of me as some pet, not domesticated enough to be allowed out of my cage, nor interesting enough to be worth a personal visit. But to make me watch that, to have his Minions stand around as observers while I wept and flailed, and to have them tell me afterwards that this was a new television show, they would bring me one episode every week as long as it lasted but who knows how long that would be? To do all that, he has to hate me.
Was I growing too comfortable for him? Too resigned?
Or am I wrong about this? Do I merely amuse him? The revolutionary poet turned television addict.
Put that way, it is more than a little entertaining. Of course, you and I know that even when there was nothing so personal at stake I had a terrible weakness for television. And low-brow television, at that. Charlie’s Angels] Loved those girls. You could never decide whether to approve of them or not. I said, why can’t feminism show some cleavage? We were standing in your bedroom. You raised a threatening eyebrow. I said, are you going to throw something at me now? Yes, you said. Your hand moved towards a pillow and then—with one of those sudden gestures of yours—you reached up, your index finger crooked into your shirt’s neck, tugged the kameez over your head and flung it at me.
Quick! said. The curtain’s open. Anyone could be looking. Get down! I pulled you on to the bed. You were laughing and I held my hand to your bare stomach and felt the muscles move under my palm. You locked your arm around my neck as I bent to kiss your shoulder and your voice was fierce when you spoke. Never love anyone but me, you said.
Samina, are you even still alive?
They told me you were dead. The Minions did. One morning, many years ago. It was your birthday, and I have never been able to banish you so completely that you’d stay away on that day. I may go weeks without thinking of you but every 8 October morning when I wake up, there you are, pressed up against me, your leg thrown over my thigh. Sweet bliss of it!
But that year the Minions walked in without my noticing. I was singing Puccini, mixing omelette batter, and calling out to you: ‘Samina! Get out of the shower or I’m coming in after you.’ I heard footsteps behind me, and for a minute I allowed myself to believe I could smell your shampoo. But when I turned, it was them. One of them said, ‘She’s dead,’ handed me the new pair of glasses I’d been long demanding, and then they all left.
They have said nothing on the subject since and will not be drawn into any discussion of you.
My love, I think I could have borne your death with some courage. I think I would have wept with grief and then with gratitude for every second I had with you. But this not knowing. This inability to discern if he had been speaking the truth or just playing tricks with me. They do that sometimes—play tricks. They told me once that India and Pakistan had tested nuclear devices; they told me once that the Berlin Wall had fallen; they told me once that Atlantis had been discovered; they told me once that a sheep had been cloned, and named Dolly (it was the absurdity of that name which revealed the lie immediately); they told me once that brain transplants are now possible, and would I like to sign a donor card so that my thoughts could live on after my death?; they told me once that Mandela had been freed and after twenty-nine years of becoming a legend behind bars he emerged into freedom and did not disappoint the world. Ha! Can you imagine trying that one on me?
They told me all these things, and more; and some they retracted, some re-retracted, some refused to discuss any more.
Let anything happen in the world outside, I don’t care. But tell me if I should mourn for you or not. I said earlier that it didn’t matter if you were alive or dead since I’ll never see you again.
It matters, my love. It matters.
If you are dead, I’ll take kidney beans by the handful and whisper a prayer over each one before dropping it on a white sheet. I’ll knot up the beans in the sheet and tell the Minions to take it to a mosque. In this, I know they’ll oblige me. They are men who respect rituals. Then I’ll walk out into the garden which they now allow me to tend, and I’ll dig up a handful of mud to fill my nostrils with the smell of earth. I’ll close my eyes, lie upon the ground and imagine every detail of your funeral. Who was there, who helped me carry your body—or no, though others might carry you to the gravesite I would insist at the very last on taking you in my arms and lowering you into the grave. Then I’ll place the handful of mud back in the ground, pat it down, and drop a flower on it. Every day for forty days I’ll step out to this spot, and lay a fresh flower. And when the mourning period is over, I’ll know that there’ll never again be an 8 October when I’ll wake to feel you pressed against me, and in that knowledge I will find peace.
It’s so lonely here without you. But it’s lonelier when you flit in and then leave, and I don’t know if it was my imagination or a ghost.
XIX
The intersecting ropes of the charpai tickled my ankle as I pulled myself into a cross-legged position, feet tucked under thighs to escape the attention of the mosquitoes. Across the splintering table Ed was bent over his plate, his fingers hovering over the mounds of haandi chicken, chapli kabab, daal and raita as he contemplated which combination to pick up with his na’an. Above us, there were more stars than you could ever see in any of the hearts of Karachi. From the other side of the restaurant’s low boundary wall came the sound of trucks traversing the highway. A group of men and women walked in through the gate and were directed towards the ‘family section’ where Ed and I were, thus far, the only patrons.
It was two days after Eid. It was a few minutes after I had decided I did believe in miracles.
I looked back down at the encrypted pages in my lap and then at the decrypted version I had just finished writing out on the back of five menu-cards. This set of pages had arrived earlier in the day, in an envelope with no stamp. Hand-delivered, Ed supposed, though no one on his street had seen it pushed through the letter slot in the gate. He had asked, yes, repeatedly. There was a tyre mark on the envelope, proof of nothing. He’d driven over it without noticing it when he came home from the gym. Then he’d got out of the car, seen tyre marks on a white rectangle, gone closer, recognized the handwriting on the envelope. He got back in the car and drove straight to my flat, the letter in his glove compartment. We made the long drive out to the restaurant without him telling me it was there.
We didn’t speak of mothers or codes or Boond during that ride. Instead we talked of the ordinary things of our lives. We talked of music and movies, school days, university years, the different jobs we’d held, the people we discovered we knew in common. He told me why he’d rather watch basketball than cricket. I told him he was a fool. He described waking up in New York one Thanksgiving and opening his window to see the air full of feathers—an event that remained unexplained. I told him about finding a dying dolphin on Karachi’s beach, its dark skin like rubber, its large eyes more gentle than any human eyes. Only when we pulled up outside the restaurant had he opened the glove compartment and handed me the envelope.
‘I wanted to be with you while you read it. Do you mind?’
I found I didn’t mind at all. ‘You’ll have to shut up while I decrypt it; can you do that?’
He’d done it with an astonishing degree of patience, not even asking questions when I said, ‘It can’t be. It can’t be,’ as the series of letters became words and the words became sense which I was so afraid of misinterpreting that I had to read it over and over, once I’d written out the decrypted version, until I was finally able to accept it.
&
nbsp; I placed the menu cards on the table between us. ‘He saw the first episode of Boond.’
‘Wh—?’ His mouth was full as he spoke, but the question mark at the end of that garbled sound was unmistakable.
I pointed to the menu cards. ‘Read it. Read it, Ed.’
While he was reading it, I rocked back on the charpai, pulling my shawl close around me. Ed pushed the plate of kababs closer to me as he read, but I couldn’t think of eating.
There was so much else to think of. That he had watched the episode and would be watching more, yes, that seemed important. That was more important than I fully realized, I guessed. But my mind kept moving on from that to other things. How reading my name had almost made my stomach flip over, much as it did when I rode the Hurdy-Gurdy with him. He always stepped off that ride slightly nauseous. And that part about Charlie’s Angels. Love and laughter and desire sparkling in the air between Mama and Omi, restoring to me my memories of them which had been more shaken than I had admitted to myself by the previous set of pages with its accusations of perversion.
I closed my eyes and my mind skimmed over those moments. But where it settled was nearer the end of the pages, the moment which had made my breath catch.
It’s lonelier when you flit in and then leave, and I don’t know if it’s my imagination or a ghost.
I knew that loneliness, the exact and exacting desolation of it. Made lonelier by my aloneness in it; everyone else had given up on her years ago. I had never realized how much I wanted a companion for my grief until, coming to the end of the Poet’s missive, I had heard, for the first time, a voice which understood my dreams. The dream of a mermaid, particularly. The dream of a burial without a body, and the anticipated release of a ritual of farewell.
I opened my eyes. The sky was almost too beautiful to bear. And it was only then that I finally asked myself the question I had failed to ask all this while: whose corpse had been found in the empty plot of land, nearly seventeen years ago? Who was the man disfigured beyond recognition for the simple crime of having the same build as the Poet? Someone inconsequential, that’s who his captor, or captors, would have chosen. Someone whose disappearance wouldn’t make newspaper headlines, whose relatives couldn’t afford to push for an extensive investigation. In all the years since, had some woman been waiting for her husband to come home, had some child grown up wondering if he’d been abandoned by his father? And if I could discover the identity of the corpse, would it be an act of benevolence or brutality to seek out his relatives and say, he’s not coming back, and this is how he died?
‘This is unbelievable.’ Ed put down the menus. ‘And weird.’
‘Weird?’
‘Why would someone go to the trouble of bringing in a VCR and television to show him Boond?’
‘To torment him with that glimpse of my mother. Ed, it was uncanny the way your mother did it. I mean, I don’t know if you ever saw Mama do that, but Shehnaz got it so right...’
‘So whoever’s keeping the Poet captive knew your mother. Knew her well enough to recognize my mother’s impersonation of her.’
‘Yes.’ It felt like a triumph. The first clue of any kind we had to the identity of the Poet’s captor.
‘It’s all happening very fast,’ he said. ‘It’s been hardly more than forty-eight hours since the show aired.’
‘There’s another question here. Whoever the captor is, why did he tape Boond in the first place? Was that just coincidence? He taped it, saw the impersonation and decided to give the Poet a viewing. Or...?’
‘Or?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I can’t think of an “or”. I guess that’s how it happened.’ I was lying. I could think of another way for it to happen. If Shehnaz Saeed was connected to the conspiracy, that’s how it could have happened. If she played the scene that way precisely in order to send it to the Poet and make him weep with longing for my mother. I ladled daal on to my plate and started spooning it into my mouth, just to have something to do.
‘What is it?’
I smiled at him. ‘Nothing. I’m just overwhelmed.’ If Shehnaz Saeed was involved, Ed knew nothing about it. I was sure of that now. Sure of him.
‘I’m having an idea,’ he said. ‘It could be crazy. But I’m distinctly having an idea.’
He called out to the waiter, gestured for the bill. ‘I have to get to STD. There’s something I need to do there. You can take the rest of the food home.’ I waved away the suggestion. ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m acting strangely. But there’s a reason. Promise. Tomorrow you’ll see. Or not. Once I think it through it may just be nothing. But I think it’s something. I think it may well be something.’ He was standing up now, almost hopping in his excitement.
I was more than happy to leave the restaurant and forestall any conversations that might lead to me airing my suspicions. Ridiculous, I was being ridiculous. Beema said I could trust her, and Beema’s instincts were always better than mine.
Although, really, my instincts were to trust her, too. When I was in her company I couldn’t imagine her involved in any form of deception. It was only away from her, when I looked at the evidence, and remembered the moments in which Ed had spoken of his mother as a creature of overwhelming narcissism that I wondered, was all that sweetness just an act?
If so, it was such a good act that even now I was far more convinced by it than not. It was easier to believe Shehnaz Saeed was being manipulated than to see her spinning webs of deceit in which she and her son and I were bound.
Ed paid the waiter, batting away my attempts to reach for my purse, and we left the restaurant. Both of us were quiet as we drove away, a distracted but comfortable quiet. My hand rested on his shoulder, and when his left hand wasn’t changing gears it reached up to caress my fingers. Soft music drifted out of the open windows—the artist was a singer I’d never heard before who threatened in every track to cross the line which separates mellow from soporific, but never actually did.
When he pulled up outside my flat, I said, ‘Will you come up?’
‘Of course. But not tonight.’ He pulled me into a swift kiss—there were neighbours walking down the driveway towards us and even that brief liplock felt risqué—and drew away, grinning like a boy who’s run through a stranger’s kitchen and stolen a hash brownie. ‘Ask me tomorrow. By then I may be your hero.’
‘All I really want is a toyboy,’ I said, stepping out of the car and blowing him a kiss.
He drove away with a screech that was entirely for the benefit of the neighbours.
I was smiling on my way up the stairs when I bumped into Rabia, Shakeel and Dad, headed down.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Rabia complained. ‘Dad’s plane leaves in an hour. We have to get to the airport.’
I looked guiltily at my father. Yesterday, after I’d locked myself in my bedroom, I hadn’t come out for hours, and when I did I refused to talk to Dad about anything to do with my mother. And so our interaction in the last twenty-four hours had returned to centring around cricket and home repairs. He’d spent much of the day correcting the imbalance of my bookshelf, oiling rusty hinges and doing something elaborate with the pipes under my sink which hadn’t yet given me cause to complain. In the evening he’d gone with Rabia and Shakeel to have a look at the renovations being done on the house, and I’d said I would cook dinner for the three of them when they returned. But then Ed arrived to whisk me away and I’d left a note saying, ‘Sorry. Forgot prior commitment. Rain-check?’
‘I didn’t realize you were leaving tonight.’
‘I can stay until tomorrow if you’d like,’ he said.
‘No. No. I’d just be keeping you from Beema. She needs you right now.’
‘Well, you’re coming to the airport, aren’t you?’ Rabia said to me, her tone belligerent.
I was still looking at my father. The boy who played ‘chicken’ on the streets of Karachi with Mama. One drunken evening, I had been talking to some friends at university and said, ‘Not that I’ve
ever imagined my conception, of course, but I’m sure it occurred entirely by accident. My mother must have bumped into my father in the dark as their paths crossed somewhere in the vicinity of the linen closet.’
They never stood a chance as a couple, that had always been clear. But since talking to Dad the evening before I had been able to believe that for a moment they—not just he—might not have known that. And, in that moment, perhaps, I happened.
‘Airport goodbyes are horrible,’ Dad said. He came down the stairs until he was standing just beneath me and we were the same height. He put his arms around me. ‘We’re not done talking. I’m just giving you a pause.’ He kissed my cheek and released me. When he got to the bottom of the steps he turned around again. ‘If she were alive, she’d let you know. She loved you.’
After they’d driven away, I went upstairs and sat on the low cement wall that surrounded my balcony, my back pressed against the building’s edifice. The temperature had dipped sharply and there was nothing except a shawl between my short-sleeved cotton shalwar-kameez and the glass-and-tinsel air.
Yes, she loved me. All the years in which she went off with Omi, she loved me. But then he died and she broke that habit. I could never explain that to Dad or Beema or Rabia. I could never say—you want to know what I think happened to her? All right. All right. Here it is: she saw the falseness in everything she had believed. She saw the futility—in activism, in protest, in peaceful resistance, in all those things she had built her identity around. So she decided to un-become the woman she had been for so long. That’s what happened to my mother. She cast off her own skin, and became someone else, someone opposite. It took time, but she was patient, and determined. My God, was she determined. She would let go of everything that held her to her past self. Everything, including me. And when she saw that she couldn’t do that here, because this place and all of us had too many memories of the woman she used to be, she left. She and Omi, they knew so many people who had to vanish from the country, leaving no trace of where they’d gone. She knew it could be done. She knew how to do it.
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