by Sorayya Khan
“Call me tonight,” Lizzy yelled from the bus window as I reached my driveway.
As always, Hanif was waiting for me on the lawn, running behind a soccer ball. He kicked the ball to me, but I missed the pass because I’d turned back to wave at Lizzy. The bus had already gone, and I was relieved to finally be home, safe from the spitting games.
During dinner, I told my father that children on the bus assumed the prime minister had rigged the elections. But what I really wanted to know from him was whether there was a connection between Prime Minister Bhutto’s murder trial and the elections. My father concentrated on the second issue. Maybe there were overeager party members who had engaged in some hanky-panky during the elections to win the prime minister’s favor, he reluctantly considered, but it was unlikely the prime minister knew what they were doing.
“So the elections were possibly rigged and now the prime minister is on trial for murder? And he’s going to be put to death?” I asked, trying to put together what I’d heard on the bus that afternoon.
“Who knows?” my father replied, surprisingly circumspect. “The country’s gone mad,” he announced, sounding like my mother, who stayed quiet while he made her standard complaint about Pakistan.
My mother instructed me to take out the garbage. “Doesn’t Sadiq do that?” I asked. She told me to take it out immediately and imposed an earlier bedtime on me for asking the question.
I went the long way to the garbage bin through the servants’ quarters, where I knew I shouldn’t have been. Sadiq’s bathroom door was open just a crack, and Hanif was reclined in a plastic tub my father had had installed for him. He was giggling continuously, like he was being tickled, while his father directed a steady stream of water on his soapy hair. It occurred to me that Hanif likely didn’t have access to an unlimited supply of hot water, made possible in our house by the water boilers attached to every bathroom. Despite such luxury, I routinely ignored my mother’s frequent reminders not to waste water with long showers.
I lingered near the bathroom and eavesdropped on Sadiq and Hanif. Even if my Urdu were fluent, I wouldn’t have interrupted them, but I wanted to understand Hanif’s devotion to the prime minister and to ask why he’d made the prime minister’s sorrow his own.
I, on the other hand, had personal grievances against the prime minister. After all, he was the reason my father had decided to move us, against our will, to Islamabad. The country had just lost a war and half its territory, but the new leader used the defeat to rally expatriates like my father to return home to develop what was left of it. “It is my duty,” my father had said. Now, many years later, I still blamed the prime minister. Whether it was reasonable or not, I held him personally responsible for my discomfort with what I was—half-and-half, mixed, Pakistani, whatever. I clung to the misplaced notion that if my father had not accepted the job as chairman of WAPDA, I could have gone on announcing I was from Pakistan in the safety of Vienna, and I would never have known what it meant to be Pakistani and neither, really, would anyone else.
The problem was, I knew the prime minister. That is to say, I knew his children, which was almost like knowing him personally. Two of them, much older than me, had attended my school when we first moved to Islamabad. They would arrive every morning in a sparkling black Mercedes. Their driver was outfitted like an embassy driver in a crisp white uniform with big silver buttons and a smart matching cap. A bodyguard sat in the front seat, and from my classroom window I thought I could make out a pistol belted to his stomach when he jumped out of his seat to open the car doors for the prime minister’s children. The bodyguard didn’t last long, though, and rumor had it this was because the prime minister’s son, Shah, insisted on carrying his own pistol strapped to his calf. I often watched Shah play on the school soccer team with my brother, but I never saw a pistol on him. When Shah was graduating along with Amir, Begum Bhutto, the prime minister’s elegant wife, was the guest speaker at my brother’s commencement ceremony. I couldn’t stop looking at this beautiful woman, tall like my mother and the only other person wearing a sari. I was staring so unabashedly, Lehla jabbed me with her elbow to make me stop. When the speech was over, we took our places in the receiving line and shook everyone’s hand. Amir stood next to his friend Shah. My brother lifted me up and hugged me, the golden tassel on his pointy graduation hat tickling my nose. When he put me down, his friend did the same. “I’m going to marry you some day,” Shah said and made us all laugh.
Hanif hadn’t even known the prime minister. He’d never spoken to his children or watched his wife give a speech. What on earth made him feel so close to the man?
“Aliya! Aliya!” My mother was calling for me.
Lizzy was on the telephone.
“Liya?”
Leeyaa. I loved the way her nickname for me rolled off her tongue. The two syllables instead of three. It made me less myself, more a Lizzy or an Annie or a Chrissy, almost the name of a character in a book. It was a pity my parents hadn’t thought to name me something so simple.
“You didn’t call me like you said you would!” Lizzy was miffed, but her accusation didn’t make me mad. No one had ever insisted on my friendship before.
FOUR
February 1978
Thick white fog was the closest we had to snow in Islamabad, and that morning, fog closed the airport. Like snow, it amplified sounds, and when my father rang the kitchen buzzer to the servants’ quarters, I had to cover my ears in my bedroom.
We were forbidden to use the buzzer. “We don’t summon servants by pretending they are trained animals,” my mother said.
“So what should we do?” Lehla once asked, caught with her finger on the buzzer.
“Use your voice and call him!”
“Because shouting is more dignified?” Lehla muttered, and she was punished for talking back.
My father miscalculated by thinking my mother would fail to notice the buzzer. I got up and cracked open my door to see what would happen, and in no time at all, my mother confronted him in the kitchen.
“I’ve asked you not to use the buzzer,” she scolded.
“Don’t be silly. That’s what it’s there for!” my father said at the same moment Sadiq appeared.
Because my father’s flight to Lahore had been canceled, he intended to complete the journey by road. He had an important meeting at WAPDA headquarters at noon, which meant he had to leave within the next hour. He’d summoned Sadiq to offer Yunis and Hanif a ride and save them the scheduled bus journey the following day.
I walked in as Sadiq politely declined the offer.
My mother’s Urdu was worse than mine, but she understood enough of the conversation to offer her thoughts.
“Please have them drive with sahib,” she said. Although Sadiq understood her simple sentence, she insisted my father translate it. “Tell him the car is much safer than the flying coaches.” She’d never been on the express buses that raced madly from city to city, but she was current on newspaper chronicles of their alarming accident rates.
Sadiq nodded in agreement but did not change his mind.
Yunis came to help with chores and also turned down my father’s invitation.
“Oh, please!” said my mother, who had a soft spot for Yunis. He had converted to Christianity so that the woman he had wanted would marry him. My mother, who’d also converted to marry my father, made no secret of enjoying this story every time it was told, and it was the reason he was her favorite servant.
“How’s the boy now?” my father asked, and Yunis’s reply made him beam.
“What did he say?” I asked eagerly, and my father told us.
The previous night, Sadiq, Yunis, and Hanif were eating dinner, and Sadiq asked his son how he was doing. The boy replied that he was happy, and when Sadiq asked why, his response was surprising. He said, “The prime minister won’t die. He’ll live as long as I do!”
The adults ooohed and aaahed at Hanif’s prediction, but I had no idea why they were takin
g him seriously. Had he had a dream? A vision? Why would that make his prediction come true? “How does he know the prime minister will live a long time?” I asked.
My father had already returned to his conversation with Yunis. From what I understood, Hanif no longer said his prayers more than five times a day, and he’d promised to go back to school.
“God willing, the boy will be fine,” my father said.
“At least his mother will be happy,” my mother sighed.
The reception on our Zenith radio was poor, and it delivered the BBC news headlines in incomprehensible bits and pieces.
“Did the announcer say Iran? Or Pakistan?” my mother asked, and in the short span of those two questions, my father’s mood plummeted.
“What does it matter? Iran or Pakistan, it’s never good news.” The general’s name, Zia-ul-Haq, filtered through the newscast, and my father added, “Especially when it refers to Cancel My Last Announcement.”
“That’s not funny,” I grumbled.
My father was using the general’s latest unflattering nickname, which shared an acronym, CMLA, with one of his titles, chief martial law administrator. It was supposed to be a joke, but there was nothing funny about it, because it was an accurate description of the man who was making my father—and the country—miserable. The general, in his CMLA incarnation, had broken several promises to the country, including holding elections ninety days after the coup. Worse, the Supreme Court had recently legitimized his martial law.
Before my father hugged us good-bye, my mother handed him a single Valium tablet.
“Do not forget to take it,” she warned. “You can sleep on the drive home.”
My father took it, even as he said the general was not expected to attend the meeting. “Just in case,” he said.
Late in the afternoon, Sadiq asked my mother for permission to be excused from work for the evening.
“Kyun?” she asked, and in the Urdu-English pidgin that passed for communication in our household, she learned he wanted to buy his son a new pair of sneakers. She told him that since everything was more expensive in Islamabad, he should buy the shoes in Lahore, but he ignored her suggestion.
“Maybe Hanif is going to play cricket again and needs them as soon as he gets to Lahore,” I suggested.
My mother complained that no one ever seemed to hear her. What she meant was that no one in Pakistan ever listened to her. Whenever it was convenient, people became deaf in her company. Her complaint was usually reserved for my father, but that evening Sadiq was also guilty.
She found her purse and tried to give money to Sadiq, who refused to take it. “He’s deaf and stubborn!” she protested, grabbing a magazine and disappearing into her bedroom.
The airport reopened in the evening, and my father returned from Lahore by plane. The general hadn’t been at the meeting, which accounted for my father’s energy. He heated up the plate of food Sadiq had left for him in the refrigerator and made his own tea. We chatted a bit, but in no time my father was focused on preparing for work the following day.
The clang of metal on metal as our gate latch opened and closed was loud, but the latch took unexpectedly long to fall closed. A moment later, we heard a whispered, frantic exchange that included, “Sahib ko bulao,” but it was impossible to tell if the speaker was Yunis, Sadiq, or the night chowkidar. My father looked up from the stack of unread reports and memos next to his dinner plate.
“Go and see who’s there,” he said.
I saw Sadiq and Yunis in the driveway, heading to the servants’ quarters with the chowkidar following close behind. Sadiq was strangely unsteady on his feet. He wove from one side of the driveway to the next under the weight of what was in his arms. He was momentarily illuminated by the lighting and, suddenly, I recognized my favorite red tracksuit. Hanif’s arms and legs swung limply on either side of Sadiq as he loosely cradled his son’s body against his chest.
“Sadiq?” I called.
At the sound of my voice, the chowkidar spun around and barked, “Yahan nahin ana!” He ordered me to return to the house and get my father.
My father dropped a file of papers and hurried to investigate. I followed, but at the back door, he commanded me not to accompany him further. I waited until he couldn’t see me and got a few steps closer to the servants’ quarters before a muffled howl filled the night. It sounded like a jackal’s cry, but I slowly realized that the wail was coming from our servants’ quarters. My mother shouted for me to come back into the house, and I had no choice but to return.
When my father entered the lounge where we were waiting, his chin was on his chest and his hands were buried in his pockets. He moved carefully, knocked off balance by what he’d learned.
“What happened?” my mother asked. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the overhead light, and the yellow glow from the copper sconce turned the three of us the same color.
His shoulders sagged, and he whispered, “The boy has died.”
“What boy?” my mother asked.
“Hanif was killed in a hit-and-run accident.”
“No, Hanif went with his father to the market to buy shoes,” my mother explained.
My father said nothing and studied her. “You’re wrong, Javid,” she said, undeterred.
“Irene, the boy is lying on his father’s bed, and he is dead.” He’d given up his whisper; his voice was clear, his words horribly slow.
My mother jumped.
I didn’t believe it either. “Are you sure?” I asked. When my father didn’t respond, I clarified, “How can you be sure?”
Fifteen minutes later, when the doctor arrived to examine Hanif, I interrupted him. “Will Hanif be all right?”
The doctor, a family friend and my pediatrician, said, “I’m sorry. The boy has passed away.” Silence spread around us like rapidly rising water, and I struggled not to fall. Then he added, “The city ought to do something about careless drivers. Light its streets. Hire traffic police. A number of things we could do that we don’t.” I found the phrase passed away absolutely inadequate for describing what had happened to Hanif.
I couldn’t bear to be alone. I sat next to my father while he made more telephone calls than I could count to arrange to transport the body to Lahore the following day. Sometimes he spoke Urdu, sometimes Punjabi, and once in a while, English. My mother made me hot chocolate with special Dutch cocoa powder and brought me one of her pashmina shawls because I was cold.
My father revealed a few details. Sadiq, Hanif, and Yunis had gone to Aabpara Market to buy Hanif a new pair of sneakers, exactly as Sadiq had said they would. After purchasing the shoes, they didn’t have enough money to return on the bus, so they walked home. At an intersection near Polyclinic, a car came out of nowhere and hit Hanif. The car sped away and Hanif was dead.
“It was as simple as that,” my father said, taking off his reading glasses and rubbing the impression they left on his nose. “Here one moment, gone the next.”
“Who did this?” my mother asked.
“Yunis says the license plate was yellow.”
My mother gasped. “Foreign? My God, diplomats do whatever they want here!”
During another lull, when my father was not on the telephone, she asked, “Why didn’t the driver stop, Jav?”
“Later,” he replied.
“Why didn’t the driver stop?” I repeated my mother’s question, but the telephone rang again and he offered nothing more.
Eventually my parents persuaded me to return to my room. My father sat on the edge of my bed, something he hadn’t done in a long time, and stroked my head until I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.
Many times during the remainder of that night, while my parents bustled between the telephone and the servants’ quarters, I fooled myself into believing Hanif was still alive. I heard his high-pitched chatter through the walls and the patter of hand-me-down slippers on his feet. The spraying water in the bathroom was his father drawing him a bath; the muted crie
s were his giggling. Through it all, he was wearing my brother’s red tracksuit.
FIVE
Late February–March 1978
The morning after the accident, my yellow school bus and a minivan appeared in front of the house at almost the same time. I was at the bus stop when the minivan drove through our gates to take Yunis, Sadiq, and what was left of Hanif to Lahore. I sat in the front seat of the unusually empty bus. The driver, accustomed to turning off the engine and waiting for me because I was always late, was slow to close the doors and continue the journey. I pressed my face to the window and concentrated on the activity in the driveway. The rear of the minivan was opening. Yunis and my father were straining to place the child’s stiff body inside the van. I assumed Hanif was wrapped in my mother’s best white sheets.
Lizzy did not get on the bus at her stop, and I wished she had so I could take my mind off the accident. I could not get Hanif out of my mind. He was a small boy, lean like Amir had once been, and over and over, I imagined his bones shattering from the impact of the car. I missed Amir and Lehla more than I ever had. I wished it had been me, instead of them, who’d escaped Islamabad so I wouldn’t have been home for Hanif’s death.
No one told me, but I knew exactly how he’d been killed. It was irrelevant that I hadn’t been with Sadiq, Hanif, and Yunis on the walk home from Aabpara Market. I wasn’t privy to the precise details, but I’d overheard things during the night. By the time morning came, the picture I’d formed in my imagination was so real I believed it to be true.
Hanif tried on several pairs of shoes until he found the one that fit. It was the most expensive pair in the store, and that left his father without any money for bus fare, which was why they began walking home.
