by Ali Sethi
“Sir,” said Isa obligingly, and held open the shiny door.
Most of the houses were in Defense, and these were easy to find—the division into sectors was surprisingly reliable. In two trips we had delivered more than half the cards. But areas like Gulberg and Garden Town were difficult: the houses had retreated from the roads, which had succumbed to boutiques and restaurants and shopping plazas, many still bare with cement and guarded by smart neon screens that came alive at night and painted promising pictures of standards surpassed and goals achieved. The houses were hidden behind these hasty conjurings, lost in a confusion of unnamed lanes that often died abruptly in empty plots. And other parts were stranger: the one time we went to Mughalpura our car got stuck in an alley. There were no boutiques here and no plazas, only small, unshuttered shops on the sides and rubbish heaped on the streets. Our car was stranded between a bus and a donkey cart, and attracted a pack of children, who were thrilled by our misfortune and banged their fists on the bonnet and dragged their squeaky palms across the windows.
Isa lowered his window and shouted, “Maaderchod!”
A laughing boy darted into the recessed shade of a house and made a shoving gesture with his fist.
“Frickin’ wild,” said Moosa, who was sitting in the front and wearing sunglasses.
The children stared and kept walking, past the car and then along the sides of the bus, dragging their palms with slow sureness across its shut doors.
Moosa said, “They’re like monkeys.” He lit a cigarette and lowered his window a little.
And Isa said, “Education,” and stared defiantly at the children outside, without saying whether he thought this was the problem or the solution.
Morning was spent locating caterers and light-wallahs in obscure, grimy corners of Ichhra, then ordering the flowers in bulk from stalls in Liberty and stopping at the roundabout to negotiate with the dholwalas, who wore starched silver turbans and yellow clothes and sat on the footpath with their drums. They took down the address and promised to be there on the night of the wedding. But there was more to do the next day, as the chores were renewed and led again into the afternoon, which was long and touched with sunshine and then a little cold, the large, low sun hanging red behind the rising dust. In the evening we were asked to collect Aasia and Maheen, sisters to Isa and Moosa respectively, from their tuition centers in Muslim Town. They were in secondary school now and were preparing for their end-of-term exams but had nothing to say on the subject; they sat at the back of the car with their mobile phones, and played with the buttons and watched the luminous screens for results. They were girly in their habits but physically complete: their shalwar kameezes were tight around the waist and accentuated the bust and the pelvis, the sleeves short and modern. Aasia was older and had stocky upper arms that she stroked from time to time as if to soothe a rash. She had thin eyebrows and stylish black glasses with thick rims, and wore her hair in a ponytail that rose and fell in a fluffy S. Maheen was pale and lanky, also pony-tailed, and wore no makeup other than a striking smudge of black around the eyes. Both carried handbags. They were at that place where, after years of conflict, they were discovering a quiet understanding with their mothers, who now appeared sympathetic and weirdly familiar.
At night I went with Isa and Moosa to see the new places of leisure. There was a mini-golf course near Center Point with gently sloping islands and fountains that coughed colorful water; a karaoke bar in Defense Market that played songs too new for nostalgia and not new enough to stir up the excitements of the present; and a dim sheesha bar in Gaddafi Stadium, where two waiters in waistcoats sat idly at a table, surrounded by the dark décor and a ghostly absence of customers. They were surprised to see us, and talked and motioned erratically as they led us up a winding wrought-iron staircase into the smoking section. We settled into a sofa by the window, and I saw that our arrival had stopped the advancements of a date: they were sitting in a corner, the boy now looking sourly in our direction, the girl speaking rigidly to the table as though someone had just switched on the lights after promising not to. An abandoned hookah sat between them like undestroyed evidence. They ordered the bill and paid it quickly, and left maintaining a careful physical distance.
And that was it. There was nothing more to do. There were still no bars or nightclubs in Lahore or in the rest of the country, where alcohol was banned. Isa said it was unnecessary since people went on doing what they had always done. He gave the example of Dubai, where they had achieved some kind of regulation by allowing alcohol only in the clubs; you couldn’t buy a bottle and take it home with you. That system was better because it allowed things in small amounts and saved people from excess in the end.
“Over here,” he said hopelessly, “everything goes on underground. Everyone does everything.” He meant the people in the society pages, from whose world he was excluded. He went on to list their vices in a burning whisper: “Partiessharties, coke-shoke, anything and everything, E bhenchod, speed and heroin.” He recovered his voice and said, “What the fuck is booze, man? It’s nothing.”
“Orgies,” said Moosa with a smile of depravity, a guilty smile that suggested complicity of intent if not in the act itself. “Swapping partners. There’s a club in Karachi where you swap your car keys first.” He laughed mordantly, as if at a hard but distant memory of the thing. “And gays. So many gays.” He said it with a sigh of amazement, a yearning for a time when it was still an occasional occurrence and not a pervasive phenomenon, a thing that happened but didn’t yet demand a reckoning by showing up so obviously around him.
“And bombs?” I asked.
“And bombs,” said Moosa, who hadn’t thought of it like that. “And bombs.”
“Basically it’s all changing,” said Isa, whose vision of it had suddenly expanded and gone beyond the horizon; he saw it all at once and it compelled him to bring up his hand and rock it to either side like a raft in water. “It’s all up for grabs,” he said. “It’s all up for grabs.”
The alcohol still came from bootleggers. And their names were the same: Samuel, Emanuel, Joseph, Ilyas—Christians with purchasing licenses. The imported bottles were sent from the warehouses of embassies in Islamabad, and in Lahore they were always more expensive. One evening we set out in the car to acquire our stock for the wedding. We were following directions delivered by the man, who was gruff and edgy on the phone and spoke only in codes (“the stuff” was ready, he said, five “browns” and five “whites”). The place was in Cantt, which was surprising, since only rich people and retired generals lived in Cantt. We got lost trying to find it. It was late already; the maghrib azaan had sounded and the sun had vanished behind the thick, dark trees of a park. Night would soon descend, and the policemen would surface at the curbs, waiting to stop cars like ours (too rich to be poor, too poor to be rich) so they could search the seats and trunks with flashlights.
“Dogs,” said Moosa, “bribe-eaters.”
“No worries,” said Isa, who had tried this sort of thing and succeeded.
We found it in a dusty lane behind the polo grounds. It was a large gray house guarded by a tall gate of thick blue iron. The owner’s name was inscribed on a white plastic plaque outside. It was not the name of the bootlegger, who went only by Ashfaaq.
Moosa offered to ring the bell.
“No,” said Isa, and dialed a number into his mobile phone.
Moosa began to gallop his fingers on the dashboard.
“Don’t,” said Isa.
Moosa didn’t.
“Ji!” said Isa to the phone, suddenly buoyant. “We are outside. Yes, right outside. Okay, no problem, no problem.” He held up the phone to check that it was the same number, then tossed it onto the dashboard.
“Coming?” said Moosa.
Isa nodded. He was watching the gate beyond, which opened at last with a whine and a clang: a man emerged with his shoulders thrown back as if to further project the bulge of his stomach. A duffel bag was carried on his palms. He paused at the gate an
d looked quickly to either side.
“Boss,” said Isa through his window. He brought two fingers to his forehead in a casual salute.
“Boss,” said the man in response, with a wide but withholding smile that took in the seats, the open dashboard, our clothes and faces.
“Stuff ready?” said Isa.
The man passed him the bag, and Isa settled it in his lap and searched it with his hand, rattling the glass inside. “Set,” he said, and brought out the cash. He counted it carefully to ensure it was the right amount, licking his forefinger every few notes.
The man watched without altering his expression.
Isa stacked the notes on his knee and handed them over in a drooping wad. “Otherwise? All well?”
“God’s grace,” said the man with a hand on his heart.
Isa held on to a look of contentment and reversed the car. He kept his speed in the lane, then outside the lane, on the streets, avoiding the checkposts and waiting until the danger had passed. And now came the rise of Sherpao Bridge, the wind and the lights in the sweep of transit: it was a memory and then a feeling, sitting in another car with Samar Api, her face turned to the window and waiting for a thrill that by then had always passed.
I looked now and found that there was no horizon, only the lights of distant houses coming on in the dark.
The days leading up to the wedding were marked by the bride’s absence. She was to be unveiled on the last night, after the two families had established themselves in a series of marital procedures that began with a milaad. It was held at our house on a weeknight. The veranda was covered in white bedsheets, which were spread out in overlapping squares and spotted with maroon velvet cushions rented from a shop in Canal Park. It was a ladies-only affair; they left their shoes at the entrance and sat in solemn rows on the floor, their heads covered and swaying to sad songs in praise of the Prophet. Then we attended a dholki at the groom’s house. Our party went in two cars, the men in starched white cotton and the women in fabrics of varying intensities, led by Daadi, who wore cream silk and a collaring of pearls, and approached the house with a frail arm in the nook of Naseem’s elbow. We were showered with rose petals at the entrance. Hands were held and cheeks were kissed. A photographer knelt and took pictures. We were shown into the enclosed lawn and were asked to take the front row of chairs, Daadi in the center, Naseem at her feet on the carpet. Instantly she began plying Daadi with tissue to show that our elders were cared for in unfamiliar environments; twice Suri and Hukmi stopped a bearer to demand a glass of water for Daadi, and my mother leaned in repeatedly to name the guests, to locate them within the crystalizing family network. Daadi listened with a steady unsurprised expression, as though the accruing information only validated opinions that had been aired earlier.
The dances began. First the groom’s aunts performed the luddi in slow, restrained circles. Their dupattas were tied like sashes across their torsos and slipped when they bent to clap. Then the young men of the clan performed a rowdy bhangra. They wore matching black kurtas and yellow scarves in siphons around their necks, and kicked the air and jabbed their forefingers at the ceiling. Now a hush fell upon the room, and someone cried, “Auntie! It’s Auntie’s turn!” There was whistling and hooting as a well-preserved woman emerged from the seated crowd and took confident, youthful steps into the center of the room. Her golden sari held its shine in brassy dents. She began to tap her foot to the gathering beat, her eyes closed, a hand massaging the chunky pendant at her throat. She was warming up. And now, her feet moving, she began to dance, but slowly, using only the features of her face, her mouth and her eyes and her eyebrows, and occasional twirls of her hand for expression. Daadi watched the dance with her own hands folded in her lap. She watched when Auntie closed her eyes and smiled, watched when Auntie began to dance in circles and stumbled and scowled and resisted with her fists the attempts of a concerned relative who was trying to take her away.
Later it was agreed that the event was mediocre at best, the groom’s relatives brash and uncouth and overly affectionate and oddly endearing in their lack of refinement. It was a way of measuring the first defeat, theirs, against the success that was expected to be ours.
But the next event was a dholki organized by Aasia and Maheen, and it fell into the hands of their friends, girls as well as boys, many of whom were newly befriended and took their time to arrive. They began to appear on the lawn after dinner had been served, the girls in long, flowing skirts and short blouses, the boys in dark blazers and shawls that were worn over plain shalwar kameezes. Their arrival caused excitement among the guests: there was talk now of dancing and speculation about the possible pairings. In a corner the girls and boys were being organized into dancing positions by their leader, a thin, rosy girl called Bushra who had come from Dubai and wore her hair in a pile and was instructing her subordinates with swift slashing movements of her arm. A rumor began to circulate, instigated by a male fashion designer in a declarative mood, about the girl’s temper at a photo shoot; she was a model or had been a model in the past; it was a shoot she had done for a magazine or a newspaper; the story traveled to the veranda, which had been converted with a screen into a place for men to stand with drinks and chat. Isa’s colleagues from the bank were there, and Moosa was trying unsuccessfully to enter their conversation. He was nodding a little too much, his loud laughs were incongruous, and he was drinking against this growing failure as a form of resistance, a refusal to submit; soon he was lost in an expression of bitter recall and staring with a drunk’s disdain at the extended folly of sobriety. He was seen wagging his finger at someone, then smiling slyly and saying something about loans. After that he attached himself to the idea of Bushra, who was about to start her dance. He announced it many times, in each instance with fresh excitement, and it began to have an effect on the gathering, which dispersed and reformed into a crowd of clapping onlookers. Bushra danced alone in a clearing to a fast-paced song about a veil the singer wanted her lover to touch: she was dancing back and forth with her own veil held taut between her hands, plunging forward and coming up and plunging and coming back up. Among the watching women there were expressions of admiration, shock, enchantment and developing interest, as well as boredom and mild contempt. And the expressions on the whole were serious and preoccupied. Then Bushra was gone; she had sat down abruptly, and in her place a boy was dancing to the rest of the song, which was the lover’s audacious response to the part about the veil. The boy too was fair-skinned and danced with slow movements of his shoulders, and it was instantly sexual, it was sexy in the extreme, and in the men’s gathering to the side this was expressed as encouragement, acknowledged with small smiles and nods of recognition, while among the women it caused a contagion of chortling and hand-holding shyness. The song ended and another began; another dance was danced; the choreography went on as before and began to lose its grip on the audience, which was increasingly restless. There came a moment when the clearing in the center was empty and the music continued unattended. A clapping uncle made the first incursion into this emptiness. And then the night belonged to all the guests, a democracy of dance that went on for almost an hour, and at last began to fade through small desertions, through partings and departures and through strange, sorrowful glances that seemed to acknowledge an unchanging truth that was always there toward the end.
So the day arrived. Almond-shaped lights appeared on the outside walls, on the frangipani tree at the edge of the lawn and around the pillars in the porch. A brass band was installed at the gate and told to perform the main tune only when the groom and his entourage arrived. To pass the time the band played patriotic tunes, and they drew the attention of mirasis: they appeared at the gate in their tattered clothes and stood behind their leader, who held a tambourine in one hand and held out the other hand and recited a long musical benediction that was dependent for completion on implied acts of charity. When no one came they struck their tambourines and sang traditional wedding songs. The manager of
the brass band came outside and told the mirasis to go away; the mirasis stopped singing and stared reproachfully. The manager went inside and complained, and after a while the mirasis were paid and left, and the brass band was able to go on playing patriotic tunes.
In the driveway the caterers had set up long tables and lined them with steel dishes. For now the dishes were empty and the lids were raised; the forks and spoons and knives were spread out underneath in adjoining rows, and every table had its own ostentatious display of salads and chutneys, desi as well as continental. Bearers in white uniforms hurried out of the kitchen with trays of stainless steel on their palms and carried them into the bloated white marquee covering the lawn, where guests were sitting in chairs and standing around charcoal braziers, and were turning again and again to look at the elevated stage where a sofa had been placed before a screen of hanging garlands. The sofa was empty, and was waiting for the bride and groom, who were going to appear after dinner, but first the marquee had to fill up. At last dinner was announced, and the guests gathered in lines by the tables in the driveway and returned with their plates and drinks to the lawn, where the chatter was suddenly loud and hectic and the sounds from the brass band outside had reached a pitch.
Inside, removed from the music and laughter, the bride was complaining.
“This is too tight,” said Samar Api, and snarled. “I can’t even breathe.”
“Try to sit up,” I suggested.
She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, slouching and making dejected faces at the ceiling. Her eyebrows, arched and sharpened during a frantic seven-hour session at the beauty salon, had acquired strange new angles at the edges, and gave her face a cunning and almost comical look. Cracks appeared in the layer of foundation on her forehead when she frowned; it had been applied clumsily; her sleeves lifted when she sighed and showed the unpainted ochre skin underneath. She tugged at her blouse in agitation. Stars fell to the carpet.
