by Ali Sethi
“You go first,” I said.
Naseem sighed. She wrung her hands in the sink, lifted the tray and went away.
She returned with the tray, which was empty.
“She here?”
“Oh, yes,” said Naseem.
“Did they drink the juice?”
“Must have.”
“You didn’t stay.”
“No, no.”
“Should I go?”
“If you want.”
I went. I stood before the door and knocked.
“Who is it?” said Samar Api from inside.
“It’s me,” I said. “Your cousin.”
“You can come in.”
She was sitting cross-legged on the bed. And Tara Tanvir was standing, still immersed in the novelty of the room, a hand on her hip, a hand holding her glass of orange juice.
“I don’t think he’s that great,” she said.
Samar Api looked at me and looked away.
They were discussing Amitabh.
“He’s tall dark handsome,” said Samar Api. Her juice was finished, the empty glass edged into the congestion on the bedside table.
“I like tall fair handsome,” said Tara Tanvir. She raised her glass to sip the juice but lowered it before it reached her lips.
“Hi, Tara,” I said from the doorway.
“Hi,” said Tara Tanvir, but distractedly. Her back was turned; she was searching a poster on the wall for the alleged appeal of its subject. The back of her vest showed tight folds at the armpits.
“You don’t have to stand,” said Samar Api.
“O ya,” said Tara Tanvir. She sought to settle her glass on the table, settled it on the floor instead, then settled herself on the bed. “Zaki,” she said, seeing me now, “you’re dressed so well.”
“You can come in,” said Samar Api.
“Ya, come sit with us!” cried Tara Tanvir with the same enthusiasm, the same bright burst of an idea out of nothing that had marked the success of the previous night. I sat again on the edge of the bed, aware of the room now, the aspect of newness and the element of disguise.
“Who all lives here?” inquired Tara Tanvir.
Samar Api gave a surprisingly succinct account of the house and its inhabitants, their various roles and functions and their links to one another.
“Where’s your mother?” said Tara Tanvir.
“My mother’s in the village,” said Samar Api. “His mother’s at the office.”
“My mother never goes out,” said Tara Tanvir.
We were quiet.
“You guys!” she cried. “Don’t be formal!” She was friendly and rallying; she thrashed her foot in childish protest on the bed and laughed as if at the absurdity of her own remark, her shoulders shaking, her eyes small and thin with mirth.
“You’re too much, Tara,” said Samar Api, and laughed concedingly.
“I’m blunt,” said Tara Tanvir.
“Too blunt!” said Samar Api.
They laughed together.
“So what’s the plan,” said Tara Tanvir when the laughing had ended.
Samar Api stretched forward and touched her toes with her fingertips. She said, “Up to you.”
“I don’t know,” said Tara Tanvir, and made a face. “I’m here to hang out with you guys.” And this was said with a degree of self-exposure, a frankness that was bold and then touching.
“Let’s show her the house,” said Samar Api, and climbed off the bed.
We went to the roof, which was bright and searing in the daylight; the aerial stood in an isolated corner like a rake. Tara Tanvir said she wanted to touch it, but Samar Api said it had the power to electrocute, and Tara Tanvir quickly withdrew her hand. She was led away then to the other side of the roof, where the trees and houses of the neighborhood protruded in an endless view: clothes hung on clotheslines, still and sagging in the breezeless afternoon, the windows of the houses open and closed without purpose or consistency of design.
“You guys have neighbors?” said Tara Tanvir. She was squinting, her hand forming a saluting terrace at her forehead to keep out the sun.
And Samar Api told the stories of some of the houses in the neighborhood, the eccentricities of former residents and the things they had left unexplained.
Downstairs again, in the uneven shade of eaves and ledges, we walked about in search of undiscovered meanings. The gravel walkway, cracked for years, now acquired the menace of disrepair, a waiting air of doom; we kicked stones and stepped on fallen branches, which crunched. I ran a hand along the flaking wall, across the unmoving multitudes of mango bugs, gray and ripe: the wall was streaked with their yellow juice.
Tara Tanvir squealed.
We passed the gutter. It was open and showed a steady gleam hurrying on in the darkness.
“No way,” said Tara Tanvir.
“It’s just a gutter,” said Samar Api.
Tara Tanvir was enchanted. She knelt to lift a twig from the ground and dropped it in the hole. It went soundlessly.
“Now it’ll come in someone’s bathroom,” said Samar Api, and laughed into her hand, not wishing to describe the process or to dwell upon the consequences.
We reached the lawn at last and sat on the grass. The sun had left broad burns behind the day; birds flapped out of trees and fled in shifting shapes against the dark.
Tara Tanvir wanted a flower from the frangipani tree.
“He’s really good at climbing,” said Samar Api.
They watched.
“Thanks so much, Zaki,” said Tara Tanvir, and twirled the white flower in her hand. She closed her eyes and smelled it, then secured it behind her ear. She leaned back on the grass against her palms. “You guys, we’re getting close,” she said. Then she said, “You know I broke up with my boyfriend,” and laughed tragically. “Ya. It was long distance. He lives in London. He’s a family friend. He’s older than me. I always go for older guys. My mistake, I guess. But he was such a good kisser.”
It was like a profession.
Samar Api reached out a hand.
“I’m over it now,” said Tara Tanvir. “And frankly I don’t care. Good riddance to bad rubbish is what I say.”
Samar Api continued to hold her hand.
“Let’s change the subject,” said Tara Tanvir.
“What’s better,” said Samar Api, “London or America?”
Tara Tanvir said London was better because she knew people there. On Oxford Street, where she often went walking, there was always a chance of bumping into someone she knew. “And London has Selfridges and Harrods,” she said. “America only has malls.” She said “mauls” and not “maals,” which was how we said it.
“You have a house there?” said Samar Api.
“We have a flat.”
“What do you do in London?” said Samar Api. She was leaning forward and trying to stretch a blade of grass between her fingers.
Tara Tanvir described a world of buses and taxis, squares where people gathered on Sundays and ate ice creams that were sold from portable counters on the street, a stick of vanilla in chocolate. “It costs a pound and twenty pee,” she said, and explained that it was reasonable, a thing she could afford since she kept all the change from other purchases in her handbag. “In London all the change comes in coins,” she said.
“You’re so lucky,” said Samar Api.
“Depends on how you look at it,” said Tara Tanvir. She said it quickly, without pause or inflection.
“You are,” said Samar Api. She tugged the blade of grass between her fingers and it broke.
Tara Tanvir said, “You know something?”
We waited.
She said, “Forget it.”
“What?” said Samar Api.
“Nothing,” she said, and then told us about her father, who was having an affair. Her mother had tried to stop it, failed, and had an affair herself. Late at night, Tara Tanvir went with her mother in a car to a house in Defense, and waited in the lane outside
to catch an incriminating glimpse of her father. And on other nights her father drank a lot of whiskey and said unpleasant things about her mother that were difficult to hear. Tara Tanvir said she was torn, unable to choose between her parents, and didn’t know whose side to take or when to take it. And she said she didn’t know when the fighting would end.
Samar Api held her friend’s hand and told the story of her own family, in which her father was impassioned and unpredictable, her mother worried all the time and inconsolable. The extended family was worse because they lived in the village and had the ways of villagers.
“And Zaki doesn’t even have a father,” Samar Api said.
“Isn’t it amazing,” said Tara Tanvir after she had heard the stories, “how we all come from broken homes?”
Samar Api went to Tara Tanvir’s house the next day on her own, and on four days the following week. Thereafter it became a routine: she went in Tara Tanvir’s jeep after school, which returned her to the house in the evening. She said they had formed a study group to distribute the homework. At home she rarely had time for playing, and preferred not to take dinner: she cited exhaustion and homework and withdrew with the telephone to her room.
I spent my afternoons with a boy called Mazri, who lived in a brick house with a barred gate at the end of the lane. Mazri’s family didn’t own the house; his father was employed there as a cook in the service of Mrs. Zaidi, an abrasive widow who was suspicious of outsiders: she had the walls of her house lined with shards of broken glass to deter climbing, and watched contemptuously from her bedroom window when I came to call on Mazri. After that we played in the lane outside. No remarks were needed; ours was a friendship of activities: Mazri owned a bicycle, a bright red Sohrab Eagle his father had bought him from the stalls in Neela Ghumbad, and we took turns riding it in the lane. Mazri was quick; he could speed up and down with his hands in the air, the tip of his tongue protruding in a knob of daring. He was generous too; he taught me to ride the bicycle and allowed me to ride it on my own. Together we flew kites on the roof. Mazri knew the natures of various kinds of string, and we cycled to Canal Park to purchase the supplies, taking turns on the bicycle, which had a second seat at the back, a flat, hard rectangle that bumped and shuddered with the road. In the shop Mazri tested the string on his fingers—fine string always left a cut—and I paid for his selections with the money my mother had started giving me on the weekends for a sense of responsibility. Sometimes we stayed on in Canal Park to play video games in the arcade, a cement enclave between two permanently shuttered shops, a place that had no door and was exposed to the smell of the sewage directly outside.
It contained four booths that were monitored intermittently by the owner, a fat, hairy man who sat on a plastic chair with one bare foot on the floor and the other up on the seat. We went to him repeatedly for tokens. I required more tokens than Mazri, who was better at playing the video game; he defeated me with ease and took on the game itself. He was better in real fights too; he fought without expression, using his hands and legs with calculation, and was unhurt by the pummeling and the furious threats of reprisal. He wasn’t provoked when I called him a servant. He walked away with his bicycle and, reaching a secure distance, turned his head and shouted, “Teri ma da phudda!” I repeated it in front of Daadi, who touched her ears and cried, “Astaghfaar!” and sent me into the bathroom to rinse my mouth with water.
Up on the roof one day Mazri announced that he had made a discovery. He removed his shalwar and began to tug at his thing, which hardened. He said the same would happen to mine. I took off my shorts and Mazri tugged at my thing, tugged and tugged until it tickled and grew. I held his in my hand. It seemed to have grown a bone. His eyes were closed. When he opened his eyes he said I had gone too far, I was dirty and wanted to do dirty things. He said these things and went home. But the next day he returned, and the fight was forgotten; we did wheelies on the bicycle in the lane and went on it to play video games in Canal Park.
Then news came to the house of a breakthrough in technology. It was shaped like a dish and derived its name from this likeness. Samar Api said it would bring five new channels to our TV: a news channel, a channel with only English programming, an Indian channel, a sports channel and a channel for music only. She insisted it wasn’t a hoax: she said Tara had it in her house, it worked all the time, and it wasn’t a secret because the price was reasonable and people were queuing up outside shops to pay it.
Daadi agreed to give the money. A group of men with rolled-up sleeves came to the house in a van and dragged out a large white dish in plastic wrapping. They carried it noisily to the roof and began working, asking at intervals for tea and water, which were sent upstairs on a tray with Naseem, who was instructed additionally to supervise the installation. Downstairs Daadi paced her room, because she feared that a fault in the setup might, by some logic of extended betrayal, spread to the existing two channels and cause them to falter. One of the men was brought into her room to make the necessary adjustments: he placed a black device above the TV and knelt on the carpet, the soles of his feet black with filth, his fingers making calculated journeys in the darkness behind. He stood up and switched on the TV to check the channels, which were blank. He put on his sandals and went back upstairs.
At last he returned to conclude the procedure, and we assembled in Daadi’s room as witnesses. He stood before the TV with the bubble-wrapped remote control in his hand and produced the channels one by one: the news channel, where two aggravated foreigners were conversing behind a desk; the English channel, where two men were lying on a beach; then the music channel, where people were standing on a stage with guitars; a channel that showed local poor people standing aimlessly in a bus—the forlorn music in the background was identified as flute and confirmed that it was the Indian channel; then cricket; then scratches; then nothing.
The man looked at the faces in the room and tapped his foot on the carpet.
He was paid and relieved.
Routines emerged. In the morning Naseem appeared with her perforated bowl of vegetables and settled cross-legged on the carpet. She watched the sports channel, cricket mostly, big matches between big teams, the one-day series and the World Cup, which Pakistan had won, but also county-level matches between unknown English teams. She peeled the vegetables and cut her hand repeatedly. Daadi turned to television in the afternoon, after waking from her nap, and was joined in her commentaries by Suri and Hukmi, who brought confectionaries from the bakery to show that they were contributing. After dinner my mother stayed on in Daadi’s room to watch the news for an unbiased view on recent quagmires. And late at night, after the others had gone to sleep, Samar Api took the TV and the telephone into her room, where she watched soap operas and discussed with the phone the significance of new realities, the kisses and confessions and the hanging sense they left of what was yet to come.
My favorite program was The Wonder Years. It appeared on the English channel in the early evening, the ongoing story of a boy called Kevin who lived with his parents and domineering older brother in America. Every morning Kevin went to a junior high school, where the corridor was lined with lockers—Kevin’s crush, Winnie, and his best friend, Paul, had one each. And inside his locker Kevin kept a file, a large, padded file with an external flap that he carried under his arm when walking in the dusk after school.
In the market the file was unavailable. The files at Anees Book Corner were hard and ugly, and contained grotesque metal rings inside. Others were slight, mere folders with pockets for holding papers, or large and unwieldy files that were used in offices and stored in the drawers of desks.
“Not for children,” said the salesman, and withdrew his gaze concludingly.
The watching of the program continued, and the need deepened for a file. It came at last from the Women’s Journal office, an unremarkable black file with the one attractive feature of a magnetic latch: it snapped open and snapped shut.
I went out for a walk.
> “What’s that you’ve got?” said Mazri.
I said it was a file.
Mazri was unimpressed.
“Holds papers,” I said, and revealed the empty flaps inside. “See how it snaps.”
Mazri was amused.
“Hold it.”
Mazri held it in both his hands, like a tray. He turned it on its back and knocked a knuckle on the hard exterior.
“We can fill it up with papers.”
“And documents.”
“What about money?”
I said we could do that as well, though a wallet was better for storing money.
Mazri opened the file, fingered the lining, flapped the flaps. He closed it and produced the snap. The sound was appealing; he made it a few times and handed back the file. “You can fill it up on your own,” he said, and began to mount his bicycle.
“It’s better than your bicycle,” I said.
Mazri was whistling.
“You don’t even go to my high school.”
And Mazri, whistling, waving his hand from the bicycle, was trying to show that he was leaving me behind.
“Bloody Mazri,” I said when I went back inside. “Doesn’t even know a thing.”
“So?” said Samar Api. She was sitting in the one-seater with her legs dangling off the armrest, changing the channels on the TV with the bubble-wrapped remote control. “You should make your own friends now.”
Yawar was a boy in my class. He became distinct the next morning in the classroom, listening to the things the Urdu teacher was saying about the importance of upholding a standard of cleanliness in society. He wasn’t a bully but wasn’t bullied either, lacking obvious vulnerabilities as well as the instinct that led more aggressive individuals to seek them out in others.
I approached him during lunch break. He was returning from the canteen with his lunch, an unopened sandwich that was held high in his hand like an item he wanted to store for later use or throw away. He didn’t comment when I began to walk with him, and together we wove our way through the barren field at the back of the campus.
