by Ali Sethi
We went to the next house, Isa’s house, and took out the smaller car from the garage. It was a Suzuki Swift, a low car with an elongated snout and a flat back. Isa claimed it was promised as a present for his fifteenth birthday, which was still a year away, though he hoped by then to be driving an automatic. He said the Swift was good for practice; he drove it with a rough efficiency, the level of consideration that is owed a thing past its prime, past the time when it is singular and paramount and the only significant thing of its kind. The houses of the colony traveled side by side until the car was out on the main road. There was noise in the streets, the sound of cars going past and of motorcycles revved in the night, a show of daring before the arrival of the holiday.
We stopped at the traffic light. An old, hunched man was going from car to car with his palm held out. He knocked on windows and waited, knocked again, raised a finger to the sky and walked on, his hands dragging along the doors of the cars.
There was movement in the seat ahead; Isa shifted and seemed to be searching for something. Then the sound came, a chuck, and another: he rolled down his window and threw out the match.
Moosa watched him smoke the cigarette, waiting with fear and anticipation. It came to him at last, and he held it carefully between his fingers, smoking the cigarette with his eyes closed and pausing to inspect the ash, which hadn’t formed. He puffed and puffed at it, the ember glowing.
He held it out.
Isa said, “You want?” His eyes were in the rearview mirror.
Moosa looked at Isa, then looked at me in the seat in the back.
“No, not now,” I said.
“Up to you,” said Isa.
He smoked the cigarette.
Moosa said, “Don’t tell everyone.”
But Isa said, “He won’t, he won’t.”
We went to a white-lit utility store in Firdaus Market, where in the beverage aisle Isa selected three bottles of Malt 79, a nonalcoholic beverage that had the taste of beer. He paid at the counter for the bottles and for his father’s Alka-Seltzer packet. Moosa paid for a new packet of cigarettes: the brand was Marlboro Lights and he wanted the soft pack, which didn’t protrude in pockets. With the remaining money we went to a video shop, one in a row of lighted shops above a sunken parking lot. Isa went in by himself and left us to wait in the car.
I said, “How long you been smoking?”
Moosa was fiddling with the glove compartment in the front. He said, “Not long. Round about one year.”
There was commotion in the street outside. The vendors and shopkeepers had come down from their stalls and shops and gathered on the pavement: they were looking expectantly at the sky, which burst now with lights, streaking flowers in violet and green and orange that died upon release and gave way to others.
“Your dad know you smoke?”
“No, man,” said Moosa. “Obviously not.” He gave a grunt at the notion and twirled the cigarette lighter in his hand. “Even if he did, I don’t see what he can do about it . . .”
“What if he found out?”
“He won’t find out.”
“What if he did?”
“Why are you asking?”
It was a need to know how fathers fell into their roles, the rules they established and the positions they had to take when others had failed.
“Just asking,” I said.
Isa returned with the video and showed it to Moosa, who confirmed that it was the one. They had a humorous exchange about the shopkeeper’s comments—he was a pious man, an elder who was easily shocked and became curt and unresponsive when confronted with vice.
“But money talks,” said Isa, and started the car.
And Moosa said we were going to have the best night of our lives.
It was slow to start. Suri and Saaji had left for the night and had gone through the shared door at the back to their own house. Isa had to go home and park the car in the garage, then go inside and deliver the car keys and the Alka-Seltzer packet to his father and ask for permission to stay the night at Moosa’s. It was granted, but not without a complication: Aasia too wanted to stay the night with Maheen—she insisted that it was fair, relying on an established system of equivalence between the houses. Suri said she had to ask Hukmi first. Then phone calls were made from one house to the other and conditions were extracted: the children—the boys as well as the girls—were expected to bathe and dress on their own in time for Eid prayers in the morning, failing which there would be no need to ask again for a night-spend, or for anything at all.
Aasia went to Maheen’s room. We went to Moosa’s. Doors and windows were locked, curtains drawn.
A voice, Hukmi’s, was calling out for Moosa.
He went downstairs.
She wanted to know if the doors were locked.
He said they were.
And the windows?
And the windows.
He came upstairs but was summoned again. Aasia had changed her mind: she no longer wished to spend the night and was standing with her nightclothes in the doorway. Moosa had to escort her back to her own house, where Suri’s reception of her was stern and unequivocal. In the other house Maheen was distraught, sobbing now for Aasia to come back, and succeeded only in drawing the attention of her own mother, who went upstairs and smacked her several times and put her to bed.
It was agreed that the girls had been unreasonable, Aasia more so than Maheen; but then Maheen was oversensitive and always made matters difficult, and Aasia was scolded for not knowing better, for dithering and for not making her choices with a grown-up mind.
The matter was at rest, the houses closed for the night. It was late.
“Night is young,” said Moosa. He rubbed his hands and spanked them on his knees, then knelt on the carpet to attach the VCR wires to the TV. He was singing a song.
“Quiet,” said Isa. He was going downstairs to get the nonalcoholic beers, deposited earlier in the freezer for cooling.
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” said Moosa, excited.
He sang his song at a lower pitch:
O didi, o didi, o didi didi didiwa
O didiwa, o didi, o didi didi di-yedi-yeh
The beers came on a tray. Isa locked the door, then set about opening the bottles, holding them down, his own neck tensing with the effort: one by one the bottles popped, the caps flew and the beer came seething up.
“Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
Moosa took a sip and hummed with pleasure and surprise. “O didiwa!” He looked amazedly at the bottle in his hand. “O didi didi.”
“Calm down,” said Isa.
Moosa hummed on for some moments and then drank his beer in silence.
Isa drank his own beer, but slowly and abstractedly, an activity that had lost its thrill too quickly.
Moosa finished his beer and brought it down on the table with a thwack.
Isa didn’t tell him to calm down.
Moosa went across to the TV.
“Lights,” said Isa, and switched them off. The room was dark, lit only by the scratches on the TV screen. Moosa placed the video in the jaws of the VCR and worked the buttons. Abruptly the screen was colored, a bright day in a city with cars out on the streets and trees in the sunlight. Moosa reduced the volume to a minimum; the music was faint, the picture warping with the slow silver lines that traveled again and again to the bottom of the screen.
Moosa went to sit cross-legged on his bed. He said, “Ooh, baby.”
A golden-haired woman in a frock and an apron stood in her kitchen. She seemed to want to pass the hours; she swirled a spoon in a bowl, her head tilting to either side in distraction; she glanced sullenly at the clock on the wall, returned to the bowl and continued to swirl the spoon. She dipped her finger in the froth and tasted it. The taste was nice; she licked her fingernail, licked her finger, her thumb, sucking her knuckles, all covered now in the froth. She leaned over the worktop and sucked her forefinger all over again.
Sucking her fingers and her knuckles, she walked out of the kitchen and into a lounge, taking her time, and fastening the apron anew so that it squeezed her waist and flared her above and below. She opened the door and hid behind it. She stuck out her neck and blinked at the visitor.
It was a man.
He followed her into the kitchen.
She motioned to the sink and shrugged her shoulders.
He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, rolled up his sleeves, ran a hand across his face, his nose and mustache and mouth and chin, and sank below the sink.
She waited.
He came back up.
She opened the tap to see if the water was coming.
It was.
He asked for payment.
She thought about it.
He was waiting.
She turned around, leaned across the worktop, hitched up the back of her frock.
“O God,” I said.
“Quiet,” said Isa, smiling.
“Ooh, baby,” said Moosa from the bed.
The woman was on her knees now and had the man’s thing in her mouth. She sucked it and sucked it and looked up at him in a questioning way, a way that asked if what she was doing was right and if he wanted more of it.
“Yeah . . .” said the man.
“O God!”
“Quiet,” said Isa.
“What’s happening!”
“Shhh!” said Moosa, smiling and nodding, and fell back into the pillows on his bed. “Just watch,” he said, closing his eyes momentarily, and bringing a forefinger to his lips to say that now was not the time to ask questions.
It was called having sex, a thing all people in the world had done in their lifetimes and were likely to do with regularity after marriage.
They had sex in bedrooms, sex in bathrooms, in the bathtub and against the wall, in kitchens and gardens and in garages. In hotels they did it in the swimming pool against the ledge.
“In the hot water,” said Moosa, and made a face of dreamy contentment.
“Everyone?” I asked.
“Yup,” said Isa, and explained that it was the way to make babies. The white substance that emerged from the man in the end was the seed, distinct from urine because it came from the knees, as opposed to urine, which just came from drinking water.
“Orgasm,” he said.
Moosa said the sensation was unrivaled.
He got up from the bed and went into the bathroom to have it.
“He’s going to use his hand,” said Isa, and moved his fist up and down. “Mastipation.”
We waited.
Moosa returned with a scrap of tissue paper that was glistening at one end.
He had done it.
He ran a hand across his brow and gasped, and collapsed on the bedding, spent.
“You can do it on your own until you get married?”
“You don’t have to,” said Isa. “Your babe can take the pill. Otherwise she’ll get pregnant.”
“Condoms also . . .” said Moosa from the bed.
“Condoms suck,” said Isa.
Moosa made a squelching sound.
They laughed.
“Then do it with a boy.”
Isa and Moosa stared. They were repulsed. Isa said it was a sin for boys to do it with one another, a sin that was forbidden in the Quran much more than other sins: when two boys did it they caused the mountains to tremble, they sent tremors of lament to the highest heaven. “Gays,” he said.
Moosa poked a finger in and out of his fist. He said girls were also not allowed to have sex with one another, though he wondered if it was a sin since nothing was going in.
It wasn’t a sin when it wasn’t going in.
“Obviously,” said Isa, “because then you’re not doing anything. . . .”
Moosa said, “Actions are judged by intentions. It’s written in the Quran.” He looked at Isa for confirmation but worriedly, sensing the change in gravity his contribution had caused.
Isa said, “It’s not in the Quran. It’s a saying. Of the Prophet.”
Moosa was reflective.
There was no retreat.
Moosa said, “We shouldn’t drink, man.”
“It’s nonalcoholic,” said Isa. “Use your brain.”
Moosa sank into exasperation. And Isa didn’t respond to the suggestion of hostility, for he was not willing to concede that there had been the chance of a conflict. He stayed calm for the rest of the night and, once Moosa had gone to sleep, put on his shoes and went to the balcony beyond the passage outside to smoke a cigarette.
“You don’t have to come,” he said.
But I went with him.
He lit the cigarette and smoked it, a hand on his hip, considering the night, which was vast and total, the darkened houses of the colony protruding against the black in blacker ridges. He smoked the cigarette down to half and passed it to me.
“You don’t have to inhale,” he said.
“I’m not.”
He watched.
“Your mother know you smoke?”
I told him I didn’t smoke on my own.
He was impressed. “Smart man,” he said, seeing considerations and calculations where there were none. “Keep it up. Keep it up.” He puffed at the cigarette and released the smoke from the corner of his mouth. “It’s good you don’t smoke on your own. Means you’re not addicted.”
“You’re addicted?”
He considered it. “More or less.”
“Moosa also?”
Isa said Moosa had been smoking for a year now. And he was only twelve. Isa didn’t stop him beyond a point—no one could stop anyone beyond a point. He mentioned it now only because I had asked; he wouldn’t have otherwise; he wasn’t one to comment on such things, which were personal. He smoked the remaining cigarette and smoked it to the very end, then flung the butt across the night. It landed somewhere and died.
Isa hadn’t taught his younger cousin to smoke, but the blame always came on him. He was blamed for being older and for not telling the elders. He said he took the blame without complaint: he didn’t hold these things, didn’t hoard them in his heart; it was wrong and even pointless to hold grudges, especially against elders, who were concerned, as all parents are, and imposed curfews and punishments that were necessary from their side. But from his own side Isa gave what he could: he gave help when there was need, advice if he was asked. Beyond that he kept his opinions to himself.
“People always do what they want,” he said. “Even when they ask for your opinion they’ll go and do what they want. Why should you stand in their way? It only makes you look bad.”
Woodpecker knocks came from behind the door in the morning. It was Suri. She was already dressed, and was saying that we were late for Eid prayers and had ten minutes in which to shower and change and appear for breakfast downstairs. We took turns. Isa went in first and was ready in a surprisingly short while. On his way to the bathroom he called out to Moosa, who was asleep in the brightened room on his side with his arm dangling off the edge of the mattress. Isa returned from the bathroom in his towel, shook Moosa awake and went back into the bathroom to make his hairstyle.
Moosa raised his head from the pillow. He looked around the room, frowning at the sudden light.
“What’s the time?”
It was a little after seven.
“Fuck.” He scratched his head and tasted the taste in his mouth.
Isa came out of the bathroom with his hair slicked back and said that the water was cold.
Moosa said, “Frickin’ . . .” and fell back into the bed.
I offered to go first.
Moosa didn’t object. “Don’t use my towel,” he said. “And keep the water on for me. It’ll get hot by then.”
Downstairs the atmosphere was one of frantic agreeability: queries were being swapped over the cutting sounds of plates and glasses, talk of lateness and the crowds at the colony park,
where the prayers were going to be held. Uncle Shafto was issuing the warnings and Uncle Saaji was hunched attentively over a bowl of sawaiyya: he slurped the milk and slurped the milk and leaned back in his chair for a brief rest, patting the sides of his mouth with a napkin. Both he and Uncle Shafto were dressed in white shalwar kameezes that were puffed and dented with starch. Uncle Saaji’s cuffs were sealed with gold studs. Uncle Shafto’s were rolled up to his elbows. Suri and Hukmi were wearing similar outfits, one in orange and the other in red, with bowl-shaped neck-lines and golden lace around the sleeves and hems, and Aasia and Maheen sat beside their mothers in matching pink ghararas. Both had been allowed on this occasion to wear makeup, Aasia exacting of all her features, Maheen still enthralled by the shock of her lipstick, a dark red one that belonged to her mother: she looked from one person at the table to another, hoping to elicit a remark or a glance that confirmed her newfound vividness to herself.
“Looking good on you,” said Suri, indicating my outfit with a surprised smile and a nod of acceptance. She looked to Hukmi for agreement.
Hukmi was not remembering.
“From Auriga,” said Suri.
Hukmi was blank.
“Oho,” said Suri. “The fabric was for a reasonable price . . .”
Hukmi peered at the outfit.
“Remembering?”
“Oh,” said Hukmi. “Of course.” She closed her eyes and nodded, relieved to have her memory. It was alive and well.
Suri said, “Not bad, na?”
“Not bad at all.”
They were pleased because they had selected the fabric together with Daadi on a recent trip to the clothes bazaar behind Main Market. Daadi had bought the cloth with her own money and had it tailored by her man in Liberty.
“All the things a mother does,” she had said, holding up the stitched kameez, “all the things a mother ought to do for her child, I do them for you, in my old age, and still not a word of thanks, not a word.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She accepted and kissed me on the forehead, but not without adding that my mother had no taste in clothes because she had no feeling for such things, no instinct.
