by Ali Sethi
“No, no,” said Chhoti.
“Oh, yes,” said Daadi, “movers and shakers.” She swayed her head from side to side.
Naseem looked up from the television and grinned as though she had benefited personally from the moving and the shaking.
“Tell us,” said Daadi, and looked at Samar Api, “is your mother not living in the glamour?”
Samar Api smiled.
“You see?” said Daadi. “Movers and shakers.”
Naseem hooted and clapped.
Chhoti sighed and said, “This glamour is the work of the devil.” And she lamented the lack of plainness and simplicity in the world, which had succumbed to falsities. “It is rare nowadays,” said Chhoti, “to find a thing that is truly well intended. It is no longer the fashion.” And she puckered her mouth in pity.
Naseem said it was a tragedy.
Daadi hummed.
Their attentions returned to the actress on TV.
“Look at her,” said Daadi. “Look at her mouth.”
“Injections,” said Chhoti. “They put rubber inside.”
A hand flew to Daadi’s mouth.
“Yes,” said Chhoti, “rubber and plastic.”
Naseem refused to believe it.
“Oh yes,” said Chhoti. “It is happening in America. You can change everything. You can change your nose, your mouth, anything you want now.”
Naseem watched the actress with renewed interest, the way her mouth was moving and talking, undeterred by rubber or plastic.
“How much is the cost?”
Chhoti said Naseem would have to sell her house and her clothes in order to reach the reception desk at one of the rubber clinics. “And then you have to keep going back, because if you don’t it all comes off. You wake up in the morning and find your nose in your lap.”
Naseem was enchanted.
Daadi said, “Drugs. They must be mixing in the rubber.” And she gave the example of Madhubala, the most famous actress of her time, who fell in love with Dilip Kumar on the set of Mughal-e-Azam and was then persuaded by her enemies to wear an ointment that poisoned her skin. “The world,” said Daadi, “does not spare those who want things. It is better to live with what you have. You don’t have to like your nose. But you must live with it. You must learn to live with it.”
Naseem said, “The wants never end.”
“Even for Madhubala,” said Daadi.
“Even for Madhubala,” said Chhoti.
The actress on TV was running down a hill and laughing.
Chhoti said she had seen a girl at a wedding in Multan, a girl whose beauty had caused a frenzy of speculation among the women. “Every mother of a son is standing in line,” said Chhoti. And she named the wife of the Multan politician who had attended the lunch at their house with his family. His daughters were engaged to their cousins, said Chhoti, but his son was unmarried. “He lives here,” she said. “And he does nothing. He sits in his father’s house and is surviving on his father’s money. Twenty-four years old and doing nothing. But his mother is looking for a bird of paradise.”
“Is she looking?” said Samar Api.
“Looking everywhere,” said Chhoti. “Everywhere she goes. But who can stop her? She is one of those women.”
“I knew it,” said Samar Api afterward. “I always knew it.” She had recalled many incidents that at the time of their occurrence had been mysterious and vaguely felt but were now explained.
She said she had known, for instance, that Jamal’s two sisters were not on her side. “They never came up to meet me. Not once. I went to their house many times. They knew I was there.” And she had never encountered Jamal’s mother on her way into the house—a servant met her at the gate, led her through a back passage and along a staircase into Jamal’s room. She had wondered then about the lack of a reception, though admittedly she had also wanted to avoid the awkwardness of meeting his family in their house without a way of introducing herself. “But still, Zaki, you have a sense, you get a feeling when you go to someone’s house, and the feeling I got just wasn’t right.”
Now the feeling was explained: Jamal’s mother wanted him to marry someone else. His sisters were expected to want the same. Only Jamal remained. And he wasn’t taking her calls.
“Don’t you see?” she said, and flung her hands. “They’ve brainwashed him!”
She was going to try everything. “Anything and everything,” she said. “That is my motto from now on.”
It followed her everywhere. Shoes could no longer be left upturned. Whenever she saw one she stopped to set it right. “You see?” she said, pointing to the sole. “It’s dirty. And it was pointing to Allah. That’s disrespectful.”
At night she asked to use Daadi’s prayer mat, which was spread out diagonally on the floor in her own room. It had to be pointing toward the Qibla, the direction of Mecca. Then she asked Daadi to teach her a special prayer for wishing. And Daadi instructed her to raise the number of nafals in proportion to the scale of her wish.
In the evening there were discussions on the principles of Islam, discussions that often fled from the particular and came to resemble, in their emphasis on yearning and intention, the higher logic of mysticism.
“The girl is maturing,” said Daadi.
Naseem said there was no doubt in it, and added that it was gratifying when strictness with children resulted in visible improvements.
The routines continued: Samar Api went to school in the morning and to her tuitions in the afternoon, where she saw Tara Tanvir from the distance that now stood between them. They were, said Samar Api, no longer on talking terms; she believed that it was Tara who had been unreasonable on the phone, and Tara who was now acting like a child. “I don’t think she has any reason,” said Samar Api. “I’m not going to apologize.” And she made attempts at befriending the other girls at school, who had already formed groups that were difficult to join or leave.
Gradually she succeeded in penetrating a group that came to her math tuition. Two of the girls were at school with her; the other two had left to join a coed school in Johar Town. The group was undergoing alterations, expecting defections and looking to expand.
She came home and named the new friends.
It sounded sinister.
“Not at all,” she said. “They’re all delicate-type, all full-sleeves and all. They sing songs in class when the light goes.”
She walked with the two girls at school, and with the full group of four at the tuition center. It was too early to exchange the information about themselves, so they talked of other things: the new friends were found to possess a fund of knowledge pertaining to the dark arts, to witchcraft and black magic and palmistry, and to old graveyards near R.A. Bazaar that were said to contain unusually long graves for the tall people who had once roamed the earth and were mentioned in the Quran. In return the new friends wanted to know about Tara Tanvir, whom they had noted like everyone else but never known.
“Do you think it’s bad that I’m talking about her?”
I said it was.
“But then why is she being such a bitch?”
“You should talk to her.”
She thought about it. “But why should I call her? I’m not the one who’s acting all stuck-up and I-don’t-care-type. She should call me. She should call me and then she should wait.”
One evening she came home with a plan: she had learned about a woman, a palmist who lived in Tech Society and kept jinns that foretold the future. The woman was unrivaled; there was no palmist or sage or tarot-card reader in the city who could make predictions with her clarity and precision. And for proof Samar Api cited one of the new friends, a girl whose mother had been to see the woman and was warned of a medical crisis, which upon investigation was found to be a stage-one lump in the breast.
“Imagine,” said Samar Api. “If it wasn’t for her . . .”
“But how will we go?”
She said we could take a ricksha. “We’ll catch it on the street. It’s very sim
ple.”
“It’s dangerous,” I said.
“Zaki?” She sat down on the bed, her palms placed patiently on her thighs. “You know something? Let me tell you something. Girls? They never go for boys who act like sissies. Never. Girls like adventurous men, men who take risks.” At the emphasized parts she expanded the air around her chest. “And I’m only saying this because it’ll be helpful to you. One day you’ll be all grown up, and you’ll look back and you’ll think of me and you’ll remember these words.” And she said it with a literal certainty, envisioning a future where we weren’t on talking terms but recalled each other’s words with fondness and feeling.
The day of our departure was a Sunday. We waited until early in the afternoon for Daadi to take her sleeping pill and switch on the fan and shut the door to her room. I was then sent to inspect the kitchen: the cupboards were locked and the lights had been switched off. Naseem had stacked the dishes in the sink and left them in the unmoving water, and gone to her room at the back of the house.
I went into my mother’s room. She was talking on the telephone.
“Yes, Zaki?”
“Nothing.”
I returned to Samar Api’s room.
“She’s on the phone.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Did she ask?”
“No.”
“Okay.” There was relief. “Can you check outside now?”
I went outside, beyond the gate, and found Barkat and two of his friends in a shack built for the servants of a neighboring house. They were playing Ludo. The heat had drained the men, drained their motivation and their luck: the die was yielding the same small progressions.
It was Barkat’s turn. He shook the die in the small cylindrical container; it rattled promisingly; he released it with a flourish, and it rolled out and meandered and encircled its destination on the board and came to a stop.
It was a two.
“Fate,” said his friend. He was the closest to winning.
Barkat rubbed his knuckles into his eyes and looked out beyond the shade. The glare stung.
“Barkat,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” he said. On the weight of his palms he stood up. His ankles cracked; he winced with pleasure and then with pain.
“Going inside,” he said.
The friends said they were all going inside, each to his own house.
They praised the Lord and rose.
Their houses were in villages.
The Ludo board was folded, the die and the other brightly colored implements stored in pockets.
“Yes,” said Barkat, after the friends had gone. “Where to now?” He was holding the car keys.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“You don’t want to go now?”
“We can go later.”
He was disappointed.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We don’t really need to go. We’ll go in the evening. You should go to your room and have a rest.”
“Okay,” said Samar Api. “I think we can go now.”
She locked her door from the outside and dropped the key in her handbag. It was plump with magazines. She was going to sell them at a secondhand bookshop in Main Market and take the money to the palmist in Tech Society.
We went through the veranda, our shoes making sounds.
But the gate was locked, and Barkat had taken the key with him to his quarter at the back of the house.
I offered to fetch him.
“No,” she said. “He’ll find out.”
A dilemma.
“We’ll climb it,” she said, and made me do it first, watching my feet and hands go up the floral wrought-iron designs of the gate.
The upper ledge was narrow. Sitting on it was uncomfortable.
But the house was suddenly whole, like in the opening scene in The Jungle Book, when the jungle foliage parts obligingly to provide a semi-aerial view of India.
“Zaki, I can’t do this.”
She was strangely feminine. Her body was foreshortened and her shoes with their heels were not made for physical exertion. The makeup was useless, and the handbag was a hindrance.
“At least try, Samar Api.”
“I can’t.” She was shaking her head and looking away.
I took the bag and the shoes and instructed her to grip the tendrils.
“Now what?” She was nervous.
“Now raise your foot.”
She raised the foot cautiously and placed it on a flattened curve. She waited for the pain. It didn’t come. She grew emboldened and rocked herself on one foot, rocked herself and then pulled up. At once the pain was sharp, and she was pulling the upper tendrils, scowling at the pain and trying to go up.
“Zaki, I can’t!”
“You can!”
“Zaki, no, Zaki!”
“Come on!”
“O God!”
And she climbed the difficult gate. Her whole body was clenched, her hands pressed into the ledge and her legs stiff with fear. But she had succeeded. In the climbing of anything now there would be a repetition.
The house with its many windows was like a skull.
I jumped.
And she jumped.
And it was easier.
“Ouch,” she said, and held up the sole of a foot. It was starting to redden. She recovered the handbag and strapped on the shoes.
We walked along the lane and then drifted onto the narrow pedestrian track. Her heels left holes in the mud, a trail that broadened out with the growing confidence of her steps.
“Wait.”
She had stopped at the intersection of the lane and the road, and was waving her arm at the traffic. The cars didn’t stop. The motorcycles and bicycles were slower. A ricksha neared but continued on its way; it was occupied.
“It’s hot,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter, Zaki.”
We waited.
The traffic left behind its smoke.
No.
No.
No.
No.
“Zaki!”
She was running to catch a ricksha that had stopped. She spoke into the driver’s window and nodded, motioned hurryingly and climbed in.
“Main Market first,” she said, and leaned back in her seat, which was hard like the rest of the ricksha, a bright tin box. The inside had been partitioned to create the illusion of room, for heads that touched the sagging plastic top and knees that folded forcibly against a metal buffer separating the driver at the front from the passengers at the back.
The ricksha sound was like a wail. It developed a consistency that broke only when the ricksha encountered a speed breaker and bumped.
“Where are you going?” said Samar Api. “This is not the way to Main Market . . .”
The ricksha drove on.
“Excuse me!” She was knocking violently on the partition. “Where are you going?”
The ricksha slowed down.
“Main Market,” said the driver, and he was a boy wearing a skullcap on his small head, the few hairs on his chin recently grown.
“This is not the way to Main Market,” said Samar Api.
The driver sighed and looked out his window, and began to reverse the ricksha.
“Do you even have a license?”
The driver was reversing.
“Are you listening to me?”
He was listening.
“This is wrong,” said Samar Api. “We could be arrested. We could have an accident. Anything could happen. I am not going to give my money for this.”
The secondhand bookstore was located in the darkened basement of a small, crumbling plaza in Main Market. The shop adjacent to the bookshop was being rebuilt; the laborers were trying to demolish an uneven, already broken wall that had flaked down to brick.
The hammers rose and struck.
“This is wrong,” said Samar Api. She was arguing over the noise with the sales assistant for ascribing arbitrary value
s to the magazines she had placed before him on the counter.
“Secondhand,” said the man.
“Look at this,” said Samar Api, and held up a magazine, an anniversary edition of Stardust with a bathrobed Amitabh on the cover. The words The King at Home were blazing behind him in stark silver letters. “This was for two ninety-five.”
The man considered the magazine and brought out his calculator. His finger was held above it.
He looked up at the ceiling.
The price came to him.
The finger struck.
He held up the calculator.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She was shaking her head.
The man said, “All right, all right.” He took hold of the piled magazines and brought them across the counter: he counted the number of spines with his finger and multiplied it by an average price.
He showed her the calculator.
“No,” said Samar Api.
“Last offer,” said the salesman.
“I’m sorry.”
“This is it.”
“No.”
“Take or leave.”
“But no . . .”
“The choice is yours.”
She sighed. She needed the money to take to the palmist and to pay the ricksha waiting outside. And she couldn’t argue with all the sales assistants in all the shops. She stood before the counter for some moments, looking at her magazines, acquired over the years and read individually and stacked methodically on shelves, in wardrobes and shoeboxes. She watched as they were lifted now and dumped whole into a container that was swarming with dead magazines, the covers marked with big black crosses.
She was paid. And she didn’t forget to thank the sales assistant.
The handbag, emptied, hung limply on her arm.
The steel steps shuddered on the way up.
“Tech Society,” she said to the ricksha driver, who roused the vehicle and drove on.
Tech Society was one of the housing colonies on the canal. And at this time of day the canal was deserted. The boys who came to dive in it had gone for the day, the mud-brown water undisturbed and wrinkling in the sun. The canal broadened on the way; the trees increased; it narrowed again and the trees thinned. We had been driving for some time when the sound of the zuhr azaan went up outside; the driver ejected the audiocassette at once, and Samar Api raised the dupatta from her shoulders and arranged it around her head.
