by Ali Sethi
And abruptly he revived, full of faith in the ideas he had thought up: he wanted me to go every morning for a few minutes into the coordinator’s office (“You have to keep up appearances”) and he wanted me to separately introduce myself to all the housemasters, whose opinions in the final meeting were given more weight than those of the other teachers. “No stone unturned,” he said. “That has to be your motto.”
He stood outside the swimming pool in the failing light and timed my lengths with a stopwatch. Afterward he shared his observations: the speed was good but there was a deviation in the line; it was noticeable and would need correction. Carefully he touched my arm, which was swollen from the effort, and withdrew his hand and said, “Impressive.” When I won the bronze medal in the swimming gala he bought me a card and a large book of photographs on the greatest swimmers in the world. “You can take it up,” he said. “It can be your profession. Nothing is impossible.”
But I left the book in the art room, and in the morning he was sullen.
He noted and reported every sighting or rumor of consequence. He said he had seen Saif in the coordinator’s office, and had seen him on another occasion, talking to an influential housemaster outside the junior building. “Very clever,” said Kazim, in a proud detection of cunning. “You have to be very careful with that one.”
When we appeared to walk together in the corridors, or on the stone path, he was full of a sense of himself. He said, “They will see!” It was enough for him to experience the sensations, even if the experience itself was deferred. In those moments he seemed to grow outward, to leave his limitations behind and become his potential.
We went to the Lahore Museum. He said he wanted me to get inspired. We went first into the painting gallery, a long room with unrelated pictures hung in two adjacent rows on the walls. Kazim explained that it was chronological. “Chughtai,” he said, pointing to a picture of a woman with elongated eyes. She was sitting in a pool of darkness and held a lighted lamp in her small, fine hands. “And this is Ustaad Allah Bux,” he said when we passed a blurry painting that showed a shepherd with his flock of sheep. “Now things get political,” he said excitedly, and led me to a painting of brick kilns puffing out dark smoke. “He was a Marxist,” said Kazim.
And he said, “This man is a Christian.”
We were standing before the picture of a wine bottle. It stood on a striped sheet of cloth. There were two gleamless oranges beside it.
“Why is this so great?” I said.
He threw up his hands and said, “Isolation. Loneliness. Don’t you get it?” And his voice echoed in the empty gallery.
We went in after that to see the statue of the starving Buddha. It was broken. Around it, in the other glass display cases, were more broken things from the past.
A cockroach crawled out from under the display case, chased itself in a circle and went back into the darkness.
“I’m inspired,” I said. “Let’s go now.”
The next day he said, “You have to meet the important housemasters.”
“I’ve met them,” I said. “I say salaam to them every morning.”
He said, “No, no. That’s not enough. They’re hard old hags. They need to see a little love.”
We were walking to the car park. The last bell had rung and the corridors were empty.
He said, “We’ll go tonight. I’ve made the appointments. Just come to my house at seven o’clock.”
I said, “Your house is too far.”
But I was at his house a little after seven. He was standing outside the small, scratched gate. He wore a long black polo neck and tight jeans that had collected in wrinkles near his ankles.
He climbed into the car and his eyes were green.
I said, “What’s wrong with you!”
He sighed, his hand on the window, and moved around in his seat. “They’re lenses,” he said.
I made him take them off before we reached the housemaster’s house. (He performed the action quickly and effortlessly in the rearview mirror.) We had come to see the housemaster of the biggest house, a teacher who had been in the school for more than twenty years and was presently the head of the math department. He lived in Sant Nagar, an area of many narrow lanes and small, unpainted houses. On the way we passed one marble engraving of a defaced elephant, then another.
“The Hindus used to live here,” said Kazim.
We parked the car in the lane outside the house. But it took up the width of the lane.
Kazim said, “Five minutes.”
We went inside. There was a room with sofas pushed against all of its walls. The sofas and the carpet were brown, and the walls were bare except for a large framed photograph of the Kaabah, a sea of white-clothed pilgrims surrounding it.
We sat on the sofa and waited.
A door opened and the teacher came in.
We stood up.
“Salaam, sir,” said Kazim.
“Salaam, sir,” I said.
Sir nodded. He was a short man, and sat on the adjacent sofa with the ankle of one leg balanced on the knee of the other. His feet were bare, and he was caressing the raised foot with his hand.
He said, “How is your mathematics?”
Kazim looked at me.
I said, “Sir, it’s not bad, sir.”
He was poking his mouth with a finger; he brought it out now and frowned at it, then placed it again into his mouth. The other hand was still caressing his foot.
Kazim said, “He is very good, sir.”
Sir said, “You are looking to improve?”
Kazim said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “I have too many pupils here in the evening. Maybe there will be an opening next week. Maybe. You can come again next week. The rate is one thousand rupees.”
Kazim said, “Thank you, sir.”
In the car I said, “I’m not taking tuition from him!”
Kazim said, “You don’t have to. I’ll take the tuition. You just have to make sure you keep up the connection with him.”
On the weekend he came to my house with a poem he wanted me to recite. The inter-house recitation competition was scheduled for the following week, and Kazim wanted me to win it. The staff meeting was scheduled for the week after that; Kazim said it was psychologically important to win something now in order to stay fresh in their minds. And he brought good news: he had gone to the principal’s house with a painting, had shown it to him and told him that it was mine. (He had made an abstract picture, he said, in a style deliberately unlike his own.) The principal was impressed. “They won’t forget you now,” said Kazim. “Whenever they mention your name some little thing will come up.”
“What about Saif?” I said.
He made a face, then gave a shudder; he had gone too far in anticipating my feelings.
“Saif’s still my friend,” I said.
He sighed.
I said, “What did I say?”
“Read it on your own,” he said, and sat sullenly in one of the veranda chairs.
I walked up and down the veranda and recited the poem, which was about barren landscapes and fresh flowers, a poem he said he had found in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.
Later we sat in the darkened veranda and went over my pronunciations of the words. A bat came in and then couldn’t get out, and spun and spun until it crashed against the door in the corner.
“Who lives there?” asked Kazim.
I said, “My cousin used to live there.”
“Who lives there now?”
“No one,” I said.
I didn’t win the recitation contest. But I won an honorable mention and was given a certificate of merit. I took it before lunch break to the coordinator’s office for submission.
The coordinator said, “What is this?”
“Certificate, sir.”
He considered my standing form, then turned the certificate around in his hand as if assessing its weight. “You’ve got the spirit,” he said.
�
�Sir.”
“You don’t think you’ll fail.”
“No, sir.”
He said, “Good, good. Keep it up.”
The list went up in the morning. First the boys went to see if it had been put up on the bulletin boards in the hallway; after assembly they checked again. And then, after the first period bell, the names began to come in: Saqlain Raza had made it because he had won the tent-pegging trophy; a boy called Babar Rahim had made it because of his grades. My name hadn’t been mentioned when I left the classroom.
Kazim was standing in the hallway. He said, “I don’t know what happened.”
The boys were crowding around the bulletin board.
They weren’t looking at me.
I said, “It’s fine.”
“You deserved it,” he said.
But I kept saying, “It’s fine. It’s fine.”
At lunch break I went to the canteen to congratulate Saif. And he was gracious; he neither condescended nor acknowledged the rivalry. He was buying and handing out drinks to his well-wishers, and he met me as only one of the crowd.
“Don,” said EQ.
“Don,” said Mooji.
We embraced and sat on the bench, waiting for Saif.
There was a party for him that night. Uzma had reserved a table at an expensive restaurant. “It’s just his very close friends,” she had called to say. “I’m baking him a cake. He asked me to invite you.”
And, after Uzma had called, the phone rang again. It was Kazim. He said he had been to see the principal, who had told him about what had happened at the meeting: my name was discussed. But the housemasters said there had been discipline problems in the past, and someone had cited a fight from two years ago, a fight that had taken place outside the campus. The principal had crossed out my name and asked for the name of the next contender. And the housemasters had recommended Saif.
“It’s sabotage,” said Kazim.
I said, “You use really big words, man.”
He said, “They deliberately sabotaged your name.” He was breathless.
But I said, “It’s not a big deal. Saif deserves it. You shouldn’t say all these things about him. It’s really not good to get involved in someone else’s life like that.”
At the restaurant there was a commotion. Saif was standing with EQ and Mooji beyond the door and talking loudly on his mobile phone; and inside, under the dim lights, Uzma and Sparkle were leaning across the table toward each other and talking.
I said, “What’s going on?” and sat down on the chair next to Sparkle’s.
Uzma looked at me and looked at Sparkle.
Sparkle said, “We don’t know what’s going on.” She looked briefly at Uzma and went on: “Saif got a call from his school. There’s been a complication. I think he’s talking to his teacher right now.”
Uzma dropped the menu and said, “He’s been suspended. His name has been taken off the list and he’s been suspended.” Her look was thinly accusing and broadly demanding.
Sparkle said, “Someone went to see the principal and said all kinds of nasty things about Saif.”
Uzma didn’t look at me.
Sparkle said, “You should talk to him when he comes in.” Her tone was understanding; it contained an assumption and a warning.
I said, “This is crazy.”
Uzma said, “We trusted you! He trusted you! How could you do something like that to your friend?”
I said, “I didn’t do it.” I wanted to say more.
Sparkle put a final hand on my arm and said, “I guess he’s angry that you tried to get back at him like that.” Her head was tilted into her shoulder. She was blinking reasonably. “Just stay here,” she said. “He’ll come in just now and you can sort it out.”
But I went outside with the intention of seeking a fight. And the traffic sounds ate up the things I said, first in panic and then in anger and then finally in the clarity of rage: their knuckles hit my face, and then my own hands and feet were moving and I was on the floor, and the taste of blood was strange but unstartling in the way that something delayed for so long will dissolve in the last light of waiting.
I awoke in my bed at home. I saw the light beyond the curtains and tried to raise my head but couldn’t. It was heavy.
My mother came in. She sat on the bed and said, “Go to sleep.” She touched my forehead, and I felt the gauzy wrap of the bandage.
Daadi came in and said, “You are not going back to that school.”
In the morning my mother called the admissions office and asked to speak to the coordinator. She said she wanted to lodge a complaint.
The telephone operator said that the coordinator was busy. She could try calling again in the afternoon.
“This is unacceptable,” said my mother. “I am going to withdraw my child from your school right away.”
The operator said that removals didn’t require a conversation with the coordinator. The operator himself could strike the name off the list.
“Yes,” said my mother. “Please do that. Thank you so very much.”
I went back to Wilson Academy on an early summer’s day to withdraw a copy of my transcripts. It was a hot, dry day, and the fourth period was in progress; the stone path was parched and deserted. I went into the senior building to collect the papers, waited in the registrar’s office, obtained the papers and paid the money, and then went upstairs to use the toilet. I passed the art room on the way, but there was no one inside.
Two years of secondary school remained, and my mother had found a tuition center in Johar Town that provided coaching for the SATs and A-levels. It also offered a guidance and counseling department; the tuition center was affiliated with many good universities abroad. My mother and I went to see the campus. It was a converted house, a brick building with dark-tiled floors. The administrator, a round young lady with a brisk, businesslike demeanor, gave us a tour of the place, which was surprisingly well furnished: the rooms had new chairs and blackboards, new split-level air conditioners; in one room the administrator switched on the machine by pressing a button on a kidney-shaped remote control. Then she switched it off. We followed her out of the classroom and into the canteen, which had high glass windows, a coffee maker and a squadron of terra-cotta pots with bristling plants. The computer lab was in the basement, a white room divided into thirty cubicles, each with a computer and a keyboard covered in a sheet of plastic.
The administrator took us back into her office and described the program: students came for three hours in the afternoon to pursue independent courses of study. The faculty was highly accomplished; the student-to-teacher ratio was tight; textbooks were optional; a uniform was not required. The administrator showed us a list of students from the last two years who had won admission to the top national colleges, plus two in the UK, one in Canada and one in America. The monthly fees were high but not higher than usual.
“Good enough,” said my mother, and signed the forms.
In the morning I went into the kitchen to make tea. The tea was in a round plastic container by the stove. I waited for the water to boil, poured in the tea, then waited for it to come to a second boil. The water bled and bubbled. I found the teapot in a cupboard above the stove and found a family of dead insects inside. I washed it in the sink, scrubbing it with a green Scotch-Brite rag I found by the tap. It was stiff with filth but thawed in the water. The milk in the fridge was sour; I threw it into the rubbish bin, and found that this was piled high with wrappers and bones from last night’s meal. I found the satchel of powdered milk on the condiments shelf, which was, like the rest of the kitchen, in need of reorganization and repair.
I carried the tray into Daadi’s room. She was surprised. She lowered her newspaper and watched curiously as I settled the materials on the table, made her a dark brown cup with just a splash of milk, no sugar, and placed the teaspoon in a gleaming diagonal on the saucer. I passed it to her.
She took a dainty first sip.
She nodded.
I drove her to Pioneer Store to buy the groceries. She didn’t object to my driving, and sat in the back with her handbag. We passed Mrs. Zaidi’s house, and Naseem was outside, crouched by the gate, wiping its bars with a rag. She saw the car and stood up.
I lifted my hand from the steering wheel in greeting.
Naseem waved, smiled, then looked around as if she had misplaced something.
I washed the car, read its manuals and learned to recognize its many sounds. I took it with Barkat to the Caltex petrol pump and had it serviced. I spent the morning showing the sooty mechanic the faults I had identified: the hand brake was loose; the car veered to the left when I let go of the steering wheel; the lock in one of the doors at the back was jammed; and there was a scraping sound that came from beneath the car when it went over a speed bump.
He lowered himself to the ground and crawled into the darkness.
There was scraping.
“Yes!” I said. “That’s the sound.”
He came back up and said, “Silencer.”
“Silencer,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Silencer.”
He kept the car for the day, and I had to pay him two thousand rupees. I persuaded Daadi to buy a lawnmower and dragged it along the grass on Sundays. It was noisy but did the work: all morning it sent up sparks of green, which I later cleared with a rake. One day the lawnmower bumped, and I knelt to inspect the obstacle it had uncovered. It was a bulge in the ground. I dug it out with my hands and found a box that contained a toothbrush, some pencils, a blue-nib pen, a compass, a lipstick and a hairbrush.
And there was a letter that said:
Dear citizen of the future, my name is Zaki Shirazi and I am a boy. I live in this house with my cuzzon.
Yawar
Lahore
Pakistan
Asia
Planet Earth
Thrilled with the rush of memory, I ran with the box into the house, into my room, pacing and remembering. I thought of taking it outside again and showing it to someone. But there was no one outside, and I stayed in my room and went over the contents again and again.
