In the City by the Sea

by Kamila Shamsie

  Hasan coughed and expelled water. Nearby, Omar was doing the same. Hasan stood up, rubbed the sting out of his eye and leaned his head to one side, pounding his left ear with the flat of his palm to eject water from his right ear. Zehra and Najam were already swimming back out to meet the next wave, flushed with the triumph of being carried all the way to shore on the crest.

  ‘Well, at least you did better than me,’ Javed said. ‘Come on, Hussar, we’ll ride the next one.’

  Hasan shook his head. His teeth were chattering. ‘I need food first.’ He ran his tongue along his lips. ‘But nothing too salty.’ He trudged back up to the hut, waving off Ali and Ayesha’s invitation to join them in a walk to the rockpools. He procured a slice of fruit-cake from the kitchen, and hoisted himself on to the bonnet of a Nissan Patrol. The bonnet was hot beneath his legs and calmed his shivering immediately.

  ‘Oh, here it is!’ Hasan whispered. He leaned against the windshield, and breathed in the sea. He recognized the mood of the moment immediately; it was the same one he had found in Salman Mamoo’s garden at dawn when Azeem’s fall had been the most unfathomable thing in his life: the mood which allowed memory without pain.

  A few months earlier – yes, it didn’t hurt to think this – Hasan had been at another City beach, sitting on the terrace of Aba’s firm’s beach hut, drinking a cup of tea just hot enough to cut the chill of the first winter breeze. The sky had been merely blue straight ahead of him, but when he swivelled his eyes to the right he saw clouds and, through a chink in one, the sun. At first the sun was golden, bordering on white, and Hasan could look straight at it without squinting. Rays of light slanted into the water, and a filigree of gold stretched across the horizon. Hasan wished the grown-ups inside the hut would stop arguing so that he could better hear the waves providing a soundtrack for the sunset. For a moment the clouds obscured the sun completely; then the chink reappeared and the sun was flame-red.

  Ordinarily, nothing would have distracted Hasan from the final minutes of sunset, but that day his eye caught something dark move across the water. Visible one moment, then gone. ‘Seaweed,’ Hasan said to his teacup, and then he glimpsed it again.

  ‘Salman Mamoo!’ he yelled. ‘Quickly!’

  Almost instantly Salman Mamoo was beside him. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Watch. There’s something out there. I saw it twice. Wait, it’ll reappear.’

  A flash of tail, an arc through the air, and back it knifed into the water. ‘Oh wow!’ Salman Mamoo breathed. ‘Saira! Sherry! All of you! Black dolphins!’

  A whole school of them, suddenly, everywhere. Their backs arching through the waves, sometimes two in tandem, one just behind the other so they looked like one dolphin, extra long; sometimes one leapt a little higher and its tail broke free of the water. Just when Hasan thought they were gone, one would rise from the waves again, and again, until sea and sky were dark and the dolphins were still darker forms rising through the phosphorescent waves. When Hasan thought of dinner and looked away, they disappeared.

  A few weeks later, during mid-term, Hasan was sitting on the branches of a mango tree in Salman Mamoo’s garden, when Salman Mamoo hoisted himself up beside Hasan. ‘Good place to talk without worrying about wire-taps,’ he said. ‘This must all be very mystifying to you.’

  ‘A little,’ Hasan said. ‘Why exactly is everyone so worried about the military? I mean, I know the President isn’t nice, and he’s put you under house-arrest and all that, but what’s he going to do? I mean, why is everyone so scared?’

  Salman Mamoo plucked a leaf off the branch, and started poking holes into it with his fingernail. ‘Remember the dolphins?’ he said. ‘Yes, of course you do.’ He looked up at the sky, and pointed out Orion’s belt, but today Hasan wasn’t interested in constellations. ‘Watching the dolphins, Hasan, I felt I could believe in magic, and I understood why I believe in God, but only later did I realize why the moment seemed so important. See, Huss, it wasn’t the dolphins. It was the way everyone reacted to them. I don’t know if you were paying attention to the conversation inside the hut just before you called me outside . . .

  ‘Everyone was yelling at each other.’

  ‘Yes. It was one of those things. There were eight people, and nine points of view in that room and dammit each one of us could yell our point of view as loudly as anyone else! But then the dolphins swam into sight and – remember this? – suddenly everyone was in agreement. Standing on the terrace, looking out of the door, the windows, all of us, all so awed and moved by those – let’s face it – fish, that for a moment arguments seemed impossible. How could we disagree about anything, or raise our voices in anger at each other, when we had stood together seeing dolphins leap against a sunset?’

  ‘Things did get quiet after that,’ Hasan concurred. ‘But dolphins are mammals, not fish.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ Salman Mamoo laughed. ‘I can maintain my low opinion of fish.’

  ‘Are you trying to not answer my question?’

  ‘No, no. All countries need dolphins, Hasan. But the General, our self-exalted leader, well, I’ve seen the way he operates. If he saw people in a hut drawing together to view a dolphin, he would shoot the dolphin dead. Then he’d plant clues to suggest to each person that someone else in the hut had pulled the trigger, and when the accusations turned to violence and everyone was intent on ducking and throwing punches, he would sneak out and sell the carcass for a handsome profit. The worst part is, before long some of the people in that hut would become dolphin-killers themselves. And Huss, I don’t think I could live in a world without dolphins.’

  Hasan jerked upright on the car bonnet. That was it! Salman Mamoo’s spirit wanted dolphins. But – Hasan’s eyes swept across the still water – but if the President killed dolphins and created dolphin-killers, then for Salman Mamoo to live . . .

  Zehra hopped on to the bonnet beside Hasan. ‘Hey, lonesome,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, God!’ Hasan moaned, slumping forward. ‘Someone’s got to depose the President. Someone’s got to depose him within thirty-six days.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hasan moved through the darkness with eyes shut and arms parallel to his torso. His big toe stubbed against a potted plant which should have been at least five feet away from him. There was a time when Hasan could have walked blindfolded through the drawing room with all its breakables and sharp-cornered tables, but now he couldn’t even negotiate his way through the hallway successfully. Four steps from the door should not have taken him to the plant, unless . . . I guess I last tried this a shoe size ago, Hasan thought. Back then, this had been just an amusing exercise to carry out in the serenity of a two a.m. house heavy with sleep while Hasan was wide awake with the excitement of being wide awake at a forbidden hour. He was tempted to extend his arms and feel his way around, but that would be giving up. He stood still for a moment and listened. The tremble of blinds in the hallway and the rustle of dining room curtains oriented him again. He remained motionless until he could feel the air currents crossing each other beneath his fingertips, remained motionless until he was so confident in his sightless seeing that he could have taken a felt-tip pen and circled the places where moonlight from the blinds’ slits dappled his body. The musky scent of Raat-ki-rani wafted in from the garden, making the breeze seem heavier than it really was. In silk pouches of air, here and there, the smell of Gul Mumani’s unsmoked cigarettes wreathed and swirled.

  Hasan walked in a diagonal into the dining room, eyes still shut, and made his way around the dining table without so much as brushing against a chair. He walked around the room five times, in ever widening circles, and successfully avoided walls, paintings, furniture, curtains. At last he stopped, paused a moment, stepped forward, and felt his fingers close around a candelabra. He smiled and kissed the cold silver of the candelabra. A hardened trickle of wax tickled his lower lip. If word got out about his plan to depose the President, and soldiers broke into the house to arrest him under
cover of darkness, Hasan would know how to find his way around the house in stealth and seek out objects that could serve as defence weapons.

  Hasan opened his eyes and placed the candelabra back on the cabinet. Only problem, of course, was that he really didn’t have a plan to depose the President. That moment at the beach when the word ‘depose’ came to his mind now seemed like a moment of incredible clarity. Not that it had felt that way at the time, of course. The moment between recognizing what needed to be done and realizing the weight of that recognition had been so brief that it was only in the freeze-frame of memory that he could bow his head before the splendour of the moment and hear, in the background, a sitar string shiver.

  Hasan had intended, of course, to tell Ami and Aba about his revelation, even though Zehra had told him that a coup was obvious but impossible and he should just stop thinking about it. Every night Hasan went to sleep assuring himself, tomorrow, at the right moment, I’ll tell Ami and Aba. But ten days had passed since the beach and the right moment still showed no signs of appearing. Instead, Hasan’s declaration of resolve to topple the government became part of the Unsayable which adhered to every surface around the house like gummy motes of dust. Always before, conversation had cleared the air. When Hasan missed Sports Day because of chicken pox, when Waji who couldn’t tie his own shoelaces accused Hasan of stealing his frog-shaped eraser, when the Widow received her first death-threat, even when Salman Mamoo was placed under house arrest, Ami and Aba had had the words to unclench Hasan’s stomach.

  But now his stomach was growling. Hasan wandered into the kitchen to see if there was any ice-cream left in the freezer. He pulled the freezer door open and it was like opening an alien vault which beamed out an eerie glow and froze intruders with a glacial blast. Aliens, it appeared, did not store ice-cream in their vaults.

  Ice, Hasan thought. Unmanageable topics were like huge blocks of ice, so cold they burned you when you tried to handle them. But Ami and Aba knew how to lift the block with words, and with words toss it back and forth between each other, until Hasan forgot the block and clapped his hands at the twist of wrist with which Aba sent the block flying and at the backward arc of Ami’s arm as she caught the overthrow. Now, however, everyone was walking around the ice, hoping it would melt of its own accord. Twenty-six days to the trial. Hasan looked at his dual digital-analogue watch. Twenty-five days.

  Salman Mamoo’s tea. Hasan slapped a hand against his skull. How could he have forgotten about it? He reached into the freezer and began to push aside the plastic-wrapped hunks of meat on the top shelf. There it was! Hasan pulled out a plastic container and held it up triumphantly. Salman Mamoo’s tea. He would heat it and drink it, and it would infuse him with ideas and inspiration. Hasan peered closer at the container. He opened the lid and looked inside. Frozen chicken broth. He placed the container back in the freezer and began to search again. Maybe Atif-Asif-Arif had moved it to another shelf. Hasan moved down to the second shelf, shifting bags of meat and containers of precooked food first to one side, then to the other. He squatted down and rummaged through the third shelf, his fingers crossing from numb to burning and still nothing. Nothing in the ice drawer at the bottom either. He must have missed it. He started back at the first shelf, taking each object out of the freezer and setting it down on the kitchen cabinet, his fingers red and raw now, pull out and place down, pull out and place down, pull out and place down, little drops of water dripping down the sides of the chicken-broth container, pull out and place down, pull out and place down, Hasan’s fingers brushed against the water droplets as he set down a piece of steak and his fingers froze on to the next packet of meat he tried to remove. He pulled his fingers off and a tiny piece of skin stayed on the plastic. Hasan grabbed two dishcloths from a cabinet drawer, wrapped them around his hands, and went back to his job. Pull out and place down, pull out and place down. Finally, after squatting down to clear out the ice drawer, he rocked back on his heels and swore out loud. He kicked the ice drawer back in its place and leaned against the kitchen cabinet, elbows on his knees, head buried in his hands. He shook the dishcloths off his hands and sucked the bleeding finger on his hand, holding his other hand under his armpit for warmth.

  Suddenly he wanted, wanted so badly his heart grew to twice its size just thinking of it, wanted to turn the doorknob to Ami and Aba’s room and crawl into their bed as he had always done when fever or nerves about the next day’s cricket match fought off sleep. Wanted Ami and Aba’s intersecting breaths to cradle him into dreams of clear night skies and just-ripe mangoes.

  It wouldn’t happen. Sleep had, of late, become the great divider in the house. At any moment of the day someone was asleep, falling asleep or just waking up, and this more than anything else made these days even stranger than the first days after Salman Mamoo’s arrest. Personally, Hasan had no trouble falling asleep at eleven p.m., or even earlier if the cricket match down the street ended before the allocated time. Staying asleep though was another matter. He glanced down at his watch again. Two-thirty. Usually he managed to sleep until at least four, but the nightmares tonight had been worse than ever before. Ami’s light had been on in her studio when Hasan had climbed down from the roof, but when he peered in through her window and saw her staring at a blank canvas, her fingers curled into her palms, he backed away before she could see him. She would stay there until about four a.m., he knew, and if he was back up on the roof at that time and the wind direction was right he would hear the drag of her feet as she closed the door leading outside and retreated to her bedroom through the other door.

  Aba, of course, saw his ability to sleep as per routine as a blow against the government, a refusal to be tyrannized within the confines of his home. So at eleven-thirty every night he would get into bed, set his alarm for seven-thirty and count words until he fell asleep. ‘A, aardvark, aasvogel.’ Aba claimed ‘ad–’ words were unfailing soporifics, but most mornings his eyes were bruised with exhaustion and when he returned from the office he slept, without words, until dinner. As for Gul Mumani, it was impossible to tell if she slept at all. Sometimes Hasan would find her in the television room, sitting upright, with eyes closed. She might stay that way for up to two hours, and just when Hasan was convinced she was asleep, a tear would slide out of her eye.

  Somehow, though, guests who dropped by after dinner always commented on how well the family seemed to be dealing with things. ‘It’s good you remember there’s still hope,’ some friendly soul would say, and last night Aba replied, ‘It’s the hope that’s killing me.’

  Water dripped down Hasan’s back. He shifted to the left and twisted his neck to look up at the cabinet top. Bags of meat were sweating. The thought of moving all those packages back into the freezer was too exhausting to contemplate. He leaned back against the cabinet and thought of dolphins.

  There was a gentle tapping on the door leading outside. ‘Hello fellow,’ Uncle Latif’s voice whispered from the other side of the door. ‘Open sesame seed.’

  Hasan pushed himself off the ground and unlocked the door. Uncle Latif stepped inside, dressed in a bathrobe and a blue and yellow polkadotted tie. ‘I peered down from my balcony, but you were not on the roof. And then I saw this glow from the kitchen and said, oh my, either the Widow’s husband has come to visit, and got the wrong address, or my friend Hasan is cooling himself on this warm night by using the freezer as an air-conditioner.’

  ‘I was looking for ice-cream,’ Hasan said.

  ‘If I ever write my memoirs that will be a wonderful title,’ Uncle Latif said. He began to refill the freezer.

  Hasan picked up the chicken broth from the cabinet and passed it to Uncle Latif. ‘So, if someone, you know, what’s the word? hyper-ethically speaking, wanted to depose the President, how would he do it?’ Hasan said.

  ‘Hyper-ethically?’ Uncle Latif said. ‘Oh, I see. Fine word choice.’ He broke a frozen water-drip off the roof of the freezer, dipped it in Vimto concentrate, and gave it to Hasan. ‘Well, how
to de-pose such a poser? Remove all cameras from his line of vision. Boot out all frogs and toadies, and leave him in a room without mirrors. Or perhaps, leave him in a room filled with mirrors.’

  Hasan frowned, and sucked Vimto off the tapering icicle. The ice was smooth along the sides but its tip was sharp against his tongue and the Vimto was so sweet it warmed his mouth. He smiled at Uncle Latif. ‘This is what the smallest stars taste like,’ he said.

  Uncle Latif closed the freezer door and sat on a stool beside Hasan. ‘Yesterday, when I was in your drawing room, scraping the ice-cream carton – raspberry flavour, couldn’t resist – that friend of Gul’s whose hair looks as though bombs have exploded in it phatak! said, “Maybe the President will be assassinated.” And Shehryar – I swear, sometimes I want to break the law just to have him represent me – said, “I hope not. I refuse to feel grateful to an assassin.” And when H-bomb hair left he said to Saira, and okay, I was dropping eaves, he said, “Tyranny is killing our imaginations.”‘

  Assassination? Hasan stared at Uncle Latif. Assassination? He walked over to the sink and threw in the remaining shard of icicle. But, of course. How else? How else? A trickle of Vimto formed a ring around his finger. If only I had a ring of invisibility, Hasan thought, I would follow the President everywhere and whisper ‘murderer’ in his ear until his conscience couldn’t take it any more and he restored democracy just so that he could get a peaceful night’s sleep.