by Tariq Ali
School friendships are notoriously fickle. Some survive for purely practical reasons, the more privileged schools in every country creating social networks that make up for the loss or nonexistence of real friendship. Zahid and I had attended different schools, but we met up in the mountains each summer. And yet ours was not just a seasonal friendship. We continued to talk when we returned to Lahore. Later we were at the same college, and our shared politics brought us closer still.
For almost ten years we confided all of our political and sexual fantasies to each other. When Zahid developed an obsessive crush on a general’s daughter, he insisted that I accompany him on his Vespa to the women’s college that she attended. We would wait outside and then follow her car, overtaking it just before it reached her house. She knew. Occasionally she smiled. The memory of a single smile kept him going for weeks. Then she graduated and was soon married off to the scion of some feudal family. Zahid’s offer, transmitted via his mother, had been rudely rejected. Zahid’s political bent and his father’s rejection of honours had made him out of bounds for daughters of army officers and bureaucrats, the two groups that ran Fatherland in those days, presiding over the kind of tyrannies that break a people’s heart and their pride. The boy had no future. How could he expect to marry into privilege?
Zahid recovered, though, and shocked his parents by insisting on marrying Jindié, the daughter of a modest but extremely well off Chinese shoemaker in Lahore. It was a Muslim family, but caste prejudices went deep in Fatherland. A cobbler’s daughter for the only son of a wealthy Punjabi family? Unacceptable. He might as well marry a Negro woman.
Zahid ignored them. ‘What are we?’ he would mock. ‘Peasants descended from low-caste Hindus whose job it was to grow vegetables for the rulers of this city. Our forebears grew turnips and pumpkins; Jindié’s father is a craftsman. Just because he measures your feet for sandals you think he’s lower than you.’ He married Jindié, the sunehri titli, as Zahid’s Punjabi friends called her—the Golden Butterfly. Her brother was a member of our political circle. She was a marvel of beauty and intelligence, a rare combination in Lahore. There was an air of gaiety about her as well as majesty. She had thin lips and profoundly expressive eyes. She had read more books than all of us put together, and in three languages. Her knowledge of Punjabi Sufi poetry went deep, and when she sang her voice resembled a flute. And she did sing sometimes, usually when she thought she was alone with our sisters and female cousins, unaware that we were listening. We all loved her. I more than the others, and I think she loved me. She had married Zahid just before his political treachery was exposed, but I thought she must have known of it and that had angered me greatly. It mattered in those days. Consequently, she, too, had been assigned to the deepest circle of my memory.
Now I found myself looking forward to seeing Jindié again. Our relationship had consisted mainly of letters, lengthy phone calls and attempted rendezvous. The last time we had met on our own, forty-five years before, she had been in a state of unspeakable confusion. Covered with shame, she had fled.
The next time I’d seen her had been at a farewell dinner for a retiring professor. She had come with her brother. It was a very proper occasion, not that she was ever capable of relapsing into coquetry. We did not speak and she appeared to be in fragile shape. Her melancholy glances cut me deeply, but there was nothing to be done. Some months later I received a letter informing me of her engagement to Zahid. It was a very long, self-justifying missive of the sort that women are better at writing than men, at least in my limited experience. I was so enraged at the news of her engagement that I never reached the end. In later years I did wonder whether it had contained any words of affection for me. I tore it up into little pieces and flushed it to the depths of the city. It was better confined to the sewers, I thought, where the rats could read bits of it. She should appreciate that, since she was marrying one. Years later, a mutual woman friend told me she had not detected any awkward corners in Jindié’s life. There were two children and they were the centre of her existence. I wondered what had become of them and her life after they left home.
I arrived early and went for a short walk by the river. There was a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Perhaps this was a mistake, after all. Why was I dining with perfidy? The passage of time doesn’t always heal wounds incurred in political or emotional conflicts. Tipu’s shift from politics to business did not retrospectively justify Zahid’s betrayal. As for Jindié, I hadn’t thought of her for a very long time and when I did she appeared as a tender ghost. I couldn’t help feeling that a restaurant, neutral territory, might have been less stressful. I walked back to my parked car, took out the bottle of wine and inspected their Richmond home carefully before alerting them to my presence. The house, a late Georgian mansion, was certainly well appointed. A mature garden sloped gently to the river and a tiny quay where a boat was moored. But I had been sighted and the French windows were pushed apart as Zahid walked down to greet me. There wasn’t a hair on his head. It was polished and smooth like a carrom board. Given our history, a warm embrace or even a perfunctory hug was out of the question. We shook hands. And then Jindié walked out, and the clouds disappeared. Her hair was white, but her face was unaltered and her figure had not coarsened with age. Her smile was enough to flood decaying memory banks. I managed a few banalities as we walked indoors. While Zahid went to get some drinks—just to be difficult, I asked for fresh pomegranate juice and was told it was possible—I looked over the interior of the house.
The large living room was conventional and unsurprising. It could have been lifted straight from Interiors or one of the many other consumerist magazines that disgrace a dentist’s waiting room. Do they think that their patients are all empty-headed, or are the glossy pictures meant to make up for the dingy decor of their surgeries? The walls were covered with mostly unprepossessing paintings, with every continent unsuitably represented. No Plato, but two gouaches by his dreadfully fashionable rival, I. M. Malik. There were also a few swords and daggers, which had not been dusted for some time.
The only object that made an impression on me was an exquisitely painted Chinese screen depicting three women in earnest conversation with each other. Not a trace here of earthly existence being a mere illusion. Had I been forced to guess, I would have ventured that it was from the late seventeenth century and by someone who either inspired or was inspired by Yongzheng. She saw my appreciative look and smiled.
‘Genuine or a copy?’
‘It’s not a copy. It really is Yongzheng. Early eighteenth century. A gift from my son when he lived in Hong Kong, earning too much money for his own good. I have no idea how he managed to get it out of the country.’
It was a bit early in the evening to start discussing progeny, and I was wondering where the books were kept, when Zahid took me by the arm.
‘Jindié knows how fussy you are about food. She’s prepared a feast tonight. While she’s applying the finishing touches, let me show you my study.’
They seemed happy together, which pleased me. Not that Jindié was the sort who would have accepted being mired in misery for too long. She would have left ages ago.
The large oak-panelled study was certainly impressive; the eclectic collection accurately reflected the different tastes of the household. Zahid said, ‘I’ve bought all your books. Thumbprint them before you leave.’ He spoke Punjabi, as we always had when we were alone. He wanted to clear up the past. ‘Daraji, what hurt the most was that you rushed to judgement without speaking to me.’
I sat down on his desk and stared at him. His eyes were still the same and looked straight back at me. He then told me what had really happened. His father had simply bribed a senior police officer to get the No Objection Certificate, and all Zahid had done was sign an affidavit affirming that he was not a member of any clandestine Communist organization.
‘We are neither of us young, Zahid. Let’s not try to deceive each other or give sweet names to things
that were never nice. Who betrayed Tipu?’
‘Was I the only one who knew he was working for your aunt?’
‘You mean it could have been Jamshed?’
‘It was that sisterfucker. He admitted as much to me.’
‘When?’
‘Forty years ago, when shame was still an emotion he wrestled with. He said he couldn’t face you after that and asked me to forgive him for allowing the blame to rest on my shoulders
‘And I thought he couldn’t face me because he’d become a corrupt, amoral businessman in bed with every military dictator.’
‘Is there any other kind?’
We laughed.
‘Zahid. You knew me better than most. Everyone in Lahore was told it was you. If I was in a rage and didn’t ring you, why didn’t you contact me? Your silence confirmed your guilt in my eyes.’
‘It was the cop who took the bribe who spread the vile rumours. My father was scared. If I challenged him and told my friends, my No Objection Certificate might have been withdrawn and I wouldn’t have been able to leave the country. I knew that if I told you, you would confront the cop, talk to journalists, tell the whole world and make a big fuss. That would have meant no medical studies at Johns Hopkins and I was desperate to become a doctor. You encouraged me. But this is truth and reconciliation time. There was another reason why I did not contact you.’
‘What was it?’
‘Jindié. I knew how close you two were. You’d told me everything and I thought ...’
‘Might as well let him think the worst of me as long as I’ve got Jindié.’
‘Something like that.’
‘But you never loved her. You would have told me.’
‘True, but I liked her a great deal and wanted to marry someone. You loved her but were not prepared to marry her ...’
‘Or anyone else.’
‘Yes, but that’s not the way she or most girls thought at the time, let alone her parents. You offered her some crazy bohemian alternative, and that, too, in Lahore, where girls learned the art of leaning on window sills to catch sight of their lovers, in such a way as to never be visible from outside. Even logistically your suggestion was crazy.’
‘It was a test of our love. Jindié failed. As for bohemian lifestyles and logistics, our poets, professors and artists used them constantly and not just before Partition. Plato had a list in his head of who did it with whom and where ... boats on the Ravi were regular meeting places. Lawrence Gardens in the moonlight when the wolves in the Zoo were howling. Now the river that so arrogantly and regularly flooded our city has no water left. Were you ever in love with her?’
‘No, but I grew to love and respect her, and Dara, please accept this as a fact. We’ve been happy. Two children and an adorable grandchild.’
‘What has the production of children and grandchildren got to do with happiness? I hope you’re happy because you like her, because you can talk to her about the world and ...’
‘When I first proposed marriage, she told me there could never be a replacement for you. Her only condition was that if we went abroad she never wanted to be in the same town as you. Never ever. Since you had already found me guilty and executed me for a crime I never committed, I was delighted to agree to her condition. No more was said.’
‘Why didn’t she ever write and tell me that you were innocent?’
‘Now that you’re both in the same town, you could ask her.’
‘I’m glad Jamshed is dead. I’m glad you’ve lost all your hair and look really decrepit and aged.’
Zahid burst out laughing. It was spontaneous and unaffected, reminding me of how much we used to laugh when we were young. He looked at me closely.
‘Why the hell haven’t you changed? Does nothing affect you?’
‘I have changed, and in more ways than you think, but some things go far too deep, and however changed the world is, it is criminal to forget what was once possible and will become so again.’
‘Always motherfucking politics. What did happen to Tipu?’
‘He was arrested, tortured and sent back to Chittagong on the request of his uncle, who was a civil servant. The uncle took full responsibility for him. Tipu stayed in touch. I thought he had died in the civil war of 1971, but he was only wounded. The last time I saw him was at the funeral where he hugged you. He’s an arms dealer who uses his Maoist past to pimp for the Chinese. A Parisian wife helps with the French side of the deals.’
A gong, pretentious but effective, was sounded below. We were being summoned for supper. The table was laid out like a work of art. She must have wasted half a day at least.
‘I never thought I’d ever cook for you.’
‘If it’s not good, you never will again.’
But it was good. In fact, it was a convincing repeat of a Yunnanese meal cooked by her mother that I had enjoyed at her family apartment in Lahore all those years ago, the meal that introduced me to proper Chinese cooking, not the muck they served in the two restaurants in town. What a wonderful way Jindié had chosen to revive the most delicious memories from the past, mingling ancient recipes with adolescent love. To start, there were three types of mushrooms, including the most prized: chi-tzong, which when cooked in a particular way tastes like chicken. Then kan-pa-chun, or ‘dry fungi’, stir-fried with red chillies, spring onions and beef fillet, which gave the palate as much pleasure as one’s first French kiss. The main course was chicken served in the steam pot in which it cooked, which resembled an espresso coffee pot with a chimney protruding from its middle, seasoned with scented herbs, a great deal of ginger, and more mushrooms. The method produces steamed chicken as soft as marshmallows and the most exquisite chicken soup I have ever tasted. To go with this there were some ‘over-the-bridge’ rice noodles and nuo mi, the sticky rice that is only available in Yunnan and parts of Vietnam. Neither of my hosts could eat the baked green chillies that adorned a single plate put next to me; these, too, I had first tasted at the original banquet in Lahore.
Last, but not least, there was ru-shan (dairy fan), another delicacy that sets Yunnan cuisine apart from the cooking of almost all other Han Chinese provinces. This is a cheese-like product, solid, hard, and very thinly sliced into fan-shaped pieces, which are eaten with gooseberry compote and raw mangoes. Since Jindié’s stomach, like those of most Han people, is sensitive to all dairy foods, Zahid and I ended up eating too much of it that evening. I declined the mao tai, a gruesome spirit whose name when spoken in Punjabi means ‘death is near’.
My stomach had been completely won over, but the path to my heart was still blocked by a forest of stinging nettles. In more relaxed mode, I asked after the children and their lives. The son, Suleiman, had tired of making money and turned to Chinese history. He was in love with a Chinese woman and lived in Kunming. No, he was not at all religious and only mildly interested in politics. The daughter, Neelam, was religious, and married to a general in Isloo. Their son would be eleven next year. I smiled, thinking of how desperately Zahid had once been in love with a general’s daughter; now his own daughter was wedded to a general.
It was my turn to be questioned, but it was obvious they already knew a great deal, and I sheepishly confirmed much of the information that Jindié had accumulated regarding my life. She even recalled a few episodes that I had totally forgotten. Jindié had kept a strict watch on me even from afar. She asked for details of my life that I had also long forgotten.
‘You see’, said Zahid, ‘we never really lost touch with you even though we could never be in contact for all those years. Jindié’s spies reported on your every movement. Once when you came to give a lecture at Georgetown, we sat right at the back in dark glasses and funny hats so you wouldn’t recognize us.’
‘I wouldn’t have recognized you without a hat, you turnip.’
I chattered away in Punjabi, pleased that the thought of Zahid would no longer plunge me into a gloomy reverie tinged with repugnance. The mother tongue encourages imprudence and indi
scretions, but both of us were enjoying the reunion. Jindié was silent, even though she was probably more fluent in Punjabi now than Zahid. I thought I detected an anxious look from her at one point, but it soon disappeared. Just as I was about to leave, I realized that we had not yet discussed Plato’s plight. Zahid had no idea to whom or why he had got married or whether this, too, was a fantasy. He admitted that he neither liked nor could understand Plato’s paintings. Jindié disagreed very strongly and we both united, to accuse him of philistinism. I suggested that I. M. Malik’s decorative work should be removed to his study or the washroom. He said that he had paid a great deal for the gouaches and asked why I owed Plato a favour in the first place. Jindié could not totally conceal her nervousness at this. I mumbled something about the distant past and fog-bound memory, but promised I would speak with Plato the following day.
The evening had turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. Just before I left, Jindié disappeared briefly, returning with a large packet that obviously contained a manuscript.
‘All those years ago you told me I should write the story of my family and the long march that brought us from Yunnan to India. I did, and here it is. At first I thought I was writing it for Neelam, but when she went religious I knew she could never understand her mother. For her, all freedom leads to moral corruption. But I carried on writing. Since it was your idea, I thought I’d give it to you. It’s for the grandchildren really. Not to be published, but I would like to know what you think. Sorry it turned out so long.’
I took the manuscript with delight, wondering whether it held up a mirror to the drawing rooms of Lahore. This little butterfly could always sting like a bee. Her waspish descriptions of visits undertaken with her mother to the great houses of the city had always made me laugh.
‘Jindié, I’m touched and honoured. If there is anything I can’t understand, may I ring you for an explanation?’
Zahid looked at both of us in turn and smiled. ‘You’re in the same town again. You’re always welcome here. And you should know that I was never given a chance to read the manuscript.’
