My people. Zafar shivered. ‘Maheen, listen to me.’
‘No, Zaf, we’re not leaving the country. I don’t want to be a stranger among strangers. War does crazy things to people, but wars end. I’ll lie low, I promise that. And when it’s over—please, God, soon!—we’ll get married and have children and one day, every day, we’ll tell them how we survived this inferno.’
He shook his head. ‘Right now, I can’t think of any reason why you should feel an iota of loyalty for this country.’
‘Treasonous? My views are treasonous?’ Zafar turned and slammed his hand against the wall behind him.
‘And that’s only what your friends say.’ Ali took a piece of ice out of his glass and held it against Zafar’s reddening hand. ‘This country’s turned rabid—the soldiers are raping the women, Zaf, raping them, all over East Pakistan, and in drawing rooms around Karachi people applaud this attempt to improve the genes of the Bengalis.’ Ali caught Zafar’s hand to stop it shaking. ‘If you and Maheen won’t leave, then you’ve got to at least stay out of sight until it’s over.’
‘That shouldn’t be too hard. You and Yasmin are about the only people who seek out our company these days.’
‘The day breaks not, it is my heart.’ Yasmin put an arm around Maheen as they watched the sun come up. ‘John Donne, that was. We’ve been up talking for seven hours now, Maheen, and you’ve only talked about what Zafar says and how he feels. You’ve never once mentioned what you think of everything that’s going on.’
The phone rang. ‘Don’t answer it,’ Maheen said.
Yasmin looked at her watch, frowned and picked up the phone. ‘Hello...’ Her face went pale, and she slammed the phone down. ‘Animals!’ she swore.
‘The worst are the ones whose voices I recognize. And, no, I’m not going to tell you who they are.’ Maheen reached over and smoothed the creases on Yasmin’s forehead with her palm. ‘What do I think of everything that’s going on? You’re the only person in this city who’s asked me that in a very long time. Yasmin, I think the end of the world will begin like this.’
‘So it ends like this.’ Yasmin put down the newspaper and reached across the table for Ali’s hand. ‘Surrender to the Indian forces.’ She closed her eyes, and Ali came round the table to sit next to her.
‘I think you need a wedding to cheer you up.’
Yasmin laughed. ‘No one has ever uttered the word “wedding” more gloomily.’
‘You know perfectly well I’m anything but gloomy at the thought of spending my life with you.’
Almost a year after that crazy night on the balcony, and this was probably the closest he’d come to saying he loved her. He was a man for whom such declarations were hard, but rather than making her insecure it had the effect of giving significance to even the tiniest admissions of affection. Yasmin leaned forward and kissed his ear, and watched with satisfaction as he turned red.
‘I wonder how Maheen is taking the news,’ Ali said.
‘I wonder how Zafar is taking it. Perhaps there’s a part of him that’s even somewhat happy it might all be over now.’
‘Happy? Why should I be happy?’ Zafar stood in the squash courts, his racquet limp in his hand. ‘Three days ago we surrendered to the Indian army. Of course I’m not happy. We’ve lost half the country and most of our soul. What the hell is there to be happy about? This whole year has been nothing but a nightmare.’
‘Oh, come on, Zaf. You cheered a little when the Indian forces entered the war on the side of those Bengali bastards, didn’t you?’
‘Bunty, get your nose out of my face.’
‘Get your face out of this club. And take the rest of you with it.’
‘Go home, Bunty. I’m here for a game of squash. Who wants to play?’ Zafar looked around. These men were his friends; he’d known them all his life. What was going on here? How much longer could he take this? What was he fighting about, he didn’t even really know why he was locked in combat with his friends every day, every weary, soul-destroying day, even now that the war was over—especially now that the war was over—and every day, every damned day, he and Maheen slipped further and further from being the couple who walked so lightly through the world that the dew-wet grass barely registered their footprints.
‘Yeah,’ Bunty turned to the men. ‘Who wants to play with the Bingo lover?’
As the first fist made contact with his body, Zafar closed his eyes and thought, I wasn’t cut out for this role. I’ve stepped into someone else’s story. Get me out. I want to get out.
Around him the men echoed his thoughts. ‘Get out,’ they snarled, their fists sticky with his blood. ‘Get out.’
. . .
When I returned home, my parents were drinking tea and watching BBC World in the TV room, wearing their dressing gowns and unusually sunny morning faces.
‘Where is he?’ Ami said. ‘Where’s Karim?’
I tossed the newspaper in my father’s direction. ‘Asleep in Zia’s car. I asked him over for breakfast when we picked him up, but I don’t think he heard me.’
My mother handed me a cup of tea. ‘Why didn’t you ask again?’
‘I did.’ I sat down next to Aba, and leaned against his shoulder. ‘Can’t handle this early-morning stuff. I’m so glad I’m not a rooster.’
‘Well...?’ Ami asked. ‘How was it? How was he? Was it wonderful?’
‘I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of it.’ I picked up the bottle of jam from the breakfast tray and started reading the contents. ‘We were just kids when we last met. Would you get excited meeting someone you hadn’t seen since thirteen?’
‘If that someone was Karim to my Raheen, yes, I would,’ Ami said.
Aba rolled his eyes. ‘Such a sentimentalist.’
Ami walked over to Aba and rapped the back of his hand with a teaspoon. ‘You were the one getting all misty-eyed ten minutes ago remembering the two of them turning towards each other in their sleep the first time we put them in a crib together. And correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you use the term “fated friendship”?’
‘She’s making all this up,’ Aba said to me. ‘She’s a sentimentalist and a liar. And the day she loses her looks, I’m running off with a Scandinavian shot-putter.’
I had already sprawled out on the sofa Ami vacated, and now she sat down on the two-seater next to Aba and rolled the pink rubber-band off the morning paper in such a way that it flew off the end of the bound paper and leapt through the air, contorting and braiding itself before landing on the bridge of Aba’s nose. I watched my parents glance at the headlines and the back page, the rubber band falling off Aba’s nose when he bent his head to read, and then move straight to the page with the crossword, which they always solved together in the mornings before going to work.
‘Do you think there’s such a thing as fated relationships?’ I said.
Aba was concentrating on folding the crossword page into a neat rectangle, isolating the crossword and its clues, but Ami looked up and shook her head. ‘Of course not. That implies the relationship will survive no matter what carelessness you’re guilty of.’
‘So who was guilty of carelessness? Uncle Ali or Aunty Maheen?’
Aba stopped folding the paper. ‘Sometimes things just don’t work out, Raheen. Ali and Maheen just couldn’t...’ He frowned. ‘They weren’t ever... Ali was always too cold for someone like Maheen.’
‘Ali wasn’t cold,’ Ami said, very quietly, taking the paper from Aba.
‘Yasmin, I’m not saying he’s some heartless bum. I love Ali. But, you know, I’ve known the man all my life, and I’ve never really seen him show any kind of strong emotion, except anger on occasion.’
‘You were never engaged to him either,’ Ami said, still quiet, still looking down at the crossword.
Aba folded his arms and leaned back against the sofa cushions, clearly amused. ‘As I recall, you told me the most romantic thing he ever said to you was “you can listen to that Barbra St
reisand record if you really want to”.’
‘And when I did, he knew all the words.’ Ami laughed. ‘Eight-letter word for a kind of flower, beginning with “G”. I’m not saying he was romantic; you’re hardly romantic yourself. Obviously that doesn’t bother me too much. But there are depths to his feelings that I don’t think any of us really ever gave due credence to... All right, stop laughing at me, Zafar. You are so irritating sometimes. Guzmania?’
‘Geranium, my love.’
‘I’m going to sleep,’ I said. I rolled over and closed my eyes, but the room had become strangely silent. I waited for the silence to pass and when it didn’t I opened my eyes and saw my parents looking at me.
‘We want to hear about Karim,’ Aba said.
‘There’s nothing to tell. He looks better, but I preferred him before. I haven’t seen him since we were thirteen; it’s no big deal, you know. Can I please go to sleep?’ I walked out and went into my bedroom, closing the door firmly behind me. They had asked so many times over the years, Why did you and Karim stop writing to each other? When you go to America won’t you even try to get in touch? and the more often I answered, People grow apart, that’s all, the less convinced they looked. Both Karim’s parents and mine always seemed to get such joy out of our friendship and, thinking about it, I had an inkling that the joy contained a strange sort of pride, as though our friendship proved their choices justified.
The door opened and my father walked in. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ I sat on my bed and kicked out of view the album of pictures of Karim and me in Rahim Yar Khan which was lying by my bed. ‘And if you keep asking, I’ll get moody, and you’ll get annoyed that I’m being moody, and that’ll make me more moody and you more annoyed, so why go down that path?’
My father crossed his arms on his chest and looked down at me. ‘I used to think we could talk about everything.’
‘There’s nothing I keep hidden from you that I would tell anyone else. Except maybe certain intimate details about boys and-’
Aba put one hand up and whistled sharply, placing tips of thumb and forefinger in his mouth, in imitation of a traffic cop. ‘Red light. Red light. Don’t need any of that.’
I took his hand in mine and squeezed it. He sat down and put his arm around me. ‘My worry, kiddo, is about the things you don’t tell anyone. Things mutate, thoughts and emotions, they mutate inside you in ways you aren’t even aware of.’
My father, the court jester, in a serious moment.
‘For instance?’ I said.
He bit his lip and looked at me. ‘For instance...’ His voice trailed off. His foot kicked against the album lying just under the bed, and he pulled it out and looked at the cover. ‘For instance, you and Karim. Have you ever spoken to anyone about why the two of you stopped writing to each other?’
How could I have shown him that final communication from Karim—he would have read my unkindest sentences and, however much I insisted that Karim had taken things out of context and the whole picture was very different from these scraps Karim had chosen to focus on, it would not have prevented him looking at me with disillusionment. I hadn’t actually been able to show it to anyone, not even Sonia and Zia, though both of them knew the general gist of why Karim and I had stopped writing to each other. ‘Aba, please. I really am tired.’
For a moment I thought he was going to say something else, but he only kissed my forehead and left. I felt strangely disappointed.
I lay down, convinced I would free-associate manically in that state between sleep and wakefulness when memories and dreams slipslide into each other, but instead I slept, almost instantly, and dreamt of wearing Nike shoes without soles in a rain-drenched park in Karachi that had ceased to be a park before I was born.
When I woke up the phone was ringing. It was afternoon, my parents were at work, and Zia was calling to say that he and Karim had both just woken up and were going over to visit the twins after they’d eaten something, so they’d come and pick me up in about an hour.
I put the phone down, and heard a tapping on the door. It was Naila, the maalishwali, doing a round of Defence to see which of her regular clients were home and wanted a massage to make up for the one they’d missed over the weekend, when Naila was unable to make it out of her part of town because of trouble in the city.
‘Heaven,’ I said, pulling off my clothes while Naila laid a white sheet on the carpet for me.
‘Always asleep when I come. You miss the best part of the day,’ she said, and then the scent of coconut oil filled the room as she unscrewed the cap of a plastic bottle and poured its contents into one hand. Massages on Saturday mornings in Karachi were one of life’s great pleasures, and Naila was our yardstick for measuring the severity of violence in the city on Saturdays. The previous weekend, when she hadn’t turned up by twelve, my mother had called around and told her friends, ‘Don’t leave the house today. Things are very bad.’ Things in Karachi had gone from being very bad to very bad indeed of late, but in the last few days we’d entered a lull and though my parents and their friends sighed that it was just temporary, I was grateful that Karim had arrived after the start of the lull so I wouldn’t have to hear his breast-beating about the grief he felt for his city every time he saw a newspaper headline.
Naila put the bottle of oil down by my head, and I caught a glimpse of her scarred elbow, reminder of the one time she had misjudged the situation and arrived at our house with her elbow bleeding. The bullet had only grazed her, she said, and if she didn’t do her weekend rounds how would she pay her children’s school fees, which were due at the end of next week?
When my mother mentioned to her friends that she was thinking of raising Naila’s pay per session, many were horrified. ‘But, sweetie, then she’ll expect all of us to do the same,’ Aunty Runty said. ‘And if the servants hear of it, they’ll all want salary increases. Please, darling, don’t rock the apple-cart. Give an inch, they’ll take a foot, and they’ll take your best shoes along with it. If Naila’s so concerned about her children’s education, give her some books. You have so many at home and, really, though I scolded the person who said this to me at your dinner the other night, the bookshelves are beginning to look’—she dropped her voice dramatically—‘cluttered. Speaking of cluttered, guess who Chun-mun is sleeping with now.’
Naila massaged the oil into my shoulders, her thumbs rotating as they worked out the knots that I had felt forming the moment Sonia told me that Karim was arriving in Karachi. If he could see me now, would he feel anything of what I had felt when he stretched and his t-shirt lifted to reveal taut stomach? Or would he see my relationship—or lack thereof—with Naila as just another reason to criticize the way I lived my life? The Karim of eight years ago, I knew what he would do if he walked in on my massage. He’d retreat hastily and, when he saw me next, hide his embarrassment behind a joke, ‘Please Ra, what kind of bodice ripping cliché have you become—lying on the ground, nearly-naked and glistening with oil.’ But this new Karim, this beautiful, angry Karim, I didn’t even know if he’d greet me with warmth or anger next time we met.
But when he and Zia walked into the TV room, just minutes after I’d finished showering and changing after my maalish, his opening gambit was nothing more than a casual, ‘Hey, you’ve changed the carpet.’ He was wrapped in a grey shawl. Large enough for two, I found myself thinking.
‘My parents would really like to see you,’ I said.
He sat down without responding, and picked up the framed photograph of our two sets of parents, and a group of their friends, including Runty and Asif and Laila, taken at Uncle Asif’s farm in Rahim Yar Khan, before Karim and I were born.
‘Ridiculous clothes,’ Karim said, and put the photograph down.
The phone rang, and on the line was Sonia’s brother sounding not-macho for the first time since his voice broke. He asked if it would be possible for me to meet Sonia at the airport and bring her home; her plane was due in thirty m
inutes.
‘Of course I can. No biggie,’ I said. ‘But Sohail, what’s wrong?’
‘Some guys took my father away.’
‘What guys? Took your father where?’
Zia and Karim stood up and Zia pointed to the extension in the hallway. I nodded and he and Karim were out of the room and had picked up the extension before Sohail stopped his ragged breathing and spoke again.
‘Just...some guys. With guns. They said they’re from the police. They said...drugs.’
‘They wanted drugs?’
‘Why did you say that?’
‘Sohail, you just said...’
‘You think my father is some kind of drug dealer.’
Zia had pulled the telephone cord as far as it would go, all the way to the doorway of the TV room, and I saw him lean his head against the door frame and close his eyes.
Karim, standing beside him, pulled the phone slightly closer to his own mouth and said, ‘Sohail, it’s Karim. Zia and I are on the extension. Just tell us what happened.’
‘I don’t know what happened. These guys came in, said they were from the police. Grabbed my father, said he had to come with them. He was so scared; I’ve never seen my father look like that. He grabbed the sofa and they prised his fingers off, one by one, and when it came to the last finger I heard...I heard a snap. Really clean. Like a wishbone breaking in two. I would have done something but I was holding my mother because she was going crazy, screaming, crying, would have attacked them, and they had guns, man, they had guns.’
‘What about your guards?’ I was trying to sound in control, digging my nails into my palms to fight the desire to lock all doors and think of places to hide. I looked at Karim, and he saw my panic, and just raised his palm slightly. It’s OK, it’s OK. My fingers unfurled. It was like that time when I saw his head appear over the gate, against the starry sky, before he was beautiful.
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