by Ayisha Malik
‘Salamalaikum,’ he said, standing at the door in his white shalwar kameez, long leather jacket and Afghan hat. Hamida was standing with him.
‘Uncle!’ exclaimed Maars. ‘Look, Adam. It’s Uncle. Isn’t it nice to see him?’
Mum straightened up in her chair as he glanced at her, nodding, probably quite perturbed at Maars’ enthusiasm. He and Hamida came in and sat down.
He leaned forward. ‘Beta, Hamida has told me all about Conall.’
Just then Mary came into the room and looked a bit taken aback by Uncle Mouch. Maybe it was the hat.
‘Oh, come, come,’ said Chachi. ‘Wasim, this is Mary. Soffoo’s mother-in-law.’
He stood up, taking her hand. ‘Of course – I remember her from the wedding.’
Mum cleared her throat, looking flushed. Mary sat down.
‘I hope they find your son very soon,’ he said to her. ‘Can you explain everything to me again?’
We went through the story as he looked on, nodding, knitting his brow, leaning forward, taking in every word. ‘Hmm,’ he said.
We waited for more but he’d fallen silent and was looking at the floor. I tried to catch Hamida’s eye but she was also looking rather distant. Had they heard bad news? Were they hiding something from me? The clock ticked. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Uncle Mouch took off his hat. I’d never seen Mum so quiet – it was almost as if she’d been the jilted one.
‘OK,’ he said, getting up and taking his leave. Mum was looking at him but he left the room without a backward glance, Hamida in tow.
‘What was the point in that?’ I said, looking at everyone.
‘You tell the story a million times you tire of hearing it yourself,’ said Mary. ‘But he seems like a nice man.’
‘He is a very good man,’ said Mum, her face reddening. ‘And you know . . .’ She looked at Mary, her breathing seeming to have got heavy. ‘If your son hadn’t left my daughter I’d be married to him now.’
Mary looked at Mum and then at me. Oh God.
‘OK, well, let’s not get into this now,’ I said.
Just then my phone beeped.
From Sakib: Sofia, I didn’t want to disturb you with everything going on, but I really need you to proof the attached material. I’ve had back-to-back meetings and won’t have time. Needs to be sent back by the end of the day. Really sorry. How’s the search going?
Bloody, bloody hell.
‘What kind of a man doesn’t tell his wife-to-be that he has a son, hmm?’
It was Mary’s turn to go red this time. I opened the attachment as I heard Maars ask Mum to go and check on Adam.
‘Well – we all make mistakes. Whatever happened to forgiveness?’ Mary looked at me as I glanced up from my phone. ‘For all your religion, you didn’t think he might need you? Do you know what it’s been like seeing my grandson go through chemotherapy and my son sit by his side, alone – no one to comfort him?’
Sean walked in.
‘Why doesn’t he go to his first wife for comfort?’ said Mum, ignoring Sean’s hello.
Mary’s indignation came out in: ‘Jesus. What a thing to say.’
Chachi looked disapproving and said in Urdu, ‘Haw, is this how you call Jesus’s name?’
‘What’s going on?’ Sean asked, looking at me.
Where are you, Conall? Where the hell are you?
‘His wife should’ve been there,’ said Mary.
‘Hang on,’ said Maars. ‘She was there.’
‘Well, dear; yes, she was. And then she wasn’t,’ she said.
‘Come on, Ma. It’s not like you wanted her there anyway.’
‘Sean.’
He lifted his arms up as if to say, it’s the truth, isn’t it?
‘Uff,’ said Mum. ‘So many lies.’
‘OK, Mum, thanks, we know.’
‘Soffoo, you married him without thinking things through, telling your family or knowing who he is. This is what happens. On top of that, he’s gora.’
‘Mum,’ I said, not even being able to look at Mary and Sean, who aren’t so stupid they don’t know by now what gora means. ‘You have got to let go of that. You and your you can’t trust him, you can’t trust him. Yes, you were right! I know he lied, but maybe things just aren’t that simple. I’m not saying what he did was right – I’m just saying that maybe things aren’t always black and white. And for someone who says they don’t mind I married a gora, you certainly mention it a lot.’
‘Hain?’ said Mum. ‘Simple? It looks very simple to me.’
‘He made a mistake,’ I said. ‘He lied. I know. But his mistake isn’t the sum of who he is.’
Mum leaned back and raised her eyebrows. ‘I said to you that you should stay with him. I never told you, leave him. After all,’ she said, looking at Mary, ‘marriage isn’t this thing you can just throw away like that.’
Oh my God.
‘Quite right,’ added Mary.
‘Anyway,’ said Mum, ‘I beg to pardon but I don’t think Wasim’s children would want their dad to marry a woman whose son-in-law is white anyway. Sorry to say.’
Mary’s cheeks went bright pink. ‘I see,’ she said.
‘To hell with them,’ I said.
Mary took a deep breath. ‘Well. I can’t say people in Kilkee weren’t talking about Conall marrying a Muslim.’ And then she murmured. ‘Let alone becoming one.’
Sean and Maars looked at each other.
‘But he had to become Muslim,’ said Mum.
‘Isn’t it time for dinner?’ I said, glancing at the attachment that needed to be proofed.
‘I think you’re right, Sofe,’ replied Sean. ‘Dinner that these lovely people are making for us while we’re here,’ he said, looking pointedly at his mum.
‘Astaghfirullah,’ muttered Chachi.
‘And why couldn’t she become Catholic?’ said Mary.
‘Because Islam is right,’ said Mum.
‘I think we’re all still quite jet-lagged, aren’t we?’ I looked at Sean, appealing for him to do something.
‘And what makes you think it’s more right than Catholicism?’ said Mary.
I stood up. ‘To be fair, how much do any of us know about the other’s religion? Non-spicy tandoori chicken?’ I said, looking at Mary.
Mary stood up. ‘No, thank you, Sofia. I’ve lost my appetite. I’ll go to my room now.’ With which she turned round and walked out, Sean looking back at me with a sorry stare as he went with her.
‘Mum, what is wrong with you? “Islam is right?” I mean, honestly.’
‘Soffoo, you have spent too much time in London. She said you should become Catholic,’ said Chachi.
‘No. No, she didn’t,’ I replied. ‘She just made a very valid point, which we can discuss when my husband is found.’
‘Haw hai, Soffoo, are you becoming Christian?’ said Mum. ‘This is the day I needed to live and see: the man I was going to marry walk away and my daughter becoming a Christian.’
Friday 13 December
3.50 p.m. I got a message from Hamida to come to the slums and had to get Jawad to drive me. It was so windy my hijab kept flying this way and that. I stepped up on to a mound, littered with bottles and rubbish, but it was quite foggy so I couldn’t see too far ahead. I noticed a new wooden shack a few metres away from us.
‘Conall helped to build that,’ I said.
Jawad looked at me with a wry smile. ‘Conall was a good man, but it is funny that these goray help us to build things, when they are the ones who created so much of our mess.’
‘Is,’ I said in semi-hysteria. ‘Is, is, is a good man.’
He looked at me as if I’d gone mad. I walked further into the slum as Jawad followed me.
Several children were outdoors playing cricket, and they ran up to me as soon as they saw us. I got my purse out and gave them some money. This just brought out another bunch of kids who asked for more cash. I’d run out of money when Hammy came out of one of the slums, telling them off.
There were the same old tin roofs and crooked doors, crammed together. I looked around and took in the mass of homelessness hazed in fog.
Hamida gave me a sorry look, holding something in her hands. What’s happened? Then she handed it to me. It was a photograph of me and Conall – the one that had gone missing from the house.
‘I don’t . . . what does this mean?’
She rested a Doc Martinned foot on one of the mounds. ‘Anything really. I found it on the ground. I guess most likely that he came here, someone stole his wallet, took his money and left anything they couldn’t sell.’ She glanced at the picture.
‘So he has no money?’
‘Potentially.’
‘If he was mugged, then they would’ve taken his passport too?’
‘Mugged, dropped his wallet, who knows? But it means he was here.’
I looked at the mass of tin roofs and litter, no closer to knowing where Conall was, just a picture in my hand of what used to be.
7.10 p.m. I’d just prayed when there was a knock at my door. It was Mary.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ she asked.
‘No. Come in.’ I got off the prayer mat as she took a seat on the chair in the corner.
‘Perhaps things got slightly heated the other day,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry.’
She looked so small in that chair as she locked her fingers together.
‘I know he always felt like a black sheep,’ she said. ‘Even when he was a boy. Sean now, he has an easier nature. Goes with the flow. But Conall . . . When he met Claire I thought she’d be good for him. A strong girl. I could tell she was able to put him in his place, but his father . . . God love him, but he’s not the easiest of men – Conall and he never saw eye to eye. What I’m trying to say is, what we gave him wasn’t enough. Then he came to London and found you, and . . . well, I’m not surprised Conall converted. He was always looking for peace.’
I felt my eyes fill with tears because I knew this. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to forgive him. ‘I know,’ I said.
‘Oh, Sofia,’ she said, her voice faltering. ‘I pray he finds it.’
I looked at her, admiring her ability to stop her tears from falling, even though I could see her eyes were filled with them.
‘Me too.’
Tuesday 17 December
8.45 a.m. Jawad came in early this morning to ask what I wanted for breakfast. I went into the kitchen with him and it was almost like old times. When I told him what everyone was saying about Conall being radicalised, Jawad, for perhaps the first time I’d seen, laughed. Actually laughed.
‘Bhai saab?’ He filled his glass with water from the cooler and took a sip. ‘He always talked to me about Islam.’
‘Did he?’
‘He used to ask me why I didn’t pray regularly, like my wife. She’d tell me because I’m lazy.’
Turns out Jawad and his wife do banter. Who’d have thought it? God, maybe I am elitist?
‘I told him I didn’t have my wife’s faith. I tell her He knows what is in my heart so how can I hide it?’
Rather abruptly, he left the kitchen. I was left wondering what I was meant to have got out of that conversation when he came back and handed me a book. It was in Urdu, and my Urdu reading skills are rusty at best, so it took me a while to decipher what it said.
‘Allah-walay.’ I squinted at the print. ‘Sufi eh . . . what? Ah, Karam?’
He nodded.
I smiled, rather pleased with myself but at a loss as to where this was headed. To be honest, I didn’t think now was the time to start exchanging literary tastes, you know. And then it came back to me.
‘He gave you this,’ I said. ‘I remember.’
Jawad nodded.
I looked at the book again and flicked through the fine pages. Closing it and feeling the curves of the printed title, I handed it back to him.
‘I started reading this. I still don’t pray like my wife. I still don’t pray very often, but something happens to my heart when I read it. It is moved.’
I took the book back and looked at the title again. Sufi. Sufi, Sufi, Sufi. I closed my eyes and thought of the conversations we used to have about Islam. How much of it he couldn’t get his head round, the parts that made him question things, and the parts that moved him too. Just like Jawad had been moved. And then it hit me. I ran out of the kitchen and into Maars’ bedroom.
‘Wake up,’ I exclaimed, shaking her. ‘Maars, you have to wake up.’
‘Sofe, man. I was up most of the night with Adam. Sorry, I missed fajr but I’ll make it up tomorrow.’
‘No, listen – I know where I have to go.’
She turned over, squinting at me. ‘Where?’
‘To all the Sufi mosques in Karachi.’
11.10 p.m. Everyone thinks I’ve gone mad. Mary looked very confused.
‘We aren’t Sufi,’ explained Chachi, looking sniffy.
I had to tell Mary about this rather mystical offshoot of Islam. My family thinks it’s a whim, because some of these places can seem ungodly, but as Hammy and I drove around I realised there’s something else in these places too. There’s calm and serenity. And I just know that it will be here that I find him.
Wednesday 18 December
10.50 p.m. Sean and I got into an argument in the middle of the street. As if we aren’t conspicuous enough. He said I’m wasting my time and I said he’s wasting his.
‘Sofe, your problem is you won’t face up to the fact that my brother’s lost his head. Even now, after all you know about him and his past, you still think he’s looking for some kind of absolution.’
I wasn’t going to stand around and waste time with this bullshit. Hammy and I got into the car and drove round the city again, visiting shrine after shrine, because this is where he had to be. Except he wasn’t. But I won’t stop trying.
Thursday 19 December
5.40 p.m. Just as Hammy and I were about to leave Mary asked if she could come with us.
‘I don’t know who’s right here,’ she said. ‘But I know there’s good in my boy.’
I looked at her. ‘You’ll have to cover your legs and head.’
She nodded and we were on our way.
After visiting the same shrines, driving past the shop with pink and green writing that always seems to catch my eye, Mary asked if we could sit down and observe people in them. We went back to the shrine next to the shop.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she said, sitting cross-legged on the drab red carpet. She stared at a white-bearded man, draped in green clothes and a red and orange hat. He was hunched over, sipping tea, muttering prayers.
‘Are there any churches here?’ she asked.
Hammy gave me a look. Churches here are for local Christians, who are generally from poor households.
We got to the Holy Trinity Cathedral and drove through the black gates that opened up for us. Mary looked a little out of her comfort zone since, unfortunately, the Holy Communion taking place at that time was in Urdu. But she prayed while we sat in the back and waited for her. Everyone stared as she walked back towards us; they extended their hands and smiled and hugged her. She came out looking flushed and happy.
‘That was quite an experience,’ she said. ‘What’s it like during Christmas?’
‘I guess we’ll be coming back here then,’ said Hammy under her breath.
Sunday 22 December
10.05 a.m. Nothing. Nothing at all. We go to the same places every day, ask the same questions to the same people and we still have nothing. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I should be helping Sean with whatever hunt he’s on. Mary doesn’t seem to know anything any more. She makes the most of things and comes with us. Mum is getting ready for a bloody wedding, which we’re all being forced to attend tonight. Just because you’re looking for a missing person in Pakistan, it’s no excuse to not attend the wedding to
which you’ve been invited.
Every so often, though, Mum will spread the prayer mat out and at the end of each prayer say a supplication for Conall. Mary caught her one day saying it out loud, but didn’t understand the Urdu, which is just as well because Conall’s name was cushioned between a prayer that Mary gets out of Mum’s hair as soon as possible.
8 p.m. I hate weddings. I am overdressed and unimpressed.
11.30 p.m. We were all sitting in our chairs, with our respective plates of biryani, when none other than Uncle Mouch came over to say hello.
‘Sit with us,’ said Maars, handing Adam to him.
He hesitated as he stared at Mum and held on to the baby he couldn’t exactly reject. The looks between Mum and Uncle Mouch were all a little PDA for my liking, but it was progress. Mary made room for him as she choked on the tandoori chicken. I got some crackers out of my bag for her.
Monday 23 December
1 p.m. Sakib called to ask how the search was going, sounding stressed out.
‘Is it manic?’ I asked.
He filled me in on what was happening and told me he’d emailed me the addresses of some suppliers to chase today at some point.
‘Sorry, it’s just got very busy, but it’s fine. Just – I am looking forward to you coming back.’
Is this how Conall would feel about his work? Despite the chaos everywhere, this anchor holding it all together, preventing him and everything else from falling apart.
‘Me too,’ I said.
9.10 p.m. Failure of a day. Nothing. Again.
Tuesday 24 December
3.20 p.m. Mum, Maars and I felt bad that Mary and Sean were spending Christmas in Karachi of all places, so Maars managed to source a tree! Chachi thinks it’s great because, well, it involves fairy lights and decorations. Adam is also rather partial to these lights. We even managed to get some presents together. We surprised both of them and Mary cried. But it’s nice to see someone other than me cry, to be quite honest. Then we lit the tree and it was all very nice except for the gnawing feeling in my gut that something had happened to Conall. That so many days of searching have amounted to nothing might mean something terrible is in the offing.
