Salt and Saffron

by Kamila Shamsie

  Three months later Samia sent Sameer a postcard:

  Guess what Sam 2! Remember the Turkish movie? Well, I mentioned it to my Turkish friend, Omër, and he says it’s a great comedy. Very subtle humour! He knows chunks of it by heart – translated some dialogue for me and it really was funny, though it didn’t ring any bells at all as far as my memory of the subtitles was concerned. Guess we got a lousy translation. Must go – there are strawberries.

  Love, Sam 1.

  P.S. How come Mariam understood the humour?

  In the days that followed the arrival of the postcard I tried casually mentioning Ataturk and Istanbul and Turkish delight around Mariam Apa, but she didn’t show even a flicker of interest. Still, I never quite forgot about it.

  Why would Taimur have gone to Turkey?

  Back again to Taimur, that inexplicable man.

  It’s true that there were relatives aplenty in the family who had been part of the Khilafat Movement just before the triplets were born, and throughout Taimur’s childhood those relatives spoke often of that political movement which tried to show the British that Muslims around the world would not accept the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. One of the uncles even stayed in Turkey for a few months, just before Ataturk declared Turkey a secular state, and after he returned he made a point of teaching all the children of the family the rudiments of the Turkish language. So it’s not inconceivable that Turkey should have had a certain hold on Taimur’s imagination. It certainly had a hold on the imaginations of most Indian Muslims of his parents’ generation, and Taimur always loved to listen to his elders’ stories. But even so … What was Taimur’s story?

  Mosquitoes had begun to buzz around me so I pulled my dupatta close like a shawl, using it to shield my bare arms from the onslaught. As a child I would tell myself things like, If I stay outdoors and brave the insects for a whole hour then tomorrow the boating plan will work out. If, subsequently, the boating plan didn’t work out, it would be because I stayed outside only fifty-nine minutes, or because I cheated by lathering on calamine lotion afterwards, or because mosquitoes died in my dreams that night.

  Was that childhood logic so different from my way of thinking now? If I ask the right questions the answers will come. If the answers don’t come it’s because I haven’t asked the right questions, haven’t pried out the necessary details from those who feel no pleasure in remembering, haven’t recalled that one lift of an eyebrow which changes everything. But what about the silences that can’t be retold in stories? What about the forgotten commas which shape us as much as the exclamation marks? Masood once said to me, ‘Why is it that when people exchange recipes they so often forget to mention salt?’

  I had laughed then and Masood, uncharacteristically offended that I shouldn’t take him seriously, served unsalted food to the family that night.

  ‘What is this?’ Aba had said, staring down in horror at his plate, after just one morsel. ‘What is this?’

  How the absence of a single ingredient can alter the meal before you. How the absence of a detail can alter a story. How much salt had been left out in all the stories I’d ever heard from, and about, my family? How much salt did I leave out when I turned my memories of Mariam and Masood into a story? Well, I knew part of the answer to that. I left out my own reactions. Of late I’d been telling myself that eventually, when everything was resolved in my mind, I’d put myself in the story and say that at first I’d reacted terribly. Then I went far away and allowed myself time to think about it and my mind accepted the marriage. Then, one day, so did my heart. And so I went to visit Khaleel in Liaquatabad.

  If only it were that simple.

  I imagined Khaleel before me, laughing. ‘Salt? How déclassé. I’d have thought you’d season your metaphors with nothing less than saffron.’

  Masood loved saffron, but when he spoke about food in terms of devotion he referred back to that déclassé seasoning. ‘I believe in God because all of science can never explain the miracle of salt,’ he said and I, having learnt my lesson, nodded.

  What if all of storytelling couldn’t explain Taimur?

  I stood up so quickly I had to sit down again. Could it be that simple? Mariam Apa never spoke because speaking would mean trying to explain Taimur, and that she was unable to do. So she hid in menus – hid in that wondrous yet confined world of lunch and dinner and, sometimes, tea – marking out the boundaries of what she could and could not speak of. She knew, as do we all, that it is useless to say you will keep quiet on one subject, because everything is interconnected. Start talking about cricket and within five minutes you might be on the subject of yaks’ milk without a single non sequitur. Ask a person one question and you set yourself up to be asked a question in return. So Mariam asked no questions, revealed no clues, started no conversations which could sprawl beyond her control. Rather than keep quiet on one subject, she kept quiet on every subject but one. It’s the only way of keeping a secret.

  Or … I squeezed my head between my hands, not knowing if I wanted my thoughts to slow down or speed up. Something was shaping inside my skull … Had all of us always been wrong about her silence? We assumed the silence was about not speaking, but what if it was about not not-listening? Did she move mute among us in order to observe? Was she so intent on listening because there was something she needed to hear? Perhaps, just as we were waiting for her to give us the answers about Taimur, she was waiting for us to help her understand why her father walked away from the family she missed so much when she was growing up. In the end, was the failure ours for being unable to hear the questions she shouted out through silence?

  Or did we finally answer those questions and, in answering them, make it impossible for her to do anything except follow Taimur’s example and leave?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Two rare and remarkable things: messages from both Samia and Celeste in my in-box when I logged on to my e-mail. I knew that Samia would have something to say about tea at Baji’s with Khaleel so I clicked on Celeste’s message first.

  Hey, Babe.

  How’s my favourite decadent Pakistani doing? Thought of you yesterday (like that’s a rare event!) while watching an old Audrey Hepburn movie with my brother – the former metal-head has become an aficionado of fifties movies. Go figure. The movie? You guessed it – Sabrina! I’ve always enjoyed it, despite its refusal to acknowledge the rigid, though unspoken, class structure in the US, but yesterday I couldn’t concentrate on it. Kept thinking of you and Mariam and … I want to write ‘Missouri’ but I know that’s not his name. Mussood?

  So, anyway, I’m still waiting to get an epiphany e-mail from you. You know what I mean. Our likeable but flawed heroine walks out from her élite neighbourhood, and, spurred on by an e-mail from her American friend (remember, in these stories someone Euro-American has to be responsible for showing our élitist Third Worlder the light), she notices the poverty in other parts of the city for the first time – No! She feels empathy for the first time – and she turns her back on her life of privilege and dedicates her days to helping the needy. Roll credits.

  Seriously, though, I know things can’t be easy. What little news we get from your part of the world is pretty frightening. Tell me it’s just the US media up to their old tricks. I miss you, girl. When do you return stateside?

  Love,

  Your favourite I-claim-to-oppose-decadence-but-live-in-a-system-steeped-in-it American.

  I dashed off a reply:

  C – In the kind of movie you’re talking about our heroine wouldn’t be inspired by a Euro-American; she would be a Euro-American. Possibly shown the light by some mystical but ineffectual Eastern type.

  More later.

  Love,

  A.

  Sameer came through the door, holding two glasses of Coke in his hands and two packets of chilli chips between his teeth. ‘Hey!’ he said, and the chilli chips fell on to the desk beside me. ‘No saliva on them, I swear. Miracle of miracles … Is that actually a message from m
y sister?’

  I didn’t want anyone, not even Sameer, to see me reading a message about Khaleel, so I clicked from the in-box back to Celeste’s message, and turned to the chilli chips. I crushed the packet between my palms and shook it vigorously to ensure an even distribution of masala. I once asked Masood if he could make chilli chips that tasted like the ones in the packet. He bit into the chilli-red potato stick I proffered him, and looked pained. ‘Would you have asked Ghalib to write a letter to the telephone company for you?’

  I pushed my laptop away. ‘I’ve just developed a theory, Reemas.’

  ‘Well, spill all, Brer Fox.’

  ‘No, moron. It’s your name backwards. Reemas.’

  ‘Oh, Reemas. Not Remus of Uncle fame. Nor Remus, even, of Romulus fame. Moron yourself.’ He kicked my chair, and I tried to imagine coming back to live in Karachi if Sameer wasn’t here. It’s all very well to love a place, but in the end what matters most is the people who live there. Why did Taimur leave Dard-e-Dil?

  ‘Your theory, professor?’

  ‘Snobbery is based on fear.’

  ‘Already it sounds highly unoriginal.’ He tipped a handful of chips into his mouth and followed it with a sip of Coke to accentuate the taste of the masala.

  ‘No, no, not fear of a revolution or anything like that. Fear of squalor. Fear of being entirely powerless, entirely overlooked. It’s not that we can’t empathize with those on the lower rungs of society; the problem is that we can. We can imagine what it feels like to be so deprived, and it’s our fear that we could, or our children could, end up like that which makes us keep our distance from the have-nots. Because at a distance we don’t have to think about it.’

  ‘Tell me you just came up with that and haven’t had time to think it through.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘First, are you saying there’s no distinction between class and wealth? Haven’t you heard your Dadi, or even your parents, or my parents, talk about the nouveau riche? Are we lower down the class ladder than the Mushtaq family next door, who pull out their teeth just so they can have them replaced by solid gold?’

  ‘We don’t know that they pull out their teeth.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Their family suffers from a rare disease called tooth dropsy.’

  ‘Forget about the teeth. Let’s get back to my theory. I think our family’s attitude towards the nouveau riche is another symptom of fear. We’re uncomfortable around them because they remind us that class is fluid; the Mushtaq parents may be considered nouveau riche, but their kids are being sent to finishing school to acquire polish and within a generation they’ll marry into respectable but no-longer-rich families, and they’ll start turning up their own noses at the nouveau riche. This reminds us that status is not permanent; as the Mushtaqs rise, someone else will fall, and that someone might be us.’

  Sameer pulled my laptop towards him and read Celeste’s message. ‘I see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re feeling guilty about not devoting your life to helping the needy, and it salves your conscience to say your snobbery is related to your great empathy. Oh, baychari Aliya. Too sensitive to hang out with the poor! That’s a Starched statement if ever!’

  He was right, but so was I. ‘What would you do if you saw Masood tomorrow?’ How odd that I’d never thought to ask him this before.

  Sameer shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Say hello, I suppose. Tell him my palate misses him. If you’re asking if I’d invite him home for tea, no I wouldn’t. And if I did, he’d refuse.’

  ‘But suppose … Remember he used to say he wished he could read English? What if Mariam Apa taught him? What if he’s read, I don’t know …’

  ‘Frantz Fanon?’ Sameer made a dismissive gesture. ‘Are you saying it’s all about education? The great leveller. You think if you read John Ashbery all differences cease to matter. Come on, Aliya. You’re smarter than that.’

  I felt my face flush at the mention of Ashbery. ‘That’s not fair, Sameer.’

  ‘To hell with fair. You spend half an hour with this Khaleel – sorry, Call – he alludes to your favourite poets, and now you can’t handle the fact that your biases are conflicting with your hormones, so you try to convince yourself that you’re not a snob, you’re just empathetic. You don’t discriminate; you just have more in common with people who are educated. And you’ll rewrite everything in the past which conflicts with this theory, including the way you feel about Mariam and Masood.’

  I thought of Khaleel drinking tea out of a saucer. How desperately I still wanted to believe that he only did it to test me. All the poetry in the world couldn’t change that. ‘Okay, go away.’

  ‘Aliya, Aloo, cuz. Listen to me. It doesn’t work. I tried it. With a girl from work. She wasn’t lower down on the social ladder or anything, she was just from a really different type of family. Like to like makes the most sense. Look, if it makes you feel better, tell yourself you’re pulling away because of difference, not because of snobbery. Tell the truth: can you see yourself getting married to this guy? Can you see yourself coming to Karachi for the holidays and staying with his family in Liaquatabad? Don’t tell me the thought doesn’t appal you.’

  The thought appalled me. ‘Who’s talking about getting married?’

  ‘You’ve got to think long-term. If it’s obvious from the start that it won’t work out, cut your losses. Why start something that can never progress?’

  ‘Mariam did.’

  ‘Do you think she’s happy?’

  ‘Do you think he is? Why don’t we ever ask that?’

  ‘You know why we never ask that.’

  Why did he go back to his birthplace? After his father died. Why did he go back? Was he sick of the pretence? Was it his version of an ultimatum? I’d never thought of their relationship as something with squabbles, and jealousies and demands. It was as though I could only begin to understand the relationship – why couldn’t I just say ‘affair’? – by making it some mythical, two-dimensional thing, larger and also so much smaller than life.

  How did he hear of his father’s death? How did he tell Mariam of it? When did he decide to leave?

  My parents had a dinner party at our house the night before Masood left. Masood burnt the naans and had to cycle out for more, delaying dinner by a few minutes. It’s a strange detail to remember, but I remember it particularly because I had only just learnt to drive and I offered to drive him round the corner to the naanwallah, but Masood said no.

  ‘Don’t you trust my driving, Masood?’ I laughed.

  ‘It won’t look right. You chauffeuring me around.’

  ‘What rubbish. I’ll get the keys. Don’t leave.’

  But he did. Mariam Apa was standing in the driveway when I walked out, keyring in hand, and yelled for Masood. She shook her head at me and spun her index fingers to mime bicycle wheels.

  ‘Why is he being so silly, Apa? I drove the mali to the bus stop last week.’ Then I thought of adding, Besides, Masood’s virtually family, but stopped myself. No, I knew that wasn’t quite true, but why did he have to go and act as though he and I were servant and mistress, rather than …

  Rather than what? Mariam Apa’s raised eyebrows asked me.

  Rather than two people who often ate dinner together when my parents and Mariam Apa were out for the evening, particularly on cool evenings, when it was a pleasure to be outside the kitchen door, cross-legged under the stars.

  Mariam Apa enacted dialling a phone number.

  Yes, it had been a while since the news that my family was going out for the evening hadn’t prompted me to pick up the phone and call Sameer or one of my school friends to make dinner plans. But I didn’t appreciate Mariam pointing that out to me.

  Four years later I allowed myself to consider the possibility that I was entirely peripheral to that night’s story. Let’s suppose – as suppositions go this is none too farfetched – that Masood heard of his father’s death that night, and not the morning after. Evidence? He burnt the n
aans. Masood never burnt anything. So let’s suppose he heard of his father’s death – it was the night of a dinner, everyone was congregated in the drawing room, out of earshot of the phone – everyone except for Masood. So the phone in the kitchen rang, and Masood answered, and minutes later Mariam walked into the kitchen. I’m not making this last part up. She was in the kitchen, I know, because she’s the one who told me the naans were burnt. I was walking to my room, was in between the drawing room and my room, when Mariam came out of the kitchen. If only I could remember, but I can’t, if something prompted me to ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ or if she just held out a burnt bit of naan to me.

  Mariam loved Masood and Masood loved Mariam and Masood loved his father and his father died and Masood hung up the phone and Mariam walked into the kitchen and the house was full of people and Mariam knew that among those people were people who might walk into the kitchen, maybe to see what Masood was cooking, maybe to see where Mariam had gone, maybe to ask for more ice. And Masood knew that all he wanted right then was to weep in Mariam’s arms.

  Is that when the naans burnt? Or was that later, seconds later, when Mariam finally put a hand on his arm, but kept her face turned slightly towards the door, alert for footsteps, and Masood said, ‘This can’t go on. I’ll go mad. We’ll both go mad.’

  I can’t fault Mariam for listening for all those footsteps, all those footsteps including mine. But there was a time when I thought that if Masood meant something to me I would fault her for what she did to him all those years. But, really, what did she do except love him, and love us also? Did I fault him? Yes, for months. Yes, for everything. Until one day I was able to say to myself, What did he do except love her and love her?

  Sameer brushed a crumb off my cheek. ‘You know you’ll never see her again.’

  I stood up and walked over to the glass doors which led out to the garden. Pushed aside the curtains and pressed my head against the glass. The chairs on the terrace were covered in dust.