by Minal Khan
Tanzeela scratched her neck distractedly and then said, “Well, I know that when I was young, and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the last thing I imagined myself saying was ‘a housewife,’” She rested her chin on her clenched hand. The other hand drummed aimlessly on the table. She was looking down absentmindedly, when her gaze fell over her watch. “Oh no,” she seemed frantic. “We’ve been here for half an hour! I really should get back.”
We asked for the check and quickly left the café. It was getting dark now. I could hear crows busily cawing their way towards their trees, mosquitoes buzzing around the dusky air. Tanzeela and I exchanged numbers before she quickly disappeared towards her car. “See you next week!” She abruptly turned and called for her chauffeur.
She then turned and left—a crow hurriedly trying to reach her tree before night fell.
~
By the time I came back home, it was a quarter to eight. I felt sticky and hot and wanted to jump in the shower right away. I thudded up the stairs and into my room. As soon as I had opened the shower, I heard sharp thrusts at the door. “Oh God,” I moaned to myself. If it was Asad asking to play monopoly again, I was going to clobber him. I quickly fastened a bathrobe around myself and whipped open the door, ready to turn my little brother away.
But it was not Asad at the door. It was Ishaq, the cook. I was least prepared to see him standing there. I suddenly felt naked, exposed. He looked dazed as he always did; half-awake. I cringed at that sly, little smile on his face.
I tried to sound assertive, unmoved, when I was suffocating on the inside. “What is it?” I asked him curtly, in Urdu.
“Begum Sahib,” he said in a soft drone. He was holding out something very familiar-looking in his hand. It was … my cell phone. How did he get it?
“You left this in the car.” The sight of his fingers wrapped tightly around my phone made me recoil. I quickly grabbed the phone from him and slammed the door shut. I didn’t hear the sound of his footsteps leaving. Was he still standing there?
I didn’t want to get out of my bath. I shivered in the warm water, my eyes closed. I couldn’t get the image of what had just happened out of my mind. While I stood there, I had felt his eyes pricking all over me, as if I was being bitten by little termites. I was unable to get over that feeling; my skin pricked and itched all over in the water. I didn’t want to leave my room; I never wanted to face him and those hooded eyes ever again.
And yet, at the same time, I knew I couldn’t tell my mother. I had little to pin against him. He had simply come and given me my phone; that was how it would look to any outsider. How could I explain that it was the way he looked at me, slowly and deliberately, that made my insides churn? She wouldn’t understand. Not until he actually said or did anything improper. This made me feel even more aggrieved.
As I was sitting on my bed, thinking about this, the phone rang, breaking the buzzing silence. It was Shahaan. I answered it on the fourth ring. “Are you alright?” he asked. “You sound as if you’ve been crying.”
I tried to sound as cheerful as I could. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “I’m just exhausted.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said easily. “But I’ll wait till you’re ready to tell me what’s wrong. If you’re not willing to now, that’s fine.”
I remained silent, lacking the energy to refute him.
“Well, I wanted to deliver some good news to you,” he said. “There’s going to be an exhibition at the Marriot Hotel next week. Some new, young photographers are displaying their work. A few of my pictures will be displayed as well. I was wondering if you and Alia would like to come.”
“Your art work at an exhibition? That’s amazing, Shahaan. Congrats!” I said, feeling a little better now. “Your very own exhibition!”
“Well, not completely,” he laughed. “I’m just one in the huge horde of photographers there. But anyway, I’ve called some friends from school and I’d really like it if you two would come. It’s next Tuesday. 6 p.m.”
“I’ll be there,” I said. “I’ll talk to Alia about it. I’ll finally get to see some of your work now.” I was genuinely looking forward to it.
“And I hope to get to see some of your work, too. Soon,” he said.
“I am actually working on a new painting now.”
“Really, what’s your subject?”
“I guess you’ll get to see it,” I teased, “when it’s complete. But I can firmly say I’ve put everything into this one.”
We talked for a few more minutes and then hung up. The image of Ishaq had more or less been erased for the time being. I called Alia and told her the news. She said she could most probably make it, if she was allowed out. “I’ve had family over for the past week,” she groaned. “I really need some time away.” I could hear loud voices behind her.
After we spoke, I lay back in my bed and started wondering what Tanzeela was doing; if she had gotten into trouble for arriving home late. I hoped that she would be allowed out for yoga classes next week. I fell asleep on my bed, my last thoughts being of a dead kitten I had seen in the middle of the road; its insides chewed and splayed over the road by an eagle.
12
When Alia was ten years old she used to write songs. She would never admit this to me, and to this day she doesn’t like talking about it. Indeed, she had not revealed anything about her song writing to me until I had pounced on an old journal in her bottom-most drawer, thinking that it was a diary. She called, “I’ll kill you if you read it!” Finally, when I escaped to her garden, to a spot where I knew she wouldn’t find me, and sat in the dewy, soft grass, out of breath, I was able to open the mysterious diary and peer into her soul.
To my dismay, there were no heartfelt entries bursting, “Dear Diary, I hate myself and everyone around me.” Instead I found, in indistinct scrawls, written songs. I had thought they were poems at first; with the perfect rhyme scheme and ordered rhythm. But then at random instances throughout the page were written “Chorus”. There was a song called, “Dripping Water,” and a shorter song called “Handicapped Girl.” I read the song, curious to see how far my friend’s imagination had taken her. The chorus read:
Oh, Handicapped Girl, please don’t cry,
You’re alone in this world, by and by.
You’re life’s a blur, full of misery,
I wish you were near, happy and free.
I was taken aback. The sounds of chirping birds and crows in the garden suddenly faded. At that moment, I wondered whether Alia was truly … distressed. Why would she write about a handicapped girl? I wondered. Had she seen some TV show, or witnessed a crippled child at the traffic signal?
As I read on, I became even more saddened: the lyrics turned more graphic and vivid. I didn’t want to read any more. When Alia had finally found me, I offered her the journal back to her without a word. I wanted to ask her what she felt when she wrote these songs; my God, she was only ten years old. “So what did you read?” she asked, frowning.
“I didn’t know you wrote songs,” I said, trying to pretend like I hadn’t just pounced upon what I had.
“I write some now and then,” she said easily. “It’s a good way to, you know, let out your feelings.” I shuddered to imagine what kind of feelings Alia might have had to have written about a girl whose wrists had been sliced off by her own parents.
I’ll wait, I thought to myself. I’ll wait until a day that she’s ready to talk about it. But in my heart, I knew I was too scared. Scared of knowing what I’d rather not know. It was silly, I knew, being afraid of my own friend’s thoughts.
It had been six years since that day in the garden. I was still trying to find the right day.
~
The monsoon season was now in full throttle. Rain slapped against our windows. Trees were shaking. Leaves dropped quickly and littered the streets. The day for the exhibition came sooner than I expected. Alia arrived at 5:15, wearing a green, cotton shalwaar kaameez. It was very unlik
e the clothes I was accustomed to seeing fashionable Alia in. I gave her a questioning look. “I didn’t want to create a scene in the house,” Alia explained. “My mom checks what I am wearing a whole lot more when there are family and relatives around.”
“So, how is your grandmother? Any better?” I asked when we were both seated in the car. Alia looked restless and fidgety. “No, no better. We called a doctor in today. They’re trying to diagnose an illness but can’t seem to.” She was tapping her foot against the floor constantly.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
She nodded and smiled. “Yes. Okay, well no, I’m not. I’m going to be honest. I really feel like a smoke. But,” she quickly added when I sighed in exasperation, “I’m not going to have one. I’ve been clean for three days now. I know if I have one, I won’t be able to stop.” I sighed. That was a relief.
“So tell me about Shahaan’s pictures. What are they like?” She asked.
“Well, I’ve only seen a few,” I replied. “They’re mostly of nature. But not the kind of nature you’d expect; no landscapes and rushing waterfalls. He captures small, unusual instances that you usually miss. Like, a close-up of an ant running on the ground during the rain.” I remembered seeing that photo at the beach; it had slid out from his bag of other pictures.
Alia thought for a moment. “It would be great to have a photographer in the family. Imagine! No blurry, finger-covering-the-lens shots; nice—artistic even—family photos; and no need to hire a photographer for special events! I’m sure his family makes full use of him.”
I fell silent. Shahaan had never mentioned his family. I didn’t even know how many brothers and sisters he had, if any at all. On the phone, he had never said anything like, “My mother’s calling me, hold a sec.”
We reached the entrance of the Marriot Hotel at 6:30 p.m. Alia breezily ignored the metal detector at the entrance and walked right through it, purse and keychain still in her hand. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. The security guard was busy opening the entrance doors. No one flinched. I did the same, quite excited when no one chased me down after the machine beeped away. “I could be carrying a gun right now,” I whispered to Alia. “This place could have blown up right now. And there’s no one who could stop it!” We laughed our way up the plush, carpeted stairs and past the heavy, branching chandelier, into the Rose Room.
There was a small cluster of people at the doorway. One security guard stood firmly at the entrance. A rifle hung casually from his shoulder. I spotted a table in the midst of the cluster of people where names on a list were being checked.
“I hope we don’t need any tickets for the event,” I told Alia nervously. “Shahaan didn’t tell me we did.”
Alia almost reeled over. She stared at me. “You have got to be kidding me. Of course we need tickets!” We eyed two middle-aged men before us, who held out two pieces of card-paper to the man at the entrance. The man at the table murmured the two men’s names, slashed them off in the guest-list. They walked by airily into the room.
We were next. The man at the entrance looked at us expectantly, as if considering it rude to demand tickets off us. He was a balding man, no older than forty, wearing a waistcoat and a pair of white gloves, a neat rose peeking out of his left pocket.
“Err, tickets, madam?” he urged, holding out his gloved hand. Alia and I looked at each other and then at him. “Umm, if you’ll just give me a second,” I mumbled, and started fumbling in my bag for my cell phone. This had never happened to me before. I had never gate-crashed a party, turned up at a get-together uninvited, or even landed at Alia’s house without telling her hours in advance. It was a habit from childhood.
On the other hand, I was also aware that my culture thrived on the Contact System, which, more often than not, undermined the rules. So I pulled out my phone and bit my lip agitatedly as I waited for Shahaan to pick up. He did so on the fifth ring.
“Hello, Shahaan?” I said loudly. I walked around aimlessly, trying to find good reception. “You didn’t tell me we needed tickets for the exhibition!” I was trying to keep my voice low, and so my sentence came out as a muffled hiss. Shahaan told me he’d come outside right away.
Alia and I stood helplessly at the side, like mute props, watching hordes of people entering with ease. Shahaan was out in a minute, like he said. He was wearing trousers and polished, black shoes and—I was surprised to see—a blue tie. He didn’t speak to us at first. He crouched over the man at the table ticking names off, and conducted a charming, urgent conversation with him, pointing to us every few seconds. “I’m sure this wouldn’t have been a big deal if I dressed up more,” Alia looked down at her clothes, and smirked. Before I could reply, Shahaan walked up to us and said, “Come on in. I’m so sorry.” He ushered us inside the large, high-ceilinged room.
I forgot my agitation as soon as I entered the busy room. On the walls, sufficiently spaced apart, were large photos; some in small frames, others life-sized, and some that stretched from the floor to the high ceiling above. There were lush pictures of forests and waterways. There were portrait shots of people in black-and-white, sepia, and color, and then there were the more extraordinary pictures, which seemed to hold a category of their own—shots of a man’s bleeding face, a snap of a monkey sitting on the back of a horse, and then a really unsettling picture of a gnarled foot.
The room was altogether dark. Spotlights shone above every photograph to illuminate them in the dim room. There were only a few other people from our age group; most looked in their fifties and sixties; art lovers, businessmen, housewives. Groups of people clustered before each photograph, whispering and nodding to each other appreciatively. “The bad part is,” Shahaan said, “people don’t mind coming here to appreciate the art, but you’ll find few who’re willing to buy it for their living room.”
“I wouldn’t mind buying something if I liked it,” I said, observing the wall-to-wall photos.
“Oh, come on,” Shahaan scoffed, smiling. “Would you rather hang a Van Gogh original in your sitting room or a picture of an old woman holding a fish taken by a Karachi local,” he joked, nodding at a large, black-and-white picture of an aged woman, smiling contentedly as she held a swordfish under her arm. “People want paintings. Not photographs.”
I walked a little further on, and came across a small picture, in a sepia tone, of a middle-aged woman. She was sitting on a traditional jhoola, a wide swing—leaning against the rail thoughtfully, with a parrot perched on her other hand. In the backdrop was a desert. The woman’s hair flowed about her shoulders loosely; the pallu of her sari flapped in the wind. She looked like she would straighten up and fly away.
“This is beautiful,” I said to Shahaan, absorbed. “I would pay for this.” Shahaan didn’t say anything. I looked at the white card next to the photograph. “Ascension,” it read. “By Shahaan Ali.” I whipped around and faced him. “You took this!” I exclaimed.
Shahaan shrugged, blushing. “This is a pretty old one. It was one of my first.” I urged him to tell me more about it. “Well, the thought behind it is kind of whimsical, actually. This woman looks as if she’s about to take off, to spread her wings and fly, but the parrot with wings stays put.”
I listened and nodded. “And who’s the woman in the picture?” I asked.
“That’s my mother,” said Shahaan.
I looked at the picture again. The woman had full lips and loose, dark hair. She portrayed the emotions required perfectly. “Oh,” I said. “Random thought, but I’m just thinking how much my mother would press you to find out where your mother got her sari from if she were here!” We both laughed. “Let me show this to Alia.” I eyed the room, searching for her. Alia had slipped off on her own, unnoticed. I finally found her before a floor-to-ceiling picture of a tulip. She was talking to someone; a man in a suit. Oh no, I thought to myself. Did these men never think twice about chatting up young girls at events? I zoomed to her rescue, ready to whisk her away from the man. But as I
reached her, she was already walking away from him. She looked calm, unbothered.
“You hanging in there?” I asked her when I caught up to her.
“Yeah. Someone was trying to sell me that picture,” she said. “It was forty thousand rupees! Can you believe it? And you don’t have to take a long look at me to get I’m not overflowing with cash.” We both burst into giggles.
When I brought Alia over and showed her Shahaan’s photograph, she stood for a few moments, taking it in. “You know what this reminds me of?” she said, not taking her eyes off the picture. “My mom; this is what she would be if she hadn’t given in to everyone’s wishes.” Before I could break the news that it was none other than Shahaan who had snapped it, she asked, “How much is this for?”
I looked at the white card. “Three thousand rupees.”
“I’m going to buy it,” Alia said. She looked around her. “Who do I go to?”
I stared at Alia, surprised. “Are you sure? Do you even have that much money on you?” Alia nodded. Her monthly allowance rarely spent, Alia was determined to purchase it. It made little difference, it seemed, who had taken the snapshot.
As Alia was parting with her money and having the photo wrapped, I searched the room for Shahaan. I knew he would be delighted that his picture had been sold. It hadn’t even looked like many pictures had been bought that night. We were the only ones who were standing in the checkout line. I spotted Shahaan a few yards away, talking to an elder man. The man patted him on his back and smiled appreciatively. When Shahaan caught my eye, he excused himself and made his way over to us.
“Are you two ready to go?” he asked us. Alia and I nodded. Shahaan insisted dropping us home, even after I assured him that I had a car to take us back. He was having none of it. “Wait for me downstairs. I’ll be down in five minutes,” he said.
By the time we had sent our driver away, got into his car, and left, it was nearing nine o’clock. Alia sat in the back seat again, with her wrapped photograph by her side.