Hot Water Man

by Deborah Moggach

  The room felt enclosed and hot, with its portrait of the Queen above the bookshelves. In the garden, safe inside the high white walls, children played on the grass. With the temperature in the nineties, they were fully clothed. No doubt Anthea had children, driven from house to house, never stepping foot on the dusty road between. I thought of your children, Roz, running bare under a lukewarm English sun.

  ‘We’re visiting Jinnah Orphanage next week,’ said Anthea. ‘Would you like to come? We collect our spare toys. It’s a bit upsetting. Some of the babies are very young.’

  Christine paused. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Heavens, I’ve forgotten to sign up myself.’ Anthea took out a biro. ‘After all my cajoling.’ She wrote her name on the list of volunteers. Anthea Siddiqi.

  For a moment Christine did not understand. The word looked vaguely foreign.

  ‘What an unusual surname,’ she said. ‘Is it Italian?’

  Anthea roared with laughter. ‘Good God no. Looked in the phone book? It’s as common as Khan.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Christine felt her face heating up. To hide it, she turned and put out her cigarette in somebody else’s saucer. The stub hissed in the brown puddle.

  Her mental letter to Roz ceased. Anthea had moved away to talk to someone else. Christine felt irked and unsettled, in her flimsy ethnic blouse. Everyone else was talking, probably about their children. There were about fifteen women here, four of them visibly pregnant.

  ‘Another card,’ said Anthea.

  ‘No, it’s not for pinning up. I just wondered if you knew where this place was.’ She spoke to Anthea with more respect now. As if in confirmation of her own stupidity, a brown-skinned girl was now sidling’ against Anthea’s slacks, rubbing her cheek against the linen.

  ‘Sultan Rahim Estates.’ She read the address and thought for a moment. ‘Nazimabad’s miles. Right the other side of Karachi.’ She explained the location.

  Outside it was noon, and very hot. Somebody – Margaret or Marjorie – offered her a lift but Christine refused. None of these women would live in Nazimabad. It was the sort of place that one only read about in newspaper reports of riots.

  She waited some time for a rickshaw, her feet scuffling the dust like a refugee.

  ‘Nazimabad?’ The man repeated the word without interest.

  ‘East Nazimabad, Street 13b.’ Bending down, she repeated the words again, louder. She could not tell if he understood. If he did, he did not care to indicate so. Was he waiting for her to get in? She felt the usual irritation rising. It was like fighting cotton wool. They stared when you were trying to be alone; they gazed way beyond, uninterested, when you actually wanted an answer.

  A car stopped beside her.

  ‘Can I help?’ It was Anthea.

  She took the card and explained, in fluent Urdu. The man still looked bored but he understood, wrapping his turban more tightly around his head.

  Time Is Golden, Do Not Fritter Away. The placards bounced past. The rickshaw bumped along the highway, showing off with its European lady passenger. The driver had tilted his mirror to get a better view of her face. She expected this now. She wished she had worn her dupatta, as much for the dust as for modesty. They passed miles of suburban slums. The highway was lined with hoardings-big painted women’s faces taken from the magazines. They held up talcum powder and soap. One showed Julie Christie, repainted in bolder style, with Dr Zhivago printed beneath. Only a month before, these faces had loomed out of the dark. She had sat in the Cameron car, the air ripe with her crushed garland, and wondered at it all. She had laughed at her first sight of a rickshaw. Now she sat, sticky on the plastic seat, her feet dusty in their rubber chappals, swaying with its movements.

  It took a long time to get there. Karachi had grown so huge. Donald had told her the exact figures: it doubled in size every three years, or was it five? He was the one for facts. Now they were arriving at what must be the commercial centre of Nazimabad, though there were no signs. Europeans did not come to a place like this. The rickshaw stopped. Beside the road stood a block of offices; white, stained concrete like the Adamjee Plaza where Donald worked. Signs, bleached by the sun, were fixed on various floors of the building to indicate the different businesses within. Sultan Rahim Estates. She felt a rush of excitement. Donald presumed her to be clinking tea-cups with British mums.

  The interior of the building was as sweltering as the street. She walked up the stairs. The walls were spattered red from betel spit. A peon in a dirty uniform was coming downstairs with a tray of tea-cups. Clerks were walking down, talking together; it was lunch time. They fell silent and stopped to let her pass. But they worked in an office; they did not jostle her like the men in Juna Bazaar. Perhaps Mr Rahim had gone out for a meal too.

  She had pictured a suite of rooms and people typing. In fact it was a small cell with one desk and a man rising from his chair.

  ‘Please to enter. Come in, come in.’

  ‘But you’re on the phone.’

  ‘No importance.’ He gabbled some Urdu and put back the receiver. ‘This is my pleasure.’

  He shook her hand, drew out a chair, hurried to the door and yelled down the corridor.

  ‘That is the tea,’ he said. ‘You have understanding of our language? No? You are recent arrival?’

  ‘Very recent.’ She sat down. ‘I should’ve phoned really. I came on impulse.’

  ‘You are a lady of impulses. Already I can tell. I too work from the heart.’ He sat down at his desk and put his hand to his chest. ‘All good business is done not from the head,’ he shook his head, ‘but from the feelings.’

  A peon came in with a tin tray. Mr Rahim took out a grimy note and sent him away.

  ‘You are liking our Pakistani tea?’

  ‘Very much,’ she lied. She inspected him over the rim of the cup. He was plump, perhaps forty years old; his hair was sleek with oil. He was perspiring – as, indeed, was she. His skin was dark, almost purple; he looked like a ripe plum in his nylon shirt.

  ‘I heard about you through your cousin, the taxi driver.’

  ‘He carries my recommendation. I tell you, Mrs . . .’

  ‘Manley.’

  ‘Mrs Manley, I am coming from nothing. I can speak with frankness, I am not proud. I am self-made man. With my own energies I build my business. Now I do dealings with all the bigwig persons. You will see my cards.’

  He pulled out a drawer and handed them to her. ‘Here is Vice-Chairman of Philips Electrical, a most pleasant gentleman from your own fair country that I myself have visited one time. Sure, I have visited London town. This man, he holds Pepsi-Cola agency, he has three fine kiddies, I have been guest in his residence. And this – he is head person of Toyota Spare Parts. I find them all beautiful bungalows with their secluded compounds.’

  She looked at the cards. Deep down she felt a twitch of reassurance, that he knew such people.

  ‘I have many letters . . .’ He was opening the drawer again.

  ‘No, please don’t bother. Actually I didn’t come about a house. I have one, in K12.’

  ‘Ah, the tiptop location, most exclusive. Please, some biscuits.’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘It hurts me, here.’ Again he put his hand to his heart. ‘You are not liking my biscuits?’

  She ate one. The phone rang and he spoke lown it. She seemed to have been eating biscuits all morning. But how different this room was from the other. No Queen on the wall; instead, a tinted print of Jinnah. No chintz curtains to draw against this foreign sky. Outside stood a block of flats topped with a water tank. Buzzards lazed in the air, ready to swoop and scavenge from the street. Down there, television sets were being unloaded from a camel cart and carried into a shop. Further along two men squatted, their backs to the street, and relieved themselves against the concrete wall. These Muslim men did it so discreetly in their loose pyjamas, rising to knot the cord.

  ‘It’s nice to look at a street without them
seeing me,’ she said when he put down the phone. ‘This is like a purdah window, up here. The only place I can sit looking out is at home, but then all I can see is the garden wall.’

  ‘Ah, in K12 the compounds are so beautiful. It is no wonder you are preferring the looking there.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’ She stopped.

  ‘Let us talk heart to heart.’ He leant forward. ‘That is what I say when I am meaning speaking business. Maybe you need air-conditioner.’

  ‘Yes, your cousin said –’

  ‘I have many threads to my bows. I have many friends, many contacts. My very dear friend, he works in the import agency. You want it, I find it. Sultan Rahim, he say. Sultan Rahim, he is never sitting still on his backside.’

  ‘Actually, I wanted a beach hut.’

  ‘No problem. I find you the beautiful beach hut quick as a flash.’

  ‘You can? I’ve heard it’s difficult.’

  ‘Everything is possible. You put your trust in Sultan Rahim.’

  They fell silent. She looked around the room. It was bare, but for the desk and two filing cabinets. Mr Rahim was rearranging the papers on his desk.

  ‘There are some?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Beach huts? You have some on your files?’

  ‘The little home-from-home beside the ocean. It is what, in his heart, is the dream of every person. I am right?’

  She nodded. Another pause.

  She looked at the filing cabinets. Still he made no move. Outside the window the buzzards wheeled round and round. They never moved their wings, coasting on the heat.

  She drained the syrupy tea. ‘Do you have any?’

  ‘We have the saying: All things they are arriving to he who is wishing them.’ He rose. ‘Come. We will visit my very good friend. He too has visited your city of London.’

  ‘So he has one?’

  ‘With Sultan Rahim, there is not any questioning of have and haven’t. My conveyance is waiting outside.’

  She followed him down the stairs. She had lost track of time. His shiny, blue-black hair bobbed below.

  ‘This is very kind of you.’ Her voice echoed in the stair well. She hurried down, her rubber chappals flapping.

  His conveyance was a small, smart Fiat. She must stop these questions. She settled into the furry passenger-seat. A doll hung above the dashboard. It was a ballerina; it jigged as he started the engine.

  They arrived at the highway. To one side stood the Baluchi hills, white as bone in the heat. They turned the other way, towards the city centre. He reached forward and pushed in a cassette. Gunfire rattled. An American voice spoke, hoarsely. Galloping hooves and then music.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Clint Eastwood movie. You are liking these Wild Westerns?’

  She nodded. They loved the movies here. The newspapers were full of ads – ‘Don’t Miss It. It is a Wonderful Exciting Picture of Lust. An Unforgettable Experience for Young Hearts.’

  ‘I suppose you import V.C.R.s?’ she asked.

  ‘I fix it. You are wishing one?’

  ‘No.’ She looked out of the window. It was real life she wanted, not cassettes.

  He was a manic driver, blowing his horn at every crossroads. It was a police siren, he explained.

  ‘You are liking our city?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She paused. ‘It’s not, perhaps, quite as old-fashioned and . . . well, picturesque as I’d imagined.’

  ‘Due to expansion Karachi is now big business centre. Myself and my brother Muslims, we are not like our Hindus over the border, we are energetic businessmens. Karachi is once little fishing village, as Dubai once little fishing village.’

  ‘And you’re in the right business.’ She pointed at the building sites they were passing. She thought of Duke, another self-made man, building his hotel somewhere outside Karachi. By the time it was finished, perhaps it would be engulfed by the city.

  She wanted to ask Mr Rahim so many things. He might know about that hot water man. He would know why the lorries were painted like children’s picture books, and why people knotted their clothes this way, or that way. They passed a vacant plot. Washing lines were strung across it; purple sheets hung from them. Hundreds more lay on the ground, drying in the sun.

  She pointed. ‘What are they for?’ Perhaps they were special robes for some religious festival where everyone dressed in purple. Hindu priests wore orange, or was that Buddhist? Widows, she knew, wore white.

  Mr Rahim looked over his shoulder. ‘Those cloths? They are for the exports.’

  She paused. ‘Exports?’

  ‘That is big colour this fall, the violet. I know this, as my cousin has shop in your Kensington Market. All your British dolly-birds, they buys his clothes. He also is having other shops, short lease in prime location like your Piccadilly Circus, he keep them open until eleven o’clock in the night-time. After movies, night-owls come to buy his kurtas.’

  ‘I see.’ The gauze skirt of the ballerina floated up and down. ‘I worked in a clothes shop, actually, back in London.’

  ‘How I am loving your Bond Street. Mr Manley, he is in garment business?’

  ‘No, I worked there.’ She stopped. Perhaps she would not tell him about the old clothes. He might not understand. He might hold her in lower esteem, and he was taking such trouble for her now. I am learning, she thought.

  He drove into the centre and stopped outside Bohri Bazaar. The pavement was spread with sunglasses and bootlaces. Even in this early-afternoon heat, the place was busy. To one side of the street were alleys hung with saris and embroidered tourist clothes. On the other side stood a covered emporium full of stalls. She had been here several times. Outside sat a young, pale European in dirty Pakistani clothes. He was doing nothing; just sitting in the sun.

  Unlike Kensington Market men tried to waylay her, but in friendlier fashion than Juna Bazaar. ‘Yes madam you step this side?’

  She shook her head. She was no tourist. She was a resident, on business. Sultan Rahim was already seated in a large stall full of hideous brass objects. A chair was produced for her. A young man gave her a cup of tea.

  ‘He’s here?’ she asked Sultan. ‘Your friend?’

  ‘He is returning in five minutes, his nephew say me. We will drink some tea.’

  Minutes ticked by. She thumbed through her library book. Now nobody was looking she need not finish her tea. She wondered vaguely about lunch; her stomach was full of syrup. There was no worry about Mohammed because she had told him that henceforth she would get the lunch herself; she had felt so foolish sitting there with her jaws working. Sultan Rahim was telling some long story to the nephew, a pock-marked youth with a weak chin. She seemed to have been forgotten. Opposite was a booth stacked with sober suitings, greys and blues; on the floor sat an elderly tailor at his sewing machine. Further down the passage was a doorway. Beside it lay a collection of men’s shoes. It was a mosque in there; she had been along this passage before. Just inside the doorway she glimpsed a row of taps for the ablutions of the faithful. She remembered something Duke had said about commerce and religion existing together here; there had been approval in his voice.

  More minutes passed. The brass coffee sets reminded her of Brinton. Donald’s grandparents’ bungalow had been full of the things. Then, too, she had felt obliged to sip sweet tea and eat too many biscuits. Their lounge had been suffocatingly hot. But outside the window, a glimpse of sea.

  Who owned this beach hut – Sultan’s friend, or a friend of his friend? Networks of men speaking heart to heart, business to business, holding hands as they did here and bending side by side in the little mosque, placed adjacent to the cash desk.

  Two women passed, their faces veiled; they wore black sateen raincoats. No doubt Sultan Rahim had a wife tucked away somewhere. Perhaps she, too, was obliged to dress in black when she went out of the house. He was a different class from the Pakistanis she usually met.

  She scratched her leg. She fel
t sticky in her jeans. What did Sultan’s very good friend think of Kensington Market, with its bold girls meeting his stare? Did he eye their skimpy clothes with only a professional interest? She looked at Sultan, slapping his thigh at something the nephew said. By now she felt quite bound with him, she seemed to have been in his company for hours. She thought of him as Sultan now. But she felt fidgety too.

  ‘When did you say he was coming back?’

  Sultan spread his hands. ‘Five minutes, ten minutes, one hour.’

  ‘But you said five minutes before.’

  ‘Who is knowing?’

  She must relax and slip into the tempo of this place. That was what the hippie did outside, sitting on the pavement and experiencing.

  She wriggled her toes. She thought of the biro’d list at the B.W.A., times fixed, promises kept. Time Is Golden, Do Not Fritter Away. She felt a rare pang for Donald, who did things when he said he would. To the dot.

  Here the brass shone timelessly; the tailor stitched. But back at Sultan’s office the phone must be ringing for nobody. Didn’t he have anything else to do? Was it such an honour, having an English girl as companion, that he was sacrificing his business hours? Perhaps he was just being kind. He drove with such frenzy, then he just sat here, swopping desultory jokes. She looked at her watch.

  He said: ‘You have other place to go?’

  ‘Actually, not really. I suppose I could spend all day sitting here, come to think of it.’ She paused. ‘It’s odd, not having a job.’ All she had planned to do was to go home and read her Tips for the Tropics. Even then she couldn’t do any gardening because she still had a mali. ‘I wish I had a job, but my husband says foreign wives can’t work. It’s against government policy or something. They can only do voluntary things.’

  ‘You want job? Leave it to me.’

  ‘Can you really help? It’s only supposed to be something a Pakistani girl couldn’t do.’

  He smiled, pointing to his head. ‘Here, there is idea. Yes.’ He paused, still smiling. ‘Mrs Manley, I have many surprises up my sleeves.’