I couldn’t help thinking of that poem as I drove over Lily Bridge and headed toward Shehnaz Saeed’s house in the colonial part of town. Kiran Hilal had given me her number and when I had called she didn’t wait beyond the moment when I identified myself to invite me over for lunch that afternoon. I said I wasn’t sure I could get away from work for an extended period of time, and she laughed, and said, ‘We’ll call it a professional meeting, then.’
What kind of meeting it really would be, I couldn’t say. Even though we’d never met, she had been part of my memory since I was three years old. It was 1974 then, and one of the Poet’s acolytes had adapted Laila for the theatre, with the Poet himself in the role of Qais and Shehnaz Saeed as Laila. Though the poem was less than four years old at the time it had already attained the status of a national classic, and though no one objected to the Poet playing the part of the impassioned young Qais, even though his age (forty-two), physical appearance (underwhelming, at best) and previous theatrical experience (none) all marked him as being wholly unsuited to the role, there was more than a little grumbling about an unknown actress taking on the role of Laila. An estranged relative of the play’s director had spread the rumour that my mother was to play Laila, and Shehnaz Saeed had to bear Karachi’s collective disappointment when it transpired that there was no truth to that story. ‘The unbarked sapling whose pretty foliage will scatter before the cold blast of expectation, leaving only denuded branches, scabbed with the blight of inexperience and folly’ is how one theatre critic famously described Shehnaz Saeed on the morning of the press preview.
The following day he was singing a different tune, with the rest of Karachi’s critics acting as chorus. In the wake of the announcement that Shehnaz Saeed was to return to acting, one of the newspapers had reprinted the volte-face review from all those years ago.
The script is appalling, the costume and set design absurd, and someone should tell the greatest of our poets that it is an embarrassment to watch a man whom we hold in such high esteem brought so low by his own insufficiencies. He cannot act. But despite all this, Laila is without doubt the greatest thing to have ever happened on the Pakistani stage. Can I write the words without swooning? Let me try: Shehnaz Saeed.
As the young, infatuated Laila of the opening scenes she is sublime. But as the play progresses and she becomes the mad Laila who metaphorically casts off her own living tissue to knit Qais’s flesh on to her bones, she exceeds all adjectives. The play’s greatest failure is to dim the stage lights as Laila looks into the pool and to bring them up again to reveal Qais standing where she had been a second before. After the brilliance of Shehnaz Saeed’s performance, even the original Qais seems an inadequate impersonator of himself.
If I ever saw a performance—or even part of a rehearsal—of Laila I had no memory of it. But I did recall sitting at my mother’s dining table, colouring in a poster advertising the play. I was young enough to regard the alphabet in terms of shape rather than sound, and I loved the way my hand curved into the bends of ‘S’ that appeared not just once but twice in Shehnaz Saeed’s name. I made a mess of the poster, of course, but the Poet merely said, ‘This one’s too special to hang up for the crows to shit on. We’ll frame it and put it in my study.’ I knew he was saying it wasn’t good enough for public display, but I loved him for the way he chose to say it, and for his free use of ‘shit’ in my presence, and when he actually did frame and hang it between the paintings of two of Pakistan’s finest artists, with the words, ‘I think you’re a perfect bridge between their contrasting styles, Aasmaani,’ then I loved him most. The poster stayed there until I took it down and tore it up, years later, in adolescent embarrassment at proof of my childhood. It was one of the few times he was ever really angry with me.
I drew up to Shehnaz Saeed’s house, and when the chowkidar opened the gate I drove up the long driveway and parked just near the front door of the double-storeyed, yellowstone house.
There were three steps leading to the carved wood door and potted plants all around the alcove within which it was set—some hanging from the ceiling, some not. Lilies, orchids, spider-plants. I rang the door-bell. An old woman opened the door, looked startled to see me, and then laughed without evident humour and pointed at my eyes. ‘Descended from one of Sikandar’s soldiers, I always used to tell her,’ she said, and turned and walked away, gesturing for me to follow her.
How often had my mother been here between the Poet’s death and her own disappearance? Those were the two years when conversation between us slowed to a trickle. I spent so much—the idiocy!—of those years slamming doors and saying things like ‘It’s none of your business where I’m going.’ That particular sentence came out when something of her old self was awake in her, and she replied, ‘Fine, then I won’t tell you where I go when I go out.’ It was in my hands, she made it clear, to choose to end the foolishness of that reciprocal silence, but I was too proud to do so. And where had that pride got me? Right here, in the doorway of Shehnaz Saeed’s house, knowing nothing.
I looked around. The house was airy in the way that no modern housing ever is, and the ceilings were high. Along the whitewashed walls were portraits of Shehnaz Saeed by both acclaimed and little-known artists. It should have seemed an act of monumental egoism to fill the entrance to your home in such fashion, but as I walked closer to the row of paintings it seemed clear that the display mocked the adulation of beauty. They were so varied, the paintings, in their portrayal of her that what came through ultimately was the absence of any singular truth about her visage and how it is perceived. Next to the painting nearest the door was a mounted card with a single word on it: APPEARANCE.
As I stood by the mounted word, recalibrating my expectation of Shehnaz Saeed to encompass a subtle intelligence, the woman who had opened the door continued to walk down the alternating black-and-white stone tiles of the hallway. With her black chapals and black shalwar-kameez she seemed to appear and disappear as she stepped from light tile to dark, her existence a strobe-light illusion.
She stepped on to a white tile and looked over her shoulder at me. ‘What, do you want a palanquin to carry you?’
I followed her through the hallway, past an open door through which I could hear the ‘hmm ... hanh ... hanh’ of someone talking on the telephone. The door was artfully ajar to allow passers-by a glimpse of a Gandhara Buddha, a Bukhara rug, and a bare arm draped over a sofa back. ‘It’s my house. I’ll invite who I want!’ the voice said, and it was Shehnaz Saeed’s voice. I wondered if she were talking about me and, if so, whether it was Ed on the other end of the line, but my guide was looking back impatiently as I slowed my steps so I had to speed up and follow her. Then I was climbing up stairs and more stairs, feet echoing on the uncarpeted ground. It was surprisingly cool indoors; the slatted window shutters facing the sun were all closed, casting half the house into shadow.
At the top of the stairs, the old woman pushed open a set of wooden doors and gestured for me to step outside. I did so, and found I was on the roof, diagonally across from a cupola of yellow stone which gave shade to a table, laid for two, beneath it. The old woman disappeared back indoors. For want of something better to do I walked round the roof, looking down on the beautifully tended garden below and enjoying the view this height afforded of grand neighbourhood houses, more than one of which served as diplomatic housing for consul generals from countries which, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, had made it known to the Poet that he need not bother applying to them for asylum. Freedom of speech was all very well, but there was no need to exercise it against a government that was helping in the fight against Communism—that had been the implicit message back in those days when our schoolteachers told us that the Russians thought of Afghanistan as a mere steppingstone to the warm-water port of Karachi, so it was our national duty to ... oh, why think of any of that? Any of that or any of what followed or what was still to come.
‘You’ve sowed, now reap,’ I announced to any represen
tative of the nation who might be listening.
I gave myself over to the view again. Karachi looked like a green city from up here, the usual vistas of unrelenting cement and concrete replaced by lushness. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the breeze. November had brought a change in climate and already there was an intimation of winter in the air. Soon, the breeze promised, you will sit outdoors at night wrapped in shawls, breaking open shells of peanuts just off the flame.
I turned the corner, back to the cupola. There was someone sitting there, facing away from me, one arm over the chair back, in the same posture that I had seen through the open door. She was dressed in a sari with a sleeveless blouse, a red rose stuck behind her ear. The theatrics of it!
I walked closer. My chapals slapped against the brick as I approached her, but she showed no signs of being aware of the sound. I wondered if she were a little hard of hearing. And then, for the first time, I realized she must have aged. In 1987, when she retired, she had been thirty-eight. So, fifty-three now. Where stunning women are concerned that change from late thirties to early fifties can sometimes be a matter of exchanging obvious beauty for a more subtle loveliness—the lines of mortality and the pull of gravity can alter an aspect to make it more moving, more precious for its own admission that it will not last. But sometimes, also, those years wipe a face clean of the memory of its own younger self and mark it chiefly with a premonition of the ravages that will befall it.
I stayed back, unwilling to walk straight up to her and have to see, up close, every emerging wrinkle delineated by the afternoon sun.
‘Hello,’ I said.
In a single fluid gesture she uncrossed her legs, turned, and stood. She did it with the sort of easy grace that can only come with practice. She had not exchanged obvious beauty for subtle loveliness. No, hers was still a quite obvious loveliness. She saw me and laughed; crow’s feet around her eyes and the angles of her face no longer seemed quite so sculpted, but for all that she was just as unapproachably lovely as when she had played Lady Macbeth.
‘It’s a stunning resemblance,’ she said in that lilting voice of hers which could deepen into gravity so unexpectedly. ‘All in the eyes, of course. Come here and give your old aunty a hug.’
I did, and was surprised by the fierceness of her embrace. ‘Samina’s daughter. My God, Samina’s daughter all grown up.’
Ed had something of her tempo of speaking. I hadn’t realized that until now.
She released me and pointed to the chair opposite her. While I had taken my twirl around the roof someone had placed na’ans and chicken tikkas and chutneys on the table. I sat down and almost immediately a moist tongue licked my foot. I jerked my feet up, and a chihuahua darted out from under the table.
‘Director, come here!’ The bonsai dog turned to Shehnaz Saeed. ‘Basket!’ she said, and Director skittered towards the door leading back into the house.
‘Did you choose that name as a tribute or an insult?’ I asked. The question launched her into a series of tales about her theatrical days and all the triumphs and tribulations she had faced. She had the extraordinary ability to speak only in short bursts, creating the impression that she was allowing me ample opportunity to be part of the conversation, yet she ended every series of sentences with the artfulness of Scheherazade drawing the night’s story-telling to a close—‘Of course that wasn’t the worst disaster!’ or ‘If only people knew the truth about his eyebrows’ or ‘We called her Peking Duck, for reasons you might be able to guess’—so ultimately my side of the exchange consisted of little more than ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ and ‘What do you mean?’ The most aggravating part of sitting through her self-obsessed performance of her own past was the adolescent voice inside me squealing, ‘IT’S SHEHNAZ SAEED!’
When she finally slipped up and broke off speaking at ‘And that was that’ I knew I should take the opportunity to ask about the encrypted page she had sent me, but I didn’t know quite how to broach the subject. So instead I asked, ‘Why return to acting now? And why on television? It’s obvious theatre’s where your heart is.’
‘My heart...’ she said dramatically, placing her hand over the organ in question as though to reassure herself it hadn’t been left behind in a theatre somewhere. ‘My heart is a spoilt child, demanding all the attention, insisting it remain central to all decisions. Isn’t it time to attend to other, more neglected organs?’
I was sufficiently overwhelmed by my proximity to greatness to nod knowingly at that bit of absurdity.
She laughed—not the tinkling laughter that had punctuated her Tales of Before but a deep, rolling laughter. ‘Oh, Aasmaani, your mother would have tossed that chicken carcass at me for such a statement. And look at you, so earnest, trying valiantly to take me seriously. You’ve been doing it all through lunch.’
For a moment all I could do was stare at her. Despite my earlier self-vaunting about knowing a thing or two about women who were legends, I had walked in here with exactly the kind of attitude I had seen so many women adopt when they first met my mother—a determination to see some mythic being, a determination so strong that my mother occasionally found herself behaving in ways entirely alien to her personality just because it seemed impolite to shatter the illusions others had about her. So, for their benefit she’d turn into a woman with no time for trivialities, no concern except Justice with a capital J. And I, who had rolled my eyes at all those people, had come in here wanting—so desperately wanting—to have lunch with a star that I even interpreted the way her door was left ajar as a sign of theatricality. And Shehnaz Saeed had seen it right away, the way my mother sometimes saw it instantly in certain people. They-who-would-feel-betrayed-if-they-knew-I-love-disco, is how my mother referred to the mythologizers.
I hadn’t thought about that side of her in a long time—but all at once she was before my eyes, laughing, ‘Oh for endless summer days! Donna Summer days!’ as she danced around her living room in outrageous gold heels, taking my hand and pulling me into the dance with her.
I picked up a chicken bone, and pretended to aim it at Shehnaz Saeed’s head. ‘You’ve been playing me this whole time!’
‘That’s better,’ she said, and patted my hand, suddenly maternal in a way that made my throat clench. ‘Now I’ll answer you truthfully about my return to acting. It’s quite obvious by now that I’m past any possibility of child-bearing, so that puts aside my initial reason for giving up the acting life. And while we’re on the subject, I’ll confirm the rumours for you—my husband really is my husband in name only.’
I looked down at my plate, discomfited. ‘You don’t have to tell me that.’
‘Oh, it’s hardly a secret. I find it so irritating when I meet new people and they pretend not to know, and there’s all this tiptoeing around things. And with you it would be particularly silly. I mean, it’s not as though I’m unaware my personal life is a topic of gossip in the gonorrhoea office.’ We laughed together at that and I thought, yes, I can believe you were my mother’s friend before her gold heels gathered dust and cobwebs. But did she ever laugh with you in those final two years before she disappeared?
‘To return once more to your question,’ Shehnaz Saeed said, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. I was irritated to find myself noticing that the laughter had produced a single tear-drop which shimmered in the corner of her eye. ‘Quite simply, I want to act again. But I’m more than a little frightened. So I need the safety nets that an ensemble piece on television, with all its possibilities of retakes and editing, can provide. When that’s done, you’re right, I’ll go back to the stage. Lady Macbeth again, I think. I don’t really have the heart to play Laila once more, even if it were a plausible role at my age.’ She rolled her eyes just slightly at the last three words, and then smiled self-deprecatingly when she saw I had noticed. ‘Think of it as a retired Olympic-gold diver walking to the edge of a low diving-board and jumping feet first into the water. It’s obvious to everyone you’re just limbering up, remembering how to use t
hose old muscles. Maybe some people will wonder why you need to do that, but no one’s going to criticize you for being something less than extraordinary in the way you perform the leap. But it gets you back at the pool. And you carry on doing those little boring jumps for a while until people get used to seeing you there, by the water’s edge. They stop looking at you in that greedy expectant way. Then, no fuss, you get out of the pool, walk up the stairs to the high board, and execute a perfect jack-knife, the barest ripple as your body breaks through the surface.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Now that makes sense. Though Kiran Hilal will not be pleased to have her baby compared to a foot-first leap from a low diving-board.’
She smiled. ‘Dear Kiran. You know, I acted in the first play she ever wrote for television. If she could forgive my retirement—which she did, but it took a while—she can forgive my analogies.’
‘And then there’s that other reason you have for going back to work.’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘Your son.’
‘Oh, yes. Ed.’ She pulled the rose out from behind her ear and ran her fingers over the petals. ‘How are the two of you getting on?’
‘I have no idea.’
She seemed unsurprised. ‘He’s not always the easiest man in the world to be around, I know. But he does like you. A great deal.’
‘Oh? What has he said about me?’
‘Nothing. I didn’t even know you were working together until Kiran told me. He’s furious that I’ve invited you over for lunch.’
Broken Verses Page 6