Broken Verses

by Kamila Shamsie

  Wasn’t that the only season finale that would leave me satisfied?

  I turned my attention back to the computer and continued to scroll down my inbox. Near the bottom was a message from my father.

  The subject heading: Remember her?

  I clicked on the message. It was just a few sentences and a weblink.

  I just found this. My first time hearing this side of her. My God! Love, Dad.

  I clicked on the weblink and my computer’s audio player popped up.

  A voice trying too hard to sound purposeful and trustworthy said: Samina Akram, 2 January 1986, Karachi. In conversation with Maulana Moin Haq.

  The voice cut off and the audioplayer started rebuffering the sound file.

  I had been there. I had been in that audience in an auditorium in Karachi, 2 January 1986, watching my mother and the maulana square up to each other—an extraordinary match-up that only took place, Omi said, because both my mother and the maulana were convinced of their ability to decimate the other in discussion. I had been sitting between Omi and Beema in the first row of the audience, and while the moderator (the term caused Omi much amusement) was introducing my mother, Omi and I were making faces at her up on the stage, trying to make her laugh, while Beema shrugged apologetically in her direction. At one point, Omi had bunched his features into a exaggerated grimace and it was the maulana, not my mother, who caught his eye. The look on the man’s bearded face almost made me fall off my chair with suppressed laughter.

  I rubbed my hands over my eyes and my mother’s voice filled the office: ‘Maulana Sahib, is it asking too much of you to look at me while I speak?’

  A man’s gentle voice came back: ‘Mohtarma, if you don’t respect yourself and the laws of the Qur’ān enough to keep your head covered in public, I at least respect you enough to keep my eyes averted.’

  ‘The laws of the Qur’ān?’ (‘Now she’s got him!’ Beema had whispered.) ‘Maulana Sahib, it embarrasses me profoundly to have to remind a scholar such as you of what is written in the Qur’ān—and I don’t mean in your translation of it, which I have read with astonishment and wonder.’ (Laughter from the audience.) ‘Within the Qur’ān itself, as you well know, there are two verses which refer to the apparel of women. Verse thirty-one of Surah An-Nur and verse fifty-nine of Surah Al-Ahzab. In one, the word “khomoorehenna” is used and in the other the word “jalabib”. Your translation, I’m afraid, seems utterly unaware that khomoorehenna comes from the word “khumar”, which simply means “a covering” rather than “a veil”. It doesn’t specify what is covered or how. And “jalabib” means a shirt or cloak. If the Almighty had wished to use the word “hijab” to more precisely indicate a head-covering I’m sure He would have done so. I know you would not want to suggest any deficiencies in His vocabulary or precision.’ (Muffled laughter from the audience, as well as some shouts of objection.) ‘It seems fairly evident from a close examination of the text that women are being enjoined, Maulana Sahib, to cover our chests in public, which I am really more than happy to do when in your company.’ (Loud laughter, in which Omi’s raucous guffaw was unmistakable.)

  ‘Mohtarma, I am impressed that a woman such as yourself should have taken the time to read our Holy Book. But as Shakespeare said,’ and here he switched to English, ‘“the devil can cite the scriptures to his own purposes”. I could mention verses from our own tradition which have similar warnings but I suspect Shakespeare of the West might carry more weight with you. The strictest definitions of “khumar” are irrelevant—what is relevant is its commonly accepted usage. I implore you not to spread your poison through the ranks of our young Pakistani women. It is precisely because of the divisiveness caused in religion by acts of re-interpretation that the gates of Ijtihad were closed in the thirteenth century—’

  ‘Maulana Sahib, there’s a difference between re-interpretation and reading.’ (And now there were hoots of delight, in largely female tones.) ‘The strictest definition of a word is never irrelevant to the intended meaning...’

  ‘The unity of the ummah is of paramount importance. Anyone who works against it works against Islam.’

  ‘And you know all about the unity of the ummah, don’t you?’ Her voice moved down a register and hearing it I knew—as I had known nearly seventeen years ago—that no jokes would follow. ‘Last night I was talking to a friend, Maulana, who has seen those planes fly to our border with Afghanistan, with volunteers—young men, little more than boys—ready to join the Afghans and Pakistanis already in the training camps preparing to battle the Soviets. Planes with volunteers from all across the Muslim world. Jordan, Syria, Sudan, Algeria, Egypt—’

  ‘Mohtarma, a second ago we were sitting here in Karachi talking about women’s religious obligations and suddenly you’re taking us all on a world tour.’ (He got his laughs, too.) ‘Please don’t stray from the subject.’

  ‘The subject is your obligations to the ummah. You take a territorial issue in Afghanistan and you make it into a matter of religious duty—you and your unlikely bedfellows in the West—and you spout phrases like “the unity of the ummah” as you hand those boys—those young, idealistic, confused, angry, devout, ready-to-be-brainwashed boys—the most sophisticated weapons and the best combat training in the world and tell them to get the infidel Soviets off Muslim soil. Soil has no religion, Maulana. If you had left those boys without that call to unity, they would be separate, untrained, spread all across the world. Some would have picked up guns, yes, and some would have lectured their sisters on how to dress. But some would have turned to local politics, or maybe even to writing bad, impassioned poetry. Or maybe, Maulana, maybe even very good, impassioned poetry.’

  ‘You are, of course, the expert on impassioned poetry.’ (There was no laughter now. Even through the computer’s speakers I could hear tension crackle through the room.)

  ‘What happens after Afghanistan, have you considered that? Where do they go next, those global guerrillas with their allegiance to a common cause and their belief in violence as the most effective way to take on the enemy? Do you and your American friends ever sit down to talk about that?’

  The sound file ended.

  Mama, could you have known that as your voice took on a power that left us all speechless, and brought tears to Omi’s eyes—as it brings tears now to mine and not just for reasons of hindsight—you were singing your swansong?

  It was only five days later that she was told Omi had died, and that version of her—that Activist and Icon and woman of grazia—we never saw again.

  I left the office and drove down to the sea, my windows open to the cool winter breeze. I drove past the lingering Eid revellers, past the theylawallas selling juice and chaat and roasted corn, past the camels with mirror-worked cloth spread over their humps who bowed each time they sat or stood. Finally, in a spot of relative isolation in front of the sea-wall, I parked the car and breathed in the scent of brine.

  Omi and I used to come walking here some evenings. He told me, on one of those walks, about the first time he came to Karachi. After his mother’s death, when the rich landlord who was his father continued refusing to acknowledge Omi as his illegitimate son, the schoolmaster in the village took him under his wing and sent him to the city to live with his brother and enrol in the school at which the brother taught. Still mourning for his mother, Omi was desperately miserable the first days in the home of the schoolmaster’s brother, despite all the kindness everyone in the household lavished on him. The schoolmaster’s nephew, three years older than Omi, was the only one who didn’t fuss over him and try a little too hard to make him feel welcome. Instead, he left him alone for two days and on the third day told Omi to climb on to the back of his father’s Vespa, and drove recklessly through Karachi’s dusty streets all the way to Clifton beach—clear blue waters and fine sand, before the waste of cargo ships slicked down its wild beauty.

  That was as far as Omi took the story, but it was enough. He stopped walking, looked out towards
the water, scanning the horizon from right to left, and I knew that in some way he pitied me for having grown up so near the sea that I couldn’t help but take it for granted.

  Is this really the most we can ask from them, the ones who have raised us? That they leave us with memories we can cherish?

  My mother won that round with the maulana, no one could deny it. But to what end? She was the safety-valve who allowed us all to release some of our frustrations as we cheered her on and said that she, too, was a voice of the nation, a voice that would make itself heard. But what came of it except a lesson to all the daughters in the audience, learnt slowly over the years, that voices such as hers could be ignored or stifled or extinguished completely? My mother’s life as an activist, brave as it had been, was a lesson in futility—and in the end, she knew it.

  So I had been telling myself for a long time now. But now I had her voice echoing in my ear, the laughter of the women in the audience echoing with it. And then all the sound of the world fell away and I was left in that silence—that almost holy silence—which had grown up around her, sentence by sentence, as she so artfully moved the debate to the exact space in which she had all along intended it to exist—that accountable space. How could I call that nothing? And the thrum of my own blood as I heard her speak, how could I repudiate that?

  Why is it so necessary for you to believe the version of her which you cling on to so desperately, Rabia had asked me.

  Because. I looked out at the water. Sunlight cut a path through the sea.

  Because. Just because.

  XXI

  It had been forty-six hours and seventeen minutes since the second episode of Boond ended with a shot of the crossword grid, perfectly in focus. Forty-six hours and seventeen minutes, and no word from Omi. Forty-six hours and eighteen minutes now, and I was lost in a vision of dark blues and reds and jagged lines.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  I turned my attention away from the ceiling of the Sadequain gallery and towards my brother-in-law, who was gesturing around the large room as though he were a game-show host and this was the grand prize. Less than fifteen minutes ago he had received a phone call offering him a solo exhibition at the gallery, and he’d run into my flat and insisted that I had to accompany him to the gallery so that I could watch him leap with joy around it and then describe it all to Rabia when she got back from her weekend trip to Islamabad.

  ‘Don’t you mind having that as competition?’ I said, pointing my thumb at the gloriously worked ceiling.

  ‘Silly girl. Sadequain’s not competition. He’s the giant whose shoulders are imprinted with my feet. He’s the guy who made me stand open-mouthed in front of a painting at the age of twelve and think, my God, this is possible. You can be just human, and do this.’

  ‘He died a poor, depressed alcoholic, didn’t he?’

  Shakeel rocked back on his heels and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Yeah. But that doesn’t erase a single line he drew.’

  As we were walking down the stairs—after Shakeel had, quite literally, leapt with joy around the gallery—my phone rang.

  ‘Where are you?’ Ed said. ‘I’m standing outside your flat ringing your door-bell. I’m paying you a surprise visit.’

  ‘Well, we’re a bad O’Hara story, then. I’m around the corner from your place contemplating dropping in on you.’

  ‘I’m turning around. I’m walking towards the stairs. I’m almost tripping over a cat. I’ll see you at mine in a few minutes.’

  Shakeel was smirking at me when I hung up. ‘We’re a bad O’Hara story,’ he said in a high-pitched voice, batting his eyelids. I slapped the back of his head and he put an arm around me. ‘When do we meet this guy? I want to see the man whose name need only be mentioned to send my sister-in-law into a paroxysm of blushes. Let me demonstrate: Ed. There you go. Beetroot Inqalab!’

  ‘Oh, shut up and drop me at his house. And no, you can’t come in and wait for him.’

  It took only a few seconds to get to Ed’s, and it wasn’t until the chowkidar opened the gate for me and Shakeel drove away that I realized Shehnaz Saeed might be home, and if so, there could be no avoiding her any longer.

  She had called me the day after .we’d watched that first episode of Boond, and I had seen her number flash up on my caller ID screen and let my answering machine pick it up. Her message had been brief. Just, ‘Please call me.’ I hadn’t—and when I mentioned it to Ed he said, ‘It’s between you and her. If you don’t want to talk to her, don’t.’ I didn’t know if she’d tried calling in the last few days. I had pulled my phone out of its socket several nights ago when the crank calling had become intolerable.

  If I was lucky, I thought, pushing open the front door, I would make it up the stairs to Ed’s section of the house without bumping into her.

  But the sort of luck I needed wasn’t possible in a house with a yapping chihuahua. I was only a few feet down the entrance hall when the creature heard me and launched into what sounded like a demented version of ‘O Sole Mio’.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I heard Shehnaz Saeed call out, and then I had no option but to walk into that elegant room from which I had so dramatically departed nine days ago.

  ‘Ed’s not home,’ were her first words.

  ‘I know. He’s on his way.’ I was sufficiently ill at ease that I was grateful to have the canine falsetto twirling at my feet, giving me an excuse to bend down and fuss over her. I thought that would pass the conversational ball into Shehnaz Saeed’s court but she didn’t say anything, and when I couldn’t bear having my hand licked any more I stood up and said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. Things have been very busy. My father was in town, and work’s a little crazy.’

  ‘Aasmaani, you don’t have to lie. I understand that you’re angry. Ed’s told me you have no desire to hear my excuses. And I’m sorry for that, I really am.’

  ‘I never said that to Ed.’ The chihuahua’s front paws were scrabbling at my shins. ‘Director, basket!’ I ordered and the animal darted out of the door.

  ‘Your mother never liked chihuahuas either,’ Shehnaz said.

  And once again, in her presence, it was impossible to feel anything but utterly at ease. I walked over to the sofa and sat down across from her. ‘So why did you do it? Imitate my mother?’

  ‘Why do you imitate your mother?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘All the time. You have all these gestures. Like now. The way you’re sitting. The way your arm is crooked on the back of the sofa and your head is resting on your hand. That. Right there.’

  I moved my arm down to my side. ‘I’m not...’

  ‘No, of course not. You’re not imitating her. You’re just sitting. That’s how you sit. You may have learnt it from her. You may have copied her at one point in time, but now that’s just the way you sit.’

  ‘I don’t understand your point.’

  ‘Look, my character in Boond, she smokes. It’s a big plot point. She smokes a very particular imported brand of cigarette from Guatemala or Ecuador or some other place that exports bananas. She has always smoked that brand, ever since she was a college student. In episode three, someone she’s trying to hide from will know that she’s been in his office because he’ll find a stub of her cigarette in his waste-paper basket. So, she’s a smoker, always has been. When we were filming that flashback pregnancy scene, the director said, OK, no smoking in this scene because she’s pregnant. She said, Shehnaz, do that air cigarette thing you did in Nashaa to show us she’s trying to quit. Did you ever see Nashaa, Aasmaani?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was the last telefilm she acted in before she retired.

  ‘Yes. Here.’ She uncurled herself from the sofa and put a tape in the VCR. ‘I was thinking of sending this to you with my driver but I didn’t know if it would make things worse.’ She pressed ‘PLAY’, and there, on-screen, was a young Shehnaz Saeed smoking air cigarettes as my mother used to.

  ‘I got it from her, from Samina. When I did Nashaa
, early on when I was still finding my way into the character’s skin, I was having dinner with Samina and she’d run out of cigarettes so she started air smoking. And I said, can I borrow that mannerism? Take it, she said, and continued to demonstrate it for me so that I’d get it right. But once I got it right it became mine. That’s how I smoke cigarettes that aren’t really there. I don’t think of it in terms of your mother any more than you think of her when you rest your arm on the back of a sofa. I learned gestures and expression from her, Aasmaani, turns of phrase and a way of squaring my shoulders when I don’t want to show that I’m intimidated. All these things and more, I learned from your mother. But in time you internalize all that you learn, and it becomes yours. I wasn’t imitating your mother in Boond.’ She gestured to the screen once more. ‘I was imitating myself imitating her all those years ago. I’m sorry that I didn’t stop to think that it would upset you. Believe me, that possibility didn’t even cross my mind.’

  ‘I see.’ I looked down at my hands. ‘You said, I have all these gestures which are hers.’

  ‘Gestures, cadences, entire sentences of speech.’

  ‘Like what? Tell me.’

  ‘It’ll only make you self-conscious. You are your own woman, Aasmaani. But it does make my breath stop sometimes, the way Samina peeps out from behind your eyes.’

  There was something in her voice as she said my mother’s name for which I couldn’t quite find a word.

  ‘You should come for dinner next week,’ she said, her tone changing into briskness. ‘My husband will be back from Rome for a few days. I think you’d like him. Although, no, actually, let me retract that invitation until I check with Ed. The two of them alternate between being civil and pretending the other one doesn’t exist.’