And the World Changed

by Muneeza Shamsie

  Santa Maria, the Black Madonna, Holy Mother of Christ, Jesus, Jesus, Ya Ali! Ya Ali! Ya Hussain, Ya Hussain. . . .

  July 5, 1999, crossing the border back into Spain—Pays Basque, to be exact—is an adventure. Zeba and I are stopped by the guards in a performance of power which we counter with the actors’ power of performance—turning on female charm full throttle, keep the motor running, behen-chod, ma di . . . yaar, why are you cursing so much, fuck it, meri jaan, it’s your bad influence of yesteryear . . . yours and Soori’s—all his fucking and swearing, Holy Mother of Jesus, how many women did he hump at UVA . . . fucking asshole, he’s still at it, tits and asses await him at every port, while the wife-who-won’t-give-him-any raises their kids back home in Lahore.

  So then, finally, the guards are apologetic, all that show of male authority comes to nought. . . . Amusez-vous bien avec Aymeeng-way . . . clever man-in-blue, at least he’d heard of the great man. . . . I nod and wink and off we go, still in possession of our packets of Paki charas (courtesy of Soori) as our victory charms.

  First stop, San Sebastian. As Hania drives around looking for the P sign, I am looking for signs of my own—the cathedral, for one. I head straight for it once we’ve emerged from the subterranean depths of the parking lot—it amazes me how efficiently Hania is able to figure out the parking protocol in foreign cities, never mind navigating the always menacing traffic. Anyhow, while she smokes her sixth Marlboro Light of the day, having expressed her distaste for cathedrals and bullfights in the same raspy breath—I enter the hallowed hall, its cool darkness a welcome shroud in which to lay at rest a spirit in constant, exhausting flight. . . . Minutes later that thought, too, goes the way of all other delusional fancies, spiraling up with the smoke of the Marlboro Lights, and after downing, rather speedily, the ubiquitous café con leche available at every Spanish street corner—we take some obligatory snaps and are on our way to the high point of my pilgrimage: Pamplona, where the sun is setting on the eve of Hemingway’s centennial and the start of seven days of unabashed libidinal energy unleashed in honor of the fiesta of San Fermin, that ever-so-saintly bishop of Pamplona.

  Na ro Zainab, na ro . . . don’t cry for your brother, martyred in the cause of a just faith—always just, of course, but no, there is no room for the questioning impulse—justly silenced when confronted with the sheer magic of the Sanfermines, where popular religion and bullfighting have come together, conjoined for centuries. I want to feel the madness, lose myself running the encierra, wear white at the bullfights and drink till I don’t know my name, chanting, Ya Ali! Ya Fatima! Ya Abbas! Beat that breast, baby, skin on skin.

  You have become exotic

  to yourself

  grinned the professor in the ponytail

  peeking through the lenses

  the diamond in my nose

  glittered in the sun

  my blond streak

  fittingly flamboyant

  she’s become

  a damned liberal

  living among them so long

  his rage

  foams on his lips

  spewing forth

  frightening

  venom

  those freaks those shias

  shiites to your friends

  he sneers

  wallowing in their blood

  i was entranced

  by the beautiful boys

  singing their songs

  moving me to frenzy

  in that climactic moment

  between life and death

  when all I could hear was the

  clanging of the chains

  before the blood burst forth

  splattering my white kameez

  and i thought

  so this is ecstasy

  remembering the dead

  remembering the martyred

  excess of memory

  surfeit of pain

  camera in hand

  i beat my breast

  so this is what it means

  to be a stranger to my s/kin

  Sylvie, our Spanish hostess married to a rich sheikh of Abu Dhabi with a keen interest in falcon-hunting—at whose stunning villa atop a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean we spend our first two nights in royal splendor—is horrified at my obsession with the Corrida. Do you know they make young boys run in front of the bulls, and so many die each year? And what about the bulls? Such cruelty to animals! I am campaigning to ban this primitive custom . . . this, to the cheers of the other women, Hania, her two cousins Bari Apa and Billi, and the freshyoungthing, Aliya Merchant (no relation to Ismail Merchant). I guess I’m lucky Hania has agreed to drive me to Pamplona at all—1500 miles, no less—to honor an old friendship and mock my literary fetishism, she says. But don’t dare talk to me about bulls, okay?? Meanwhile, grateful though I am to have her road skills at my disposal, I can’t help thinking, what a bunch of—well, women, excuse me—I’m surrounded with, now that I’ve discovered the machismo upon which my feminism is built. . . .

  My mother is horrified when I announce my intention of spending the night running with the mourners in the inner city on the Shia holy night of Ashura. Do you realize how dangerous this is? People are killed every year! How can you be so enamored of something as uncivilized as self-mutilation in the name of religion? You can’t go! Tell your husband (spitting venom in my face) to take responsibility for your behavior—what will we do with your kids if you’re killed in those mobs? Are you mad? The hysterical reproach from mother’s Ava Gardner eyes is almost too much of a cross to bear, especially when she confides to me in what has suddenly become a very pragmatic, no-nonsense tone of voice, that Shia Muslims (if they can even be called Muslims!!) are known to pollute the town’s water supply following this primitive ritual with blood from their bodies. . . . What is a poor, rational Sunni to do??

  Na ro, Zainab, na ro . . .

  bleeding

  something awful

  This is a pragmatic poem

  about a pragmatic woman

  my mother

  she teaches me

  never to be free

  of surfaces

  smooth

  sailing

  like a pumice stone

  on my sole

  rough skin sloughs off

  as it appears

  the seams mustn’t show

  this is Morrison’s art

  and mummy lives a/part

  so well

  down syndrome baby and all

  never upset her

  nor daddy’s tumor

  and subsequent disfigurement

  You came, then You left

  accuses the supplicant

  Look at my passport

  no entries no departures

  i was home

  tending to my babies

  it is common to

  hallucinate

  after a major operation

  I had bad dreams

  as a child

  bad men

  rough-bearded

  breaking open our

  house

  my heart led away

  Beautiful and Elegant

  in a white cotton

  sari

  jasmine in her hair

  She looks over her

  shoulder

  with those Ava Gardner

  Eyes

  as if to say

  it’s okay

  II

  So I see her

  with that man

  purring sleekly like a cat

  his whiskers dipped

  in mother’s milk

  it seems ages

  have gone by

  then I hear her

  banging on the door

  hysteria masked

  practically

  underground

  you didn’t see anything

  there was nothing

  to see

  now i must go and

  pick up your

  da-ddy

  The night is you
ng at 10:30 p.m. The big ball of fire had barely disappeared as my girlfriend and I stepped lively out of our hotel, confronted immediately with the variegated odors of human and canine flesh all mixed up, with the pretence of perfume unable to mask the peculiar aroma of rich, raw sex . . . sex was definitely, unmistakeably in the air, pungent as an onion. . . . Without warning the crowd gave way and the choked-up lane that couldn’t possibly go anywhere opened into the mise-en-scene of a passion play. My eyes locked into handsome uncle-by-default, intensely focussed in his stiff white kurta pajama, and reassured, I slipped into the trance of the men, elbowing my way into their wavelength, banging, hammering, wanting to be let into the magical performance (for my husband the engineer, the hinted orgasmic state in hindsight is yet another in an endless series of betrayals, deserving only a venomous spit I must accept both outside and in) fair flesh, dark flesh, thin flesh, fat flesh, young flesh, old flesh, hairy flesh, smooth flesh, taut flesh, sagging bellies, pounds and pounds of masculine meat so near and yet so far, I want to put my hands down under the skin beaten raw and red so the haze spreads all across the broad manly chests and the boyish ones, I want to take I want to take I want to take my fingers and dip them deep inside the redhot liquid and sign my name in blood, Fawzia was here. . . .

  I see him on St. Nicholas Street first, then later inside one of those bars we danced and drank in, and I kept thinking, Hai Allah, I hope he isn’t a Paki, what will he make of the two of us, hard-drinking Muslim girls (okay, okay, so we’re both 40-plus, one rather stocky and short, the other tall and struggling against the middle-age spread) and would you believe it, here comes another one, same doleful eyes, older, pock-marked face that makes him look rather like Om Puri playing the fanatic’s father in this year’s hot new Hanif Kureishi film. I wonder if they are father and son selling flowers to pretty ladies, or perhaps to men in search of some.

  I see him again, later—much later, a fish without water in a place with so much to drink, silently silhouetted against the pane of glass made hazy with so much heavy breathing. Tallish, but not too much. Rather slightly built, like someone not given to rich fatty foods, or to drink either. And then I laugh at myself, why, of course not, he couldn’t, he has only flowers, red roses at that . . . or perhaps, now waxing lyrical, that is a great deal to have, who needs food and wine or a roof over one’s head? Still, he is an uneasy reminder—of what exactly I couldn’t say—rather unaware of my/our existence, it seems; though the smile, which wasn’t quite one, flits about the corners of his lips, I can see those lips even in the darkness of the bar, white shirt open at the neck, black pants hanging rather loosely on bony hips, a bunch of red roses and sleek black—and I mean Black—hair, falling, falling, and ohmygod, are those . . . chappals??? Why yes, indeed, open-toed, scissor-style—I never did like them, so typical of Urdu-wallahs. I’d always joined my friends in mocking them (poetic justice that I ended up marrying one!). Through the mist I see him and then I don’t. He is gone. Just like that. I could have sworn I saw him again from the balcony of my hotel room where Hania drags me back, unwillingly exhausted, at 3:00 in the morning. I go to hang my dripping bra and panties out on the railing above the bull-run path and there he is, red, white, and black, turning the corner, just ever so slightly out of reach. . . .

  She was a very strange woman. So strange that they called her Madame Sin, not knowing what else to trace her infernal energy to. But that was in the before days . . . when evil consisted of setting fire to a poor bastard’s peanut fields without really meaning to, and the thrill of the chase was a black man racing behind with a scythe in his powerful arms, and danger was climbing into jamun-heavy trees pregnant with plump, purple fruit, afraid Papa would wake up and discover us gone, and who would be blamed, the leader of the pack, Madame Sin herself, tearing around, even in the scorching heat of a 120-degree Lahore afternoon, disturbing the peace on the outskirts of Bathurst, in a little enclave of erstwhile colonizers. The thirst for adventure, even then, was unquenchable . . . why did they call her Madame Sin???

  I do not know him yet but can feel his interest, his passion for detail, his reporter’s eye watching it all, drinking it in. A dark-complexioned man, slightly pocked-mark, with straight dark hair that keeps falling into his face, making me want to clip it back. The tonga ride back to Aunty’s home on Temple Road where we would try and sleep for a few hours before heading back at dawn, just before fajr prayers, is incomparable to anything else I’ve ever done. It doesn’t remind me of anything except itself. The byways and alleyways brimming over with perspiring hordes even late into the night are, finally, deserted, except for the odd mangy dog or cat. Clip-hoppity-clop go the horse’s hooves, poor beast of burden, no rest for you, not tonight . . . Samir blowing smoke-rings while I scanned the sky above me for a sign of light, a little silver moonbeam to add the right touch to the surroundings, something to remember. Then, suddenly, there we were at the old house peopled with our girlish laughter from convent days, oddly silent now, and that’s when the spell is broken. No money for the tonga-wallah. The reporter’s jaib has been cut, the no-longer-so-stiff white kurta has a big gaping hole, wallet gone. What is he going to tell his brandnew wife, waiting expectantly for the first-of-the-month delivery? Lost the money running with the Portateri alongside Madame Sin?

  II

  The drive to D.C. is painful. I mean the heat, and the traffic, lordylord, enough to drive a saint crazy, and being merely a sinner I arrive at Moina’s in a state of barely suppressed rage. Poor kids, they had to endure the brunt of Mama’s anger although, come to think of it, they’re probably rather used to it by now, since just about anything and everything ticks off their mama (last night A said he might be forced to leave, he couldn’t stand the rage anymore, festering festering, like storm clouds looming forever threateningly on the horizon. . . . I’m scared, he said, poor man, and I, secure in the knowledge of a permanent love I mistrusted, made purring noises, meant to be comforting, which somehow came out sounding insincere even to my prejudiced-in-favor-of-self ears).

  Anyhow, where was I . . . ah yes, my friend Moina, a mynah-bird to me . . . well, it isn’t exactly her house, not in the same way that the Lahore house had been hers, just as the residence at Temple Road is indelibly marked as her mother’s place now that her father is gone. Moina’s house in Gulberg, despite Mashuq’s presence, really was hers, quite without a doubt. From the fragrance of the chameli flowers adorning both front and back lawns, to the gold-filigreed cushion-covers against ornately carved chair backs to, of course, the signs of music everywhere . . . and that is the first thing I notice as I walk into the spotlessly white-walled, white-carpeted duplex on Windmill Court—her organ, on its stand, black keys in stark relief against the all-white background. Thank God some signs of her past life have made it into the new world she has entered of her own free will, emancipated woman that she is.

  Hai, hai, do you know, she had that affair going all those years . . . haan, haan, bhai, I’m telling you na yaar, she’s married that Richard Gere of hers. (A always marvels at the fact that all my family—and, it would seem, the fantasy lovers of my near and dear ones, too—resemble Hollywood stars; all white ones at that: Zahid Mamoo is Gregory Peck, Mum’s Ava Gardner, Dad, despite his facial paralysis, is, who else, Clint Eastwood of course, and Farhan, my brother, looks just like Travolta, especially after he shaved off his terroristic mustache). So then it is disturbing that there are so many tears at each and every reminder of the way things were, maybe the sense of loss (quelle gaspillage! sobbed the insensitive husband one couldn’t help feeling bad for at the end of Entre Nous, one of my all-time favorite movies, when his wife finally divorces him and sets up house with her shell-shocked girlfriend), cultural and familial pressures are harder to endure than she imagined.

  I sing and drink a great deal, each sip of Bailey’s Irish Cream, each note of Raga Malkauns, each silly little jingle of an Indian film song transforms into droplets of memory’s perspiration, leaking out of the pores o
f our bodies and souls, our most blessedly confused happysad selves, skin resting on skin, salty tears and beads of sweat mixing with peals of girlish laughter gigglygalote . . . and white-haired, white-bearded Richard Gere himself, playing quite the knight-in-shining armor, clearly chagrined by his perceived betrayal of King Arthur, nevertheless sits down to meals served by his Guinevere. I am a bit nonplussed to see her playing this role, I must confess . . . and yet . . . when I sing again that night, David the son-in-law strumming away madly on his electric guitar in passionate accompaniment, it comes to me in the darkness of Darbari that Khayyam had gotten something right: nor all thy tears nor words, e’er erase a word of It.

  The drive home is a real drag.

  III

  Monday morning I scream and shout the kids into submission, and when I finally arrive at the doctor’s office she wants to know if my wearing red means something. I tell her I’ve just recently returned from Spain where bulls and blood took over my consciousness. She tells me to get that kitchen done and stay home for the next few years. “Your teenage daughter needs you to stop running with the bulls,” she advises, wagging the proverbial finger at me. “But I haven’t really done that yet,” I begin to protest, silenced suddenly by an image of Moina wearing red, twenty-two years ago. Honey and I are the only friends from school who make it to her wedding with a Sunni man, angrily shunned by her father. She is the first of our intimate circle to get married, exactly nine months after the Nepali has shamed her into a silence I still cannot penetrate, lacking perhaps the ability to love that way. . . .