by Saba Imtiaz
The door opens and Saad walks in with a bag of naans, munching on one. ‘What are you two talking about so intently?’ he asks, and I instantly feel guilty. ‘Aunty has just been telling me how she wants to get you married off,’ I say. When in doubt in Pakistan, always use marriage as a way to take the conversation completely off track. Saad rolls his eyes and I keep up a stream of chatter over dinner about everyone I know who’s been mugged, and Saad’s mother pitches in enthusiastically with a story about her 70-year-old friend who told her mugger off. In our zeal though, our stories end up sounding a tad ludicrous and exaggerated. At least, that’s what I think, because instead of being horrified by the tales, Saad laughed hysterically throughout dinner. I suppose I could have toned down my retelling of Zara’s mugging a bit—surely I didn’t have to mention the falsa juice that Zara handed over to the mugger—but Saad’s mother actually put on accents when describing what happened to her friend, like a crime scene reconstruction. Saad offers to drop me off, and the minute we get into his car he suggests we get juice from a roadside stand near my house. Just as I’ve taken my first sip of the pomegranate-apple mix, Saad asks, ‘So what were you and my mother talking about? She’s not really thinking about getting me married, is she?’
‘Oh, of course,’ I say. ‘You should really rethink this moving back idea; before you know it she’ll stage a jhattmangni-patt-viyah type scene.’
‘I know for a fact she isn’t, so what were you talking about?’
‘Oh nothing,’ I say. ‘I was asking her how she manages to fill up her days and she sounds like she’s really busy. I thought you said she was quite lonely but her social life sounds better than mine.’
‘Oh whatever,’ Saad says, rolling his eyes. ‘I see what you’re doing here. You don’t think she needs me and I shouldn’t move back.’
‘No, of course not…’ I start, but Saad holds his hand up. ‘I mean, seriously, I thought you’d be happy I was coming back. You’re always saying that you miss having me around.’
‘I do,’ I say, trying to figure out a sensitive way to frame his mother’s point. ‘But you know I’m perpetually worried and tense living in Karachi and I just don’t want to have to worry about you as well. I know you laugh off the muggings and kidnappings and bombs, but just take a look around. Look in front of you. The juice guy has a security guard, for the love of god, because he’s scared someone will make off with his day’s earnings and the canned pineapples.’
Saad doesn’t reply and he drops me off after we’ve finished our juice.
Midnight
I’m transcribing an exchange from my notebook when the phone beeps. WhatsApp message from Saad.
‘What’s up?’ I type back, while squinting at the notebook, trying to decipher whether I’ve written ‘achanak’ or ‘ailaan’ in my illegible Urdu handwriting.
Saad: ‘I’m outside. Can I come in?’
‘Is everything okay?’ I ask, opening the door.
‘Yeah, I just wanted to talk.’
He walks around my room, idly picking things up off my dresser and putting them back. ‘So I’m not really moving back for my mother,’ he says, and flops down on the bed.
‘Okay.’ I close the lid of the laptop. I wish I was a more nurturing, caring person and could offer something more sage than ‘okay’. What does one give to people who appear to be in the midst of a crisis? A Xanax or a cup of hot milk? Or perhaps I have it all wrong and Saad is the one who needs help with disposing of a body. ‘So, what is it?’
‘I really need to get out of Dubai. You know that night we went clubbing when you were there? I looked at the photos later. Even though I knew so many people there that night…’
‘Including the skanky girls,’ I interject, remembering the flock of incredibly gorgeous girls who thronged around him at the club.
‘Yeah, them too,’ Saad says. ‘Anyway. Well since then I’ve been thinking about how I don’t really have any friends in the city and how I had fun that night because you were there. It would be so much easier to be here, where I actually have friends who care about me rather than about how much booze I have in the cabinet on any given night.’
‘I didn’t realize you felt this way,’ I say.
‘Well, so I just came to tell you that,’ Saad says abruptly and gets up. ‘I’m flying out tomorrow morning, but I’ll see you in a couple of weeks?’
‘Sure,’ I say, and lock the door behind him. There is something really bizarre going on with Saad but I can’t put my finger on it yet. Why did he look so upset when he was telling me he was moving back because of his mother? Why did I not guess that he was so unhappy in Dubai? He’s never mentioned any of this to me before. All I’ve ever heard about is the fantastic concerts and the great bars. Weird.
Friday, April 24, 2012
9 a.m.: E-mail my story to Al Jazeera—all three thousand words of gritty interviews—and stare at the laptop. Refresh e-mail. Nothing. Maybe the Internet connection isn’t working. Reboot the router. Still no reply. Perhaps a watched laptop doesn’t beep. Check time zone for editor. Unless she’s an insomniac, there’s no way she’s seen my story yet. Am about to turn the laptop off in exasperation when yes! New e-mail!
Hmph. Turns out it’s just a BuzzFeed forward from Zara. ‘50 reasons you know it’s time to quit your job.’
10 a.m.: Maybe I’ll just go to the gym instead.
11 a.m.: Gym is actually buzzing. Its 11 a.m. Find this incredibly bizarre. When I was employed, I lived under the delusional cloud that like me, everyone else was also working and so I should not feel bad about the hours ticking away while I was stuck in editorial meetings or covering legislative assembly proceedings. Nearly all of the treadmills are occupied. I peek into the men’s gym. It’s even busier. Clearly there are a lot of trust fund kids running around the city.
There’s a yellow Corvette in the gym’s parking lot with the licence plate number ‘CIA-111’. It’s being guarded by a carload of policemen. I have never understood why Karachiites buy ridiculously expensive cars that scream ‘I’m rich!’ only to then have to get cops to save them from the inevitability of being mugged. Snap photo and am posting it to Twitter when a cop comes running up. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Nothing,’ I casually say, and put my phone away. ‘I’m checking my phone.’
3 p.m.: The photo has already been retweeted half a dozen times. Still no e-mail from Al Jazeera though. I am an abject failure.
I drink the dregs of the whiskey Saad brought over. Now that I am unemployed, I feel no shame in drinking in the daytime. Saad. I really don’t understand what is going on with him. Why does he want to move back to Karachi? Surely the appeal of cheap bun kebabs and the comfort of always having someone to call up and have drinks with on a Saturday night isn’t much when compared to being able to live in a city where one can actually have a life. I don’t know how to tell Saad how often I long for any kind of nightlife beyond listening to the neighbourhood boys angrily debating the umpire’s decision in a street cricket match or blaring the latest weepy Bollywood song. But we’re twenty-eight, not fourteen anymore. I can no longer dissuade Saad from doing things the way I could when we were kids. The only possibility I can bank on is that Saad will move to Karachi, have a miserable time, and then eventually realize he needs to leave.
E-mail! From the editor! ‘This is really fantastic—just what I was looking for! We should have this online in an hour. You should get started on the next story too. And send me your bank details asap.’
I AM NOT AN ABJECT FAILURE! I AM A BRILLIANT REPORTER AND I AM GOING TO BE RICH AND FAMOUS AND WIN A PULITZER.
Five minutes later: Wonder if the story is up yet. Click refresh on the page. Not yet.
20 minutes later: No story yet.
25 minutes later: Still no story.
27 minutes later: Dammit, have closed the browser with a streamed episode of Sherlock.
50 minutes later: Click refresh…oh bloody hell, the electricity has gone.
Am fini
shing the rest of my drink and wondering if I can make the fan start working with sheer willpower. Maybe I’ll just lie down for a bit.
4.30 p.m.: Am about to doze off when the phone rings. Zara. ‘Ayesha! I just saw the story you did. It’s fantastic! When did you do this, you sneaky cow?’
‘What, it’s out?’
‘Yep, haven’t you checked Twitter? At least a dozen people on my timeline posted it, including Sara, or one of those girls from your newsroom. They all look the same.’
‘Omygod, omygod, thanks—gotta go look!’
I log on using the neighbour’s WiFi, hooked up to their UPS, and hurriedly get on to Twitter. Zara was right. Even my timeline is full of people tweeting the story and quotes from it. Check the article. It looks beautiful online. Ooh, someone else has just tweeted it. This would have never happened to me when I was writing for the Daily News. I would perpetually plug stories on Twitter, Facebook, my Google Talk status and even LinkedIn, until someone would finally take pity on me and share them. Is this really happening to me? For once, I feel proud of the work I’ve done. I feel… happy, I realize with a shock, given that I seem to have spent the past few weeks in a rage-filled haze. It’s finally happening. I am actually doing the kind of stories I’ve wanted to do for so long.
Should probably calm down a bit. Oh, another retweet! No, must look away from the screen.
Hmm. Maybe I’ll read the article just one more time.
CHAPTER 12
Saturday, May 2, 2012
Headline of the day: ‘Man sues Al-Khan Tonight Restaurant for Rs 1 million for mental torture and humiliation’
7 p.m.: My father has just walked in to my room to find me in the exact same position I’ve been in for the past few days: in pyjamas, hunched over a laptop, and eating chili chips by the fistful.
‘Don’t you think you should change your clothes?’ He sniffs the air and picks up an empty bottle of Diet Coke from the floor. ‘And how many cigarettes have you smoked?’
I look at the overflowing ashtray and try to kick an empty can of Murree beer under the bed. ‘The usual,’ I mutter and get back to my laptop. I’m five hundred words into an article about the police investigating threats to journalists.
‘And can you stop eating those chips? I read online they give you ulcers.’
I look at him in horror. Chili chips are part of a Karachiite’s DNA. They’re tangy, made from some amazing combination of potatoes, oil, copious amounts of salt, and enough red chilli to burn the lining of your stomach. I was hooked, like all of my friends, when I was first introduced to them by the school canteen, because no parent would ever bring them into the home. As soon as the lunch bell rang, students would make a beeline for the canteen to buy the sticky white packets of chips, which would inevitably run out in the first ten minutes. And despite dire warnings like those my father—or any out-of-towner who couldn’t fathom why anyone would eat them—routinely issued, no one had managed to overcome the addiction even decades after leaving school. Zara sprinkled them on biryani and promptly drank a glass of Eno after, Saad ate them whenever he was feeling homesick, and there was a khao suey delivery joint in the neighbourhood that featured them prominently on the menu.
I’m about to repeat all of this for the fiftieth time when the phone rings. Zara.
‘I don’t care what you’re doing tonight,’ she says, before I’ve even said hello. ‘I am getting you out of this social hibernation. Put on your best white kurta, we’re going to hear Rahat Fateh Ali Khan perform.’
‘I don’t know,’ I start. I’ve just opened a pack of chili chips and a new episode of Masterchef is about to start. ‘No, you’re coming. Get moving. I’ll pick you up in thirty.’
I race around trying to find a white kurta and straighten my hair—a fruitless exercise, since it just keeps frizzing up again thanks to the humidity. The first kurta has a large cigarette burn. The other isn’t ironed and the third, while clean and mercifully free of rips and cigarette burns, is too long. That’s the one, I suppose. I realize the event will probably be in some garden somewhere, so there really is no point in doing anything to my hair. Twist hair up, and look for the cut up sock I use to hold it together and make a faux chignon. Oh. The last time I saw that sock was when I slept with Jamie, that glorious evening in the hotel. It feels like a lifetime ago, even though it’s barely been a few weeks. Why does it still hurt so much? Why am I still so enraged? Tempted to text Zara and tell her to blow off the concert and bring a bottle of wine over so we can dissect this in detail. No. Cannot become a cliché, sobbing over a man. I kick my pyjamas away—sigh, they do look terribly comfy—and find my stash of bobby pins and start savagely pinning up my hair.
An hour later, Zara and I, cocktails in hand, are walking around the venue where Rahat Fateh Ali Khan is set to perform. The performance is part of a three-day classical music conference that Zara’s paper is sponsoring and she’s managed to sweet talk the advertising department into giving her free passes. The venue is an empty plot where the neighbourhood dumps garbage on weekdays, which has been transformed by a chic tent and all-white décor that is surely going to be splattered with food and spilled drinks by the end of the night. The crowd is made up largely of corporate types, men sporting an air of discomfort at having shed their uniform-like suits for shalwars. There’s a smattering of politicians, all knocking back their drinks and laughing raucously with legislators from rival parties whom they’re going to skewer in parliament on Monday. ‘Isn’t that Jackie?’ Zara whispers, pointing to a skinny man in his fifties whose claim to fame is not his property development empire, but the fact that he did time in jail for running a ring of assassins. In court, he told the judge, ‘Even if I have killed someone, and I’m not saying I have, isn’t it better to have organized crime instead of handing a gun to every Tom, Dick, and Harry?’ He’s smoking a cigar and looking on as two ministers bicker.
‘Isn’t that bartender cute,’ Zara says as she stares at a kid, who is barely twenty, if that, and is deftly using a cocktail shaker. I spot Farrah, the model, reclining on a cushion and smoking a cigarette. She waves and gestures at me to sit down next to her. Zara goes off to chat up the bartender and I go talk to Farrah. ‘Darling, haven’t seen you in ages,’ she says. ‘How’s that horrible boss of yours?’
‘I quit, actually,’ I say, sneaking a cigarette from her pack.
‘Good for you. By the way, his wife’s just had another Botox shot, her eyebrows are so far up her forehead they look like they were drawn on. And I swear I heard her saying that she wants a second nose job, even though she now snores thanks to the first one she got because she wanted to look like Nicole Kidman.’
I really don’t want to bitch out Kamran and his wife to Farrah given her propensity for gossip and the likelihood that she could be best friends with Kamran next week. ‘And how are you? How’s life after fashion week?’
‘Amazing!’ she says, ‘Doing some great campaigns. And there’s some gora reporter in town who’s following me around for a week to do a story on how models live in Pakistan. Totally clichéd bullshit stuff, but hey, it’s CNN!’
‘CNN?’ I repeat slowly. Oh no. Please let it be someone else, please don’t let this be who I think it is…
‘Yeah, oh look, there’s the guy.’ She points to someone standing nearby and even though I can only see his profile, I instantly recognize him. It’s Jamie, drink in hand, and the only man here in a suit.
I stomp out my cigarette and tell Farrah I have to run. Where the hell is Zara?! I do a quick scan of the venue but damn the white kurta code, everyone looks the same. Oh thank goodness, she’s still standing near the bar trying to catch the 20-year-old’s attention. I rush up and drag her to a corner.
‘Jamie’s here!’
‘What? Where?’
‘Err, two o’ clock.’
Zara starts looking the other way.
‘Jeez, Zara, TWO O’ CLOCK. Do you not know how to tell time?!’
Zara quickly gl
ances at him and then stares at me. ‘Ok. We’re ignoring him. He doesn’t exist. We’re going to have a great time. Here, drink this,’ she says, pushing her martini at me. ‘Liquid courage.’
‘Don’t you think I should confront him?’ I say. The urge to ask Jamie what the hell happened is overwhelming. He’s confidently chatting away with someone, and I feel a distant longing for the time when he turned all that charm on me. Is it possible that he’s gotten even better looking in the past few weeks?
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Zara hisses. ‘Do you really want to have this discussion here, in front of all these people? And no, you are not talking to him. If anything, he should be here on his knees apologizing to you for ruining your life. Now let’s go find someplace to sit.’
We start walking around, trying to find an empty space that isn’t next to the speakers or any of the men who are already wavering slightly. Clearly the bartender has some skills. I’m trying to angle the cushion behind me when I hear a voice. ‘Ayesha?’
I turn around slowly. It’s Jamie, drink in hand, his skin glowing as if he’s just returned from a spa weekend. I so desperately want to say something but I feel like I’ve lost the ability to form words other than youmotherfuckingassholewhathehellareyoudoinghere. I say hello and start staring at my phone, a part of me wishing that he would just disappear into thin air. Jamie stands there for a minute before Zara loudly interjects. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Yes?’ Jamie says.
‘You’re standing on my dupatta.’
Jamie looks at me again and then walks off, a wounded expression on his face. How can he be the wounded party here?! Zara looks at me angrily. ‘You were about to talk to him. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?’