by Ali Sethi
“You should come to my house,” I said. “We’ll make a time capsule.”
Yawar grunted.
I explained about time capsules.
“Sounds good, sounds good,” said Yawar, who was caustic by nature but amenable.
He came to the house on the weekend in starched white shorts and a colorful T-shirt, his shoelaces tied and settled like ribbons, his thick white socks pulled up to his knees. Daadi was pleased with his appearance and offered him food to eat, which Yawar declined, and a glass of juice from the fridge, which Yawar accepted and drank but left unfinished on the table. Of this too Daadi was approving; she said the lack of greed was a mark of good upbringing, and showed that Yawar’s mother was devoted to the household, which was rare in these times, a blessing that hadn’t been bestowed on other households.
We made our time capsule in the lawn. The capsule itself was a black plastic box we had found inside the house, a box that was strong enough to endure the eroding soil and the gnawing attempts of insects. It would surface after centuries, when man was estranged from the lives that preceded his re-emergence, and the excavation would lead to a discovery: some items from the past that offered proof of man’s intelligence and his ability to find his way in a world that by then would have vanished.
We searched. We looked first in the kitchen, where the knives and forks were locked in the cupboard; the key was with Naseem, who was sleeping in her quarters at the back of the house. We wanted items of instruction, items that would lead to conclusions about the past: we sought syringes, binoculars, lighters, none of which were found. We tried to contain the file within the box, tried to hold down its corners. But they snapped.
“It’s boring,” said Yawar.
I went inside and brought what I found: a toothbrush, some pencils, a blue-nib pen, a compass, a lipstick and a hairbrush.
We drafted a letter. I wrote: Dear citizen of the future, my name is Zaki Shirazi and I am a boy. I live in this house with my cuzzon.
Yawar wrote Yawar and added the date and location.
“What if Americans find it?”
Yawar wrote Asia after Pakistan.
“What if aliens find it?”
Yawar wrote Planet Earth.
We sealed the box with masking tape and buried it in the ground. Yawar said he didn’t think anyone would find it. He was restless now and wanted to go.
“There’s nothing there,” I said.
But he went and found Mazri, who came up to the gate on his bicycle and did a wheelie. Yawar wanted to know about the bicycle; he said his older brother also had a Sohrab Eagle, but his was an older model. Mazri was not rude or mocking. He said his father had taken the bicycle to the petrol pump in the morning and had the tires filled with air; they were good as new now; he allowed Yawar to mount the bicycle to test his claim. Yawar made a slow, wavering journey up and then down the lane.
“So then?” cried Mazri.
“Good as new, good as new!” cried Yawar.
When Mazri rode the bicycle he did it with flair. And Yawar stood patiently at the gate and watched him, grunting with pleasure at the showy turns.
“My turn now,” I said.
And Mazri laughed and said that I would have to pay him first.
At night I went out walking in the lane, which was deserted, and past the other houses in the dark. I climbed the barred gate of Mrs. Zaidi’s house and hopped. The knife I had brought was small and sharp. The windows in the house were all shut, the curtains drawn from inside. There were roses on the fringes of the garden, eerie in the stark white light that came from the porch, the buds meager and shriveled and the stems thorny, as if waiting to injure hopeful smellers. The bicycle had been leaned against a pillar in the porch. At first the knife had no effect; the rubber of the tires was hard and held. But stabbing in the same place proved worthwhile: the rubber popped, and the air began to hiss out.
“What did I do?”
“Get in,” said my mother, and started her van. The school parking lot was not a place she visited regularly; she was angry already and aggravated by the unmoving cars ahead.
“But what did I do!”
“You know bloody well what you did,” she said, and swerved the van away from a car. “All day long I work like a dog. And then I have to come home and listen to that old witch who lives in that house for twenty bloody minutes on the phone because she wants new tires, she won’t settle for repairs, she wants new tires, and I have nothing to say because you are no better than riffraff.”
The traffic outside was worse. The road was blocked and the van was stuck in the blockage.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Shut up.”
They had decided to send me away. I was to spend the Eid holiday with Suri and Hukmi and their children, away from the house and the television, away from negative influences. “And it is good,” said Daadi, “because Samar will be gone as well and there will be nothing to do in this house all by yourself.”
Samar Api was going with her mother to Barampur, where Uncle Fazal was hosting a lavish Eid lunch for his relatives and friends on the third day of the holiday. Families were driving in from other parts of the district, and Chhoti and her daughter were required to entertain the lady guests.
Samar Api didn’t want to go. She fought with Daadi when it was mentioned, then fought with my mother when she went into her room for persuasion. Chhoti was arriving in a few days to take her daughter back to the village. Daadi said it was a matter of days—Eid was a family occasion that occurred only twice a year—and they weren’t asking for more than that. But Samar Api refused to come out of her room. She said she wanted to stay in Lahore and go to Tara’s house for Eid.
Chhoti arrived, unwarned, unprepared for resistance, and flew into a rage upon arrival; she cited hardships and sacrifices and cursed her own fate for giving her an ungrateful child. And she sulked, suggesting with her silence that the residents of the house had done nothing to make it easier. Daadi was offended and withdrew her involvement, and my mother was left to mediate the remaining correspondence between Chhoti and her child.
They left in the morning. Chhoti went to sit inside her car and instructed her driver to start the engine, which revved and revved in the driveway. At last Samar Api emerged from her room, and her eyes were red and swollen with crying; she went outside with her schoolbag, in which she had her clothes, and sat beside Chhoti in the back of the car with the bag in her lap, refusing to look at her mother or at the assembled spectators outside, and stared ahead at nothing in defiance.
6
Suri and Hukmi lived with their families in the Gulistan housing colony.
Their houses were separated by a low white wall and resembled the other houses in the lane, houses with brown iron gates and slanting, imbricating roofs, and strips of grass that fringed the outside walls and appeared to be of an equal length. It was a new way of living, a way out of the old joint-family system that hadn’t done away with the better aspects of community life: there was a park in the heart of the colony, with slides and merry-go-rounds, a walking track, a cricket pitch and a badminton net held between two poles in the grass. A chowkidaar patrolled the lanes at night. The milkman had to report to the colony office for his salary and was punctual. There was no load-shedding at night, no problems with electricity, no water crisis at the last minute—problems, when they did arise, were addressed promptly and efficiently, owing to the built-in aspect of accountability. And still the houses continued to be available and continued to sell at reasonable prices.
At Hukmi’s house today there was no one to answer the door. Her servants had left for the Eid holiday with advances on their salaries. Hukmi had to open the door herself. She was wearing a bathrobe and a towel in a turban around her head.
“They’ve all gone,” she said.
I followed her past the dining room, where the curtains were drawn and the light kept out, the chairs tucked into their places at the dining table, then past the paintings
on the wall, paintings of fair-skinned babies and the robed, fair-skinned women tending to their needs. They were unlike the paintings my mother collected, which were awkward and childishly made and became interesting only after she had told a story about where they came from, or who had made them, or how they had been made.
“Shoes,” said Hukmi, indicating a wooden rack beside the bedroom door. It held several shoes at a raised angle, caught at the heels and held aloft.
“Take off, please,” said Hukmi, and watched.
In the bedroom the lights were dim. Suri was sitting on the sofa under a golden clock and talking in tones of understanding on the telephone, though she now made a face at Hukmi that revealed her exhaustion. And on the bed were Uncle Saaji and Uncle Shafto, both lying on their backs with their heads propped up against pillows. They were watching a tennis match on the TV in the corner.
“He’s finished,” said Uncle Saaji, and puckered his lips. He was married to Suri and had once owned factories in Lyallpur. His soft, benign face gave his occasional bouts of anger the blunted quality of disappointment.
“Wait and see,” said Uncle Shafto, Hukmi’s husband, a passionate man who had never owned anything of significance. “The man will win. He will make a comeback. Born to win.” His upturned mouth was sealed in determination.
Uncle Saaji said, “No, no,” and crossed his hands behind his head. The pose was uncomfortable; he returned his hands to his chest and settled and resettled them.
“Man’s a player,” persisted Uncle Shafto.
“No, no.”
“Just see.”
They saw.
“Baakaap!” cried Uncle Shafto. His head lifted from the pillow. “Baakaap!”
Uncle Saaji made a sputtering sound.
“Baakaap!”
“Finished,” said Uncle Saaji.
On the TV the audience was clapping, the two players walking to the net to shake hands and then walking apart, both looking humbled and dispassionate though one had just won the match and defeated the other.
“Actually it is bad luck,” said Uncle Shafto.
Hukmi came out of the bathroom in her clothes and sat on the sofa beside Suri. Her hair was wet and hung in braids.
Suri hung up the telephone and said, “Marwa Madam wants to change the plan.”
Hukmi said, “I’m not going.”
“Wants us to have it here,” said Suri.
“I am not going.”
“Always at the last minute—”
“I’m not going.”
It was settled.
“Zaki Shirazi,” said Uncle Saaji from the bed. He frowned in admonishment, then altered his expression and gurgled naughtily with a finger in his mouth.
“Oh yes,” said Uncle Shafto, taking note; he raised his neck and resettled the buffer of pillows behind his head. “What a match, Zaki Shirazi. What a match.”
The TV was now showing golf: men in caps holding clubs, the people standing behind them in rows on the mown grass.
“It’s a bore,” said Uncle Shafto, and crossed his arms over his chest.
Uncle Saaji changed the channel to the news. He said, “Day-spending?”
“Night-spending,” I said.
“Why not,” said Uncle Saaji. “Why not.”
Uncle Shafto said, “Basically everything is allowed in this house. Everything I don’t mind”—he began to count the things on his fingers—“day-spend night-spend I don’t mind, friends coming-going I don’t mind, the car I don’t mind, everything I have allowed. But smoking?” He was flabbergasted. “Smoking is not allowed, sorry.” He returned his attention to the TV but continued to shake his head.
Uncle Saaji sniffed.
And Hukmi stared.
Suri said, “Zaki, beta, go upstairs. It is not good for children to sit around all the time with their elders. Go upstairs and find your cousins, go.”
The rooms upstairs were preceded by a passage, a dark place where suitcases stood under shelves in angular poses, bellies rotting, some ruptured and damaged past the point of rescue, and cricket bats and tennis rackets, once fresh and vital, now lay scattered about in the dust. One bat still leaned against the wall, displaying on its blade the autograph of a famous cricketer. It had torn at the handle and flattened out at the toe, flattened from striking and striking the ground in preparation, the blade bruised in all the places where it had struck—marks of service that it wore like wounds of sacrifice, detailing abandonment. The pictures on the shelf above showed Uncle Shafto in white cricketing attire, posing with his bat at the wickets. The glass casings shone faintly with filth. They were like the other pictures on the shelves, no longer useful. And on the highest shelf sat a doll with a resilient expression in which one eye was blue and the other was missing, the mouth pink and parted in surprise: it had belonged to either Aasia or Maheen, whose voices now came from behind a door, and stopped, and started up again with the sounds of a televised cartoon.
The other door was open. Isa and Moosa were sitting on the carpet and playing a video game that was unfolding between two ninjas on the TV screen. Isa was absorbed in the game; his eyes were focused, his mouth open, his fingers waiting on the buttons of the joystick. Moosa saw that someone had come into the room but didn’t look up. He said, “Shit.”
His ninja fell. Above, in a corner of the screen, the bar that indicated its life reserves turned red and began to throb.
“Next time,” said Isa, “duck and don’t jump.”
“Duck, don’t jump,” said Moosa.
The new round began. It was the same: Isa planned his movements and retreated, and Moosa was restless, hopping to and fro and squandering his movements. His ninja suffered, recovered and fell again.
He turned.
“Oi. What’s your age?”
I said, “Ten.”
“He’s a frickin’ kid,” said Moosa.
Isa was selecting the options for a new round.
“Mama’s boy,” said Moosa, and laughed.
I said nothing in response.
Moosa turned around again and said, “You go with your mama to your school in the morning?”
He had stopped laughing.
“You deaf?”
“No.”
“You take a lunchbox?”
“No.”
“I’ll break your face.”
“No, you won’t.” It was weakened by fear.
“No?” said Moosa. “No?”
“No.”
He remained in his place. “No? You only know one word?”
“Oi,” said Isa. He was talking to me. “You want to play?”
“Winner to stay,” said Moosa, and edged away from his place on the carpet. “It doesn’t even matter if he wins. He’s still a frickin’ kid.”
I played the round. And it was difficult but instructive: the moments of contact were brief at first, then developed into entanglements. Isa gave the codes for special movements, configurations on the buttons of the joystick that enabled flying, invisibility and the appearance of a rope that lassoed the opponent ninja and made him helpless. I lost the first two rounds but won the third, and Isa gave up his place for Moosa, who played the round blindly and frantically and was calm and restored when he won.
“Next time,” he said, pointing to the TV screen, “duck instead of jumping all the time. You’ll keep on losing if you don’t listen to what I’m saying.”
In the evening we went downstairs for tea. We were going out for a drive and needed money. The elders were in the large and circular drawing room, which had a high ceiling and square windowpanes that looked out onto the lawn. Suri was bent over the tea trolley, assembling refreshments on plates and passing them around: there were lemon tarts on one plate, samosas and pakoras on another, biscuits in a jar, chicken patties and coils of jalebi in a heap on a platter. All these things were on the lower level of the trolley; the upper level held teacups and saucers, a sugar bowl, a jug of milk and a teapot in a tea cozy.
“It�
��s hot,” said Suri, and held out a cup on a saucer for Hukmi, who received it with both her hands.
“I want it!” cried Aasia. The idea had come abruptly: she was sitting on the floor with her legs poking out from beneath a puddled frock, playing with a pair of dolls that she now held threateningly apart.
“Me too!” cried Maheen from the floor. She was upset that Aasia had said it first.
“No,” said Suri.
Aasia resumed with the dolls.
Maheen saw that Aasia had recanted and looked weakly at her own mother.
Hukmi said, “No,” and said it with severity to set a precedent.
“Dad,” said Isa. He was standing before his father with his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
Uncle Saaji looked up from the magazine in his hands.
“How much?” he said.
Isa made a calculation and said, “Three hundred.”
Uncle Saaji saw how it added up.
“It’s too much, Saaji . . .” said Suri warningly.
Uncle Saaji counted the money and held it out. “Bring my Alka-Seltzer.”
“Too much,” said Suri.
Isa took the money and tucked it into the folds of his wallet.
Moosa said, “Dad?”
Uncle Shafto was leaning back on the sofa with his neck turned tensely to one side, his face stretched downward and lengthened in a small round mirror that he held in his hand. The other hand held a pair of tweezers near the rim of his nostril.
Moosa was waiting.
And Hukmi was watching.
“My wallet,” said Uncle Shafto, “where is my wallet?”
Hukmi said, “Take it from me,” and abruptly opened the zip of her handbag.
Moosa went to stand before his mother.
And Uncle Shafto resumed his tweezing.
“Taking the car,” said Isa, and jangled the car keys in announcement.
“Bring my Alka-Seltzer,” said Uncle Saaji.
“And don’t drive fast,” said Suri, “because you don’t have a license and we won’t come and find you at the police station in the middle of the night.”