by Ali Sethi
“Lawyer!” said Daadi.
“Bar of London,” said Chhoti.
Daadi was impressed. “So then?” she said to Samar Api with a look of probing complicity. “What have you thought? Is it a yes or is it a no?”
Samar Api said, “No, no,” and smiled indulgingly. She was dressed in clothes that revealed by suggestion, and rustled like wrapping when she moved in her chair, bringing other things to the fore.
Daadi approved of the changes and gave a complimenting nod to Chhoti, who was gratified beyond her ability to show it and began instead to list the virtues of village life, which had more to recommend it than she had initially allowed.
“Well, I have always said it,” said Daadi. She settled her hands in her lap and waited for the acknowledgment, if not the apology, that was her due.
“You have,” said Chhoti. “You have.”
“So much to do anywhere,” said Daadi.
“So much.”
“Only a matter of finding it . . .”
“Only.”
“And of looking.”
“Of looking, no doubt.”
After tea Chhoti left. She said she wanted to reach Barampur before dark, or her sisters-in-law would talk. Daadi wanted her to stay but Chhoti insisted. And soon after she had left, Samar Api announced that she was going to Tara Tanvir’s house.
Daadi was surprised. “But you have just come,” she said. “Be patient. Wait a little.”
“But I have to go,” said Samar Api, and went into the dressing room.
She emerged after some minutes with her hair tied up. She was looking for a handbag; she held her dupatta behind her back while she bent to search in the wardrobe. She found it: she stood up, hung the strap on her shoulder, patted the bag with her hand and watched it settle, then adjusted the position of the strap, watched it settle once again and was ready to go.
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
But she was in a hurry. “You’re not invited, Zaki. It’s not polite to go to people’s houses when you’re not invited.”
Later in the week Daadi received a phone call from a woman who introduced herself as a schoolteacher and gave her name as Mrs. Waheed.
“Shama,” she said. “Shama Waheed.”
“Yes,” said Daadi.
The woman said she ran the guidance and counseling department and taught English literature—that was her area of expertise, though she had also been the counselor for almost a decade now—
“Yes,” said Daadi.
“Well,” said the woman, “I am calling today in my capacity as the teacher of your niece, Samar.”
Daadi noted the style.
“She is a delightful child.”
The woman was kind.
“I have taught the girl for two years now. And I would like to tell you that she is a fair student—not to mention a pleasure—and I am pleased—”
“You are kind.”
“You are kind!”
They laughed.
“Yes,” said Daadi, sensing the ease, “please tell me: is all well? I hope it is not the school fees that have gone up again . . .”
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Waheed. “Not at all. Though I would not be surprised if they did increase the fees one of these days. Profit, profit, all the time profit. That is the school’s philosophy.”
“These schools,” said Daadi.
“Terrible,” said Mrs. Waheed.
“You also feel?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Waheed. “Oh, very much so. The fees are rising all the time, but teachers’ salaries are staying the same, if you please.”
Daadi said, “Terrible.”
“And we have children also, you know. We must also send our children to school. And if their fees are rising, and our salaries are staying the same, then how are we going to make up for the difference? It does not add up, you see.”
Daadi said, “Terrible, terrible.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed, and sighed. “What a relief it is to let it out.”
“Yes,” said Daadi. “Yes.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed, “I hope you have felt as comfortable with me, Mrs. Shirazi, as I have felt with you, or as you have made me feel, rather, in these few moments.”
“Yes, of course,” said Daadi, and placed her hand on the mantelpiece.
“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed.
“Yes,” said Daadi.
“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed again, and blew out her breath. “I wanted to say, Mrs. Shirazi, that your niece has been absent for the whole of this past week from her school.”
Daadi said, “No, no.”
“That is correct,” said Mrs. Waheed.
“Cannot be,” said Daadi. “There is a mistake. She goes every morning, Mrs. Waheed, she has breakfast with me in this room, in this room where I am standing. How are you saying that she is not going?”
“Then I am right,” said Mrs. Waheed.
“You are wrong,” said Daadi.
“No, no, Mrs. Shirazi, that is not what I am saying. I have known for some time that something is going on . . .”
Daadi was stroking the mantelpiece.
“It is not your niece, actually, it is not these girls but the company they are keeping.”
Daadi said, “Company.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Waheed. “Tell me, Mrs. Shirazi: are you dropping the girl to school yourself?”
“My maid goes. My maid and driver.”
“And are they picking her up as well?”
“No, she comes with her friend.”
“Tara Tanvir.”
“That is the one.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Waheed, “then I should tell you that Tara has also been absent from school on the very same days.”
Daadi was quiet.
“And her house you cannot even call,” continued Mrs. Waheed, “because there is no one to confront, no mother, no father, no one to take an interest, I don’t know how many hours I have been holding on the line . . .”
Daadi was nodding. “Thank you,” she said, “for letting me know. The girl will go to school. She will go. I will see to it.”
They were summoned into Daadi’s room. She turned first to Naseem.
“Where do you take her in the morning?”
“To her school,” said Naseem.
“To her school?”
“To her school—ask her, ask anyone—”
“Are you lying to me?”
Naseem said she was willing to take an oath on the Quran.
Daadi brought out the Quran and made her do it. Then she held the Quran before Samar Api. “Swear,” she said. “Swear on it.”
Samar Api was crying.
Daadi took her hand and placed it forcibly on the book.
Samar Api withdrew the hand.
“Let me . . .” said my mother.
“Swear!” said Daadi.
“Please,” said my mother, “let me.”
They went into the next room and returned after some minutes. Samar Api was now sobbing into her hands. My mother stood beside her and explained to Daadi.
In the morning the girl went to school with the maid and the driver, was delivered to the school gates, where she waited for her friend, in whose car they then went to the friend’s house. There they stayed all morning, and the friend’s car returned the girl to her own house in the afternoon.
It was said that they were studying to prepare for their exams.
Daadi said she wasn’t fooled.
“I will call my sister,” she said. “And I will tell her what has happened. I will see to it that the matter is addressed, because I will not be held responsible, I will not be made to hear the taunts when tomorrow she goes and does something . . .”
Daadi continued to threaten and complain.
“Brought out the Quran,” said Naseem. “Just think of it.”
Samar Api brought me into her room.
“Zaki, I have to tell you something.”
It was
late at night. The light of her bedside lamp was the only one in the room, and sent its enlarged dim oval along the ceiling and down a wall. The door was locked.
She was sitting on her bed in her pajamas, a pillow in her lap, her fingers spread out on the bedding.
“Zaki, I am in Ell Oh Vee Eee.”
She looked at me.
“Zaki, you can’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t tell anyone, Zaki—”
“I won’t.”
She accepted. She leaned back on her palms, then leaned forward and began to press her fingers into the mattress. She said his name was Jamal, he was the son of a politician from Multan; their family had gone to the lunch at Uncle Fazal’s house in Barampur. That was where she had met him, though at the lunch itself they didn’t speak, only saw each other from across the room. Later he sent her a letter through his cousin, a small piece of paper on which he’d scrawled a verse and signed his name. She called him at night on the phone and they talked. She had been to see him at his house in Lahore because Tara had taken her there. He spent most of his time in Lahore, she said, and he was older than her, twenty-four years old.
“Zaki, I need your help,” she said. “I really need your help, Zaki.”
I said I would help her.
And it relieved her. She fell back into the bed and said she had always known in her heart that she could trust Zaki. And she turned on her side, and hugged the pillow under her chin, and said that sometimes she had to hold herself to know that it was happening to her. “Because sometimes,” she said, blinking in wonderment, in delighted disbelief, “I can’t believe that my Amitabh has arrived.”
8
The advent of the dish antenna had coincided in the cities with the spread of billboards. In Lahore they stood on all the main roads, in the newly licensed commercial areas as well as in the older neighborhoods, ads for dentists and doctors near houses, for electronics on the busier thoroughfares, fridges and televisions and deep freezers and split-level air conditioners operated by remote control, causing happiness and enchantment among the women who stood by their appliances of choice with surprised expressions. One of these, the tallest of the billboards on Sherpao Bridge, was taken down at the start of winter for readjustment. For days the site was veiled, obscured by a curtain made from many different sheets of cloth that stirred and lifted lightly in the wind and fell again into place.
And then it was there.
It showed a leggy blonde in an overcoat with her arm stretched out in stopping, one foot on the pavement and one in the air. The world around her was a haze of activities, of bodies passing in and out of buildings and of cars streaking past. But she was looking ahead and smiling, confident in her ability to cross the street.
Look at me! the billboard cried. I am Swiss Miss!
A box of Swiss Miss cosmetics cost three hundred and ninety-five rupees.
“That much I have,” said Samar Api, and emptied her savings onto her bed. She had more than four hundred rupees; she had one thousand, seven hundred and seventy rupees, her combined earnings from various gift-giving occasions, as well as savings from her pocket money, which was no longer forthcoming since it was no longer considered necessary for Samar Api to go out of the house.
“We have to start going out,” she said. “I think it’s been long enough, Zaki.”
My mother appealed on her behalf: the grades were better, she said, and the teachers had no complaints. The girl went to school every morning and returned every afternoon and went straight into her room. “Children make mistakes,” said my mother, “and they should be forgiven. That’s the way to set the example. To forgive and reward, not to punish all the time. How can there be improvements when there are no rewards?”
But Daadi was unwilling to end the confinement, and said that her decision to not inform Chhoti of her daughter’s recent conduct was a big concession.
Samar Api went to school and returned from school. She came into Daadi’s room at lunchtime, ate her meal and went back into her own room. She asked for the phone only in the evenings but returned it before Daadi went to sleep. And she didn’t ask for permission to go out.
Her essays and assignments, marked and graded approvingly by her teachers, were left around the house for others to see.
“This is remarkable,” said my mother. She was holding up a stapled exam sheet.
Daadi didn’t ask to know the marks.
“Twenty-six out of thirty,” said my mother, and looked around amazedly.
Naseem nodded.
And Daadi continued to wipe the bits of roti in her hand along the grease on her plate’s rim.
One Thursday afternoon we went with Naseem and Barkat in the car to buy groceries from the market. And the following week we were allowed to go to Empire Center to try a new dessert dish made of chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream that had drawn enthusiastic recommendations from Suri and Hukmi.
Samar Api said she wanted to go to Empire Center with Tara Tanvir.
“No,” said Daadi.
“And why not?” said my mother.
“Not with that girl.”
“Why not?”
Daadi was shaking her head in sustained refusal.
“They are children,” said my mother. “And children make mistakes. That is why they are children: they make mistakes and they learn from them. For God’s sake.”
In the car Tara Tanvir said, “Your grandmother doesn’t like me, na?”
It was her way to ask a question, even a difficult one with a potentially hurtful answer, in a simple and carefree way that didn’t leave room for elision.
I said, “No, man, you’re crazy, obviously not.”
We were parked in her jeep outside an audiocassette and CD shop in Fortress. More than an hour before we had delivered Samar Api to Jamal’s house, which had a high white gate with sharply pointed spears along the top. Samar Api had said to collect her in an hour or so, though by that she usually meant longer.
“I know your grandmother doesn’t like me,” said Tara Tanvir. “I know she hates my guts.” She made guts sound especially horrible, but then laughed at the end into her hand. It implied bigheartedness on her part, or obliviousness, it didn’t matter; she sat up now, brightened by her own high spirits. “So tell me,” she said, “what all have you been up to?”
I told her about my two cousins Isa and Moosa, with whom I had grown friendly over Eid.
She wanted to know their ages.
I said, “Twelve and fourteen.”
“Too young, man!” she cried, and we both laughed loudly, reducing Isa and Moosa to a juvenile experiment, a leaping lesson in adulthood.
“I have these cousins,” she said, “Tina and Sara. They’re coming to visit from America. We’ll all go out. You’ll like them. Very your type. Tina more so than Sara. But Sara’s out of her mind!” She touched her temples. “Boozingshoozing full time, and she’s not like even thirteen! Kassam se. Tina’s more down to earth, definitely more than Sara, older and more quiet-and-reserved-type.” She nodded understandingly. “I guess when you have siblings you become like that. One’s always more this than that.” The thought led to others. “You and Samar are like that.” And she went on to explain the difference: Samar Api was more intelligent but in a grown-up way, a way in which girls grew up much faster than boys, who were generally more blunt, though Tara Tanvir herself was more like boys, then, because she liked to say what was on her mind.
“Tell me something,” she said. “Does Samar ever bitch me out?”
I said, “No, Tara . . .”
Her look was unrelenting.
“No way, man!”
“You’re telling the truth, na?” She was solemn now.
“Of course, Tara . . .” There was no other way.
“I think,” she said, untying and then retying her hair into a ponytail with practiced swiftness, “that it’s good to know what people think. Like even with your friends you should know. I d
on’t know. I guess I like to find out beforehand, like I want to know before it’s all over town, you know? Like I do not want to find out on the last minute.” She waved it away. “Like I’m so glad to have you guys”—she hugged it to her heart—“I’m so grateful to have real friends. Like Samar and me are like this”—she held up two fingers in a knot—“and I thank my lucky stars for that. I just don’t ever want it to go wrong, you know?”
It had crossed over and gone beyond.
I said, “Ya, man, you should, definitely you should.” And it had gone nowhere in the end, but still had the shape of a discovery, of something that was agreed upon and settled.
Samar Api climbed into the jeep and her perfume came in a gush.
She switched on the car light. Its dusty glow fell on her forehead, her cheeks and her chin, and brought them out as if for the first time. She was looking inside her handbag and frowning.
It was dark in the lane outside, the houses sharply outlined against the dusk. Somewhere a car roared, turned and vanished. Again the night was silent.
Tara Tanvir looked at the time on her watch and said it was late.
“I know,” said Samar Api. “Let’s go.” She put away the small round mirror, zipped up her bag and sat back in the seat. She looked at her window and sent up a hand to hold the strap.
The jeep was roused, and moved away from the high white gate with the spears at the top.
Tara Tanvir started the music. It was a song about a lover, sung by a girl, the words rapped behind her by a boy to the fast beat.
“What’s the latest?” said Tara Tanvir, and turned in her seat at the front of the jeep.
Samar Api said, “Nothing. We just talked.”
“About what?”
“Stupid things,” said Samar Api.
“Did he say I love you?”
“Not yet. But I haven’t said it either.”
“That’s good.”
The song had changed, and the same woman was singing about having sweet dreams at night.
Samar Api said, “He’s simple.”