by Ali Sethi
“I don’t know, Jamal,” she said. “I just don’t know anymore.” She wanted reassurance, and the telephone cord was wound up around her finger.
She listened to what he was saying.
“But why are you saying it like it’s my fault?”
“Ya, but why are you saying it like it’s my fault?”
“But it’s not my fault . . .”
“Ya, but you’re saying it.”
Abruptly she was accusing him of saying things to upset her and of not saying enough when he should have; earlier occasions were recalled now and hurled collectively. And it lit up her features and her voice before it left her with the dread of having gone too far. “Okay, Jamal, I’m sorry. Just forget it—please just forget it.”
She hung up the phone and stared at it.
“Samar Api . . .” I said.
But she shook her head vehemently and looked away in time to hide the tears.
“Zaki, I think it’s my fault.”
It was afternoon of the next day, and the gloom of the night had lifted. In its place now stood a spirit of self-examination, a hard new wish to identify the problems and an attendant belief in the remedial powers of honesty and reason.
“I think I overreacted. But he should know I’m sensitive. But I should know he’s sensitive too.” The reasoning had led to a dilemma.
She consulted the horoscope in the newspapers.
“See,” she said, “he’s a Cancer. He’s like a crab. He’s moody but he’s also sensitive.”
And she looked for herself.
“And I’m a Capricorn! O God, it’s so true. It says I’m stubborn and this week I should try not to be so stubborn. It says I should swallow my pride.” She was glad to know it. “I can’t be proud, Zaki. You can’t be proud in a relationship. You have to learn to compromise.”
She had it confirmed on the phone by Tara Tanvir, who told her that it was true, she was stubborn and she could be proud. And she had been unfair to Jamal, who was simple and blunt by nature and could not be expected to attend to the needs of a hotheaded Capricorn.
“O God,” she said afterward. “I’m like a total bitch!” She was considering it for the first time. It was exciting. “Zaki, do you think I’m a bitch? Zaki, you have to be honest!”
It was turning into a joke.
I said, “Sometimes.”
She gasped—she was shocked! She threw a protesting pillow in my face, and I threw it back with twice the force, and we ended up having a pillow fight.
She laughed and I laughed.
“O God, Zaki!” She was laughing and grimacing at the same time, hugging her stomach with gaseous pain. “O God, stop it . . .”
We laughed and gasped and blew whistles.
“Seriously,” she said, sitting up and placing the pillow in her lap, “what do you think I should do?”
“About what?”
“This thing,” she said, and waved at the wall. “How do I fix it?”
I said she could call him.
“But no, na”—she slapped the pillow in her lap—“I have to do something special, something that makes up for being such a bloody bitch.”
In the end she decided to buy him a present, a cologne and a selection of songs on an audiocassette that she would ask the man at Off Beat to record for her. She would have the items wrapped and delivered to him at his house. And then she would wait for him to call her.
We stood over her bed and counted her savings, depleted by recent outings to restaurants and cafés. And we talked about what to get him, the kinds of things as well as the prices.
“I think we have enough,” she said, and stacked up the notes in her hand.
But there was still the uncertainty of her confinement. Barkat and Naseem drove her to the tuition center in the afternoon and waited now for her in the lane. Naseem hadn’t told anyone in the house. But she had promised nothing, and the threat of disclosure remained. One day, watching Samar Api emerge with Tara Tanvir from the Lyceum building after the math lesson had ended, Naseem said, “From now on you will not be seen with that girl.”
“Why?” said Samar Api.
“Buss,” said Naseem.
“Listen to your elders,” said Barkat.
At home it was said that Naseem was turning into a nuisance. But Daadi said nuisances were necessary, and only accumulated with age, starting with marriage itself, the mother-in-law and the sisters-in-law, and children too with their demands, and then daughters-in-law, until one was left with oneself and found that that was the biggest nuisance of all.
“Zaki,” she said. “I need you to do me a favor.”
She wanted me to go to the market and buy the present, the cologne as well as the selection of songs. “And you can say you’re getting them for yourself.”
But I didn’t have the money.
“So you can say I got them for you.”
She explained that it was important for her to stay in the house for some time; she had to recover the earlier freedoms. She didn’t think it would take her more than a month. And she was thinking ahead to the future: the subjects she was going to study for her A-level exams, and her graduation, timed to coincide with her engagement; she was going to have his family solemnize the relationship in a hanh ceremony, an exchange of rings that was not binding but would enable her to meet him without these constraints.
I went to the market with her money. Isa and Moosa took me in their car, which was being driven today by Moosa. He was still too young to apply for a provisional license. It didn’t stop him from driving the car with confidence, with swift movements of the steering wheel, making a style even out of the mistakes.
Isa shouted.
“Chill,” said Moosa, and tittered.
We went first to Off Beat with the list of songs. The shop was located in the upper alcove of a small plaza on Main Boulevard. It was a hot day, and the shop’s windows were tinted black against the sun. The air inside was suddenly cold. The stacks of CDs and audiocassettes went all around the walls, on shelves made of glass that were reflected in the narrow mirrors that stood at regular intervals and reached up to the ceiling.
The man behind the glass counter was sitting on a stool with his arms crossed over his chest.
I showed him the list of songs.
“Do you have all of them?” It was not unusual for songs on an Off Beat selection to end unfinished because the reel had ended, or to not be on the tape because the man behind the counter hadn’t found them.
The man held up the list and angled his head and raised both his eyebrows and sighed.
The man was nodding. It was possible.
I said, “How long?”
He thought about it and said, “Tuesday.”
But it was Wednesday.
“Sorry,” said the man, not in apology but in refusal.
“Sunday,” I said.
“Closed,” he said.
“You open it.”
He wasn’t willing to consider it.
“Magazine,” I said. “Long article about you and your shop.”
Now he was being stubborn because he had to.
I placed the money on the counter, on top of the list.
He sniggered contemptuously, an adult beholding a child.
“Buss, buss,” said Isa, and raised a palm in intervention. “Saturday the shop is open. So five o’clock it is. You keep the money and we will come and pick it up. All set.”
And again at Al-Fatah, on the first floor, among the mirrors and the products and the swarming shoppers, we found our way to the cologne counter, where the bottles were kept in their cases on shelves behind a sliding glass pane. The salesman was a dark, balding man, and was presently writing up receipts in a notepad.
We waited before him with our hands on the counter.
He looked up inquiringly.
“Boss,” said Isa. “And Cool Water. And what else?”
“Versace Blue Jeans,” I said.
“Blue Jeans,” said
Isa.
The man turned to the shelves behind him and located the boxes from three different corners. One by one he placed them on the counter.
I wanted to open the boxes and take out the bottles and smell them.
“Cannot,” said the salesman. “Sealed.” As if to eliminate any remaining doubts he pointed behind him to a sign on the wall that said FIXED PRICE PLEASE.
Isa asked for the prices; only Versace Blue Jeans was less than a thousand rupees. But Isa wanted me to get Cool Water—he was familiar with the smell and insisted that it was better than the smell of Versace Blue Jeans.
“You can come back with more money,” he said.
There was no more money to bring back.
I said, “I’ll take Blue Jeans. It looks much better.”
And the box was sent with a peon-boy in an Al-Fatah plastic bag to the front desk for payment and collection.
“Zaki, this is not right.”
She wasn’t happy with the sheet of wrapping paper: there were too many lines in the pattern. She said she had wanted something simple, plain and elegant (she had said nothing of the sort at the time of designation). And she was dismayed to learn that the selection was going to take until the weekend to record. “I wanted to send it all today or tomorrow,” she said. “And now I’m going to have to wait until Sunday. . . .”
She called Tara. And Tara told her that it was not necessary to send presents.
“Why are you even with him?” said Tara.
“I don’t know, man . . .” She was trying now to feel sorry for herself.
“Seriously,” said Tara Tanvir, “I’m only saying this because it’ll be helpful to you. I don’t have any problems with Jamal or anything. I think he’s a nice guy, a great guy, I just don’t see the point of this thing between you two, like I don’t see where it’s going.”
They talked about the relationship’s strengths and weaknesses, the fact that it was perpetually long distance now, since it was difficult for her to see him without getting caught, and he wasn’t even trying to console her.
“And it’s not like I don’t understand,” said Samar Api. “I know I overreacted, I know he’s sensitive, it’s a misunderstanding and people have them all the time, but it’s like grow up, you know?”
“Frankly,” said Tara Tanvir, “I don’t think you overreacted.”
“You think so?”
“Completely. You just did not overreact. It’s a fact. Why don’t you face it?” And she gave the same reasoning: it was not that she disliked Jamal, but more a question of compatibility between two very different people.
“I guess opposites attract,” said Samar Api.
“I guess,” said Tara Tanvir.
They discussed it over the next few days on the phone, Tara Tanvir insisting that Samar Api and Jamal were two very different people, and implying with her vehemence that it was time to end the relationship. Samar Api listened to the justifications of her own behavior, and found herself agreeing with Tara Tanvir. On Saturday the recorded selection arrived, was combined with the cologne and wrapped in the wrapping paper. And on Monday she took it in her bag to school and gave it to Tara Tanvir.
She returned from school.
“What happened?”
She said she had given Tara the present. “And she took it and all. But she was all sad about it. She goes, you don’t listen to me, you don’t care what I say. I was like, what’s wrong with you, just take the bloody present and give it to him, can’t you do this for a friend? But she goes, you’re the one who’s selfish. Can you believe that? She actually said that. I was like, you’ve lost it, woman.”
She waited by the phone. She went into the next room to check the time on the clock. She tried calling Tara’s house, but no one was answering.
“Should I call Jamal?”
She decided against it.
She went again to check the clock and came back and said that it had now been more than an hour.
She dialed Tara’s numbers, the upstairs number and the downstairs number, again and again, until someone picked up the phone.
It was the Far Eastern maid.
“Give the phone to Tara.”
“Maadaam in shower.”
But Samar Api insisted, and was made to hold on the line while the maid went looking, a scratchy orchestra keeping her unentertained in the meantime.
“I don’t know why it’s taking this long,” she said, holding the phone away from her mouth. “I need to know his reaction and all.”
The music had stopped.
“Did you give it to him?”
Tara Tanvir said she had.
“What did he say?”
“He liked it, I guess. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“Tara, why are you being such a bitch?”
Tara Tanvir laughed, released from the obligations of friendship. “I’m being a bitch? Well, excuse me.”
They were calm.
“Okay,” said Samar Api. “So what did he say?”
Tara Tanvir was vague.
“I can call him myself, you know, Tara? I asked you because I thought you were my friend.”
“Oh, please,” said Tara Tanvir.
Samar Api said, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” said Tara Tanvir.
“You think you can fuck up everyone’s life because your own life is so fucked up? Just because you have your car and your driver all the time? You think you can play with people?”
And now Tara Tanvir laughed and said, “You’re so full of shit. Your family knows it, your friends know it, and guess what: Jamal knows it too.”
“Don’t take his fucking name, okay? Don’t talk about my family, okay?” She was weakened and it was showing.
“Seriously,” said Tara Tanvir, “you need to sort out your shit. Because I am so not dealing with it.”
“Fine. Don’t.” She was dialing again.
I said, “What are you doing?”
She was calling Jamal.
But it went directly to his answering machine. His voice was asking her to leave a message.
“Zaki,” she said, sobbing, holding up the phone.
“Samar Api,” I said. I placed the pillow in my lap, placed her head on it and took the phone away from her hand. “You have to stop crying, Samar Api. You have to look at the bright side.”
There was no bright side.
“He’ll call you, Samar Api. Just stop crying.”
“You think so?” And briefly, amazingly, the tears stopped.
“O God, Samar Api,” I said, and stared at the wall. “Obviously.”
9
On the weekend Chhoti came to the house; she appeared at the door in a state of acute physical unease, her face sweating and inflamed and her cheeks puffing in and out. She fell on her back on the sofa, and the cushions nodded with the suddenness of her weight.
Daadi attempted to rise from the bed.
“Sit, sit,” said Chhoti, and put up a palm.
Daadi was looking at her sister.
“The heat,” said Chhoti.
“It is not the heat,” said Daadi.
“Too hot over there.”
“It is not the heat.”
“What to tell you.”
“Look at your face.”
“It is the heat.”
“You never listen. You never have and you never will.”
The comment was also a sentence to the life it lamented.
“I am telling you,” said Chhoti, laughing now to show her recovery, “I am fine. It is only the heat. Over there it is much worse than here, even in the car it can’t be avoided.” And she told of the recent rounds of load-shedding in Barampur, where the sight of electrical wires was still a novelty.
Daadi wanted to know what the doctor had said.
“Sugar,” said Chhoti with a sigh, and with a habitual frown to suggest an insignificant ailment, “and blood and heart. The same.” Her breaths were more deliberate.
Daadi asked to know the readings on the blood-pressure pump.
Chhoti told her.
Daadi said, “You are not taking your medicines. It is on your face. Why do you do it?”
Chhoti said there was only one clinic in the village. And the nearest hospital was in Okara Town, which was an hour by road and required an effort Chhoti wasn’t willing to make.
“It is your health,” said Daadi.
“I don’t care,” said Chhoti.
“You are careless.”
“So I am.”
“You will die.”
“So I will.”
We went to Daadi’s room in the evening. Naseem was sitting on the carpet and peeling raw vegetables into the perforated steel bowl. Daadi and Chhoti were sitting on the sofa and watching the Indian actress, now retired, who was presently being interviewed on the Indian channel in Behind the Scenes, a program in which the reminiscences of showbiz personalities were interspersed with songs and dialogues from their films.
Daadi was repeating the words of the song on TV.
Chhoti was watching her and slapping her knee.
“Oi hoi,” said Daadi, laughing.
“Too much,” said Chhoti, “too much.”
Naseem was amused to see that it had caused such a sensation.
“At least you are young,” said Daadi. “At my age these things are adventures.”
“Your age,” said Chhoti, “is nothing.” And she gave the example of her three sisters-in-law. “Their teeth are going,” she said. “But their hearts are still beating.”
Daadi was captivated.
Chhoti said, “And with cooks and drivers.”
Daadi said, “It cannot be.”
Chhoti closed her eyes and sealed her mouth, then opened them and said, “Some women are like that. They cannot be contained by God or man.” And she touched her earlobes in the gesture for repentance.
Daadi said, “Your life is full of glamour.”
Chhoti said, “No, no.”
“Yes,” said Daadi. “You cannot deny it. You are one of the movers and shakers.”