In the City by the Sea

by Kamila Shamsie

  ‘Your mother’s the most beautiful woman here,’ Zehra said. She stood on tip-toes, though she had outgrown the balcony railing some years ago. Hasan nodded. Ami had surveyed herself earlier in the evening and laughed that she would look like a crow among Birds of Paradise, but as she waved up at the balcony Hasan found himself standing a little taller and moving his face into the light so that anyone who looked up would know he was her son.

  She was wearing something new. ‘Angarkha,’ Zehra said. ‘Originally a man’s coat, but you lot didn’t appreciate it enough so we adapted it.’ Ami’s angarkha, worn over a shalwar, was black and fell to mid-calf. Gold paisleys bordered by gold piping made a dramatic hem and played off against the gold and emerald choker around Ami’s throat. She had brushed her hair off her face and her cheekbones challenged gravity.

  ‘Admit, admit, o vision in green!’ Uncle Latif appeared beneath the balcony, resplendent in raw silk sherwani, and held out his arms towards the Widow. He had shifted the excess pounds from his stomach on to his chest and the effort made his voice choke. ‘Eat your words without salt. This is grander than grand, eh? More okay than dokay?’

  The Widow laughed and took his arm. ‘Yes, and I’m sure Nero was an excellent fiddler. By the way, did you know you’re compromising my honour by not marrying me? One of your friends just told me so.’

  ‘Take me to this friend! Let me say, “I’ve tried to compromise her, but she just won’t allow it”.’

  Zehra refused to explain what Uncle Latif meant, which proved she didn’t know herself and was just looking amused to disguise her ignorance. ‘Come on,’ she said, when Hasan tried to catch her out. ‘It’s time for dinner.’ She raced to her own balcony with the speed that had once prompted Uncle Latif to tell her to slow down for modesty’s sake lest her clothes fail to keep up with her.

  Zehra’s balcony looked down on the longer, slimmer part of the garden where chikoo trees gave way to squat shrubs that did not impede wall-climbing. The Bodyguard had placed five wooden tables end to end in the garden, their splintered ricketiness concealed beneath a starched white tablecloth. Five brass warming-pans glowed above spirit-lamps. Further back in the garden, earthenware bowls of kheer were paired together, one covering the other to keep the flies away. It was a mark of well set kheer that when the bearers separated the bowls like musicians unclashing cymbals not a speck of kheer would dislodge. But before that could happen, there was the main course to attend to.

  Uncle Latif signalled five bearers who each placed a hand on the covers of the warming-pans and, as one, raised the lids. There was no need to announce that dinner was served – the aroma was dinner-gong enough. There was pulao with peas nestling in the rice; prawn vindaloo which made Hasan’s eyes stream and throat burn just from looking at it; murgh mussalum made with such tender pieces of chicken that Imran was seen hugging three members of the Bodyguard after he sampled it; fried okra, crisped to crunchiness; and, of course, the ultimate medley of meat, onion and spices – Imran’s kharay masalay ki korma. At the end of the table a basket of na’an was surrounded by various achaars, chutneys and the delicacy which Aba claimed Shakespeare had foretold: ‘Such stuffed chillies as dreams are made on.’

  Businessmen, artists, army officers and journalists clinked glasses together in honour of appetite; estranged couples shared bowls of kheer; Ami and Aba danced together after the music stopped playing.

  ‘Oh, Artemis,’ Hasan whispered. ‘Let them live.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Skal ego com par tram du sumer’s daeg.’

  Hasan frowned as he heard Aba’s voice drift across the garden. When Aba started translating lines of poetry into their root words it was clear something was worrying him; but when the poetry was Shakespeare’s sonnets . . .

  ‘Bad. Badder than bad,’ Uncle Latif whispered to Hasan, wagging his head from side to side. ‘Under General Circumstances he’s calm by Sonnet Six, but here we must have Major Circumstance which has propelled him to Sonnet Eighteen with no sign of brakes coming into effect. I think I will crawl back to my side of the wall until called for.’

  For a moment Hasan was tempted to follow Uncle Latif’s loping stride out of the gate, but something in the hunch of Aba’s shoulder changed his mind.

  ‘Swa lang lifian this and this gefan lif to tram.’ Aba slapped a twig against his thigh as he paced up and down the garden.

  ‘Aba?’

  ‘Huss!’ Aba came to a stop and rocked back and forth on his heels. ‘How was the match? And how did you get that?’ Aba ran the twig along the chlorophyll mark that stained Hasan’s white trousers from thigh to shin.

  ‘We won. I scored fifty-three. Clean bowled at the end. And I took an incredible diving catch. At mid-wicket. The stain is my souvenir. I’ll never wash these trousers. What’s bothering you?’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t remember the rhyming couplet in Sonnet Eleven. That’s a little discomforting. Plus, you’ve suddenly adopted a speech pattern that resembles bursts of machinegun fire. And if all this wasn’t enough, my wife is in her studio trying to convince two of the most influential men in the art world that they should exhibit her paintings internationally. They’ve been in there nearly an hour now and the suspense is driving me ga-ga.’

  ‘Deep breaths,’ Hasan suggested. ‘I thought they weren’t coming until tomorrow.’

  Aba looked pained. ‘We all thought that. So your mother went off shopping and suddenly the bell rang and there they were. And I had to entertain them.’ Aba’s look of horror suggested that waltzing with a rhinoceros might have been a more soothing way of spending his evening. ‘God knows how I managed. But I think I did a pretty good job, talking about this and that, everything and nothing.

  ‘You mean MVG?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Male Vacuous Garrulousness. Gul Mumani told me all about it.’

  There was no one in the world with a laugh as infectious as Aba’s. It started as a booming sound – the rapid beating of a drum – meshed with the growl of a revving motorcycle engine, and finally melded into the swoosh! of palm-leaves slapping together in a monsoon shower. When the three sounds achieved a crescendo their contagion was so great even the lilies dropped their posture of indifferent elegance and swayed from side to side, and the voice of the muezzin cracked over the loudspeaker as he called the faithful to prayer. Hasan usually prayed at maghrib, brought to his knees in adulation by the sunset, but today the laughter seemed worship enough. He could almost, oh-so-nearly, see his own laughter rising up in the air, riding on the backs of Aba’s three laughs as they spiralled around the day’s last shaft of sunlight.

  ‘Do you always have so much fun while I’m not around?’

  Ami stood in the driveway – alone – arms akimbo in mock authority. Peter Pan, Hasan thought, marking her posture and the green of her kameez. Leader of Lost Boys.

  ‘What happened? Where are they?’ Aba said.

  ‘They just left.’ She grinned and flung out her arms. ‘They love my stuff!’ Aba whooped with joy and swung her around in his arms. Hasan found it a little hard to be quite so enthusiastic about the inevitable but he succumbed to the impulse to turn cartwheels.

  ‘How shall we celebrate?’ Aba said.

  ‘Tea,’ said Ami.

  What were those words Salman Mamoo had sung to Ami last year when she refused to wake up in time for a sunrise hike? We savoured the dew, wrapped tongues round the mist/Now your taste-buds mainly crave tea, dear sis.

  ‘Everything A-okay?’ Uncle Latif yelled down from his balcony.

  ‘Better than A-okay,’ Ami yelled back. ‘Come over for dinner later and we’ll tell you.’

  ‘Ho, Shehryar!’ Uncle Latif said. ‘What’s the etymology of “etymology”?’

  ‘From the Greek etymos meaning “true”, akin to eteos which also means “true”, which comes from the Latin esse meaning “to be”,’ Aba shouted back. ‘Why are you pretending to be interested?’

  Uncle Latif held up his massi
ve red dictionary. ‘Because I already looked it up. From esse meaning “to be”! So in his solo-liliquy Hamlet was saying “Etymology or not etymology”. Finally the light, the light. This is why he’s your favourite literary character.’

  The new cook – Atif? Asif? Arif? – brought three cups of tea and a box of wheat biscuits into the TV room. Ami and Aba sang between sips, inventing lyrics to old tunes, inventing dance steps to old lyrics. Aba stepped on Ami’s foot mid-twirl and she responded by biting his knuckle.

  ‘You’ve been spending too much time at the office,’ Ami said. ‘You taste of paper.’

  Ami wasn’t usually given to such careless remarks. Referring to the taste of paper was a little like referring to the taste of chicken, as though there weren’t hundreds of levels of fowl taste ranging from Imran’s chicken korma to Farah Khala’s half-raw chicken in ketchup that wasn’t palatable even when she called it poulet avec tomatre.

  Last year, Nargis Lotia had acquired sudden glory when her uncle returned from overseas with a diary for Nargis that had both combination lock and key lock. Nargis wouldn’t let anyone see inside the diary, even though she hadn’t started writing in it yet, but she did tear out the middle page and pass it around the class. The paper was so smooth and thick and creamy that Hasan couldn’t resist tearing off a corner and putting it in his mouth. After that, everyone wanted a taste and Nargis was forced to rip out another page. Hasan tasted the paper again in his mouth, its corner cutting his tongue like a particularly sour lemon. It was hard to imagine Aba’s knuckle tasting anything like that. Too bony.

  ‘What does Aba usually taste like?’ Hasan asked. ‘When he’s not at the office so much?’

  ‘Sea-air,’ Ami smiled. ‘With the slightest hint of crab.’ She touched Aba at the place where his neck met his shoulder. ‘Especially right there.’ Hasan wanted to ask Ami why she knew such a strange piece of information, but she and Aba were dancing again.

  Hasan slid his fingers along the face of his cricket bat. It was slightly bowed in the centre, testimony to Hasan’s gift for repeatedly striking the ball with the centre of his bat to produce the most wonderful sound in the world: Thock! Thock! Thock! Thock! Hasan recalled his afternoon innings. Thock! Aba was laughing again. Hasan closed his eyes and froze the moment. On a day like this even shin burns were sources of delight.

  Outside the gate a car horn beeped peh-peh-pehpehpeh.

  Salman Mamoo’s code!

  Hasan charged towards the open window, and slid out from under the grilles. His shoulder caught against one pointed grille in his haste, but he barely noticed the tear of fabric and skin. He could hear Ami and Aba running out through the door, and he permitted himself a momentary smile at his own litheness and agility. Hasan dropped down on the ground, off-balanced on to his hands and knees, picked himself up and rounded the corner into the driveway at the same time as Ami and Aba ran out through the front door and Atif-Asif-Arif flung open the gate.

  Only Gul Mumani was in the car.

  She hurtled into the driveway, screeched to a halt, threw the handbrake and, with the ignition still running, she half-fell out of the car and into Ami and Aba’s arms, weeping.

  ‘They’ve taken him away. They’ve taken Salman to prison.’

  Chapter Nine

  At first Gul Mumani’s words didn’t mean anything. At least, they didn’t mean anything they should have. Hasan heard ‘prism’ for ‘prison’ and pictured Salman Mamoo sitting cross-legged in a glass room, capturing light in cupped palms and sifting it through his fingers into rainbow colours. But then Hasan looked across the bonnet of the car and something in Ami’s and Aba’s faces made him think, ‘Some day one of them will die, and I will have to look after the other one.’

  ‘Prison?’ Ami said, and Hasan was grateful to have something else to think about.

  Gul Mumani was sobbing and trying to dry her tears on Aba’s sleeve at the same time. Prison, Hasan said to himself. Prison. The word sank down to his stomach, cold and smooth.

  Ami put an arm around Gul Mumani’s shoulders and led her into the house. Gul Mumani seemed barely aware of what was happening and kept repeating a single phrase over and over. The words disappeared and became a rhythm that was echoed in the throb of her Corolla’s engine and the mating call of birds. Tu-whit-to-woo. What will they do?

  Aba’s brown eyes were suddenly hazel, as though shock had stripped away a layer of colouring. ‘They won’t do anything,’ he said patting Hasan’s shoulder. The gesture should have been comforting but Hasan couldn’t help feeling that Aba wanted to reassure himself that Hasan was still there. ‘They won’t do anything,’ Aba repeated, his hand capping Hasan’s head. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  I’m not, Hasan nearly said. He wasn’t quite sure what he was feeling, but it had nothing of the intensity of panic he was used to experiencing when a ball smacked off his bat and climbed in the air, giving a fielder ample time to get under it before it descended.

  In the TV room, Gul Mumani was holding up a vanity case and wiping away smudges of mascara from her face with a tissue. She closed the case with a snap and made a final dab near her eye which left a curve of mascara smeared across her cheek. The smear was located beneath two moles. Hasan fingered the yellow and black markers on the side table and considered drawing a Smiley on Gul Mumani’s cheek. Ami put out an arm and drew him close.

  ‘I knew it as soon as I woke up yesterday, six am, up before next-door’s rooster even,’ Gul Mumani said. ‘My eyes just popped open and I looked at the clock and thought, that’s strange, because (a) what kind of hour is that to wake up? and (b) I couldn’t remember what I had been dreaming of, and Sai, you know that’s not normal for me, although all right such a thing isn’t necessarily whatchamacallit, portentous.’ Gul Mumani paused to light a cigarette. She did not take a puff, but held the tip just inches from her face and inhaled through her nose. The smoke-scent combined with her rose-scent to create the odour of decaying wreaths.

  ‘So I went outside because I couldn’t go back to sleep and I didn’t want to wake up Saloo. I was walking around the garden and I heard the guards outside, well, didn’t hear what they were saying exactly, but heard the tone of their voices and I can’t tell you, I felt a fear, not just fear, but a fear, one particular variety, like the kind Rustum felt when he bent over the dying soldier he had struck down, the young one, Sohrab, and Sohrab said, “ My father will kill you for this. My father, Rustum.” That fear – the one that knows you will undo the dead soldier’s collar and find there the locket you sent to your child whom you haven’t seen all these years. That fear. I ran inside and shook Saloo awake. You know what he’s usually like – he’s like you, Shehryar; tells me my imagination is running a marathon. But not this time. He came outside with me, and he felt it too.

  ‘Maybe he knew right away. It’s possible, because straight away he said, let’s call Saira, just to chat, and I said, baba, she’s in the same time-zone as you are, you can’t phone at this o’clock. But he picked up the phone and without dialling said, oh yes, you’re right. Too early. What was I thinking? Let’s cook breakfast. Well, Saira, you know the last time your brother acted so nonchalant a bomb had just missed blowing him up, so I picked up the phone and it was dead.

  ‘Well, what to do? Salman just said, oh it means nothing. Phones are forever dysfunctional. So we’re in the kitchen, it’s Zahoor’s day off, making breakfast and a guard – the really courteous one with the amazing jaw, you know? – appears and says we’re not to step outside, can’t even go in the garden . . .’

  ‘What did Salman Mamoo do?’

  ‘He offered the man a fried egg. The guard said, no thank you, I have high cholesterol.’ She inhaled cigarette smoke once more and let out a sound that was half-sigh, half-laugh. ‘The rest of the day went so slowly it made seven-hour lay-overs in airports seem double-speed in comparison. We couldn’t understand whats or whys, and neither of us was willing to really talk because if we did we knew the word ‘assassination’
would pop out. But I was thinking it, thinking it until my toes curled and wouldn’t uncurl, until Salman said, look if they wanted to get rid of me they’d just do it. No shilly-shallying.

  ‘So six o’clock the pine-cones fell and it was the first day since this whole thing started that Salman hadn’t stood outside watching them hail around him. He started to go crazy, you know, pacing around our bedroom, muttering to himself. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but I was afraid it was terrible and the wire-taps would pick it up so I said shut up, Saloo, shut up, and there we were yelling at each other when the garden sweeper threw a pine-cone in through the window. Salman calmed down then but as for me, I mean, I appreciate symbolic gestures and all that but I’m happier when one doesn’t hit me on the head.’ She fished a pine-cone out of her handbag and handed it to Hasan. ‘Here, I know you appreciate these more than I do.’ Hasan took the pine-cone but what he really wanted was to hug Gul Mumani.

  ‘Then, maybe an hour or hour and a half ago, we heard more vehicles drive up to, and then inside, our gate, and Salman walked out of the front door when he heard them. He told me to stay inside – what sort of John Wayne comment is that! – of course I told him to shut up. Then I followed him out, and in the driveway there were two jeeps with tinted windows, unmarked licence plates. The doors of both jeeps opened and out came six men, military men, with guns, though not thank God! pointed at us, just visible so we would know. They walked up to Salman and he saluted them. Will someone explain that to me? I was about to spit at them. I mean, execute the messengers I say, if they agree to carry the message. But they saluted in return, which surprised me, and one said, “I’m going to have to ask you sir, to come with us.” I thought they were a firing squad.’