Hasan rubbed the Vimto off his finger. But I don’t have a ring of invisibility. I don’t know how to get a ring of invisibility. Let’s face it, there probably is no such thing as a ring of invisibility. He stared at his reflection in the window. If I could, would I do it? Would I kill the President?
Chapter Twenty
‘Thank God you’re finally home, Zed. I’ve realized something horrible,’ Hasan said, sitting down on the grass beside Zehra, who was shelling peas for Imran. ‘I prefer daytime to night.’
‘And somehow the world still goes on turning,’ Zehra replied, looking up from the pea-pods just long enough for Hasan to see that her day at the pool with Najam and crowd had gauzed her eyes red. Zehra was usually particular about wearing her goggles in chlorinated water. Hasan decided not to remark on the matter.
Hasan ran his thumbnail down the stitching of a pea-pod and opened up the casing to reveal three perfectly rounded peas inside. ‘There’s something really wonderful about this,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s so simple, it’s moving, you know?’
Zehra raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh God, you’re going to turn into one of those boys who write poems entitled “For I Have Seen the Miracle Of Sunsets” at the age of sixteen and never have more than three words in a line.’ Hasan stood up to leave and Zehra pulled him down. ‘Hey, I’m the moody adolescent here, okay? So, what’s the scene?’
The nice thing about Zehra was that she could hear four words for every word that Hasan spoke. When Hasan finished telling Zehra about the events in the kitchen the night before, and how he couldn’t sleep after that until sunrise, she said, ‘It’s all about the way time moves when a wave pulls you under,’ and her answer was so perfect Hasan bit a raw pea. The pea was strangely sweet.
‘So how do you feel now?’ Zehra said.
Hasan shrugged. ‘Like an eleven-year-old who’s sitting in the City while the President is in the capital surrounded by guards. But at night, when I read part of The Lord of the Rings, I really believe that I can do, you know, something.’
‘Heard of Don Quixote?’ Zehra said.
‘Donkey Who?’
Zehra just smiled and rolled three peas out of the final pea-pod. ‘Let’s see what’s on TV,’ she said, standing up.
Ogle was in the television room when Hasan and Zehra walked in, gnawing at something that looked suspiciously like Hasan’s cricket ball. Hasan was about to yell at the dog, but before he could do so Ogle lifted up a bandaged paw.
‘What’s happened to him?’ Hasan cried out.
‘Fight with a chicken,’ Zehra said. ‘Vicious thing swiped him with a claw.’ She grinned. ‘I’ve asked Imran to make chicken cutlets for dinner tonight.’
‘That’s sick, Zehra!’
‘The revenge psychology is strong in today’s society. That’s why we think Hamlet is a wimp for delaying.’ Zehra had an annoying knack for lifting excerpts from grown-up’s conversations and repeating them with utter confidence, as though she actually knew what she was saying. Hasan opened his mouth to question her, but she forestalled him with a flick of the remote-control. The TV blared into life.
‘Why does he always air his speeches when my favourite shows are supposed to be on?’ Zehra moaned.
It was the President. He wasn’t talking about Salman Mamoo. Zehra handed Hasan the remote-control and pointed to the green button at the top right-hand corner. Hasan pressed the mute button and, with his voice gone, the President’s features seemed suddenly exaggerated. Hasan stared hard at the shine of his bald head, the hollows beneath his eyes, the boot-polish quality of his dyed moustache. Hasan looked at the President’s jowls and imagined pulling down on their sag, way down to the ground, then releasing them to snap back up and slap his cheeks. The image wasn’t as satisfying as it used to be.
Hasan lowered his eyelids until only a tiny slit remained open, and the President’s features blurred and became porridge. He tried to superimpose Salman Mamoo’s face on the President’s, tried to see Salman Mamoo sitting in the television studio addressing the nation, but no matter how hard he tried Salman Mamoo’s face would not come into focus. Hasan could feel the raw pea bouncing around his insides.
‘Look Huss!’ Zehra said. ‘His hand. It’s bandaged.’
Hasan looked from the President to Ogle, and back again. White bandage on left hand. White bandage on left paw. Ogle sat up, cocked his head to a side and used his back leg to scratch his right ear. The President scratched his right earlobe.
‘Zehra! Did you see?’
Zehra laughed. ‘So they scratched in unison. Quinky-dinky.’
The world was happening too fast, thoughts clamouring and rushing at such a speed Hasan became dizzy. ‘It can’t all be coincidence, Zed. Listen, just count . . .’
‘Stop yelling.’
‘They have the same birthday, all right? And the scar – look, over the eyebrow. They fell ill at the same time . . .’
‘I was ill then too, remember?’
‘And now the bandage and the scratching. Come on, admit it’s strange.’
Zehra snorted in derision. ‘Are you the animal side of our President?’ she said, tickling Ogle. ‘Oh no! Mix up! You got the human side. Help! That’s why people call him a son of a bitch.’
Hasan could hear her laughing as he ran down the hall and out of the front door. The clouds had all rushed away, and the air was so dry it didn’t even carry the memory of rain. Hasan slammed his fist against the outer wall of the house. The physical pain jerked tears to his eyes but he fought them down, head tilted to the sun so that any drop of liquid that escaped would be instantly evaporated. He fisted his right hand, like Aba re-enacting his favourite Shakespearean scene, and shouted in a whisper, ‘You think I’ll weep. No, I’ll not weep. I have full cause of weeping but my heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I’ll weep.’
When he finished he felt absurd. He wandered into the garden and lay down on the just-mowed grass. Through the heat haze he watched sunset stream across the sky. Dribble of purple, diffusion of pink. Once, in such a moment, he had thrown back his head, shut his eyes and stuck out his tongue as far as it would go. Sky-purple dripped on to his tongue. He lay unmoving as the thick purple liquid slid down his throat. When he opened his eyes Salman Mamoo was sitting beside him holding a glass of pulpy plum juice.
‘Do something,’ Hasan whispered, his voice cracking as it hit the dry air. ‘Do something.’
But no matter how desperately he paddled towards action, some current whirled him backwards. Whirled him into an eddy of spirits, mangoes, parrots, dolphins and, now, dog. But Hasan hadn’t grown up by the sea for nothing. He knew it was best to go with the current while praying for the tide to change and sweep him back on course. Soon. For the moment, he found, as his feet were propelled down the street, the current was pulling him back to the Oldest Man.
But by the time he reached the Pink House he realized he had no idea how to phrase his thoughts, and decided to leave. The Oldest Man had seen him, though, and the topmost joint of one withered index finger jerked back and forth, beckoning Hasan forward.
Hasan drew nearer, grateful that the Oldest Man was alone. Hasan couldn’t say what he was going to say around anyone else. Not even Zehra. But the Oldest Man was used to such peculiar visitors that nothing surprised him.
About a year ago, a university student, notebook in hand, had asked the Oldest Man, ‘You’re not lonely, then? Who visits you?’
The Oldest Man replied, ‘Only the living.’
The student scribbled furiously in her notebook. ‘So you don’t believe in ghosts?’
The Oldest Man twitched his shoulders in a vague approximation of a shrug. ‘I think the dead have ostracized me for shunning their company for so long. That’s O-S-T-R-I-C-I-Z-E-D.’
With Hasan he was more forthcoming about his visitors.
‘They are: people from my village who are new and lost in the City; people whose grandparents owe me a debt; people to whose parents I owe
a debt; people who think I am a myth; people whose great-grandmothers once loved me; people who think old means wise; people who think wise means rich; researchers; and, thank you Allah, making all the rest tolerable, my friends – e.g., you.’
The researchers were Hasan’s favourites. They arrived at the Pink House, still smelling of aeroplanes, having been in the City just long enough to find a translator. The Oldest Man was always gracious enough to act as though the translator was needed. No matter how often he watched it, Hasan never tired of seeing the Oldest Man ‘do his act’: gesticulate to the Heavens, reiterate his love for simple pleasures, and, at least twice, say, ‘Have you really travelled across the waters?’
Today, though, the Oldest Man’s only companion was a crow, perched on his toe, with a piece of grass dangling rakishly from its mouth. The crow nodded at the Oldest Man and flew off when Hasan neared the hammock. The Oldest Man motioned Hasan to sit down. ‘So, Hasan, what is this question I can see getting ready to dive off your lips?’
Hasan shook his head. ‘I’m not even sure myself what the question is.’
The Oldest Man nodded. ‘Some say that is the beginning of wisdom. Myself, I call it confusion. But try.’
‘Okay. When I came here last you told me about the spirit, and how someone like the President must have imprisoned his spirit. I thought that meant he must have imprisoned it inside, you know? I mean, somewhere inside him. But, you know Zehra’s dog, don’t you?’
The Oldest Man chuckled. ‘When you live as long as I have you get used to hearing strange remarks collide together dharam! but that’s the most interesting one this decade. You mean the black dog? The one named after the President?’
Hasan nodded. ‘It was just a joke at first. Because they had the same birthday and a scar over the left eyebrow. But since then, there have been other things. They fell ill at the same time; Ogle was in a really strange, frisky mood the day Salman Mamoo was arrested; today, Ogle’s left paw is bandaged and so is the President’s left hand; and while the President’s speech was being broadcast live on television, he and Ogle scratched their ear at the same moment. And these similarities are only the ones I’ve noticed. So, I was wondering, I don’t know what, but I remember a couple of years ago I heard you saying something about animals being used for black magic . . . oh I don’t know!’
‘What are you saying? You think the President’s spirit has been imprisoned inside the dog? If that is so, and you need to break open the prison to free the spirit, where does that leave the dog?’
Hasan suddenly felt very embarrassed, as though he had been caught believing in the tooth-fairy. He tore a handful of grass from the ground, and shook his head. ‘I suppose it’s all just coincidence.’
The Oldest Man placed a shell against his ear and lay back. ‘When you play cricket you must keep your eye on each ball that is bowled your way, but you must also know which ones to leave alone, which ones to block defensively and which ones to hit over the boundary line. When you are in the last over of a championship match you may be inclined to hit everything you see, but what good will that do you? You try to hit the bouncer that you should duck under. Your bat misses it completely. The ball strikes your temple, whack! You retire hurt. You miss the chance to hit the next ball for a winning six! Goodbye happiness.’
Hasan threw his pieces of grass up in the air. The day after Salman Mamoo had been placed under house-arrest he had found his first moment of absolute calm while watching a cricket match on television. When the audio link was disrupted, shortly after the fall of Razzledazzle’s wicket, and the commentator’s voice disappeared, Hasan was triumphant about his ability to know exactly what was going on without any experts feeding him information about the length of the delivery and the merits of the batsman’s stance. (Aba, of course, noticed immediately that when the link was restored the commentator stopped referring to the new batsman and team captain by his first name – Salman – and started to call him by his last name – Akram. This was tremendously confusing since the other man at bat had the same last name. Only when Salman Akram was bowled out did the commentator yell, ‘Careless shot, Salman! Salman cracked under the pressure. Questions must arise about Salman’s leadership ability.’)
Trust the Oldest Man to take a game Hasan knew so intimately and talk about it in terms Hasan understood completely, yet still make little sense.
‘What were you like when you were my age?’ Hasan asked the Oldest Man. ‘Do you remember that?’
The Oldest Man opened his eyes wide. ‘Remember it? Better than today’s breakfast. I, too, was full of questions then. But I was also surrounded by people who had straight answers for everything. It instilled terrible habits in me.’
I wouldn’t mind some terrible habits, Hasan thought to himself, as he trudged back home, kicking a stone ahead of him. He kicked the stone all the way home, inside the driveway, through the front door and into his bedroom where Zehra was waiting for him, Ogle acting as her pillow.
‘I thought you would be laughing with me. But then you disappeared,’ she said. ‘So, what about Ogle and the President?’
Hasan shook his head. ‘Nothing. Straw-clutching. I just had to talk to the Oldest Man to clear my head.’
‘That’s a relief. I was afraid you would have a Hazrat Ibrahim moment. You know, something like, “God has spoken to me. Let’s slaughter Ogle, and maybe at the moment of sacrifice he’ll turn into the President.”‘
Hasan smiled. ‘No, I ducked that bouncer. Hey! I finally understood something the Oldest Man said. Besides, I haven’t been fitted with an audio connection to God.’ He was still smiling at the cleverness of that remark when Zehra spoke up again.
‘But if you had believed it? If the Oldest Man had told you there was a connection between Ogle and the President’s spirit, what would you have done?’
Hasan lay on his stomach and touched his forehead to Ogle’s wet nose. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Zehra, I almost wish the trial were today. I just want this over.’
Chapter Twenty-One
In pockets of the world where disbelief had never tainted the air, magic was still possible. Such a pocket existed beneath Hasan’s desk, though he hadn’t realized it until six days earlier when, still distracted by thoughts of his conversation with the Oldest Man, Hasan had knocked a pencil beneath his desk and smelt dragons when he bent down to retrieve it.
And tomorrow it would be May. Hasan flung a blue bed sheet over his desk, making sure the edges reached down to the floor, and crawled between the desk legs. He drew his knees up to his chin and rested his back against the wall. The blue flaps of the tent slapped open, and Salman Mamoo walked in. Dusk-fairies swarmed in front of him in a mass of wings and stingers.
‘It’s all right,’ Hasan said to the dusk-fairies. ‘He’s more than a friend.’ The dusk-fairies sank to different corners of the tent, feebly chirping their greetings.
Salman Mamoo clasped Hasan’s arm, his fingers touching Hasan’s elbow. ‘So . . . Sir Huss,’ he smiled. ‘Where are we?’
Hasan picked up the magical Staff of Kryket from atop the mass of maps strewn across the low-lying table, and handed it to Salman Mamoo. ‘A place without clocks, and with no sundials that work.’
Hasan and Salman Mamoo walked out on to the field. A unicorn lowered his horn in greeting as he sauntered past. From amidst the cluster of warriors around a fire someone with gleaming teeth flashed a victory sign. Hasan pointed up and Salman Mamoo looked to the leaden cast of the sky. It was as though someone had taken a blunt pencil and scratched it over every inch of sky, and then blended the scratches together with a slightly greasy thumb.
‘No one can keep track of day and night any more,’ Hasan said. ‘And the dusk-fairies are dying.’
A giant yellow kite swooped down towards Hasan, a boy crouched in its frame guiding the kite’s movement with the dip of his shoulders. The kite skidded to a stop, and the boy hopped off. ‘The Warlock’s forces are amassing about five miles from here,’
he said. ‘But the Warlock is still in his castle.’
‘If I could just bypass his armies and meet him one on one, I could defeat him and break the sky-spell,’ Hasan said, hands straying to his scimitar.
‘The Staff of Kryket and I are at your disposal,’ Salman Mamoo said.
A voice, blurred by entry portals and magic zones, called out Hasan’s name. ‘I have to go,’ Hasan said.
The boy shrugged. ‘Time doesn’t move here without you. Go, live your other life.’
Hasan strode back towards his tent, whispered the magic word ‘Sirius’, pushed aside the tent flaps and crawled out from under his desk. Atif-Asif-Arif hammered on the door and said, ‘Are you in there?’
Hasan opened the door. ‘I am now,’ he said.
Atif-Asif-Arif looked offended. ‘Well, your mother said if you’re awake you should join her next door for breakfast.’
Hasan turned to put on his shoes, and then turned back. ‘What’s your name, by the way? Atif, Asif or Arif?’
‘Aqib.’
‘Oh.’
Hasan slipped on his shoes and wondered whether he should wake Zehra up for breakfast. It was only 6.33 a.m., and a few months ago Zehra would have thrown a heavy object at him for pulling her out of her dreams at such an hour. These days, though, she was inclined to give him a great deal of latitude in most things. Might as well take advantage of that while it lasted.
But when Hasan levered himself over the boundary wall with the aid of a flower pot, he saw that Zehra was already awake and sitting out on the terrace with Ami, Ogle and the Widow, slathering apricot jam on to a piece of toast. Hasan crawled in the mud between wall and shrubs, intending to leap out with a roar and frighten Zehra into dropping her toast within snapping range of Ogle’s jaws. It was a delicate operation, requiring patience and timing. No point roaring when Zehra’s hold on toast was firm, or when Ami or the Widow had cup in hand, halfway to lips, in prime droppable position.
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