‘That’s because you don’t kiss,’ Karim said. ‘Where did this Betty suddenly come from?’
Zia raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t get jealous, Karim. She was this girl I met last summer in London. We...well, a gentleman doesn’t talk about that kind of stuff.’
He was really such a terrible liar that I couldn’t even begin to feel jealous. Or was it that I didn’t even begin to feel jealous and decided that was because he was a terrible liar?
‘Zia!’ Sonia said, appalled.
‘Oh, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.’ Karim started laughing. ‘OK, go on, describe her to us. What colour was her hair?’
‘Golden.’
Karim and I shrieked with laughter. ‘You could at least——’ I said, and burst into laughter again.
‘—At least say blonde,’ Karim finished.
Sonia scrunched up her face and looked from Zia to Karim and me. ‘Blonde Betty? Archie comics?’
‘Archie comics!’ Karim was bent double, his face almost touching my knee. ‘Show some originality, man.’
Zia stood up, and flung my dupatta to the ground.
‘Oh hey, Zia, come on,’ Karim said. ‘We’re just joking around. Sit down, yaar, come on.’
Zia was looking at Sonia. I was looking at Zia and trying not to notice that I thought he was being ridiculous.
‘Don’t be angry,’ Sonia reached a hand out and lightly touched his sleeve. ‘I’m sure there really are blonde Bettys in London. Aren’t there?’ She turned to Karim and me, a fierce look on her face, daring us to contradict her.
Karim and I nodded. Karim nodded a little more fervently than I did. The bell rang, and so Zia was saved from having to decide whether to sit down again or not. Karim held out a hand, and Zia pulled him up. Karim turned towards me, and I started to hold my hand out to him, but found I was turning the gesture into something else, pretending I was only reaching up to pat the top of my own head. Sonia stood up and pulled me up, and we walked towards the school building, Sonia’s arm around me, and the two boys close in conversation, a gap between them and us that seemed right somehow, seemed comfortable, and at the same time was quite new.
If Karim moved to London, would he meet Blonde Bettys?
. . .
It was probably soon after that conversation in the school yard that Zia called me up, late one evening, proposing a visit to Sonia’s.
‘I can’t,’ I said, rather feebly. ‘There’s school tomorrow and it’s already after ten.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Your parents are at Runty and Bunty’s beach party, aren’t they? Mine are too. And, guess what, so are Sonia’s parents. Aunty Runty told Mummy this morning that Bunty had invited them; he’s such a loser, he’ll invite anyone with a bank balance that goes into seven digits. OK, eight digits maybe.’
‘I suppose I could call my parents and ask them...’
‘Raheen! There aren’t any phones at the beach. Besides, even if there were, you know your parents would say no. Come on, sneak out. Just once. I’ll have you back within an hour.’
‘Well...’
‘I’ve got my neighbours’ Merc.’
‘What do you mean you’ve got it?’
‘I have the keys. They’re out of town for the next few days.’
‘And they gave you the keys?’
‘Details, details. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Call Karim. Tell him we ’11 be at his place in thirteen minutes and tell Sonia we’ll be there in eighteen.’
I dialled Karim’s number and hung up after one ring. Then I did the same with Sonia’s number. When Zia walked into my room, twirling unfamiliar car-keys, I said, ‘Called the other two but no one answered their phones. I think Karim’s at his cousin’s place and maybe Sonia’s gone to sleep already.’
‘We’ll stop at her place to check.’
Oh, great.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘This is going to be the ride of your life.’
He really did have his neighbour’s Mercedes. It was red and it was cool. ‘Wow!’ I said out loud, forgetting that I had to be as quiet as possible so that none of the servants would know I was leaving and report me to my parents the next day.
Zia winked and flipped up the collar of his shirt. He opened the passenger side door for me and then slid across the bonnet to the driver’s side. I thought I would faint with delirium.
We took the long route to Sonia’s house via back roads, Zia gunning the engine for all it was worth. In those days that part of Defence was still comparatively uninhabited, so the back roads at night were deserted and Zia zigzagged from one side of the road to the other, weaving between street lamps, pretending to be out of control. I felt crazy enough to say or do anything, even to say, ‘How’s this for an idea, Zee? You and me. Is that an idea or is that an idea?’ and I probably would have, except that the music was blaring too loudly, Springsteen singing ‘No Surrender’ and Zia lip-synching along, banging his palm against the steering wheel. When I hear that song today I’m almost-fourteen again and back in that car and nothing in the world is impossible except a broken heart.
We drove into a pitch-dark street and I said, ‘Electricity’s gone; yes, bye-bye, bijli.’ A repair truck from the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation rolled up and Zia said, ‘KESC to the rescue... Oh, I know which song we have to listen to.’ He rewound the tape all the way to the beginning and Status Quo’s ‘In the Army Now’ blared through the speakers. ‘Sing, girl,’ he said, and together we drowned out Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi’s voices: ‘Bijli fails in the dead of night/Won’t help to call “I need a light”/You’re in Karachi now/Oh, oh, you’re in Karachi now.’
Volume turned up all the way, despite the fact we were now in a built-up residential neighbourhood with our windows wide open, we serenaded the streets: ‘Night is falling and you just can’t see/Is this illusion or KESC/You’re in Karachi now.’
We didn’t even hear the first shot. If Zia hadn’t turned to look at me and seen through my window the gunman run out on to the street...
But he did. He yelled, ‘Duck,’ pushed me down, my hand on the volume knob jerked in surprise, the music disappeared, the rat-tat-tat-tat against the car, Zia so low in his seat he can’t possibly see out of the windscreen, his foot on the accelerator, we fly over a speed bump, bang my head on the glove box, a thump against the front of the car, Zia mutters, ‘Cat. Has to be. Cat.’ I don’t even look to check, he’s zigzagging, taking turns so fast I swear all four wheels leave the ground. ‘He was on foot, Zia, on foot,’ I scream, but I’m still huddled, sweat all over, and finally he stops. ‘We’re OK,’ he says. ‘We’re OK.’
He stepped out of the car before I did. We were on the main road, under a street light. A house a few doors down was festooned with fairy lights; the wedding season was at its height. The gate was wide open and girls holding rose garlands stood near the entrance, waiting for the imminent arrival of the baaraat. Music spilled out over the walls. He Jamalo. If we walked into that house we’d probably recognize someone there. But how would I explain being out with Zia, alone, at this hour? I tried to open the door but it was stuck, so I rolled down the window in time to see Zia in front of the car, wiping something off the mudguard. He held up his palm, plastered with bloodied fur. ‘Cat,’ he said. ‘Told you. A silly-billy cat.’ We both started laughing. I was half-in, half-out, of the car window, and as my hysteria grew I slapped my palm against the exterior of the door and felt something sharp bite into my skin.
‘Zia, come here.’ I slid out of the window, found my legs weren’t working properly and sat down hard on the street. A wavy line of bullet holes ran all the way across the front and back door, just centimetres below the window. I bent forward at the waist and touched the tip of my finger to the jagged metal that marked a bullet’s point of entrance. Hot. I jerked my finger away. What that thing could do to flesh. How my body would convulse. Thrown forward into the windshield. No pain, just burning. Seared.
And then this sentence, in these word
s exactly, came to mind: they cannot protect you against this.
I turned over, on to all fours, gasping when I expected to retch. Zia had walked over to stand next to me, and I saw him move his foot away as a line of spittle fell from my mouth. I knew I would never forget that gesture. I wiped my mouth against the back of my hand, and thought of rubbing my hand against his jeans, but when I turned my head to look at him, he was staring at the bullets in a kind of wonder that made me think of religious awe. ‘It missed me,’ he said, and flexed his shoulders, savouring the easy movement of his muscles. ‘It’s so easy to miss.’ I pushed myself off the ground and stood next to him.
He switched on the torch attached to his key chain and shone it into a bullet hole. ‘I can see it lodged there.’ He leaned in through the open window. ‘Yup,’ he said.
I leaned in next to him. He was running his fingers along the protruding bumps in the car door. If the gun had been just a little more powerful, the bullets would have ripped through the door’s inner sheet of steel.
‘Man,’ Zia said. ‘They almost got you. Man. Your parents would have killed me. Karim, too. And Sonia. Man.’
I think I would have bashed his head against the car door if I hadn’t seen his fingers gripping white on to the side mirror. Is this moment an exception, I somehow found the clarity to wonder, or is his cool demeanour always a mask? As he tried to light a cigarette, I looked away so that he wouldn’t know I could see him snapping the heads off matches in his attempt to strike them against the flint.
‘Damn wind’s too strong to get a flame going,’ he muttered, and tossed the matches back into the car.
I stepped back. ‘Zia, the car,’ I said.
He looked at the ravaged vehicle and this time he allowed stark terror to write itself across his face. I saw blood rush to his face and drain away as he slumped against the bonnet of the Mercedes. I put my hand on his shoulder, thinking that if he fell apart now he wouldn’t be able to drive us home.
‘The police. I have to go to the police,’ he said, straightening up.
‘Don’t be stupid. What can they do?’ We were both whispering.
‘Have to register a complaint. The car. It’s not my car. They never said I could...I stole the keys from my father; they gave him a spare set so he could run the engine every so often while they’re away. They never said I could. He doesn’t know. I have to be responsible. I have to be responsible. Insurance. I have to register a complaint with the police. When my cousin’s car... He had to. Insurance purposes. I have to register.’
‘Zia, I want to go home.’
He nodded. Blinked. Nodded again. ‘Police station is no place for a girl. I’ll drop you home and go. Won’t mention your name. Your parents won’t have to know.’
We drove home very slowly, stopping not just at the red lights but also at the amber ones. I can’t remember a word Zia said but he could no more stop talking than I could start. When he dropped me off I said, ‘Maybe I should come...’ and was more than relieved when he shook his head.
‘Call me when you get home. Promise, Zia.’
My first instinct when I stepped inside the house was to call my father. But there were no phones at the beach. Karim. I’d call Karim. But if it would have been hard to explain to the people at the wedding what I was doing out alone with Zia at that hour, it was somehow even more unthinkable to explain it to Karim, who would ask for no explanation, offer no comment. But my house was so silent, the gunshots still echoed so loudly in my head, and I needed to hear Karim’s voice, I needed him to laugh and make me laugh. But no, I couldn’t call Karim. I had to keep the line free in case Zia tried to call.
I sat down on the marble steps, unable to decide whether to go upstairs or down. If the gunman had aimed just a little higher, the bullet would have gone through the open window and hit me... here. I pressed a finger against the flesh halfway between elbow and shoulder. And if it had gone all the way through my arm it would have lodged itself here, between these two ribs. (The next morning I was to have two bruises exactly where I imagined the bullets would have hit. I didn’t know whether to be terrified or exhilarated by my body’s fidelity to recording the possible, and I briefly tried to imagine if I could turn into some kind of superhero if every morning my skin marked all the possible consequences of the previous night’s follies. But then I remembered my fingers digging into my flesh, reassuring myself of its wholeness.)
‘Damn you, Zia, call.’ I curled up, my head resting uncomfortably on the edge of the step above me, and let hot tears spill on to my sleeve. ‘Call, so I know you’re OK. Call so that I can call Karim. Aba, come home. Please come home.’
Over an hour later Zia still hadn’t called and no one answered his phone. No sign of my parents either. And again and again in my head: they cannot protect you from this. When I tried to force myself to think of something else, something silly that would mean nothing, I thought: the hippo told the rhino piggledypoo and smartypants and what else? But only part of that stuck. They cannot protect you from this. And what else? So I called Karim. All I said was, ‘This is quick, in case Zia tries to call. But we went for a drive in his neighbour’s car and someone shot at us and we’re OK but he went to the police station and he should be home by now but he’s not.’
An improbably short time after I hung up and went to the dining room to look out of the window, Karim climbed over the gate and jumped down into the driveway. I think that was the first real moment, the first inkling. If I had to start this story again, perhaps that would be the place to start. Stars, moon, blue-black sky, and a boy’s head easing into the frame. He was not attractive, not well-proportioned, and he half fell over as he landed, but when I saw his head appear over the gate I clutched the curtains tight and said, ‘Thank you, God, thank you.’
When I went out to meet him, he held my hands very tightly, and we just stood there, looking at each other, rocking back and forth on our toes, like birds. When he spoke it was to say, ‘Which police thaanaa did he go to? Do you know?’ I shook my head.
I got into the back seat of his car, and Karim sat in front with Altaf, his driver, who kept yawning as he drove, his eyes narrowing into squints, not yet reconciled to being awake. We spotted the Mercedes, after what seemed an interminable while, parked outside the third police station to which we drove. Karim had said only three things during our search for Zia: ‘That fake driver’s licence won’t fool anyone’, ‘If only there was a map with police thaanaas marked on it, so we could do this efficiently’ and ‘You don’t know how much money he had on him, do you?’
Outside the station, Karim and Altaf ran their hands along the pockmarked Mercedes door. Altaf inserted a finger into a bullet hole, just below the passenger side window. His finger disappeared almost down to the knuckle. I didn’t feel anything when I saw that. I wondered if I was in shock. Karim knelt down by the mudguard and vanished from my line of sight. I walked around the car to see him staring down at his blood-streaked fingers. ‘Cat,’ I said.
‘Did it die?’
I pictured a bloodied and bleeding feline dragging its shattered limbs along the road. ‘We have to go back there.’
‘Zia first, OK?’
‘You go in,’ Altaf told Karim. ‘I’ll stay here with her.’
Karim glanced at me, expecting an objection to this moment of ‘Let’s protect the girl from unpleasantness’, but I felt only gratitude towards Altaf. ‘Sack boon,’ Karim said.
I don’t know if he really was back soon or not. It could have been two minutes or twenty that I lay in the back of his car, trying to remember how to breathe evenly, before he opened the door and said, ‘You’ve got to come inside.’
I thought, cat homicide. Fleeing the scene of an accident. I thought, it wasn’t cat fur but human hair on the mudguard. I thought, I wasn’t driving. I’m not responsible for anything.
‘It’s OK,’ Karim said, taking my hand. ‘They only want you to confirm you were in the car with him.’
Then
they’d say, what were you doing alone in a car late at night with a boy who is neither brother nor cousin nor husband?
‘I’ve told them you’re his cousin,’ Karim said. ‘And I’m your brother.’
He leaned to a side and the street lamp lit up the back of his head. ‘You have a halo,’ I said with a laugh and found myself able to step out of the car.
Inside the police station a grey-shirted, mustachioed policeman, whose resemblance to Pakistan’s wicketkeeper, Saleem Yousuf, was immensely reassuring, asked me if I could confirm my brother’s claim that I had been in the Mercedes with my cousin. I nodded and, laughing, he shouted to someone to bring the boy out. ‘Sorry for this,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘But he kept insisting he was alone in the car.’
A door opened and Zia emerged, his upturned collar looking absurd. When he saw us he tried to reassemble his expression into something approaching jauntiness, but it crumpled into relief instead. The Saleem Yousuf lookalike threw the Mercedes car-keys in his direction and gestured towards the door.
‘What happened?’ Zia and Karim said to each other in unison when we exited.
‘You first,’ Karim said. We got into the Mercedes—the front door was still jammed, so I climbed in through the window—and Karim signalled Altaf to follow us in his car.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what was going on. I went in, reported that someone had shot at my car, and they asked what colour the car was and where it happened. I said, “Near the Arab Sheikh’s palace, and it’s a Mercedes.” One of the cops looked out, saw the car and said, “It’s red,” and then they demanded to know who had been with me. Well, I didn’t want to drag Raheen into it, so I said no one. Next thing I know, they’ve got me in this room and this big guy with really bad b.o.—who looks like Mike Gatting, there’s some weird cricket thing going on there—is telling me I can’t leave until I tell them who I was with. So now I’m completely confused and don’t know if it’ll make matters better or worse if I admit my original story wasn’t true, so I decide just to wait. I knew you’d get worried, Raheen, when I didn’t call, and that you guys or my parents would come in search of me.’
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