Kartography

by Kamila Shamsie

  ‘Only half my ass is Sindhi. The other half is Punjabi.’

  Karim didn’t join our laughter. When I turned to look at him, his eyes were wide, terrified. ‘I shouldn’t have come back,’ he said.

  Zia reached over and touched my knee then. He saw how hurt I was by the comment, but Karim was oblivious. I thought of another car ride, heading to, rather than from, the airport. Karim had sat opposite me and drawn a map and even the fact that he couldn’t have known it was the last time we were to be together for the next seven years didn’t temper the corrosiveness of that memory. Look up, I had wanted to say then. I’m here. But he hadn’t looked at me then and he wasn’t looking at me now.

  ‘Well, then, go home,’ I said. ‘If you have a home to go to.’

  ‘Raheen, cool it,’ Zia said.

  ‘Let her continue, Zia.’ Karim crossed his arms and looked at me in the manner of an eagle staring down a sparrow.

  ‘There’s really nothing more to say. Why don’t you turn around and leave, and I’ll draw you a nice map of all the places you might have visited while you were here. I’m sure for you that’ll be better than actually having to deal with the realities of this place and the people in it.’

  ‘Why the hell do you keep harping on about maps?’ he said.

  I didn’t have the first idea how to respond to that one. We continued to glare at each other, while Zia turned the music up again and started singing along boisterously, as though he were listening to hard rock rather than a qawaali. Why did I keep harping on about maps? How had they become the symbol of everything that had gone so wrong, so inexplicably, in my relationship with Karim?

  ‘Strabo and Eratosthenes,’ I said. ‘That’s what I was going to talk to you about on the phone the other day.’

  ‘Yes?’ He looked at me cautiously, as though he thought I was drawing him closer just so that I could hit him over the head with a mallet.

  I had first encountered mention of the two of them while researching a paper on Homer at college, and that’s really when I decided it was time to get in touch with Karim again, although I had to wait until I wrote that Calvino paper before I was able to decide how to make the first move. Eratosthenes, the grandfather of cartography, was the first man to make a distinction between scientific and literary mapping. Prior to Eratosthenes, no one ever said that cartography should concern itself with science and facts rather than stories; the distinction didn’t really exist. The Odyssey was considered as valuable a tool of mapping as were the charts and eyewitness accounts of sailors and travellers. But Eratosthenes’ decision removed Homer, and all other poets, from the corpus of cartography.

  In the furore over this move, which lasted through generations, Eratosthenes’ greatest critic was the cartographer Strabo, who said that Homer depicted geographical truths in the language of poetry, so it was absurd to deny him a role in the realm of cartography. I loved the idea of those early cartographers who thought Odysseus’ voyage was as valid a source for map-making as the charts of travellers who had actually set sail themselves.

  Back then, of course, maps weren’t used for travel. They were mainly used for illustrating stories. There stands Mount Olympus. That’s where Theseus fought the Minotaur. That kind of stuff. So maps weren’t about going from point A to point B; they were about helping someone hear the heartbeat of a place. I explained this, and then I reached for Karim’s hand and held it at the very tips of his fingers. He didn’t draw away. ‘Seems to me like we’re Strabo and Eratosthenes, Karimazov. I want you to pay attention to the stories that define Karachi, and you want to know what the name of the road connecting Gizri to Zamzama is, and how many people have died there in the last year.’

  But even as I said all that, I wondered why any of it should have been anything more than a minor irritation in our friendship. And then I was back, again, to the question I had asked so many times it even invaded my dreams: what did I do to make him cut up my letters?

  His hand closed on my wrist so tightly I almost cried out. ‘You want to hear the heartbeat of a place? Do you know how hard your heart beats when you’re lost? Do you know what it is to wander out of the comfort of your own streets and your own stories?’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Which stories do you want me to pay attention to? Or, more to the point, which stories have you deliberately turned away from, Ra, and why?’

  I pulled my wrist out of his grip and then turned away from Zia’s uncertain, sympathetic, exasperated eyes, which were meant as much for Karim as for me. I cranked up the volume of the music as high as it would go, so that none of us could hear our own thoughts.

  All around us, Karachi kept moving.

  . . .

  1971

  ‘Of course there won’t be war,’ said Asif, running his fingers through his luxurious mass of hair. ‘Everyone’s playing brinkmanship, that’s all. Here’s what’ll happen: Mujib will back down on his Six Points, give up the whole idea of a decentralized federal system of government in exchange for some political and economic concessions towards East Pakistan. Once he does that, Yahya will invite him to form the government, and at that point Bhutto will also take his place as leader of the opposition. It’s the only sane, rational, not to mention cheerful, choice. Mujib’s no zealous revolutionary, and, besides, whatever the Bengali masses might want, they’re just rabble, and our army will decimate them if they try to make some kind of one-legged stand. No one wants to be slaughtered.’ He snapped his fingers at the Ampi’s waiter and asked for more ice.

  ‘No one wants to be enslaved either,’ Maheen said, waving down at Laila and her new husband, who had entered and taken a table on the ground floor. ‘Yasmin, don’t you love what she’s wearing?’

  ‘My God, she is so gorgeous. What does she see in him?’ Asif shook his head. ‘And come on, Maheen, isn’t enslaved a little too dramatic a word?’

  ‘Nothing dramatic about it,’ Ali said. ‘Just look at the statistics.’

  ‘Oh, you and your statistics,’ Asif said with a laugh.

  ‘Well, but just think about it. East Pakistan is the majority wing of the country in terms of population, and yet...’ He started to count off his fingers, ‘It gets less than 30 per cent of foreign aid allocation, less than 20 per cent of civil service jobs, less than 10 per cent of military positions, fewer schools, fewer universities, it makes up near 70 per cent of the country’s export earnings but receives the benefits of less than 30 per cent of our import expenditure.’

  ‘All these stupid bloody politicians on their own power trips,’ Zafar said, picking up the menu and looking at the dessert section. ‘Why don’t Mujib and Bhutto just have a duel to the death, pistols at dawn, and leave the rest of us out of it?’

  ‘It’s not that simple, Zafar,’ Ali said, folding his napkin neatly into a little square.

  ‘Well it’s not the little numbers game you make it out to be either, Ali.’

  Maheen put a hand on her fiancé’s arm. ‘Jaanoo, Ali’s right. Look, Asif, I wish—really, really, I wish and pray—that everything could be easily resolved, but you’re deluding yourself if you think the Bengali people’s demands are going to go away, because I don’t know if they’ll even accept a federation at this point when the word Independence has gone around and it’s such a more soul-stirring word than federation.’

  ‘Ah, but you don’t know what I know,’ Asif said.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That just today Yahya told newsmen that his talks with Mujib were satisfactory, and that Mujib will be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. They’ve reached a compromise, Maheen; I’m sorry, but your soul will have to do with being a little less stirred.’

  ‘God’s sake, Asif, she’s lived all her life in Karachi,’ Yasmin said. ‘She’s not...’

  ‘Not what?’ Maheen turned to her friend. ‘One of them?’

  There was a yelp from below. The waiter had spilt a drink on Laila. Her husband stood up and cracked a slap across the waiter’s cheek. ‘Halfwit Bingo! Go bac
k to your jungle.’

  Zafar stood up. Ali and Asif pulled him down.

  Laila grabbed her husband’s arm and whispered something. He looked up at Maheen, and turned red. ‘It’s a new sari,’ he called out in Maheen’s direction, pointing at Laila’s stained clothes. ‘I got angry, can you blame me? No hard feelings, OK, Maheen?’

  Maheen shrugged noncommittally, which seemed to satisfy him. He sat down and resumed eating. Laila continued looking up, but Maheen refused to meet her eye.

  ‘It’s going to get worse,’ Yasmin said.

  ‘How much worse can it get?’ Zafar sighed. He slipped his hand into Maheen’s palm beneath the table, but her fingers didn’t curl around his in response. She was looking at the Bengali waiter. He walked past and caught her eye, and for a moment the barriers of class and gender became porous and something passed between them that Zafar couldn’t quite identify. Maheen’s hand slipped out of Zafar’s. He turned his face away from her, and saw Yasmin and Ali looking at Maheen, their faces moulded into identical expressions of concern. It was so brief he was almost unsure it happened, but for an instant he felt a most alien and inexplicable sensation of jealousy.

  ‘A lassi stand. I’m going to set one up right here,’ Yasmin declared. ‘I’ll mint millions.’

  ‘Right here? In the middle of the racecourse stands? Excellent idea. And how do you think Ali will react to being married to the Lassi Lassie?’ Zafar asked, fanning Yasmin with his newspaper.

  ‘Oh, that’s heaven, Zaf, thanks. Ali is not one of those Neanderthal men who expect their wives to stay at home. Done the crossword yet?’

  ‘No. You like crosswords? Is that Neanderthal comment a swipe at me? What makes you think I’d want Maheen to stay at home?’

  ‘It’s not about what you want, Zafar, it’s what Maheen wants that matters.’

  Zafar tried to work out exactly what he’d said that was so objectionable. Hard to tell with Yasmin. Ever since that time she’d rebuffed him in the Nasreen Room he’d been too aware that he frequently misread her. For a moment he stopped to wonder how different things might have been if she had responded with more warmth to his suggestion. Impossible to imagine. Already it seemed a lifetime ago, and he honestly couldn’t remember why it was that when Ali had reintroduced him to Maheen and Yasmin, both of whom he’d known only vaguely before Oxford, he’d looked longer and with more interest at Yasmin. ‘I always manage to irritate you, don’t I? Even when I’m in complete agreement with you. I really wish you liked me more.’

  Yasmin looked at him, surprised. ‘I don’t dislike you. But you were a bastard to me once and I haven’t quite forgotten it.’

  ‘Me? When? I would never... What did I do?’

  Yasmin shook her head. What was she doing? It could only do harm to revisit the past, particularly when he was wearing the same black shirt—why did he always have to wear black, even in the heat of Karachi’s days, and why did he always have to look so good in it? She gripped her finger with its engagement ring. And more important than that, why did she still have to entertain these thoughts about this...boy, when every day she learnt something new about Ali, and every day felt more strongly than the day before how lucky the two of them were to have found themselves alone on that balcony on Asif’s farm. ‘Never mind. Nothing. I’m just joking. Oh look, there’s Anwar.’ She pointed out the curly-haired man on the other side of the racecourse stands. ‘Poor Anwar and Dolly. There can’t be anything worse than the death of a child.’

  ‘Rumour is, it wasn’t a stray bullet at all.’ Zafar looked at his watch. ‘Where are Maheen and Ali? The race is about to begin.’ Below, the horses were being led on to the track.

  ‘Oh, rumours are all the rage these days,’ Yasmin replied, relieved he’d changed the subject. ‘Just heard one that the fat cats are going to have the National Assembly building in East Pakistan bombed; that way work on it will never be completed and the National Assembly will never convene and Mujib will never become PM. You don’t really believe what they say about the shooting, do you? How could Dolly and Anwar continue living where they do if that were true?’

  ‘Speaking of rumours, I think we’re going to start one if the two of us are seen alone at the races.’ He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. Was that an inappropriate comment, Zafar wondered. He hastened to return to the earlier subject of conversation. ‘I hear Dolly wants to move. But Anwar’s been acting so strangely. They say he still hasn’t shed a tear about the whole thing. And look who he’s sitting down with. Here, look through the binoculars. See him? With a bunch of your aforementioned fat cats. He’s been avoiding all his old friends since the...since. Only ever see him now with the kind of people who should make anyone sick.’

  ‘Maybe they’re all talking about bombing the National Assembly.’

  ‘Probably talking about Bhutto’s little speech yesterday.’ He drummed his fingers on the newspaper headlines.

  ‘Revolution from the Khyber to Karachi if the NA convenes without him. It would be nice to dismiss that as rhetoric. Some nights I can’t sleep for terror.’ If this is how I feel, Yasmin thought, how must Maheen feel, a Bengali living in West Pakistan? And every day someone new seemed to succumb to the madness that was sweeping the country, someone new said things that defied all understanding, and it was hard to say which were worse: the people who stopped dead, mid-sentence, as soon as Maheen entered the room, or the ones who kept on talking.

  ‘The race really is about to begin now,’ Zafar said. No escape from talk about it, not even here at the racecourse with Yasmin. It was a physical ache, this burden of trying to be some kind of refuge for Maheen; every day more comments to deflect, ignore, make light of. In the beginning it was easy enough: hell, it came naturally. But now, oh God, now... ‘Where are they?’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Ali was supposed to pick her up half an hour ago.’

  ‘Do you think there’s been some kind of trouble?’

  Don’t think about it, don’t start believing it. ‘What, the start of revolution?’

  ‘I’m serious, Zafar. Maheen should get out of the country. Something could happen.’

  Zafar looked down at his hands. ‘Any good at palmistry, Yasmin?’

  Yasmin put a hand on his shoulder. This was not a voice she’d heard from him before. ‘I don’t believe in fate. Why?’

  ‘I want to know if it’ll tell me where I’m going to live.’ After that day at Ampi’s when Laila’s husband slapped the waiter, he’d told Maheen they should leave. Get married straight away and move to London. He had wanted more than anything for her to say ‘no’, and she had, but he wasn’t sure if that was because she meant it or because she saw how desperately he wanted that ‘no’. Leave Karachi! Zafar shook his head at the thought. Leave home.

  ‘Karachi’s home to both of you,’ Yasmin said.

  Zafar felt nauseous. Of course it was. And yet, when he mentioned moving he’d thought that would mean leaving home for him, and leaving what was rapidly becoming enemy territory for Maheen. But this was her home, too. How could he have forgotten that? But he had. Not for a second, or an hour, but for days, for weeks. He hadn’t even realized his own mistake until now. He covered his eyes with his hands. How insidiously this madness spread. God, when did things get so complicated?

  ‘Race about to begin.’ Yasmin nudged him.

  Zafar sat up and tried to focus on the course below. ‘My Two’s looking jumpy.’

  ‘Why can’t racehorses have names like... Oh, false start!’

  ‘Falstaff? For a racehorse? Oh, I see... No, listen, Maheen will be fine. We’ll all be fine.’ He said it again. ‘We’ll all be fine.’

  ‘Unless rumours get around about the two of us spotted out in public without our fiancées.’ She nudged him again, and laughed. ‘What will my parents say?’

  ‘As if you care. They’re off!’

  Hoofs pounded, jockeys’ colours were misted in dust, and at the end of it all Zafar slumped back in disgust.

 
‘I thought he was your favourite?’

  ‘He is. That makes it more frustrating that I don’t bet.’ A thought was beginning to worm forward from the back of his mind. ‘Hang on. That time I asked you out and you said your parents wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘Long time ago, Zaf.’

  ‘Not that long. Just long enough that I didn’t know you well enough to know the comment was absurd.’

  ‘Bygones, Zaf.’

  He scratched his head. ‘You could just have said no straight out. I wouldn’t have pushed.’

  ‘Leave it, Zafar.’

  ‘I’m just curious. Hang on, you weren’t doing that woman thing of saying one thing and meaning another, were you?’ As soon as he said it, he knew it was a mistake. Now she would narrow her eyes at him, or say something cutting, just when they were beginning to relax in each other’s presence.

  But she didn’t say anything, just pretended not to hear him, and looked around through his binoculars. ‘Here comes Ali! But where’s Maheen?’

  Zafar was out of his seat immediately. ‘Where’s Maheen, Ali? Where’s Maheen?’ He started running towards Ali, uncaring of the heads turning towards him. Oh please, say she just wasn’t in the mood to come out.

  Ali caught him by the shoulder. ‘She’s all right, don’t panic. I dropped her home. You’d better go to her, Zaf. Some old beggar woman spat at her when she was walking to my car. You know, you’ve really got to get her out of here.’

  ‘Hear that?’ Maheen said, leaning against Zafar.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sun setting into the sea. It’s so quiet you can almost hear it sizzle as it touches the water.’

  He put his arms around her, not caring that they were out in public. ‘Peaceful, isn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘Hard to believe Civil War is actually here. It’s almost as though it’s happening in’—she laughed shakily—‘another country.’ She continued to look at the sea gulls swooping impossibly close to the sea and rising up again without a single bead of water falling from their wings. ‘Laila heard from some foreign journalist that the army’s slaughtering my people by the thousands in Dhaka.’