In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

by Daniyal Mueenuddin

‘An army friend flew over in a helicopter and told me about it. It took me a whole day to find a way down, following these dry watercourses. Even goats can’t find much to eat here.’

  Walking out onto the sand, she took off her sandals and carried them in her hand. The place seemed immense and empty, a huge bowl of rock, with the cool river running through it, the blue and white stripes of the two tributary rivers beginning to mingle, a confusion at the middle of the stream. A breeze blew off the water, increasing the loneliness, rolling up a tube of sand, which snaked in front of her, rustling softly.

  She looked around, at the hills, bare all around, the parked jeep seeming to glow, tiny against the backdrop. ‘You know what’s amazing, we’re actually alone here. That never happens in Pakistan.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure we are alone. That’s what I was checking with the binoculars.’

  Throwing herself down on the soft sand, wriggling to make herself comfortable, she said with a little laugh, ‘You’re a real belt-and-suspenders kind of guy.’

  He brought a rug and a basket from the car, placed the rug carefully on the sand, and then poured them each a glass of white wine.

  They drank, looking out at the river, silent.

  Taking sand in her palm, she let it stream out between her fingers, blown away by the wind.

  ‘I’m really moved. Thank you for bringing me here.’

  ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t like it. You probably don’t often go out of the city.’

  ‘I don’t, but I wish I did. I’d like to live in the country. Sometimes I think I’d like to live alone on an island.’

  He opened the picnic basket, had clearly made a great effort, a baguette from the French bakery, expensive cheeses, grapes, chocolate, nuts, little chicken sandwiches, and then Pakistani food in containers, more food than they could possibly eat.

  After lunch, he went behind the jeep and came out wearing shorts, carrying a towel, his body slender and brown, legs muscular, a thin trace of hair below his belly button. His head was mounted well on his shoulders, the shoulders set back. Walking far upstream, he disappeared around a pile of enormous boulders, while she sat musing, the sun warm on her back.

  Silently and very fast, he came sweeping into view out at the middle of the river, his head small and black against the dark green water, caught in the boiling current. Sheltering her eyes with her hand, she watched, knowing she could do nothing to save him, feeling irritation and regret wound together, at this abrupt sinking of her frail butterfly hopes, this stupid ending, the mess. As she lunged up to run across the sand, panicking, he waved to her, floated on his back for a moment, turned over, and began to swim in toward the shore with a precise motion, turning up his head to breathe at every second stroke. He took a clever angle against the river sweeping him away, and at the far point, where the curving bay ended, he splashed ashore.

  Approaching, walking on the harder sand at the edge of the water, he stood above her, almost dry, glistening from the sun. ‘That was pretty goddamned cold,’ he said. ‘I’ll admit that!’

  She threw him the towel, squinting up at his face, which seemed black against the sun behind him. ‘You scared me. I thought you were drowning.’

  ‘Not this time. There’s a bit of Persian poetry that my father quotes: Standing there on the shore, / What do you know of my troubles, / As I struggle here in midstream.’

  He sat down, facing almost away from her. ‘You have to admit, that’s a pretty apt quotation.’

  ‘Very impressive. Or maybe it’s a bit too literal, if I wanted to be picky.’ After a moment she said, ‘I’m not going to sleep with you, you know. I decided that, while you were swimming or drowning or whatever you were doing.’

  ‘I must say, for a girl from a good Punjabi family you say the most astonishing things. Let me guess: you swore to God that if I survived you would renounce me forever. Or I should say, swore to some unspecified life force.’

  ‘I know, The End of the Affair. I saw the movie. But it’s sort of true. I really did think you were finished. And I doubt I could get home alone in your car. Not to mention the scandal. Imagine explaining what we were doing together in this place. I wouldn’t even bother to try, I’d dump the body outside your parents’ gate at night.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m glad to know you were focusing on the really important aspects of the problem.’

  ‘Not at all. I didn’t push you in the river, you were showing off. You’re a grown-up.’

  ‘Very laissez-faire. You do your thing, I do mine.’

  ‘Exactly. Companions on a social venture.’

  ‘I see. Well, let’s have another drink.’

  As she sipped from her glass, watching him over the rim, she said, ‘Or maybe not for a long time.’

  ‘You keep bringing it up. And how do you know I’ll sleep with you?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy. It’s written all over your face.’

  He lit a joint, and she wished that he hadn’t, looking over at him as he passed it, wanting him not to get drunk, not to smoke, to do drugs. Of course, he’d been at Princeton, he must have more or less gone through all that, rich Paki stanis at school in America almost invariably did – in her single year at NYU, failing, not even taking the spring semester exams, she herself received an entire parallel education, going around with an Iranian boyfriend three years older than herself, who took bumps of coke all day and night. As Murad sat facing the river, aloof, the breeze raising goose bumps on his bare arms, the towel pulled tightly around his shoulders, she felt immense tenderness toward him.

  The experience of that day stuck with her, strange as if seen through warped glass. The scent of fast-moving water, the immense flow of the Indus, the dry flat light reflecting off the sand – all this seemed alien and harsh and therefore consistent with the intensity of Murad’s approach to her, which was not in anything he said, but in the way that at every point in their interactions he seemed to maintain contact with her, to be interested in her, and to have planned his responses to her. He reassured her, held her up to a standard that she didn’t quite comprehend, an unconventional standard, raw and entirely between them – and then found her sufficient by it. If initially his fixation on her had appeared menacing – she had been excited by it – now she saw in it something benign and heartfelt, a spontaneous resolution that he had made in her favor, an impulse to belong to her and be with her. It struck her that she had been alone with him by the river, no human being for miles around, after spending at most half an hour chatting with him at a party – and yet she had been perfectly comfortable. How many Pakistani men would that be true of?

  He didn't press her – the day after the picnic he left for his farm, where there was no phone, no cell phone service.

  A week later, he called. ‘I’m back.’

  ‘So you are. I’m glad.’

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m getting dressed, some Norwegian Telenor guy is having a party. I’m going to Mino’s first.’

  ‘That’s too bad.’

  It struck her that she wanted very much to see him. ‘I guess I get plenty of those guys, and you’re farm-fresh. Come over, and I’ll make some excuse with Mino.’

  ‘That’s rather nice of you. I promise to be really bursting with flavor.’

  She dressed carefully but very plainly, no makeup, jeans, a gypsy top with long sleeves, white – wanting to appear pretty but wholesome, as she felt. Examining herself frankly in the mirror, she acknowledged wanting to meet his image of her, not just to be pretty, but to show him a cleaner better side of herself. Another note sounded, a shrewd voice, telling her not to trust this enterprise, which required her to change her dress, her self-presentation – but then, wasn’t that exactly what she wanted, a new life, and so a new look?

  On the phone she had told him to drive around behind her parents’ house, to her cottage at the back of the long garden. Now she called from an upstairs window that he should let himself in. When she came down the stairs af
ter a few minutes, barefoot, she found him already in her little living room, standing and looking at the bookshelves.

  ‘You’ve made yourself right at home.’

  ‘You have no idea.’And then, when she looked puzzled, ‘You must have seen The Lion King. The cub says to his evil uncle, “You’re weird, Uncle Scar,” and the uncle says, “You have nooo idea.” I was trying to be funny.’

  ‘If you say so. Actually I knew that, I’ve seen The Lion King way too many times.’

  ‘Proof of compatibility,’ he suggested.

  ‘Or proof that I’m a Sunday afternoon stoner. How about you?’

  ‘Arrested development. I watch brainless movies at the farm sometimes, when I start losing it.’

  Sitting on her haunches by the fireplace, she took a match and lit the rolled newspapers. She thought of doing this watched by another man a few weeks ago, feeling his eyes on her, admiring her, judging her body, back held straight, her blouse tight around her slender waist, the evening in front of them, the seduction and the dance, both of them easily prepared for this encounter – half drunk, snuck away from some party. It wearied her that this memory came now, as she turned and stood, appraising Murad’s clothes, loafers with unfortunate tassels, pressed jeans, white shirt tucked in – resembling somehow an army officer out of uniform, the effect touching to her, sincere, a gentleman calling on a lady.

  The fire took, slowly at the edges, as she went to a side table and poured two glasses, without asking what he wanted.

  ‘We’ll have whiskey,’ she said.

  ‘All right.’

  Murad took an etching from a stand on a table, of a man lying in a boat, stretched out under a cloak, with a lamp burning at the prow, the boat floating downstream unpiloted.

  ‘That’s by Chughtai,’ she said. ‘It’s my favorite thing.’

  Sitting down close to him on the floor, her finger tracing the figure on the glass, she asked, ‘Why the lamp? It’s so strange, I don’t know if he’s being swept away or if he’s just sleeping like that, and letting the boat go wherever it wants. I bought it for almost nothing. It’s damaged in the corner, see, it must have been stored somewhere and got eaten just there by termites. I like it because of that.’

  He stood up and replaced the etching on the table. ‘You’re more of a romantic than I am, and that’s saying a lot.’

  ‘Are you trying to be smooth with me, Mr. Talwan?’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Come on, what do you know about me?’

  He swirled the ice cubes in his glass, looked into the fire.

  ‘Can I tell you a story? About the first time I saw you?’

  ‘Do I want to hear it?’

  ‘I think you do, actually. Do you remember, last fall there was a party up in the mountains, at the house of Sohail Harouni?’

  ‘I remember. Were you there?’

  ‘I was. It was an odd time for me. A couple of months earlier I’d gone to my farm, sick of everything. My mother had passed away two years before, my father had taken to his bed, my aunts trying to marry me off to “suitable girls.” I was so goddamned bored, in my father’s incredibly gloomy house. I would go to visit relatives and sit there for hours saying nothing. I really don’t like my friends from Aitchison anymore, they all work in banks or do something in textiles, becoming politicians, or doing nothing if they can afford it. I hated myself, and I hated my life.

  ‘So I went to my father’s farm and swore to myself that I’d stay there for three whole months, without leaving. Before that I would go for a week or ten days, then retreat. Now I began the vegetable project, building the greenhouses, and I ran every day along the canal, until the villagers even got used to it. At the beginning they thought I’d gone barking mad, sprinting until I was red in the face. I would come home after running and lie on my back on the lawn and watch the day end and the stars come out. Have you ever done that? Staring straight up with the sweat trickling down my face and the mosquitoes hovering in a little formation, and I would think about how space goes on forever, and how little I mean, and how little my problems matter. Real popcorn philosophy, I know.

  ‘A servant was coming to the village on leave from my father’s house, and he delivered an invitation – to Sohail Harouni’s Halloween party. My three months weren’t over, and the party was just two days later. They brought the envelope out to me while I was lying on the lawn, and I realized how happy I felt, how alive, looking up at the sky. I had the farm running well, I’d been exercising, reading good books at night, now I wanted people, I wanted life. Right then I told the cook to pack some food, called my driver, called the farm managers from their houses to give them parting instructions, and a few hours later we were on the road, the driver and I taking turns at the wheel. The sun came up while we were still driving, smoking cigarettes, cruising on the motorway, over the Salt Range, into Islama bad. I love that moment, coming past the United Bakery, the jewelers, past Old Book Corner, the streets full of diplomats’ cars, the farm and its problems far far away.’

  He held up his drink. ‘I’m sorry, I began sort of at the beginning. I’m boring you.’

  ‘No, I like it. I bet I’m about to enter the picture.’

  Going to the table, he made them each another drink. Sitting with her chin on her knees, she looked into the fire, which blazed now, the room soft and dark around them – she had turned off all the lights except two lamps, sentinels, on tables flanking the door. When he handed her the glass, she took it languidly, drank, and then again put her chin on her knee.

  ‘I drove up to that massive house, with its views almost forever, over Rawal Dam. You remember, with a couple of hundred people there. His wife Sonya, the American, is very sweet, she was almost the only person I spoke with all night. She told me about leaving America as a bride and growing up suddenly when she came here, and then she told me that I seemed a bit lost – but said it in a way that I didn’t feel imposed on. I’m not sure why, but for me the air was magic that night, I felt secure, perfectly unruffled merely sitting by myself on the terrace, looking out at the view, fifty kilometers down to Islamabad, to ’Pindi, the lights of the cities. When you’re like that, sure of yourself, people take it quite for granted that you’re all right, they might say a word to you, and then they move on.

  ‘I walked down to the swimming pool, along the paths lit so beautifully with fires in metal pans, and I sat down in the shadows, on a bench placed under a little grove of chinar trees, beside the pool. People walked down toward the pool, but they kept veering off to the big lawn, where the famous Nizami Sahib was playing the sitar.’

  Lily began to get up, to put another log on the fire. He took her arm, touching her with just the tips of his fingers.

  ‘Wait, I’m almost done. I sat there for perhaps half an hour, listening to the breeze in the pine trees. And then, a woman came down, but instead of going to the music she continued down to the pool. It was you, of course. You were wearing a long white tunic and a light blue shawl, your arms were bare, your hair was shorter then. You knelt down by the edge of the pool, do you remember? They had put candles in blocks of ice and floated them.’

  And she said, ‘I didn’t see you, but I remember sitting there. I remember that I wanted to disappear into the water. I could see the moon reflected. Something had just happened, something bad, humiliating. I wanted to die, just for that moment.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what it was. Hear me out. You splashed the water so that the reflection of the moon broke up and then became whole again. You kept doing it, so much longer than I thought you would, looking so amazingly pretty, pale as you were, in the moonlight. Then some people came down, and I wondered if you would stay and talk to them, and I wanted so much that you shouldn’t. And quickly you stood up, so gracefully, and before they could see you, melting away like a wild animal, you disappeared, into the trees, away from the sound of the party. And after a moment I went home.’

  Neither of them spoke, and then she said, ‘T
hat’s the nicest story I’ve ever heard about myself.’

  She drank more than he did, though neither drank very much, bringing the bottle and the ice bucket beside them on the floor. He told her about his farm, about the characters living there, the loneliness he felt, and also how he felt whole and committed only there. He told her about his vegetables, a new and expensive and difficult project.

  At a pause in the conversation he sat back, stood up, and paced a few times back and forth across the room, smiling to himself. ‘There, I even told you about my greenhouses.’

  She had become languid, sleepy. ‘You did, and I liked it. Usually men are so boring when they talk about business. I’d like to see your farm, you know. The only farms I’ve seen are the ones outside Lahore, where people give parties.’

  ‘Those don’t count. The people who own those lose money by the handful, and they don’t care. It’s disrespectful, of the land and the people who work it.’

  ‘Don’t be so serious.’ The call for prayer sounded from a nearby mosque.

  Murad sat down again. ‘It’s almost morning, I should go.’

  ‘No, stay. Should we smoke a joint or something?’

  ‘I’m perfect the way I am. But I don’t want your parents to see my car.’

  ‘They’re in Lahore. It’s only the watchman and my old servant Fakiru. They’ve both seen it all, and they know enough to keep quiet.’

  Looking into the fire for a long moment, he said, ‘I’m sleepy, but you’re right, I don’t want to leave.’

  ‘Why don’t you carry me upstairs and put me to bed in that case?’

  He picked up a lighter and spun it on the floor. ‘No, let’s not do that now, let’s save it. Bring a cover and a pillow and we’ll sleep here by the fire.’

  They lay down by the fire and held each other and finally slept. At midday when they woke, instead of asking the servant for lunch they drove out to Kausar Market and bought food for a picnic, eating it in her garden lying on a carpet the whole afternoon, with wine and cheese and all the good things.