‘Yes. Yes, I do. I didn’t realize what I was doing.’
‘He was furious at Adil for playing with his saw.’
‘Yes he was.’ Mamu had not even been there.
‘He’s hardly ever angry at Adil.’
‘He’s very kind to his children.’
‘He’s a kind man.’
‘I know.’
‘You shouldn’t take advantage of it.’
‘I won’t.’
She turned to go back inside, then changed her mind and headed for the wall, where she retrieved the hammer from where the neighbour had left it.
‘Di,’ Mamu called.
‘What?’
‘Next time I’ll ask him.’
‘I know you will. You’re a smart man. You always learn from your mistakes.’
She went back into her room, locked the door and didn’t come out for the next two days, at least not when there were other people around. I moved Adil’s things from his room into mine, stripping it bare of all his Wasim Akram posters and toys, leaving just the small bed for Mamu to sleep on. At night Adil and I huddled together under my blanket, listening to my mother pottering about the house. Drawers would open and shut, a dining room chair pulled out and squeaked back into place, the TV came on and went off.
‘Ashoo,’ Adil whispered into my armpit, ‘what is she looking for?’
A suicide note, I thought. ‘I don’t know Adil,’ I replied.
‘Will she stop looking soon? It’s hard to sleep with all the noise she makes.’
‘She’ll stop looking when she finds it.’
‘Will she know when she finds it?’
‘I don’t know. Go to sleep Adil.’
‘I can’t, there’s too much noise.’
Something fell outside, the crash punctuated his sentence.
‘Concentrate on something else.’
‘Like what?’
I racked my brains. ‘Like Airwolf, like its control panels. Can you remember how many flashing lights there are?’
‘It depends on what it’s doing. If it’s battle-ready, then there are more.’
‘Imagine its battle-ready then, and you’re flying it to meet some horrible enemy.’
‘What happens when I get there?’
‘You and Airwolf have to destroy it.’
‘With guns?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought guns were bad.’
‘Depends on who’s using them.’
‘Oh.’
Adil drifted into thoughts, trying to wrap his mind around the good-bad paradox I had introduced into his ten-year-old psyche. I thought he had fallen asleep.
‘Ashoo,’ his poke in my tummy pulled me out of a fitful sleep.
‘What Adil?’
‘That doesn’t make sense, what you said about guns.’
‘Okay, it doesn’t matter.’
‘It does. Either something is bad or it isn’t. You shouldn’t try to confuse me.’
‘I wasn’t trying to confuse you.’
‘I might be small, you know,’ he turned away and pulled his legs into his chest, ‘but I’m not stupid.’
We both fell asleep eventually. In the morning, Mamu and I cleaned up the mess in the lounge and dining room while Adil made jam sandwiches for breakfast. He left one outside Ammi’s door on a plate after sliding a piece of paper under it.
‘What did you write?’ I asked him.
‘That it’s difficult to sleep without Abba in the house.’
The day passed like the one before and the one after it.
MUNNA ROCKET
BACK OF RICKSHAW
~
People came and went but no one had news, only questions. Mamu and I fielded them together, when he was around. Generally it fell to me.
‘When is the soyem?’
‘We don’t know that he’s dead.’
‘He was such a family man. He would have called.’
‘Maybe he was kidnapped.’
‘If he was, wouldn’t we have heard about it?’
‘How’s your mother?’
‘She’s resting.’
There were many looks of pity, and something else as well. My mother had always managed to make other women feel she was condescending to them. There was a certain smug satisfaction in the air when some of them came calling, a sense of justice having been done.
‘That bit of meat could do with some tenderization,’ I heard one portly matron whisper to another as I ushered them out after saying thank you for coming, and explaining that Ammi didn’t feel up to meeting anyone just yet.
Similar sentiments surfaced often during the next few days as all attempts by ‘outsiders,’ i.e. not immediate family, to participate in our grief were rebuffed. Being together in celebration and tragedy was the bedrock of our culture, the base from which all social interaction rose, but my mother’s behaviour made it impossible. If someone came to call, to condole, to assist, they expected gratitude and solemnity, not aggression and histrionics. And even if someone was angry, it was understood that anger would not be vented on the guests. We could not guarantee that, so we eventually started making excuses for not letting most people in. There was also the small fact that we didn’t know what had happened to our father. We had reported him missing, the Mamus had been around to the hospitals and the morgues, but there was no trace, no indication of what had happened to him and whether he was alive or dead. So a soyem was out of the question, and it was easier to ignore people altogether than it was to answer their many questions with politely modulated ‘I don’t knows’. Our stock in the neighbourhood plummeted. No one sent food after a while. Mamu took to the kitchen, with disastrous results.
The kitchens in most old houses in the area were long and narrow with the stove against one wall and the sink opposite, next to the door. Mamu had been boiling rice to go with the yellow daal concoction that was the only thing he said he knew how to cook. He turned to wash the dishes in the sink, leaving the cloth used to handle hot pots dangerously close to the flame. It caught fire.The whiff of smoke alerted Mamu and he turned and grabbed it, thinking he would douse it in the sink, but it ignited the front of his kurta as it rose on the breeze from the open kitchen door. His screams brought Adil and me running. There was a pan of soapy water in the sink, I grabbed it and threw it on him. Miraculously, he was unhurt.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ he mumbled, brushing Adil and I off, ‘just a little fright that’s all. No harm done.’
We insisted on examining him anyway, before declaring him fit to continue with his life. He seemed very relieved when I insisted he let me finish in the kitchen. As Adil led him out we heard the door slam shut. Mamu stopped outside Ammi’s closed bedroom door and cleared his throat.
‘No need to worry Di, I’m fine.’
There was no answer.
The three of us ate in silence. When the dishes were cleared, I soaked the pans and settled down with Adil to make phone calls and find out from his school friends what he and I had been missing in class. Mamu set out to meet Baray Mamu, who had said he had located a ‘source’ in the police that might help them show more interest in finding out what had happened to Abba. He came home late, after I had sent Adil off to, if not sleep, at least lie in bed. We talked loudly outside the room Ammi had barricaded herself into so she could hear us.
‘They said they’d do their best,’ Mamu cleared his throat, ‘but cases like these are hard to crack. Tomorrow your Mamu and I are going to the Citizens Initiative. Sometimes they find people when the police has given up hope.’
He looked tired, crestfallen, as wrinkled as his kurta.
‘Why don’t you rest then, Mamu? I’ll lock up. You go ahead,’ I nodded reassuringly, ‘I have the house under control.’
Patting my head and mumbling something about how I should be worried about my studies not the house, he went to bed.
Before going to join Adil in our nightly game of Who Shall Fall Asleep Last, I left a plate of
daal chawal prominently displayed on the counter.
When I stumbled in bleary-eyed to make tea the next morning, it was gone.The clean empty plate was stacked with the others in the drying rack.
Adil slipped another note under the permanently closed bedroom door in the afternoon.
‘What did you write this time?’
‘That you and Mamu don’t cook like she does. That Mamu nearly made Mamu ki bhujia. And that I’m missing lots of coursework at school and …’
‘And?’
‘And that Mamu said the CI can find people when no one else can.’
‘Were you listening at the door when you should have been asleep?’
He nodded.
‘You know you’re not supposed to do that.’
‘You used to do it all the time.’
That was true.
‘All right then. Want to play some Ludo?’
We settled down to a game.
‘Ayesha you know you snore very loudly.’
‘I do not.’
‘Yes you do. It’s okay. I don’t mind. It actually helps me sleep. You know why?’
‘Because you’re a strange little boy?’
‘Because it reminds me of Abba.’
‘On a Sunday afternoon?’
‘Mouth open, legs sprawled …’
‘One arm dangling …’
He’d looked like a body in one of those forensic shows, I realized as I lay in AKU. All that had been missing was the tiny bullet hole in the centre of the head, the open eyes staring vacantly into space.
YAADGAR ANDAZ, SAWARI LAJAWAB
BACK OF RICKSHAW
~
In addition to my life, my love life, and the ideal Pakistani woman according to idiotic Pakistani men, my coma also mimicked my father’s departure. From the outside, there was no evidence that I was truly gone, and also none to indicate I was truly here.What did ‘truly here’ entail anymore? Floating through life rudderless, practically friendless, thinking constantly of destruction yet pretending to enjoy life. When Abba disappeared, part of me had wanted to fall apart like Ammi had, wanted to dedicate the rest of my days to some tragic love story that was doomed, doomed, doomed; the male lead having disappeared. But I couldn’t.The mother had disintegrated into some sort of demon lover wronged by fate, the brother was too young, the Mamus too ineffectual. So it was ‘once more into the breach!’ Or was it once more into the courtyard? The hospital had a nice courtyard.
I used to look at the human millipede, many legs and one thought – ‘survive’ – crawling by. There had to be others like myself, female heads of families, unacknowledged and unappreciated. I would recognize them if I saw them. They would be palpably different from those around them. It would be something in the stance, erect, back straight, legs apart, arms not crossed protectively over breasts unlike most other women around them in the presence of men, not ashamed of what made them women. It would be something in the clothes, a lack of frills and overt girlishness; instead clean, simple cuts, strong colours or one colour and always, the sensible shoes. Most of all, it would be something in the eyes. Pupils. That would be a good start.
Did the other women have it better? The ones without the serial second-guesser in their heads? Did they bathe in ass’ milk and wallow in contentment? Sleep better at night? Did they sometimes want to be like me, like I sometimes wanted to be like them? If Adil put an ad for me in the matrimonial section of the paper would it read ‘match wanted for my sister tall fair MBA domesticated’ or ‘tall fair MBA masticated (but still inedible)’? Was my independence a charade considering I had actually been domesticated just by my mother not by a man? Is that why I wanted Saad? Did I want a new owner?
That Saad would be a supportive husband was a frequent topic of conversation between us, in purely hypothetical terms of course.
‘My wife,’ he had replied when I first asked if, for all his outward rhetoric, he was a closet conservative like 80 per cent of other men I knew, ‘will be marrying the most open-minded person there is within a one-thousand mile radius.’
‘And how open-minded would that be exactly?’
‘I’m so open-minded I have to walk leaning forward so my brain doesn’t fall out of the back of my head.And I never drive by Burnes Road, because the shopkeepers chase my car yelling “Mughuz, Mughuz“.’
‘That is open-minded.’
‘I told you.’
‘But seriously …’
‘But seriously, I’m not one of those men who would presume to dictate to my wife, especially not since I’ll probably marry an intelligent, educated woman with a mind of her own.’
‘So you wouldn’t get all constipated about her working, etc?’
‘Hell, she should work. Everyone should, just because it helps you appreciate things you’d otherwise take for granted. Of course,’ he said, catching my look of disgust at the implication that some people worked because they felt like it rather than because they had to, ‘if she wanted to stay at home and paint her toenails, that would be fine too.’
‘What if she used your money to go out and pay someone else seven hundred rupees to paint her toenails for her?’
‘No problem. As long as they aren’t black.’
‘So your giving nature does have limits.’
‘Everyone has limits. Otherwise there would be nothing to push against, and what would life be without a little conflict, my little court shoe.’
‘Don’t call me your little court shoe!’
‘Now that’s a silly limit to have. Why don’t you save your convictions for something really important, like honour killing?’
‘There’s more than enough to cover both.’
‘I know,’ Saad sighed, ‘I wish you’d laugh more.’
‘I would if I saw more of you. You’re funny looking.’
We chortled, grinned idiotically at each other, and munched masala fries in contented silence for the next few minutes. When I was with Saad, a heavy weight seemed to lift off my shoulders.
IT’S VERY HARD TO FIND A VIRGIN
GRAFFITI ON ZAMZAMA
~
‘Ayesha, Ayesha!’ My mother was standing by my bed shaking my arm. The canola in my hand was dangling by a thread.
‘Ma’am, stop it! Ma’am, stop shaking her!’ A nurse gently took both my mother’s hands in her own. ‘You mustn’t disturb the drip, you must not touch anything,’ she told her.
Ammi looked bewildered, ‘But don’t you think it’s time for her to get up?’
‘She needs to rest.’
‘Rest, rest, rest. That’s all she ever does. Well, I think it’s time she got up and let the rest of us rest. Ha ha,’ Ammi chuckled. To the practiced ear, it was an ominous sound. The rage train was about to leave the station.
‘Ma’am why don’t we go outside for a while? The doctor said only a minute.’ She took her arm. Kind eyes. Ammi shook her hand off.
‘No. I want to stay in here and talk to my daughter some more. She’s unconscious, so I can be the one talking for a change. She never lets anyone talk when she’s awake.’
‘You have to go outside now Ma’am.’
‘Don’t defend her. I know you’re doing it because you think she deserves it, but if you were in her place she would never have been as considerate of you. She has no consideration for anyone. Do you know her name and picture are in the paper today? A picture of her being carried to a car by a hijra? People know she’s my daughter. What will they say? No, she has no consideration for anyone!’
‘Anjum!’ The nurse kept trying to get Ammi away from my bed with one hand, calling to someone outside over her shoulder.
‘Oh no!’ Ammi didn’t seem conscious of where she was, ‘she’d be out with some boyfriend or the other. Taking their presents. Calling them at night to whisper obscenities. She thinks I don’t hear her but I do. Letting them drive her places.You know what kind of places, don’t you? No, you’re just a girl.Your father would know.’
‘Ma’
am, please come with me.’ Anjum turned out to be a strapping male nurse. Another one of those girl-boy names.
Till now my mother’s tirade had been delivered in a melodious, happy tone; she had skipped over the words like an excited child playing hopscotch on a concrete pavement. Now, her tone tightened, her voice hardened as she said, ‘That’s why he liked her so much, you know.’
‘Who, ma’am?’ Anjum asked as he pushed her firmly towards the door, ‘why don’t you tell me about it outside?’
‘Why, her father of course! He liked he because he knew what she was. He knew others like her. I know he did. He didn’t know I knew but he knew them. Knew them very well. Better than a decent man ever would. He liked her because she reminded him of them, with her flirting and her revealing clothes and her whispering in his ear.’
‘Ammi,’ I was weeping but she couldn’t see me and if she could it would have made no difference, ‘please stop it …’
‘You think I don’t know what he whispered to you,’ Ammi ripped herself out of the startled Anjum’s grip and, flinging herself on my paralysed form, began to beat on my chest, ‘I know what he whispered, he used to whisper it to me first!’
Both the nurses moved to grab her arms and tried to pin them to her sides but she elbowed one in the chest and stamped on the other one’s foot. Slivers of jet escaped from her bun and rose around her face; Medusa in her prime. The female nurse stumbled backwards, clutching her chest and gasping, then she rushed through the door and into the corridor.
‘Slut! Lazy, good-for-nothing, worthless slut!’
Slam! The IV tube was knocked over, the long-suffering canola in my hand ripped out of its miserable, half-justified existence.
‘Whore! Slut! Fraud! Bitch!’
There was a commotion at the door as several people, led by Adil, Dr Shafiq among them, tried to get in at once. Adil looked stricken at the sight of our mother looming over me, her face contorted with hate, her mouth working.
‘It was all your fault!’ she shrieked as her manic hands went to the tube that fed oxygen into my nose. Two orderlies grabbed her and began dragging her towards the door. She struggled, managing to push one of them off.
‘Get her out of here,’ Dr Shafiq snapped, pulling the fallen man to his feet and pushing him back into the fray.
Tunnel Vision Page 11