Salt and Saffron

by Kamila Shamsie

  I ran to my room, locked the door, and wept, though I didn’t quite know why, my fists banging against the wall. And when half an hour went by and Mariam Apa did not knock on the door, I wept some more. But when I heard Aba dragging suitcases down from the store-room shelves, I pushed myself off the bed, out of the room, into her room where she was waiting for me, arms open just wide enough to fit me in. Something of the sickness inside me dissipated then, for though I knew she would leave, I also knew he – Jahangir – would not be able to help but love her.

  ‘There was a boy in my class called Jahangir,’ I gulped between sobs. ‘We used to call him Jangia – Underpants.’ And then we both laughed, our heads thrown back, our shoulders shaking, our arms still around each other.

  She and Aba left the next day. She had packed all her favourite clothes and books, much to the consternation of Ami, who kept saying, ‘But you’re only going to meet him now. That’s all. The wedding, if there is a wedding, won’t be for a while yet.’

  But she knew Mariam Apa well enough to know there would be no planning and preparation and attention to custom and drawing up guest lists that would include everyone whose shadow had ever crossed paths with Mariam Apa and her closest relatives.

  There was a strange silence in the house when they left. Ami and I retired to separate rooms to try to imagine what would await Mariam Apa at the end of that train journey. But I could not imagine the Underpants Man as anything other than a caricature, and found myself wondering over and over how she would greet Masood, and would she hug him again? And why, why, I wondered, I finally wondered, why was it that when we tried to think of ways to save Mariam Apa there was one we never mentioned?

  Several times that day I paused to think of living in a house without Mariam Apa around, but I never allowed myself to linger over that thought, telling myself instead that soon I’d be gone as well, and perhaps by the time I came back for the holidays Mariam Apa would have found a way to convince Underpants to move back to Karachi and build a house in the empty plot next door to ours, with an extra-large kitchen for Masood.

  Aba returned the next day, alone.

  ‘Well?’ Ami and I greeted him at the door.

  ‘Well, she’s married.’

  I looked at Ami, and she looked at me, and I knew she was thinking what I was thinking, only she was thinking it with greater horror, and we both wondered, How? How can we say it? So we just said it the simplest way we knew: ‘To whom?’

  I had lived all my life in that house but, I swear, I asked the question because I did not know the answer.

  Chapter Nine

  To set foot once more on the soil of one’s homeland. Modern airports deny us this symbolic gesture. No soil, not even tarmac. Instead we step into an elevated corridor which carries us through to passport control, luggage claim and customs clearance. Denied my Richard II moments (‘so weeping-smiling greet I thee, my earth’) I’ve learnt to crane forward, or sideways, towards a window, to await the dip of the plane’s wing, the descent from the clouds and – almost there now – the giant expanse of Karachi glittering under the darkened sky. I’ve always loved the brashness of that city, the resolve that turns on lights, night after night, not really in the hope of outstarring the sky, but just for the sake of contesting. Skyscrapered skylines, for all their self-vaunting, seem far less ambitious by comparison; the buildings shouting out, ‘I’m taller, I’m more brightly lit, hey look at me!’ vie merely with each other for attention.

  As I watched the land below, an area of lights winked once, twice, and disappeared. A sigh, half exasperated, half amused, went round the cabin. ‘Bijli failure,’ someone behind me said needlessly, and we all waited to see how many lights would flicker on, signifying back-up generator power. Only a handful did, and the voice behind me said in Urdu, ‘Well, looks like it isn’t Clifton or Defence.’ The passengers around me started laughing at this mention of the élite neighbourhoods, except for the woman across the aisle from me who caught my eye and gave me a rueful smile. We both recognized the other as someone who did, or easily could, live in the most upmarket parts of town.

  At passport control the same woman and I regarded the long line ahead of us, consisting almost entirely of men, and simultaneously set up a cry of, ‘Ladies!’ The cry was picked up by the men in line, ‘Ladies! Ladies please!’ and a path opened up, despite a few grudging noises, to the front of the line.

  The airport official looked at my passport picture, which had been taken the year before on what was, by the look of it, the most glamorous day of my life. The official sniffed, squinted at me, and said the photograph was of my older sister. He turned the picture towards me to make his point, but the men standing near me waved off his suspicions. ‘Oh, you know the studio photographers; when they’re developing the picture they do a little artistry of their own,’ one man said. Another interjected, ‘Touch up. Touch-up job.’ And a third sealed the argument. ‘These are women’s matters.’ The official grunted, ‘Sometimes I think we place too much importance on women’s matters.’ But he let me through.

  The wait for the luggage was mercifully short. As a porter wheeled my suitcase out of the terminal I heard a voice announce over a loudspeaker, ‘No cigarette smoking or paan chewing in the terminal.’ The end of the remark reminded me of Che’s reddened teeth and I realized I was glad Celeste hadn’t been able to afford to take me up on my offer to spend part of her summer in Karachi.

  My cousin Sameer was waiting for me when I exited the terminal, and he hugged me with an exuberance that prompted a cat-call from some unknown person.

  ‘Good God, girl!’ Sameer grinned. ‘You’re a sore for sight eyes.’

  ‘You’re a bit of a sore yourself,’ I laughed. ‘But, oh God, Sammy, the heat!’

  ‘The problem’s the humidity.’ He gestured in the direction of his car. ‘Your parents were planning to come and pick you up but I had to drop a business associate at the airport in any case, so I said I’d just hang around and wait for you.’

  ‘Business associate.’ I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘And how’s the corporate world treating you?’

  He made a face. ‘It would help if this country had an economy to speak of. My advice is, keep studying as long as possible.’ He put an arm around my shoulder. ‘But, honestly, other than my overwhelming desire to greet my favourite cousin, I’m here because the BS called. Beloved Sister. She told me what happened and that maybe you’re a little shaken up. So I’m here with my shoulder.’

  I shrugged. ‘He bought me a cup of coffee. Not much more to it.’

  ‘He who?’

  ‘He who? Well, what did Samia say?’

  ‘Baji. The family tree. What the stars say about you and Mariam.’

  ‘Oh. That.’

  ‘That.’ He didn’t say anything else as we got into his olive-green Civic (brand new – obviously the economy wasn’t treating him too shabbily), paid the porter (ignoring his plea for US dollars) and drove away from the comparative order of the airport into the crush of brightly coloured buses and honking horns and zigzagging scooters. Open-backed trucks carrying huge, mushroom-shaped bales of hay lumbered past, and Sameer veered off to the far lane and slowed down until they passed. A man rolled down the tinted windows of his car and raised an eyebrow seductively at me from behind eighties-style dark glasses. My view of him was cut off by a van that zipped past, letters of the alphabet stuck on its back window, spelling out I AM TOM SAWYER.

  I laughed so hard at that I almost wept. ‘The absurdities Karachi proffers up to keep our sense of humour intact.’

  ‘Of course it’s not as absurd as believing old family myths.’

  ‘Sam Mere!’ I boxed his shoulder. ‘If it were one set of twins, or two, it could be coincidence. But so many, over the years, and each time …’ We overtook Tom Sawyer and I saw he was a woman. ‘Of course I know it should be absurd. And you have to really stretch definitions to believe that Mariam and I … but still. Something feels unresolved.’


  He was gracious enough not to laugh at my expectation of resolution. ‘Is that why you’re finally here before the middle of June?’

  ‘Has she said anything about that?’

  ‘Your dadi? Not exactly. But she called me a couple of hours ago and gave me a lecture on driving carefully and not exceeding the speed limits.’

  ‘There are speed limits?’

  ‘In the abstract. Are you nervous about seeing her again?’

  Nervous? That wasn’t inaccurate, but the word seemed wrong somehow. Who was it who first decided that something as complicated as an emotion could be summed up in a word with consonants neatly spaced between vowels? Of course, there had been a time with Dadi when my feelings were as uncomplicated as a monosyllable, vowels politely alternating with consonants. A monosyllable such as ‘love’. And then, after that, there had been a time when I tried to convince myself that my feelings for Dadi were as uncomplicated as that other monosyllable, love’s opposite. But I could never quite bring myself to believe that.

  ‘She’s not at my house, is she?’ I asked Sameer.

  ‘What, now? No. Don’t suppose so. Think she’s had her share of family-related tensions for the day.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘Mummy just broke the news to her. My grandmother’s coming to town.’

  ‘Meher Dadi? God help us all.’

  Don’t misunderstand that remark. Dadi’s sister, Meher, is the grandmother I’d always wanted. Born two years after Dadi, she early on perfected the role of rebellious younger sister. At thirteen she announced that one day she would elope, and five years later she did just that. Mind you, the man she eloped with was from a very good family and, on his own merit, was a particular favourite of my great-grandfather’s, so both families were delighted with the match. (Once, watching a stage production of The Tempest, Dadi laughed at Prospero’s plans to unite Ferdinand and Miranda and said, ‘My father was Prospero to Meher’s Miranda.’) Meher’s husband died long before she was ready to settle into respectable widowhood, so she took to spending her evenings playing bridge with my father and his friends and demanding to know when one of them was going to marry her daughter. One of them finally did – my father’s old friend, Zaheer. Immediately after the wedding Meher sold her house and declared she was going to Greece, and maybe she would take flying lessons while she was there. She said to her daughter, Zainab, ‘Zaheer’s rich, and I don’t foresee divorce for the two of you, so you won’t mind if I squander all my money, will you?’ Then she took off in the direction of the Mediterranean and proceeded to multiply her wealth with a few wise investments in the European stock markets. Every so often she’d return to Karachi for a visit and – this is why I said, God help us – she and Dadi would get into the most bitter rows about the most trivial things. I was almost fifteen before I realized that ‘Apollo’, who missed her while she was away, and because of whom she couldn’t stay in Karachi long, was not a dog. And yes, she had learnt to fly. She had the aviator goggles to prove it.

  In London, Samia had said that once you scratched the surface those two sisters, Meher and Abida, were really quite similar. I pointed out that Meher might scratch the surface, but Abida would consider it a most common activity.

  ‘So what did you think of Baji?’ Sameer waved away the young boy who had darted into the middle of the road to wipe the Civic’s windscreen at the red light. The boy ignored Sameer and wiped vigorously with a dirty cloth, leaving streaks of grease on the windscreen. Sameer rolled down his window and yelled at the boy, who darted around to my side and wiped with more vigour. I picked up the two-rupee note lying, half torn, by my foot and handed it to him just as the lights changed.

  ‘I was too terrified to think. But Rehana Apa’s lovely.’ Something that should have occurred to me long ago finally did. ‘Sameer, how many of the Indian relatives do you know?’

  Sameer shook his head and turned on his wiper spray. ‘Me personally? None. Samia and Rehana Apa found each other in London a couple of weeks after my last visit there, so I haven’t met her or Baji or Stinko and Skunky, or whatever the kids’ names are. And you remember that old Indian relative you saw at our house when we were kids? The one you thought was talking about someone called Prue Frock? Well, she wrote my grandmother a letter of condolence when my grandfather died, which Mummy answered, along with some polite if-you’re-ever-in-Karachi kind of note. No one really expected Prue Frock to take the offer up, and there was – I can’t believe we haven’t talked about this before – there was a huge tamasha when she wrote back weeks later to say she’d be in Karachi for a few hours. A major deal was made of keeping the whole thing secret from your dadi. But we haven’t heard from her since then. I think she might have died.’ His hands left the steering wheel in a gesture of incomprehension. ‘Our more distant cousins – you know, the Starched Aunts and that whole side – probably keep up some of their old ties. I think some of them may have done some border hopping from time to time. And now that everyone’s moving around so much … You know little Usman’s got a conditional offer for Oxford? Akbar and Sulaiman’s old college, no less. So yes, I suppose there are increasing opportunities for meeting on neutral soil. But I think, the more closely one’s connected to your dadi, the less likely one is to hear about all the family reunions going on. I love her, you know, but she’s always been a little nutty about the Indian relatives.’

  ‘Can you imagine doing that? Cutting off all contact with me? Or Samia?’

  Sameer’s hand touched one ear and then the other. ‘God spare us all from such horrors.’ He said it with a fervour I didn’t expect, and for a moment I thought he was mocking me.

  ‘There’s a strong chance the bank’s going to post me to Hong Kong. It’s an attractive proposition and God knows there are days I just want to get away from the inefficiency, the violence, the corruption … Fact is, if it happens I’d be stupid to turn it down. Professional suicide. But no place will ever be home like this. And no company is as comforting as the company of family. That’s what I learnt at college.’

  I turned off the air conditioner, and rolled down the window. We were much closer to the sea now and, coupled with the speed at which Sameer was driving, it made for a pleasant breeze. I inhaled the musky scent of motia that wafted over boundary walls, and turned up the volume of the stereo. Dire Straits with my perennial favourite, the Brothers In Arms album. This could be any day, any year, in the last decade. Sameer driving, me controlling the music and the ventilation, conversation drifting between what we would do in the future and what we didn’t know about the past, and Sameer as inclined as ever to treat a red traffic-light as a suggestion rather than a command.

  Karachi boys have a distinctive one-handed way of driving, though I hadn’t realized that until I went to America. They push their seats further back than is necessary, keep one hand on their left thigh, ready to shift over to the gearbox, extend the other arm forward, absolutely straight, and grip the top of the steering wheel. When the time comes to turn, they unfist their right hand, hold the open palm against the wheel, and make the turn, the circular motion of their hand suggesting that they’re miming the actions of a window-cleaner with a wash cloth. It’s only silly when it isn’t sexy.

  ‘So, go on. Spill the beans,’ Sameer said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Who is the “he” you mysteriously alluded to at the airport? The one who bought you coffee?’

  ‘I was just wondering how he drives. You’d like him. Have you ever been to Liaquatabad?’

  ‘I hope you’ve just changed the subject.’

  ‘Why? Dammit, Sameer, why?’

  ‘Because petrol prices have shot up. Name?’

  ‘Khaleel. New topic.’

  ‘Khaleel? So he’s a desi.’

  ‘New topic, Sameer.’

  ‘And he lives in Liaquatabad? Aliya, seriously?’

  ‘New topic. Please. Sammy, please.’

  ‘Okay. But we’re going to have to talk a
bout this later. Hey, did you hear about Godziloo? The lizard in my bathroom?’

  I closed my eyes and leant back. ‘Yes. It was the same colour as the floor and it moved with speed. But go on, tell.’

  When I opened my eyes again, the front door of my house was on the other side of the windscreen and my father was leaning in through the window, pulling my nose. ‘Oh, Zsa Zsa GaSnore. Madam Snooze Jahan.’

  My mother clipped Sameer’s ear. ‘Sammy, you so-terrific soporific’

  Home.

  Chapter Ten

  When I finally awoke the next morning, my first thought was that I would see Dadi today. So I skipped over the first thought.

  Wasim was in the kitchen, squatting on the floor and kneading flour for chappatis when I pushed through the swing door minutes later. He smiled when he saw me. ‘Who is this guest in the house? The mali was going to water the plants outside your window earlier this morning –’ he gestured as though holding a hose, and produced the sound of spurting water – ‘but I told him not to because it might wake you up. Guests receive every courtesy around here.’

  ‘I have every expectation that I’ll receive nothing less from you,’ is what I wanted to reply. But my Urdu, never up to par, swapped umeed with amrood and I ended up saying, ‘I have guava that I’ll receive nothing less from you.’

  Wasim laughed and put the kettle on to boil. ‘Always thinking of food.’

  In Masood’s kitchen, how could it be otherwise? I sat on the counter, with my feet resting on the stool beneath. In the early mornings between waking up and leaving for school I’d sit just so and watch Masood prepare lunch. He was always up by sunrise, preparing the miracles Mariam Apa had asked for the night before. ‘The sun can climb or it can burn,’ he said, more than once. ‘The first stages of the sun’s ascent are the more sheer and slippery. It’s like climbing K2. So Aftab Sahib climbs the sky and does nothing but climb. By the time he is near the top it’s as easy as climbing a hill, so his attention can wander and then he starts seeking out kitchens and angles his rays through the windows.’