by Siya Turabi
‘The bees need to find a new home for the new queen and the colony before the rains.’
‘Why?’ he had asked his father.
‘It’s hard to move through the storms. It takes too long and the food can run out,’ his father had replied. ‘The bees will send scouts to look for the new place.’
More bees joined the hovering ones, and they were all now moving together in a specific dance. These were the scouts, and the bees that were still dancing were sending them off to look for a new home.
One of the scouts left the group and Hassan followed its movements upwards, higher and higher, past the spiralling tiles. On its way, it stopped in a beam of sunlight coming through one of the holes in the rim. It hovered for a few moments in the warmth before it moved towards the hole and out into the air. Another bee followed, and soon all the scouts were leaving.
He ate the chocolate slowly. Where was Baba now? The cook had said he was in prison but Hassan knew that was a lie. Ansari Saab had said he had been seen in a musical band. His father might be travelling from village to village now, playing the instruments that he’d found or made.
Hassan stepped outside, just for a minute. It had to be midday by now. Inside again, he paced the room, taking sips of the water. He had known Maryam for little more than a week but he trusted her and he would do anything for her. Did that mean he loved her? No, love was for films. Romantic love, at least. But was this another kind of love? Was it possible to have different kinds of love that he could measure or compare? And what about his love for the bees? Was that what he felt when he was inside the nest? Yes, it could be his imagination but that didn’t matter anymore. The love in their home filled him with longing. When he was there between the walls of honeycomb he knew what he wanted: to be closer to the queen. In those moments he would do anything to be near her. Was this love?
He paced across the floor. Where was Maryam? Should he try to find her? What if the cook had followed her and what if he had hurt her? Hassan couldn’t bear to think about that. He reached for the door and nearly opened it but turned around and paced to the other side of the floor again. He did that five times, stopping himself each time with his hand on the bolt.
The fifth time, he noticed the bees again.
Fifty or so scouts had returned and they were all dancing around the cluster for attention until there were just a handful left dancing the same dance. Their discovery seemed to be the most popular. Then they stopped too and, in one fell swoop, they dived into the colony. They had won the battle outside the nest but there was more work to do inside. The bees there had to know the news too.
The sound of humming grew quieter until the whole nest shuddered again and sent out a warmth which reached Hassan too. There were some sharp tones in the humming now, like horns, but higher pitched. The whole nest shuddered again and this time it glowed. The bees had agreed on a new destination.
They were about to swarm. The hive shuddered again, a compact ball of energy. Outside the mass, scouts darted up and down, left and right, about to lead the way. The cloud of bees began to move, changing shape from a ball into a cylinder. There were thousands, about to leave.
He heard a knock at the door, sharp and short. Hassan was there in a second, his ear on the wood. Footsteps on the soft sandy ground outside had to be Maryam’s. There was more knocking on the door, but it was hard to hear against the humming from the hive. He had to be double sure; his hand was on the bolt and he waited for Maryam’s voice. Nothing. He put his head to the door again and waited. She said she would say his name. Had she forgotten? Was the humming too loud for him to hear her? He began to pull at the bolt. Then the banging started and he froze.
Hassan rounded his mouth and puffed. The bees grew quieter for a few moments and then began to stir, moving upwards a little as one cloud. They understood the language.
The beekeeper’s face was in his mind again, his lips moving, making the sounds. Hassan copied the shape with his jaw and lips – movement and sound – grunts, puffs, clicks, and a deep-throated roar until the formation of bees became a force, hovering at the door near him. Their humming, now more of a growl, entered his heart.
The column was spinning, like a mini tornado. Hassan was there in Harikaya, the flatlands spread out around him, the shrine in the distance, the drumbeat, the desert sands, the warm air, the night sky all spinning at once, blurring into one mix. The energy of the bees was his energy. All became sheer energy, expanding, a glimpse of the universe within him.
He raised his hand to the door. The bees inched closer, and he pushed the lock and pulled the door. The bees were quick through the open gap.
The cook waved his hands as thousands of bees surrounded him. He screamed and slapped his head and face as he scrambled about. The bees were only warning him; they would not hurt him. That was not Hassan’s instruction.
Hassan thanked the bees and ran, leaving the cook to fight and swat as best he could. They would give him enough time to run back to the house. A car was pulling into the courtyard and stopped in the carport.
The door crashed open.
It was Maryam. Hassan leant back on the wall of the servants’ quarters to wait for Ali Noor to go inside. Hassan was there in a few seconds. Without a word, Maryam took his arm and guided him into the hall.
‘I have them,’ she said, taking an envelope out of her shoulder bag.
They sifted through the photos together. His time in Karachi slipped through his fingers until they found the three photos of the cook, the journalists, the plan, just as he remembered. Maryam pointed to the living room. There was no time to waste.
Mir Saab was on the chair with the television blasting news. He turned his head slowly; a tiny light passed through his sad eyes when he saw Hassan.
‘We’ve got them,’ Maryam said.
‘Where is he now?’ Mir Saab asked.
‘At the masjid,’ Hassan said. Maryam must have told Mir Saab everything.
Maryam turned to Hassan. ‘But, how…?’
‘It’s all right. The bees trapped him,’ Hassan said, ‘but we need to be quick.’
Mir Saab rang the bell and Muhammed appeared. Mir Saab told him to send the guards to find the cook and then, when it was just the three of them, he turned to Hassan. ‘The cook said he found plans for the boat in your room.’
They stood face to face, a foot or two apart.
‘There are very few truths in life. One of them is nature. The other is friendship. I still believe in that,’ Mir Saab said. ‘Forgive me for doubting you.’
‘I doubted you. I thought you would send the guards again to look for my father.’
‘What do you mean again?’
‘You sent them for my father.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The forest fire was his fault.’
Hassan wanted to go on but Mir Saab was shaking his head.
‘What are you talking about? I never sent any guards.’
‘The guards that came to my house in Harikaya. Amma saw their uniform.’
‘That’s not the first time I’ve heard a story like that. Someone must have paid them.’
The truth hit Hassan like a punch in the stomach. Everything had been a lie. Hardly able to breathe, he staggered. The cook had done all this. He wanted to run out and find the cook himself, but the thought made the pain in his arm stronger. His vision became a blur. A gentle grip took his elbow. It was Maryam who led him to the couch.
‘What about Baba? Where is he?’ The question played over and over in his mind while they all sat in silence. Something was wrong. The clock chimed from the study. It was taking too long.
Muhammed came in, panting. ‘We looked everywhere,’ he said. ‘Must have escaped into the city.’
‘Inform the police,’ Mir Saab said.
Hassan left them after a few minutes and returned to the servants’ quarters.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kulsoom’s door opened by itself when he knock
ed. Hassan remained in the door frame. She was lying on the bed in the dark, airless room.
‘Who is it?’ Her face was still creased by sleep.
‘You thought I’d be dead by now, didn’t you?’
‘What?’
‘You’ve always been jealous of my mother, always happy when things went wrong for her. It must have been good to take her son away too.’
‘She begged me.’
‘You knew what the cook did. You knew he paid the guards.’
Kulsoom sat up on the bed and sighed as if she had expected these questions.
‘Give me my ID card.’
She looked confused for a second.
‘Give it to me now.’
She reached to the cupboard by her bed and opened the top drawer. She held it out to him. He came into the room just enough to take his card back from her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about the guards?’ he asked.
‘What would it have changed?’
He swallowed. She looked weak. In her way, she had lost everything too.
‘Why did the cook hate my father so much?’
‘Your mother was a beautiful woman. She had a choice between two young men, one who loved bees and the other who only loved money.’
Hassan sat down on the floor in the doorway.
‘Your father tricked your mother with poetry. With song. With forgotten promises. My family paid a dowry for your father and he gave it away to the needy, to anybody who asked him for it.’
His father’s ways had been hard on his mother.
‘He never worked hard in his life,’ Kulsoom said. Her expression was blank and her voice carried no emotion.
‘He wrote for the newspaper.’
‘Writing a few articles that got him into trouble. Call that work? Your mother did the work of two people.’
Hassan knew where she was going now. Baba had often gone off for days. Adventures, he had called it. He had always come back, with poetry and presents.
‘So, when your father left, I said nothing.’
Kulsoom had forgotten about one thing, the one thing she didn’t seem to have ever known. Love. What about his father’s love for him? She hadn’t cared about what losing that would mean for a child, for him. She had known the cook, known what he had done and kept it secret. He wanted to scream at her dishevelled form. Instead, he sighed. She had never known love.
‘He never loved me,’ she said, guessing his thoughts. ‘I know that now.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘He loved your mother. I always knew that. But who was worse? Your father or him?’
She had loved someone so imperfect, someone who hurt her. She had been ready to sacrifice her own family for this love. No, this kind of love was not love, but she had held onto the cook’s false love as if it was her own heart itself. Everything she had done made sense in a sad way.
She looked up at him sharply. ‘And your mother loved him too, once. But your father got her.’
‘That’s why the cook hated my father so much.’
‘I took what your mother threw away. I always came second.’
An expression crossed her face that made Hassan almost pity her. A lost child, forgotten by her family.
‘He doesn’t like to lose. In his own way, he still loves your mother. He needed revenge. He was eaten away by it. When he saw your father come back from the fields, he had the idea of going to the guards. They were friends of his.’
‘You mean he paid them off.’
She sighed.
‘What did he pay them with?’ Hassan asked.
‘What do you think?’
‘Opium. And my father, where is he now?’
‘The guards told your father to stay away or they would—’ There she stopped; she looked broken now, shrunken and ten years older.
‘What?’
‘Or else they would kill you.’
Hassan managed to get up to his room somehow, in a cloud of silent anger. He had blamed the wrong man. All this time.
There was a screech at the window. It was the crow and it was quiet again, waiting for Hassan to say something, to make the first move.
‘I’m going to leave you,’ Hassan said to the bird, getting up close to it. ‘I’m going back home.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hassan was glad to be at the dining table and eating again. It was lunch time but it seemed like much later. He ate with his hands, breaking the bread to scoop up the daal and vegetables. The bread was soft and warm to touch. The rice was easy to mould.
‘They think I’m a fool,’ Mir Saab said.
‘Who does?’ Zain asked.
‘The Prime Minister’s cabinet. Everyone. I’m a laughing stock.’
Hassan stopped eating.
‘My manager spoke with my contact in parliament,’ Mir Saab said. ‘They’ve all seen the article about the boat.’
‘They can’t use that against you,’ Maryam said.
‘They are,’ Mir Saab said. ‘I told them my plans about the charity. But they’re discussing a new bill now.’ He coughed, his eyes watering. ‘Charities are to be state owned. They’re voting tomorrow to try and pass it.’
Hassan passed him a glass of water. ‘Everyone wants to win,’ he said.
‘And nobody cares about anyone else,’ Mir Saab said.
‘There must be a way,’ Maryam said.
‘When are we going back to Harikaya?’ Hassan asked. ‘The rains will start soon.’ He was thinking of the puddle he had seen that morning outside the temple. ‘We still have time before Maryam returns to England.’
‘Baba can ask his estate manger to book the plane tickets,’ Zain said.
‘For today,’ Maryam said. ‘Or tomorrow.’
Hassan dug his fingers into the seat. He wanted to fall backwards and hide his joy behind the cushions.
‘You’ll find the beekeeper,’ Maryam said.
‘When you find the beekeeper, Hassan, what’s the first thing you’ll ask him?’ Amina asked.
‘Where the black honey nests are,’ he said.
Mir Saab sat down. He turned a pencil round and round in his fingers. Hassan’s fingers were sticky; he really wanted to lick them, like he did at home.
‘It’ll be better in Harikaya,’ Amina said.
Mir Saab was mumbling to himself. He picked up the newspaper and stared at it for more than a minute. ‘We’re not going,’ he said.
The clock ticked as each of them absorbed this information.
‘I’m going to parliament tomorrow. Some of them might vote against the bill if they see me in person.’
‘But bills can take months to pass,’ Zain said.
‘I have to convince the neutral ones. The sooner the better.’
‘But the black honey…’ Maryam said.
Mir Saab turned towards Hassan. ‘We’ll go as soon as this business is sorted.’ Mir Saab tried to sound calm but his voice trembled.
‘The rains are starting soon,’ Hassan said. ‘I’ll go by train.’
‘But the trains run once a week,’ Zain said. ‘And the service has stopped for the festivities.’
‘Baba, please.’ This was Amina.
Their voices were becoming a blur to Hassan.
‘I have to go and stand up for the people.’
Mir Saab was trying to save a world that was breaking apart. Hassan looked down at the clouds in the marble floor. The sound of the looms grew louder in his mind, blocking out all the words that had been spoken. The women were smiling. He was dancing again. He twirled like one of the villagers at night when the moon and the flames of small fires were the only light. One by one, the looms crashed to the floor. Darkness. Ink and oranges. His mother’s eyes; they were growing worse.
‘I need to prepare. The estate manager’s coming in the morning,’ Mir Saab said. He stood up, somehow stronger. ‘We need to act fast, like sand cats, running into desert caves away from the men who’ve heard that their skins are good luck.’
Hassan
pictured the sand cats hiding in the deep cracks of caves, too dark for human eyes. Mir Saab shuffled off to his room. The others left the table to go to their lessons. Hassan dipped his hands in the water, wiped them dry and went to sit on one of the chairs. The study door was open; Mir Saab lit a candle.
The fan was creaking overhead. Endless creaking. He wished he could get up and switch it off but his limbs were heavy. He was sinking into the cushions of the seat. What would the bees do? This was the question, and he had to have the answer. Mir Saab was at his desk in front of the golden hive, lighting candles around it.
‘What would the bees do in your situation, Mir Saab?’
Mir Saab gestured for Hassan to sit down. ‘The bees? I used to think about that when my father gave me the factories.’ Mir Saab continued lighting small candles under the hive. ‘Departments are like hives, working side by side. Workers care for their own work and their neighbours’ work. That’s the spirit of community.’
‘And you were the queen,’ Hassan said.
‘No, that wasn’t my job. The queen is all of them put together. A united intelligence.’
Hassan nodded. It was the feeling of the queen that mattered, the presence behind the hive.
‘The factories provide the workers with purpose as well as survival,’ Mir Saab said. ‘Without them, migrating to the cities will be the only option.’
The golden hive structure glowed now. He took another match to light a final candle.
‘Mir Saab, in the masjid, the bees showed me inside their nest.’
‘They’re letting you in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go on.’ The match was still burning. The flame reached Mir Saab’s fingers, and he shook them immediately and blew it out.
‘At first I saw lights… flashes. Then the comb and the cells. And then I saw the welcoming platform.’
‘Where did you learn those words?’
‘My father… I… From books—’ Hassan stopped. There was no need to lie anymore. ‘My father loves bees.’