‘Stop it. Both of you,’ Rabia pleaded.
‘Tell me what I can’t understand,’ Dad demanded. ‘Go on. Explain it to me.’
I reached for my handbag, slung over the back of a chair. Omi’s pages were inside. I touched the bag as though it were a talisman. If he could still be alive, anything was possible.
‘Soon, Dad, you’ll see what strangeness the world is capable of. Then you’ll start to understand.’ I brushed past him and walked into my bedroom, locking the door behind me.
. .
There is nothing to do now but wait.
It sits across from me, the television, reflecting the room back in grey concaves. I feel like a creature of the wilderness newly acquainted with this magic box, wanting to peel away the greyness — which doesn’t move unless I move in it — and find beneath it those layers of coloured images which, yesterday, moved by so fast they gave the impression of continuous motion.
The Minions brought in the television and VCR. Late, late at night. Early a.m. today, if I am to be precise. I woke to hear them moving about in the second room and when I went to see what they were doing they made me sit down, told me there was something I had to watch. They turned on the television and everything was grey-and-white specks and a noise of static. It had been so long since I saw a television that even the static seemed fascinating. Lice jumping round a middle-aged man’s hair! I said to the Minions. They told me to sit, and they played the tape. A single word of Urdu appeared on the screen. The first word of Urdu in so long. And then my old friend, my old Macbeth, walked into a room. No, I suppose we were never friends, really. I translated a play, he acted in it, we met once or twice. But he belongs to that other life of mine, and so I recognized him with a joy that might be more suited, under normal circumstances, for encountering a long-lost twin.
And when I realized it was in Karachi. Oh, that moment. What was it? He said something. He said: this isn’t Funland. Funland! I hadn’t thought about it in years, but when he said that I remembered taking Aasmaani there and how she loved that ride, what was it called? Hurdy-Gurdy! Show me outdoors, I started to scream at the images. I’ve forgotten the passive art of television viewership. Show me the sea, please show me the sea. But it was all interiors. The ad breaks were edited out. I have never wanted so desperately to see ads. What’s being sold, what’s being used to sell it? Sixteen years of living outside the world and suddenly I was hungry for any kind of knowledge. So there I was, examining fashions. The women weren’t all covered up, that was a huge relief. Very short sleeves and near-revealing necklines for the younger actresses, as well as streamlined shalwars that could almost pass for trousers. Kameezes shorter than I remembered, though not as short as in the seventies. And hairstyles, compact. Thank God for that. The volume of hair we had to contend with when I was last part of the world was just embarrassing.
Me, looking at clothes and hairstyles. Who would have believed it possible?
Still, I couldn’t understand why I was watching it. And why the Minions were standing around, watching me as though preparing mental reports about my reactions. I couldn’t understand it at all but I kept watching and at last we had an exterior. An airport. Big and new and marble and clean. The words ‘Quaid-e-Azam International Airport’ in large letters across the top of the building.
Karachi has a new airport? I said to the Minions.
They didn’t say anything, but one of them — who I’ve caught before showing signs of sympathy — nodded briefly.
Then I forgot them. Forgot everything.
Because, disembarking from a plane, setting her foot down on the tarmac and looking up and around, as though seeing a sky she hadn’t seen for a very long time: Shehnaz. Almost before I was able to believe it really was her, she looked up at the sunset and then the scene was changing to another sunset and there she was again, pregnant at the beach.
I don’t know how I didn’t have a heart attack. Shehnaz and the waves, Macbeth at her side, and I said to the Minions, ‘Stop. Pause it. Pause!’ They just looked at me, and I stood up, tripped, fell over and crawled to the VCR, my hands the hands of a trembling old man as I pressed the pause button to freeze the moment.
I put my hand to the screen. I touched the water. The waves nearest to shore were bowing, a gesture of self-effacement that was a split second away from annihilating them. I touched the sand, first where it was wet, then where it was not. I touched Shehnaz’s face, her shoulders, the swell of her stomach. I put my forehead against the screen, wrapped my arms around the box, and tried to breathe in the scent of the ocean, the scent of her skin. I know what I looked like to the Minions: a whimpering old man trying to make love to a television. I didn’t care. I am long past dignity.
At length, I sat back and pressed ‘PLAY’.
And there you were.
Don’t ask me to relive what I felt. I cannot separate the emotions into discrete words. Three of the Minions looked away; they couldn’t watch my emotions spilling on to the floor.
Sweet, sweet torture, that’s what it was. I never realized until then how much my captor hates me. Nearly seventeen years locked in here, you’d think I wouldn’t be left in any doubt about that. But I’d begun to believe he just thought of me as some pet, not domesticated enough to be allowed out of my cage, nor interesting enough to be worth a personal visit. But to make me watch that, to have his Minions stand around as observers while I wept and flailed, and to have them tell me afterwards that this was a new television show, they would bring me one episode every week as long as it lasted but who knows how long that would be? To do all that, he has to hate me.
Was I growing too comfortable for him? Too resigned?
Or am I wrong about this? Do I merely amuse him? The revolutionary poet turned television addict.
Put that way, it is more than a little entertaining. Of course, you and I know that even when there was nothing so personal at stake I had a terrible weakness for television. And low-brow television, at that. Charlie’s Angels] Loved those girls. You could never decide whether to approve of them or not. I said, why can’t feminism show some cleavage? We were standing in your bedroom. You raised a threatening eyebrow. I said, are you going to throw something at me now? Yes, you said. Your hand moved towards a pillow and then — with one of those sudden gestures of yours — you reached up, your index finger crooked into your shirt’s neck, tugged the kameez over your head and flung it at me.
Quick! said. The curtain’s open. Anyone could be looking. Get down! I pulled you on to the bed. You were laughing and I held my hand to your bare stomach and felt the muscles move under my palm. You locked your arm around my neck as I bent to kiss your shoulder and your voice was fierce when you spoke. Never love anyone but me, you said.
Samina, are you even still alive?
They told me you were dead. The Minions did. One morning, many years ago. It was your birthday, and I have never been able to banish you so completely that you’d stay away on that day. I may go weeks without thinking of you but every 8 October morning when I wake up, there you are, pressed up against me, your leg thrown over my thigh. Sweet bliss of it!
But that year the Minions walked in without my noticing. I was singing Puccini, mixing omelette batter, and calling out to you: ‘Samina! Get out of the shower or I’m coming in after you.’ I heard footsteps behind me, and for a minute I allowed myself to believe I could smell your shampoo. But when I turned, it was them. One of them said, ‘She’s dead,’ handed me the new pair of glasses I’d been long demanding, and then they all left.