Maheen leaned against him. It was this she loved most in him: he could say everything but love was irrelevant, and come so close to making it seem true that when she looked up at the shifting clouds she almost did not see them pulling apart, rending into pieces, wisps of smoke spiralling…
…round the dining table cries of ‘Happy New Year’ stilled as Asif stood up, clinking a fork against his glass.
‘I’m too drunk,’ he said. ‘And I’ve been an appalling host. Plus, I’m a decadant feudal, as Zafar so eloquently reminded us all last night. I will now pause so that you can all contradict me.’
There was silence from the eleven guests around the table, save for muffled sounds behind hands clamped over lips to prevent laughter.
‘Well, if that’s your attitude, none of you are invited back for New Year’s Eve next year,’ Asif said, grandly, waving one arm in the air and tangling it among the streamers that trailed down from the chandelier. ‘Oh, hell. Zaf, you do the toast.’ He fell back into his chair, ripping streamers in two.
Zafar stood up, and held up a glass. ‘Ladies and gentlemen and Laila…’ Cheers and catcalls rang from the crowd around the table, and Laila stood up imperiously and blew a raspberry at him.
Zafar winked at her, and continued. ‘Before we move on to dessert—’
‘Ice cream,’ Rukhsana shouted, leaning across Asif to prong a fork into Zafar’s arm. ‘I want ice cream.’
‘Isn’t ice cream a sign of sexual frustration?’ Laila said.
‘Nonsense,’ Yasmin said expansively. ‘That’s just a rumour started by those polygamous diabetics.’
‘Bastards, the lot of them!’ Maheen yelled.
‘Maheen’s drunk!’ Yasmin said gleefully, putting an arm around her best friend’s shoulder.
‘Everyone’s drunk,’ Asif said, ripping up streamers and aiming them into wine glasses around the table.
‘I want to get more drunk,’ Laila’s fiancé said. ‘Hurry up with your toast, Zafar.’
‘Well, if Rukhsana wouldn’t interrupt…’ Zafar said.
‘Rukhsana’s a teetotaller,’ Yasmin said. ‘She must be ignored.’
‘Guess who’s been doing everything but ignoring Rukhsana? Bunty!’
Whistles all around the table.
‘Come on, Rukhsana, grab him quick,’ Maheen said. ‘I would, if I wasn’t engaged to Thing here.’
‘Please, Rukhsana, grab him quick.’ Zafar clasped his hands together. ‘Else she’ll leave me for him.’
‘Rukhsana and Bunty. Sounds good together.’
‘Sounds awful,’ Ali said, finally catching the mood of the party after three days of near-silence. ‘We’ll have to call him Bukhsana. He looks like a Bukhsana. Rukhsana and Bukhsana.’
‘Or Runty and Bunty,’ Maheen said.
‘I’m no runt!’ Rukhsana objected.
‘Yes, she is.’
Everyone started thumping on the table. ‘Runty! Runty!’
‘Oh shut up and let Zafar propose the toast.’
‘Right.’ Zafar cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to formally welcome 1971 to our homeland of Pakistan. This will be the year that signals the end of bachelorhood for me. And the end of divorceehood for Laila. Thank God she got rid of that first guy; we can all say it now. Maheen — I’m a lucky bastard, and I know you won’t let me forget that. And if any of the beautiful single women around this table want to join the wedding bandwagon, allow me to recommend my friend Ali.’
Ali used his fork to catapult an olive at Zafar.
Zafar caught the olive in his mouth, and continued: ‘So, 1971, these are the favours we ask of you: may the miniskirt get more mini, may long sideburns go out of fashion, and may something else happen that I’m really not sober enough to think of. Anyone, we need a third thing that we want to happen. May…may…’
‘May we not have civil war,’ someone shouted.
‘He mentioned politics.’ Laila pointed an accusing finger at the offending party. ‘Into the buffalo swamp with him.’
Nine people stood up, and ran after the fleeing man.
Yasmin and Maheen were left at the table.
‘May we not have civil war,’ Yasmin said, and moved to clink glasses with Maheen. Maheen’s glass tilted over and red wine streamed down both women’s arms.
Streamers still wrapped around his arm, Asif pointed up at the bark of the gnarled tree in the back garden. ‘Well, look at that. Zafar, you old romantic.’
The house guests pressed around him, peering up through the dark, buffalo swamps quite forgotten. ‘Oh, that’s so sweet!’ Laila said. She slapped her fiancé’s arm. ‘You’ve never done anything like that for me.’
Zafar shook his head. ‘As if it wasn’t bad enough that you abandon me in the orchards at night, Asif, now you have to embarrass me in front of all our friends. Which of your poor minions had to do that?’
‘You’re denying it’s your handiwork?’ Asif roared with laughter. ‘No weaseling out of this one, Romeo. Oh, and here comes the much-loved Maheen.’
Maheen and Yasmin walked arm in arm through the grass, and the crowd parted to let Maheen see the initials carved into the tree’s bark.
‘Zafar!’ Something so intimate in the way she said his name that all their friends smiled at one another, not without a trace of wistfulness, and drew away.
‘It wasn’t…’ Zafar started to say, looking at Asif.
But Maheen’s arms were around his neck, and Asif was walking away, so Zafar never finished the sentence.
Is this a life sentence, or will I wake up one day and find I’m free of her? Ali twirled the stem of his glass between his fingers and tried not to think of that look in Maheen’s eyes when she put her arms around Zafar’s neck.
‘I know you want to be alone, but I’m joining you all the same,’ Yasmin said, coming to stand beside Ali on the balcony, which overlooked the back garden. She took his hand in hers, and inspected the bruise beneath his thumb. ‘Must have hurt,’ she said. ‘Hammer?’
Ali nodded. ‘It was dark. Missed the chisel, caught my thumb. How did you know it was me?’
Yasmin shivered in the cold, and put her hands into Ali’s jacket pocket. ‘Zafar’s too lazy. And I saw the look on your face when Maheen put her arms around Zaf. What made you do it?’
Ali took off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders. ‘Don’t know. Anger, love, frustration, all of the above. I hate emotions I can’t control. Hacking away at a bit of wood seemed a good way to release all that bottled-up stuff.’
‘You should have told me you were doing it,’ Yasmin said. ‘I would have helped.’
Ali raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘Were you thinking of making some kind of amorous advances towards me about three months ago?’
‘No…I mean, it’s not to say I would have any objection…I mean, you are… What? What’s wrong?’
Yasmin leaned a head against his shoulder. ‘Bugger,’ she said.
Ali regarded her bowed head with curiosity. Among all the women he knew, Yasmin was the only one he would really call a friend. More than that, she knew him in ways that constantly surprised him. She was probably the only person who would even consider it possible that controlled, aloof Ali could love Maheen enough to gouge her initial, and that of his best friend, into a tree. But why she was leaning her head against his shoulder and releasing a long stream of expletives he could not begin to fathom.
If she stopped cursing, Yasmin knew she’d start crying. The bastard, the bastard, she said, losing the words in the folds of Ali’s shirt. No one else but Ali whose shirt she’d feel so comfortable weeping into. Zafar, you bastard. He had pulled her on to the dance floor at the Nasreen Room, just as summer was ending and Karachi’s evenings began to invite dancing and festivities again. Pulled her on to the dance floor, black shirt moulded tight to his chest, and said, ‘Don’t you think it would be nice if sometimes we saw each other without seventeen dozen other people around?’ A ‘yes’ seemed too simple an answer, too girlish, so instead Yasmin went the unfamiliar route of coquetry, fluttered her eyelashes, which he couldn’t see in the dark, and said, ‘I don’t know that my parents would approve,’ the laugh in her voice meant to convey what he should have already known: Yasmin was so in the habit of making her parents disapprove that to conform to their expectation would almost constitute filial betrayal. But Zafar’s face went still when he heard her and he nodded curtly and led her off the floor. ‘Good. Good answer. It’s just that I think Ali might put that kind of question to you, and I wanted to make sure you knew how to handle the situation. Reputation, Yasmin, can’t toy around with your reputation.’