‘Damn wind’s too strong to get a flame going,’ he muttered, and tossed the matches back into the car.
I stepped back. ‘Zia, the car,’ I said.
He looked at the ravaged vehicle and this time he allowed stark terror to write itself across his face. I saw blood rush to his face and drain away as he slumped against the bonnet of the Mercedes. I put my hand on his shoulder, thinking that if he fell apart now he wouldn’t be able to drive us home.
‘The police. I have to go to the police,’ he said, straightening up.
‘Don’t be stupid. What can they do?’ We were both whispering.
‘Have to register a complaint. The car. It’s not my car. They never said I could…I stole the keys from my father; they gave him a spare set so he could run the engine every so often while they’re away. They never said I could. He doesn’t know. I have to be responsible. I have to be responsible. Insurance. I have to register a complaint with the police. When my cousin’s car… He had to. Insurance purposes. I have to register.’
‘Zia, I want to go home.’
He nodded. Blinked. Nodded again. ‘Police station is no place for a girl. I’ll drop you home and go. Won’t mention your name. Your parents won’t have to know.’
We drove home very slowly, stopping not just at the red lights but also at the amber ones. I can’t remember a word Zia said but he could no more stop talking than I could start. When he dropped me off I said, ‘Maybe I should come…’ and was more than relieved when he shook his head.
‘Call me when you get home. Promise, Zia.’
My first instinct when I stepped inside the house was to call my father. But there were no phones at the beach. Karim. I’d call Karim. But if it would have been hard to explain to the people at the wedding what I was doing out alone with Zia at that hour, it was somehow even more unthinkable to explain it to Karim, who would ask for no explanation, offer no comment. But my house was so silent, the gunshots still echoed so loudly in my head, and I needed to hear Karim’s voice, I needed him to laugh and make me laugh. But no, I couldn’t call Karim. I had to keep the line free in case Zia tried to call.
I sat down on the marble steps, unable to decide whether to go upstairs or down. If the gunman had aimed just a little higher, the bullet would have gone through the open window and hit me… here. I pressed a finger against the flesh halfway between elbow and shoulder. And if it had gone all the way through my arm it would have lodged itself here, between these two ribs. (The next morning I was to have two bruises exactly where I imagined the bullets would have hit. I didn’t know whether to be terrified or exhilarated by my body’s fidelity to recording the possible, and I briefly tried to imagine if I could turn into some kind of superhero if every morning my skin marked all the possible consequences of the previous night’s follies. But then I remembered my fingers digging into my flesh, reassuring myself of its wholeness.)
‘Damn you, Zia, call.’ I curled up, my head resting uncomfortably on the edge of the step above me, and let hot tears spill on to my sleeve. ‘Call, so I know you’re OK. Call so that I can call Karim. Aba, come home. Please come home.’
Over an hour later Zia still hadn’t called and no one answered his phone. No sign of my parents either. And again and again in my head: they cannot protect you from this. When I tried to force myself to think of something else, something silly that would mean nothing, I thought: the hippo told the rhino piggledypoo and smartypants and what else? But only part of that stuck. They cannot protect you from this. And what else? So I called Karim. All I said was, ‘This is quick, in case Zia tries to call. But we went for a drive in his neighbour’s car and someone shot at us and we’re OK but he went to the police station and he should be home by now but he’s not.’
An improbably short time after I hung up and went to the dining room to look out of the window, Karim climbed over the gate and jumped down into the driveway. I think that was the first real moment, the first inkling. If I had to start this story again, perhaps that would be the place to start. Stars, moon, blue-black sky, and a boy’s head easing into the frame. He was not attractive, not well-proportioned, and he half fell over as he landed, but when I saw his head appear over the gate I clutched the curtains tight and said, ‘Thank you, God, thank you.’
When I went out to meet him, he held my hands very tightly, and we just stood there, looking at each other, rocking back and forth on our toes, like birds. When he spoke it was to say, ‘Which police thaanaa did he go to? Do you know?’ I shook my head.
I got into the back seat of his car, and Karim sat in front with Altaf, his driver, who kept yawning as he drove, his eyes narrowing into squints, not yet reconciled to being awake. We spotted the Mercedes, after what seemed an interminable while, parked outside the third police station to which we drove. Karim had said only three things during our search for Zia: ‘That fake driver’s licence won’t fool anyone’, ‘If only there was a map with police thaanaas marked on it, so we could do this efficiently’ and ‘You don’t know how much money he had on him, do you?’
Outside the station, Karim and Altaf ran their hands along the pockmarked Mercedes door. Altaf inserted a finger into a bullet hole, just below the passenger side window. His finger disappeared almost down to the knuckle. I didn’t feel anything when I saw that. I wondered if I was in shock. Karim knelt down by the mudguard and vanished from my line of sight. I walked around the car to see him staring down at his blood-streaked fingers. ‘Cat,’ I said.
‘Did it die?’
I pictured a bloodied and bleeding feline dragging its shattered limbs along the road. ‘We have to go back there.’
‘Zia first, OK?’
‘You go in,’ Altaf told Karim. ‘I’ll stay here with her.’
Karim glanced at me, expecting an objection to this moment of ‘Let’s protect the girl from unpleasantness’, but I felt only gratitude towards Altaf. ‘Sack boon,’ Karim said.
I don’t know if he really was back soon or not. It could have been two minutes or twenty that I lay in the back of his car, trying to remember how to breathe evenly, before he opened the door and said, ‘You’ve got to come inside.’
I thought, cat homicide. Fleeing the scene of an accident. I thought, it wasn’t cat fur but human hair on the mudguard. I thought, I wasn’t driving. I’m not responsible for anything.
‘It’s OK,’ Karim said, taking my hand. ‘They only want you to confirm you were in the car with him.’
Then they’d say, what were you doing alone in a car late at night with a boy who is neither brother nor cousin nor husband?
‘I’ve told them you’re his cousin,’ Karim said. ‘And I’m your brother.’
He leaned to a side and the street lamp lit up the back of his head. ‘You have a halo,’ I said with a laugh and found myself able to step out of the car.
Inside the police station a grey-shirted, mustachioed policeman, whose resemblance to Pakistan’s wicketkeeper, Saleem Yousuf, was immensely reassuring, asked me if I could confirm my brother’s claim that I had been in the Mercedes with my cousin. I nodded and, laughing, he shouted to someone to bring the boy out. ‘Sorry for this,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘But he kept insisting he was alone in the car.’
A door opened and Zia emerged, his upturned collar looking absurd. When he saw us he tried to reassemble his expression into something approaching jauntiness, but it crumpled into relief instead. The Saleem Yousuf lookalike threw the Mercedes car-keys in his direction and gestured towards the door.