Aba leaned through the window to hug me, one hand smacking the back of my head while the other one gripped my shoulder. ‘My baby,’ he said. ‘My baby.’
‘I’m fine, it’s fine.’ For the first time in my life I felt I needed to be the adult, reassuring my father that the world was still in order. But how could the world be in order if I was that one doing the reassur ing? Crack a joke, Aba. Issue a command. Tell me nothing like this will happen again.
But he did none of these things, just held on to me, until Ami pulled him away and said, ‘It’s OK, darling.’ I don’t know which one of us she was speaking to, but it got my father to stand up straight and it got me to climb out of the car. When I explained what had happened Aba put one arm around me and another around Karim, reassuring rather than asking for reassurance this time, but Ami merely took Zia by the shoulder and said, ‘Do you realize how lucky you are that I’m too relieved to be really angry?’ I was completely mortified, of course, but Zia didn’t hold it against me, just said, ‘Yes, Aunty. Sorry, Aunty. Maybe I should call my parents.’
As we were walking towards the house, Ami put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Why is it that the only thing you resemble me in is your wilfulness?’
I looked at Aba and then at Zia. ‘And your weakness for gorgeous men,’ I said.
She started to laugh, then forced a stern look on to her face. ‘You’re still in disgrace. Don’t think this matter is over,’ she said, in a voice that suggested terrible rules being prepared to curtail my freedom. I was hardly reassured when she put an arm around me and kissed me on the top of the head. My mother had been sufficiently wilful as a teenager to know exactly how wilful teenagers needed to be handled, and we both knew that a gentle word of admonishment would have as little effect on me as it would have had on her some twenty-five years ago. She left me to ponder the suffering I would have to endure and quickened her pace to catch up with Karim and whisper something that made him smile and look back at me.
Of course Karim wasn’t in disgrace at all, but he was hardly the kind of boy to sit around looking chipper while his two friends were awaiting punishment, so when his parents and Zia’s parents were called and all of us made to sit in the upstairs study to await their arrival, he didn’t gloat or look satisfied but bit his lip and looked as nervous as Zia and I did. It wasn’t long afterwards that we heard Aba open and close the front door, and then open and close it again. There was some conversation that was too soft for us to hear, and then Uncle Ali’s voice demanded, in a raised but unnaturally even tone, ‘For how long do we put up with this kind of thing?’ I remember thinking that unfair. We’d never driven off at night in a stolen car and got shot at before.
Before anyone could answer Uncle Ali’s question, Zia’s father had barrelled into the study, where he picked Zia up by the collar and shook him wordlessly. Zia did nothing more than look down at the floor, but when I saw his father’s face contorted in the manner of someone who’s trying to remember how to cry I recalled that Zia’s brother had been killed by a stray bullet when he was a toddler, back in the days when stray bullets made front-page news.
Zia turned red and extricated himself from his father’s grip. ‘Let’s go, Dad. It’s late,’ he said, and with a final apology to my parents Zia left, his father two paces behind him.
‘If they didn’t spoil him so much,’ said Ami, with a sigh. ‘Still, I understand the impulse.’
Zia never talked about the brother he never knew and the only time I tried to bring up the subject, he said: ‘Stray bullet. Funny expression. As though all that bullet needed was a good home and a bone to chew on.’
Karim went straight to his mother as she entered the room, and threw his arms around her, which seemed a little bit excessive considering he hadn’t been anywhere near the bullets. Another one of his dramatic moments, I thought. I looked at my mother, and wondered if it would help to fling my arms around her. No, she’d see right through me. My father, on the other hand, would melt if I put my arms around his waist and started crying. How good it would be to put my arms around his waist and start crying. If my mother tried to speak strongly to me after that, he might just tell her I’d suffered enough. The question was: if Zia called me up next week and asked me to go for a drive late at night, just the two of us, would I say yes? Yes. And Ami knew it.
I squared my shoulder, ready to face what was to come, but my mother seemed determined to keep me in suspense, and continued some pointless conversation about the flaws in Zia’s parents’ child-rearing techniques. So I was almost grateful to Uncle Ali for saying, ‘Bloody stupid, Raheen. Zero out of ten for responsibility and honesty. And anyway, as Mercedes go, that one’s not very appealing.’ I started to smile at him, but stopped when he turned to Karim and said, ‘As for you, young man. Bribing police officers? Do you think that makes you a hero?’
‘I think it got Zia out of jail.’ Karim crossed one ankle over his knee in an exaggerated posture of adulthood.
‘Shh, Karim, don’t talk to your father like that.’ Aunty Maheen sat down next to Karim and stroked his hair. He half-turned, rested his head on her shoulder, and linked his fingers through hers.
Uncle Ali switched the table lamp on and off and on again. ‘So if you want to be a good friend, you bribe a policeman. If you stand on ethics, you’re a lousy human being.’ He looked at my parents. This was clearly a continuation of some other conversation. ‘This is not about accepting grey areas any more; it’s about a value system that’s totally bankrupt.’
‘And your solution?’ Ami said, her face illuminating and disappearing into shadows by turn as Uncle Ali continued to fidget with the light switch.
‘His solution is to leave,’ Aba said. ‘Isn’t that the most bankrupt choice, Ali? To turn your back on something you love because it’s grown unmanageable?’
‘It’s not as though you were never on the verge of doing the same,’ Aunty Maheen said softly, still stroking Karim’s hair.
What were they all talking about? For heaven’s sake, I’d just been shot at.
Aba picked at something lodged beneath his fingernail. ‘That was completely different: ’71 was madness.’
‘But perhaps it would have been best if you had left,’ Uncle Ali said.
The reaction to that statement was baffling. Ami started plumping cushions into shape, muttering something about drycleaning; Aba leaned forward towards Uncle Ali and said, ‘Have you gone mad, mate?’ and Aunty Maheen’s hand on Karim’s hair started shaking. ‘Oh, Ali,’ she said. ‘Ali, of all the things…’
Uncle Ali put up both his hands in a defensive gesture. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. God, Zaf, you know I wouldn’t. Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re all being ridiculous. I meant maybe we should all have left and…I mean, there is madness here now and it’s getting worse, that’s what I meant. I meant the country, I’m talking about the country, the government, the people. I don’t mean…it wasn’t personal.’ I had never seen him so agitated. He stood up, sat down again, and resumed switching the lamp on and off. ‘I need a drink, Zafar.’
‘Sorry,’ Aba said. ‘Had to give Bunty my entire supply of the hard stuff. His bootlegger’s gone on Hajj, and he was worried about running short for his party.’