‘We’re here to see Sonia,’ I said and waited for him to open the gate.
‘Names?’ he said.
Zia and I looked at each other, and Zia shrugged. ‘I must look suspicious. Either that or unnecessary security measures are all the rage with the nouveau ri-chi-chi.’
‘That’s a Soniaism, right? Ri-chi-chi. I’d forgotten that one.’ But now that he reminded me I wondered, as I had done when she first coined the term, if Sonia was aware of the way all of us regarded her parents, whose increased sophistication Aunty Laila dismissively compared to a thickening layer of make-up — merely drawing attention to how many blemishes there were and how much had to be done to hide them.
‘Name?’ the security guard said again.
‘Where’s Dost Mohommad? Where’s Kalaam? They know who we are.’ A part of me felt absurd for demanding the appearance of the cook and driver, but it seemed a point of pride to be admitted into Sonia’s house without being forced to give my name to the guard.
He clicked his tongue and, stepping backwards, turned to speak to someone else. As his frame receded I was able to see that he had a gun slung over his shoulder and that there were two more armed guards, sitting on a charpai, between the driveway and the flower beds with their masses of canna lilies. A chill was beginning to seep from the cement driveway through my thin chapals, and my determination to win a stand-off with a guard who wasn’t doing anything other than fulfilling the basic requirements of his job began to waver. I stepped away from the shadows.
‘Serious weapons,’ Zia said, drawing my attention to the guards’ Kalashnikovs. ‘You’d think this was some bigwig feudal household. Guess that’s the idea.’
The guard pressed his eye against the flap again. ‘Names?’ he said.
Zia rolled his eyes and took his mobile phone out of his jeans pocket. He dialled a number and said, in Urdu for the guard’s benefit, ‘Uncle! Salaam! We’re standing outside your house, talking to…just a second…’ He looked up at the guard. ‘Name?’
The guard closed the flap. There was the squeak of a lock unbolting. Zia put the phone back in his pocket and winked at me. ‘Never mind, Uncle. We’ll be right in,’ he said to the air. I knew that he was behaving like a bit of a jerk, but I couldn’t help thinking that it was so good to be home where we knew how everything worked and so know how to circumvent annoyances. In the air was a smell of something distant burning, which I always associated with Karachi winters.
We walked past the guards without a second glance, and went straight to the intricately carved front door. Locked. I turned back to the guards and made a gesture of irritation, and one of them went over to the little booth beside the charpai and spoke into the intercom. It was clear he was arguing with someone on the other side. I grabbed the branch of an almond tree and pulled down on it, relishing the weight of a branch without snow, no fear of something cold and wet sliding off and soaking your skin. The joy of breathing in deeply without teeth aching of cold. I heard footsteps inside approach. The tiniest of cracks appeared between the door frame and the door. I leaned close to the crack. ‘Raheen and Zia,’ I said, and Sonia’s cook, Dost Mohommad, opened the door wide, beaming.
‘Bored of America again?’ he said. ‘Come in, come in. These guards, they’re useless. What will you eat? What will you drink? When did you get back?’
The marble floors were polished to a high gleam as always, and there was a new painting on the wall — a Chughtai watercolour of a beautiful woman, her glance poised between cruelty and sensuality — replacing the garish family portrait that used to form the first impression visitors had of the interior. The place had metamorphosed gradually over the years and it had been a long time since Zia had last made a snide comment about the Horror House and leopard-print carpets, though I was sure the gold taps still hadn’t been replaced. On the table in the reception area was a photograph of Sonia’s father standing next to the Pope. Rumour had it he’d paid a computer whiz huge amounts of money to have his image inserted next to that of the Pontiff. What, if not forgery, could explain the rabbit ears he’d formed with his fingers just behind the Pope’s head? Although, if you were going to pay someone to digitally create a picture of you with someone famous, why would you choose the Pope?
‘Just got back yesterday,’ Zia said to Dost Mohommad. ‘We’ll call down from Sonia’s room when we decide what we want for tea.’ We both turned towards the stairs.
‘Sit, sit in the drawing room. I’ll tell her you’re here.’
‘No, no need. We’ll go upstairs.’
Dost Mohammad made an apologetic sound. ‘I’m sorry, Zia baba, you’ll have to wait downstairs.’
Zia started to laugh, then saw that Dost Mohommad was serious. ‘Me? Me specifically?’
Dost Mohommad looked down at his feet. ‘Boys,’ he said. ‘No boys upstairs.’
‘What? No, that must mean strangers. Or even friends of Sohail’s. Obviously Sonia wouldn’t want her brother’s annoying seventeen-year-old friends barging into her room. It doesn’t mean me.’ Laughing again, Zia started to head towards the stairs, but Dost Mohommad’s hand shot out and gripped Zia’s arm.
‘Last week, Cyrus baba said the same thing and I let him go upstairs. Almost got fired for it.’
‘He’s travelling to Egypt,’ I mumbled.
‘What?’ Zia said, still looking at Dost Mohommad.
‘Gone see-Nile. Look, why don’t you wait down here, just to make him happy. I’ll bring Sonia down.’
I took the stairs three at a time, and charged into Sonia’s room without knocking. She wasn’t there, but I heard the shower running so I thumped on the bathroom door and yelled, ‘Come out or I’ll un-alphabeticize your CDs.’
Sonia yelled with delight, ‘I’m quickly, quickly rinsing.’
I sat down on her desk chair and picked up the magazine lying there, face down. It was the December issue of Newsline, the one that Karim had mentioned in our conversation two weeks earlier. I put it down and picked up the magazine next to it. The November issue of Newsline, with the words KARACHI: DEATH CITY running across the cover. I flipped it open and read an excerpted block:
Roaming the dark, death-haunted streets of Saddar where even the street lights were off, one would be confronted with the surreal glow of a flower shop not more than a thousand metres away from the troubled area of Jacob Lines. Asked why his shop was open late into the night when all others were closed, a flower-seller explained: ‘This is the season not of marriage but of death. People come to buy floral wreaths for those who die in the riots.’
Shivering, I turned to the last page, which was guaranteed to bring comic relief with its round-up of the most absurd lines from Karachi’s English-language press. Sure enough, there I read: ‘Only the other day he was spotted lolloping into a famous disco which was a wee bit abnormal hangout for a bud like him. When interrogated he bleached.’
I was still laughing when the bathroom door opened and Sonia enveloped me in an embrace that was all softness.
‘You hodious creature! When did you get back?’ She pulled back and smiled at me, and I couldn’t help thinking that if she were to walk down 5th Avenue just once, anorexic models would be pulled from the catwalk and a woman’s beauty would no longer be judged by her success in obliterating flesh.
‘Early this morning. You’ve put on weight since August. Looks good.’
‘Hanh, well, happiness has a high calorie count.’ She laughed and hugged me again. ‘OK, sit, I have news to tell you so big that your eyes will pop out of their sockets and plop on to the floor. But don’t worry: it was swept this morning.’