‘Still the Queen of Trivia,’ Karim said. ‘Hey, QT.’
‘Hey, Bloody Damn Idiot. Can you spot that clever acronym, BD-I? But before we lose track of the conv, tell me, did you and Grace ever watch “Spartacus” together?’
‘Oh, you didn’t,’ Zia said. ‘That would be too weird. Who wants to re-create their parents’ relationship, have to imagine when they were young and hormonal and…’ He looked at Karim, went bright red and started cursing the beggar who was now barely visible in the rear-view mirror. Karim turned to look at me, his expression unfathomable, then looked hurriedly away.
I remembered something I’d been wondering about for a while. ‘So, have you ever visited your mother in Boston in the last few years? While Zia and I were on the east coast? Were you there, too?’
‘Don’t start with the recriminations,’ he said shortly and looked away.
How could I explain to him about Aunty Maheen, when I hadn’t really explained it to myself? He probably suspected that I had flown out of Boston again on my way home and still hadn’t called her, despite his rebuke to me on the phone. It’s not as though I hadn’t thought of it. It’s not as though I hadn’t picked up the telephone and started to dial the number, more than once, more than twice, more than that even. I wanted to lean across and shake Karim. Why did this have to be so difficult? Although Zia barely ever answered his letters, and hadn’t had any kind of verbal communication with him since we all left school, aside from one phone call last week when Karim asked if he could stay at Zia’s, they were chatting away in the front seat as though no time had passed and nothing had changed since 1987, pausing only to look at each other, still sizing up the changes time had wrought in their physical selves, then laughing, half-embarrassed, as boys do when they’ve been caught paying any kind of attention to the way other boys look. And when Sonia had met Karim in London she had come back and reported that he was the same, their friendship was the same, everything same-to-same, except that now he was gorgeous, but that’s just superfacial change, right?
‘I can’t believe I’m back,’ Karim said.
‘The temptation is strong to say, there is no going back.’
‘Resist it,’ he advised.
Resistance was never my strong suit, so I tried to look only at his ears. They really were his least attractive feature, and I had to concentrate hard to avoid shifting my attention to the triangle of moles on the nape of his neck, and the FromHereToEternity length of his legs, and the supple fingers that were drumming snatches of REM’s ‘Nightswimming’ on thigh, throat, clavicle, and all this I was manag ing quite well, but what was really getting to me were the veins that stood out on his wrist and forearms, even when his hands were relaxed, and one vein in particular that ran all the way from his wrist to his elbow.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked, as Zia turned off the airport road earlier than he would if going to my house or his.
‘I’ve made a command decision. We’re off to Mehmoodabad. I have to look at a billboard that has my face painted on it.’
‘Eh?’ I said.
‘I agreed to pose for this photograph for some ad. As a favour to Cyrus’s cousin — you remember Cyrus from school, Karim? — who’s just started up this ad agency. Anyway, I thought it would be some print ad, but it turns out my long lashes are going to greet you as you ascend Clifton Bridge. According to Cyrus’ cousin the painters have captured my features but missed my essence, so I have to drop in on the painters and radiate essence so that they know where they went wrong. They start work at dawn, poor bastards, so they should be there now.’
‘What are you advertising,’ I asked.
‘I didn’t actually bother to ask.’
‘Mehmoodabad,’ Karim said. ‘That’ll be great.’
‘Why?’ I was instantly irritated. It wasn’t my Karimazov but the foreign cartographer speaking — the one who had sent me maps of Karachi from London, informing me how limited my knowledge of the place was. ‘Why will Mehmoodabad be great when you’ve probably never been there?’
Zia turned up the volume of the music, and Nusrat’s rendition of ‘Mera Piya Ghar Aya’ drowned out anything Karim might have thought to say in retaliation. Mera Piya Ghar Aya… My beloved came home.
We crossed Kala Pul, the Black Bridge that wasn’t black, and turned into the residential streets of Defence Housing Authority (Phase II), just past the roundabout that displayed a model of a fighter-plane with a trail of fire shooting out of its rear (when Runty and Bunty provided a map to their house for one of their Ghutna parties, the roundabout was marked: ‘jet with flaming ass’). I closed my eyes, overcome with sleepiness. When I looked out again the comparative order of Defence had given way to the narrow alleys and tiny store-fronts of Mehmoodabad. I had no idea how we’d got here, and Zia seemed a little surprised himself. I could hear him muttering, ‘Left after the place where the goats were eating the antenna, then right…before or after the hubcap?’
Zia turned into an alley, slightly wider than the first, and drew up to a gate that looked brown but turned out to be rusted. He parked his car half on the street, half on the narrow pavement that ran along one side of the road.
Karim and I stepped out of the car at the same time, and Karim stretched, his shirt rising up as he did so, revealing a raised chicken-pox scar just above the waistband of his jeans and a line of hair leading downwards from his navel. He caught me looking at the scar and glanced at it self-consciously.
‘I have one,’ I said, and showed him the discoloured scar on my elbow. He touched it.
‘Mine’s bumpier,’ he said, and raised his shirt so I could see it again.
‘Is it?’ It obviously was. I ran my finger over the scar. He breathed in suddenly, just as I touched him, and a gap opened up between his flat stomach and his jeans.
I didn’t move my hand away, and he smiled, stomach muscles still contracted. ‘You’re cold. Gave me a shock.’
‘You have goldfish on your boxers,’ I said, looking down, and he laughed and exhaled.
‘Are you guys coming?’ Zia called out. He was peering over the rusty gate, and holding up a hand in greeting to someone on the other side. A man with a white streak in his hair — paint or pigmentation? — opened the gate. We walked into a large open space, littered with billboards and prone steel poles; various men who’d been sipping tea and talking in the compound stood up and drew near Zia as Bilal — the man who had opened the gate — called Zia’s attention to a billboard standing flush against the far wall.
‘Oh!’ I couldn’t help exclaiming.
It was Zia. Or Zia’s head, rather, ten times its usual size, looking with delight at Zia’s ten-times too large hand squeezing white liquid out of an inflated pink glove into Zia’s wide and fleshy mouth. ‘Uh, Zia?’
‘I have no idea, Raheen. I have no idea what that is.’
Karim had been wandering around the compound, examining brushes stiff with paint and pretending to make a feat of balancing on the wide poles, but now he came up and looked at the painting and as soon as he started laughing I knew exactly what the pink glove was.
‘Bet this is where the slogan goes,’ I said, pointing to a blank patch of canvas.
‘But what am I selling?’ Zia said.
Karim and I grinned at each other.
‘Some new brand of milk,’ I said. ‘Probably with a name like human kindness.’
‘And the slogan: UDDERLY FRESH!’ Karim said.