Maybe I’d been watching too many movies.
‘No,’ Karim said, flinging himself on the lower bunk and rolling up the blinds. ‘It’s not Hollywood association that sets your heart racing. It’s the sound of the train. Dhug-dhug. Dhug-dhug.’
‘Ker-chug. Ker-chug,’ I argued.
‘Well, something iambic.’
Mr Intellectual.
I lay down on the top bunk. The black vinyl stuck to my skin and I imagined how it would feel if the boy on the lower bunk opposite me were Zia, not Karim. Zia with his fake driver’s licence, Marlboro cool, thick lashes and curly hair. Zia who said that the point of smoking was to draw attention to your lips. Which I was quite happy to do, except Karim said he’d tell my parents.
I blew imaginary smoke rings in the air and said, ‘Why do you have to be so annoying sometimes?’
Karim continued to look out of the train window. ‘Can’t help it. It’s the company I keep.’
I propped myself up on my elbow, trying not to imagine to whom or what else the vinyl had clung in the past. The bed-sheets that Ami had packed for the journey were in Uncle Chaperoo’s compartment, but I could hear him singing wedding songs through the wall that separated his bed from mine, and it seemed impolite to intrude. So instead I turned off the overhead light and watched Karim’s reflection in the window while shadows of trees and tracks and rural stations passed over his face and the moon glowed in his hair. All the while, his finger traced station names on to his arm, left to right and right to left, impossible to say if he was writing Urdu or inverted-English, English or reflected Urdu. I thought, no, there’s no one I would rather be here with than my best friend, my one-time crib companion, my blood-brother (or spit-brother; sputum being the fluid we chose to mingle in a cup and ingest), no one else who will catch me if I fall out of this top bunk, catch me not because of quick reflexes but because of anticipation.
When I finally slept, I dreamt I was on a train.
. .
‘Sugar cane thataway, kinoos thisaway, cotton everywhichaway.’ The decadent feudal, Uncle Asif, pointed his walking-stick in the direction of his crops, all of which were hidden from us by the wall of trees and bushes that separated the creeper-covered house and its garden from the rest of the farm. ‘I suggest a walk. If you get lost, we’ll launch a dramatic rescue operation complete with local police, hunting dogs and a few snake charmers for added rural colour.’
‘We’ve got snake charmers in Karachi.’ Karim’s tone was sulky. This I had not anticipated, though I was usually so in tune with his moods that I would often claim emotions and realize, hours later, that really they belonged to him. But all the way from the railway station to the house I had been so captivated by Uncle Asif’s charm that it didn’t occur to me that Karim’s reaction might differ from mine. How could anyone fail to be won over by raccoon-eyed, pillow-bellied, pear-headed Uncle Asif?
‘Oh, those snake and mongoose fights at the beach! All fakes! The snakes are defanged, poor buggers, so that the cute little mongooses — mongeese? mongii? — can win every time.’
‘Everyone knows that,’ Karim said. I stepped on his foot and smiled at Uncle Asif, my mouth barely bearing up under the pressure of being charming for two. My lips were already beginning to chap in the cold, dry air, and I was afraid if I smiled with any greater force they would split open.
‘Is Aunty Laila here?’ I said.
Uncle Asif lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘The snake charmer came and spirited her away in the dead of night.’ He straightened up and grinned at me. ‘But he’ll bring her back by lunch. She left instructions that you should eat, shower and call your parents the second you arrive, but since the second has passed and we’re still out on the veranda you’re free to stretch your legs and other body parts also. Just be back in an hour, OK?’ He waggled his cane at someone I couldn’t see, and walked off towards the sugar-cane fields.
‘Well, he’s an oddity,’ Karim said, as we turned away from the house and cut through the long, manicured garden with its beds of chrysanthemums and roses.
‘And you, as Sonia might say, are an idioddity. What are you being so moody about?’ I had the longer legs, but I was struggling to keep up with him as he strode from the garden on to the surrounding path and from there charged, head down, into the bushes.
There was, just feet away, a two-person-wide opening in the bushes to allow for easy access between house and crops but I was just old enough to worry that I might be turning ladylike, so I ignored the opening and followed Karim. He must have known I was behind him but this didn’t stop him from pushing aside a pliant bit of foliage, stepping forward and letting go. The green and prickly thing lurched towards me and I had to put my arms up to fend it off. ‘What the hell, Karim?’
‘Walking, not talking, is a good idea.’ He stepped out from the bushes and didn’t even stop to take in the sight of those acres of crops rolling towards a distant shroud of mist, but merely continued walking along the mud-path that bordered the cotton, head still down.
This was all very strange. Surliness was my thing in those days. I could summon it up over an egg. All because of the tyranny of bras, I now believe. I had yet to reconcile myself to a lifetime of being so strapped in at the chest. But, my point being, Karim was the peacemaker, the even-tempered one, the joker who dared me to stay sullen in the face of his wit. Look, he’d said once, holding up a five-rupee mask of Sly Stallone in Rambo headband looking peculiarly Pakistani, it’s the face of my wit. He slipped it over my head. Stay sullen in it. I dare you! Rambo Rehman. Rambunctious. Ram Boloo Pehlvan.
In the middle of the path he came to a stop and closed his eyes. There was a faint roar of farm equipment in the distance. ‘That’s the sound of waves breaking,’ Karim said, with an extraordinary leap of imagination. He raised an arm and started jabbing at the air. ‘There’s Zia’s beach hut, and there’s Runty’s hut. There’s the cave where Zia goes to smoke, there’s the place where we saw the baby turtle, there’s the steep cliff we thought we’d never be able to climb, there’s Portal Karim and Portal Raheen, and Sonia Rock is almost lost in the gloom, and there’s where my parents built a sand castle together two years ago.’ He dropped his arm, his eyes scrunched tight.
Well, I decided, whatever’s bothering him, either he’ll tell me about it or he’ll forget about it. I quickened my step and edged past him. For a few seconds the distance between us widened, and then somehow we were side by side again, our feet stepping in time to ‘Left, right, left right, pyjama dheela, topi tight.’ We walked past cottonfields, past buffaloes wallowing in pools of water, past goats, past chickens, past grass greener than any green in Karachi, past more cottonfields, always more cottonfields, and I thought for the first time how strange it was that we never walked in Karachi, not from Karim’s house to mine, not from Sind Club to the Gymkhana, not from anywhere to anywhere except at the beach, and even there you could walk only so far before water or rocks or crabs indicated, Enough now. Go back.
On our return to the house, Karim picked a chicken claw off the ground. ‘This could be a starfish,’ he said. ‘It should be. We should be home. Planning a trip to the beach. We should be home. Doesn’t it bother you that we’re not?’
‘Home is an anagram of “oh, me!” Such a dramatic cry. Speaking of which, why are you being the one-minute version of Drama Hour for no reason? This is a holiday; it’s cool. We can wander around and explore and stuff. Besides, no one’s going to get permission to go to the beach these days, not with all the violence and stuff.’