‘So was he the one…who told Karim?’
‘Of course not. Don’t be absurd. No, Ali and I did some detective work. Turns out it was Runty. One year when she was visiting London. And a cousin of mine provided confirmation of the details.’ She waved her hand. ‘But that’s not important any more, is it?’
‘What is important?’
Aunty Maheen patted my cheek. Her hand was warm, but the rings on her fingers were cold. ‘You and Karim. When I spoke to your father just now, he told me what you said to him on the Lady Lloyd Pier. He told me you think you and Karim would be together if it wasn’t for Zafar and my story standing between you. Child, that’s ridiculous.’
‘I know,’ I admitted. ‘I know I let Karim down. That’s the real issue between us. But what I did is made so much worse by the fact that it wasn’t just anyone doing it, but Zafar’s daughter doing it to Maheen’s son. I don’t know if he can get past that. I don’t know what I need to do to get both of us past that.’
‘I think that’s why your parents are the best couple I know,’ she said. ‘You feel they know how to get past anything.’
‘But…’ It seemed a desperate breach of form and manners to say this, but I had to. ‘But you and Aba were in love.’
‘God, yes,’ she said, and smiled in a way I might smile if someone mentioned my teenage crush on Zia. ‘But lots of people are in love lots of times. Yasmin and Ali were in love, too, though in a different way. And Yasmin and Zaf were in love, still are. The most surprising thing of all is that one day Ali and I were in love, also, though that came much later. And then, we weren’t.’ She laughed. ‘It would all be very silly if it didn’t wreak such havoc in our lives. The issue is not who paired off with whom — I’ve been trying to learn when to use the word “whom”, sweetie, was that correct? — but who was able to make it work and how. Your parents did.’
‘So it’s not so special, is that what you’re saying? What I feel for Karim.’
‘Oh, darling. The thought of the two of you together brings such tears of joy to my eyes.’ She kissed the side of my head and handed me the entire plate of pakoras.
‘I’m really very confused,’ I said. ‘OK, one question: how do you forgive what he said?’
She stood up and started walking around the flat, hugging her paisley shawl close in the air-conditioned air. ‘I thought I was showing courage by staying in Karachi during all that madness, and I’m still not sure I wasn’t. But, you see, I was a Bengali. I was born that way. So though people turned away from me at parties, and conversations stopped when I entered the room, and all sorts of things went on that no one should have to live through, there was a certain…resignation, almost, in people’s attitudes towards me. I was just a Bingo, nothing to be done about it. But your father…your father was something much worse. He was a turncoat, a traitor. A Bingo-lover.’ She said the words slowly, as if examining them, trying to unravel their mystery. ‘That evening — when Shafiq got the telegram about his brother — Zafar had just come back from hospital. Broken rib, fractured thumb, bruises everywhere. He claimed he’d been mugged and beaten, but no one was fooled. There was violence in the air those days, and why should your father have been expected not to get terrified of it? Whatever he said to Shafiq, awful as it was, I don’t believe he meant it.’
‘If you didn’t believe it, you would have married him.’
Aunty Maheen walked over to the window and looked down at a bridge being raised so a boat could pass through. ‘You weren’t alive in those days. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
She had never spoken to me in that tone before.
I walked over to the window. It was certainly pretty, the view of the river and the tall buildings, but I wondered what Aunty Maheen saw when she looked out. Did she see home?
As if she had read my mind she said, ‘I don’t think I could ever bear to go back to Karachi. First it was because I knew the kind of whispers that would go around about me. I think I was afraid almost — of being shunned, of having backs turn on me a second time round. And now…’ She ran her fingers over a book on the console table that had pictures of some of Karachi’s landmarks on the cover. ‘Now, it’s changed so much it might break my heart to see it. To be reminded that, after all, after everything, I’ve ended up a foreigner in that city.’
I put my arm around her, and thought of all my friends who weren’t planning to return to Karachi after university. Zia was still trying to convince me that I, too, should stay in America. He had even called up one of his father’s contacts who worked in a travel agency in New York and got him to agree to hire me. He meant well, so I didn’t tell him it was the kind of thing his father would have done. Besides, I hadn’t decided to turn down the job yet. What kind of home would home be without my friends in it?
‘I need to find a way to forgive my father. I think you’re the only person who can help me do that.’
‘No. I’m not. He is.’ Aunty Maheen lifted the Karachi book and shook it. A thin blue piece of paper with writing on either side fell out from between the pages. ‘This may help; it may not.’ Aunty Maheen handed me the blue paper. ‘As soon as you called I knew it was finally time to give it to you. I’ve had it a long, long time. Your father wrote it to me. I’m going down to the store to get something for dinner. You’re staying the night, of course.’
She left me alone, and I picked up the paper, and started to read.
Dear Maheen,
Already I’m thinking ahead to how I’ll end this letter, and in case you haven’t yet scanned ahead to find the answer to that question, let me tell you it will be with the phrase: my love always, Zafar.
I will show this letter to Yasmin when it is finished. She will approve the ending.
I’m more glad than I can say that the two of you are reconciled now that Raheen and Karim are born. I have seen you look at your son and then at Ali, and even I’m not vain enough to believe you are thinking of me for even a moment. But I know the first thought you have — will have, have already had, are having even now — of me in conjunction with your child will he: thank God. Because if we had been married your Karim would not have been born, nor would my Raheen — and how can we love the notion of some hypothetical children that might have been more than we love these tiny-fisted creatures who yesterday seemed entirely unaware of each other for fifty-nine minutes of the hour they were together, yet turned to each other in that sixtieth minute, and Raheen — with eyes shut — reached out and put a hand on Karim’s cheek, and Karim kept looking at her without blinking.
I picture them already as firm friends. And then I picture them growing up, and, Maheen, what will I say to my daughter when she is old enough to understand the truth and all its implications?
Nothing can excuse or erase what I said. So why am I writing this letter? To tell you that if you want me to stay always silent about how things ended between us, I will. But your heart has always been far greater than mine, so let me first — please, Maheen, don’t stop reading. I should tear this up, it makes little sense, but if I wait to write again until I can craft every sentence, I may never write.
What I was saying was — oh, I don’t even know. But I know this — it is less than two years since Bangladesh was born, and already we in Pakistan have become so efficient at never speaking about it. That scares me more than anything else. When we do refer to ‘yi, it’s as personalised stories about sitting on the roof, sipping whisky and watching the dogfights in the sky, or about waiting for a dawn that never came because the oil refineries were bombed and a thick cloud of smoke shut out the sun. We tell these stories and contain the horrors of war into four-line anecdotes that we tell over tea and biscuits.