‘What? To Multan?’ He tilted his large head to one side.
‘South of the country, not the province,’ I said. ‘Oh God, Karachi. No, of course not.’
Not really so long ago that Uncle Chaperoo’s was the face I imagined when I imagined Romeo; not really so long since he’d cut the romantic figure of a man defying convention by marrying outside his tribe. And now he said the problem with Karachi was that it was such a mishmash, no good could come from rampant plurality. His wife was not around when I saw him. They weren’t divorced, just indifferent.
‘Multan! South! Such circumscribed seeing,’ I said to Sonia. ‘This holiday isn’t doing much for me. Let’s go home,’ and we took the next flight out. On my way home from the airport I remembered that was a phrase from Aba’s letter: Circumscribed, seeing, a thing we can ill afford.
The Prime Minister told reporters the country was doing well. When asked about Karachi, she said Karachi was only ten million people.
Aunty Laila gripped me by the elbow in the doorway to the chemist’s and hissed, ‘We have to get out of here. Act casual.’
Numb could be mistaken for casual. I let her pull me out, my eyes sweeping the area for the glint of sun on trigger. Perhaps we should say something, warn the other shoppers. On the ground, a package. I tumbled into Aunty Laila’s car and ducked low in the seat. Still unable to speak, I gestured to her driver to step on it.
Aunty Laila opened the back door. Slowly, so slowly.
A man reached down to pick up the package.
Aunty Laila put a hand to my forehead. ‘There’s a journalist in there. I don’t want tomorrow’s papers announcing SOCIALITE BUYS SUPPOSITORIES.’
The man pulled a kabab roll out of the bag, and began to chew.
I heard Aba and Ami talking to Aunty Maheen on the phone. They sat right next to each other, his arm around her shoulder, with the phone held between them. They were both laughing.
***
I was supposed to be looking for a job, but what did I want to do with my life?
The memory of his throat beneath my mouth, the sting of aftershave in the cut on my lip…
A nomad from Uncle Asif’s dune begged Uncle Asif to get him a job in Karachi. Even now, even at this time, it was still a city that beckoned. Uncle Asif said that nomad was little older than I was, and I wondered if among his few possessions were a pair of marbles that looked like the eyes of a goat.
‘Why are there no parties, why are there no parties?’ Aunty Runty wept. ‘I can’t bear all this sitting at home, I can’t bear my own imagination.’
Naila hadn’t appeared with her coconut oil at anyone’s house since early May.
Orangi, Korangi, Liaquatabad, New Town, Golimar, Machar Colony, Azizabad, Sher Shah…violence in all those parts of town whose unfamiliarity still felt like a blessing. But then, six died in Kharadar, including a beggar girl. As I read through the newspaper article I saw, between one word and the next, images of bullets and bodies, the wounded weeping for the dead, crushed and broken sugar cane kicked aside by fleeing feet; balloons burst around me and the ground outside the white-tiled hotel rushed up to meet me. Gravel bit into my skin. A man cradled a boy’s blood-dark head in his lap, whispering, ‘Ocean, oceano, samundar, mohit, moa shoagor, umi, bahari, valtameri…’
Sonia called me late one night. ‘Just so sick of it. Everyone is gloom and doom and harpoon happiness. But just listen to what happened to me this evening. Ama and I had gone to my grandparents’ house for dinner — Aboo’s in Islamabad, and who ever knows where Sohail is these days? — and as we were walking to our car to leave, this man, real chichora type, leapt out of the shrubs, caught Amma’s wrist and said, “Give me your car-keys.”’
‘No!’
‘Yes, na, I’m telling you. So Amma became suddenly hysterical and she’s trying to find the key in her bag but the clasp is so complicated it takes real techknowhow to get it open, and even when she finally manages to do that her hands are shaking so much that she can’t really find anything, so then the man starts to put his hand down his shalwar and said, “Hurry up and give me the keys or I’ll take out my TT.” And Ama went completely mental and started throwing the contents of her bag at this guy, yelling, “No, no, anything but that,” and the man got such a shock, what with Ama and also the neighbour coming to see what the commotion was all about, that he ran away. I turned to Ama and I said, “You know, a TT is a kind of gun,” and she said, “Oh, thank God, I thought he was going to show us his privates.”’
I reminded Sonia that before this summer we used to be able to laugh without consciously thinking, Now I’m laughing. Now the suffocation is gone from my lungs for a moment.
She reminded me there hadn’t been much cause for laughter in the winter either.
All mobile-phone services had been suspended because there were strong indicators that such a mode of communication aided terrorist activities.
My car developed a flat tyre when I was driving home from the Club. When I got out of the car to check it, a Suzuki van stopped and three men got out. A cyclist pulled over beside me. A fruit seller walked across the street towards me. I knew why they stopped, I knew what they were going to do. They told me to sit back in the car, with the air conditioning on. It was a hot, sticky day. They changed the tyre for me, and then they all left.
It was exactly the sort of thing you’d expect unknown men to do in Karachi.
I walked into Zia’s room as he was packing to return to New York. He lugged his suitcase off his bed, making room for me to lie down. But I felt awkward, said I should leave. He said he wasn’t planning to come back to Karachi and who knows when he’d see me again. So how much did it really matter what happened between us, this once?
I said, ‘Let’s go for a drive. I don’t feel comfortable here, having this conversation, with your parents maybe walking by on the other side of the wall.’ We drove out in his Integra, though all summer I had kept my movements confined to houses and squash courts as much as possible.
I felt no pleasure, no anticipation, as we drove, just some numb sense of inevitability. Zia’s face unreadable. Where were we going? How deserted the streets were, so soon after sunset. Near the submarine roundabout he turned off the main road. We were going to one of Sonia’s father’s offices, the one closest to home. Desk, phone, fax. Makeshift work space for days when it was too dangerous to head to offices in other parts of town. Green carpet. Nothing of real importance there, no caretakers and guards keeping watch. Years ago, Sonia had showed us we could unlock the door with a penknife. Zia swerved, without slowing, around a stalled car blocking the road. A man stepped out from behind the car, right into the path of Zia’s car. Zia spun the wheel. Braked. The man, uninjured, pointed a gun through the window.
‘It must be fate,’ he said.
It was the car thief.
He directed us to get out of the car.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, we’ll get you a job. I thought my friend had arranged it.’ Zia was sweating in the still night air.
The man shook his head. ‘Your friend did arrange it. Lohawalla Sahib tracked me down, found me a job. I owe him a lot. But my brother’s been shot. You don’t need to know details, but he’s been very angry, done a lot of foolishness. Still, he’s my brother. And if I don’t get him to the hospital he’ll die. But if I try driving from here to there, the police will stop me, and then they’ll recognize him. They won’t stop a car with a girl in it.’