At intermission they eat cucumber sandwiches and sip tea, standing next to each other like strangers. Although he does bow slightly to her as he passes a plate, and her friends cannot help smiling with their eyes.
The Regal Cinema did at one time deserve its name.
Now I sit on a broken seat at the very back, a seat, not a couch, with a crack that pinches my bottom when I move, munching on a greasy bag of chips, trying to ignore the shouting of the men next to me as Chow Yun-Fat kicks his way to another victory for the common man, for good over evil, for hope over tyranny. I love kung fu flicks from Hong Kong. They’re the only movies I go to see in the cinema anymore. Everything else is better on a VCR, without the smells and sounds of the audience. But not kung fu.
A fight breaks out somewhere in the middle rows, with much yelling and hooting. People surge up and at each other as Chow flashes a six-foot grin over the scene. One of the men to my left throws a packet of chips into the scuffle. There are no women to be seen here, except on screen, and when those appear, the men in the audience go wild, whistling joyously. Maybe the real ones are in private boxes. Maybe they know better than to come to see Chow Yun-Fat on opening night. Or to go to the cinema at all. No woman I know goes unless the entire cinema has been reserved in advance. Reserved for the right sort of people, that is.
I sit for a while after the movie is over, watching the unruly audience make its way out, sad at what’s happened to this place since my parents were my age. Look at us now: we can’t even watch a film together in peace. I cover my face with my hands and it feels hot, my entire head feels hot. I’m on edge. I think I need some hairy.
The cinema is almost empty when I realize someone is watching me. I stare at him, and he hesitates for a moment before walking over, motorcycle helmet in hand. Thick black beard. Intelligent eyes. Looks about my age. Salaams.
I return the greeting.
‘Have we met before?’ he asks me. Calm voice.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Were you at GC?’
‘I was, as a matter of fact.’
‘I remember. You were a boxer.’
I nod, surprised.
‘So was I,’ he says.
I extend my hand. ‘Darashikoh Shezad.’
He shakes it firmly. ‘Mujahid Alam. I was a year junior to you. Middleweight.’
‘Now I remember. The beard is new.’
He looks around the deserted theater. ‘I came over because you looked upset.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, a little taken aback.
‘Did you find today’s spectacle disturbing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All the shouting, the fighting, the disorderliness. Our brothers have no discipline. They’ve lost their self-respect.’
‘One can hardly blame them.’
He lowers his voice and continues in a tone both conspiratorial and friendly. ‘Exactly. Our political system’s at fault. Men like us have no control over our own destinies. We’re at the mercy of the powerful.’
Normally a speech like this from a virtual stranger would seem odd. But something in the way he says it makes me comfortable, drawing me in. I lean forward to hear him better.
‘We need a system,’ he goes on, and it sounds like he’s quoting something, ‘where a man can rely on the law for justice, where he’s given basic dignity as a human being and the opportunity to prosper regardless of his status at birth.’
‘I agree.’
‘Then come to our meeting tomorrow.’
‘What meeting?’
‘A gathering of like-minded people, brothers who believe as you and I do that the time has come for change.’
I’m not surprised. I could tell he was a fundo from the moment I saw him. But at the same time, I’ve taken a liking to him and I’m reluctant to let him down. I say gently, ‘I’m not a very good brother, brother. I don’t think I’m the sort you’re trying to recruit.’
He smiles. ‘I’m not recruiting you. I just keep my eyes open for like-minded men. Besides, no believer is a bad believer.’
‘And what if I’m not a believer at all?’
‘You should still come. None of us can change things acting on our own. And to act together we need direction. What else is belief but direction? A common direction toward a better end?’
I smile. ‘We could be hiding enormous differences.’
‘If differences can be hidden, perhaps they aren’t differences at all. Maybe you’re more of a believer than you think.’
I look at him. He seems like such a nice, earnest guy. ‘Tell me where the meeting is.’
He writes it for me on a piece of paper, and as we part ways he shakes my hand with both of his. ‘I hope we’ll meet again.’
‘As God wills,’ I reply.
He accepts that with a nod.
In the car I take an aitch out of the glove compartment. Pre-rolled. I thought I might need one after the movie. I light up, thinking about Mujahid. What a nice guy. I hope he doesn’t get himself killed trying to make things better for the rest of us. I guess there are all kinds of fundos these days. And they’re obviously well organized if they even have a sales pitch for people like me.
I can’t say that I entirely disagree with their complaints, either.
But I’m definitely not going to that meeting. I roll the paper Mujahid gave me into a ball and toss it out the window.
I need a drink.
I watch a lizard strut along a wall, its shoulders and hips moving in a sensuous swagger. I can’t tell if it’s dark brown or dark green in the candlelight, but I can see that it’s missing half its tail. Lizards look obscene without their tails, naked somehow. But tails grow back eventually, if the lizard is lucky and lives long enough. And this lizard is already only partly naked, partly tailless. Partly bald, like Ozi. Or partly damaged, like me, with my nine good fingers.
I like its eyes: two black dots, nonreflective light-trappers. Utterly determined eyes, doubt-free, unselfconscious. Frightening eyes if they happen to be looking at you and you’re small enough to be dinner. The same eyes a man probably sees on an alligator before it drags him down and shakes the air out of his lungs and leaves him to rot a little in the murk, to be tenderized properly before he becomes a meal.
The lizard dashes forward and stops. Two feet away, on the wall above a candle, taking a much-deserved breather from hectic lovemaking, sits one of my shuttlecocks in waiting: a moth the perfect size for pinging. Black dots eye dinner. And dinner, exhausted from a rather strenuous dance with the candle, pants with its wings folded in an aero-dynamic delta, more sleekly angled at rest than in flight.
The lizard steps forward. Two steps. Two more. Then four. Stops. Dinner doesn’t move. Black dots come closer, close enough to blow moth dust off dinner if the lizard should happen to sneeze. But dinner doesn’t seem to think of itself as dinner. No, dinner is completely caught up in its own fantasy, a romantic Majnoon, antennae unkempt, warming itself in the updraft of heat from the flame of much-loved Laila.
Slowly, with no hurry at all, the lizard takes the moth into its mouth and squeezes. Only now does dinner realize it is dinner, one wing trembling frantically until it breaks off and falls like a flower petal, twirling. The lizard swallows, pulling the moth deeper into its mouth, then swallows again. And that’s that.
I clap loudly, my legs crossed at the knee, smiling at the lizard. Thanks for the entertainment. Clapclapclap.
Echoes bounce back from the walls.
Mumtaz comes. She doesn’t want to go inside. So even though a light rain is falling, we stand by her car.