I have to say I didn’t begin by wanting to deceive Najma with these spidery nonsense nets. She had taken it for granted that I was already wealthy, and would become even wealthier in the near future, like her male cousins. She’d been to Britain often, but had little idea of what it was really like. Most people, in fact, seemed to think that Miriam and I were rich. If we weren’t, we must have been stupid or mentally weak. One time I saw a young servant of Yasir’s wearing my shoes, then a pair of my suit trousers.
When I remonstrated with him, he just grinned. “But you are rich,” he said in strange English.
“Get that stuff off,” I said. “I’m going to tell Yasir.”
He acted like I’d hit him. “Please, I beg you, no, no,” he pleaded. “He sack me.”
Off he went in my gear. What could I do? He earned almost nothing. Miriam, being generous and ingenious, found a way to fund him while benefiting us. She got him to bring us joints, which we’d smoke on the roof. Not long after, I discovered from Najma that Papa was referring to us as “les enfants terribles.” His own children!
Not that we weren’t looking into him too, eager to get the lowdown. I knew little about his romantic life, whether he had anyone or not. It seemed unlikely. He had his routine, his worries and his books.
There was, though, his second wife. Miriam and I went to her office, where she worked as the editor of a woman’s magazine. She was very cool, small with fine features, polite, curious and intelligent. She had an English upper-class accent with the head-wagging Indian lilt I’d liked since meeting Ajita. I could see Miriam getting a crush on her. But she wasn’t for a moment emotionally engaged with us. She didn’t talk about Papa or our lives without him. After our visit, Miriam phoned a couple of times but was told she was away.
Things began to go bad. One time I was in the library and Najma was waiting outside as she always did. I went to her, checked for prying eyes, and kissed her shiny lips a little and began to touch her, but she was cold and pushed me away. She was silent for a while, letting me take in her hurt, before beginning to abuse me in Urdu. Her father, in a rage, came in. They talked a lot in Urdu too. I got out of there. It was breaking down.
It turned out that Najma had gone to Miriam and confessed to her. We were in love, we were going to marry, we were off to London, New York, Hollywood, in a Merc, or was it a Jag?
Miriam calmly told her to forget it, Jamal was marrying no one. He’s not even a student; he’s got the degree, but so does every bum and semi-fool in London Town. Forget the Jag, the fucker might be able to drive but he hasn’t taken his test, they wouldn’t let him on the road in England. If he’s intending to marry, she finished off, he hasn’t mentioned it to me, and he mentions everything to me, otherwise I slap him.
I was in a rage with Miriam. Why did she do this? She liked the girl, she said. She felt sorry for her being subjected to my lies and stupid stories. But what was she doing herself?
It was taken for granted that I’d accompany Papa during the day (I was learning a lot), just as he took it for granted that Miriam would stay at the house with the other women. But, apparently, she had stopped doing this. Instead, she had taken to driving off in Uncle Yasir’s car, often with her head uncovered. When asked where she’d been, she’d reply, “sightseeing.” I had some idea of what these sights might be when she told me that her favourite thing in Karachi was to go to the beach and there, under a palm tree, split open a coconut and pour half a bottle of gin into it.
Most of the sightseeing she did was from within the arms of one of our cousins’ fiancés, an airline pilot who had a beach hut. He and our cousin were to be married later that year, but the pilot was taking the opportunity to get to know the further reaches of the family. He and Miriam had also been meeting in rooms in the hotel I’d visited with Najma, where he knew the manager.
They’d been spotted. Gossip was one of the few things that moved urgently in Karachi. He’d taken it for granted that English girls were easy, and when he ran into Miriam, he knew he was right. I’d been wondering how she knew so many little things about the country. Of course our cousin went crazy, and threatened to stab Miriam. Miriam was outnumbered; I refused to help her.
Miriam had thought we could live in Pakistan a while, get a job, save a bit, hang out on the beach and deal hash, and so on. But in little less than a month, the whole thing had become impossible. We were too alien; there was no way we could fit in. There were American and British wives living there, but they had gone native, wearing the clothes, doing the accent, trying to learn the language in order to speak to the servants.
Outside, if Miriam wasn’t covered, she was jeered and hissed at. They even pinched her. She picked up fruit from stalls and threw it at people. I was terrified she’d get into a fistfight or worse. I kept my head down, but Miriam, being a modern woman of the most extreme kind, fucked them all up. Our grandmother, the Princess, had already gone to her, placed her hand on her forehead and said, “I’m going to recite a small prayer which will drive out the devil and the evil spirits which possess you. Satan be off! Give us victory over those who disbelieve!” The following morning she had two sheep slaughtered. The meat was distributed among the poor, who were asked to pray for Miriam’s quick recovery.
It all blew up at Papa’s flat one morning when I heard a commotion in the sitting room. There were raised voices. Then I heard what sounded like a large object being thrown across the floor. I guessed the large object might be Papa. When I ran in, followed by the servant, Miriam was sitting on Papa, rather as she used to sit on me, screaming at him. He was trying to protect his face as well as trying to strike her. She was strong and difficult to pull off. There was something she wanted to tell him.
“He’s been abusing me!” she said as we held her, trying to pin her arms behind her back. Papa was dusting himself down. Then I saw that she had spat at him, that her spittle was on his face. He took his handkerchief and cleaned himself.
She said, “He says I kiss the arse of whitey! He calls me ‘a rotten girl’ and a dirty slut who can’t behave! Yet he left us there in London! He abandoned us! What could be worse than that!”
“Get out,” cried Papa in a weak voice. He went into another room and shut the door.
It was the last time we saw him.
Dad must have spoken to Yasir. When we got back to his house, we were informed that we were leaving later, around one in the morning. We were not given any choice. The servants were already packing our bags. No one said goodbye or waved. We weren’t allowed to say goodbye to the girls.
The funny thing was, we spotted Miriam’s lover, the pilot, going through the crew lane in the airport. Later, during the flight, he came to collect her. Apparently she “guided the plane.” A packed 747 with Miriam at the wheel, sitting on the pilot’s knee with, no doubt, her hand in his fly.
Mother had wanted us to see Father “in his own environment.” She thought it would be informative. It was. We could no longer idealise him. In most ways he was worse off than us. He couldn’t save us, nor us him. He couldn’t be the father we had wanted him to be. If I wanted a father, I’d have to find a better one.
By the time we returned to London, Miriam and I weren’t speaking. I hated her and didn’t want to see her again. I didn’t want to be the little brother anymore. Usually I’m quite passive, if not evasive. I go along with things to see what’s happening, not wanting to make things worse by tossing my chilies into the stew. But I had said to Miriam, as we left Papa’s, that she had ruined the whole trip.
“No wonder Papa thinks you’re an idiot and a bitch,” I explained. “You can’t control yourself for five minutes! These people have their own way of life, and you just pissed all over it! There can be few people in this world who are more selfish than you!”