Our project at the cable company went on to end well — in the sense that we identified substantial cost savings and our client was pleased by the thoroughness of our valuation — but I was a nervous young man on the day of my December review. As it turned out, I need not have been so concerned. Two of the six analysts in my entering class — those ranked fifth and sixth — were indeed among the employees our firm let go. But I, Jim informed me, was once again ranked number one; I was, in fact, awarded a prorated bonus that, although not enormous by the standards of our profession, was still rather generous given the expectation of lean times ahead. It enabled me to pay off, in full, my outstanding student loans and put aside a few thousand as well. I should have been ecstatic, but earlier that week armed men had assaulted the Indian Parliament, and instead of celebrating my good fortune, I was confronting the possibility that soon my country could be at war.
My mother told me not to come; my father said much the same. But with the help of a Seventh Avenue travel consolidator and my sudden ability to afford Business Plus class airfare on PIA, I found myself bound for Lahore at that time of year when New York shoppers busy themselves with the purchasing of last-minute presents and couples can be seen kissing on the streets as they drag beautiful little shrubs to their apartments for use as Christmas trees. I sat on the airplane next to a man who removed his shoes — much to my dismay — and who said, after praying in the aisle, that nuclear annihilation would not be avoided if it was God’s will, but God’s will in this matter was as yet unknown. He offered me a kindly smile, and I suspected that his purpose in making this remark was to reassure me.
And with that, sir, the moment has come for us to eat! For Your own safety, I would suggest that you avoid this yoghurt and those chopped vegetables. What? No, no, I meant nothing sinister; your stomach might be upset by uncooked foods, that is all. If you insist, I will go as far as to sample each of the plates myself first, to reassure you that there is nothing to fear. Here. A piece of Warm bread, like so — ah, fresh from the clay oven — and I will begin.
Chapter 9
WILL THEY provide us with cutlery, you ask? I am certain, sir, that a fork can be found for you, but allow me to suggest that the time has now come for us to dirty our hands. We have, after all, spent some hours in each other’s company already; surely you can no longer feel the need to hold back. There is great satisfaction to be had in touching one’s prey; indeed, millennia of evolution ensure that manipulating our meals with our skin heightens our sense of taste — and our appetite, for that matter! I see you need no further convincing; your fingers are tearing the flesh of that kebab with considerable determination.
There are adjustments one must make if one comes here from America; a different way of observing is required. I recall the Americanness of my own gaze when I returned to Lahore that winter when war was in the offing. I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared, with cracks running through its ceilings and dry bubbles of paint flaking off where dampness had entered its walls. The electricity had gone that afternoon, giving the place a gloomy air, but even in the dim light of the hissing gas heaters our furniture appeared dated and in urgent need of reupholstery and repair. I was saddened to find it in such a state — no, more than saddened, I was shamed. This was where I came from, this was my provenance, and it smacked of lowliness.
But as I reacclimatized and my surroundings once again became familiar, it occurred to me that the house had not changed in my absence. I had changed; I was looking about me with the eyes of a foreigner, and not just any foreigner, but that particular type of entitled and unsympathetic American who so annoyed me when I encountered him in the classrooms and workplaces of your country’s elite. This realization angered me; staring at my reflection in the speckled glass of my bathroom mirror I resolved to exorcise the unwelcome sensibility by which I had become possessed.
It was only after so doing that I saw my house properly again, appreciating its enduring grandeur, its unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm. Mughal miniatures and ancient carpets graced its reception rooms; an excellent library abutted its veranda. It was far from impoverished; indeed, it was rich with history. I wondered how I could ever have been so ungenerous — and so blind — to have thought otherwise, and I was disturbed by what this implied about myself: that I was a man lacking in substance and hence easily influenced by even a short sojourn in the company of others.
But far more significant than these inward-oriented musings of mine was the external reality of the threat facing my home. My brother had come to collect me from the airport; he embraced me with sufficient force to cause my rib cage to flex. As he drove he ruffled my hair with his hand. I felt suddenly very young — or perhaps I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth. It had been some time since I had been touched so easily, so familiarly, and I smiled. “How are things?” I asked him. He shrugged. “There is an artillery battery dug in at the country house of a friend of mine, half an hour from here, and a colonel billeted in his spare bedroom,” he replied, “so things are not good.”
My parents seemed well; they were more frail than when I had seen them last, but at their age that was to be expected with the passage of a year. My mother twirled a hundred-rupee note around my head to bless my return; later it would be given to charity. My father’s eyes glistened, moist and brown. “Contact lenses,” he said, dabbing them with a handkerchief, “quite smart, eh?” I said they suited him, and they did; his glasses had come late in life, and they had concealed the strength of his face. Neither he nor my mother wanted to discuss the possibility of war; they insisted on feeding me and hearing in detail about my life in New York and my progress at my new job. It was odd to speak of that world here, as it would be odd to sing in a mosque; what is natural in one place can seem unnatural in another, and some concepts travel rather poorly, if at all. I censored any mention of Erica, for example, and indeed of anything that I thought might disturb them.
But that night a family banquet was held in my honor, and there the conflict with India dominated conversation. Opinion was divided as to whether the men who had attacked the Indian parliament had anything to do with Pakistan, but there was unanimity in the belief that India would do all it could to harm us, and that despite the assistance we had given America in Afghanistan, America would not fight at our side. Already, the Indian army was mobilizing, and Pakistan had begun to respond: convoys of trucks, I was told, were passing through the city, bearing supplies to our troops on the border; as we ate, we could hear the sounds of military helicopters flying low overhead; a rumor circulated that soon traffic would be halted on the motorway so that our fighter planes could practice landing on it, in case all of our airfields were destroyed in a nuclear exchange.
It will perhaps be odd for you — coming, as you do, from a country that has not fought a war on its own soil in living memory, the rare sneak attack or terrorist outrage excepted — to imagine residing within commuting distance of a million or so hostile troops who could, at any moment, attempt a full-scale invasion. My brother cleaned his shotgun. One of my uncles stocked up on bottled water and canned food. Our part-time gardener was deployed with the reserves. But for the most part, people seemed to go about their lives normally; Lahore was the last major city in a contiguous swath of Muslim lands stretching west as far as Morocco and had therefore that quality of understated bravado characteristic of frontier towns.