In the City by the Sea Read online

  ‘Your government made a great show of support for Salman, not so long ago,’ Ami cut in.

  ‘Saira, what can I say? That trade agreement . . .’

  ‘Is bribery!’ said Ami.

  ‘Perhaps, but my country is getting real benefits from it. You can’t expect us to place your well-being over our well-being. And it’s not just the trade agreement. There are other strategic reasons why we can’t alienate your President.’

  ‘You’ve been rehearsing that all day, haven’t you?’ Aba said drily.

  ‘All week, actually,’ the woman said.

  ‘All week! You mean to tell me . . .’

  ‘One other thing,’ the woman went on, as though Aba’s interruption had not occurred.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know I’m not the only person of influence you have tried to contact. Give it up. The risk is too great and there will be no dividends.’

  Three sets of footsteps echoed down the hall. Hasan poked his head out of his room, but could find nothing familiar about the back of the woman who was walking out of the front door with Ami and Aba. Hasan walked over to the TV room and froze in the doorway. Gul Mumani was in the room, staring up at a painting of Salman Mamoo and Aba, dressed in their cricketing whites. Salman Mamoo’s collar button was undone and his head was thrown back in laughter. Gul Mumani placed the tip of her index finger against Salman Mamoo’s hint of an Adam’s apple. The finger began to move side to side along Salman Mamoo’s throat; a gentle caress, now pressing down harder, faster, a thing beyond Gul Mumani’s control, whipping from left to right to left until it was a frenzy Hasan could no longer bear to watch. He walked away before Gul Mumani knew he was there, but he was never again able to brush skin against canvas without a shudder rippling down his spine.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At first Hasan thought it had merely been hunger. French toast and sweet, milky tea dispelled all stomach somersaults so completely Hasan began to think the fear he had woken up with was merely a hunger so intense it defied immediate categorization. But when Ami entered the kitchen, red cracks at the corners of her eyes gravitating towards her pupils, Hasan’s stomach turned gymnastic again.

  ‘Any news about Salman Mamoo?’ he asked, pushing away his plate.

  Ami moved aside a jar of tea-leaves and reached for the coffee at the back of the cabinet. ‘No. Nothing. The Bodyguard reports nearly a hundred people were killed in the riots yesterday, in the City alone. I have a feeling you’re not going back to school for a while.’

  ‘Is Aba going to the office?’

  ‘Not today. ACE has extended the strike indefinitely.’

  ‘POTPAF,’ Hasan corrected her, but it didn’t seem to lighten her mood. She stirred boiling water into her coffee and came to stand beside Hasan.

  ‘You hate coffee,’ he reminded her.

  Ami wrinkled her nose in agreement and pushed the mug away. ‘Gul’s moving in. Your father’s taken her to pick up her things.’

  Hasan had thought he was the first one awake. ‘I wonder what prison’s like,’ he said.

  Ami covered Hasan’s eyes with her hands. ‘A blank canvas,’ she said. ‘See it?’ Hasan nodded. Five blank canvases, joined together to form the five sides of a cube. Floor, ceiling and three walls. The canvases grew four, six, eight feet tall as he watched them, and became the grey of dirt and sweat and thoughts staled by repetition. Slashes of light rent through the far wall of canvas and shaded the grey to end its monotony. Salman Mamoo appeared in a shaft of light, arms akimbo, and surveyed the canvases. He did not see Hasan standing behind him in the place where a sixth canvas was needed to complete the cube. Hasan didn’t mind.

  Salman Mamoo walked over to a wall-canvas, produced some glinting object from his pocket and began to scratch the grey paint. He’s trying to scratch through the canvas, Hasan thought. That’ll take for ever. But no, Salman Mamoo was etching calligraphy on the wall, etching snakes and diamonds of Urdu verse. Hasan looked closer at the words and his faltering Urdu took flight; his brain translated the words into English, while his heart beat in time to the original metre.

  Though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed, in rooms where lovers are destined to meet, they cannot snuff out the moon, so today, nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed, no poison of torture make me bitter.

  Wall-to-wall poetry, Hasan thought. This could be the newest craze in interior design.

  When Salman Mamoo had covered all three walls with poetry he reached up to the chinks in the far wall, and beckoned. Wisps of memory, deep blue and silver, floated in. Salman Mamoo caught them by the handful, rubbed them between his palms into strands, and wove the strands together. When he was done, his carpet of memories covered the prison floor completely and he sank his feet into it and wriggled his toes.

  Ami withdrew her hands from Hasan’s eyes, and her voice fell silent. Hasan felt as though he could sing again. At last he had the images to think of Salman Mamoo without imagining rats and rancid meat and the stink of sewers.

  ‘You told me it wouldn’t happen,’ he said to Ami. ‘You told me he would just remain under house-arrest for a while.’

  It was only that there was space for the first time. Space to say and think things, knowing that the answers would be bearable. But Ami held the coffee-cup against her cheek and closed her eyes for longer than a blink. ‘I know, jaan. I told myself that, too. We all did. I don’t know . . . perhaps we were all just acting in self-defence, insisting that he would be all right, that we would be all right, just so we needn’t contemplate the alternative.’ She put down the cup and pressed the base of her hands against her temples, but Hasan couldn’t tell whether she was trying to keep thoughts in or out. ‘But if you don’t think about the alternative you can’t do anything to prevent it from happening. So maybe if we had thought about it, faced the possibilities, we could have done something, good God! we could have tried. But not even to have done that much.’ Ami’s voice trailed into silence, then gathered itself up to its full power for a final burst. ‘God, this coffee is revolting!’

  It was a sign, Hasan decided. Not the coffee; the talk of considering possibilities and preventing them from happening. He left Ami pouring coffee down the sink and went to his room to find Yorker.

  ‘All right,’ he said, placing his forehead against the shiny red of Yorker’s cranium. ‘Let’s transmit thoughts.’ He shut his eyes so tight he could hear them squeezing smaller and smaller, and silently asked, ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen to Salman Mamoo?’

  Yorker’s answer: ‘He could die.’

  ‘Right,’ Hasan said, standing up and opening his eyes before the words could become pictures. ‘We have our quest, squire Yorker. We have to defeat Death, or at least deflect it away from Lord Salman Mamoo. Make preparations!’

  Yorker was clearly in a period of rebellion, chaffing against his role as squire, so Hasan had to forage around for quest equipment himself. Rope from the storeroom, in case of unexpected mountains; pine-cone talisman to ward off bad luck; magnifying glass and lens from old glasses to use with the sun’s assistance for lighting fires (the lens was from a pair of dark glasses which seemed somehow wrong, but such were the shortcomings of living in a house of people with 20–20 vision); a map (actually blank paper upon which directions would magically appear when needed); seashells and marbles for bartering; and a backpack, because Yorker refused to carry any equipment himself. Hasan ran an eye down the checklist. Just one thing missing.

  Aba’s voice carried down the hallway. ‘A boon, sire,’ Hasan cried out, charging out of his room and falling before Aba on bended knee. ‘I crave a boon.’

  ‘Tell us this boon, fair cuz, that we may say “why, aye” or “nay”.’ Aba bent forward and whispered, ‘Iambic feet with internal rhyme. Not bad!’

  ‘Your sword, sire. For I fear mine was shattered in slaying the Beast and despite thy promise thou hast not bought me another.’

  ‘Yes, well, Beasts are expensive these days. A
ll right, here you go.’ Aba produced his penknife key chain and slipped the keys off the ring. ‘Be careful, the blades are sharp. Wound yourself and I revoke your knighthood. Where are you going anyway?’

  There was only one place to go under the circumstances. Hasan needed to know more about Death, and his personal font of knowledge regarding the inexplicable was Merlin, who, for all his eccentricities, read a great deal and could always predict the result of a cricket match before the first five overs were bowled.

  The journey was treacherous. First Sir Huss had to leave the palace unobserved to escape detection by spies. Not that he mistrusted any member of the royal family, of course, but he had to be wary of the newly appointed royal cook who never ate onions. What could that mean, except that he didn’t want anyone to smell his approach? Sir Huss avoided the main portcullis and took leave of the palace through the windows of the minstrel’s gallery. All was going well, and though the mountains between the palace grounds and Merlin’s land would daunt most travellers, Sir Huss had traversed the peaks before and knew the safe paths. But wait! A dragon prowled across the peaks, its colour changing to meld with bush and scrub. The dragon halted in a patch of sunlight and began to perform push-ups, showing off the scales and strength of its forearms. While it was intent on admiring itself Sir Huss and his squire scrambled over the peaks, choosing speed over stealth, and descended into Merlin’s land.

  But the dragon had reminded Sir Huss of his greatest ally, Merlin’s daughter, the Wizard (Ms) Zed, who feared nothing except dragons. Sir Huss looked up at the Wizard’s balcony. She had her back towards him and was making use of her favourite magic device, The Fowne. Sir Huss was about to call out to her but stopped, seeing her tilt her head to one side and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Sir Huss scowled. Despite her powerful magic, the Wizard (Ms) Zed had clearly fallen under the spell of the Pale Knight, Sir No-gem.

  Merlin walked out into his garden, a cup of tea in one hand and a saucer in the other, and pottered from chikoo tree to chikoo tree, pausing every few seconds to look up at his daughter.

  ‘Merlin?’

  Merlin glanced around, and held up the saucer in greeting to Sir Huss. ‘No, no, Merle Out. However, his apprentice, Latif the Uncle, is present and accounted for.’ He looked back up at the balcony and scrunched his nose. ‘Highly disturbing. No tougher lessons for parents than a-doh. Yes, baba, adolescence adolescence, cause of much high depression. And what? Is one side of her brain heavier than the other? Why this tilting-shilting?’

  Sir Huss hooked a finger through a hole near the cuff of Latif the Uncle’s kurta, and brought the sage’s shuffling steps to a halt. ‘I have to ask you something.’

  ‘Oh, I sense a leap into the deep complexities of life. Well then, let me wear the oracle monocle.’ From his pocket the Uncle produced the monocle-frame which he carried everywhere with him, and held it in front of his right eye. ‘Okay, fire away, but don’t forget to aim first.’

  ‘How can I help someone escape death?’

  ‘Escape is OOQ.’

  ‘OOC? As in DICOOC? Out Of Country?’

  ‘No, no. O-O-Q. Out Of Question.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Avoidance, however, might be achieved for very many years.’

  Sir Huss and Yorker looked at each other and telepathically agreed that half a loaf was better than none. Unless the loaf was stale, of course, in which case rice was a better option. So Yorker thought, but then he had no teeth, and was still acting grumpy about the mundanity of a squire’s life besides. So start a trade union, Sir Huss advised, and returned to the matter at hand.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’ll do. How do I avoid death?’

  Latif the Uncle shook his head. ‘Look Lancelittle, I told you once to avoid bad eyesight by eating carrots. You became Bugs Bunny with the eyes of a hawk. I told you to avoid bad skin by rubbing lemon-juice and salt on your skin. You stole all the lemons from my tree, and look, your skin glows like a worm.’

  ‘Worm?’

  ‘Glow worm. I told you to avoid cavities by brushing your teeth often. You didn’t listen and your dentist took a trip up North with the money he billed your parents for.’

  ‘I know all that, Unc . . . Latif the Uncle. That’s why I’m asking you about this now.’

  ‘But Huss, I could say all that because the oracle monocle told me what causes bad eyesight, bad skin and cavities. But where death is concerned the OM is as clueless as a parachute. Do not question the simile. So, point being, before you can try running-shunning from Big-D, you must find out what causes it.’

  ‘And how do I do that?’

  ‘Question one who has come close enough to it to know its nature. Question the OM.’

  ‘Oracle Monocle?’

  ‘Yaar, bachoo, you are a tortoise on the uptake today. The Oldest Man, Huss. The Oldest Man.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Even his lips were wrinkled. His skin was so leathery bees snapped off their stingers on it, and his eyes were so deep-set their gleam resembled torch-beams signalling for help from the bottom of a pit. A single strand of white hair circled his head like a halo, but surely no angel would belch so loudly. He had lived in this hammock between two palm trees in the back garden of the Pink Mansion for as long as anyone could remember, since before the Pink Mansion was pink, and no shuffling around of its tenants ever affected him.

  Sir Huss had to cross the vast, pitted expanse of the Wrode to reach him, looking carefully left right left before setting out on the perilous crossing. Despite his precautions, a horse, its flesh obscured entirely by green armour, galloped along the Wrode at a pace so furious Sir Huss had to leap out of its way. Sir Nogem, he recalled, had a green armoured horse. Sir Huss narrowed his eyes. Perhaps his quest would need to be delayed while he saved the Wizard (Ms) Zed from the clutches of the Pale Knight. But the green horse charged past the Wizard’s gates and disappeared round the corner. Sir Huss dusted off his armour and smiled.

  At the gates of the Pink Mansion, though, Sir Huss recalled that he was approaching alien soil, with its own rules. He cast off his knighthood and transformed himself into Hasan, a commoner.

  Hasan walked towards the hammock bearing in hand a spotted seashell which he had picked up the last time he was at the beach. The Oldest Man received the shell with a nod of gratitude and compared it to another shell, similar in shape and design, from his collection on the grass beneath his hammock. He wagged his head with pleasure, banged the shells together, and held a shell against each ear. The gleam of his eyes lost focus, withdrew into their pits, and his hammock began to bob up-down-sidetoside as though tossing on a churning sea. When he spoke his voice was cracked from overuse.

  ‘This,’ he beckoned Hasan closer, placed the shells against Hasan’s ears, and was silent for a moment as Hasan listened to the echo and roar of the waves. ‘This is the way the sea sounded when we reached the horizon, my third year at sea. Such a storm, such a storm, and the sky flowing into the sea, both sea and sky reflecting each other’s darkness. Thirty men on that ship, all of us throwing our weight on the port side of the vessel and still it tilted to the starboard, just inches above the water’s surface. What an attack of religion we had then! But it worked. No sooner had we sobbed out one prayer than the storm clouds scattered and blew away. We thought we had been saved, until our skins blistered, bubbled and boiled and we raised our heads to see the sun setting honest-truth setting on our heads. Oh, how we rowed out of there!’

  Hasan touched his hand to his forehead deferentially. He had been loathe to part with the shell which had given him such an interesting seahorse-shaped bruise when he stubbed his toe against it, but the Oldest Man’s story was recompense enough. Hasan crossed his legs, and talked with the Oldest Man of nights at sea, and how the stars shine with a peculiar brilliance in places where fewer than a dozen eyes are watching them. Finally, the Oldest Man said, ‘I have heard of Salman Haq’s imprisonment. I wish there were something I could do.’ In respon
se, Hasan asked the question he had come there to ask.

  ‘It is the spirit,’ replied the Oldest Man. ‘When the spirit leaves, death claims you. I know this because many many years ago, as many years as there are waves in the sea, I nearly died. I was sick, sick with an illness that had no name and that killed five members of my family. One night, as I slept, my spirit tried to leave my body through my open mouth. I woke up just in time, however, and shut my mouth tight like a trap. My spirit rushed up to my nose to escape through my nostrils, but before it could do that I addressed it mentally.

  ‘“Spirit,” I said, in a voice as honeyed as a lover’s. “Why would you desert me? Stay with me longer, and I will show you a life of wonder.” My spirit acquiesced, and then my life began anew as we travelled together, read together, loved together. And now we are so harmoniously united, I think I shall never die.

  ‘But I was lucky to discover my spirit, and discover its desires. It is one thing to know you have a spirit, and quite another to get in touch with it, and learn its particular characteristics. Mine, for example, dislikes mangoes, and wanted to leave me primarily because I used to eat so many. Now I never eat mangoes, but that is a small price to pay for continued life. I miss them, though – mangoes, I mean – and one day during the monsoon season, when the air is heady with rain smells, I will take an armload of mangoes, sit under a tree, and gorge myself on them. Then I will die.’

  Hasan considered this notion for a moment, then shook his head firmly. ‘But suppose your spirit wants you to murder or steal or . . . or do something impossible like swim underwater for two hours without coming up for air.’

  ‘In the third case, you would leap into the sea with a snorkel. Undoubtedly Mr Snorkel was inspired to invent an underwater breathing device because his spirit demanded it of him. But as far as murder or theft goes, na! not possible. The spirit is born of the heart and the mind via the tastebuds. I must admit, I am still unclear about the role of the taste-buds, but everyone knows the choice of what-we-eat and what-not is a constant struggle between heart and mind, and of course the outcome of the struggle affects the spirit’s nature.’