In the City by the Sea Read online

  The door opened and Aba walked in, bouncing a pine-cone from palm to palm.

  ‘Pine,’ he said. ‘From pinean: to suffer. Old English.’ He shook his head. ‘Be careful of the symbols you adopt, Huss. They may haunt you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He tossed the pine-cone into Hasan’s suitcase. ‘Pack. Shoes at the bottom.’

  Hasan raised his eyebrows at Aba. Shoes? He stared down at the sneakers on his feet. ‘But what will I wear on the ride home?’ he said.

  ‘Forget I spoke,’ Aba said. He disappeared into the bathroom and came out with Hasan’s toothbrush and tube of Plaqattaq. Hasan packed the bottom of the suitcase with A Star Gazer’s Handbook, Great Cricketing Moments, Lord of the Rings, Mathematics – Book 3, three pine-cones and – with a nonchalance that defied Aba to comment – the container of tea. Aba’s gaze rested a moment on the mathematics book. Before he could remark on its uncut pages, Hasan whisked out the book and put it on his bedside. ‘I think I’ll finish up my homework before we leave,’ he muttered, as though speaking to himself. From the closet he pulled out an armload of clothes, deposited them into the suitcase, flattened the pile with his hands and closed the lid. He laid his cricket bat and Yorker on top of the suitcase and threw his arms wide in triumph.

  Aba picked up Yorker and examined him in much the way that Salman Mamoo had been examining the fork. ‘Huss, I know we joke around a lot. But if there’s ever something you want to talk about. Something serious . . .’

  ‘Aba, I wouldn’t do it in a house that’s bugged.’

  ‘True enough. Come on, let’s find your mother. We should be leaving soon.’

  But as the moment of departure came closer, everyone recoiled from it and kept recoiling so that the distance between Ami-Aba-Hasan and departure stayed constant through the day. But finally there was no more lunch and no more desire for tea or coffee or cake, and Ami and Gul Mumani won even rematches of the rematches at Trumps, both with and without cheating, and Hasan learnt to hook a bouncer for six runs, and Aba managed to catch a pine-cone in his mouth when Salman Mamoo threw it at him, and Gul Mumani remembered the song that had been playing in the background when Salman Mamoo proposed, and she sang it with gusto, and even the sun retreated behind clouds then, and so it was time.

  As they walked towards the garage, Salman Mamoo said to Hasan, ‘Well, I’m sure you’re ready to get out of this state of seclusion.’

  ‘No! I had so much fun this week. And I got to spend more time with you than I have in ages. None of those weird political types around.’ He paused, and then admitted, ‘But I do miss Zehra’s puppy.’

  ‘Latif’s daughter, Zehra?’

  ‘Yes. She named the puppy Ogle, after the President.’

  ‘Ogle?’

  ‘As in O-G-L. Our Glorious Leader.’

  ‘Oh, pehlvan, I’ll miss you. But why name a puppy after the President?’

  ‘Because they’re somehow connected. They have the same birthday, they both have a scar above their left eyebrow, and last week when the President was ill, so was the puppy.’

  Salman Mamoo smiled. ‘It seems almost natural that peculiarities like that should occur in a house where the Widow lives.’

  Salman Mamoo was still smiling as Aba started the engine and everyone waved goodbye. Just as the gates were about to close behind the car, Hasan looked back to wave once again. But Salman Mamoo was not looking at him now. He was staring, instead, at the wheels of the car. And Hasan knew that the look on Salman Mamoo’s face was that of a man who watches a car drive through his gate and knows he may forever have to stand in the driveway and wave to it, goodbye.

  Chapter Five

  Outside, the world was dust. Dust swirled the streets, filled Hasan’s nostrils, weighed down the air, made every intake of breath a conscious action. The City had changed in a week. It used to be home, but now it was just a place that existed outside Salman Mamoo’s house.

  As Aba rounded the corner from Salman Mamoo’s house Hasan saw wild shrubs squatting in empty plots of land, their brambled arms reaching out in all directions to snag, rip, rend. Black polythene bags danced around the shrubs; one leapt up, caught the end of a branch, and fluttered, flag-like. Around the shrubs, orange peel mingled with empty milk cartons, eggshells, and bones picked so clean they held no interest for the pi-dogs. A boy and a girl, about Hasan’s age, wandered through the garbage, sacks slung across their backs, in search of bits of paper they could sell. The girl yelled triumphantly, held up a book – the kind Hasan used for writing homework assignments in. Hasan rolled down the car window and flung his mathematics book towards the children. The car screeched to a halt.

  ‘What did you just throw out?’ Aba asked

  ‘My maths book.’

  ‘Go and pick it up right now!’

  Hasan slid out of the car, closing the door behind him with a motion just short of a slam. The girl reached the book just before he did, and picked it up. She was a little taller than Hasan, and it was hard for him to know what she would look like after a bath, though the green flecks in her eyes indicated that she was a Northerner. One hand fisted on her hip, the other holding the book, she stared at Hasan in a manner quite at odds with his expectations of a dirty, barefoot girl who scrounged through garbage. With a flick of her wrist, she released the book into Hasan’s hands. He opened the book to the center page, and grabbed hold of a bunch of pages, ready to pull them out and give them to her. She stopped him with a click of her tongue, and walked back into the empty plot.

  ‘Exactly what did you think you were doing?’ Aba asked, as Hasan stepped back in the car.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand. Only Salman Mamoo would.’

  ‘Hasan!’ Ami warned.

  ‘Can we just go home.’ Suddenly Hasan wanted very much to burst into tears.

  ‘Watch your tone of voice,’ Aba said.

  Good, Hasan thought, I’ve hurt him. As Aba took his hand off the wheel to shift gears, Hasan saw the crescent scar on his palm, its whiteness startling even against Aba’s fair skin, and then he was angry only at himself.

  It was about two years ago that Hasan had first heard the real story of the scar. He had never really considered it before, because nine years of seeing a thing disposes you to never noticing it. But one evening he had heard Ami refer to it as ‘the war wound’, followed by some mention of a bomb attack. Hasan was supposed to be in bed at the time, not sitting in the garden outside the drawing room counting the stars, so he couldn’t run in and ask whatwhywhen.

  But the next day, during art class, when Mrs R. Khan asked the class to paint a picture of heroism Hasan drew a white crescent. Mrs R. Khan (Auntie Rukhsana outside school) beamed at the picture, and called Ami from the staff room to gush her praise. ‘So young,’ she said, ‘but clearly so devout. None of this clichéd hero nonsense of knights and firemen and people killing themselves in order to save a dog.’ When Ami failed to see why a painting of a crescent should be so impressive, Mrs R. Khan said, ‘Obvious religious symbol. The crescent of Islam.’

  Later that day, poolside at the Club, Ami related the conversation. Aba raised a questioning eyebrow at Hasan across a plate of soggy french fries, and Hasan leaned forward to trace Aba’s scar with his index finger. ‘Your war wound,’ he said. ‘The one you got saving us from the bomb attack.’ Ami put down her glass of fresh lime with soda, and decided perhaps she was in the mood for a swim after all.

  ‘Saira!’ Aba said, ‘Don’t you think you should explain . . . given that you’re the one who caused the misunderstanding.’

  Ami looked at Aba the way she looked only at Aba and said, ‘I don’t really think it is a misunderstanding, Shehryar, and don’t you dare drink my fresh lime while I’m gone.’

  Aba looked around for diversion, but the only people in attendance were children swimming frantically around the pool yelling ‘Marco’ and ‘Polo’, teenagers in dark glasses surreptitiously lighting up cigarettes, women gossiping around canopied tab
les while slanting their bodies into the shade so that no sun darkened their skins, workmen cleaning the yellow brick façade of the Club’s residential building, and white-liveried bearers clustered around the stone bar explaining to an irate member of the Old Guard that their hearing aids were low on battery power.

  ‘Well,’ Aba said, raising Ami’s glass to his lips, ‘Here’s the story . . .

  ‘As you know, you were born just in time to witness the Bigger War. Now, there’ll come a time when the history books will try and convince you as to the real reasons for the outbreak of war. Just remember, the war had nothing to do with politics, economics or patriotism, and everything to do with the fact that the leaders of both sides were named after fruits, and had spent their whole lives trying to escape from that ignominy. Ignominy – deep personal humiliation, derived from the words ignorare and nomin. So, yes, they wanted to escape the ignominy of their names. Neither did, but nearly half a million people died in the war that was supposed to imbue the names Chikoo and Angur with terror.

  ‘Whatever the reasons, the City was subjected to a constant barrage of aerial bombing in the weeks just preceding the peace treaty. The jets flew so close to the ground that it was possible to see the razor-cuts on the pilots’ cheeks. Poor Begum Malik used to rush outside the house every time she heard the air-raid siren, in the hope of catching sight of her son who was an air-force pilot on the other side. There are those who say there was a look of joyful recognition on her face as she stared up at that jet, just before it dropped a bomb on her, but it’s hard to know if that’s the truth or just a good story . . .’ Something distracted Aba away from words, and Hasan followed Aba’s gaze to see Ami launch herself off the high diving board and spear her body into the water. She did not emerge immediately, but skimmed the bluetiled floor until she reached the shallow end. ‘Eel!’ Aba called across to her.

  ‘Aba . . .’ Hasan said.

  ‘Hang on, I’m getting there. Well, we were living in a rented house at the time. The green one, with the window-panes that kept rattling. In those days everyone slept in the most bombsafe places in the house, so your mother and I slept under the stairs, and you were in a cot in the corner of the drawing room that was furthest away from the windows. And one night it happened. An explosion, followed by glass shattering. I was too stunned to move for a second but your mother scrambled out from under the covers and ran to you.

  ‘It was dark, of course. Bombs aren’t kind on electricity wires, but in the moonlight she could see you lying in your cot, not a sound, not a whimper. Your blanket was covered with glass, but your face didn’t have so much as one shard of glass on it. She picked you up and walked back to me. I was looking for the box of matches that had been knocked off the table by the force of the explosion, and when I couldn’t find it I went to the dining room where I had left my lighter. I was still smoking then, had considered quitting, but war really does wonders for cigarette sales. So, anyway, I got the lighter, came back to the hallway and lit the candle.

  ‘We couldn’t believe it. There we’d been, wandering around in our bare feet, and the floor was just a sheet of glass. So much glass . . . it was as though we were living in a greenhouse and the glass walls had caved in. But here’s the thing, Huss. Not one scratch on our feet. Not one.

  ‘It was about three in the morning, so we decided the only sensible thing to do was to go to sleep. We went up to the bedroom, because the likelihood of another bomb falling on our street was unlikely – lightning doesn’t strike twice, and all that – and we were tired of cowering under the stairs. It was a bit of a shock to see that pieces of shrapnel had just torn through the bedroom walls, but at three in the morning you’re too tired to think much about such things. We lifted the blankets, shook the glass off them, and prepared to go to sleep. But then the mosquitoes started swarming in through the shattered windows, so we had to go to Salman and Gul’s place for the rest of the night. For the rest of the war, in fact, while the house was being patched up.

  ‘But during that night and during the days that followed, I was never frightened at the thought of what had happened. Not for a second. But then, about a week later, when the airraids seemed to have stopped altogether, Salman and I walked down to Farooq’s house for a game of bridge. We had only been playing for about half an hour when the air-raid sirens started up. My hands started shaking, I broke into a cold sweat. It was the first time I hadn’t been with you and your mother when the sirens sounded, and I jumped up, tried to run for the door though my knees were jelly, just thinking I had to get to the two of you. Salman grabbed hold of me, and somehow I fell and he fell and the bridge table fell and the glasses on the table fell. I looked down and saw a piece of glass sticking out of my palm. Then I fainted. So, that’s how I got the scar. No daring save-the-woman-and-child escapades in my life, I’m afraid.’

  At the time Hasan had been disappointed – almost offended, to tell the truth – and was only slightly mollified when Salman Mamoo later added that the glass shard almost went through to Aba’s metacarpal and the gush of blood made two bridge-players physically sick. But now, sitting in the car, looking at the scar, he imagined Aba running out on to the street, running towards his family, a perfect bull’s-eye for a fighter pilot who could fly low enough to show his razor-cuts. In Hasan’s mind the bomb dropped. Dropped on Aba, no, Salman Mamoo, no, Azeem. Hasan rested his head against the car window and envied the girl with the green flecks in her eyes; envied her ability to stand with her fist on her hip and look at him as if nothing in all the world mattered.

  Chapter Six

  ‘You can’t envy someone a thing like that!’

  ‘Why not?’ Hasan said.

  Zehra made a sound of exasperation, though whether at Hasan’s question or Ogle’s inability to respond to the command ‘Shake!’ it was hard to tell.

  ‘Because. When you’re my age you’ll understand these things better.’

  Hasan laughed, and rolled over on his back in the grass. ‘A whole twenty-five months! I can’t wait.’ The grey boundary wall around Zehra’s house didn’t seem as stunted as it had yesterday evening when Hasan returned from Salman Mamoo’s. Hasan closed his eyes and decided that if he could remain this way long enough for his eyelashes to grow and weave together, Zehra’s double-storied, sloping red roofed, multi-balconied house would transform into Salman Mamoo’s single-storied, arched-doorwayed, multi-verandahed one. Seconds drifted past. Suddenly the windblown whiffs of Uncle Latif’s prized chikoo trees dissolved in a concentration of pine smell. ‘It worked,’ Hasan cried out, his eyelashes springing apart. But the only thing different was Uncle Latif’s presence in the driveway, his thumb pumping an air-freshener spray. Hasan closed his eyes again and reached one hand up in the air.

  ‘Still trying to touch the sky?’ Zehra said.

  ‘Not really. It’s just habit now. Zehra, do you ever wish you could do something?’

  ‘ Well, there are some things I wish I could do. Like tap dance.’

  ‘No, I mean really do something. Like in books. Something heroic. Like knights.’

  ‘I’m a pacifist with breasts,’ Zehra said archly. ‘That counts me out of the Round Table.’

  ‘Zehra!’ Hasan turned red, and looked away from her.

  ‘But I think I would have felt the same way, though for different reasons.’

  Having a conversation with Zehra was like juggling oranges in the air, never knowing which would land in your palm, or whether they would still be oranges when they landed. Sometimes the oranges would take whole weeks to land, and Hasan would almost forget that they had been left hovering in the air until Zehra would break into a conversation about, say, angels, to comment, ‘It might be true for elephants, though.’

  Hasan looked back at her, and twirled his fingers in a silent question-mark.

  ‘The girl you saw on the road yesterday,’ Zehra said. ‘I would have envied her for being able to leave home and walk through the streets. You have to be male or poor to do tha
t.’

  Hasan smiled smugly. ‘Bet you wish you were a boy, huh?’

  ‘Are you mental! No more than I wish I was poor.’

  ‘God, I can’t imagine being a girl. I mean, all the things you can’t do. Stupid things. Like . . .’

  ‘. . . wandering around on the roof where everyone can see you.’

  Hasan hid his face in Ogle’s flank. He could feel Ogle’s heartbeat as he ran his fingers over the ridges of the puppy’s ribcage, the black fur ruffling against his fingertips: dhuDHUD . . . dhuDHUD . . . Like gunfire. Like the boy’s name.

  ‘Azeem,’ Zehra said. ‘You’re thinking about him.’

  The time it took him to fall from roof to ground seemed an eternity, longer and longer each time Hasan replayed it in his mind; so long it seemed that if Hasan had just tried, just jumped and run with arms outstretched he could have caught the boy before . . .

  ‘Whenever you talk about it, you talk about the time he was in the air, never about the moment when he actually . . .’

  ‘I don’t remember that part.’

  ‘Knobble-knees, this is me you’re talking to.’ Zehra’s voice was very gentle. Hasan almost preferred the moodiness and curtness he had come to expect of her these past few months.

  ‘I don’t remember that part,’ he insisted. ‘It’s as if I’m watching a movie, and I’m also in the movie, and I can see him falling in slow motion, and he falls and falls and I see the grass just beneath him, and then I look up and see the kite. I don’t even know if I ever saw him . . . you know . . .’

  So sometimes he believed it didn’t really happen; believed a pair of arms did catch Azeem, and that one day Azeem would walk up to him and say, ‘I did it. I flew.’

  ‘You never say the word.’

  ‘What word?’

  ‘The word you always replace with ‘you know’. And you always cut me off before I can say it, too.’