In the City by the Sea Page 8

  Hasan closed his eyes. A is for ACE, he thought. A is for the day Salman Mamoo first mentioned the name Anti-Corruption Enterprise, the day after he resigned his portfolio and addressed the crowds who met him at the City’s airport, his voice lowering just when everyone expected it to rise, lowering to an intimacy as he said, ‘Give your imaginations a little freedom again. There are few realities that can withstand collective belief. Let me tell you something I’ve often imagined of late . . . a political party called the Anti-Corruption Enterprise.’

  B is for Beach. Salman Mamoo’s favourite haunt, the one place that beat anything the North had to offer. It was Salman Mamoo who taught Hasan how to hypnotize himself by rocking back and forth on his heels on the wet sand, watching his toe imprints fill with water and disappear. And it was Salman Mamoo also who agreed it would be a travesty to squeeze into shoes for the car ride home just when one’s toes had spread so wide apart they could cover the length of a two-week old turtle’s shell.

  C is for Cricket . . .

  Hasan had made his way through the English alphabet and had progressed to zal in Urdu when a foot kicked open his door, and Zehra walked in bearing a plate of chicken tikkas in one hand, and a plate of na’an in the other. Ogle bounded in after her, and darted forward to grab Hasan’s socks in his mouth. As these were still on Hasan’s feet there was a momentary scuffle, from which both emerged triumphant. Ogle, with one sock dangling from his mouth; Hasan with one sock on his right foot. Zehra, sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, rolled her eyes. ‘Og! Drop!’ she commanded. The Labrador spat out the sock and lunged for Hasan’s right foot. Hasan jumped backwards and hit his head against the wall.

  ‘Ow!’ he growled, glaring at Ogle.

  The dog retreated to a corner, and contented himself with chewing on a slipper.

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into him today,’ Zehra said. ‘He’s never this frisky in the afternoon.’

  ‘Remember why you named him?’

  ‘Hmm . . . his connection to the Prez.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hasan said, taking a lemon-slice between his fingers and squeezing it with a vigour that far exceeded the lemon’s capacity to provide juice. ‘Well, I bet he’s frisky today.’

  Zehra didn’t say anything, but handed Hasan the hottest na’an, the one at the bottom of the stack. Hasan smiled. He had made the same gesture of consolation and sympathy towards Zehra when her mother died, years ago. Or so Zehra had once told him. For her that moment marked the beginning of their friendship, though Hasan couldn’t remember the gesture any more than he could remember a time when he and Zehra weren’t friends. Hasan shook his head. Zehra’s mother’s death had nothing to do with Salman Mamoo’s situation. Nothing.

  Hasan bounced the na’an from palm to palm, not allowing it to settle in one spot long enough to burn him. When it had cooled just a fraction, he ripped off a piece and bit into it, savouring, with closed eyes, its mixture of lightness, chewiness, and warmth.

  ‘You know, all the clichés about love are also true for food,’ Zehra observed, her pinched fingers holding a piece of na’an over the fleshiest part of the chicken breast. With a flick of her wrist she tore a piece of meat off the bone, and popped na’an and chicken into her mouth. Food is blind? Hasan considered this for a moment and decided – yes, true enough. All conversation stopped while Hasan and Zehra chewed on the chicken’s mix of charred exterior and succulent interior, bound together by Imran’s ‘mystical spices’. When they had devoured the meat, the room filled with the sound of paperthin ribs cracking between Hasan’s teeth, interspersed with the ring of tongue-smacking as Zehra sucked the spices off her fingers.

  ‘So, what have you heard?’ Hasan asked.

  Zehra squeezed lemon juice on her fingers to cut the grease and shrugged. ‘Not a lot. Just that Uncle Salman’s trial is on the nineteenth of next month. You didn’t know that?’

  Hasan shook his head. ‘I guess that’s what Ami wanted to tell me,’ he said. ‘Good. So he should be free before the summer holidays start.’ He avoided Zehra’s eye. There was silence again.

  ‘Why doesn’t Uncle Shehryar disconnect the phone?’ Zehra asked finally. ‘It keeps ringing every five minutes.’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess in case someone calls with news about how to help Salman Mamoo. I mean, Aba must know someone who can help.’

  Zehra toyed with her wishbone for a few seconds before blurting out, ‘Look, grown-ups can’t always fix things. I know. I mean, I didn’t always know and so I was angry with my father. And even now, sometimes, I want to yell at him because if it had been her liver or her kidneys that would have been one thing, but it just seems he should have known if something was wrong with her heart.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing,’ Hasan said. ‘Look, I should go and sit with my parents. I’ll come over later.’

  Hasan followed Zehra and Ogle out of the room, then turned towards his parents’ room with some reluctance. The phone rang the moment he entered the room. ‘My turn,’ Ami said. ‘Hello . . . oh, Farah Apa . . . No, just that the trial is next month. On the nineteenth.’

  Hasan turned to Aba. ‘So, any calls about Salman Mamoo?’

  Aba managed his lop-sided smile. ‘About fifty! But all just questions. Oh, except for one a few minutes ago. I answered, and this man on the other end identified himself as a party worker. I said, “I’m really not in a festive mood. Try calling the President,” and, of course, it turned out he meant . . .’

  ‘Political party.’

  ‘Hmmm. You probably should have answered the phone.’

  ‘Oh, Aba! Was he offended?’

  ‘I believe so. He said, “I mean POTPAF.” I said, “POTPAF yourself.” So he said, “Party Of The Present And Future. That is the Anti-Corruption Enterprise’s new name.”’

  ‘ACE has become POTPAF!’

  ‘I presume this was done without Salman’s approval. Anyway, once we had established that the caller wasn’t a waiter or a bartender he said he was calling all Salman’s supporters who weren’t DICOOC . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dead, In Coma, or Out Of Country. So, the party...’

  ‘POTPAF!’ Hasan laughed louder than he would have at any other time. At least Aba was trying to be normal.

  ‘Yes. POTPAF is arranging a protest rally this evening.’

  Hasan stopped laughing instantly. ‘Where?’

  ‘We’re not going.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Listen, Huss. These are dangerous days. Now more so than before. So for all our sakes you mustn’t talk to anyone about Salman or the President. Understood?’

  ‘I know that already, Aba. I never say anything, except to Zehra. But why can’t we go?’

  ‘I have a feeling this rally will be an opportunity for people in the party to stir up trouble, and we’ll only get hurt if we’re a part of it. God knows I admire the struggle, but there are certain prices I cannot pay to assist it.’ Hasan’s mouth tightened, and Aba added, ‘I would rather live under a dictator and have Salman safe at home, than achieve democracy through his imprisonment.’ Hasan had been looking above Aba’s head at Ami’s newest painting, watching for the moment when the strokes of greens and browns would transform themselves into suggestions of shapes, but now he snapped his attention back to Aba’s face; had it been his imagination or had Aba paused, almost fumbled, before the word ‘imprisonment’?

  Aba held up his hand. ‘I know. You think it’s cowardice, and it’s true that I’m placing my needs above the greater good, but if it is cowardice it’s based not on fear, but on love. Is any of this getting through to you? ‘

  ‘Yes,’ Hasan said shortly. ‘You wish Salman Mamoo would agree to give up politics and make a statement supporting military rule.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. He would hate himself, you know. Besides, it’s people like your Salman Mamoo who change the world. And son, it needs changing.’

  Hasan turned his attention to the newspaper
’s comic strips. Aba had always laughed at people who offered up morals and capsule philosophies; he said it revealed the quantity of bad television that people watched. ‘Roll credits,’ Hasan muttered, making sure Aba couldn’t decipher his words.

  Ami ended her phone conversation and turned to Aba. ‘That was Farah Apa. She wants to come over so of course I told her not to think of leaving her house with the situation as volatile as it is. But she’ll be over this way later, for her nephew’s – little Azeem’s – chehlum.’

  Forty days! Forty days since a yellow kite had offered Azeem flight, and his body had realized, too late, its limitations. Forty days, and tonight the period of mourning would be over.

  ‘. . . so I told her we would go with her.’

  ‘But, Saira, we barely know the boy’s parents.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But they’re practically our neighbours now and with all the riots there aren’t likely to be many people there. I’m sure they would appreciate it if we went. Besides I can’t just go on sitting by the phone all day.’

  ‘Well, you and Hasan go. I’ll sit by the phone. But right now I’m going to eat some of that chicken Latif sent over. Want some?’

  Ami shook her head. When Aba had gone she turned to Hasan and said, ‘What is it about Azeem that brings that look to your face?’

  ‘I told you. I saw him on his roof while he was flying his kite.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s all you saw?’

  ‘I told you, Ami. I saw him fly his kite and then I went inside. It’s weird, that’s all, to know that just a few minutes later he . . . you know.’

  Ami was looking at him with an expression she had last displayed when he had claimed a splitting headache just minutes before Zehra came to pick him up for Najam’s birthday party. Fortunately the phone rang again and Hasan left the room the moment Ami picked up the receiver.

  He found himself in Ami’s studio, looking at the calendar on the wall. He flipped to the previous month and counted one day at a time. Yes, it really had been forty days. He turned to the next page and placed his finger on the nineteenth. He snaked the finger backwards. One week, two weeks – page flip – three weeks, four weeks and one, two, three, four days plus today. The finger stopped. Another forty days until Salman Mamoo’s trial. Hasan rested his head against the calendar and wondered if life henceforth would be a journey from grief to grief.

  A mug of soapy water stood on a stool beside Hasan. He picked up a piece of wire, bent its end into a circle, dipped it into the water and blew out a stream of bubbles. Each bubble led into another, one ending so that another could begin, each a swirl of colours, brightest before it burst into nothing and left Hasan staring through a wire loop.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ami and Aba took it so much for granted that Hasan would go to the chehlum that he did not bother to argue. Just as well to let someone else make that decision for him; he felt personally incapable of deciding if he would rather stay at home or not. He showered, ironed his shalwar kameez, put a piece of scotch tape over the rip in his shalwar, and was ready, on-the-dot punctual, when Farah Khala’s car drew up to the gate. Hasan was curious about how he would react to the chehlum but he surprised himself by feeling nothing, except thirst, when he walked through Azeem’s gate. Ami and Farah Khala disappeared into the house with the other women mourners, and Farah Khala’s son, Ali Bhai, cousin to both Hasan and Azeem, guided Hasan further into the garden.

  ‘That’s Azeem’s father,’ Ali Bhai said, bending down, nearly doubled over, to speak into Hasan’s ear. He pointed in the direction of the bougainvillaea where a group of men stood shaking their heads and smiling the way people do when they are about to cry.

  ‘Which one?’ Hasan asked.

  ‘The one with the beard. Come on, I’ll introduce you,’ Ali Bhai said, taking Hasan’s hand.

  Hasan shook his head. ‘Too many people. You go. Introduce me later.’ Ali Bhai nodded, patted Hasan on the back and disappeared into the crowd. He’s put on weight since his wedding, Hasan thought. It was at Ali Bhai’s wedding that Hasan had met Azeem and, amidst the fairy-lights and flash-photography and swirls of silk, Azeem from the North, boy of hill-stations who sometimes awoke to find clouds creeping into his bedroom through the cracked open window, had confirmed what Hasan had always suspected. ‘ Of course people can fly,’ he said. ‘My elder cousin says she has, but she also says it’s something you must do in the secrecy of night.’ Was that it? Hasan wondered. Did daylight kill Azeem?

  Something shiny glinted in the bushes near the verandah. Hasan squatted on the grass and pulled the thing into view. It was a roller-skate. Hasan turned it around in his hands: yes, this was the same make of skate as the ones Ali Bhai had given Hasan for his birthday last year. The day he had ripped apart red shiny paper to reveal the skates Hasan had even tried sleeping with them on his feet, but that turned out to be a practice most enticing in the abstract. Still, his grief had been quite profound when a wheel snapped off the left skate. Hasan examined the skate in his hand more closely, spinning the wheels one by one and running them over his palm. This, too, was a left-footed skate. He put it down on the ground and lined it up with his foot. Same size.

  ‘Oh,’ he said out loud, only just realizing what he was doing. He picked up the skate with both hands and set it down amongst the bushes before walking quickly away. Halfway across the verandah he looked back. It’s not as though anyone else is going to use it now, he reasoned. Enough, he told himself. Enough!

  Hasan looked around. Glass sliding doors separated him from the drawing room where Ami sat cross-legged with the other women on a large white sheet. While Hasan watched she rocked forward, scooped up a fistful of kidney-beans from the pile running along the centre of the sheet, rocked back and let each bean fall from her fingers with a prayer. He could see her body relaxing in a trance of ritual, her lips moving in a steady rhythm, her thumb flicking each kidney-bean from her palm to her thumb and forefinger where it rotated for the duration of a whispered prayer before falling, falling . . .

  Hasan started and turned his eyes away. His gaze landed on the bright yellow flowers of the laburnum tree. He tilted his head back to look at the roof. This was the spot. Hasan stepped forward into the shade of the laburnum. He closed his eyes and saw Azeem frozen in descent, just to the right of the laburnum. He opened his eyes and the image of the falling boy shimmered before him, translucent and shot-through with rainbows. Hasan outstretched his arms. One step forwards and he would have him.

  ‘Hasan?’

  Hasan swung around. A man with the passing familiarity of a third cousin was looking at him.

  ‘Hasan, right? Saira’s son?’

  Hasan nodded.

  ‘You don’t remember me. I’m your cousin Ali’s brother-in-law, Taimur.’ Hasan feigned recognition. The man went on. ‘I just wanted to say I’m praying for your Uncle Salman. Everyone is.’

  ‘You’re Salman Haq’s nephew?’ a second man said. ‘No joke! Really?’

  Hasan turned around. Azeem’s image was gone. Everywhere he heard ‘Salman . . . Salman’; men waiting around for the sound of the azaan so that they could pray for Azeem were gathering around him asking, ‘Any news from your uncle? Is it true your family’s planning to leave the country? When did you hear?’ and then one squeaky voice: ‘Who’s going to represent Salman at the trial?’

  The azaan cut through all talk. The men ambled towards the far end of the garden where, between wooden poles holding up a paisleyed canopy, four overlapping white sheets weighed down by stones served as a giant prayer-mat. But Hasan stayed where he was, one hand clapped to the top of his skull. Of course, he thought. Of course! Aba will represent Salman Mamoo and there’s no way he won’t win. After all, Aba’s the best lawyer in the City and Salman Mamoo’s innocent to boot.

  To boot, to boot, to boot, Hasan sang to himself, skipping towards the prayer area. Halfway there he remembered propriety and slowed to a shuffle. The cluster of men bustling across the white sh
eets resolved itself into rows and columns, and a cloth-capped man detached himself from the main body and prepared to lead the prayers. Hasan weighed the impropriety of running at a funeral against the impropriety of arriving late for prayer, and sprinted the last few steps to an empty spot beside Ali Bhai.

  As one the assembled men placed hands parallel to heads, thumbs touching shoulders, placed hands one on top of the other against chests, bent, knelt, prostrated themselves, lips moving in Arabic. One by one, then in twos and threes they closed their eyes. Hasan recalled the calm of alphabetizing books.

  While he was kneeling he felt a touch against his cheeks. He opened his eyes and something winged glided past. Dusk-fairy. Hasan was about to lower his lids when he became aware of Ali Bhai winking at him. That certainly seemed inappropriate. Hasan, lips still moving, turned his head and saw that Ali Bhai was actually pretending his eyes were closed while really keeping one eye slightly open and fixed on Azeem’s father who was kneeling in front of him.

  Hasan had to stifle a laugh. A brief flirtation with atheism had cost Ali Bhai the ability to recall the rituals to prayer, and no matter how often his younger cousins reminded him when to stand, when to kneel, when to bow, he always misplaced the information just when he needed to put it to use.