In the City by the Sea Read online

  Azeem’s father bent forward and touched his forehead to the sheet. In his haste not to be left behind Ali Bhai jerked his torso downward with greater velocity than necessary and his forehead bounced off the ground. He stifled a moan. Hasan sucked in his cheeks and bit down on them before he recalled he was not merely an observer in this scene and closed the distance between his head and the sheet.

  This forehead-to-the-ground posture posed immediate problems for Hasan’s enjoyment of Ali Bhai’s predicament. His eyes could not see anything but white sheet with occasional blades of grass poking through. But no doubt Ali Bhai faced the same dilemma. Hasan turned his head sideways so that his left eye could see Ali Bhai and, at that moment, Ali Bhai turned his head sideways and his right eye looked straight at Hasan. There was a movement of bodies all around. Ali Bhai sprang to his feet, and Hasan followed suit without thinking. Everyone else was kneeling. Ali Bhai and Hasan crashed down on their knees. Now a number of eyes were open and distracted from God. The ultimate upstage, Hasan thought, and hoped his shoulders weren’t shaking as much as were Ali Bhai’s. Through all the confusion Hasan had continued reciting prayers in his head. He couldn’t quite decide if that was extreme piety or ultimate irreverence.

  The prayer reached its conclusion and the men cupped their hands inches away from their faces to offer up individual blessings for Azeem’s soul. Hasan held his hands right against his face in an attempt to smooth his mouth into a straight line. He peeked between thumb and forefinger at Ali Bhai. Ali Bhai’s face was very still and his eyes were closed like traps. From the house next door came the sound of laughter. Without warning, Hasan felt himself flush with rage. He wanted to leap over the wall and physically knock down whoever was laughing. Wanted to cry out, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead. How dare you laugh today!’ Hasan bowed his head. ‘Please,’ he whispered, his voice splintering in the hollow of his palm. ‘Please, oh please. Please. I’ll do anything, just . . . please.’ His body rocked back and forth and back and forth until the whole world was rocking and he no longer knew what he was saying or why or to whom or how to stop or what else he could ever do in his life but this. ‘Please, please.’

  ‘Hasan.’ Ami drew his hands away from his face and held them tightly in her own. Hasan blinked and looked around. He was the only one left under the canopy. The garden lights had been switched on, and brass dishes piled high with steaming biryani formed a dissecting line along the length of yet another white sheet. Azeem’s father stood up from his cross-legged position at the edge of the sheet and walked towards Hasan with a plate of biryani in his hand.

  ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘Sometimes what we think is grief turns out to be hunger. That’s why the famine-stricken always look so unhappy.’

  Hasan wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this so he merely took the plate, trying to look sombre and grateful and edified in the same moment. Ami led him indoors to eat with the women. ‘Aren’t I too old to be allowed in here,’ Hasan said, slipping off his shoes outside the drawing room and scanning the room for two empty spots where he and Ami could squeeze in as unobtrusively as possible.

  Ami smiled, and pretended not to. ‘Of course you are. But nobody will mind.’

  More white sheets lay wall to wall in the room. Hasan wondered if the sheets had been bought for the occasion, or just borrowed. Perhaps Azeem’s family had a thing for white sheets. Hasan had only once been to a chehlum before, but he couldn’t recall who had died, let alone the quantity and colours of sheets laid down. Hasan picked at his plate and swallowed grains of rice, one by one. Of course, there had been Nana’s chehlum as well, but all Hasan could recall of the events surrounding his grandfather’s death was Ami putting an arm around Salman Mamoo’s neck and saying, ‘So, we’re orphans now.’ Oh, and undoubtedly there had been a chehlum for Zehra’s mother. Hasan picked apart a piece of chicken into thin strips. All these deaths, he thought. For a moment he looked at the piece of chicken and considered vegetarianism, but his stomach sent urgent override messages to his brain, and Hasan bowed his head in gratitude and shovelled biryani into his mouth.

  ‘They say the quality of food at a chehlum reflects the quality of the deceased person’s life,’ said a corpulent woman near Hasan. ‘And I have to say, though I’m full I can’t stop eating.’

  ‘Azeem was too pure for this world,’ another woman said.

  ‘So delightful, God could not be apart from him any longer.’

  When Farah Khala dropped Ami and Hasan home, Hasan asked, ‘Is Salman Mamoo pure?’

  Ami bit her lip. ‘No, he isn’t.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘No. Salman’s going to be tried in a military court. No civilians allowed, not even civilian lawyers.’ Aba held the ice-tray under the hot-water tap and twisted his wrists this way and that until there was a crackle of dislodging ice. Visitors had been dropping in all evening and all night, and Atif-Asif-Arif’s fingers had turned to prunes with the endless washing of tea-cups. There had been three cars parked outside the house when Ami and Hasan returned from the chehlum and by nine-thirty the row of cars had extended all the way down to the pink house, prompting passers-by to tell the Bodyguard that it was absolutely disgraceful the way the élite behave . . . throwing a party on a day of national calamity.

  Gul Mumani and Ami shook their heads at each visitor saying, ‘You shouldn’t have left the house. Things are so dangerous,’ but everyone claimed to know a safe route home. Still, Hasan noticed that cars arrived and left in tandem, and none of the visitors lived beyond a five-mile radius from Hasan’s house. At first Hasan had wanted the visitors to leave; their gloomy expressions, hugs of commiseration and incessant patting of Gul Mumani’s hands seemed a particularly perverse form of torture. But then Auntie Chinnoo got the hiccups, prompting everyone to proffer tried-and-tested remedies, and oh! the horror on Uncle Aslam’s face when he entered the room and saw his wife kick off her shoes, rise up on her toes, hold her breath and circle her arms, clockwise, through the air. With that, everything changed. Aba and Uncle Javed threw themselves into a rematch of their college thumb-wrestling contest; Auntie Naz attempted to perform card trick upon card trick, each more hilariously unsuccessful than the last, until Ami picked a card and Auntie Naz grabbed it out of her hand, glanced at it, shoved it back in the deck and said, ‘There! It’s the six of clubs.’ Ami, nearly incoherent with laughter, said, ‘Nine of clubs, actually’; Gul Mumani remembered her teenaged efforts to impress the French boy who sat beside her in class by passing him a note consisting of the only French she knew: voulez vous. Spelling was never Gul Mumani’s strong suit, and the boy looked down at ‘Woo Lay Woo’ and sent back the scrawled message: ‘Chinese porno film?’; and, just when the glum-faced arrival of Uncle Poppy and Auntie Poops threatened to destroy all levity in the room, Uncle Latif donned white pyjamas, black shirt and white jacket, and swivelled his hips into the TV room, singing ‘Night Fever’ in falsetto.

  And through it all Hasan had hugged his knees to his chest and laughed louder than anyone else, thinking ‘Aba’s going to save Salman Mamoo’. But now, with a single utterance –‘No’ – Aba had ruined everything.

  ‘What good are you?’ Hasan burst out. The words quivered in the air for the briefest of moments, and Hasan wanted to reach out and stuff them back in his mouth even if they choked him. Even as he thought that, he knew he couldn’t say it out loud because some part of him wanted Aba to believe he meant the accusation.

  Aba pressed the tips of his fingers against the top of an icecube and watched the cube turn into water with the pressure. ‘Not much good,’ he said. ‘You know, I’ve always maintained that ninety per cent of all action should take place here –’ he tapped what remained of the ice-cube against his skull. ‘And if I work hard enough at the ninety per cent I can make the remaining ten per cent palatable . . . I mean, the mind, Hasan, the mind. Its sheer capacity!’ Hasan looked back blankly, but Aba was in what Ami ca
lled ‘the Throes’. Hasan could see the last of the visitors leave, but Aba made no attempt to go and see them off though he could not have missed the high-pitched goodbyes of Auntie Shehla. Perhaps Aba noticed Hasan’s incomprehension, because he made backflipping motions with his hands. ‘Let me put this differently,’ Aba said.

  He leaned against the counter, seemingly oblivious to the cubes of ice melting and soaking his sleeve. ‘For Salman, time is pendular.’ He pulled a piece of string out of the kitchen drawer, shook some salt on to a piece of ice, and held one end of the string against the salty surface of the ice. For a couple of seconds he just stood there, holding up a finger for silence and then he raised the hand holding the string. The ice rose off the counter, attached to the salted string. Hasan’s eyes opened wide. Aba flicked a finger against the ice. String and ice started swaying back and forth. ‘For Salman, time is pendular,’ Aba repeated, pointing to the ice. ‘That’s why he’s such a nostalgist, always talking about his uncle’s glorious governance. See, to Salman, nostalgia is hope; to me, it’s usually loss. Linear time, that’s my view.’ Aba flicked the ice again with more power, and the ice flew across the room to smash against the fridge, leaving Aba holding a dangling string.

  Hasan felt as though he had heard this – or something like it – before, but he couldn’t see what it had to do with Aba’s inability to represent Salman Mamoo. ‘Okay, I’m building up to something resembling a point,’ Aba said, absent-mindedly rolling up his sleeve and chucking the remaining blobs of ice into the ice-bucket. ‘Given Salman’s situation, my belief in linear time gives me hope.’ The Throes again. ‘Situations don’t necessarily have to keep recurring. It’s just that people generally have such limited imaginations that originality seldom occurs. But that doesn’t have to be the case. So what if there are no historical precedents for a completely happy ending? So what if the happiest ending that comes to mind is one which requires erstwhile good-guys to use the tools of a tyrant? So what? We can play with ideas until we think of a new precedent and then . . . apply it.’

  ‘Aba,’ Hasan sighed. ‘I’m eleven years old.’

  ‘A valid observation. Basically I’m saying, don’t give up.’

  Hasan thumbs-upped his approval of this sentiment. Yet another visitor walked up to the front door. Aba peered out and his eyebrows shot up. ‘Huss, can you sit out of this visit.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘I’ll explain later,’ Aba said and almost ran out of the kitchen. Hasan tried to decipher the expression that had lit up Aba’s face, and decided it was hope. Something linear must have happened, he told himself.

  He retrieved Yorker from his bedroom and wandered outside to sit with the Bodyguard, seven in number this evening. Zehra was on her knees just outside the Bodyguard’s circle, braiding the greying hair of Razia Bibi, smoker of imported cigarettes.

  ‘No school tomorrow, I suppose,’ Hasan said to Zehra.

  Zehra frowned at him. ‘Don’t be rude. Speak Urdu. Although –’ she glanced around, grinning, and switched to English herself, ‘I bet they all understand English, right?’

  Khalida-the-Heartbreaker laughed. ‘No school. More strike,’ she said in English.

  There were whistles and applause all around, but the loudest and deepest roar of approval was missing. ‘Where’s Khan?’ Hasan asked. Khan was the one constant in the ever-shifting composition of the Bodyguard. He was also the only member of the Bodyguard to whom the Widow ever spoke, though he only acquired that distinction last year when Uncle Latif hired him to replace the family’s narcoleptic driver. ‘Where is he?’ Hasan said, surprising himself with the brittleness of his voice.

  It transpired Khan’s brother-in-law was missing. He had not returned home to Khan’s sister the night before and this morning rumour arrived that two plain-clothes policemen had picked him up just near the tea-stand at which he often stopped on his way home from work. Khan had gone to make inquiries at the central police station.

  ‘It is a stupid thing to do,’ said Khalida. ‘With all the riots and killing, and now curfew clamped in thirteen different districts, I don’t know how he even expects to reach the police station.’

  Mansoor-with-the-long-thumbnail saw an opportunity to discredit his chief rival for Khalida’s affection, and hastened to jump into the conversation. ‘Well, he’s either hiding down the road, hoping you’re impressed with his bravery in the face of death, or he’s emptied his brain of common sense and, since no buses are running today, is walking ten miles to the police station. Whatever the case, he’s either a liar or a fool.’

  Razia Bibi clucked her tongue in disdain. ‘Khan’s no liar, and as for being a fool . . . if a man isn’t a fool where his family is concerned, I have no respect for him.’

  There were murmurs of agreement, and Khalida said, ‘Well, we will all pray for his return. Even if it means staying awake all night in supplication. Will you join us, Hasan?’

  ‘Ask the Widow that,’ Hasan laughed. ‘Can you imagine anyone asking her to skip her sleep for one night. Even in order to pray.’

  ‘Oh, she doesn’t need to pray,’ said a voice behind Hasan. ‘ Why, every moment of all our lives is a prayer for her well-being in this life and the next, so even if she were to give in to debauchery for the rest of her life, when she dies our combined prayers will wrap around her like a shroud and carry her along the path to heaven which only prayers know of.’

  ‘From philosopher to poet,’ Khalida smiled up at Khan, causing Mansoor to scowl. ‘What news of your brother?’

  Khan sat down, angling his body carefully as though his back were made of cardboard that would crease if bent. ‘ Nothing good. For most of the day my shoes just collected dust, going this way and that, taking roundabout routes to avoid the curfew areas. The streets were more silent than sleep – shells of torched buses everywhere. At last I came near the central station, but it was surrounded by curfew areas. So I stood outside the curfew zone, counting the hairs in my beard until the curfew lifted for an hour.’ He stopped and ran a finger along a crack in his sole. Mansoor rolled his eyes at the drama of the telling, but even he edged closer when Khan started again in a whisper.

  But now Hasan was no longer listening to Khan because he was walking with Khan through the curfew zone, watching men – ACEmen, some barely older than Hasan – form human shields around the groups of women who strode, stone-eyed, to the market to buy up all the provisions in stock from shopkeepers who – by and large, by and large – made no fuss about buying on credit. Uniformed men crouched behind sandbags with fingers on triggers and did not so much as turn their heads when two tanks rolled up. Khan kept his head down and looked innocuous enough to pass unmolested through the makeshift checkpoints which had sprung up at every turning with an efficiency that was chillingly unfamiliar to the City.

  But at the police station the gates were locked, though men and women with sweat stains shaped like continents on their clothes stuck hands and faces through the grilles of the gate and cried, ‘My son . . . my husband . . .’ And one anguished cry, ‘Oh God, my daughter.’ Khan saw it was useless and started to walk away when a young man – well-dressed, booted and suited – touched Khan’s arm and said, ‘I know where you can get news of your brother-in-law.’

  ‘But Khan, how did he know who you were looking for?’ Zehra asked.

  ‘Zehra, when you haven’t eaten meat for a week and someone offers you a bowl of piya you don’t stop to ask him where he got the goats for it,’ Khan said. ‘Even if you know it’ll give you indigestion.’

  ‘So then?’ Mansoor demanded.

  ‘Well, he said to go to the newspaper office. Told me there were lists there of people killed resisting arrest or attempting to defy state authority. So I started walking again, but Akhtar saw me with my broken sole and said his bike would get him to the newspaper office and back here in quick-time. He should be here soon.’

  ‘But what would the police want with your brother-in-law?’ Hasan said.

  Khan rubbed blades of g
rass together and made the patch of lawn sing squeaky laments. ‘He’s an ardent supporter of your uncle.’

  ‘So are most people I know,’ Hasan said.

  ‘Yes,’ Khan acknowledged. ‘In their hearts and in their drawing rooms. Besides, wealth changes things.’ Hasan looked down, and fingered the cuff of his jeans.

  ‘Here comes Akhtar,’ Razia Bibi said.

  Akhtar sprung off his bike and rushed to Khan with a list, not even pausing to pull down the wheel-rest. The bike crashed down on Uncle Latif’s sloping driveway, wheels spinning frantically. Khan took the list and handed it to Zehra. ‘It’s in English,’ he said.

  Zehra slid a finger down the page, her lips moving silently. A few inches from the bottom of the column of print, her finger stopped.

  ‘I’m sorry, Khan,’ she said.

  ‘Where is it? Which is his name?’

  Zehra’s finger underlined the words ‘Gohar, son of Asghar’. Hasan was amazed she knew which name to look for. Khan prised open the blade on his pocket-knife and cut out his brother-in-law’s name from the page. ‘I’ll give this to my sister,’ he said. ‘At least it’s something.’ He traced the letters, right to left. ‘He could read English, you know.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hasan. His cheeks were burning, and he felt as though he should feel guilty about something. ‘I have to go,’ he mumbled, standing up. He wanted to hug Khan, but that would mean walking halfway around the circle and drawing attention to himself.

  Once inside, Hasan made his way into his bedroom. He had just shut the door behind him when the door to the TV room opened. A foreign-accented female voice emerged.

  ‘Believe me, I’m sorry about this. For the record, though of course, off the record, I admire Salman –’ she pronounced it as if it were ‘sall-mun’ – ‘and even consider him a friend. But my hands are tied. Coming to see you is as far as I can go in contravening my government’s directives.’