Kartography (14 page)

Of course Karim wasn't in disgrace at all, but he was hardly the kind of boy to sit around looking chipper while his two friends were awaiting punishment, so when his parents and Zia's parents were called and all of us made to sit in the upstairs study to await their arrival, he didn't gloat or look satisfied but bit his lip and looked as nervous as Zia and I did. It wasn't long afterwards that we heard Aba open and close the front door, and then open and close it again. There was some conversation that was too soft for us to hear, and then Uncle Ali's voice demanded, in a raised but unnaturally even tone, ‘For how long do we put up with this kind of thing?' I remember thinking that unfair. We'd never driven off at night in a stolen car and got shot at before.

Before anyone could answer Uncle Ali's question, Zia's father had barrelled into the study, where he picked Zia up by the collar and shook him wordlessly. Zia did nothing more than look down at the floor, but when I saw his father's face contorted in the manner of someone who's trying to remember how to cry I recalled that Zia's brother had been killed by a stray bullet when he was a toddler, back in the days when stray bullets made front-page news.

Zia turned red and extricated himself from his father's grip. ‘Let's go, Dad. It's late,' he said, and with a final apology to my parents Zia left, his father two paces behind him.

‘If they didn't spoil him so much,' said Ami, with a sigh. ‘Still, I understand the impulse.'

Zia never talked about the brother he never knew and the only time I tried to bring up the subject, he said: ‘Stray bullet. Funny expression. As though all that bullet needed was a good home and a bone to chew on.'

Karim went straight to his mother as she entered the room, and threw his arms around her, which seemed a little bit excessive considering he hadn't been anywhere near the bullets. Another one of his dramatic moments, I thought. I looked at my mother, and wondered if it would help to fling my arms around her. No, she'd see right through me. My father, on the other hand, would melt if I put my arms around his waist and started crying. How good it would be to put my arms around his waist and start crying. If my mother tried to speak strongly to me after that, he might just tell her I'd suffered enough. The question was: if Zia called me up next week and asked me to go for a drive late at night, just the two of us, would I say yes? Yes. And Ami knew it.

I squared my shoulder, ready to face what was to come, but my mother seemed determined to keep me in suspense, and continued some pointless conversation about the flaws in Zia's parents' child-rearing techniques. So I was almost grateful to Uncle Ali for saying, ‘Bloody stupid, Raheen. Zero out of ten for responsibility and honesty. And anyway, as Mercedes go, that one's not very appealing.' I started to smile at him, but stopped when he turned to Karim and said, ‘As for you, young man. Bribing police officers? Do you think that makes you a hero?'

‘I think it got Zia out of jail.' Karim crossed one ankle over his knee in an exaggerated posture of adulthood.

‘Shh, Karim, don't talk to your father like that.' Aunty Maheen sat down next to Karim and stroked his hair. He half-turned, rested his head on her shoulder, and linked his fingers through hers.

Uncle Ali switched the table lamp on and off and on again. ‘So if you want to be a good friend, you bribe a policeman. If you stand on ethics, you're a lousy human being.' He looked at my parents. This was clearly a continuation of some other conversation. ‘This is not about accepting grey areas any more; it's about a value system that's totally bankrupt.'

‘And your solution?' Ami said, her face illuminating and disappearing into shadows by turn as Uncle Ali continued to fidget with the light switch.

‘His solution is to leave,' Aba said. ‘Isn't that the most bankrupt choice, Ali? To turn your back on something you love because it's grown unmanageable?'

‘It's not as though you were never on the verge of doing the same,' Aunty Maheen said softly, still stroking Karim's hair.

What were they all talking about? For heaven's sake, I'd just been shot at.

Aba picked at something lodged beneath his fingernail. ‘That was completely different: '71 was madness.'

‘But perhaps it would have been best if you had left,' Uncle Ali said.

The reaction to that statement was baffling. Ami started plumping cushions into shape, muttering something about drycleaning; Aba leaned forward towards Uncle Ali and said, ‘Have you gone mad, mate?' and Aunty Maheen's hand on Karim's hair started shaking. ‘Oh, Ali,' she said. ‘Ali, of all the things...'

Uncle Ali put up both his hands in a defensive gesture. ‘I didn't mean it that way. God, Zaf, you know I wouldn't. Oh, for heaven's sake. You're all being ridiculous. I meant maybe we should all have left and...I mean, there is madness here now and it's getting worse, that's what I meant. I meant the country, I'm talking about the country, the government, the people. I don't mean...it wasn't personal.' I had never seen him so agitated. He stood up, sat down again, and resumed switching the lamp on and off. ‘I need a drink, Zafar.'

‘Sorry,' Aba said. ‘Had to give Bunty my entire supply of the hard stuff. His bootlegger's gone on Hajj, and he was worried about running short for his party.'

‘This is what I mean! What kind of country has this become?' Uncle Ali appeared unaware of my mother moving the lamp away from him. ‘Bootleggers! No one in a civilized country should use that word except in jest.'

‘Zia and Raheen get shot at and what's worrying him? The illegality of alcohol.' Aunty Maheen rolled her eyes. Precisely. ‘Listen, baba, Prohibition happened in the dark distant past, back when I could eat three chocolate eclairs and still look good in a bathing suit the next day, back when you were still...' She stopped and looked at Karim, who hadn't moved at all during this whole exchange. That sick feeling I had begun getting whenever Uncle Ali and Aunty Maheen started on at each other in this manner crept over me now. I wanted to announce that I could still hear the gunshots echoing in my ears. I wanted to lean against Uncle Ali's shoulder and cry so that Aunty Maheen would sit down right next to him in order to put an arm around me and tell me it was OK. I wanted to stop thinking, as I looked at them,
And what else? And what else?
I wanted most of all never to mention any of this to Karim.

Uncle Ali turned to my mother. ‘Poor Maheen. Stuck with a husband such as I. How long can any woman put up with such suffering? I think some of the Ghutnas are taking bets on that question. Do you think they'll let me place a wager?'

‘Karim, Raheen, green tea,' Ami instructed. ‘Oh, and call Sonia. I think we managed to make her panic about you.'

Glad to have a reason to leave the room, I accompanied Karim downstairs to the kitchen and called Sonia while he put the water on to boil.

‘Oh, thanks God,' Sonia's mother said, when she heard my voice. ‘Everything theek-thaak?'

‘Everything's fine.' She told me to hang on while she called Sonia, but even after she had gone and there was no one on the line I continued to speak—‘Yes...umm hmmm...I'm sorry to have caused you concern'—just so Karim would think I was sufficiently distracted not to see his shoulders shake with weeping as he stood with his back to me.

‘Who are you talking to and where were you guys?' Sonia shouted into the phone.

I ignored the first part of the question and answered the second, the words falling out of my mouth as though they were a recording. I was looking at Karim's shoulders and thinking how small they looked, how thin, and thinking that if he ever saw me crying he'd put his arms around me, and make me stop.

Sonia said, ‘So did you go back? To find the cat?'

If I stayed put and did nothing, he would stop on his own, out of embarrassment. But if I went to comfort him, perhaps he'd start talking, perhaps he'd tell me what I never asked and he never mentioned: what it was like to live with his parents when my parents weren't around to re-channel the conversation. I suppose I had known it for a long while, but that evening was the first occasion I really allowed myself to think that Karim lived in sadness some of the time. The thought was so painful to me that I had to let go of it, had to tell myself that being shot at was making me melodramatic.

‘No, idiot,' I said to Sonia, ducking my head so that I wouldn't have to look at Karim. ‘We didn't go back for the cat.'

‘Where did it happen exactly? I'll tell my father to drive me there. Poor cat could still be limping around.'

‘Your father's car is red, Sonia.'

Karim turned around at that, and tried to smile.
Come on, Karimazov.

‘You think we should just forget the cat?' Sonia's voice was uncertain.

‘Put it out of your mind like last term's vocabulary list.'
Yes, like that, smile.
‘Which of our parents called you?'

Sonia laughed. ‘All three sets. Ama got quite upset. Wanted to know if I minded that the three of you had gone on some joyride without inviting me round. Not that I'd have got permission on a school night.' She lowered her voice. ‘I know you just wanted to be alone with Zia, but you should be careful. You could get a bad reputation.'

‘Sonia, please. I'll see you in school, OK? ‘Bye.'

I hung up, relieved that Karim was looking like himself again. And sounding like himself, too, as he walked around the kitchen pulling out teacups and spoons, and muttering: ‘Is green tea popular in Greenland? When cannibals in Greenland tell their children to eat their greens are they referring to vegetable or meat? What do you call a cannibal who decides to become vegetarian?'

But when we returned upstairs, the atmosphere there hadn't improved at all.

‘Things really are going to hell here,' Uncle Ali said, adding eleven grains of sugar to his green tea. ‘How long can we just go on taking it? Don't you ever think of getting out, Zafar?'

Aba waved his hand dismissively. ‘I can't imagine growing old anywhere but here.'

‘Exactly,' Aunty Maheen said. ‘I mean, London is fine, but I'll never get used to umbrellas, not to mention the way they talk.'

‘The parrot-all parasol. Those talking umbrellas,' Karim whispered to me, but he was trying too hard.

‘Really, those accents over there!' Aunty Maheen went on. ‘Last time we were there, we had just stepped out of Heathrow and this man came up to us with a cigarette in his hand and said, “Cu ah geh a lye fro you, plaiz,” so I thought, “Oh, foreigner. Airport, after all,” but no, he was a local and he was asking if he could get a light from me, please. I thought, Henry Higgins, where are you now? But my point is, if we leave here I'll spend my whole time missing people in Karachi because there are so, so, many to miss that you can't just squeeze in all that missing during your morning cup of tea.'

‘If one of those bullets had been aimed just a few inches higher...'

‘Oh, shut up, Ali,' Ami said so sharply that I knew she'd been thinking the same thing. ‘I hate it when you do this sort of thing. Just drink your tea and think calming thoughts. Think of dry-cleaning.'

Karim and I had got up and walked out by now, and Uncle Ali and Aunty Maheen must have seen us close the door and assumed we'd walked immediately away, away and out of hearing, but we hadn't because the string of my garnet necklace broke and Karim and I went down on hands and knees outside the TV room to pick up the fallen stones.

‘Not this time, Yasmin,' Uncle Ali replied. ‘Look, I know you don't want to think about it, but you've got to. This little incident has made up my mind, I'll tell you that. We're migrating.' At Aunty Maheen's noise of disbelief, he added, ‘At least, I am. And I'm taking Karim with me.'

Karim's hand closed around a handful of garnets. My hand closed around Karim's wrist.

Aunty Maheen said, ‘Ali, when did you become this person?'

‘Stop it now, both of you,' Ami said.

But they didn't. ‘I've become my reflection, dear wife. I've become the man I've seen reflected in your eyes for so long.'

‘Ali, don't,' Aba pleaded. ‘It's been a tense evening; best not to speak. We'll only say things we regret.'

‘Regret is an emotion,' Aunty Maheen said. ‘It doesn't apply to him.'

I tried pulling Karim away, but he shook me off. ‘Karimazov, come on. Let's go to my room. You don't want to hear this.'

While I was speaking I drowned out whatever it was that my father said, but after Karim pushed me away again, the heel of his palm shoving my shoulder, we both heard Aunty Maheen's response. ‘Please, Zafar. Don't you, of all people, try to tell me that feelings can't change. How dare you be the one to say that to me.'

Sometimes you hear the voices of people whose every cadence you think you know by heart. By
heart.
But then sounds emerge from their throats, sounds that you want to believe cannot belong to them, but it's worse than that because you know that they do; you hear the sound and you know that this grating cacophony belongs to them as much as does the music in their voices when they call you by nicknames that should sound utterly silly but instead are transformed by affection into something to cherish. I heard Aunty Maheen turn on my father, and I knew that one day, not today perhaps, not even next year, but one day people more familiar to me than the smell of sea air would become strangers and I would become a stranger to them.

‘The kids are still outside,' Ami said, and Karim and I turned and ran into my room.

‘Now we'll listen to music and say nothing.' Karim headed straight for my stereo without waiting for a response. He popped in one of my parents' tapes and pressed play and the room filled with the morose sounds of ‘Seasons in the Sun'. Karim switched off the music and pulled a jigsaw puzzle out of my desk drawer. ‘Let's assemble.'