Kartography (27 page)

‘How will I tell my fiancé?' she said to Karim above the sound of Zia and me blowing our noses. ‘How will I tell Adel?'

Afterwards, I was to search my memory for any recollection of Zia's reaction to that, but I can only remember him seeing me look around for somewhere to throw the tissue and pointing to a flowerbed.

In the car, on the way to Sonia's we stopped at a traffic light where a man selling motia bracelets rapped on Zia's window and said, ‘For pretty ladies.' Zia had only enough change for one bracelet, which he offered to Sonia, but she said the smell of the flowers was too cloying, though she appreciated the gesture. I slipped on the bracelet and felt the little white buds cool against my wrist. I can't recall if we drove to Sonia's house in silence, which must mean we didn't, but I know our conversation didn't touch on her father's situation or allude to the ordeal she had undergone. Round the corner from Sonia's house, another motiawallah approached our car at a traffic light and held up a row of bracelets.

Zia rolled down his window. ‘No money. Besides, we've already bought. Raheen, show him.'

I held up my wrist.

The motiawallah turned to Sonia. ‘And yours?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't have one.'

The motiawallah's eyes widened. ‘You must take this from me,' he said, slipping a bracelet off the wooden stick on which his wares were arrayed. ‘No, you must. I am your brother; as a brother I'm giving this to you. See, I have three sisters myself. I understand these matters.' Here he gave Zia and Karim a look of disgust. ‘Please, I won't sleep tonight if you don't.'

‘That's so typical,' Sonia said, as Zia drove on. She had put the bracelet on and was leaning her cheek on her wrist, elbow propped on the window ledge, her nose almost buried in that cloying scent. ‘It's so typical of our people. That generosity to strangers. I'm going to cry.'

She cried all the way to her house, tears mixing with flowers, the rest of us unsure what to do since she was in the front seat, which made it hard for Karim or me to put our arms around her. Zia signalled me frantically in the rear-view mirror. Should he pull over? And then what? Exchange positions with me so I could hug Sonia? Should he drive faster to get her quickly home, or slower to delay the inevitable knowledge that would greet her once she got there? I didn't know. How should I know?

‘Just drive,' Karim mouthed to Zia. So Zia drove and Sonia cried and I felt utterly ineffectual. But, more than that, I felt guilty, because I couldn't stop thinking of how close Karim held Sonia at the airport and how beautiful she looked, even in pain, and now his hands were resting on her shoulders, and when she reached up to rest her hand on his I almost couldn't breathe for jealousy. So I was glad when we finally approached the road to Sonia's house; but when Zia turned the corner all four of us in the car were simply baffled—Sonia for reasons separate to ours—to see Sonia's father getting into a police car. Before we could react, the car drove away. No fuss, no fanfare.

 

 

 

 

. . .

 

If we had more reliable systems of law and governance, perhaps our friendships would be shallower. But with no one to rely on except one another, Karachiites come together in times of crises with attitudes which suggest that no matter what else we are in our lives—bankers, teachers, hypochondriacs, cynics, Marxists, feudals, vegetarians, divorcees, bigamists, anorexics, dyslexics, sexists—our real vocation is friendship.

So by the time Sonia's father was released by the first set of armed men, Sonia's house was already filling up with people dropping by to see how everyone was and what they could do to help. And shortly after the second set took him away in the police car, all chairs, sofas and floor cushions were in use, and a dozen different conversations were being conducted on mobile phones by people calling ‘useful contacts' to try to find out what was going on. All anyone knew was that the first round of men had started questioning Sonia's father about his business affairs, when they were interrupted by a phone call, which involved a lot of ‘yessirs' on the part of one of the interrogators, followed by a stream of curses when he hung up. Clearly, everyone surmised, two different agencies were after Sonia's father, and the first had been instructed by someone in a position of high authority to release their captive so that the other agency could deal with him.

I looked over at Sonia. She was sitting on the sofa in the downstairs study, our friend Nadia sitting to one side of her, clasping her hand, and Karim perched on the sofa arm on the other side of her, his hand on her shoulder. The room was filled with the hum of our friends talking, keeping the conversation light when Sonia seemed to need that, and discussing all the cases of people wrongfully arrested and soon released, when it seemed that would do her more good. Zia hovered in the doorway, trying to get in touch with his father, but every time he managed to get through to the Club—a difficult feat just days before the Winter Ball—and asked for the call to be transferred to his father he was put through to the bakery instead.

‘God, Karim's looking gorgeous,' one of my friends whispered to me.

‘Normally, we'd flip a coin and one of us would grab him,' her twin sister said. ‘But you've got right of first refusal.'

‘This is hardly the time,' I hissed back, and they exchanged meaningful looks and subsided.

I saw the front door open and more of Sohail's friends walked in, followed by one of Sonia's mother's cronies. That's when it struck me: none of Sonia's father's friends were here. In households like mine, and Nadia's and the twins' and—to some extent—Zia's, and—once upon a time—Karim's, there were no set boundaries between our mothers' friends and our fathers' friends. But Sonia's parents lived entirely separate lives, with Sonia and Sohail serving as the only links between them. So where now were Bunty and his cohorts, who for years had been spending their Friday nights drinking Sonia's father's whisky out of Sonia's father's glasses in Sonia's father's living room? I could picture them now, sitting back in their exaggeratedly regal postures, taking bets on whether he'd go to prison or not. And if he didn't, if he made it through this, they'd say
,yaar, of course we weren't at your house that day, mate; we were running all over town trying to find out what had happened to you. Pass the Black Label.
Well, that's what you get for trying to ingratiate yourself with high society on the sole basis of money so new the ink on it is barely dry.

I sunk my face into my hands. Why did I have to think this way? My palms smelt like steel. I didn't know why. There I'd been searching for specific reasons why Karim was so angry with me, and maybe it was just this: because he knew me. Maybe that was reason enough for disgust.

‘Raheen?'

I looked up at Sonia. ‘Are you OK?' she said.

Images flashed through my mind. Sonia watching her father accused of drug smuggling in court; Sonia hearing the verdict of ‘guilty'; Sonia visiting her father in prison; Sonia sifting through the evidence and discovering it's all true; Sonia trying to find a way to still be herself, still be compassionate, forgiving, generous, when looking her father in the eye, knowing the truth of who he is. Then I saw Karim's hand, still resting on her shoulder, and I knew he would stand by her every moment she needed him. I thought,
Please, let the charges he dropped,
and I didn't know if I wanted it for Sonia's sake or for my own.

I lifted myself off the floor cushion. ‘I'm fine. I just need some water.' I edged towards the door. Karim pointed at the jug of water and glasses on the trolley next to him, but I pretended to look distracted and turned away.

‘Why would anyone do this to my father?' Sonia said.

I hoped it was a general question, and not one addressed to me. I didn't wait to find out, or turn around to see if she was looking at me. I just squeezed past Zia, who was yelling down the phone: ‘No, I'm not calling about the quiche,' and went out of the front door, round to the back garden.

Zia came after me. ‘So where's this wonderful fiancé of hers? Why hasn't he called? All of Karachi knows by now. Someone's bound to have got hold of him in London and told him. And why hasn't she called him?'

‘Go and ask her,' I snapped.

‘Oh, one of those moods,' he muttered, and stalked back to the house. Then he turned and strode back. ‘What happened with you and Karim in Mehmoodabad when I went to get my sweater?'

‘I wish I knew. I just seem to have this knack for saying the wrong things sometimes.'

‘If there were prizes awarded for it, you'd win gold, baby.' He pulled an orange-gold flower out of a flowerpot and handed it to me.

I tucked the flower behind my ear. ‘I can understand Sonia's friendship with me lasting through the years. She's a saint. But how the hell have I managed to keep you from slamming the door on your way out?'

‘Well, to start with, we never actually have serious conversations about anything for more than twenty seconds. So there's a sort of beautiful superficiality to our relationship which sometimes gets covered up by all the genuine affection flowing back and forth.'

‘That must be it.' I kicked his ankle. ‘So if I actually ever bared my soul to you, it would all be over.'

‘Could be. I know I would never subject you to my bare soul. You, I don't know. I mean, whether I want to take a joyride in a stolen car, or drive two hundred miles across America to find the perfect milkshake, you're the girl I call, and you don't even hold it against me when someone shoots at you or the milkshake machine is broken. But here's the thing: even in your finest moments you always seems so suspicious of yourself.' He looked at his watch. ‘Twenty seconds up. End of discussion. I have to try to get hold of my father again.'

I didn't follow him in, but walked over to the crescent-shaped fish pond, and sat cross-legged on the grass beside it, watching for streaks of gold to fin past between the green pond vegetation. A crow dropped a twig in my lap, and I dipped it beneath the surface of the water and watched the ripples.

A Karim-shaped shadow cast itself over the surface of the water. ‘Whatever your problems are at this moment, they're totally insignificant compared with Sonia's, so stop being so bloody selfish and get back inside and at least pretend to be a goddamn friend.'

A fish darted past, a streamlined streak through my reflection. ‘I don't know how,' I said.

Karim dropped to his knees beside me. ‘Rubbish.' But his tone was gentler now.

‘I'm so sure her father's guilty, Karimazov. And she's going to know it. I'm such a damned awful liar.' I shook my head, and swooped my hand down to within millimetres of the water in a bird-of-prey imitation, terrifying the fish into zipping madly about. ‘You know, everyone keeps going on about my wonderful trait of honesty. But it's only because I know I can't get away with lying. I squint, or I shift, or I scratch my nose, or I concentrate so much effort on not doing any of those things that I become a statue. It's pretty pathetic, really.'

‘That is pathetic. And who says your honesty is wonderful? It can be brutal. And will you stop trying to give the fish a heart attack.' He slapped away my hand, which was still making diving motions towards the water. ‘Maybe you need practice, that's all. Say something to me that's a blatant lie. Go on.'

‘I haven't missed you at all.'

‘Ah, but that's no good.' He crossed his legs, and we sat kneecap to kneecap. ‘I would have to believe that's a lie, no matter how much conviction you put into saying it.'

‘Why's that?'

‘Because I've missed you too much to be able to bear the thought that it was all one-sided.' He linked his fingers through mine and we bounced our clasped hands from one knee to the other. We seemed to be encased in such a fragile moment of perfection that I hardly dared breathe for fear of destroying it.

‘Something you want to ask me?' he said.

‘When did it stop being awful, your parents' divorce?'

Never letting go of my hand, he pivoted round on his backside and lay down in the grass, resting his head on my knee. ‘Never.' He held my hand against his chest, and I could feel his heart beat. ‘But you kept telling me I needed to allow my mother to be happy.'

‘When did I say that?'

‘In my head, always. And you were right.'

I ran my fingers along his scalp, tracing the contours of his head beneath the soft, cropped hair. ‘I think there's a better me inside your head than there is out here in the world. Is that why I make you so angry, Karim? Because I fail to live up to the person you thought I'd turn out to be?'

In those moments just before he answered I wondered how things might have been different had Karim never left. Perhaps we would have grown apart, the secrets between us multiplying as adolescence took over our bodies and our lives, his parents' marital woes placing a strain on their friendship with my parents, no one sure where loyalties should lie. But instead he left, and that allowed both of us to remember—or re-imagine—our friendship as something mythic, something fated, something waiting to be renewed and transfigured into a more adult version of itself.