Salt and Saffron (22 page)

Mariam Apa enacted dialling a phone number.

Yes, it had been a while since the news that my family was going out for the evening hadn't prompted me to pick up the phone and call Sameer or one of my school friends to make dinner plans. But I didn't appreciate Mariam pointing that out to me.

Four years later I allowed myself to consider the possibility that I was entirely peripheral to that night's story. Let's suppose – as suppositions go this is none too farfetched – that Masood heard of his father's death that night, and not the morning after. Evidence? He burnt the
naans.
Masood never burnt anything. So let's suppose he heard of his father's death – it was the night of a dinner, everyone was congregated in the drawing room, out of earshot of the phone – everyone except for Masood. So the phone in the kitchen rang, and Masood answered, and minutes later Mariam walked into the kitchen. I'm not making this last part up. She was in the kitchen, I know,
because she's the one who told me the
naans
were burnt. I was walking to my room, was in between the drawing room and my room, when Mariam came out of the kitchen. If only I could remember, but I can't, if something prompted me to ask, ‘What's wrong?' or if she just held out a burnt bit of
naan
to me.

Mariam loved Masood and Masood loved Mariam and Masood loved his father and his father died and Masood hung up the phone and Mariam walked into the kitchen and the house was full of people and Mariam knew that among those people were people who might walk into the kitchen, maybe to see what Masood was cooking, maybe to see where Mariam had gone, maybe to ask for more ice. And Masood knew that all he wanted right then was to weep in Mariam's arms.

Is that when the
naans
burnt? Or was that later, seconds later, when Mariam finally put a hand on his arm, but kept her face turned slightly towards the door, alert for footsteps, and Masood said, ‘This can't go on. I'll go mad. We'll both go mad.'

I can't fault Mariam for listening for all those footsteps, all those footsteps including mine. But there was a time when I thought that if Masood meant something to me I would fault her for what she did to him all those years. But, really, what did she do except love him, and love us also? Did I fault him? Yes, for months. Yes, for everything. Until one day I was able to say to myself, What did he do except love her and love her?

Sameer brushed a crumb off my cheek. ‘You know you'll never see her again.'

I stood up and walked over to the glass doors which led out to the garden. Pushed aside the curtains and pressed my
head against the glass. The chairs on the terrace were covered in dust.

Karachi was full of corners, and I had grown up turning every corner with the hope in my heart that she would be there. How could I continue to live my life between such corners? How could I not?

Other people never reminded me of Mariam, but that's not to say I was never reminded of her. In moments when I least expected it everyday objects would become doorways to memory. A shoe buckle, a keyring, a mango seed bleached by the sun; running water, railway tracks, cobblestones and cochineal; cacti, cat's-eyes, Cocteau and kites; chipped plates, race tracks, swimming pools, diving boards, bluebottles, jellyfish, bougainvillea, stones; crickets and bats and cricket bats.

I know. Cocteau is not an everyday object, but she loved
Orphée.

What if she were dead? How would I know? Is it better this way, this not knowing? I wondered, tracing circles in the glass. This way she can be immortal to me, in my lifetime. I don't ever have to face the finality of her death. That thought should have brought me comfort, but it didn't. If she were dead, I'd want to know so that I could weep. The circles in the glass looped outward and became spirals. I am frozen when I think of you, Mariam. My mind goes everywhere and nowhere. Nothing in my life is untouched by your absence. I think you'd like Khaleel. I don't know if that makes me run towards him or pull away.

‘Aliya, what did your father mean that day over lunch? Remember, just after you got back? I escorted Abida Nani out and when I came back he was saying, “I should have
fired Masood when …” and then your mother told him to shut up.'

‘I don't know.' I had forgotten about that entirely.

Sameer stood up. ‘I'm going to find your mother. Maybe she'll tell us. You can use my absence to read that e-mail which you're so desperate for me not to see.'

He left, and I turned gratefully to my laptop.

Hi, Ailment.

Your e-mail about tea at the Starcheds' had me in hysterics! Seriously. Someone rang the bell and I couldn't answer it because I was having such a
haal
picturing Older Starch stuffing food into the older Ali Shah's mouth to stop him from charming you. But obviously you don't want to hear any of this, as your last message so subtly hinted. ‘How's Baji? Have you seen her recently?' my foot. Why don't you just come right out and say Cal Butt has hoovered you off your ankles? So, everyone loves him, if that's what you want to know, but, after he left, Baji (who somehow detected your interest in him, although neither Rehana Apa nor I can recall saying anything about it) said, ‘Of course, you don't marry an individual. You marry a family.' Normally I would roll my eyes at this marriage phoo-pha; I mean, flings can be great fun, and if it wasn't for you I'd fling him in a second. But you've never shown signs of being able to do that one-day-at-a-time thing and frankly Liaquatabad should stop you from thinking long-term. I've gathered enough info from him to know that his Karachi relatives' English is weak, they've never left the country, and they believe in the joint-family system (the horror, the horror; imagine living in a house teeming
with your own relatives, never mind someone else's). I know he lives in America (claims he wants to get a job that'll let him travel the globe), but if you and he end up together there'll have to be family interaction in Karachi and that will be a disaster, the fallout from which will not leave you unscathed at all! Call me a snob if you want to, but what the hell do any one of us have to say to the great mass of our compatriots? We can talk about cricket and complain about the politicians, but then what?
I'm not denying that they could be wonderful people,
but that's really not the point.

There – I've done my bit. Now I'm going to give you a message from him, which he wrote on my arm in some bloody indelible ink which refused to come off until half a bar of soap later. He wrote: ‘Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door we never opened/Into the rose garden. My words echo/Thus, in your mind.'

It's all a bit too pseudo for me, but I suppose you think it's charming. (Quoting Yeats is charming, Aliya; quoting Eliot is showing off.) He's still not sure when he'll be in Karachi, but he will be there before the summer is through. I've had to thoroughly wrestle with my conscience about relaying his message to you, but Rehana Apa said she'd tie me to Nelson's column and feed prunes and bran fibre to the pigeons if I didn't do it and pronto. Now, don't expect another message from me for a while. This is all too exhausting and I have to read too many books on fiscal policies of Indian rulers in the eighteenth century.

Love to the family (excl. Starcheds),

Samia.

The passage we didn't take. The door we never opened. What was I thinking? Sameer was right – I'd talked to Khaleel for half an hour … No, actually, it was more like an hour. I've never drunk a cup of coffee so slowly. Still, just an hour. Besides, I had no intention of getting married before I finished my MA, and let's be honest, when I thought of Khaleel it wasn't wedding bells I heard but something a little more akin to slow jazz. And yet … Samia had said something to me the night before I left London. She said, ‘I don't believe in love at first sight, and neither do you. But I know, and after today you know also, that sometimes it only takes a few minutes to recognize that a person is capable of breaking your heart.' Yes.

I had mentioned heartbreak to Mariam Apa when I was sixteen and devastated over a boy who was flirting with me just to make some bleached blonde jealous. Not dyed, bleached. I ask you!

I said to Mariam Apa, ‘Well at least I found out now. Bruised ego, but no broken heart. Must avoid broken hearts.'

She shredded a piece of Masood's roast chicken, flavoured with chillis and garlic and yoghurt, and poured gravy over the shreds. She gestured to the chicken on my plate, still in one piece.
A broken heart has more surface area than a heart that is intact.
Anyone who's bilingual knows that shock of surprise when you think you've been speaking in one language and someone else points out that no, you haven't. It was like that with Mariam Apa. I was so accustomed to translating her gestures into sentences that I sometimes wondered why people looked so perplexed when I claimed to be quoting her words exactly.

She had somehow got word to Babuji to star our names
on the family tree. I was convinced of it. She had starred the names and now I would never hear the term not-quite-twins without adding myself and Mariam Apa to their list. And soon the rest of the family would add our names to the list, too, if they hadn't already. How long before word of the latest not-quites crossed the border? The news would not be met with surprise. I could think of only a handful of relatives who would refrain from saying that Mariam had already brought about the inevitable disaster by robbing us of our pride. And, to be quite honest, even that handful probably wouldn't refrain from thinking it. Was I about to compound our disgrace by mirroring her actions, with a choice far less shocking than hers, yet also more significant for its refusal to walk a path far removed? Or were we, was I, in a position to show the others that not-quites were not necessarily harbingers of doom? This, then, was Mariam's farewell gift to me: the courage to take Khaleel's hand in mine and say to my parents, say to Dadi, say to Sameer and Samia and the Starched Aunts and Great-Aunt One-Liner and Bachelor Uncle and Mousy Cousin and all the rest of them,
Just because a thing has always been so, it does not always have to be so.

I opened my desk drawer and smiled at Celeste's painting of Mariam, greying and radiant.

Then I remembered what Samia had said.
No one, not even you, will trust any feelings you have for him.

Sameer barged into the room. ‘There was a love triangle in your house. Mariam and Masood and Hibiscus-Eating Ayah.'

‘No, you have to go to see your grandmother instead.'

‘Aba!'

‘Aliya, this is not open to discussion.' Aba turned to Ami. ‘I can't believe you told her.'

Ami looked up from the samples of red carpet material laid across the floor. ‘Nasser, you opened the bag. The cat was going to let itself out soon enough, so I saw no harm in giving it a little prod. At least our daughter can say we weren't keeping secrets from her when she was old enough to deal with everything that has twisted our lives around for the last four years. And now this man wants not only the reddest carpet in the world but one which bird droppings will not show up against.' She returned to staring gloomily at her samples.

‘Well, fine then, you've told her. So there's no need for her to go and see any ayahs and start discussing family members with them.'

‘Aba, please! She hasn't told me anything except that Hibiscus-Eating Ayah left in some jealous fit because of Masood.'

‘Well, there's nothing more for her to tell you. That's all
we know. In fact, let me correct that. We don't even know that; it's just conjecture.'

Ami snorted.

Aba and I glowered at each other.

‘I'll go to see her after I see Dadi. Happy?'

‘No. You're not going. I forbid it. Who knows what stories that woman will invent just to see your reaction.'

‘That woman, Aba? Oh, so she could be trusted to look after me when I was a child, but she's not trustworthy enough to repeat a few simple facts.'

‘Don't you speak to me like that, young lady.'

His words were a roar, and I grabbed on to a table to give myself strength. ‘Just because you're too ashamed to discuss Mariam with anyone doesn't mean—'

‘Ashamed? Ashamed! How dare you think you have a monopoly on unconditional love!' That took me aback. He had always been so tight-lipped about Mariam's marriage; I had taken his silence as censure, but perhaps it was only pain. Lord, what had I been doing these last four years? In what cocoon of self-pity had I been stifling myself?

But before I could apologize or ask him what he was feeling, my mother cut in. ‘Stop it. Both of you.' I could answer back to my father any time, even in the face of his rage, but when Ami barked out a command, both Aba and I turned into mush. She claimed she had learnt how to counterfeit steely resolve in order to avoid being quashed by her mother-in-law, and it certainly worked. There's no one else with whom Dadi gets on so harmoniously. Nine times out of ten Ami allows Dadi to be domineering, but that tenth time she just raises an eyebrow and Dadi subsides. There's a great deal I need to learn from Ami.

‘Aliya, go and see your Dadi. Ask her if she needs help
with packing. She'll say no, but you should ask all the same. Nasser, go out and find me some samples of bird droppings.'

‘Would you like them gift-wrapped?'

‘My
jaan,
the red carpet was your idea. Now stop looking ineffectual.'

Aba turned to me. ‘Aliya, collect bird droppings. Go and stand motionless – Ha ha! Motionless, get it? – under the
badaam
tree for an hour. If you whistle bird-calls you may only have to be there half an hour. Wear a hat, otherwise your mother won't let you wash your hair until she's sorted out this carpet problem.'