J
ameel and Mumtaz sat on the edge of the marble swimming pool dangling their feet in the tepid water. It was mid-monsoon, and wet heat pressed down on the city of Lahore like the heel of a giant hand. Jameel glanced over his shoulder.
“I'm watching, Jameel!” said his mother from the shade of the patio where she sipped tea with Auntie Leyla and Auntie Selma, who'd come to visit for the day. “You still have twenty minutes to wait. I don't want your grandfather to have to pull your waterlogged body from the bottom of the pool!”
Jameel closed his eyes and exhaled through his teeth. Mumtaz nudged him with her elbow.
“It's an old wives' tale, Muti,” Jameel said under his breath. “You can't drown because you just ate aloo paratha.”
“Five aloo paratha, maybe ⦔ said Muti, smirking.
“She's never so protective in San Francisco.” Jameel took a long, slow breath. “I'm fifteen years old!” They were silent for a moment. “How do you stand it?” he asked, keeping his voice low. “Your whole life happens under their noses! Don't they suffocate you?”
“Baba and Uncle Omar are okay,” said Muti, absently flicking water with her toes. “Leyla would just as soon see me drown.” Jameel slid his eyes over toward her. Muti knew that kind of talk made her cousin uncomfortable. Jameel visited every summer, and he liked things to run smoothly, with everyone getting alongâespecially with only a few days before the end of vacation.
But the fact was things seldom ran smoothly for Muti. Her mother and father had died when she was five, and most of the time since she'd lived with a woman who hated her. Leyla had also hated Muti's mother, and took every opportunity to let Muti know she was not her social equal, and that having her live with them was a terrible burden on everyone. Treating Muti as a servant whenever Baba wasn't looking was a part of Leyla's cleverly devised brand of torture, which Muti called “death by a thousand pinpricks.”
“Where is everyone?” Baba's voice boomed across the gardens, which were heavy with the scent of tuberoses and jasmine. Jameel imagined that the ripples in the fountain and swimming pool came from the depth of his grandfather's voice. “I have a surprise for you! You'll never guess what's just arrived!”
Omar and Leyla's son, Jaffar, who was ten, bolted from
the shade of the banyan tree on the other side of the pool, where he'd been playing in a lawn chair with an electronic toy that bleeped wildly as he pushed the buttons. “What, Baba? What is it?” Jaffar shouted. Jameel and Muti unfolded their bodies from the pool's rim and turned toward Mahsood Jameel Amirzai, the patriarch of the family, after whom Jameel was named. The old man stood with his massive hands on his hips, his pale blue shalwar kameez hanging limply over his rotund belly, a white turban piled loosely around the crown of his head, and his beard a white tangle of curls on his chest.
He'd come from the garage, where a large motor roared to life. Jameel thought of the summer his grandfather had imported a red-and-silver BMW motorcycle from Germany, complete with a protective suit of leatherâchaps, boots, and vest. The noise alone had scandalized the staid Gulberg area of Lahore almost beyond forgiveness. Grandmother didn't speak to her husband for a good part of the summer. Finally Baba had taken a nasty spill when he was showing off for his friends in the driveway, smacking his head on the pavement, and wounding his dignity more than his skull. Only then had he agreed to ride the machine exclusively in the countryside, where villagers heard him coming and dove into the thorn bushes beside the road to avoid being run down. Jameel wondered what machine had captured Baba's fancy this time.
But Baba would not let them into the garage. “It's a surprise!” he said, and everyone looked around at everyone
else, eyebrows raised, which pleased the old man very much.
Within the hour Baba gathered a party together on the bank of the canal, outside the garden gate. He sent Leyla to organize tea and cake, and he called Uncle Omar to come home from his office downtown. Jameel's mother went back up to the house with Leyla, and Muti held Selma's arm as they walked to the canal's edge.
When Omar arrived at the spot beside the canal, Baba waited for Nargis and Leyla to return before pulling a tarpaulin from the back of a battered pickup truck to reveal a shining silver Jet Ski. His driver, Khoda Baksh, supervised five servants as they unloaded the machine and slid it into the slimy green water where the canal curved to run beside Anwar Road. Baba waded in and climbed aboard, revving the engine and nearly toppling off as the Jet Ski leaped to life.
Omar leaned back on his elbows, stretched his legs out before him in the grass, and laughed. Jameel's mother and Auntie Selma smiled affectionately, and Leyla put her hands over her mouth in horror.
“I'm glad your mother isn't alive to see this,” Leyla hissed under her breath. Grandmother had died the year before. Omar looked at his wife and sighed.
“Mother always tolerated more than she let on,” he said. “He always expected her to disapproveâand she never let him down.” Since his mother's death Leyla had taken on the role of household critic. Omar shifted his attention back to the canal.
Jameel and Muti and Jaffar all clapped as Baba got the machine under control and shot down the canal with his
beard flying and the end of his turban flapping over his shoulder and a bright arc of spray jetting out behind. Two turbaned malis stood from their work around the rose beds beside the canal and stared in wonder after Baba, their lungis loose around their hips, their hands holding sickles dangling by their sides.
Jaffar, Muti, and Jameel all begged for rides, and Baba took the boys first, one at a time. When he returned for Muti, Leyla marched down to the edge of the canal.
“You mustn't, Baba,” she said, her eyes flashing. “All of Gulberg is laughing at you.”
“Let them laugh!” Baba said loudly. “It'll add a little fun to their day!”
Leyla was stricken and unable to speak for a moment. “But ⦠but ⦠for Mumtaz this behavior is unseemly! You know what people will think! How will we find a suitable match for her if she behaves this way?” Leyla's voice had grown shrill. The spell of Baba's amazing machine was suspended for a moment.
“Oh, let them think!” Baba boomed, brushing aside Leyla's protestsâjust as he'd brushed aside his wife's objections. “Come on, Mumtaz,” he said, beckoning Muti into the water. “We only live once, eh?” Muti pulled her shalwar up around her knees and waded in, the bottom mud squishing between her toes. She climbed onto the seat behind Baba. But she knew that Leyla would make her pay later, when she was out of Baba's sight.
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That evening Number 5 Anwar Road overflowed with members of the Amirzai extended family. They gathered first in the large reception hall to honor Jameel and his parents amid flowers and pitchers of pomegranate juice, and whiskey, too, although Baba kept it in a teapot, and offered it quietly to the gentlemen, all of whom considered themselves good and devout Muslims.
“More cold tea?” he asked, and the men chuckled and said yes, holding out their teacups for more whiskey.
Jameel and his parents were leaving in two days to return to San Francisco, where Jameel was born and had lived his entire life. They'd arrived in Lahore the week after school ended, the third week in June, after two or three days in Karachi to visit Jameel's paternal grandparents. And now it was August, and school would begin soon.
Jameel couldn't imagine where the summer had gone. This year he'd come to Lahore reluctantly for the first time in his life. He'd met a girl in California, just before the end of the school termâa beautiful blond girl named Chloe. He couldn't wait to tell Muti about Chloe, but this summer it seemed his parents or Uncle Omar or Auntie Leylaâsomeoneâwas always around. It was as if he and Muti needed a chaperone.
Muti and Jameel had been best friends since they were toddlers. Technically, they were first cousins once removed. They were a month apart in age, and they shared secrets and jokes and dreams. As children they had made up games, instantly falling into each other's imaginings. There were dragons in trees and monsters in bushes, villains and bandits
who needed routing around every corner. Evenings they'd sneaked down the back stairs to watch the adults at lavish dinners, and to listen in as Baba settled tribal disputes in his grand reception hall. They'd exchanged letters in the long fall, winter, and spring, devising plans for the summer. But this year it seemed one of the adults was always nearby and they'd had few private conversations.
When everyone moved into the dining room for the banquet, Baba upset Leyla's seating arrangement, insisting that men and women sit together at the two long tables, and the younger relativesâboys and girls togetherâat the smaller round tables around the edge of the room. Leyla tried to redirect ladies to one table, gents to the other in a more traditional seating arrangement, but Baba easily overpowered her with his booming voice.
Once the confusion ended and everyone was seated, a dozen bearers in white uniforms and fanned turbans brought out platter after platter: roast meat in spiced gravy, vegetables in delicately flavored sauces, biryani made with scented rice and pieces of meat, steaming piles of roti, kebabs of lamb and chicken, deep dishes of channa and lentils and pickles and dahi with cucumbers to cool the heat of the spices.
Members of Baba's family who seldom appeared at Number 5 Anwar Road were there: his brother Nazir, who lived alone and out of favor in a suburb on the road that went toward the border crossing at Wagga; their sister, Selma, who lived alone in the family's old haveli in the ancient walled city of Lahore; and cousins, aunts, and uncles whom Jameel
and Muti greeted politely before joining the younger people at their own tables.
The dining room, which had a white marble floor, echoed with the sounds of laughter and talk, glasses clinking, and the ping of silverware on china plates. An enormous crystal chandelier hung overhead, its arms branching out the length of the two large tables, which seated twelve people each. Jameel and Muti and Jaffar sat at one of the smaller tables with four cousins, who ranged in age from eight to eighteen.
When they had eaten, the bearers began to clear the plates while others brought out platters of fruit and sweetsâsilver-covered burfi, bhoondi ladoo and bowls of coconut kheer, halwa and rasmali, pretzel-shaped jalabisâand the children's faces rekindled with smiles as each new tray arrived. Leyla rose from her place at one of the large tables and made her way around to where Muti sat, and stood facing her, hands on hips.
“Get up and help clear, Mumtaz,” Leyla said. Out of the corner of her eye Muti saw Jameel look at her in surprise. “You're supposed to earn your keep.” Muti glanced over toward the big table. “Omar and your grandfather have been into their cold tea,” Leyla continued. “They aren't going to rescue you. Get up!” Muti got to her feet obediently, collected the remaining plates on their table, and carried them toward the kitchen. She didn't want Leyla to make more of a scene and embarrass everyone.
As she passed the end of the large table, Muti smiled at Auntie Selma. Her father's sister frowned, and did not smile
back. Selma shifted her eyes toward Leyla, watching her until she resumed her seat at the large table.
When Muti was helping to serve tea, Jameel caught her eye and gave her the signal they'd always used for emergency meetings: five fingers spread on the tabletop, his head beckoning slightly with a tilt over the shoulder. It meant five minutes, out in the garden.
Muti waited until Leyla was occupied with giving more orders to the bearers, and slipped out the French doors that led to the swimming pool and the gardens beyond. She followed the path beside the pool, through the rose garden, and down to a small garden with a little pond that held Baba's silver-and-orange koi, with a wooden garden swing beside it, where Jameel sat waiting.
“What took you so long?” It was Jameel's turn to smirk. Muti sighed and sank down beside him on the swing.
“Leyla's always watching to take advantage of me. It'll be almost a relief after you've gone, when she'll simply ignore me again!” Muti said.
“Did you do something to make her angry?” he asked. Muti sighed but said nothing. Jameel had never seemed to notice before that Leyla spoke sharply to Muti, that she ordered her to do things only the servants were expected to do, and that she acted under the radar of Omar and Baba. When Muti was little, Leyla and her mother, Amina, tried to make Shabanu mend the clothing and look after the children and clean their shoes, and even Muti's father didn't seem to notice.
“We don't have much time and I want to tell you something,” Jameel said, clearing his throat and turning to look at Muti. “I've met a girl I like very much. Her name is Chloe, and she's beautiful and kind. And my parents would freak out if they knew.” He smiled at Muti, whose jaw had dropped.
“Where did you meet?” she asked. “Does she go to your school? Why didn't you tell me?”
“I tried! This is the first time I've had a chance,” said Jameel. “We met skateboarding. She's the best skater in the park. She's amazing. She does flips and twists and ollies and ⦔ Jameel remembered Muti knew nothing about skateboarding. “She goes to a different schoolâa public schoolâand my parents know nothing about her. We talked one day, and then we just started to meet at the park, after school and weekends. I almost didn't even want to come here this summer!”