Trespassing (14 page)

He focused on one beautiful thing.

In the evenings, when the workers had left and Handsome scratched his ballooning stomach and gossiped with his younger brother Chikna, Salaamat’s technique began to evolve. He no longer let the giant turtle take him across smooth seas to a safer place. He now grasped Rani. Not in any ocean, but right there, in the dark and littered storeroom that was his sleeping cell.

He cleared a fourth of the space to stretch in, and over the weeks, his encounters with Rani grew increasingly fierce. At first he only lay with her in his arms, gently nibbling her full lips. Then he began rubbing her tunic. Then he got impatient. So did she. One day Rani brushed up against him and moaned, ‘Hurry!’ He clicked his tongue, clutched her two henna-doused hands roughly in one of his own and smacked them. Then he pushed the small, pearl button at the top of her kurta out of the buttonhole with his tongue and teeth. At the third pearl he sank in her cleavage, pecking
at her soft breasts while she yelped. He tightened his grasp of her hands and pushed her neck back to bare more flesh. Her breasts were enormous and smooth. He lifted each with the back of his free hand so it grew even rounder. Then he yanked each nipple with his teeth and tongue the way he had the pearl buttons. She screamed. Feverishly, he threw off her shalwar. When she struggled, before parting her legs, he squeezed her neck. That silenced her. From now on, this was how it had to be.

The next morning, he rushed out the room to check on the seventh bus. His greatest fear was its completion. The bus still needed some touching up – the owner wanted the interior throbbing with heart-shaped lights, and these had still to be made. Salaamat dreaded the day the hearts went up. Though he was swiftly learning to work with steel almost as well as any Punjabi, he’d still never held a brush. He was still very, very far away from replacing Rani when she left.

But she stayed with him, the only thing in the world that was his.

During meals with Handsome’s family, Salaamat listened quietly to the chatter. Above them lurked a portrait of the General, Handsome’s hero. Handsome told of his two nephews who were being trained to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. He looked up at the portrait and blessed the General. Then he blessed Amreeka for training and arming the freedom fighters, thundering, ‘We are Amreeka’s best allies, and they are ours. With their help, we are coming closer to saving Islam.’ Shoveling hunks of meat in his enormous mouth, he spoke next of the many anti-Soviet rallies organized by the religious parties to whom Amreeka was giving aid.

During the day, Handsome’s family kept apart from the Pathans and vice versa. What little Salaamat managed to hear of the latter’s chatter was no different from Handsome’s. In fact, Hero and his friends had more than two nephews
between them joining the war. They seemed to know dozens of boys up in the mountains, boys much younger than Salaamat, who were learning to load and use weapons he couldn’t even imagine. It was a community of young Heroes. Why wouldn’t Handsome be pleased with that?

He soon had an answer: thousands of war refugees were pouring into Peshawar daily, pushing some of the local residents south to Karachi. Of these, too many were in the bus-body-making business. If this continued, the Pathans would drive the Punjabis out. Those who’d pushed villagers like Salaamat to the edge fiercely resented being pushed out too.

At night, before taking Rani, Salaamat constructed a comical scenario in his mind.

Hundreds of men were packed into a small space like his sleeping cell. The door kept opening and yet more were shoved in. Soon there wasn’t an inch to stand in, so colossal men like Handsome stepped on scrawny ones like Hero. The scrawny men stumbled into the back wall and pressed into it, trying desperately to find a little gap. But there was none. Eventually, even the Handsomes got mashed against the wall like mosquitoes.

It was not unlike what happened on buses every day. Sooner or later, everyone had to fall off. Who cared who fell first? If he fell with Rani, it wouldn’t be so bad. He never had enough of pressing into her anyway.

One evening at dinner Chikna left the room in a state of nervousness, and returned in a state of increased nervousness. ‘It’s the Authorities,’ he panted.

Handsome frowned, ‘That’s twice this month.’ He pushed his plate away and marched outside, Chikna in tow.

Three of them waited, equipped with batons and a list of grievances – nonpayment of taxes, unregistered documents, expired licenses, a distaste of bus ornaments. Ornamentation,
they argued, was a traffic hazard. How could the driver see when the bus was a distraction?

‘But it’s a distraction from the
outside,’
Salaamat, still in the room, heard Handsome explain.

The Senior Authority raised his baton menacingly. ‘How can he see out the rear-view mirror when he has that,’ he smashed a crown off the fender of a bus, ‘staring at him?’

Salaamat stepped outside. The Authority had attacked Rani’s bus. A part of him was relieved: the more damage the bus suffered, the longer she’d stay. But another part was outraged. How dare this man threaten her?

As the Senior Authority advanced toward the rear, Rani covered herself entirely. He tapped the cloth away with his stick and leered. Before he could catch himself, Salaamat blurted, ‘The crown would not have been staring at him through the rear-view mirror.’

‘Oh is that right?’ The man spun around. ‘Would you like to show me what he would have been looking at?’ The two other Authorities, absorbed in smashing more fenders, joined their boss.

The boss swung his baton. Before Salaamat could pull away, it cut across his arm. He buckled. A second man struck his knee. A third, his stomach. ‘Who are you to answer us?’ they hissed. ‘You’re just an ajnabi.’

Salaamat’s head began to whirl. He saw three pairs of glistening boots. One pair aimed for his groin. ‘We’ll show you your place.’

None of the other workers moved. None, not even Chikna, had spoken. They’d given him what he’d asked: food and lodging. The rest was up to him. Ghee burned his nose as he began to vomit.

Nearly three years ago, the first kick had also struck his knee. Then too he’d vomited. He heard the wind in his hair from that night, hair since trimmed. But though short now,
his locks were still reins to steer him with. The Authorities yanked them as they punched.

There had been the sound of waves. His grandmother’s watchfulness. Soft, soft sand. And then the turtle’s shell. He reached out. Rani was beside him, mopping his forehead with cool fingers, invisible to all but him.

Just before losing consciousness he saw Handsome peel several hundred rupees from a thick wad of notes in his pocket.

Three days later, after tossing in delirium on the hard floor of his littered room, he stumbled outside to find Rani gone.

He had Fridays off. He spent them roaming the city, on foot and by bus. He made sure to travel on a different one each time, and in his head kept meticulous track of their various designs. Before his first year at Handsome’s was up, he’d sat in over a hundred inner-city buses. But he never saw Rani again.

It was on a sweltering day in May, on a bus with a two-foot PIA plane model on its roof and a driver who skated down a runway only he appeared to see, that Salaamat met his youngest brother, Shan.

‘You’re here!’ he said, surprised at his own happiness. The boy had been twelve when they’d last met. Now his voice was beginning to crack and on his upper lip hovered a wisp of fuzz. ‘You look well.’

Shan barely knew him. ‘Yes,’ he shrugged.

‘Are you alone?’ Salaamat pressed on.

The bus screeched and swerved. Salaamat’s head bumped the canopy of a green waterfall.

‘No. Aba has come. So have Sumbul and Hamid, Chachoo and his family.’

‘Where are they?’

‘In Thatta. But we’re about to move here, in the city. Aba’s been hired at a rich man’s house. His name is Mr Mansoor. He’s very important.’ Shan straightened his shoulders proudly.

The bus stopped, then started again. Shan hadn’t mentioned their mother.

Salaamat looked at his brother, lean and dark like himself. Like her. He saw her fingers, pink and crinkled like the shrimp she peeled, rejected by a husband who lived off them. He whispered, ‘And Ama?’

‘She died.’

In the jammed bus still more commuters were piling in. They shook like a tin of nails. When Salaamat spoke his teeth rattled. He cursed the driver for mimicking a pilot. Then he cursed Shan. ‘Bastard! When? Why wasn’t I told?’

Shan stepped back. ‘A few months after you left,’ he cried. ‘Dadi said there was no point calling you. She said you had to keep working.’

‘That wench! Just because she saved my life once, doesn’t mean she owns it.’

Shan moved further away.

Salaamat’s ear began to ache. He’d only distanced his brother even more. But what did it matter? From the day his grandmother told him to leave, his family had forgotten him. Except perhaps his mother, and his sister Sumbul. They’d cried when he left. Yes, they’d have thought of him. He took a deep breath. Except for his pounding ear, everything went deathly still.

After a long pause, he asked more gently, ‘Is Sumbul well?’

‘Yes.’ And then: ‘She often speaks of you.’

Salaamat could not resist a smile. ‘What were you doing in Thatta?’

‘We were guarding the tombs of Makli Hill.’ He lunged into an elderly man, then straightened up again. ‘Chachoo and his family are still there, but we’re going to the rich man’s house. This is my stop.’

Salaamat hopped out with him. He loosened his shoulders. They were always sore now since his thrashing by the Authorities. But the men never had the chance to beat him again. He’d learned to quickly duck into his den whenever they came.

Shan caught another bus, and a third, and finally, in the late afternoon, they reached a neighborhood unlike any other Salaamat had frequented on previous Fridays. Streets were wide and tree-lined. Shops had tinted glass and words scrawled in beautiful, swirling script. Houses were like forts, with massive gates and towering walls topped in barbed wire partially concealed behind ropes of ivy. The air was cleaner. But one thing remained the same: boys played cricket in the street.

It was into a street with a game in progress that Shan now turned. The bowler had the definite advantage, for the lane was at a sharp incline and he stood at the top, while the batsman hunkered below, braving the speed of the descending toss. ‘Out!’ came a voice from the top of the hill. A girl’s voice. The wicket, three frail wooden pins, soared into the air.

‘That was just the wind!’ complained the batsman. ‘Anything would send this stupid wicket flying.’

Salaamat squinted, but the bowler was in shadow. The umpire, a man nearly as wide as Handsome but not as tall, raised a finger and declared, ‘Out!’ From up the hill the invisible bowler hooted.

‘That’s favoritism!’ screamed the batsman. The umpire rolled on the balls of his feet and grinned at the bowler skipping into the sunlight, down toward him.

The bowler
was
a girl. Well, more than just a girl. Her yellow kameez was both thin enough and tight enough to
reveal two small but shapely breasts, and an equally shapely behind. The umpire embraced her, ‘Shabash, beti!’

Her smooth, nut-brown cheeks were flushed and sweaty, her shoulder-length hair a delicious mess. ‘Aba,’ she laughed, ‘that’s three for ten runs at the end of just three overs.’

The lone fielder picked his nose. ‘This is so damn boring,’ he announced.

‘Yes,’ said the batsman. ‘Boring and only for cheats.’ He threw down his bat and stormed inside a gate with wrought-iron waves rising from the top. The fielder dug into his other nostril.

Shan gathered the three pins and walked up to the umpire.

It was the girl who took the pins from him. She smiled. ‘Thank you.’

Shan chewed his lips timidly. He addressed the father, ‘I’ve brought some things, Mansoor Sahib.’

Mansoor Sahib looked at Salaamat. ‘And this is?’

‘Oh,’ said Shan vaguely. ‘My eldest brother. But,’ he quickly added, ‘he won’t be staying here.’

Salaamat held his head up high. The sahib seemed to be waiting for his greeting but Salaamat said nothing.

All four entered the gate. They walked up a long, swirling driveway shaded with jamun and peepul trees. A sweet smell infiltrated his nose. Yellow wings fluttered across his vision. Up ahead and to his right, in an enormous mulberry tree, sat a pair of blossom-headed parakeets, nibbling at each other’s beaks. Finally, they reached a mass of round rocks, from which toppled a miniature waterfall. Salaamat sucked in his breath. This was exactly the kind of picture painted on the ceilings and corners of almost every bus he’d seen or worked on. No, it was better. The picture stretched on, till they came at last to a clearing bordered by laburnum trees.

In the center sat a woman at a glass table. ‘Just in time,’ she looked up. Her gaunt face was framed with short hair
arranged in a copious swoop to the side. Salaamat thought even Shan prettier.

‘I won, Ama,’ said the girl.

‘I know,’ the mother laughed. ‘I saw Hassan storm away.’

‘He always loses,’ the girl rejoiced.

Her father sat down. ‘Maybe you should let him win from time to time.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ her mother intercepted. ‘What he needs is a wife who can bowl better than him.’ She and her husband exchanged glances, while the girl, still standing, watched keenly, her wide eyes darting from face to face, her smile fading.

Then the woman turned to Shan. With a curious, bemused air, she asked of Salaamat, ‘And this is?’

‘My brother.’ Shan reddened again.

Standing with both legs apart and hands behind his back, Salaamat still said nothing.

‘Perhaps he’s in the army,’ Mr Mansoor offered. ‘Everybody seems to be these days. Should we eat?’

It was a fair question, thought Daanish. Does the United States want a war? But he was learning which questions could not be asked.