Trespassing (16 page)

She’d not even told him what ‘question’ she’d posed the morning of his arrival. ‘There is plenty of time to answer me,’ she’d said, but then the next evening, knew nothing about it. He cursed again.

Shedding his clothes, he stood before the full-length mirror. The light-brown eyes that answered back were his father’s. After hearing of their likeness for years, he saw it clearly now. He was exactly his height. The weight he’d acquired this
year at college, when the plastic flavors of Fully Food finally stopped nauseating him, was beginning to settle around his midriff in a soft, barely noticeable belt of flesh, probably exactly as it had begun to do on the doctor when he was twenty-two. His legs were still sleek and sinewy. Swimmer’s legs. Going by the doctor, they’d always be Daanish’s best feature.

Becky had admired them the day they first met, when he walked her home from the gym. Thinking of her made him remember the missing photographs again. He’d liked the one of Pamela leaning against an oak tree. The ground was strewn with autumn leaves reminding him of their tryst in the sunken garden where Daanish loved to roam. Only, there was none of the humiliation of that time with Penny. By the time he’d met Pamela, Daanish knew better than to poke a stomach or buttock like a blind mole. The photograph was taken just before she sat on the bed of leaves and began to slowly undo her blouse. It was a three-quarter view, so her right bluish-green eye appeared larger than the left. Above it, a thin eyebrow was raised, giving Pamela her characteristic expression: Oh yeah?

Damn! Where was it? For the next half-hour, he searched every corner of the rearranged, freshly painted room. His eye fell on the lacquer box, one of the few items not missing from the duffel bag. But this too had been touched. He’d never before seen the photograph inside it. What on earth was it doing there?

His head began to throb. He got into the shower. Because there’d been no electricity since yesterday, the water pump hadn’t been switched on. The tank was almost dry and the pressure so low only two holes of the showerhead released a few drops. Still soapy, Daanish returned to his room and stood naked on the new white rug. He looked up at the ceiling fan wishing for the telltale whine that sounded when it spun. But the loadshedding continued.

Soon his sweat blended with the soap and he was covered in a thin coat of slime. He left a trail of gray footprints on the rug. This pleased him. As the rug’s color muddied, his head began to clear. Toweling himself dry, he listened to Anu making preparations for the Quran Khwani downstairs. It was just after eight. The mourners would start arriving around nine. There were fewer now that three weeks had passed since his father’s death but there were still more than he wanted to meet. He combed his hair and braced himself for another day of being the Amreekan orphan.

But he didn’t go downstairs. Instead, he returned to the drawer. He kept the three cocoons there now. Exactly as the driver said, the insects had spun their homes. Though he was disappointed to have missed the weaving process, the downy balls entertained him in their own way. They moved. First he’d left them on a pile of newspapers on his desk. When he returned, they’d jumped into a walnut bowl that held his pens. By the following day, they’d hopped onto the desk, far away from the newspaper. No matter where he put them, they wanted to be somewhere else. At last he found a place they found acceptable: inside a dark, dry corner of the drawer. According to the driver, if Daanish wanted the threads he’d have to cook them next week.

Kneeling for a closer look, he whispered,
cocoon.
It had a calming sound. Soft like sleep, like nestling. He fit into it somehow. ‘What should I do with you?’ he asked. ‘You’re so different from my beautiful shells. They can’t live without water, you can’t live within it.’

He thought of the gazelle-eyed girl in the blue dupatta. If she returned, he wanted to be the first to talk to her. He wanted to tell her he’d followed her advice and found out what she’d left. He wanted also to look more closely at that smooth, caramel face with the gracefully tapering chin. But
he’d not seen her again. Did he even remember her correctly? Hell, he needed a picture of her too.

It was the hope of finding the girl that finally forced Daanish downstairs.

A swift glance revealed the girl was not there. He kissed his mother good morning and picked up a siparah, heading for the adjoining room, where the men sat.

The room looked on to a small garden fringed with hibiscus bushes. The grass was beginning to scorch in patches. His street badly wanted water. Two lanes away lived a minister, so no loadshedding ever plagued that street. Some of the mourners were discussing this when he joined them. They fanned themselves with newspapers and Daanish knew that in amongst the prayers for his dead father were prayers for bijly, and a brand new lot of politicians.

Along the opposite wall sat three of Daanish’s uncles. They came and sat beside him, too hot to read, keener on conversation. His chacha turned to him. ‘All his life Shafqat Bhai knew you would make him proud. Everything he did, every hour of toil, was for you.’

Another uncle chipped in, ‘Our children in Amreeka do very well. There, of course, they have all the opportunity
to shine. And they do! Look at Daanishwar!’ He thumped Daanish heartily on the back. ‘Come, you’ve told us nothing of your experiences there. All good things must be shared.’

The other men nodded with gusto.

When Daanish remained noncommittal, an older cousin nudged him. ‘I hear it’s very quiet and peaceful over there. Not like here, with army troops muscling their way into our neighborhoods.’

Immediately his phoopa interrupted, ‘Things are a lot better since the army operation. I know. I drive through Nazimabad every day, unlike you in your elite street. I see how many fewer buses and trucks are being burned. It’s because of the troops!’

‘Yes,’ said his chacha. ‘But we have to question their tactics. They’re rounding up anyone from the Muhajir areas and beating them regardless. This is only going to fuel the MQM’s anger.’

There was a general murmur of consent, in which Daanish’s phoopa remained aloof. After a pause, he looked up. ‘It’s the Punjabis who are being made to pay. We’re going to be driven out. I’m thinking of taking my family back to Lahore.’

‘Rubbish,’ said another. ‘It’s the Muhajirs. How many of us are in prominent positions? The quota system must end.’

‘You all control Karachi!’ came the bellowing response.

The chacha was quick to intercede. ‘One thing we can all agree on: those Sindhi separatists are imbeciles.’ Everyone nodded. The chacha continued, ‘Now, what is the point of getting into this discussion here? My poor brother would not have wanted it.’ He padded toward the center of the room, where sweets and savories lay in large clay platters. He began passing them around. Next he poured out warm Pepsi, explaining, ‘Without water for tea, it’s the best we can do.’ Daanish’s stomach turned; it was barely ten in the morning.

His chacha turned to him again. ‘Today, it’s Daanish who will talk!’

Just a hop across the ocean, thought Daanish.

‘You’ll be a better mold of me,’ the doctor had said. The test had begun.

‘But what do you want to know?’ Daanish asked.

‘All that you’ve seen these three years!’ they replied.

He shrugged. ‘In many ways things are really different, but in others, they’re not.’

‘Tell us what’s different,’ said his phoopa. ‘We don’t care about the rest.’

‘Yes,’ said another man Daanish did not recognize. ‘We don’t want same same.’

‘Well,’ Daanish shifted. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

The men waited.

‘Here we have many restrictions but few rules, there it’s the opposite. There are few restrictions but many rules.’

The men exchanged glances. It was a poor beginning. Before he could start again someone asked, ‘Are there plenty of jobs available?’

‘Well,’ Daanish cleared his throat. ‘Actually, since the Gulf War there’s been a bit of a recession.’

The room was silent and the silence grew. Someone shook his head, ‘That war was a crime.’

Everyone nodded and a general moroseness took over. His chacha said, ‘What did those poor Iraqis ever do to them? I tell you, oil is a curse. Look at Iran. Look at Libya.’

Another nodded, ‘And look at the Saudis. Look how low they stoop.’

Daanish’s phoopa scowled, ‘Are you insulting the holy land?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘I’m insulting the beggars who live in it.’

The phoopa declared, ‘They are our brothers.’

‘They are closer brothers of the Iraqis they let the Americans bomb.’

‘Urdu speaker,’ he retorted.

Someone began to recount how he took a different route
to work every day for fear of being kidnapped. ‘The situation has gotten so bad,’ he said emphatically.

‘But there have been fewer kidnappings since the army operation,’ Daanish’s phoopa insisted.

‘There’s going to be a civil war!’ announced another unknown.

‘There’s going to be nothing besides more rumor and your hysteria!’

Daanish’s chacha again began serving sweets.

Daanish looked around in despair. He must quickly tell the men of his other, better life. He’d have to reconstruct it the way he’d tried to reconstruct this one for an exotica-starved Becky. He’d failed her; he was probably going to fail his uncles too.

While he wondered what to say, the dispute continued. For some reason, a man was thumping his chest and booming, ‘I am a thinker.’

‘Ask those that built this country!’ his opponent snapped. ‘We are the ones who really toil for Pakistan!’

‘Please, please,’ Daanish’s chacha sighed. ‘Think of my brother.’

A taut silence again descended. More Pepsi was served. More eyes turned desperately to the ceiling fan. Not a thread of an air current blew past them. The room began to smell of feet, armpits, fermenting sugar.

Then, again, ‘Someone needs to topple this government.’

‘In our country,’ said an elderly man thus far silent, ‘Prime Ministers do nothing but play musical chairs.’

‘Han, han.
As soon as the people stop cheering, another one sits down!’

There was laughter, and jokes as to which one of the two still circulating had the bigger bottom.

The old man tugged his long white beard and declared, ‘Definitely he does, but
she
has two. Three if you count her husband’s favorite horse!’

Applause. The air lightened. Perhaps the pressure was off Daanish now. But no, when the laughter subsided, his chacha hooked him. ‘It doesn’t happen there, does it? There, the President always completes his term.’

There was a general chorus of, ‘There, of course!’

Daanish breathed deeply. He must contribute positively this time. ‘Another great thing is that there, people stand in lines.’

‘There, of course!’

He was getting in the spirit: ‘The bijly seldom goes.’

All eyes gazed beckoningly at the stubborn ceiling fan. ‘There, of course!’

Daanish shut his eyes. ‘The air is clean and crisp. In the winter, the snow gives gently under your boots, in autumn the colors are like the softest firelight, and in spring …’

He was back in the sunken garden. He could smell the dew as he lay on the grass. Pollen dusted the air. He wasn’t even sure what he said next, just that everyone agreed, and that another presence had crept beside him. It had eyes like his, a plump midriff, and legs strong and lean. It listened, transfixed, as Daanish confessed to missing his walks in the cedar forest. So it went with him, laughing in a wonderful, grizzly way, happy to be out in the world instead of locked in the inward, tail-biting frenzy of the mourners. It said, ‘My son, you will be a better mold of me.’

And then the room fell silent. Slowly, the men began reading again. Daanish realized he was scrunched in his chacha’s embrace and that his face was wet.

When the war broke, television showed planes dropping missiles with absolute precision. At the same time, the print media disclosed that the Pentagon had rules for war coverage. In his journal, Daanish insisted these rules amounted to deleting the war entirely. Absolutely no gore was shown. There were no wounded soldiers on either side, no schools in flame, no detonated sewage systems, no Iraqi civilians – the American public would not see even one, dead, dying or alive. There were no war hospitals, no interviews with patients receiving any medication, no broken oil pipelines, no blown-up dams inundating thousands of square miles. None of that happened. The war was surgical and pure. There was no suffering. And Wayne continued deleting Daanish’s journal entries.

In the TV lounge of Daanish’s dorm, only a handful of students followed even the sterilized news. One day he looked inside it on his way to Fully Food. The lounge was dark and warm with plush pink sofas. Pizzas speckled the carpet. Coke stained it. There was a rustling as fingers probed paper bags for
popcorn. The seventy-two-inch screen featured an aerial sortie. Ready–aim–fire.The projectile cruised in a velvety sky. It could have been fired from the starship
Enterprise.
Any minute now, the spacecraft would save the world from ugly green aliens.

A student, donning a T-shirt that said
Food Not Bombs,
yawned and said he’d had enough. He then emptied his popcorn down the shirt of the woman beside him. She laughed, hollering at the missile, ‘That’s what you get for oppressing your women, suckers.’

Days later, Daanish skipped all his classes, and skipped Fully Food.

Hunkering in a corner of the library, he started taking notes from a few small American publications that defied the Pentagon’s gag order. One disclosed the use of weapons employed during the Vietnam War but since declared illegal by the UN and the US. It quoted a CIA agent saying the fuel-air explosives, used to clear out dense jungles in Vietnam, made no sense in the flat desert of the Middle East, and yet the bombs were being used on frontline Iraqi troops. About napalm, a US Marine officer admitted it had been used, just as in Vietnam, against both troops and civilians. So were cluster bombs. Another lamented that on television, one general called the air strikes ‘a party’.