Trespassing (4 page)

While she talked, he kept wondering if this was a date. If so, what should he be doing? All his previous encounters with women had been hasty squeezes in Karachi, inside jammed cars while a designated watchman kept an eye out for the police, who had a radar for unmarried couples. So his interactions with women were feverish and clumsy. He’d never talked to a single one he’d kissed and barely even seen what he’d touched.

Becky abruptly ended her chatter and said, ‘You know, you dream too much. You’ve got to take hold of your life, grab it by the neck and let it know who’s boss. They haven’t learned that in Mexico.’

He didn’t doubt that she’d grabbed her life by the neck. And he did concede that back at home, daydreaming was a favorite pastime. ‘It can be soothing. Life takes its course, and you become a spectator. Sometimes you really have no other choice.’

‘You
always
have a choice.’ She began stomping noisily about the room, doing he wasn’t sure what. Today she wore a pink T-shirt that said
Take Action.
Her hair was wet again, from swimming. It dripped on to her shirt so the top halves of the letters were darker, as if taking action. She started drying her hair. ‘You have a choice about every step you take, and if you’re ever doubtful, you should choose to do something about it.’ The hair dryer droned as she waved it about.

‘Sometimes,’ he shouted over the dryer, ‘you’re faced with obstacles that are bigger than you. When there’s no electricity and you can’t turn on the water pump, and it’s a hundred and ten degrees, what choice have you but to sit and let the sweat pour off?’

Grrr,
went the dryer,
woosh, wap, ee.
She appeared not to have heard. In an instant, she was done with drying and shining a mirror.

In their ensuing encounters, Daanish never saw Becky idle. Even while peeing, she crammed her senses with the numerous
glossy hair and make-up magazines stacked under her toilet sink. He found the collection odd for a Women’s Studies major, remarking also that it was not displayed with the books on feminism. But he thought it wise to keep these observations to himself. In general, he let her talk, waiting eagerly for the day their kisses would culminate in more. He was nineteen. These days especially, his virginity was making him feel ninety.

Perhaps it would happen today.

He knocked on her door. He could hear furniture screech. She shouted, ‘Who’s it?’

Daanish tried hard to infuse desirability into one small word: ‘Me!’

Nothing for several seconds. Then at last: ‘Can you come back?’

Back meant more than two months later, for the New Year’s party where she wanted to appear with someone ethnic. But when college resumed, Becky never opened the door again. So two weeks into Winter Term, he crawled into another.

It was 4.30 in the afternoon, twilight, when he trudged up the hill again, this time to Penny’s dorm. Temperatures had plummeted to sub-zero. Daanish had never known such cold. His winter boots had cost him nearly all his savings from the first term, and he grew anxious. Would the glue dry? The stitching tear? Leather thin? Shoes were notoriously short-lived in Karachi. Here they seemed to wear well. This cheered him, even though he couldn’t stop shivering, despite the thermal vest and leggings, the doctor’s black turtleneck from his London years, two wool sweaters and a down jacket. The jacket he’d purchased only yesterday with the birthday check his parents had sent. He pulled it closer to his chin and felt their presence.

He stepped where the snow was solid, not merely to save
his shoes from leather-munching slush-demons, but also for the sound of snow crunching under his boots. Good, sturdy boots. Around him, icicles hung off branches, changing to russet gold in the setting sun. Two crystals suddenly rose upward and grew in size. One sported a handsome cap. They flew into a large dogwood that slouched over the gym where he and Becky had first met, and began to whistle.

It was the high-pitched call that made him realize he’d been looking at a pair of cardinals, and not a flurry of possessed hail. The birds considered him, breasts forward, the male’s crest erect, the female singing again. Daanish paused. His father would have enjoyed this – the frost, the birdcall in the starkness. Back at home, he was probably in his study, smoking Dunhills. Daanish sank lower into the doctor’s woolens. Beneath all the layers, a string of seashells pressed into his flesh.

He’d skipped lunch again – it was hard for him to eat at Fully Food even on his days off. His stomach rumbled. If he’d had an extra five dollars, he’d have walked straight into town and ordered one of those delectable melts he’d seen his roommate eat.

Passing the house where Becky lived, he casually glanced in its direction, hoping she’d see him walking to another building. It was on one of his many hikes up to Becky’s that he’d bumped into Penny last fall. She was, in her own words, a poetess, dancer, and nurturer. Not as trim as Becky but in her own way, just as spry, and though she too favored authenticity, it was secondary to circularity. Actually, she clarified, authentic was the offspring of circular. Or was it the other way around? It didn’t really matter, since it all came back to The Beginning. She liked her own explanation so well it became a poem. In fact, it always
had been
a poem, she was just the medium. Like Becky, she too believed in taking action, but, she cautioned, always listen to your body first.

Fine advice, Daanish had mused several weeks ago, when
she led him to a forest of birch and maple, stripped from the waist down, and jumped into a pile of golden leaves. At last! He undressed, nearly screamed when the chill hit him, and rushed in after her. They rolled on the thick mattress of fallen leaves, Daanish trembling and ecstatic. But why was it taking so long to find her?

‘You’re a virgin!’ she giggled as he plunged into her belly for the fifth time. He thrust up her Amazonian thighs, poked the crack of her buttocks, and went full circle (just as Penny knew one always went), back to her belly. She was both irritated and amused, and at last said, ‘We’ve got to stop. This is beginning to hurt.’

He was mortified. She sat up, fingered his penis till it grew stiff again, and encouraged him to listen to his body.

‘What does it say?’ she whispered.

His eyes nearly fell out of their sockets.
What do you think it says?
he wanted to shout, the color in his cheeks horribly like the sanguine leaves beneath them. He was harder than the trees smirking around him, and began to despair. He was going to climax in her hand.

‘Let it happen,’ she encouraged. ‘Don’t hold back.’ She prepared to lie down with him again but it was too late. His semen sprayed her knees. The forest shook with mirth, dropping yet more leaves.

The color rose again to his cheeks as he trudged up the hill, remembering that day. Disturbingly vivid about it all was the sound of their bodies on the mattress of leaves. It was not like crushing paper, nor like rubbing two starched shirts. Not quite like a voile dupatta trailing on grass, but maybe closer to a child’s rattle or iron shavings sliding at the bottom of a can. It was a sound that lowered Daanish to the sinking depths of shame. Every walk he took that fall brought the memory back stronger, and when a chipmunk bounced or bird hopped in the blanket of leaves that covered the campus, he heard the chorus of the laughing trees.

Fortunately, snow covered the campus now. And Penny had very kindly decided to downplay the event – thank God it hadn’t been Becky. He was successful at last in the early morning after their first night together. Perhaps he’d been too sleepy to panic, and had instead, as Penny advised, listened to his body.

She was waiting for him in a flowing pastel skirt and coarse purple sweater. Her thick legs were wrapped in mauve tights. She warmed his lips with her own. Her room smelled of lilacs and cooked fruit, a result of the candles burning on the windowsill. On the bed and loveseat were piles of pillows. The ceiling was covered in a deep purple sheet on which she’d drawn her galaxy: crescent and circular moons, and stars. In a corner sat a covered dish. Daanish eyed it hungrily. She lifted the cloth: cheesecake with two pencil candles.

‘I’m starving,’ he drooled.

‘How long are you going to reject dorm food?’

‘As long as the sight of it makes me puke.’

‘Then you have to come up with something else, Day-nish you poor thing, or you’ll get sick.’ She kissed his nose and lit the candles. ‘Happy Birthday!’

‘Thanks, Penny.’ He blew the candles out and waited impatiently for a slice of cake. He wolfed in silence, suddenly depressed. She was the only one in this college of three thousand who knew he turned twenty today. She ruffled his hair while he ate. She was giving, kind, and yet he could think of nothing at all to say to her. He sat on Penny’s bed, under Penny’s galaxy, in Penny’s candlelight. If she snuffed it all out, where would he go?

Daanish sat down with a thump. He’d made it back to his seat just as the Fasten Your Seat Belt sign lit up. The water acquired from a pleasant stewardess for himself and Khurram spilled over them both. But as usual, his companion was delighted. His eyes danced, ‘Now we are having fun.’ Though water had fallen on her too, in the aisle seat Khurram’s mother stayed rolled up in a deep sleep.

Khurram said, ‘You don’t talk very much. You are like my mother, but not my father. I got his tongue. And when he jabbered on, she did just that.’ He pointed to the blanketed bundle. Only a shriveled nose and closed eyelids poked out. He slapped his chubby, Levi’d thighs and laughed heartily. ‘Now I am insisting you tell me what is going on in your brilliant mind. I know you are like my brother in Amreeka. Always thinking. Never enjoying life. One day you will be so successful, and by the grace of Allah, support your jolly younger brother!’

Daanish laughed. ‘I have no brothers.’

‘Ah! That is first thing you are telling me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It is taking fourteen hours.’

‘I’m glad I’m not the only one keeping meticulous track of the time.’

Khurram rubbed his hands. ‘No brothers? Your poor parents. Sisters?’

‘No. Only cousins. And too many.’

He swiveled around to better face Daanish, and his stomach torqued under the seatbelt. ‘How can you say that? There can never be too many.’

Daanish didn’t have the heart to tell him that as of three days ago, he didn’t even have a father.

The ride was markedly smoother now, and the seatbelt sign switched off. Khurram returned to Nintendo. After a while he said, ‘We’ll be in Lahore soon. Then Karachi, at last. Who is to picking you up?’

My father, thought Daanish, his absence hitting him.

They touched Karachi four hours later.

‘We’re here!’ Khurram unfastened his seatbelt. There was a bustle of activity: bangles ringing, babies screaming, the overhead storage compartments snapping open and banging shut, briefcases and shopping bags bludgeoning bottoms. Passengers were preparing to dismount before the plane had even halted. The withered voice of a stewardess asked them not to, but then she and the crackling radio together gave up.

Finally the door opened and Daanish followed the others down to the runway. The sky was a light gray haze and the leaden heat immediately stifling. Not a star shone through. He adjusted his watch to local time: 3.30 a.m.

‘The car is waiting,’ said Khurram, when they’d made it through the tangle of immigration, baggage and customs.

‘Which car? I haven’t seen my family yet.’

‘Oh ho, don’t you remember? You are the forgetful type! How did you manage alone in Amreeka for three years?’

‘Khurram, it’s been great, but I should stay where my chacha can see me.’

‘You really don’t remember calling from my mobile when we landed in Lahore? Are you sick?’ They were wheeling two carts each, though only one suitcase was Daanish’s.

Daanish frowned, ‘Remember what?’

‘Arre
paagal,’
Khurram’s cart tipped. He wrestled with a suitcase bursting at the seams. The lights were too dim to know if anything was lost, so he pawed around the gravel. ‘I told you your house is so close to mine, and since we have a driver, what is the point of disturbing your poor chacha? The flight is delaying already. We called him, and even talking to your mother. Everyone finally agreed. Nobody likes driving alone in the middle of the night these days.
Kooch to yaad ho ga?’
Khurram’s old mother zipped ahead with purpose. All those leg curls on the plane seemed to have rejuvenated her thoroughly.

Daanish was speechless. He had absolutely no recollection of the phone call. He wanted to know if he’d spoken to Anu or if Khurram had, and how she’d sounded. But he couldn’t shock Khurram any further. He followed him, feeling suddenly that
he
was the bumbling child and Khurram the adult.

The parking lot was strewn with men idly wandering about and yawning. The drawstrings of their shalwars dangled like goat-tails. They smoked, hawked, and watched families re-unite. Two little children ran up to Khurram and boldly squeezed his midriff. ‘Khurram Bhai! Khurram Bhai!’ they squealed. The girl had stick-like legs that skipped under a golden dress, while arms bedecked in bangles and fingers finely tipped in magenta nail polish waved excitedly. The boy climbed into Khurram’s arms and was attaching a balloon to one fat ear, when all at once there appeared half a dozen others. Each began vying for Khurram while his mother, with whom he’d barely conversed during the entire flight, zealously orchestrated the grabbing and pinching.

Daanish stood apart, eyeing the baggage, wondering how
they’d all fit into one car – or were there several? His attention was suddenly caught by another man obviously affiliated with the party, but like himself, not quite a part of it. He was a striking presence: dark, with cheekbones women would extract teeth for; coal-black, oiled ringlets that brushed a prominent chin; eyes an odd, bluish opal; soldierly stature; shoulders straight and solid, with curves decipherable enough through a thin kameez in the dim light. He seemed aware of cutting an impressive figure and turned his head, allowing Daanish a view of his haughty, chiseled profile. Daanish raised an amused brow.