Broken Verses (30 page)

This year, with Beema in Islamabad, Rabia had taken over the responsibility of the family lunch, and as I was still lying in bed enjoying the light streaming in between the curtains, I heard her push through the connecting door and yell, ‘Smaani! Help! There are six disasters already, and one of them involves the Tyrant!' The Tyrant was one of Beema's aunts, and I knew immediately that the disaster was related to the Tyrant's decision, three years earlier, that she would climb no more stairs. Concomitant with this decision came her discovery of her love for ice-cream, and the sprightly slip of a woman had now transformed into a great mass of lethargy who caused many a marital row in the family when husbands declared that at the next family gathering someone else could help hoist the chair in which the Tyrant got carried up the stairs. And Rabia's flat was on the third floor.

I got out of bed, laughing. And then I continued laughing all through the morning and afternoon, as I helped Rabia and Shakeel prepare lunch, spoke to Beema and Dad who had tales of two mobile phones destroyed in one evening during Dad's attempt to demonstrate the principles of aerodynamics to one of his neighbours, and then received the relatives (the men and women resolving the crisis by taking it in shifts to carry the Tyrant up the stairs]. I even managed to remain in good humour while being lectured about my unmarried state by old great-aunts who didn't allow the absence of blood ties between us to stand in the way of their familial right to lecture me. ‘You could die a virgin]' the Tyrant said, clutching my hand. ‘It happened to a cousin of mine. And she, poor woman, was married.' All the women of her age nodded, some of them whispering the name of the cousin to each other with hands covering the side of their mouths to protect the identity of the dead woman, while the younger generations looked for a place to hide their embarrassment, the uncles started talking very loudly about cricket and the new government, and Shakeel sprinted into his studio, from where we could hear him explode into laughter.

There is this narrative, too, in my life, I thought, late in the afternoon when everyone was filing out, and more than one of the female cousins near my age whispered, giggling, ‘Don't die a virgin!' as they left. There has always been this narrative. Just for this one day I will not be hostage to that other past of mine.

Next door, the phone started ringing.

‘Aren't you going to answer it?' Rabia said. ‘It's been going every fifteen minutes for the last couple of hours.'

Here we go again.

I went into my flat, picked up the phone. No answer, no originating number. I disconnected the phone, trying not to notice the tiny fibrillations of my heart that occurred each time I heard that ring, and the rush of gratitude I felt when I answered to hear a voice on the other end, even if the voice belonged to no one I had any interest in speaking to.

I took a long siesta that afternoon, with dreams in which the sound of a ringing telephone followed me everywhere, even though I was transported back in time, trekking in the middle of desert and rock in a world in which I knew phones hadn't yet been invented.

I forgot about that dream when I woke up, but it returned to me later that evening as I was driving to Shehnaz Saeed's for dinner, replaying the day's amusing moments in my head and finding that I had almost entirely exhausted my determination to laugh at the world. I turned on to Chartered Accountants Avenue and, in the rearview mirror, I saw a motorcycle weaving its way through traffic towards me. I heard an echo of a phone ringing in my head, recalled the dream, and the nausea I felt then came from the realization that the motorcycle had been following me through the dense Eid traffic for over ten minutes now, ever since the Bar-B-Q-Tonite roundabout, just a short distance from my flat. The man driving had large dark glasses on, and the man seated behind him had a shawl loosely wrapped around him, though it wasn't really cool enough to warrant such attire.

The traffic stopped and the motorbike drew level with me. I was boxed in on all sides by cars. The man with the shawl looked in through my rolled-up window, and slowly—unbearably slowly—removed his hand from the driver's shoulder and reached beneath the shawl.

‘Eid Mubarak,' he mouthed, the hand beneath the shawl scratching his stomach, and then the motorcycle continued to snake through the traffic and turned towards Gizri.

I bit my lip and willed myself just to continue driving, without any further looks in the rearview mirror unless they were necessary to prevent an accident. A few minutes later, it was with the relief that travellers in the desert greet Bedouins bearing palm fronds and coconut water that I saluted the chowkidar at Shehnaz Saeed's house when he opened the gate for me.

The front door was ajar, and as I walked up to the doorway I saw Ed standing in the hallway, arms crossed, looking at the paintings of his mother.

I was absurdly glad to see him. ‘Hey, stranger.' I walked up to him, not sure whether to hug him or kiss him on the cheek or put my arms around his neck and see what followed

He turned around, arms still crossed, making all three options physically awkward to manage. ‘Hello, Aasmaani.' He didn't smile or show a sign of anything except indifference at my arrival.

‘Well, this is a strained moment.' He half-shrugged. ‘I see. And getting worse by the second. Should we try polite chitchat? When did you get back?'

‘Yesterday.'

‘Uh-huh. And how did filming go?'

‘Fine.'

‘Glad to hear it. And clearly the rugged wilds of Pakistan allowed you to get in touch with your inner Heathcliff. How is that experience going for you?'

‘Oh, stop it, for God's sake.' He strode into the nearest room, slamming the door behind him.

I heard footsteps and turned in their direction. The woman who had let me in when I came for lunch with Shehnaz Saeed was walking down the tiled hall towards me, her clothes white this time, as though she had switched sides in a game of draughts. ‘When he does that it means he wants you to follow him in,' she said.

‘Maybe I should just leave him alone.'

She shook her head. ‘Even as a little boy he used to think he needed to do all kinds of drama to get attention. Because his mother was so busy with her acting.' She held up a hand, cutting off a statement that I hadn't been about to make. ‘I won't hear any criticism of her. That husband went off and left her without any money, what could she do but work? But my little Adnan,' she pointed towards the door, ‘he was too young to understand that. So he'd jump out of trees and break his legs to make her stay at home. His heart,' she beat her hand against my chest, ‘it's so large he doesn't know what to do with it.' And then she was grinning suggestively at me. ‘Maybe you can teach him.'

In a surprisingly quick motion, she opened the door and pushed me inside.

I was in a study, dark save for an up-lighter on the floor, directed at a large mirror which reflected the dim light on to the bookshelves and sofas and Ed, sitting in an armchair, rocking a millefiori paperweight in his hands. The door closed behind me.

‘Is this about me or are you just in a bad mood?' I asked, staying near the door.

‘Too much these days is about you. I don't know how that happened. I can't seem to stop thinking about you.'

‘And this is a terrible thing?' I walked up to him as I spoke, resting my hand on his shoulder when I came to the end of the question.

‘Why did you call me?' He was looking down at the paperweight, which he was twisting as though to pull the clear glass off the enclosed blue, green and yellow flowers. ‘I had just convinced myself that you wouldn't call, that you weren't thinking about me. That it was over before it had really begun. Then you called. And hearing your voice, Aasmaani, it was like ... like that moment in
The Wizard of
Oz when Dorothy opens the door and the world is colour. Remember that haiku of yours? How did she recognize emerald, ruby and yellow when all she'd known was grey? She dreamed of colour, that's how she knew. And that's why she had to return home to grey Kansas. Because there's nothing more frightening than stepping into the dream closest to your heart. If it lets you down, you won't even have a dream of colour any more, you'll have nothing but grey.'

‘Is it really so impossible to believe I won't let you down?'

He looked up at me, finally. ‘You already did. When I realized you weren't calling because of me. You were calling to ensure you kept getting those damned messages from your beloved Poet. If it was the CEO giving you the letters, you'd have been calling him instead.'

I sat on the arm of his sofa. ‘Do you know the story of Merlin and Nimue?'

‘Yes. She imprisoned him in a tree.'

‘That's one way of looking at it. She needs something from him. But she can't get it unless she falls in love with him.' Then I did what I'd been wanting to do since the first time I saw Ed. I ran my fingers through the thickness of his hair. ‘I don't deny the Poet's messages are what brought us close, or that they continue to make it essential that you don't step out of my life. But, Ed, do you really think that if the CEO had been the one to give me the messages I would be sitting here playing with his hair?'

‘No. He's bald.' He glared at me as he said it. And then—it was like alchemy—he smiled. He put an arm around my waist and pulled me on to his lap.

‘Eid Mubarak,' he said. ‘How's your day been?'

‘It's had a couple of low moments, but on the whole, pretty wonderful.'

‘Am I the low moments?'

‘You were most of them. There's also a whole phone thing going on which is starting to get to me.'

‘What phone thing?' He reached up to my hair and pulled off the band that tied it up.

‘Oh, I don't know. Probably just a crank caller. I'm being paranoid. Result of getting a lecture from an esteemed journalist about staying under the radar.'

‘You've lost me. If you ever cut your hair, Aasmaani, I'll run through the streets wailing like a madman. What journalist, what radar? What have you been doing?'

‘Nothing very effective.' I held up a lock of my hair over his upper lip to see what he'd look like with a flowing moustache. ‘Unless alerting reporters and Archivists and doctor's sisters and God knows who else to my attempts at discovering what happened to the Poet can be termed effective.'

All the playfulness vanished from his face as he took hold of me by the shoulders. ‘Aasmaani, you stupid woman. What have you been doing?'

I pulled myself away, and stood up. ‘Don't talk to me in that tone.'

‘What have you done?' He was standing up too, now.

‘Nothing. Nothing that led anywhere. I went looking for answers about the Poet, that's all.'

‘You did what?' He caught my shoulders again. ‘Hasn't it occurred to you that maybe everyone was right all along? That really powerful agencies were involved with his death?'

‘He's not dead.'

He slammed his hand on the desk. ‘Whatever happened to him sixteen years ago, Aasmaani, someone—maybe several someones—planned it, and executed it, and has kept it a secret all these years. And you just decide to wake up one morning and let the world know that you've decided to be Nancy Drew.'

‘Hey!'

‘Don't “hey” me. These people are dangerous. And they're without compunction. Who do you think you're dealing with here, some incompetent cartoon goons? They can hurt you. They can kill you. They can do to you what they did to him. And that may not matter to you, and it certainly won't matter to them, but it goddamn well matters to me. Do you have any idea how much it matters to me?'

I didn't know what to say to that. I just stood, looking at him, wondering where this terrifying and terrified stranger had come from.

What an odd life I've had, I thought unexpectedly. Because it was my life I didn't stop very often to think how it must look from the outside, or how distinct it was from other lives. But here was Ed, almost delirious with panic because I had been asking questions about the Poet's death—seeing his reaction I couldn't help but feel silly about those moments of concern I had about ringing telephones or men wrapped in shawls. This was nothing. Compared to what I'd grown up with, this was nothing. I was nothing. There wasn't a thing I had yet done to shake the complacency of those men who were so assured of their ability to know exactly what was going on that they wouldn't strike unless someone posed a threat. I posed no threat. I had, to all intents and purposes, come no closer to finding Omi than in all those years I believed he was dead. That was the terrifying part. And I had no idea how to start looking for him. That, that was what was unendurable.

‘You don't really believe he's alive, do you?' I said at last.

‘Oh God, Aasmaani.' He stepped back and covered one side of his face with his hand. ‘I don't care if he's alive or not. I don't care about him. But you. You ...' He came closer to me. ‘What if he really is dead?'

I shook my head. ‘No. It's him. I know it is. And it's like a miracle.' I was speaking slowly now as for the first time I tried to explain what it meant to me to read those pages. ‘It's like ... stepping into a dream of colour.'

‘I see.' He shrugged. It took me a moment to understand why that mechanism of self-defence had come into play.

‘I'm sorry, Ed.'

He shook his head. He was unshaven, and I could imagine how his stubble would feel against my lips, the rasp of it. ‘How do you not resent him? The Poet. How? My mother ... everyone she ever ... I always ...' He stopped, drew a long breath.

‘You resent your stepfather?'

Ed made a dismissive gesture. ‘That nonentity? Hardly! I resented all the others.'

‘Oh.'

‘And I resented her for having them.'