Salt and Saffron (19 page)

The woman in the drawing room had her back to me when I entered. She was looking at a painting of the Dard-e-Dil palace grounds. Hard to believe that my grandparents played in these grounds as children. The long driveway and manicured lawns were a little too tidy for my taste, but I loved the scattered sculptures – particularly the fountain with its statue of a bear cupping his hands to catch the water that spurted out of a baby elephant's trunk. The palace, with its harmonious mix of straight lines and arches, stood in the background.

‘From the roof we could see forever. In 1947, turn this way and you'd see Hindu mobs burning down Muslim houses; turn that way and you'd see the Muslims doing the same to the Hindus. But not in Dard-e-Dil itself. You have to give the Nawab credit for that.'

Dadi's sister, Meher, turned around and smiled at me. ‘I'm getting old,' she said. ‘I'm thinking favourably of that
depraved aristocracy from which I was so fortunate to escape. Come here and hug me.'

I put my arms around her and she said, ‘Why does my sister persist in cluttering her walls with these mementoes of bygone decadence? What do you think she'd say if we took all the paintings down while she was away?'

‘She'd tell us to put them back up, and not crookedly.'

I pulled back and looked at Meher Dadi and laughed. She was wearing a sari with a sleeveless blouse, and her silver hair was impeccably styled. ‘If this is getting old, bring on those birthday cakes. I thought you weren't getting in until tomorrow.'

‘Changed my mind. Arrived this morning. I called Sameer last night from Athens airport to tell him I was on my way. My poor grandson! He had to wake up at some terrible hour this morning to pick me up, but what can I do? I so enjoy the element of surprise.' She sat down, her hands resting on the arms of the chair as though it were a throne.

‘How's Apollo?'

She looked amused. ‘For the sake of propriety we're all supposed to pretend that he's just my banker who has, over the years, become a friend. He's fine.'

‘Will he ever come to Karachi?'

‘Don't be silly. Why should my banker come to Karachi?'

‘Have you ever thought about marrying him?'

Her eyebrows rose sharply. ‘Well, we're suddenly very upfront. Have you been spending time with Samia?' She made a dismissive gesture. ‘I don't think his wife would approve of the match. Are you shocked?'

‘Yes.' Deeply, deeply shocked.

‘Good. You should be. I don't sanction taking marriage
lightly. She's Catholic. Doesn't believe in divorce. Other than that she's not too bad. He was in a little accident last year. Nothing serious. But when the police notified her she called me. I thought that very decent. Why don't you ever visit me in Greece?'

‘I suppose I'll have to, just so I can meet this mystery man. Does he look like a Greek god?'

‘A fat, bald octogenarian. I'm feeling very prudish now, so let's change the subject.'

‘Prudish? You've asked me to come and stay in the house where the two of you live together.'

‘We do not. He lives with an old friend next door. Well, when any of my relatives come to stay he does. Now change the subject.'

I tried to imagine any of my friends having this kind of conversation with a great-aunt. Impossible. Usually it was people of Meher Dadi's generation talking about marriage and people my age trying to change the subject.

‘There's something I want to show you.' I ran into Dadi's room and brought out the picture, newly framed, from Baji's flat. ‘I met Baji in London. She gave me this photograph. I thought Dadi should have it. I never know where I'll find it when I go into her room. One day it's by her bedside table, the next day on her dresser, the day after that it's hidden away in a drawer.'

Meher Dadi took the picture in both hands and looked at it for only a moment before putting it face down on the coffee table. ‘I can't look at it. It breaks my heart. Even now.' She looked up at me. ‘Why is that? I can look without sadness at pictures of all the dead I've wept for – my parents, my husband, my childhood friends – but this picture, oh Aliya, I wish you hadn't shown it to me.'

‘Dadi said the man in the centre is Taimur. Not Akbar.'

Meher Dadi's face went blank. ‘Your Dadi and I were close to all three of the brothers.'

I knew that blank expression. I'd worn it often enough myself. ‘There's something you're not telling me.'

‘And you should respect that.' Dadi swept into the room in her best imperious manner. ‘Meher, the painting of the palace is crooked. Why can't you ever …' The end of the sentence was lost in Meher's hair as the sisters held each other and swayed back and forth, Meher's arms around Dadi's neck. For all their wrinkles and hanging flesh they looked unspeakably lovely. When they drew apart Dadi wiped a tear off her sister's cheek; the action would have been merely efficient if it hadn't taken that extra split-second to accomplish.

‘You arrive early just so you can catch me looking less than my best,' Dadi sniffed. ‘I'm going to freshen up. Aliya will entertain you.'

Meher Dadi rolled her eyes. ‘Oh Apa, I'm not some beau coming to call on you.'

Dadi ignored that comment. Just before she left the room she said, ‘Tell Aliya about Partition.'

‘Which details?'

‘The ones she doesn't know.'

She was trying to ensure I didn't ask any more questions about Taimur. He had been gone for nine years by the time Partition took place and, despite my fascination with all family history, I really wasn't interested in 1947 at that particular instant. But I couldn't very well tell Meher Dadi that; not with what Partition had meant to her generation.

‘What do you know about the not-quites and nineteen forty-seven?'

Only that of all the twin stories, Akbar and Sulaiman's was the one I never told to entertain crowds. Not for the same reason that I never told Mariam Apa's story; no, Akbar and Sulaiman left no great mark on my psyche. Their story was just, well, boring. Judge for yourself: the two brothers (Taimur now long gone) disagreed politically. Akbar was a Leaguer, Sulaiman was a Congress man. One believed that Nehru and the Congress were dangerously power-hungry; the other believed the same of Jinnah and the League. The brothers fought; the fighting turned bitter. The whole family was drawn into the battle and forced to take sides – all other causes of division and unity among the Dard-e-Dils were forgotten, and all that remained were the Pakistan camp and the united-India camp. When Partition actually took place, one country coming to life on 14 August, the other on 15 August, the Dard-e-Dils sighed, said, ‘Born on opposite sides of midnight like Akbar and Sulaiman,' and took that as a sign that the family rift was inevitable. It was the curse of the not-quites raining down on the Dard-e-Dils yet again, except this time, instead of losing land, wealth or architectural plans, they were losing each other.

(Later, during the bloodshed of 1971, when East Pakistan became Bangladesh, there were those in my family who said it was inevitable. Because there had been three brothers. If Akbar and Sulaiman were Pakistan and India, then of course there had to be a third country to represent Taimur. The stupidity of that statement is unparalleled, but it seems sagacious compared to the other kinds of stupidity that did the rounds of West Pakistan in those days. Let me take that back. Stupidity is too tame a word to describe justifications of genocide and rape. Dadi always
claimed that 1971 killed Akbar. Not the war, the talk. His heart couldn't take that hatred. One of the last things he said was, ‘But if the three of us couldn't work things out what hope is there for anyone? We are lost, utterly lost.' This deserves more than an aside, but I've lived too long with silence about those dreadful days, and I lack the heart and stomach to speak of things I don't even want to believe possible.)

To return to Meher Dadi and her reaction to my version of Akbar and Sulaiman's fight: she laughed.

‘Look at them,' she said. She held up the photograph, palm covering Dadi's face so I was forced to focus on the three boys. ‘Akbar, Taimur, Sulaiman.' She pointed to each in turn. Yes, that was Taimur in the middle, but he wasn't keeping the other two apart as I had first thought. Akbar's arm lay atop Sulaiman's arm, across Taimur's shoulder. Akbar's fingers pulled Sulaiman's ear lobe; Sulaiman's palm cupped Akbar's neck. ‘You think Nehru or Jinnah could have ripped these boys apart? They'd have left the country together, moved to Timbuktoo, if they thought national politics threatened to make enemies of them.'

‘What are you saying?'

‘Aliya, you have to understand love.'

Oh, that again.

‘Aliya, when did your grandfather leave Dard-e-Dil for Karachi?'

‘Summer, nineteen forty-six.'

She nodded. ‘Hasn't that ever struck you as strange?'

Before she even finished the sentence I realized how strange, how very strange the timing was. In the summer of 1946 no one knew for sure that Pakistan would become a
reality. So how could Akbar's reason for coming to Karachi have been his desire to be a Pakistani?

Meher Dadi turned slightly and pointed up at the painting of the Dard-e-Dil palace again. ‘He made his decision there, on the first of July, nineteen forty-six.'

The family, she said, had gathered on that date for the Nawab's birthday but, coming so close after Congress's rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan, the evening was anything but celebratory at the start. Sulaiman and his wife had just returned from a European holiday and when dinner was served, the promise of wine and food turning the evening festive at last, he and Akbar broke away from the rest of the crowd and forwent the delicacies of the royal kitchen to sit on a verandah and talk. The three months Sulaiman had been away was the longest period the brothers had ever been apart, and Meher Dadi recalled how, even during the initial stages of the party, Akbar was more cheerful than he had been for weeks. Dadi watched the brothers walk towards the verandah and said, ‘Thank God.' She asked Sulaiman's wife, ‘Is your husband also impossible to live with when his brother isn't around?' Sulaiman's wife – a beautiful but insipid woman whom Sulaiman had married in haste without remembering the repentance part of the axiom – probably responded but Meher Dadi swears she can't remember a word the woman ever said. Nor does she remember what took her to the room which led out to the verandah where the brothers sat, but she can't forget what she heard when she got there.

At first it seemed like just another conversation about politics, although how anyone could think any discussion of politics was ‘just another conversation' in 1946, I don't know. In fact, I'm sure that right from the beginning there
must have been something about the conversation which marked it as unusual. Why else would Meher Dadi have stayed to eavesdrop?

Imagine a summer night with crickets chirping and a cool breeze carrying away the oppressive heat of the sunlight hours. In the background, the tinkle of glass and laughter and the spurt of water from fountains. But something else was in the air – an edge of desperation to the revelries. Someone that evening had reached down to a flower bed and let a handful of rich loam trickle through his fingers and, though he was merely looking for a fallen pearl button, the word ‘symbolic' raced through the gathering. Seemingly oblivious to this, two brothers, identical, reclined on garden chairs, the glow of cigarettes held between their gesturing fingers prompting fireflies to swoop in for a closer look.

‘How can you say you believe both in secularism and in this Pakistan idea?' Sulaiman picked up an ashtray and held it on his knee, within Akbar's reach.

‘I believe in secularism. But I don't believe in Congress. If they aren't willing to compromise now, why should they do so when the British leave? Oh, Sully, the divisions exist. Blame it on who you will – the British, the politicians, the Hindus, the Muslims, whoever. Fact is, they exist today to an extent they never have before. And relationships are not motor cars; they can't be reversed. Not between individuals; not between groups. Certainly not between Congress and the League. If the English had left after World War One things might have been different. But now it's too late for the dream, Sulaiman.'

‘If this Pakistan comes into being and you support it, then it will be too late.'

‘Don't you see that history has left us behind?' He passed his cigarette to Sulaiman, who always liked the last drag best. ‘The other not-quites shaped history; we are shaped by it. We have no power except over our own lives.'

‘And each other's, Akbar.' Sulaiman stood up and Meher Dadi ducked back into the shadows of the room to avoid being seen. She always regretted doing that, she said. Maybe if she'd stepped out, stopped the conversation, everything would have been different.

‘How can you even consider leaving your home?' Sulaiman said with a gesture meant to encompass all of Dard-e-Dil. ‘Because that's what you're thinking about, isn't it? It's not just in theory that you're “for” Pakistan. You actually want to go there, don't you? We both know that however the borders are decided – I can't believe I'm talking about this as though it will really happen – but if it does, there's no chance that Dard-e-Dil will fall in Pakistan. So if you choose Pakistan you have to forfeit home. How can you do that? I don't understand how anyone can do that, let alone my brothers. First Taimur, now you.'

Akbar sighed. ‘When Pakistan happens – and it will happen, Sulaiman … I thought for a while that the Cabinet Mission Plan might work, but since Nehru has chosen not to accept … Oh, but never mind that for the moment. Yes, when Pakistan happens we'll all have to choose whether to stay here or go there, and I believe I'll go. But I'll only be going next door.' He laughed. ‘I mean, it's hardly as though I'm planning never to see the rest of my family again. Most of the Dard-e-Dils will stay here, I know that. But I wish you'd think about coming with me. Think of it, Sulaiman: a new country with all the potential in the world.' He gestured around him, just as Sulaiman
had done seconds earlier. ‘Let's admit it, this life is over. And for all its decadence and claustrophobia we'll weep for it. But we'll scold our children if they do the same. Maybe that's why Taimur left when he did. He didn't want to watch his world die.'