The Scatter Here Is Too Great (8 page)

He looked at me with lit-up eyes, lifting the coconut slice caught in between his thumb and finger. “Yes!” He lifted his other hand for a high five. He broke the slice in two and I took the half he offered me. The taste of the scrubby-sweet-watery texture filled my mouth.

“It's just two rupees,” I said, trying to make my point casually. “Why take the risk?”

“
Abay
, it is not about two rupees or five rupees,” he said looking at me, his face still red with the triumph. “It's about practicing.” He smiled.

“Practice?” I was puzzled.

“Yes, if you're going to get anywhere in this place, you must protect yourself from getting fucked, and the moment you get a chance, you must fuck the other person. You understand? That takes practice. Learn the lesson early,” he said exultantly, chucking the last bite of coconut in his mouth.

The bus started moving. I looked out the window and caught a glimpse of the coconut seller rearranging the slices on the tray. I felt a sting: he seemed to be counting for the missing.

Right then, I realized Sadeq was conversing with an odd-shaped head wiggling in front of him. “My knee, you know, I cannot sit in that seat,” it was saying to him. “Can I sit here, please hunh? You can take my seat, it's right here, just behind this one, hunh?”

Sadeq made a face and moved to the seat behind ours. A short, crooked man in a light crumpled red-checked shirt appeared beside me. His head was sparsely haired and defined like an overgrown lightbulb which was screwed with a tiny mouth. He had no teeth on the upper level, and the ones below, which he used for smiling continuously, jutted out in a constant display. I noticed the top buttons of his shirt were loose and revealed the crinkly skin of his chest.

He smiled looking at me as I ate the last bit of my coconut. I nodded and turned to look out of the window. He tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the red checks on my bag. “Your bag matches my shirt—huee huee!” he said, looking amused.

I smiled and looked away again.

He paused and then leaned closer to whisper in my ear, “Run from school, eh?”

Before I could reply, I heard his sniggering laughter. “Huee huee huee! I used to do the same . . . run from school. In fact, I ran away from college then from work. And now I am retired, I run away from my home!”

I was unsure about how to react to this information. He continued, “You know, I don't go home for days because I like it here in the city—around all the noise and people.”

“Hmm . . .” I nodded.

“You know what I do around here?” he said somewhat triumphantly, after a thoughtful pause. “Guess?”

I looked at him completely puzzled. “I don't know?”

“Huee huee . . . I look for others who have run away and I write their stories. I am a
writer
,” he said with emphasis and looked at me with a delighted expression. His abundant glee disturbed me and I think he detected my discomfort. He immediately added, “All of it completely imaginary, of course.”

“Hmm . . .” I said.

“Here, shake my hand,” he said. “You are my friend now.” He pushed his hand forward. I looked at it, and reluctantly gave him mine. He snapped it. His jaw jutted out, and from his open mouth, I saw the broken architecture of his teeth. He had a surprisingly powerful grip. “You see the power in this hand?” he said, his face glowing. “You know how old I am?”

My hand was hurting. I looked around to see Sadeq. He had dozed off on his seat. “No,” I said, trying to pull away my hand. It struck me how large his hands actually were.

“Guess?”

“Eighty-three!” I blurted out of sheer pain.

“Yes! Eighty-three! I turned eighty-three yesterday! See I told you people who run away are friends!” He released my hand. I felt the crushing pain in my hand but I didn't look at it. “I will write your story now,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“To the sea?” I said reluctantly.

“Ha-ha! That's where they all go when they run away at first! But then they all come back. The sea, you see, feels good for only a few days, but then it starts suffocating you. You first escape to the sea to escape yourself, but after a while that's all you find there. City is better that way. There are too many lanes and alleys. You never run into yourself there.” Then he leaned closer and said again in a whisper, “I spend my day in a café at Cantt Station. It has delicious fruitcake: cheap. Chai, so strong. Omelet, very reasonable rate. That's where you should come as well after you're tired of the sea. Okay? Look for me. I am there.
Writer
.”

“And yes, don't let them confuse you—” he said, still smiling, as if reassuring me of something he thought I was afraid of. “They will tell you all kinds of things,
philosophies
—huee huee—like I am doing now—huee huee! But that is all bogus stuff. All this philosophy business is bogus—even mine, huee huee huee. . . . It's all meant to trap. Don't listen to anyone. Just keep running away. . . .”

He went on for some time, but I stopped paying attention to what he was saying. Something about him disturbed me, something about the way he spoke about the city. He got off with us at the Cantt Station and pointed me to the café he was talking about. He made the handshaking joke with Sadeq too; he was unable to guess his age.

While we were waiting for the next bus to the sea, we watched the old man hobble along the sidewalk. He was cripplingly old and permanently bent. He waved to a select few faces as he went along the sidewalk—the cobbler, the paan seller, the little boy carrying tea, all of them stopped their work to exchange a word with him. He balanced himself by holding their shoulders. A little boy jumped when he pressed his hand. I heard his “Huee huee huee!” in my head.

“What a jerk! The bugger has totally lost it with age, eh?” Sadeq said, smiling. I didn't like that but I kept quiet.

We got on the bus. I felt my father's presence once again. It seemed to me he was there even when the old man was around, listening to him talk about his city.

“What was the bugger saying to you?” Sadeq asked as we seated ourselves in the bus again.

“Nothing, he was just proving to me how retarded he was. Telling me his adventures with whores.”

“What! Whores! Are you serious?” He jumped.

“Yeah. He even told me about a whorehouse near here, just behind some café. He said he was going there. He offered to fix us with some for cheap rates if we wanted. He said he was a pimp.”

“Oh yeah? Then why didn't he tell
me
that? Old bastard! But we should go! We should be careful. That's how they lure boys and then fuck them, ya? He looked like a bastard to me. I could tell by the way he pressed my hand.
Bhen ka
. It still hurts.”

“Yeah, but we should visit him sometime. He said he hangs out in that café.”

“Ha-ha, yes, yes. But I didn't know you were into this stuff.”

“I'm not. But I think it's about time I should start getting into this stuff, no?”

“Ha-ha, yes yes. Why not. We could start together. I have a couple of reliable links. You know, whores are shady people. You have to be careful. They have contacts with the police and ministers. They cut your dick if you mess with them. Be careful. That's what I've heard from friends.”

There was a pause. “Oh, so I was thinking”—he smiled—“about that joke you told me a few days back—the lion one, what was it? Tell it to me again. It was really funny, that one. I want to memorize it for my friends.”

“Ha-ha, not now,” I said.

“What do you mean not now?”

“I mean I don't feel like it?”

“
Abay
you fucked-up? Why not?”

I looked at him in the eye; I knew he'd be sore if I refused—but I really didn't want to talk about it, especially because I wasn't feeling good. The old man was nice to me—I shouldn't have said all that about him.

I wanted to refuse, but then I just decided to get it over with quickly. The joke went something like this:

Once upon a time a fox goes outside a lion's lair and starts swearing at the lion who is sleeping inside: “Oh fuck you, you cur! If you have any shame, come out and get me! Who's made you the king, you whore! Hey bastard, come now!” The lion glances at the fox with one eye still closed and turns over and continues sleeping. The fox continues to swear at the lion, and then even goes on to challenge his manhood. The lioness, who is witnessing all this, is outraged: “What kind of a lion are you? Go get this half-breed of a fox, otherwise I'll have to do something!” When the lion ignores her as well, the lioness roars and runs after the fox. The fox dodges her and leads her into a hole in a tree trunk, through which the fox slips but the lioness gets stuck because of her bigger behind. The fox comes around and does a job on her backside—and disappears happily. When she finally returns to the den, she finds her husband angrily pacing up and down. He bursts out the moment he sees her, “Are you happy now? Why do you think I was so sleepy? I was fucked five times last night!”

Sadeq laughed hard (“Ha-ha-ha! Five times! Fox! Ha-ha-ha!”). I turned away to look outside the window.

We are sitting on a footpath, facing the Empress Market-bustle and sharing a glass of lemonade from the pushcart. Before us, the perennial Empress Market traffic jam: cars, rickshaws locked behind buses on the narrow strip of road, and the buses,
gurring
their engines as they wait for their seats to fill up before taking off.

My head feels hot and my tears are drying on my face. The slipper on my foot seems a dead, dust-ridden animal with a broken strap and mauled face.

It happened very quickly: I tripped and fell while trying to keep up with his pace. My slipper got lost under hundreds of feet. He had turned immediately and lifted me up. “Are you okay?” he asked in a worried tone. I told him to find my slipper, which he did. But without realizing, I was crying—my palms and elbows were scratched with blood and dust, the skin grazed and burning.

Soft drinks are a luxury my father cannot afford, but I am a crying child, so he takes me to the lemonade pushcart. He watches me with a smile while I slurp it up. I ask him, “Baba, aren't you thirsty?” He shakes his head. I forcefully give him a sip. He takes a sip and returns it to me. He's a storyteller and he's looking at the buildings, as if daydreaming what it's like to be inside. He has receded into his recollection mood. He points me to the blue Konica 1-hour photo board in front of us. “When I was in college, instead of that, there was a horse-riding cap store. This place was the heart of the city, cleanest in all of the city. The most chic crowd came here. That building you see there was a billiard room. Expensive stuff. We couldn't go there on our student budget. That corner store, which is selling cheap socks, was a cabaret and a bar. But come.” He gets up and we walk.

He walks the streets with his arms spread wide, his chin cocked up. He walks as if he owns the city. We dodge a few pushcarts and he pauses to let a man complete spitting his phlegm in front of him. He stares at the man, who does not pay any attention to him. I pull him on and we then run to cross the road to reach the sidewalk of a park where the air turns into an incredible stench of piss. He points me to the building in front of us, which is a crumbling colonial facade on top and a camera store below. “That was the India Coffee House,” he says. “All the intellectuals, poets, and artists came there. You remember the sketches I have at home? All of them were made by my friend Salahuddin over a cup of tea. Everyone I met, everything I know about life and politics, I learned from there. I came here with my friends after college, which was near the old Karachi University campus.” He takes a pause to laugh. “The owner of that place used to shout when he looked at me:
Ho ho! Here he comes, our young intell-kachool!
”

I look at his smiling face and then turn to look at the decrepit old building and try to reconcile the emotion. It is then, perhaps, for the first time I am confronted with the fact that places and people are like things: both made of memories and meaningful to us in the same way: we construct ourselves in our conversations with them.

I am perhaps too young to realize all this, but my relationship with the city has already been established. It is one of perpetual loss.

Sadeq and I sat on the ledge facing the sea, our shirts filled with the gusty breeze. Our frenzied excitement upon first seeing the sea had subsided, and now we were flicking roasted chickpeas into our mouths. We were calm and without the need to speak with each other.

The sea at 11:00
A
.
M
. was one Karachi dream that came true each day. It was one part of the city that remained as it ever was: a vast desert of water meeting a uniform spread of gray sand that shimmered with litter in sunlight: plastic bags lolled their heads in the constant wind, half-buried glass bottles stuck their radiant necks out of the sand, varieties of seaweed lay wasted like old mop cloths, and the sea breeze was forever at work scrubbing sand on everything that interrupted its movement. And then, the crows—everywhere. The sea was full of them. We watched them as they scampered, all at the same instant, lunging and snatching after a piece of bread or any desirable or shiny object—they made one-legged, lopsided landings, flipping and flailing in the sea breeze and colliding into one another without caring a damn about anything. And then after eating the piece of bread or whatever they scavenged, they played among themselves with the wild abandon of children still learning the rules of the game. In some sense, the crows embodied the spirit of the city itself. To me, they looked like litter with wings.