The principal, who was English, as English as only an Englishman in Pakistan can be, walked past with a baleful look in Zia’s direction. Zia saluted him and sat down.
‘Ok, so, Sonia, what do you want me ask the Queen?’
‘I just want to know if she got really depressed when they aged her on the coins.’
Zia, Karim and I laughed, and if Zia looked at Sonia in a way that neither Karim nor I looked at Sonia, I was simply too happy or too oblivious to notice it. Secret passions lurked in the breast of my boy Zia, but I was stupid enough to mistake the dupatta on his sleeve for his heart.
To sum up our little love triangle: I had a crush on Zia and Zia had a crush on Sonia and Sonia worried about hell. Hell is being a teenager worrying about hell, but Sonia exercised a steely grip on anything resembling a hormone and choked the life out of it. Once, soon after we had become friends, I tried convincing her to let her imagination run wild with some guy, any guy — there had to be someone out there — and she just smiled that wicked smile of hers that undercut her every dutiful utterance and said, ‘When you know you’re going to have an arranged marriage, you start preparing early on. I’m a lot happier than you, have you noticed?’
‘So what do you think about to make yourself happy while I’m sitting here getting so blue I’m purple over Zia?’
‘Heaven.’ And then she looked so pious I knew she was joking.
Sonia was, we used to say, ‘from a conservative family’. Or, at least, that’s how Karim used to put it, though Zia was more apt to say, ‘They’re just not like us, yaar, though Sonia’s got potential.’ Conservative or not-like-us, put it however you want. The fact was, Sonia couldn’t go to parties if boys were going to be there; she couldn’t sit alone in a car with a boy for even a second, which is why Zia would always pick me up before picking her up even though that made no logistical sense; she couldn’t speak to boys on the telephone unless the door was open and her parents could hear everything. There were plenty of girls at school with me who had much the same restrictions, but Sonia’s family was the most ‘not like us’ of all because none of our parents knew her parents, none of our cousins were married to her cousins, none of our uncles had done business with her uncles. So naturally everyone concluded that it was shady, very shady, dealings that had enabled her father to move his family to the poshest part of town, enrol his daughter in the most elite school in the nation, and install those gold taps in his bathroom.
Zia was particularly scathing about the gold taps. And about the general décor of Sonia’s house. ‘Let’s go over to Horror House,’ he’d often say. ‘I feel like a laugh. Let’s go and see the latest acquisitions. What will they think of next? Leopard-print cushion covers made of real leopard skin? A reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Diamond-encrusted calligraphy on the nameplate, with an armed guard employed to shoot on sight anyone who ventures too close to it? Any and all of the above are possible when there’s enough money to buy everything except good taste. Come on, Raheen!’ He never just said, ‘Let’s go and visit Sonia,’ so perhaps I should have seen how hard he was trying to cover up his desire for her company, but I didn’t. I didn’t see anything at all in those days, least of all how strong a part Sonia’s conservatism played in my friendship with her. If she had been willing to entertain romantic notions, surely she would have entertained them about Zia, and how would I have forgiven her that?
We were still laughing when someone called out my name. It was the fast bowler who had remained unfazed by the football. ‘You want anything from the tuck shop, Raheen?’ he called out. I had known him all my life; his parents used to live next door to us. But he was two years older than I, and when he entered the Senior School and I was left behind in the Junior School he’d stopped acknowledging my presence. Among some of my classmates, he was something of a heart-throb. Too surprised by this turnaround after four years of silence to decide whether I wanted another Coke or packet of chilli chips, I just shook my head and raised my hand in a gesture that might have been a ‘thank you’.
Sonia poked me in the ribs. ‘What was that?’
I shrugged. Zia was struggling back into his blazer, flipping up the collar and then smoothing it back down again. Nothing like a fifteen-year-old fast bowler to make a thirteen-year-old look like a novice in the game of cool. I had to bite back the urge to say to Zia, ‘Oh, just give up.’
‘I think he likes you,’ Sonia whispered. The fast bowler had turned round to look at me again, and I swear he winked. ‘He’s really cute.’
I didn’t agree with that latter assessment at all, but Zia was not looking happy so I said, with all the casualness at my disposal, ‘Maybe I’ll go out with him.’
‘What?’ Karim turned to me. ‘Don’t be so stupid.’
‘What’s your problem?’ I said. He had turned quite red.
‘He’s right, though. It would be really dumb to go out with that guy,’ Zia said. I almost didn’t hear him; I was too busy trying to figure out what was making Karim so upset. Surely he knew I was joking? And if he didn’t, that still didn’t explain his attitude.
‘He doesn’t respect girls.’ Karim was sounding positively huffy.
‘Respect isn’t what I want from him.’ I tried to smile in a knowing way.
‘Shut up, Raheen,’ Karim shouted.
‘Oho!’ Sonia put a hand on both our wrists. ‘Raheen’s not that kind of girl, Karim. Don’t worry about her.’
‘What kind of girl am I not?’
‘The kind of girl Betty is,’ Zia said.
‘Huh?’ The three of us turned to stare at him.
‘Yeah,’ Zia said. He had tied my dupatta into a bandanna around his forehead, and was lying back on his elbow, lord of all he surveyed. ‘Betty who I met in London last summer. I didn’t mention it before because, you know, I do respect girls. I don’t kiss-and-tell.’
‘That’s because you don’t kiss,’ Karim said. ‘Where did this Betty suddenly come from?’
Zia raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t get jealous, Karim. She was this girl I met last summer in London. We…well, a gentleman doesn’t talk about that kind of stuff.’
He was really such a terrible liar that I couldn’t even begin to feel jealous. Or was it that I didn’t even begin to feel jealous and decided that was because he was a terrible liar?
‘Zia!’ Sonia said, appalled.
‘Oh, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.’ Karim started laughing. ‘OK, go on, describe her to us. What colour was her hair?’
‘Golden.’
Karim and I shrieked with laughter. ‘You could at least—’ I said, and burst into laughter again.
‘—At least say blonde,’ Karim finished.
Sonia scrunched up her face and looked from Zia to Karim and me. ‘Blonde Betty? Archie comics?’
‘Archie comics!’ Karim was bent double, his face almost touching my knee. ‘Show some originality, man.’
Zia stood up, and flung my dupatta to the ground.
‘Oh hey, Zia, come on,’ Karim said. ‘We’re just joking around. Sit down, yaar, come on.’
Zia was looking at Sonia. I was looking at Zia and trying not to notice that I thought he was being ridiculous.
‘Don’t be angry,’ Sonia reached a hand out and lightly touched his sleeve. ‘I’m sure there really are blonde Bettys in London. Aren’t there?’ She turned to Karim and me, a fierce look on her face, daring us to contradict her.
Karim and I nodded. Karim nodded a little more fervently than I did. The bell rang, and so Zia was saved from having to decide whether to sit down again or not. Karim held out a hand, and Zia pulled him up. Karim turned towards me, and I started to hold my hand out to him, but found I was turning the gesture into something else, pretending I was only reaching up to pat the top of my own head. Sonia stood up and pulled me up, and we walked towards the school building, Sonia’s arm around me, and the two boys close in conversation, a gap between them and us that seemed right somehow, seemed comfortable, and at the same time was quite new.