‘This is what I mean! What kind of country has this become?’ Uncle Ali appeared unaware of my mother moving the lamp away from him. ‘Bootleggers! No one in a civilized country should use that word except in jest.’
‘Zia and Raheen get shot at and what’s worrying him? The illegality of alcohol.’ Aunty Maheen rolled her eyes. Precisely. ‘Listen, baba, Prohibition happened in the dark distant past, back when I could eat three chocolate eclairs and still look good in a bathing suit the next day, back when you were still…’ She stopped and looked at Karim, who hadn’t moved at all during this whole exchange. That sick feeling I had begun getting whenever Uncle Ali and Aunty Maheen started on at each other in this manner crept over me now. I wanted to announce that I could still hear the gunshots echoing in my ears. I wanted to lean against Uncle Ali’s shoulder and cry so that Aunty Maheen would sit down right next to him in order to put an arm around me and tell me it was OK. I wanted to stop thinking, as I looked at them, And what else? And what else? I wanted most of all never to mention any of this to Karim.
Uncle Ali turned to my mother. ‘Poor Maheen. Stuck with a husband such as I. How long can any woman put up with such suffering? I think some of the Ghutnas are taking bets on that question. Do you think they’ll let me place a wager?’
‘Karim, Raheen, green tea,’ Ami instructed. ‘Oh, and call Sonia. I think we managed to make her panic about you.’
Glad to have a reason to leave the room, I accompanied Karim downstairs to the kitchen and called Sonia while he put the water on to boil.
‘Oh, thanks God,’ Sonia’s mother said, when she heard my voice. ‘Everything theek-thaak?’
‘Everything’s fine.’ She told me to hang on while she called Sonia, but even after she had gone and there was no one on the line I continued to speak—‘Yes…umm hmmm…I’m sorry to have caused you concern’—just so Karim would think I was sufficiently distracted not to see his shoulders shake with weeping as he stood with his back to me.
‘Who are you talking to and where were you guys?’ Sonia shouted into the phone.
I ignored the first part of the question and answered the second, the words falling out of my mouth as though they were a recording. I was looking at Karim’s shoulders and thinking how small they looked, how thin, and thinking that if he ever saw me crying he’d put his arms around me, and make me stop.
Sonia said, ‘So did you go back? To find the cat?’
If I stayed put and did nothing, he would stop on his own, out of embarrassment. But if I went to comfort him, perhaps he’d start talking, perhaps he’d tell me what I never asked and he never mentioned: what it was like to live with his parents when my parents weren’t around to re-channel the conversation. I suppose I had known it for a long while, but that evening was the first occasion I really allowed myself to think that Karim lived in sadness some of the time. The thought was so painful to me that I had to let go of it, had to tell myself that being shot at was making me melodramatic.
‘No, idiot,’ I said to Sonia, ducking my head so that I wouldn’t have to look at Karim. ‘We didn’t go back for the cat.’
‘Where did it happen exactly? I’ll tell my father to drive me there. Poor cat could still be limping around.’
‘Your father’s car is red, Sonia.’
Karim turned around at that, and tried to smile. Come on, Karimazov.
‘You think we should just forget the cat?’ Sonia’s voice was uncertain.
‘Put it out of your mind like last term’s vocabulary list.’ Yes, like that, smile. ‘Which of our parents called you?’
Sonia laughed. ‘All three sets. Ama got quite upset. Wanted to know if I minded that the three of you had gone on some joyride without inviting me round. Not that I’d have got permission on a school night.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I know you just wanted to be alone with Zia, but you should be careful. You could get a bad reputation.’
‘Sonia, please. I’ll see you in school, OK? ‘Bye.’
I hung up, relieved that Karim was looking like himself again. And sounding like himself, too, as he walked around the kitchen pulling out teacups and spoons, and muttering: ‘Is green tea popular in Greenland? When cannibals in Greenland tell their children to eat their greens are they referring to vegetable or meat? What do you call a cannibal who decides to become vegetarian?’
But when we returned upstairs, the atmosphere there hadn’t improved at all.
‘Things really are going to hell here,’ Uncle Ali said, adding eleven grains of sugar to his green tea. ‘How long can we just go on taking it? Don’t you ever think of getting out, Zafar?’
Aba waved his hand dismissively. ‘I can’t imagine growing old anywhere but here.’
‘Exactly,’ Aunty Maheen said. ‘I mean, London is fine, but I’ll never get used to umbrellas, not to mention the way they talk.’
‘The parrot-all parasol. Those talking umbrellas,’ Karim whispered to me, but he was trying too hard.
‘Really, those accents over there!’ Aunty Maheen went on. ‘Last time we were there, we had just stepped out of Heathrow and this man came up to us with a cigarette in his hand and said, “Cu ah geh a lye fro you, plaiz,” so I thought, “Oh, foreigner. Airport, after all,” but no, he was a local and he was asking if he could get a light from me, please. I thought, Henry Higgins, where are you now? But my point is, if we leave here I’ll spend my whole time missing people in Karachi because there are so, so, many to miss that you can’t just squeeze in all that missing during your morning cup of tea.’
‘If one of those bullets had been aimed just a few inches higher…’
‘Oh, shut up, Ali,’ Ami said so sharply that I knew she’d been thinking the same thing. ‘I hate it when you do this sort of thing. Just drink your tea and think calming thoughts. Think of dry-cleaning.’
Karim and I had got up and walked out by now, and Uncle Ali and Aunty Maheen must have seen us close the door and assumed we’d walked immediately away, away and out of hearing, but we hadn’t because the string of my garnet necklace broke and Karim and I went down on hands and knees outside the TV room to pick up the fallen stones.
‘Not this time, Yasmin,’ Uncle Ali replied. ‘Look, I know you don’t want to think about it, but you’ve got to. This little incident has made up my mind, I’ll tell you that. We’re migrating.’ At Aunty Maheen’s noise of disbelief, he added, ‘At least, I am. And I’m taking Karim with me.’
Karim’s hand closed around a handful of garnets. My hand closed around Karim’s wrist.
Aunty Maheen said, ‘Ali, when did you become this person?’
‘Stop it now, both of you,’ Ami said.
But they didn’t. ‘I’ve become my reflection, dear wife. I’ve become the man I’ve seen reflected in your eyes for so long.’
‘Ali, don’t,’ Aba pleaded. ‘It’s been a tense evening; best not to speak. We’ll only say things we regret.’
‘Regret is an emotion,’ Aunty Maheen said. ‘It doesn’t apply to him.’
I tried pulling Karim away, but he shook me off. ‘Karimazov, come on. Let’s go to my room. You don’t want to hear this.’
While I was speaking I drowned out whatever it was that my father said, but after Karim pushed me away again, the heel of his palm shoving my shoulder, we both heard Aunty Maheen’s response. ‘Please, Zafar. Don’t you, of all people, try to tell me that feelings can’t change. How dare you be the one to say that to me.’
Sometimes you hear the voices of people whose every cadence you think you know by heart. By heart. But then sounds emerge from their throats, sounds that you want to believe cannot belong to them, but it’s worse than that because you know that they do; you hear the sound and you know that this grating cacophony belongs to them as much as does the music in their voices when they call you by nicknames that should sound utterly silly but instead are transformed by affection into something to cherish. I heard Aunty Maheen turn on my father, and I knew that one day, not today perhaps, not even next year, but one day people more familiar to me than the smell of sea air would become strangers and I would become a stranger to them.