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.’
‘Oh, good God.’ Sulaiman smacked a palm against his forehead and stood up to pace the verandah. ‘That’s the real reason you’re planning on leaving for Pakistan, isn’t it? You think you’ll find Taimur there. Why? Because Liaquat’s the only politician he ever said a kind word about? Because of those times he said he wanted an option other than England or Dard-e-Dil? Akbar, you idiot.’
Can we believe Meher Dadi’s account of what happened next? How clear a view did she have while trying to hide out of the brothers’ sight? She claims that even as Sulaiman seemed to insult Akbar his hand reached out to brush an insect off Akbar’s shoulder. Akbar did not see Sulaiman, but he felt — or saw — the insect, and his own hand reached back to flick it off. He flicked Sulaiman’s hand away instead, without realizing that it was the very tips of Sulaiman’s fingers he had touched. He must have thought he’d made contact with the insect, because he didn’t turn round and hold Sulaiman’s hand in apology as he would otherwise have done, but said instead, ‘Get that damn thing off me.’ Sulaiman’s face turned to stone and he cursed Akbar, ‘Go to hell,’ and then Akbar’s face, too, became granite.