Masood loved saffron, but when he spoke about food in terms of devotion he referred back to that déclassé seasoning. ‘I believe in God because all of science can never explain the miracle of salt,’ he said and I, having learnt my lesson, nodded.
What if all of storytelling couldn’t explain Taimur?
I stood up so quickly I had to sit down again. Could it be that simple? Mariam Apa never spoke because speaking would mean trying to explain Taimur, and that she was unable to do. So she hid in menus — hid in that wondrous yet confined world of lunch and dinner and, sometimes, tea — marking out the boundaries of what she could and could not speak of. She knew, as do we all, that it is useless to say you will keep quiet on one subject, because everything is interconnected. Start talking about cricket and within five minutes you might be on the subject of yaks’ milk without a single non sequitur. Ask a person one question and you set yourself up to be asked a question in return. So Mariam asked no questions, revealed no clues, started no conversations which could sprawl beyond her control. Rather than keep quiet on one subject, she kept quiet on every subject but one. It’s the only way of keeping a secret.
Or … I squeezed my head between my hands, not knowing if I wanted my thoughts to slow down or speed up. Something was shaping inside my skull … Had all of us always been wrong about her silence? We assumed the silence was about not speaking, but what if it was about not not-listening? Did she move mute among us in order to observe? Was she so intent on listening because there was something she needed to hear? Perhaps, just as we were waiting for her to give us the answers about Taimur, she was waiting for us to help her understand why her father walked away from the family she missed so much when she was growing up. In the end, was the failure ours for being unable to hear the questions she shouted out through silence?
Or did we finally answer those questions and, in answering them, make it impossible for her to do anything except follow Taimur’s example and leave?
Chapter Eighteen
Two rare and remarkable things: messages from both Samia and Celeste in my in-box when I logged on to my e-mail. I knew that Samia would have something to say about tea at Baji’s with Khaleel so I clicked on Celeste’s message first.
Hey, Babe.
How’s my favourite decadent Pakistani doing? Thought of you yesterday (like that’s a rare event!) while watching an old Audrey Hepburn movie with my brother — the former metal-head has become an aficionado of fifties movies. Go figure. The movie? You guessed it — Sabrina! I’ve always enjoyed it, despite its refusal to acknowledge the rigid, though unspoken, class structure in the US, but yesterday I couldn’t concentrate on it. Kept thinking of you and Mariam and … I want to write ‘Missouri’ but I know that’s not his name. Mussood?
So, anyway, I’m still waiting to get an epiphany e-mail from you. You know what I mean. Our likeable but flawed heroine walks out from her élite neighbourhood, and, spurred on by an e-mail from her American friend (remember, in these stories someone Euro-American has to be responsible for showing our élitist Third Worlder the light), she notices the poverty in other parts of the city for the first time — No! She feels empathy for the first time — and she turns her back on her life of privilege and dedicates her days to helping the needy. Roll credits.
Seriously, though, I know things can’t be easy. What little news we get from your part of the world is pretty frightening. Tell me it’s just the US media up to their old tricks. I miss you, girl. When do you return stateside?
Love,
Your favourite I-claim-to-oppose-decadence-but-live-in-a-system-steeped-in-it American.
I dashed off a reply:
C–In the kind of movie you’re talking about our heroine wouldn’t be inspired by a Euro-American; she would be a Euro-American. Possibly shown the light by some mystical but ineffectual Eastern type.
More later.
Love,
A.
Sameer came through the door, holding two glasses of Coke in his hands and two packets of chilli chips between his teeth. ‘Hey!’ he said, and the chilli chips fell on to the desk beside me. ‘No saliva on them, I swear. Miracle of miracles … Is that actually a message from my sister?’
I didn’t want anyone, not even Sameer, to see me reading a message about Khaleel, so I clicked from the in-box back to Celeste’s message, and turned to the chilli chips. I crushed the packet between my palms and shook it vigorously to ensure an even distribution of masala. I once asked Masood if he could make chilli chips that tasted like the ones in the packet. He bit into the chilli-red potato stick I proffered him, and looked pained. ‘Would you have asked Ghalib to write a letter to the telephone company for you?’
I pushed my laptop away. ‘I’ve just developed a theory, Reemas.’
‘Well, spill all, Brer Fox.’
‘No, moron. It’s your name backwards. Reemas.’
‘Oh, Reemas. Not Remus of Uncle fame. Nor Remus, even, of Romulus fame. Moron yourself.’ He kicked my chair, and I tried to imagine coming back to live in Karachi if Sameer wasn’t here. It’s all very well to love a place, but in the end what matters most is the people who live there. Why did Taimur leave Dard-e-Dil?
‘Your theory, professor?’
‘Snobbery is based on fear.’
‘Already it sounds highly unoriginal.’ He tipped a handful of chips into his mouth and followed it with a sip of Coke to accentuate the taste of the masala.
‘No, no, not fear of a revolution or anything like that. Fear of squalor. Fear of being entirely powerless, entirely overlooked. It’s not that we can’t empathize with those on the lower rungs of society; the problem is that we can. We can imagine what it feels like to be so deprived, and it’s our fear that we could, or our children could, end up like that which makes us keep our distance from the have-nots. Because at a distance we don’t have to think about it.’
‘Tell me you just came up with that and haven’t had time to think it through.’
‘Why?’
‘First, are you saying there’s no distinction between class and wealth? Haven’t you heard your Dadi, or even your parents, or my parents, talk about the nouveau riche? Are we lower down the class ladder than the Mushtaq family next door, who pull out their teeth just so they can have them replaced by solid gold?’
‘We don’t know that they pull out their teeth.’
‘Yeah, right. Their family suffers from a rare disease called tooth dropsy.’
‘Forget about the teeth. Let’s get back to my theory. I think our family’s attitude towards the nouveau riche is another symptom of fear. We’re uncomfortable around them because they remind us that class is fluid; the Mushtaq parents may be considered nouveau riche, but their kids are being sent to finishing school to acquire polish and within a generation they’ll marry into respectable but no-longer-rich families, and they’ll start turning up their own noses at the nouveau riche. This reminds us that status is not permanent; as the Mushtaqs rise, someone else will fall, and that someone might be us.’
Sameer pulled my laptop towards him and read Celeste’s message. ‘I see.’
‘What?’
‘You’re feeling guilty about not devoting your life to helping the needy, and it salves your conscience to say your snobbery is related to your great empathy. Oh, baychari Aliya. Too sensitive to hang out with the poor! That’s a Starched statement if ever!’
He was right, but so was I. ‘What would you do if you saw Masood tomorrow?’ How odd that I’d never thought to ask him this before.
Sameer shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Say hello, I suppose. Tell him my palate misses him. If you’re asking if I’d invite him home for tea, no I wouldn’t. And if I did, he’d refuse.’