Broken Verses (34 page)

In the second picture she is down on the ground, several of her friends gathered nearby, not daring to help pick her up. A policeman is standing about five feet away from her. In his right hand is a lathi, and in his left a much longer stick, slightly pliant, which he uses to keep my mother pinned to the ground as though she were an animal. But she will not be defeated. Although she's on the ground, her head is raised, looking straight at the policemen, and one hand is gripping the long stick, making clear her intention to use it to lever herself to her feet. In the background, other men walk past, not even looking at her.

Mama, how did you find the strength? And why did it leave you so utterly when you thought the Poet had died?

My father turned the file towards himself, and winced when he looked down at the images. I thought that was a sign of sympathy for my mother, but he said, As long as you carry on looking at pictures like this you won't allow yourself to admit you have reason to be angry at her.'

I touched my hand to my mother's midriff. I remembered the bruises the lathi had left, remembered walking into her room as the Poet, crying, rubbed balm on to them. When she saw me she pushed his hand away and lowered her kameez to try to hide the vicious purpling of her skin. I ran and threw my arms around her, and though the Poet gasped as my body collided with hers, she only ran her fingers through my hair and kissed the top of my head.

‘Hello, my sanctuary,' she said.

I looked up from the picture and saw my father—so unbruised, so safe.

‘Of course I've allowed myself to be angry.' Saying that, I felt my heart quieten down. ‘I've been nothing but angry and resentful, Dad, for so long. For the leaving. Not for this—' I gestured to the pictures. ‘I will not be resentful for this. How dare you make me try? The one thing I've hated most about this place—ever since I was a child—is all the attitudes here which tell me I should be angry about this, I should be resentful. No one says, be resentful of the people who made it necessary for her to choose between staying home to help you with your homework and going out to fight laws which say rape victims can be found guilty of adultery and stoned to death. No one ever says, be resentful of your father and stepmother and everyone else who didn't go out and join that fight and make her burden lighter.'

My father's face took on an expression that told me what I had said was so absurd he didn't even believe that I really believed it. ‘What, so now you're angry Beema and I didn't get beaten up and thrown into prison, leaving you and your sister to look after yourselves when you were eight and twelve?'

‘Stop it. Stop doing that. She made one choice. You made another. And it's purely a matter of perspective which one of you let me down. At some abstract level, I really do believe neither of you did. But it's just hard sometimes to know that in my heart.'

‘In your heart, she takes up so much place that there's almost no room left for the rest of us—let alone for anyone new.' His tone was slightly peevish, and that made it impossible for me to be angry.

I looked at his neck again and felt such tenderness that I almost cried out. Let us leave this room, Dad, and meet again somewhere far away from every shadow around which we've peeped at each other all our lives, and let us talk. Let's talk about who you are, who I am. Let's talk about the heroism of staying at home with your children, and the heroism of leaving them in order to fight. Let's talk of the archaeologist you wanted to be, and why you wanted to hold history in your hands. Let's talk about losing Mama. Let's talk about the simple pleasures of finding order in the working of an electric fuse. I never saw until now that my ordering, if not ordered, mind is your mind.

‘If it's any consolation, I know she's far from perfect, Dad. I know she has her faults.'

His eyes opened wide and there was such fear in them that I glanced over my shoulder, muscles tensing to face the threat that must have entered.

‘Has
her faults? Fourteen years later you're still saying,
has
her faults?' He reached across the table and caught me by the elbows. ‘Aasmaani. Aasmaani, your mother's dead.'

I knew they'd been saying it, all of them, for years, but it was the first time I heard the words. I knew it would happen some day, and I thought I'd be prepared, but I wasn't. I wanted to hit him, simple as that. Wanted to strike the mouth which had uttered that obscenity.

I stood up. ‘Get out of my flat]'

‘No.'

‘Get out!'

The connecting door swung open and Rabia came running in.

‘What happened? Dad, what did you say to her?'

My father pushed his chair back and stood up slowly. ‘Something I should have said many years ago. Aasmaani, she is dead. She is dead. There's no other explanation. She is dead.'

‘Rabia, get him out of here.'

But Rabia only took our father's hand in hers. That was the betrayal for which nothing had prepared me, and I felt such desolation it took away all my will to argue.

‘She was miserable with her life.' Dad reached for me, but I drew away from him. ‘She couldn't see a way out of it. She left the house and never came back. She was last seen walking towards the sea. She never came back. Put it together. Allow your mind to do what it does best. Put the pieces together.'

‘I have. But you'll excuse me if I don't choose the same pieces you do.'

Dad crossed his arms. ‘Fine. Educate me, then. What happened to Samina? She's still alive—yes? Yes?'

‘Dad, don't,' Rabia said.

Our father held up a hand to stop her. ‘Enough, Rabia. You and your mother have tried it your way for years now. It hasn't worked.' He turned his attention back to me. ‘Go on, Aasmaani.'

‘Dad, she could...' Rabia started, and then broke off.

‘I could what?'

‘You could become the way your mother became when the Poet died,' Dad said. ‘Except, you won't. And if you do, we'll find a way to help you. But I can't tiptoe around you any more and allow this to continue.' His face softened. ‘Darling, why force yourself to believe she's alive and staying away from you? Don't you see that damages you more than the truth ever could?'

‘What do you know of the truth? You're a small man with a small mind. You can't possibly understand.'

‘Stop it. Both of you,' Rabia pleaded.

‘Tell me what I can't understand,' Dad demanded. ‘Go on. Explain it to me.'

I reached for my handbag, slung over the back of a chair. Omi's pages were inside. I touched the bag as though it were a talisman. If he could still be alive, anything was possible.

‘Soon, Dad, you'll see what strangeness the world is capable of. Then you'll start to understand.' I brushed past him and walked into my bedroom, locking the door behind me.

 

 

 

 

. . .

 

 

There is nothing to do now but wait.

It sits across from me, the television, reflecting the room back in grey concaves. I feel like a creature of the wilderness newly acquainted with this magic box, wanting to peel away the greyness—which doesn't move unless I move in it—and find beneath it those layers of coloured images which, yesterday, moved by so fast they gave the impression of continuous motion.

The Minions brought in the television and VCR. Late, late at night. Early a.m. today, if I am to be precise. I woke to hear them moving about in the second room and when I went to see what they were doing they made me sit down, told me there was something I had to watch. They turned on the television and everything was grey-and-white specks and a noise of static. It had been so long since I saw a television that even the static seemed fascinating. Lice jumping round a middle-aged man's hair! I said to the Minions. They told me to sit, and they played the tape. A single word of Urdu appeared on the screen. The first word of Urdu in so long. And then my old friend, my old Macbeth, walked into a room. No, I suppose we were never friends, really. I translated a play, he acted in it, we met once or twice. But he belongs to that other life of mine, and so I recognized him with a joy that might be more suited, under normal circumstances, for encountering a long-lost twin.

And when I realized it was in Karachi. Oh, that moment. What was it? He said something. He said: this isn't Funland. Funland! I hadn't thought about it in years, but when he said that I remembered taking Aasmaani there and how she loved that ride, what was it called? Hurdy-Gurdy! Show me outdoors, I started to scream at the images. I've forgotten the passive art of television viewership. Show me the sea, please show me the sea. But it was all interiors. The ad breaks were edited out. I have never wanted so desperately to see ads. What's being sold, what's being used to sell it? Sixteen years of living outside the world and suddenly I was hungry for any kind of knowledge. So there I was, examining fashions. The women weren't all covered up, that was a huge relief. Very short sleeves and near-revealing necklines for the younger actresses, as well as streamlined shalwars that could almost pass for trousers. Kameezes shorter than I remembered, though not as short as in the seventies. And hairstyles, compact. Thank God for that. The volume of hair we had to contend with when I was last part of the world was just embarrassing.

Me, looking at clothes and hairstyles. Who would have believed it possible?

Still, I couldn't understand why I was watching it. And why the Minions were standing around, watching me as though preparing mental reports about my reactions. I couldn't understand it at all but I kept watching and at last we had an exterior. An airport. Big and new and marble and clean. The words ‘Quaid-e-Azam International Airport' in large letters across the top of the building.

Karachi has a new airport? I said to the Minions.

They didn't say anything, but one of them—who I've caught before showing signs of sympathy—nodded briefly.

Then I forgot them. Forgot everything.

Because, disembarking from a plane, setting her foot down on the tarmac and looking up and around, as though
seeing
a sky she hadn't seen for a very long time: Shehnaz. Almost before I was able to believe it really was her, she looked up at the sunset and then the scene was changing to another sunset and there she was again, pregnant at the beach.

I don't know how I didn't have a heart attack. Shehnaz and the waves, Macbeth at her side, and I said to the Minions, ‘Stop. Pause it. Pause!' They just looked at me, and I stood up, tripped, fell over and crawled to the VCR, my hands the hands of a trembling old man as I pressed the pause button to freeze the moment.

I put my hand to the screen. I touched the water. The waves nearest to shore were bowing, a gesture of self-effacement that was a split second away from annihilating them. I touched the sand, first where it was wet, then where it was not. I touched Shehnaz's face, her shoulders, the swell of her stomach. I put my forehead against the screen, wrapped my arms around the box, and tried to breathe in the scent of the ocean, the scent of her skin. I know what I looked like to the Minions: a whimpering old man trying to make love to a television. I didn't care. I am long past dignity.

At length, I sat back and pressed ‘
PLAY'
.

And there you were.

Don't ask me to relive what I felt. I cannot separate the emotions into discrete words. Three of the Minions looked away; they couldn't watch my emotions spilling on to the floor.

Sweet, sweet torture, that's what it was. I never realized until then how much my captor hates me. Nearly seventeen years locked in here, you'd think I wouldn't be left in any doubt about that. But I'd begun to believe he just thought of me as some pet, not domesticated enough to be allowed out of my cage, nor interesting enough to be worth a personal visit. But to make me watch that, to have his Minions stand around as observers while I wept and flailed, and to have them tell me afterwards that this was a new television show, they would bring me one episode every week as long as it lasted but who knows how long that would be? To do all that, he has to hate me.

Was I growing too comfortable for him? Too resigned?

Or am I wrong about this? Do I merely amuse him? The revolutionary poet turned television addict.

Put that way, it is more than a little entertaining. Of course, you and I know that even when there was nothing so personal at stake I had a terrible weakness for television. And low-brow television, at that.
Charlie's Angels]
Loved those girls. You could never decide whether to approve of them or not. I said, why can't feminism show some cleavage? We were standing in your bedroom. You raised a threatening eyebrow. I said, are you going to throw something at me now? Yes, you said. Your hand moved towards a pillow and then—with one of those sudden gestures of yours—you reached up, your index finger crooked into your shirt's neck, tugged the kameez over your head and flung it at me.