Kartography (13 page)

I got into the back seat of his car, and Karim sat in front with Altaf, his driver, who kept yawning as he drove, his eyes narrowing into squints, not yet reconciled to being awake. We spotted the Mercedes, after what seemed an interminable while, parked outside the third police station to which we drove. Karim had said only three things during our search for Zia: ‘That fake driver's licence won't fool anyone', ‘If only there was a map with police thaanaas marked on it, so we could do this efficiently' and ‘You don't know how much money he had on him, do you?'

Outside the station, Karim and Altaf ran their hands along the pockmarked Mercedes door. Altaf inserted a finger into a bullet hole, just below the passenger side window. His finger disappeared almost down to the knuckle. I didn't feel anything when I saw that. I wondered if I was in shock. Karim knelt down by the mudguard and vanished from my line of sight. I walked around the car to see him staring down at his blood-streaked fingers. ‘Cat,' I said.

‘Did it die?'

I pictured a bloodied and bleeding feline dragging its shattered limbs along the road. ‘We have to go back there.'

‘Zia first, OK?'

‘You go in,' Altaf told Karim. ‘I'll stay here with her.'

Karim glanced at me, expecting an objection to this moment of ‘Let's protect the girl from unpleasantness', but I felt only gratitude towards Altaf. ‘Sack boon,' Karim said.

I don't know if he really was back soon or not. It could have been two minutes or twenty that I lay in the back of his car, trying to remember how to breathe evenly, before he opened the door and said, ‘You've got to come inside.'

I thought, cat homicide. Fleeing the scene of an accident. I thought, it wasn't cat fur but human hair on the mudguard. I thought, I wasn't driving. I'm not responsible for anything.

‘It's OK,' Karim said, taking my hand. ‘They only want you to confirm you were in the car with him.'

Then they'd say, what were you doing alone in a car late at night with a boy who is neither brother nor cousin nor husband?

‘I've told them you're his cousin,' Karim said. ‘And I'm your brother.'

He leaned to a side and the street lamp lit up the back of his head. ‘You have a halo,' I said with a laugh and found myself able to step out of the car.

Inside the police station a grey-shirted, mustachioed policeman, whose resemblance to Pakistan's wicketkeeper, Saleem Yousuf, was immensely reassuring, asked me if I could confirm my brother's claim that I had been in the Mercedes with my cousin. I nodded and, laughing, he shouted to someone to bring the boy out. ‘Sorry for this,' he said, spreading his hands. ‘But he kept insisting he was alone in the car.'

A door opened and Zia emerged, his upturned collar looking absurd. When he saw us he tried to reassemble his expression into something approaching jauntiness, but it crumpled into relief instead. The Saleem Yousuf lookalike threw the Mercedes car-keys in his direction and gestured towards the door.

‘What happened?' Zia and Karim said to each other in unison when we exited.

‘You first,' Karim said. We got into the Mercedes—the front door was still jammed, so I climbed in through the window—and Karim signalled Altaf to follow us in his car.

‘I don't know. I don't know what was going on. I went in, reported that someone had shot at my car, and they asked what colour the car was and where it happened. I said, “Near the Arab Sheikh's palace, and it's a Mercedes.” One of the cops looked out, saw the car and said, “It's red,” and then they demanded to know who had been with me. Well, I didn't want to drag Raheen into it, so I said no one. Next thing I know, they've got me in this room and this big guy with really bad b.o.—who looks like Mike Gatting, there's some weird cricket thing going on there—is telling me I can't leave until I tell them who I was with. So now I'm completely confused and don't know if it'll make matters better or worse if I admit my original story wasn't true, so I decide just to wait. I knew you'd get worried, Raheen, when I didn't call, and that you guys or my parents would come in search of me.'

‘They didn't hurt you or anything, did they?' I said.

Zia shrugged. ‘Nah. I mentioned Uncle Wahab's name.'

‘He's been suspended on corruption charges.'

‘I know that, Karim. That's why they didn't let me out at the first mention of the first syllable of his name. But they're underlings, you know, and everyone knows the suspension won't last. They wouldn't let me sleep, though. Shook me awake when I tried heading into the land of Z. I tried mentioning another few names to them, of friends of my father's, but I think I overdid my list of connections and they were sure I was making it up.' He pulled up to Tony Paan Shop—which was not called Tony Paan Shop at all, but had somehow acquired the name even though no one named Tony worked there—and beeped his horn to signal for a packet of cigarettes.

A young boy standing outside the shop (more a cubbyhole with shutters than a shop) raised his hand to acknowledge the signal and Zia said to Karim, ‘Pay him when he brings it, will you. I've left my wallet at home.'

Karim held out his empty wallet. ‘Had to give Saleem Yousuf everything I had.'

‘Why?'

‘Because you're months away from turning fourteen and the minimum driving age is eighteen.'

‘Oh, shit.' Zia leaned out and yelled to the paan shop boy: ‘I don't have any money.'

The boy came over with a single cigarette. ‘Take this.'

Zia looked at the brand name stamped on the cigarette. ‘I can't smoke this.'

Karim made a noise of disgust and got out of the car. ‘I'll borrow some money from Altaf.'

Seconds later, Zia lit up and sat back in his seat. ‘Your turn, Karim. What really happened?'

‘Can you drive us home?' I said. Tony who wasn't Tony was pulling down the shutters of his shop, and even the beggars had gone home—or gone away—for the night.

‘Good thinking.' Zia smiled, and for the first time since the gun shots I remembered I was in love with him.

He started the car again and as we headed towards my house Karim told us why Zia had been treated like a criminal for having a bullet-marked car. There had been a series of burglaries in Phase V, where we all lived, in the preceding weeks, and the police had been unable to apprehend the perpetrators. (The Saleem Yousuf lookalike told Karim this in a mixture of Urdu and Punjabi but he said ‘perpetrators' in English, pronouncing it as two words: perpa traitors.) Earlier that evening the dacoits had struck again, but this time their getaway car was spotted. The car was red. So the police alerted all the armed guards who were employed to protect the wealthiest houses in the neighbourhood.

‘What exactly does “alerted” mean?' Karim asked the policeman.

The policeman smiled. ‘We said, if you see a red car, going fast, with two people in the front seat, shoot them. We advised shooting at the tyres, so that the car would stall, but, you know, some of these guards don't have much skill at marksmanship. Also, they get quite bored, so any chance for excitement... Anyway, one of the guards told us he had shot a red car, near the Sheikh's palace, which had two people in the front seat. That's how we knew your cousin was lying to us about being alone. We couldn't let him go until we knew the truth, just in case he was involved with the thefts. But, of course, if you say a girl was with him...that explains things.'

‘That's absurd,' Zia said, pulling up to my gate. ‘It's a Mercedes. Since when do dacoits drive around in a Mercedes?'

 

 

 

 

. . .

 

When bullets have missed you by inches, you should assume you've expended your quota of good luck for the night. All the same, I was keeping my fingers crossed as we drove home, hoping my parents were still at the beach, or that they'd returned, exhausted, and gone to sleep without noticing my absence. But when Zia turned on to my street, there was no mistaking Aba standing on the boundary wall, binoculars trained on the Mercedes. Only when we pulled up in front of the gate, just inches away from him, did he lower the binoculars and call out in the direction of the house, ‘It's them, Yasmin! Phone the others.'

‘I'll take the blame,' Zia whispered to me. ‘Get out and explain. Give whatever version you want.'

I was half-convinced he'd drive away instead, which is why I kept sitting in the car, forcing my father to lower himself from the wall and come over to us.

He walked around to Zia's side, and didn't lean down to look in, but stood straight, drumming his fingers on the roof of the car. Zia, Karim and I looked at one another, uncertain of how to proceed.

‘Well, he's your father,' Zia whispered finally.

‘You're sitting closer to him,' I replied.

In the end, I think it was the irritation of that drumming sound rather than any chivalric impulse that made Zia poke his head out of the window. ‘Sorry, Uncle. Got excited about having this car. Mercedes, Uncle Zafar. Could you have resisted going for a spin when you were young?'

‘Oh, very smooth, Zia,' Karim muttered from the back seat.

Zia tried again. ‘Sorry, really. But back in one piece. If Raheen would just get out, I wouldn't hold you up any longer. Altaf's behind us, see? He can drop Karim home and I'll drive back to my place and then we can all go to sleep, because it is late, I know, and we have school tomorrow and so if Raheen would just get out...'

Aba's hand reached in, pulled the key out of the ignition and pointed towards the house. ‘Yes, sir, absolutely, Uncle. My parents aren't still at the beach, are they?'

By this time my mother had come outside, and walked around to my side of the car. Karim groaned. I suddenly realized why Zia had wanted me to get out so that he could drive off. I continued looking straight ahead, so I didn't see Ami's expression as she realized what the bullet holes were, but I heard her gasp.

‘Where were you when this happened?' she asked me, pointing to the bullet holes.

‘Right here,' I replied, from the passenger seat.

The looks we place on our parents' faces when we show them the jagged evidence that we are living in violent times, no escape from it. No mere fluke that it came our way, no, not a fluke but something closer to probability, something closer to the roll of a die. Those looks that we have never seen until that moment, but we know they've seen them in their imaginations, their dreams, in their mirrors that time last year when we were late coming home from school because there seemed no harm in loitering around the school yard and then there seemed no harm in stopping for sugar-cane juice halfway between departure point and destination. How do they forgive us every time, I wondered, as my father came round to my side of the car, his expression mirroring my mother's before he even saw the bullet holes; how have they forgiven us already?

Aba leaned through the window to hug me, one hand smacking the back of my head while the other one gripped my shoulder. ‘My baby,' he said. ‘My baby.'

‘I'm fine, it's fine.' For the first time in my life I felt I needed to be the adult, reassuring my father that the world was still in order. But how could the world be in order if I was that one doing the reassur
ing?
Crack a joke, Aba. Issue a command. Tell me nothing like this will happen again.

But he did none of these things, just held on to me, until Ami pulled him away and said, ‘It's OK, darling.' I don't know which one of us she was speaking to, but it got my father to stand up straight and it got me to climb out of the car. When I explained what had happened Aba put one arm around me and another around Karim, reassuring rather than asking for reassurance this time, but Ami merely took Zia by the shoulder and said, ‘Do you realize how lucky you are that I'm too relieved to be really angry?' I was completely mortified, of course, but Zia didn't hold it against me, just said, ‘Yes, Aunty. Sorry, Aunty. Maybe I should call my parents.'

As we were walking towards the house, Ami put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Why is it that the only thing you resemble me in is your wilfulness?'

I looked at Aba and then at Zia. ‘And your weakness for gorgeous men,' I said.

She started to laugh, then forced a stern look on to her face. ‘You're still in disgrace. Don't think this matter is over,' she said, in a voice that suggested terrible rules being prepared to curtail my freedom. I was hardly reassured when she put an arm around me and kissed me on the top of the head. My mother had been sufficiently wilful as a teenager to know exactly how wilful teenagers needed to be handled, and we both knew that a gentle word of admonishment would have as little effect on me as it would have had on her some twenty-five years ago. She left me to ponder the suffering I would have to endure and quickened her pace to catch up with Karim and whisper something that made him smile and look back at me.