Kartography (43 page)

—Italo Calvino

 

Karim,

There's a street in Karachi that follows the moon.

Near an Imam Baragh, there's a line of houses, with hack and front doors and no boundary walls. When the lunar calendar enters the month of Muhurram, Shia women make their way to the Imam Baragh daily. There is a back door to the Imam Baragh for them, for the ones in purdah, and to reach that back door without being gazed upon by strangers in the open streets they walk through the neighbourhood houses. Back and front doors are flung open, and the women walk through from the hallway of one house to the hallway of another until that alley within houses takes them all the way to the door of the Imam Baragh. It is an alley without name, it is an alley that ceases to exist when the moon disappears, but it is an alley all the same and one that says more about Karachi than anything you'llfind on a street map.

Your mother called the other day to say she's given you a copy of my father's letter. In it he speaks of Karachi's war stories that are personal in a way which excludes everything outside the story. I

understand now, at last, what this has to do with street names. I've always thought it wonderful that everyone I know in Karachi gives directions in terms of landmarks and stories—go to the submarine roundabout; turn into the lane where the car thief accosted Zia; drive until you come to Soma's father's office. Such familiarity, such belonging, wrapped up in every set of directions. Don't deny there's something remarkable about that; we belong to a city invested in storytelling. It is in our blood. But you can only be familiar with those you know well, you can only know the stories of those to whom you've bothered to listen. What happens to all those streets that hold no stories for us? Do we simply stay away from them? I've lived my life in such limited circles and it's your voice I hear now, telling me the limited can be so limiting.

But what has this to do with us? You think my limited life excluded you before, will exclude you again. Karim, I can't deny I've been selfish. Your mood has always been so infectious, no antibodies in my blood to keep me immune from the way you feel. So I've always wanted to make you laugh and see you laughing instead of having to weep your tears. I thought you knew that. How could you ever think it was lack of caring that made me turn away from the sight of you in pain?

Am I trying to say my selfishness is a mark of love? How can selfishness and love coexist? Ask the city we live in.

Karachi at its worst is a Karachi unconcerned with people who exist outside the storyteller's circle, a Karachi oblivious to people and places who aren't familiar enough for nicknames. What I've sometimes mistaken for intimacy is really just exclusion. But Karachi is always dual. Houses are alleys; car thieves are the people to help you when your car won't start; pollution simultaneously chokes you and makes you gasp at the beauty of unnatural sunsets; a violent, fractured place dismissive of everyone outside its boundaries is vibrant, embracing, accepting of outsiders; and, yes, selfishness is the consequence of love.

No simple answers in Karachi. Just when we decide that intimacy is exclusionary, a man at the airport turns round and
gives us his car-keys, a motia seller calls us ‘sister' and adorns our wrists with flowers, families fling open their doors and avert their eyes and help us make our way to places of worship; at its best, Karim, Karachi is intimate with strangers.

If I am truly to call myself a product of this city, how can I not find it in me to learn that much easier lesson: how to be intimate with my intimates.

This is not an epiphany, it's just the start of an attempt to be brave enough to think about certain things that terrify me. There's a letter we've both read which urges me to face the terror. What my father said and what he wrote were part of both our pasts, and to pretend the matter can be easily discussed and resolved is to deny how deep in our marrow consequences are lodged. We have to every day live with the truth and every day find a way towards unblinking, unsentimental compassion that renders forgiveness irrelevant. And compassion has to wheel all about us, in concomitantly widening and narrowing circles. To look at waves and understand that when they break they start to re-form, that seems crucial, though perhaps I'm getting my metaphors all tangled up.

I love this place, Karim, for all its madness and complications. It's not that I didn't love it before, but I loved it with a child's kind of love, the kind that either ends or strengthens as understanding grows.

I can see you, out there, reading between the lines.

Come home, stranger.

Come home, untangler of my thoughts.

Come home and tell me, what do I do with this breaking heart of mine?

 

 

 

 

. . .

 

I was in Uncle Asif's study, in Rahim Yar Khan, when Aunty Laila told me there was a phone call for me. I looked at my watch. My mother had three hours to her deadline for an article on the Orangi Pilot Project, which had turned one of the most troubled spots in Karachi into a haven of high literacy, effective sewerage, tolerance among communities. Listening to my mother talk about the people who worked there I had begun to imagine a possible future for myself, though I'd be lying if I didn't admit that a lot of the time it seemed much more appealing to imagine myself sitting in a comfortable office in Aba's ad agency, drinking tea and discussing slogans. But now I knew it had to be my father on the phone, asking me why I had travelled up north and left him alone in the house to face the dread YUD: Yasmin Under Deadline. Somehow over the course of the summer, Aba and I had learnt to laugh together again. I wouldn't say I had forgiven him; more to the point, forgiveness was no longer an issue. He had to live with his failures, just as I had to live with mine. And if I hadn't known what he had said to Aunty Maheen, I would never have believed that I needed to be vigilant for the serpents and abysses that could slither into or open up in any soul, not just the souls that were housed within obvious monsters.

But for the record,
I had told him,
I think you said it to save her from Shafiq.

I picked up the extension in the study. ‘Has she started sticking paperclips in her hair yet?'

‘Do Aunty Laila's ceramic bowls still have purple and green dye stains?'

‘Karim.' I stood up and the suddenness of my movement yanked the telephone jack out of its socket. ‘Don't hang up,' I yelled to anything that might possibly transmit that message to Karim. ‘Don't hang up.' I went down on my hands and knees and fitted the jack into the socket. ‘Don't hang up,' I yelled into the handset.

‘Wouldn't matter if I did. Continue to yell at that pitch and I'll hear you in Karachi.'

‘You're in Karachi?'

‘Yes. I've decided I really do want to make a map. I need your help. That's why I'm calling.'

‘That's why you're calling?'

‘Yes. You're the one who gave me the idea. With your mention of the lunar street. I'm going to make a map on the Internet.'

I leaned back in the leather desk chair, watching the clouds outside the window gather and darken. He'd read my letter, and it had given him an idea for a map. It was worse than if he'd never acknowledged the letter.

‘Are you listening to me? You gave me the idea yourself. We'll make an interactive map on the Internet. You start with a basic street map, OK, but everywhere there are links. Click here, you get sound files of Karachiites telling stories of what it's like to live in different parts of town. Click there, you get a visual of any particular street. Click again, the camera zooms in and you see a rock or a leaf or a billboard that means something to that street. Click, you see streets that exist seasonally, like your lunar street. Click, you see which sections are under curfew. Click, you hear a poem. Click, you see a painting. Choice of languages in which you can read the thing. Sound files in all kinds of dialects. Strong on graphics for people who are illiterate. Just wait, Raheen, this is going to be amazing. And don't tell me most people can't afford computers; you just wait a few years and an amazing number of people will have access to one even if they don't own it themselves. This is a lifelong project, Raheen, in a city that's always changing. Too exhausting to contemplate doing alone. You'll help me, right, you'll join me? We'll do this together, right? You'll write something; we'll include links to all kinds of text about Karachi. Write something about the city, the Karachi you know. You always could write well. We'll be Eratosthenes and Strabo working hand-in-hand. Have you disconnected the phone again?'

‘No.' I looked across at the globe on its axis, which stood on a table by the window, and wanted to throw something at it. We'd be Eratosthenes and Strabo. So this is how it would end. Each of us learning something from the other, sharing ideas, making a map. We'd tell people what a wonderful working relationship we had. After all, we'd been friends all our lives. And if anyone asked us about the time we'd been young and in love, we'd have to pause to draw up those memories of how it had been, how we thought it would be. Sometimes, late at night, when no one else was around, each of us would sit alone and wonder how it would have worked out if only... But we'd never think about it too long, or too seriously.

The thought was unbearable.

‘Will you do it? Will you write something? Write a story or something. Write about the motia-seller and the car thief and Zia and Sonia and falling in love.'

‘What exactly should I write about falling in love?'

‘Write, “There was a boy called Karim who never fell in love.”'

‘He never fell in love?'

‘No. There was no falling. He was born in love with her, and he was borne by love all the way back to her, even though there was a period of total stupidity in between.'

I bowed my head. The grace of this moment. Remember this always.

‘You keep going silent on me.'

I pressed the phone as close to my ear as possible. ‘Karim, you bastard, I'll kill you.'

He laughed. ‘What? You really thought I called you up to tell you to help me make a map?'

‘Stop being obnoxious. Say something sappy.' From Uncle Asif's collection of seashells and fossils, I picked up a cuttlebone and traced the outline of my hand with it.

‘Maple syrup.'

‘Are you feeling kinky?'

‘It's made from sap.'

‘I'm going to hit you. Should I fly back to Karachi or will you come here? Which is faster?'

‘I'll come there. Supposing I was being kinky, how would you have responded?'

‘When you get here, I'll tell you. When's the next flight?'

‘Hang on, girlio. I can't make the next flight. I really am going to do this map thing, you know. ‘Cause you know what I realized? There's bound to be a map somewhere. The police, the Intelligence Services, maybe even the post office, they have got to have a street map of Karachi.'

‘I guess.' I couldn't help laughing at how we'd come full circle. Rahim Yar Khan and maps and the two of us. But how far we'd travelled to get back here.

‘Don't guess. It's true. Zia's father spoke to someone—one of his shady contacts—who said he'll get me a map. So Zia's father is coming over right now with a police escort to take me to meet this guy and get the map. I'll bring it to Rahim Yar Khan and we'll start thinking of ways to use it as the basis for our Internet map. But we won't worry about that in a hurry. Right? All the time in the world.'

‘Karim, no.' Despite my happiness, I felt a shiver of apprehension. ‘The worst way to start a project like this is to start it with Zia's father's help.' I couldn't bear to be in the same room as him now. The man who still hadn't cried over his son's death. His grief mutated past redemption.

‘I'm going to start squeezing toothpaste from the middle of the tube. We're obviously just searching for things to argue about. Oh, car's here. I'll call you from the airport with flight details, OK? Hey, one last thing. Your name. How come you never told me it means “guide”?'

When he hung up I stayed as I was, phone pressed to my ear. ‘Karim,' I said. ‘Karim,' I whispered, tasting his name in my mouth.

I turned the cuttlebone around in my hands. Why didn't he take the next flight? Why wait to be taken somewhere with Zia's father? No good could come of any interaction with Zia's father.