Tunnel Vision (4 page)

*

Amna Mumani had come in while I drifted. A petite, still pretty woman in her early forties, her delicacy belied her strength. It was that delicacy, that apparent frailty, that had led my mother to shortlist her as a potential bride for her younger brother. Since Mamu had stepped in to fill the financial void left when Abba passed into the great beyond (the great beyond us, I mean), when it was judged to be the right time for him to settle down, Ammi had engineered a union with what she felt was a pliable young woman. Courteous, educated, docile, someone who knew her place, that
'
s what my mother was looking for when she started combing through old diaries for phone numbers of women she hadn
'
t spoken to in years to enlist their aid in the great matchmaking scheme. Turns out Amna knew her place a lot better than my mother did. Within a year of their marriage, Mamu and his bride had moved out. My mother
'
s attempts to point out the impracticability of increasing Mamu
'
s monthly expenditure by renting another flat was given due consideration. To offset that increase, a reduction was accordingly made in Mamu
'
s contribution to our household. To my brother and I, it was two newly weds beginning to plan their lives. To my mother, it was war. The moral of the story, with no comment on whom the bad guy was, is that women are generally their own worst enemies.

I had no bones to pick with Amna Mumani. She had always treated me well.Actually, she had treated all of us well, even Ammi. Gifts, food, time, concern, love even, things my mother was often careless about, especially with me.That of course, made my mother even madder.

‘
The most humiliating way to destroy your enemy is through kindness,
'
she had yelled when I
'
d asked her once why she was so hostile to someone who went out of her way to be considerate of us. Family, enemy, the lines of my mother
'
s world were often blurred and contradictory. And the negativity was one-sided. Amna Mumani had never even acknowledged my mother
'
s animosity, let alone respond in kind.

Even now, standing by her husband at my bedside, she seemed calm. Unruffled. Ever practical, she smoothed the sheet where it had bunched across my chest and sighed in exasperation as she touched the bruise forming around the canola in my hand.

‘
We want to be a world power, but we can
'
t even learn the simplest things,
'
she remarked softly,
‘
look how roughly they
'
ve pushed this in.
'

The nurse in the room gave no signs of having heard her comment and waddled out soon after.

‘
And there
'
s bloody cotton wool on the floor. Don
'
t they have any notion of hygiene?
'

‘
Sssh Amna.
'
Mamu and his nervousness.
‘
Speak softly.
'
He shot an apprehensive glance towards the nurses outside.

‘
Jaan, this filth is dangerous for someone in her condition. Don
'
t you remember what happened to Akhtar Bhai? His bypass was fine but then he contracted that bacterial infection in PO and it nearly killed him.
'

What was it with middle age and the onset of medico babble? Overnight, people went from being as unconcerned about cleanliness as the next Karachiite to becoming obsessed with disease and decay. Perfectly obnoxious adults who once spat in stairwells now rolled out the heart disease section of medical manuals with aplomb. It was odd to hear post-op from my mumani
'
s little bow-shaped mouth. Abbreviations from her convent educated lips seemed almost profane. At the same time, astral me was happy someone was concerned enough to be making even the mildest fuss.

The machines connected to the burn victim next to me had been making anxious noises for a while now, but there were no attendants by that bedside and the nurse ignored them.

A nostril tube was the only indication of where the nose had once been. A milky eye permanently fixed on the ceiling where the eyelid had burnt off. I decided it was a her. They generally were.

After that initial glance, I did not have the courage to look at her. Although the beggar freak-show at traffic lights in the metropolis had done its best to fry my compassion for human suffering, the maimed window-rappers tended to be male. And when they were female, their injuries were blatantly fake, only the most superficial nod to gender equality in the beggar workforce. Frequently accused as we were of being a patriarchal, retrogressive society all hung up on honour, we didn
'
t like to parade female victims of violence (accidental or deliberate). We tried to restrict their anguish to hospitals instead or if they had any notion of patriotism (went the extremist mantra), then they just died and saved us the embarrassment. Any number of infidel civilizations eager to point fingers at us would rush at the chance to exploit one of those (mythical, of course) kerosene or acid-burn victims that popped up every now and then.Was this woman one of them, I wondered.

Her gruesome injuries made my mummy-wrapped head look trivial in comparison. And I wanted to dwell on my own misery, so I turned away. If I forgot, for a second, my connection with my body might snap. I might drift away, up, down, sideways. I wanted to be here, stay here; at least till I had seen all those I loved.

How many of us daydream about what would happen if a horrible accident befell us? How would people react? What if you died? Would your family, friends and lovers be sad? One of my favourite daydreams was now my only reality. If God had just upped and decided to start granting my wishes why didn
'
t he do the one about the hips?

Mamu had filled Amna Mumani in on what the doctors had told my mother. She stroked my arm lightly as she thought.

‘
We have to get a second opinion,
'
she said brusquely.

‘
Shouldn
'
t we wait for forty-eight hours like the doctor said?
'

‘
We should find out whether we should wait or whether there is something else that needs to be done.
'

‘
But the doctor …
'

‘
Look around you Najam!
'
The voice was still gentle, but the tone suggested ever so delicately that a straightening of the spine was the only proper way to respond.
‘
Look at where we are? Don
'
t you read the papers? Haven
'
t you seen a million accusations of malpractice and neglect on the city pages? And this is not a standard appendectomy; it
'
s a head injury. If I know my niece, she considers that the most important part of her, and you need to do your duty and see that it
'
s well taken care of.
'

I was beginning to enjoy this. Really, I was. Mamu was very endearing when nervous. When he had lived with us, Adil and I used to yell
‘
Fire,
'
or
‘
Dacoits,
'
every once in a while just to watch his reaction. He was like a sparrow trapped in the old children
'
s trick of basket, seed, stick and string; even now in stillness that same frenetic hopping nervousness seemed to ripple under his skin.

‘
Right. Er … yes.
'

‘
Yes what?
'

‘
Yes we should get a second opinion.
'

‘
Good. Now go out and arrange for one. Perhaps we should move her to another hospital like the Agha Khan.
'

‘
Is it a good idea to move her?
'

‘
Why don
'
t we ask that doctor you
'
re going to go and get?
'
Mumani smiled sweetly.

At the door Mamu turned.
‘
How do I find the right doctor? We don
'
t know any.
'

‘
Isn
'
t that boy she
'
s been seeing well connected? Talk to him. His father probably has connections with a lot of medical people.
'

She had no idea how right she was. After years of assiduously courting the patronage of the movers and shakers of the Pakistani medical realm, Saad
'
s father had connections with a lot of
‘
medical people
'
indeed. In this part of the world, criminal complicity was the start of many a beautiful friendship.

Pharmaceutical malpractice, while widespread, didn
'
t get a lot of press in the home country. Newspaper owners not supported by government advertising in exchange for
‘
editorial restraint
'
relied on corporations. In essence, take a harsher line with officialdom but turn a blind eye to the policies of the big private corporations. Of course it was same all over the world, but at least in developed countries there were watchdogs baying for their blood. Pakistan
'
s consumer protection initiatives were generally stillborn.

The point was, Saad
'
s not-quite doting daddy
'
s connections with certain luminaries of the medical community weren
'
t entirely based on the principles enshrined in that oath they took. Tickets to regional conferences, sponsored junkets in Bhurban, an avalanche of calendars, diaries and wall clocks, it was more about presents than products. His generosity always made it easier to
‘
win friends and influence people
'
. But whether he was willing to exploit those relationships for me was a different matter altogether. In his version of the film about our lives, I was definitely the villain.

AA BAEL MUJHE MAAR

FOLK SAYING

~

W
hen Saad first began showing an interest in me that was beyond the professional, his father was probably the fourth person to know about it. Right after Saad, me and the super sleuth stool pigeon that told him. Why else would he have engineered a one-on-one meeting? It was ostensibly to review my team
'
s performance, but I had worked for Dada Labs for two years at that point, and this was the first time he had shown any blatant interest in one of his
‘
chotas
'
, as he called anyone not on the board. Like any Seth with the label, he knew everything that happened at the SITE headquarters but made sure he never appeared to snoop.

Like a one-day batsman facing a bouncer right into bat, I was forced onto the back foot which is what he intended, of course. The rest was about acquiring knowledge, and subtle intimidation. He wanted to gauge Saad
'
s seriousness, and my chances, all at once. Show me that he knew what was happening, humiliate me into understanding that a climber like me wasn
'
t good enough for the only son of a man like him. And that
'
s when I decided to respond to Saad
'
s overtures. While I had decided early in the professional game to be smart and forego office romances, now I really wanted to annoy his father. I was a social climber, was I? When my ascent was done, he
'
d be scrambling to lick the mud off my shoes. Sensible wall climbing shoes, of course, not stilettos. I was a working woman, after all, not a trickster angling for a prize.

Saad
'
s pleasure at my finally saying yes to his repeated requests for a cup of tea at a nearby dhaba was flattering.While I
'
d known he was attracted to me before he did (it
'
s all in the body language), I had considered it more nuisance than new beginning.Yes, he was good-looking (five feet eleven, twinkling eyes, luminous skin), rich, articulate (bonus in the land of the emotionally constipated), but he was my boss. I didn
'
t want an action replay of my last job.

After getting my BSc in chemistry from Karachi University, I steamrolled through a series of professions while doing an MBA at the IBA
'
s evening programme and going into sales. I had never planned to do an MBA, in fact it had figured nowhere in my list of
‘
top ten things to do in the evenings
'
(much like the accident), but it seemed impossible to find a worthwhile job without one, and also it got me away from the simmering stew of tension that was our house in those days.

I wasn
'
t content to be a lab rat, having nurtured delusions of worth all my life. Everyone was happy when I landed a job at Airway Travels after getting my MBA. Ammi was especially happy I
'
d gotten that silly degree, she thought it would help drive up my market value as far as marriage prospects were concerned. She was probably right, but at that point marriage wasn
'
t on my list of top ten things to do in the evening either.

At Airways, I started out being responsible for all corporate sales. I
'
d always been good at telling people what to do, where to go and how they should get there. It seemed like a logical progression.

Direction savvy, that
'
s what I was. Not bossy, there
'
s a difference.

There are two kinds of women dominant in Pakistani organizations. Parasites and pit bulls. Sure there are others; mousy non-entities flitting from desk to bus and back again, hoping no one will notice and their husbands/fathers won
'
t beat them too badly for an imagined indiscretion, confident urban graduates that thrive in controlled environments where the men have all undergone sensitivity training and khaddar is king (or queen?), like equal opportunity NGOs, women who work in groups and move in packs (teachers at all girls
'
colleges for example), occasional trailblazers that pop up in individualistic fields like film or art … but there are more parasites and pit bulls than all the rest together.