Текст книги "Broken Verses"

Автор книги: Kamila Shamsie

Соавторы: Kamila Shamsie
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

I opened my mouth to say, ‘Dad, she stayed away for my sake,’ but then I saw the expression of anger still on his face and I knew he’d think I was just trying to defend Omi. So I said, ‘What did you want him to do? Stop writing? Write pretty little verses about the sparrows and the rainbows? You expected him to stop writing because of me? For God’s sake, Dad, I wasn’t even his daughter.’ Everything my father had said, I’d thought a million times over for more than half my life now. But I had blamed her, not him. I wasn’t his daughter, but I was hers. And she chose him over me every time – that’s what I had believed for so long.

My hands were rubbing the length of my thighs. I couldn’t quite stop them, couldn’t render myself into stillness.

But even if you thought of coming back, Mama, and I talked you out of it, why did you allow me to do that? I was a child. How could you let me make those decisions for you unless they were the decisions you wanted all along? Even if you wanted to come back, that does nothing to change the fact that you left to begin with. It’s not natural. Mothers aren’t supposed to choose anyone else over their children. You unnatural woman. Oh, stop, stop, stop.

I got out of the chair again and walked away from the table, aware of my father’s expression beginning to cross from concern into worry. Unnatural? I wasn’t going to fall for that one; she’d taught me too well to allow me to buy into such stories.

When I was twelve and Mama was at the forefront of political activism with the Women’s Action Forum, the mother of one of my friends said I mustn’t be angry at my mother for getting thrown in jail when she should have stayed at home and looked after me; after all, the woman said, she was doubtless just doing it because she thought she could make the world a better place for me. I looked at the woman in contempt and told her I didn’t have to invent excuses or justifications for my mother’s courage, and how dare she suggest that a woman’s actions were only of value if they could be linked to maternal instincts. At twelve, I knew exactly how the world worked and I thought that by knowing it I could free myself of the world’s ability to grind people down with the relentlessness of its notions of what was acceptable behaviour in women.

‘I had you and Beema and Rabia,’ I told my father, things that I once believed coming back to me. ‘Mama knew that. The Poet had no one really, except her. I mean, there were admirers aplenty, but people who would follow him into exile, relocate their lives to see him in jail, no. No one except her. Don’t ask me to hold it against her that she stood with him. Didn’t stand by him, didn’t follow him, didn’t give up her life to the dictates of his plans. She stood with him. Would you have preferred it if she took me with her every time she left?’

‘Oh, come off it, Aasmaani. Don’t pretend that everything you had to give up was OK by you. All in service of the greater goods of freedom and poetry, which – I might add – have got this nation nowhere.’

It was nothing that I hadn’t thought myself. The futility, the utter futility, of everything Mama and Omi did in the name of politics. But they didn’t know it was futile, a voice in my head insisted, and I recognized it from a time in my life when I knew how it felt to walk on fire, unharmed. A voice which didn’t blame or whine but simply remembered the facts as they had been before hindsight changed the shape of everything Mama-related. I pushed back my chair, and strode into the lounge to retrieve Rabia’s file about my mother. My father sat watching me as I flipped through the articles. When I came to the one I wanted I meant to turn it towards him, but instead I found my own eyes unable to pull away from it; I had never before been able to do more than just glance at it.

It was a newspaper article from an Egyptian paper, two decades old, covering a protest rally against the Hudood Ordinance. One of my mother’s friends in Cairo had sent it to me shortly after my mother disappeared, along with a message about the importance of my mother’s role in linking Muslim feminists from around the world; the message sounded too much like a letter of condolence to be bearable, so I tossed it, and the article, into the garbage from where Rabia retrieved them. What Arabic I had learnt in ‘82, the year my mother and the Poet moved from Colombia to Egypt and I visited them over my summer holidays, I had now forgotten, but the text wasn’t what was important about the article.

In grainy black and white, my mother is the centre of both photographs that accompany the text. In the first, she is surrounded by policewomen brandishing lathis. She is holding on, with both hands, to a pole that must have helped support a banner, but she’s been separated from whoever held the second pole, and the banner has ripped in two. They must have held on tight to each pole, she and the other woman, to make that banner tear down the middle as they were pushed apart. The half-banner is furled in on itself, making it impossible to read the words on it. Even so, one of the policewomen is reaching for the pole, which my mother holds upright, resisting the temptation to wield it like a weapon. A second policewoman holds a lathi horizontally. The photographer has caught the moment when the policewoman’s arm recoils after striking my mother across her midriff with the lathi, and my mother is just beginning to double over, mouth open, eyes closed, face strangely serene.

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.

Quick! said. The curtain’s open. Anyone could be looking. Get down! I pulled you on to the bed. You were laughing and I held my hand to your bare stomach and felt the muscles move under my palm. You locked your arm around my neck as I bent to kiss your shoulder and your voice was fierce when you spoke. Never love anyone but me, you said.

Samina, are you even still alive?

They told me you were dead. The Minions did. One morning, many years ago. It was your birthday, and I have never been able to banish you so completely that you’d stay away on that day. I may go weeks without thinking of you but every 8 October morning when I wake up, there you are, pressed up against me, your leg thrown over my thigh. Sweet bliss of it!

But that year the Minions walked in without my noticing. I was singing Puccini, mixing omelette batter, and calling out to you: ‘Samina! Get out of the shower or I’m coming in after you.’ I heard footsteps behind me, and for a minute I allowed myself to believe I could smell your shampoo. But when I turned, it was them. One of them said, ‘She’s dead,’ handed me the new pair of glasses I’d been long demanding, and then they all left.

They have said nothing on the subject since and will not be drawn into any discussion of you.

My love, I think I could have borne your death with some courage. I think I would have wept with grief and then with gratitude for every second I had with you. But this not knowing. This inability to discern if he had been speaking the truth or just playing tricks with me. They do that sometimes – play tricks. They told me once that India and Pakistan had tested nuclear devices; they told me once that the Berlin Wall had fallen; they told me once that Atlantis had been discovered; they told me once that a sheep had been cloned, and named Dolly (it was the absurdity of that name which revealed the lie immediately); they told me once that brain transplants are now possible, and would I like to sign a donor card so that my thoughts could live on after my death?; they told me once that Mandela had been freed and after twenty-nine years of becoming a legend behind bars he emerged into freedom and did not disappoint the world. Ha! Can you imagine trying that one on me?

They told me all these things, and more; and some they retracted, some re-retracted, some refused to discuss any more.

Let anything happen in the world outside, I don’t care. But tell me if I should mourn for you or not. I said earlier that it didn’t matter if you were alive or dead since I’ll never see you again.

It matters, my love. It matters.

If you are dead, I’ll take kidney beans by the handful and whisper a prayer over each one before dropping it on a white sheet. I’ll knot up the beans in the sheet and tell the Minions to take it to a mosque. In this, I know they’ll oblige me. They are men who respect rituals. Then I’ll walk out into the garden which they now allow me to tend, and I’ll dig up a handful of mud to fill my nostrils with the smell of earth. I’ll close my eyes, lie upon the ground and imagine every detail of your funeral. Who was there, who helped me carry your body – or no, though others might carry you to the gravesite I would insist at the very last on taking you in my arms and lowering you into the grave. Then I’ll place the handful of mud back in the ground, pat it down, and drop a flower on it. Every day for forty days I’ll step out to this spot, and lay a fresh flower. And when the mourning period is over, I’ll know that there’ll never again be an 8 October when I’ll wake to feel you pressed against me, and in that knowledge I will find peace.

It’s so lonely here without you. But it’s lonelier when you flit in and then leave, and I don’t know if it was my imagination or a ghost.