A Season for Martyrs: A Novel (33 page)

Sunita was silent, but Ali could hear the fresh hurt in the way she breathed out in a long exhalation that was midway between a sigh and a gasp. A smattering of applause burst out; the play had ended and the crowd was dispersing, leaving the actors to stand together in a little band, smiling and shaking hands with a few supporters who’d hung back to talk to them. There’d be a discussion; they’d talk about whether or not the play affected them, related to their lives. Ali would have liked to take part, but the person whom he’d affected was sitting right next to him, and he had to make things right with her before he could think of fixing the rest of the world.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said quickly. “That I’ve lied to you about everything. And you’re right. I have. I’ve been a coward.”

Sunita was twisting her hands in her lap. Ali reached forward and took one of her hands in his own. He massaged her palm lightly with his thumb, stroked her fingers, felt her warm skin and the beat of her pulse in the web of skin between thumb and forefinger. “My father’s a Pir. He’s a zamindar. He has two wives. I have a half sister I’ve never seen. I thought you wouldn’t love me if you knew all of this …” His voice trailed off before he could confess that he hoped she would love him still. He would make no excuses for his deception. Perhaps she would sense his earnestness like she sensed so many things about him: his insecurity, his fears, his weaknesses. And most of all, his shame, through the nights when he was unable to sleep and lay awake in bed, smoking and talking to her for hours on the phone. “Don’t say anything,” he said. “Just tell me you forgive me.”

“I don’t know …”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

Sunita shook her head. He knew she wanted to say more, and waited for it. She swallowed instead, and he watched as her delicate throat moved with effort. “I don’t even know you.”

“Then why did you come?” He asked the question gently, but a knife edge of desperation lay underneath his soft tone. Her answer would tell him whether he had a chance at redemption or whether he should give up now and never hope for her again.

She looked down. “I missed you.” Her lips were trembling, and she pulled her hand away from his, but he couldn’t help the slow spread of joy that started at the base of his spine and moved up his back, gooseflesh rising on his arms, a warmth that lifted the hair off the nape of his neck and caused his cheeks to burn. This was not the moment for the arrogance of the victor, the triumph of the conqueror. In losing Sunita, he had very nearly lost himself. In humility he had to kneel at her feet, hope that her compassion would grow into forgiveness, that forgiveness would once again blossom into love.

They sat together, side by side. He breathed with her and mirrored the movements of her limbs, crossing his arms when she crossed hers, stretching out his legs when she stamped her feet and shook her sleeping foot up and down to wake it up. He had never felt so peaceful, so whole. The sun began its descent toward the horizon, and a chill embraced them both. She shivered; he would have put his arm around her, but they were in a public place and it was still Pakistan. He leaned into her and willed his blood to warm her just as her words had warmed his soul.

Half an hour passed, and then his phone rang again. It would be his mother, asking where he was. “I’m sorry. I have to take this.”

Sunita nodded. He smiled at her as he flipped open the phone and held it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Ali, it’s Ameena.”

“Ameena? Is everything okay?” She must be calling him about his last paycheck, he thought. He still hadn’t received it; there had been some question about Ali not having given proper notice when he’d quit. He didn’t care much, but he appreciated her following through. He’d heard enough horror stories at other offices of people who didn’t get paid for months, or who had to come every day to finance departments and beg for the money owed them.

“Ali, glad I caught you. Listen, I know you’re on leave, but there’s something I want you to do.”

He frowned. “What is it?”

“I want you to cover a political rally for me. Benazir Bhutto’s going to be speaking tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“In Rawalpindi. Liaquat National Bagh. I know it’s short notice, you’d have to take the first plane out tomorrow morning, but you’d be there in time. The rally starts at three p.m. Can you do it?”

“Ameena, I’m not supposed to be working right now …”

“What can I say, Ali? I want you to come back to us. In my mind you’re still on the payroll. You’re a damned good reporter. If you say yes, I’ll make sure you host your own youth show in six months. And I’ll make you an anchor after you graduate from university.”

“Hold on.” He put his hand over the phone, quickly related everything to Sunita. In Sindhi, which he knew Ameena could not understand, he asked her, “Should I do it?”

“Ask for twice as much money as you were being paid before.”

Ali grinned. “You are a genius.” He spoke into the phone once again. “All right, Ameena. I’ll do it.”

“Come to the office in the morning. There’ll be a plane ticket waiting for you.”

“I’ll be there.” He didn’t realize, until he heard Ameena’s tones of command even while begging him for a favor, how much he’d missed being at the channel. It made him feel good to know that his absence had been felt, that Ameena wasn’t ready to reject him because of his true background.

He shut the phone and put it in his pocket. Then he took Sunita’s hand again. This time, he wanted to talk to her until the sky turned the color of crushed dark velvet and the stars came out, first the North Star and then the other constellations, winking out their silvery Morse code above the heads of the Sindhi fishermen in their boats on the Arabian Sea. He wanted to be with her until the moon followed the path of the sun toward the flat line of the ocean, and the sun rose up again in the east, bringing the new day, and with it, a new start for both of them, with no more interruptions.

Signs

RAWALPINDI
, 2007

When the world was still to be born

When Adam was still to receive his form

Then my relationship began

When I heard the Lord’s voice

A voice sweet and clear

I said “yes” with all my heart

And formed a bond with the land I love

Rawalpindi had always made her nervous. In this garrison town lived the army in their fortified barracks; GHQ was not half an hour from where she was right now, in her Islamabad home. She had spent months in detention here, waiting for her father to die. He had been hanged in the Rawalpindi Central Jail on April 4, 1979, a date emblazoned in her mind, always taking precedence over the birthdays of her children, the anniversary of her sister’s marriage, her own anniversary. Not a single happy day could pass without her thinking of him, weakened and ill, dying a martyr’s death when he should have been living a king’s life.

Her father’s birthday and his death day were separated only by four short months. He had been a Capricorn, like Muhammed Ali Jinnah, who died on September 11, 1948. A disaster for Pakistan sixty years ago; a disaster for the world sixty years later. April 4, 1979, had turned out to be a disaster for Pakistan thirty years ago; what disaster would befall her country on April 4 in 2008, thirty years later? She had always been suspicious, superstitious, that way; everywhere she turned, she saw signs, and they chilled her. She consulted holy men and oracles, Pirs and sheikhs, to try to find consolation, but her heart was always fluttering like a trapped bird beating its wings against her rib cage.

Rawalpindi was the scene of yet another disaster for Pakistan: the assassination in October 1951 of Liaquat Ali Khan, the country’s first prime minister. An Afghan from the Zadran tribe had shot him twice in the chest as he was about to make an announcement at the Municipal Park. It had been renamed Liaquat Bagh Park in the murdered prime minister’s honor, and it was here that she was to address a political rally that afternoon.

She had told everyone that she wasn’t afraid for her life. The long poems she had composed during those days in exile were her heart’s honest outpourings, testimony to what she felt about herself, her life. When you have buried a father and two brothers, what else is there left to fear from death?

From Marvi I learnt

From past mystic saints

From my dear brother Shah I learnt

That handsome youth who fought another tyrant

That

Were I to breathe my last, living

Away from the home I loved

My body won’t imprison me.

Still, she wished for a moment that she was not in her house in Islamabad, but back home in Larkana. She always felt strongest in her ancestral home, not far from where her father was buried. It was as if his bones had leached into the sand and given her strength; as long as she could be connected to the earth, through her feet and legs, she would not lose him. And yet, as Shah Abdul Latif had written in the epic poetry she adored (and tried to emulate in her own humble attempts at poetry), life was about separation and loss; she had been through the cycle time and time again, exiled from her beautiful Sindh, forced to wander for years, away from the love of her life.

Larkana, loved one, I remember

The sweet scent of roses

Of fresh rain on desert sand

Of trees washed by nature’s hand.

She could not bear it if she were to never see Sindh again. But then she shook her head and pushed away the gloomy thoughts: of course she’d get through this, as she had, by the grace of God, got through all the other days. She’d learned something from the terrible night back in October: not to trust the government’s assurances of safety, not to rely on their promises. Her security people had made arrangements for jammers, for strong floodlights; she’d talked to the Americans and the Israelis for private security contractors to protect her. The Israelis were still considering her request, but the Americans had provided her with some men, and she had faith in God.

And then there were her children: handsome Bilawal, with his first term at Oxford nearly over—how proud she’d been to take him there herself, show him the lawns where she’d studied, the halls where she’d debated, the rooms where she’d talked politics and movies and life, late into the night. Her daughter Bakhtawar, who wanted to be a punk musician—she’d even asked that rapper, what was his name? Puffy, Puff Daddy, Diddy, something like that, to help Bakhtawar out when it came time to try to enter the music industry.
The things one has to do for one’s children,
she thought to herself with a wry smile. And Asifa, whose skin had begun to grow patchy, sending mother and daughter fleeing to the best dermatologist in London, the Dubai sun no good for her condition.

She had so much to do for all of them; she thought constantly of them when she was away. A mother’s heart, pulled in so many directions; but her husband could never accuse her of
not
thinking of the children.

The meeting that morning with the EU election observers had gone well. She’d informed them of the preparations the president’s party had been making for weeks: the plans to stuff the ballot boxes, the ghost polling stations, the intimidation of the voters that was by now a vital part of the playbook of Pakistani elections. The American lawmakers would be given another full dossier, when she met with them after the rally. She’d prepared her documents, working late into the night, hunched over her laptop computer with her glasses perched on her nose, a green pen in her hand to mark the printouts wherever she saw an error or a place where an amendment could be made.

Nobody knew where she found the stamina to keep working the long hours after everyone else had fallen nodding into bed, but she knew she had to be note-perfect when she spoke to Senators Specter and Kennedy, after they’d been wined and dined by the president, and he’d sung his song of fair elections and honorable intentions to them. She would not let them be hoodwinked by him.

She could hear muffled words, urgent whispers coming from outside the door where she was working, and she called out to them, “What is it? Tell me now …”

A reluctant aide approached her, and stood in front of her, shuffling from one foot to the other. Finally, he spoke up: “Bad news: four Nawaz supporters were killed. Someone fired upon them from a rooftop. The PML is blaming the Musharraf group. Violence to scare opponents away from the polls.”

“Nothing new,” she said. “Send a message of condolence through the official channels. Tell them that no dictator can stop the democratic process. It is what the people want.”

Away I live in a mansion grand

But I long to campaign

On rocky roads

In bumpy jeep rides

With flags and banners

With selfless zeal to change

The sad present

Into a smiling future.

At two o’clock, she called out, “What’s for lunch?”

“
Aloo salaan,
and chapati … sorry it’s so plain.”