Moth Smoke (24 page)

‘So why hold back now?’

‘Daru, I’m married. I have a son. I’m not looking to mate. I’m looking to be with a man for me, because it makes me happy.’

‘And I don’t make you happy?’

‘You do.’

‘But you don’t care about my happiness.’

‘Of course I do. That’s why I’m being honest with you. If you’re looking for a wife, you need to look somewhere else. I’m an awful wife. And I’m already married.’

I walk over to a cabinet and take out the hairy. I haven’t told Mumtaz I’ve been smoking the stuff. But suddenly I see no reason to hide. Let her be angry.

Then again, maybe she won’t even care. I’m just her lover, after all.

I light up and she asks for a puff.

‘No,’ I say.

She stays seated, hugging her knees on the sofa. ‘Why not?’

I pull the smoke into my lungs, growing calm before the aitch has even begun to work: the relaxation of anticipation. ‘You don’t want it.’

‘Are you angry?’ Her tone is neutral, neither cold, accusatory, nor warm, inviting reconciliation.

‘It’s an aitch.’

‘Aitch?’

‘Aitch. Hairy. Heroin. Bad for your health.’

She’s quiet. I don’t feel any need to say more. I like this, the sense that she’s trying to communicate with me while I hold back, waiting.

‘You’re more stupid than you look,’ she says.

I ignore her. The aitch is almost gone. I hold it between thumb and forefinger, fill my chest with a last puff.

‘Are you such a coward?’ she snaps. ‘Have you really just given up on everything?’

‘Don’t overreact. I’ve had some occasionally. Twice or thrice.’ I’m acting cool, but inwardly I’m overjoyed by her reaction. She’s furious. Which means she’s concerned.

She glares at me. ‘You have to stop it.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t be an idiot. It’s heroin. It isn’t hash or ex. It isn’t a nice little recreational drug.’

‘It depends on how much you have. I’m a recreational user.’

‘Do you think you can quit?’

‘I’m not hooked. How about you?’

She’s touching her chin with her finger. ‘How about me?’

‘Do you think you can quit?’

She shakes her head and gives me a frustrated smile. ‘I don’t smoke heroin, you maniac.’

‘Quit Ozi. He’s bad for you. You’re unhappy.’

She looks at me, still shaking her head. Then she lights a cigarette. ‘Let’s not confuse things. Your doing heroin has nothing to do with my marriage.’

‘You’re here every day. Why don’t you leave him?’

‘I have a son, in case you’ve forgotten.’

With the heroin comes clarity. And a certain cruelty, a calm disregard for consequences. ‘You don’t give a shit about your son.’

She stops smoking. ‘Don’t say that,’ she says in a low voice.

‘You don’t love him. Stop pretending.’

She drops her cigarette on the floor. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘You run away from him every chance you get. Do you think it’s good for him that you stay? He’s going to grow up wondering why his mother never really talks to him, why she’s always so distant. And do you know what that’s going to do to him? He’ll be miserable.’

She stares at me, eyes wet, face hard. ‘You’re a bastard.’

‘Quit them,’ I say. ‘It’s for the best.’

She stands, wipes her tears.

I reach out, but she slaps my hand away. Pain slices up from my finger.

‘I don’t love you,’ she says. ‘And the reason you’re so desperate to think you’re in love with me is because your life is going nowhere and you know it.’

With the pain in my hand comes unexpected, ferocious anger. But even more than anger, I feel triumph straighten my back and flush my face, triumph because I know I’m right about her, because she’d never be so vicious if I were wrong.

She holds out a note. ‘Here’s a thousand. You’ll need it.’

‘I don’t want it.’

She walks into the bedroom, strips naked, puts on her clothes, and leaves without another word.

When she’s gone I pick up the clothes she was wearing and put them on. I can smell her in them, and I’m suddenly filled with the longing to speak with her.

Then I find the thousand-rupee note in my wallet.

I’m at once furious and ashamed, furious because people give money after sex to prostitutes and ashamed because I’m so hungry that I have to take it. But I make a decision. To hell with handouts. I’m ready for a little justice.

I’m driving slowly to Murad Badshah’s workshop, trying not to splash pedestrians wading through the flooded
streets with their shoes in their hands and their shalwars pulled up their thighs, when I’m overtaken by a Land Cruiser that sprays muddy water in its wake like a speedboat and wets me through my open window. Bastard. I dry my face on my sleeve and clear the windshield with the wipers.

All my life the arrival of the monsoon has been a happy occasion, ending the heat of high summer and making Lahore green again. But this year I see it as a time of festering, not rebirth. Without air-conditioning, temperatures are still high enough for me to sweat as I lie on my bed trying to sleep, but now the sweat doesn’t evaporate. Instead, it coagulates like blood into peeled scabs of dampness that cover my itching body. Unrefrigerated, the food in my house spoils overnight, consumed by colored molds that spread like cancer. Overripe fruit bursts open, unhealthy flesh oozing out of ruptures in sickly skin. And the larvae already wriggling in dark pools of water will soon erupt into swarms of mosquitoes.

The entire city is uneasy. Sometimes, when monsoon lightning slips a bright explosion under the clouds, there is a pause in conversations. Teacups halt, steaming, in front of extended lips. Lightning’s echo comes as thunder. And the city waits for thunder’s echo, for a wall of heat that burns Lahore with the energy of a thousand summers, a million partitions, a billion atomic souls split in half.

Only after light’s echo has come as sound, after it is clear sound’s echo will fail to come as heat, do lips and teacups make contact, and even then minds and taste buds remain far apart.

It is, after all, our first nuclear monsoon. And I’m looking for a fat man.

I follow Ferozepur Road as it curves past Ichra, hoping as the water gets deeper that my car won’t stall. But soon I reach a point where most of the traffic is turning around and only the Bedford trucks and four-wheel drives are continuing on. Ahead, a few cars have foundered, their exhaust pipes submerged, and I doubt mine will do any better, so I park my car beside the road on a raised slope in front of a shop that sells toilet seats and bathroom tiles. With my shoes tied together by the laces and hanging from my neck, and my jeans rolled up to my knees, I head out on foot.

It takes me the better part of an hour to wade the mile or so to Murad Badshah’s workshop. He’s chatting with a mechanic, and their hands are stained with motor oil. ‘Hullo, old chap,’ he booms when he sees me. ‘This is a pleasant surprise.’

‘I thought we had an appointment,’ I reply, shaking his hand.

‘Yes, but I assumed it was canceled, force majeure and all that.’ He gestures in the direction of the street. ‘How did
you make it here, by ship? I’m losing money every hour because this damned water has two of my rickshaws stranded.’ He tells the mechanic to take a break and offers me a stool next to a rickshaw lying on its side. ‘I tried to call you from the shop next door to tell you not to come, old boy, but no one answered at your end.’

‘My phone is dead,’ I tell him. ‘It must be the rains.’ Either that or I’ve finally been disconnected.

He smiles and strokes his chin, his stained fingers leaving streaks. ‘No job, no electricity, no telephone. Perhaps you ought to reconsider joining me in the entrepreneurial venture I mentioned before.’

I have reconsidered. That’s why I’m here. I only hope I’m not about to be disappointed. ‘I’m in no mood to be laughed at,’ I warn him.

His puffy eyes open wide. ‘I’m being serious.’

‘Tell me.’

Murad Badshah lights a cigarette and leans back on his stool like a child on a wooden horse. ‘A mechanic in my employ has a dimwitted cousin who managed to secure a position as a guard at a storage depot on Raiwind Road. In April of last year, during the flour shortage, a hungry mob attacked the depot. The guards shot three people dead. People were dying for their hunger, old boy, dying for their hunger. But there was no need for them to go hungry. My mechanic’s cousin told me, and I heard this with my own
ears, mind you, that there was over a hundred tons of flour in that warehouse alone. Stockpiled, hoarded to keep up the prices.’

‘May I have a cigarette?’ I ask. ‘Mine seem to be soaked.’

‘There you are.’ He offers his pack and lights one for me.

‘So what does all this have to do with your plan?’

‘Just laying the intellectual foundation, old boy,’ Murad Badshah tells me. ‘This is how I see things. People are fed up with subsisting on the droppings of the rich. The time is ripe for a revolution. The rich use Kalashnikovs to persuade tenant farmers and factory laborers and the rest of us to stay in line.’ He reaches under his kurta and pulls out the revolver I’ve seen once before. ‘But we, too, can be persuasive.’

‘Let me see it,’ I say, and he hands it to me. It feels cool against my cheek, soothing, like a wet compress on a feverish forehead. I sight along the barrel, pleased that I hold it rock steady, without the slightest trembling. ‘What’s your plan?’

He takes the gun back from me and tucks it away. ‘Boutiques. I want to rob high-end, high-fashion, exclusive boutiques.’

Is he mocking me? ‘Why boutiques?’

Murad Badshah starts rocking back and forth with excitement as he ticks off the reasons on his fingers. ‘Built on main roads with easy access, rarely more than one guard,
good cash-to-patron ratio, small size, risk-averse clientele, high-profile hostage possibilities, little competition. And, as an added bonus, symbolism: they represent the soft underbelly of the upper crust, the ultimate hypocrisy in a country with flour shortages. Boutiques are, in a word, perfect.’

‘It can’t be that easy or someone else would be doing it.’

Murad Badshah smiles. ‘Entrepreneurs tend to ignore that argument.’

I look at him, at his good-natured face, his chin streaked with motor oil. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you know what you’re talking about? Have you done this sort of thing before?’

He looks offended. ‘You doubt my qualifications?’

‘It’s a reasonable question. Don’t look at me like I’ve demanded a copy of your c.v.’

He pulls up his kurta, revealing the long, slow roll of his belly. Dead center, a scar the size and shape of a large bird dropping on a car window.

‘Polio vaccination?’ I ask.

He turns around and bends forward, revealing another, larger scar. ‘Polio vaccinations don’t leave exit wounds.’

I’m relieved. Impressed, even. Exaggerated or not, there’s obviously some truth behind his stories. But one thing still bothers me. Why does Murad Badshah need me if his plan is so good? ‘I don’t know anything
about robbing boutiques. I don’t even know how to use a gun.’

‘You can walk into a boutique without arousing suspicion,’ Murad Badshah says. ‘If someone like my mechanics, or my drivers, or even myself showed up, the guard would watch him like a hawk. No offense, but you blend in with those boutique-going types. When you walk in and act like a customer, no one will look at you twice. Then you put a gun against the guard’s head, I come in, we generate some revenue and implement our exit strategy. No violence, no profanity, suitable for viewing by young children, and potentially extremely lucrative.’

‘Let’s do it,’ I say, extending my hand.

We shake. Surprisingly, I don’t feel the slightest tremor of doubt or worry. Must be the hairy. Which reminds me. ‘Do you have any more heroin?’

He’s quiet for a moment, looking at the rickshaw lying on its side. ‘My supplies have been cut off by the rain. The Jamrod-Lahore trucking circuit has been disrupted.’

Just my luck. ‘That’s bad news. I’m completely out.’

‘Don’t do any more. I’m being very serious now, old chap.’

‘How do you know I’ve done any?’

‘You look awful. Besides, I can see you’re on it right now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your eyes. And you keep scratching yourself.’

I have to remember not to do that. ‘Are you sure you don’t have any?’

‘I have a little. But I’m not going to give it to you.’

‘I don’t need your protection.’

He looks at me, surprised at the tone in my voice. Then he shakes his head.

As I wade back to my car, excitement builds inside me. I’m finally taking control of my life. I keep waiting for the fear to come, but it doesn’t. In fact, I’m walking taller, grinning, empowered by the knowledge that I’ve become dangerous, that I can do anything I want.

I get behind the wheel and point my finger at a passing Pajero.

Bang bang.

In the morning, the smell of something burning brings me out of the house and onto the street in search of its source. Neat mounds of rubbish in front of the neighbors’ houses smolder, trash smoke rising only to be beaten down by the rain.

I walk closer.

Definitely an odd smell. Maybe there’s plastic in the heaps. Or maybe the rain does something to the way they burn.

I kick one. Sodden refuse, half-burnt, flies off. Underneath it’s more dry, but I see no fire, no embers even. Just
smoke coming out of fissures in the black heart of a trash pile, like steam from the cooled crust of lava.

The stench released is unbearable.

Like burning skin.

I walk inside. But the smell stays with me. On my shoes maybe, on my clothes. It lingers even after I shower.

Even after I dump my clothes in a tub of soapy water.

It clings to me. Wafts over the wall. Makes me want to retch.

I wish Murad Badshah would give me some more hairy. But we’re partners now, and I need him, so I never ask him for any when he comes by. Wouldn’t want to worry the old boy. Instead, we discuss strategy: the boutiques he’s scoped out, the gun he’s going to buy for me (the cost will be deducted from my share of our eventual take), when we’re going to do target practice, et cetera. I want to get on with it, but he keeps telling me to be patient, saying that planning is nine-tenths of the work.