Noon (23 page)

I nodded. He seemed even in his frail state to enjoy the attention, and smiled weakly at me, showing teeth over which a yellow film had collected. I thought he relished the expression on my
face, when as he sat up, he revealed his two bandaged wrists, both wrapped in a thin white gauze, and daubed with two brown stains.

‘Mirwaiz,’ I said, ‘shame on you. This is cowardice.’

His sister smiled encouragingly, and Mirwaiz, too, seeming to enjoy the rebuke, yielded to my words. ‘What to do, saab? Life has been like that only. You don’t know what I’ve
been through. A harvest of troubles!’

‘Giving lines?’

He laughed. ‘Rehan saab, what lines are there with you?’ Then becoming serious, he said, ‘I’m telling you the truth. They threw me out like a dog. All the servants stood
around me, saying, “Mirwaiz, sir, saab, where would you like your luggage to be taken? Where are you going from here? Of what service can we be to you?” Even that old bitch
Narses’s mother joined in. I felt like one of those princes, who are ejected forcibly from their kingdoms by a revolution. The swines!’

‘Was Narses there?’

‘No,’ Mirwaiz said bitterly, ‘where would that poor wretch have been able to stand such a sight? As soon as word came from Sahil saab, his heart, or what remained of it, turned
to ash. He handed over the responsibility of carrying out Sahil saab’s order to his mother, and said, in a wavering voice, “Mirwaiz, I’m going to La Mirage on business. I’ll
be back in some three or four days. We’ll meet then.” But that of course was to be our last meeting.’

‘Did you get any compensation or anything?’

‘Yes, I did. But I was robbed of that too.’

‘How?’

‘The thing, Rehan saab, is this: when you remove an animal from his natural setting and rear him in a house, he loses his instincts. He ends up neither of the jungle nor of the
house.’

Mirwaiz’s sister, who’d been listening quietly up to that point, was so affected by these words that in a forceful mixture of Punjabi and Kashmiri she suddenly said: ‘Truly,
they’ve been savage with him. And it’s not like we’ve had it easy.’

I nodded in agreement.

‘If I hadn’t come, God knows what would have become of him . . . I can’t lose another family member; he’s all I’ve got.’

‘Speak in Urdu,’ Mirwaiz interrupted.

But she fell silent, as if overpowered by her own words.

Mirwaiz, who had been listening with fascination to this account of his self-destruction, took over: ‘The truth is that I lacked the courage to cut deep. I just needed to feel pain,
physical pain, that could in some way cool my internal pain.’

As I sat there, listening to this tale of high drama, I wondered why I had been called here? Money? If so, I was happy to give him some. I had some dollars in my pocket, which I knew would go
far in Port bin Qasim. Or was it something else they wanted? An appeal to Narses perhaps. That, I was far less willing to do. Help finding a job? But with whom? I knew only Tabassums.

For all his frailty, Mirwaiz followed my thought process at every turn. When reading my face, he could see it had reached a dead end, he said, ‘Don’t worry, Rehan saab, I want
nothing from you. I want only to lighten my conscience. And yes, if by doing so, Isffy saab comes to feel that I am a good and loyal man, then I am ready this instant to come back into his
employ.’

‘Back into his employ?’

Mirwaiz eyed me carefully, seeming to weigh his options. Then he said, ‘He hasn’t told you who sent me to work at Mr Narses’s . . .’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘And
why
?’

As he witnessed the horrific impression his words made on me, Mirwaiz seemed almost to look with pity on my innocence.

‘You were sent for that? To entrap Narses? Right from the beginning?’

Mirwaiz nodded solemnly.

‘So what is the problem? Why didn’t you go through with it?’ I said, half in anger. ‘Why do you need me to speak to him?’

‘Because he’s come to doubt my loyalty. I became soft, you see. I grew fond of Mr Narses, and could see he genuinely cared for me. I didn’t want to betray him. And because of
that Isffy saab came to think I was playing a double game. But I wasn’t. I was always his man; I just couldn’t do what he asked of me. And I want you now to help me prove my
loyalty.’

The room became heavy with anticipation. The roar of the street was suddenly audible, the way a film’s music sometimes takes the foreground.

‘I know who it is,’ Mirwaiz said at last, ‘I know the man who is placing a price on the secrets of Isffy’s saab’s private life?’

A stylish way to describe blackmail, I thought.

But before I could know more, I needed to know something else: ‘What, if any, connection does he have to Narses?’

‘A distant connection,’ Mirwaiz replied. A contorted smile creeping into his face, he added, ‘This isn’t Mr Narses’s work. But let’s say that if he was aware
of it, he would not have stopped it either.’

I was very satisfied with this; it was just the kind of half-truth that was so well suited to Port bin Qasim. Mirwaiz, it seemed, had gauged the necessity for tact in the waters we found
ourselves in.

‘In my opinion then,’ I said, ‘there’s no need to bring his name into any disclosure we might make.’

‘No,’ Mirwaiz said, letting his eyes rest on his sister. She had been watching in fascination, and now shook her head vigorously in agreement: ‘No. No need at all,’ she
said.

Once more silence fell over the room; or at least we were muted, and the music of engines and horns played.

Mirwaiz pushed himself up higher against the wall, using the help of his turned-in wrists, and winced slightly from the pain. Our eyes followed him in expectation. Then, allowing a second to
pass, he made an oblique gesture with his injured hand, indicating a flowing beard, rounded his fingers into a pair of spectacles, and rubbed his forehead with his thumb to suggest a prayer
callous.

‘Mir Anwar’s swine son,’ he muttered.

I returned to a bungalow enveloped in a dusk gloom. Isffy was not back and it seemed there were no servants about, for no one had switched on the lights. The chowkidar let me
in, but even in his tired and lined face there were questions and anxiety; nothing, however, that he was prepared to put into words. He said only that Isffy saab was still out, and he had taken
Zulfi with him. When I recalled Zulfi’s ferocity, and the urgency with which Isffy had asked for him after I had shared Mirwaiz’s information – ‘
Send Zulfi to me this
minute, and
wait for me at home
’ – that had a menace of its own.

It was like the mood of the house I entered, dark and tense, alive with the hum of a refrigerator. Silvery evening light, seeping into the front room from an invisible source, was dotted here
and there with the red circle or icy blue square of a voltage stabilizer or air conditioner. I climbed the stairs, leaving the lower portion of the house to its darkness.

Upstairs, in the room where I had spent so much time, Isffy’s glow-stars shone dully. I turned the knob of an uplighter and they vanished in the halogen glare. There were the relics of
Isffy’s childhood – the toys, leather beanbags and posters of plastic beauties. I thought I would take advantage of his absence to get my things together. When I’d revealed the
identity of his blackmailer, I had also slipped in the news of my sudden departure. It had come so fast, and on so discordant a note, that he seemed not to register it at all. And yet, I wondered
if he had felt it as another desertion. He had been so calm and collected, so businesslike in his manner, that I was not able to gauge his true reaction. He seemed once more the elder brother he
had been on my arrival, once more the man in control, the man who had had my bags moved to his car without a thought. But where was he now? What had he meant when he said, ‘If I’m late,
go to bed and I’ll wake you up when I get home’?

The hours passed and the quiet of the house deepened. Evening became night. I opened the bay windows in expectation of a breeze off the sea, in expectation of that balmy Port bin Qasim night,
scented with brine, but it didn’t come. What came instead was something thicker and velvety. A deep and sudden night, moonless. My suitcases were packed, but still open. Locks, money, my
passport and ticket lay on the coffee table. There had been few times in my life when I felt so utterly without purpose. I dared not touch my Dostoevsky for fear of inviting troubled sleep. But
neither did I want the glare and activity of the television. At last I sank into a beanbag, and began to wait, fighting my smarting eyes and drowsy mind.

I can’t remember how I woke. But the house, which to its foundations had been asleep, was, like me, now awake to an uneven and jarring energy. A door slammed heavily; and the bungalow
vibrated to it. There was also a phone ringing somewhere, an old-fashioned phone that I hadn’t even known existed, a shrill landline. And beyond, a great murmur, as if thousands had collected
in the street outside. I tried to process the different pressures logically. The phone. That was the first thing to find. I began hunting around and followed the ringing into Isffy’s room,
where I found it beneath a heap of unwashed clothes. Just as I lifted the receiver, I heard the sound of breaking glass in the room outside. And then the clarity of slogans, as if they had always
been there: ‘Khoon ka badla khoon se lenge/ We will avenge blood with blood.’ And: ‘Sahil Tabassum Murdabad! Sahil Tabassum Murdabad!/ Death to Sahil Tabassum! Death to his
house!’

On the other end, Narses’s voice: ‘Rehan, is that you? Thank God, I’ve got you on the phone. I’ve been trying for hours. Where’s Isffy?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, doing my best to sound alert.

‘Oh, God. Well, listen,’ he sighed, ‘we have to get you out of that bungalow. The entire Zeban-e-Pak is going to collect there any second, baying for blood.’

‘Narses,’ I said, allowing my ears to catch the dull clamour of voices outside, ‘I think they’re already here.’

There was a pause, then he said: ‘Just wait there. I’m sending you an escort. I’ve spoken to the commissioner. Your father, poor man, has laid his turban at the feet of the
Governor, begging for his son’s life. It will be OK; just stay inside.’

‘Narses,’ I said, suddenly remembering, ‘I have a flight in the morning.’

‘Good. Very good. Where to? Somewhere far away, I hope.’

‘Dubai and London.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Narses, what’s happened?’

‘Isffy,’ he said with false calm in his voice, ‘has tried once more to ruin us. That is what has happened. Such is his hatred for his family. Brutal what he did to that boy,
Meeru’s son. Unspeakable things. And he’s not a nobody, you know; Meeru’s got serious connections. But, you watch, he’ll find out,’ he added, his voice trembling with
rage, ‘he’ll be the only one to suffer for this. He’s only ruined himself.’

Just then, as if conjured up by this abuse, Isffy appeared in the doorway. His face was white and drenched with sweat. He put a finger to his lips.

‘Rehan, are you there?’ Narses said.

‘Yes, yes,’ I said.

‘Well, sit tight. Someone will be there for you in the next hour or so. You are to leave the house from the servants’ quarters. Understood? And if Isffy shows up, call me
immediately.’

Isffy let the door close softly behind him. He was quiet. Outside a kind of orchestral violence reached its climax. Chants thundered and every now and then a pane shattered,
drawing from the crowd a howl of euphoria.

‘They have torches,’ Isffy whispered with boyish excitement. ‘Angry faces and torches, just as in olden days.’

‘How did you get in, Isffy?’

‘Through the back.’

He entered the room and sank to his haunches in front of an elaborate sound and video system, whose shape towered before us, like the darkened outline of a city. With Isffy’s touch, little
red lights and pale green displays sprang to life on it.

‘What are you doing?’ I said, bewildered.

‘Shhh,’ he said. Then gently, turning a large black knob, he drew Begum Akhtar’s voice, in a low whisky-ed moan, from the sound system. It filled the room, pushing back the
commotion beyond.

Isffy stood up and went over to a little fridge, near the sound system, from which he drew two ice-cold beers. He handed me one and gestured to the bed. ‘Sit down. I want to show you
something.’

I moved reluctantly towards it. Isffy removed a small grey tape from his pocket, and fitting it into a VCR converter, slid it into the video player. Picking up the two remotes that lay beside
it, he came to sit on the bed next to me.

The room was soon filled with the blue light that precedes the screening of a film. Isffy and I, cold beers in our hands, two thick feather pillows behind us, watched in silence. His face wore
an expression of fatigue as deep as I had ever seen.

‘We should have done this more often,’ he said quietly.

I nodded, and for some reason asked if we would have to turn the music off.

‘No,’ he answered, ‘it’s not that kind of movie.’ And grinning, he added: ‘It’s a silent movie.’

We sat like that for many minutes, the Begum Akhtar, soft and powerful, the room bright with blue light. Isffy’s face was still pale, and his body damp with perspiration.

‘You stink,’ I said.

He nodded, and smiled thoughtfully, as if I had said something profound about our weeks together. A moment later, he said, ‘I was very good and able once, Rehan. But I was wasted. And
there is no anger like the anger over wasting what is good.’

I was about to say something. I wanted to tell him that I knew of the pressures upon him, knew, too, how these pressures no less than elemental ones could alter the moral composition of an
individual. I wanted to tell him to resist, to remain what he was, what he intended to be. But what could I, who had resorted each time to flight in my own life, offer him? To stay, I felt now
– no matter what you became – was to resist. And maybe it was better to be strong and corrupt than possess a morality that was not yours, that could only be adhered to through inaction
and escape. In any event, I was too late.