Salt and Saffron (25 page)

‘I'll pray that you pass your exams,' the beggar said.

‘And so she arrived in Karachi ready to consider the possibility of loving a cook?' Sameer said.

‘More than ready. Determined to prove that she was capable of doing so. She always had the strangest stubborn streak. Remember Dr Tahir and the sari?'

‘In the name of Allah …'

‘So her silence was subversion.' For once Sameer was paying attention and not laughing. ‘We look at this guy's letter and we decide his social status. You think Mariam's silence was a protest against the prejudice built into language? That's why even when she did speak it wasn't to the élite. She only spoke to Masood to order meals and even then – Did you ever notice this? – she spoke in questions not in imperatives. She'd say,
“Bhujia? Koftas? Pulao?”
Basically, she was undercutting the whole employer-servant paradigm.'

I thought of all I couldn't say to Masood's brother. ‘Maybe. Yes, maybe. Why not?'

‘And the ultimate test of her ability to look beyond class was the act of eloping?'

‘Let's not get carried away.' I looked suspiciously at Sameer. Was he trying to out-Aliya me with these leaps?
But he looked quite serious. ‘By that point she loved him, I'm sure. But only because she first acknowledged that it was possible to do so. Do you think that's part of the reason society was so outraged? Because by eloping with Masood she made eloping with a servant possible?'

‘May Allah give you many many sons.'

‘Well, I heard of more than one servant being fired straight after the elopement. For looking. For daydreaming. Did you know daydreaming is to be discouraged among servants? I read that somewhere. And Bachelor Uncle sacked his driver because he caught his neighbour's daughter staring at the driver's bare chest one day.' Sameer handed the empty bottles to the beggar and told him he could collect the bottle deposit from the drinkwallah. The beggar made an expression of disgust. What good was a couple of rupees to him?

‘I can get you a job,' Sameer said, standing up and brushing down his trousers.

‘This is my job,' the beggar said, and walked away.

‘Works every time,' Sameer laughed, unlocking the car door for me. As we drove away from the bright redness of the setting sun he said, ‘Is that what's going on with this guy, Khaleel? You want to prove something to yourself just as Mariam did?'

It had nothing to do with the weather, but Mohommed still insisted on saying, ‘I told her so,' when Dadi slipped and hit her head and had to be taken to the hospital. The doctor – Great-Aunt One-Liner's son – said she was fine, no damage done, but no harm, either, in staying in hospital overnight.

I offered to be the one to stay with her, and my parents agreed, but Meher Dadi said her sister had nursed her through measles when they were children so the least she could do in return was sit in the hospital room until Dadi fell asleep. Technically, only one of us should have been allowed to stay after visiting hours, but the nurses and orderlies were no match for the stubbornness of Dadi and her sister. After much wrangling, the nurse on duty finally pretended to believe Dadi's claim that I had left and gone home, even though I yelped quite loudly when the nurse stepped on my hand as I lay in my hiding place under the bed.

‘And knock before you enter,' Meher Dadi said to the nurse. ‘Sometimes at night I dance around naked and I don't want anyone barging in on me when I'm in that state. Not the way my breasts look now. What were once melons are now half-empty bladders.'

Older Starch was more brazen in her manner of ignoring hospital rules. ‘Hello, hello, Abida Khala. What a terrible thing this is.' She sailed in with arms outstretched. ‘Couldn't make it for visiting hours so I told the nurse outside of my connection to several trustees of the hospital and here I am with Maliha.' Her daughter kissed Dadi and Meher Dadi and shot in my direction a look that conveyed all the embarrassment a twelve-year-old can feel at the hands of a parent.

‘There are visiting hours in the morning,' Dadi said.

‘That's all the way tomorrow. Can't let you fall asleep thinking I didn't look in on you. Besides, Maliha has to be taken for waxing in the morning and it's her first time so I'm going along to hold her hand.'

‘It'll hurt, won't it, Aliya Apa?' Maliha said.

Older Starch turned to her. ‘Hurt? What's hurt? Do any of us live without it? But, Maliha, you've heard the story of Sameer Bhai and the lizard in the bathroom. It was the same colour as speed and it leapt on to his leg. Real acrobat it was. Just one
chalaang
from the floor and on to his shin. Shorts he was wearing, shorts! You think he didn't try to kick it off? Of course he tried. But his legs are so hairy that the lizard gripped on with its claws and climbed, one claw at a time, climb climb climb, up his shin, over his knee, up to his thigh and we don't even want to think about what would have happened next if that reptile hadn't hit a bald spot around a scar and lost its grip. Aliya, Aunts, I ask you: would this trauma have occurred if he had waxed his legs?'

I don't know what we would have said if Great-Aunt One-Liner's son, alerted by the nurses, hadn't walked in and ordered Older Starch and her daughter out of the
room. He pretended I was just a pile of clothes, even though Older Starch said, ‘But, Aliya.'

‘Every story has a moral,' Meher Dadi said when the door closed, and then she and Dadi clutched each other and laughed so hard they knocked heads.

I was quiet through the evening, allowing them to talk as only sisters can. The talk meandered through nearly eight decades of memories, their word associations too far removed from logic to make much sense to me and I thought, For all the talking we've ever done together there's still so much I'll never know. I knew I was capturing a memory as I watched them, both lying on the bed now, so oblivious to my presence it was as though I were not yet born. They spoke of the living with nostalgia, and of the dead with mirth, and I wondered at my earlier inability to see how remarkable were the women of their generation, who spoke so rarely with regret, though they had seen so much turn to dust.

At one point I thought they were both asleep, until Dadi said, ‘Remember what the old boy said on the eleventh?' and I knew ‘the old boy' was Mohommed Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam, the Great Leader, whom even my generation with all our cynicism could refer to by that title without irony. And ‘the eleventh' must have been 11 August 1947, three days before Independence.

‘Of course I remember,' Meher Dadi said, and she quoted, as though the words were still fresh, ‘You are free. You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination – no distinction between one community and
another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.'

Dadi nodded, and when she spoke I knew she had remembered me again. ‘Perhaps we did not pay enough attention to that part about “any caste”. We thought that was merely a religious term that didn't apply to us. Perhaps we did not pay enough attention at a time when our attention was worth something.'

It was the first time the word ‘liberal' came to mind regarding Dadi. Her grandmother had lived and died in purdah, unseen by men who were not of the family, her life a life unconcerned with the world outside the palace, her principle interest the matter of marriage. And then, just two generations later, there was her granddaughter: Abida who went to college, Abida who rode on donkey-carts to the refugee camps in 1947 to help those who needed it, Abida who told me I had to learn to be independent because she didn't want me to become one of those women who relied on their husbands for everything. How her grandmother must have despaired of her! How the young Abida must have chafed against the rules and regulations her grandmother wanted her to follow. When she sighed sometimes and said she wished I was more like her she meant not that I should share her particular attitudes but that, like her, I should step away from those attitudes of my grandmother which badly needed stepping away from.

Dadi finally went to sleep a little after ten, and Meher Dadi came to sit by me on the window seat.

‘I'm glad the two of you have resolved your differences,' she said. ‘She can be a harridan, but there's no one more remarkable in the world.'

‘Oh, I think it's down to a penalty shoot-out between the two of you.'

She hugged me fiercely. ‘I miss my family. You all drive me mad, but coming back to Karachi is like stepping into the sea again after months on land. How easily you float, how peaceful is the sense of being borne along, and how familiar the sound of the water lapping against your limbs.'

‘Do you know any Pakistanis in Greece?'

‘Oh yes. There are
desis
in every corner of the globe. There's even a chap from Dard-e-Dil who comes to visit me. Haven't I told you about him?'

‘No.'

Meher Dadi laughed. ‘First time I saw him I thought, Oh God! Funny looking, bearded chap, clearly not Mediterranean, who cycled up my path and knocked on the door just months after I'd left Karachi. He said he was a mechanic, had lived in Turkey all his life, but his parents were from India. He married a local who was half Greek, half Turkish, so they'd hop across the border every so often. I'll never forget this; he said to me a few years ago, “My father moved here at the time of the Khilafat Movement. First World War, that was. So we missed Partition, but somehow it was my destiny to live between two neighbouring countries who are enemies.” The first time we met I asked him where in India his parents were from and he said, “Same as your parents. Dard-e-Dil.” I wasn't surprised he knew. I'd already met a couple of Pakistanis there, so I knew word would spread through the community. But it was a joy to meet someone who … Well, it's an ego thing, isn't it? Even though he'd never lived in Dard-e-Dil, I was his royal family. And not just in some distant way. His father found his first job in Istanbul via that Dard-e-Dil
relative of ours who went to Turkey and learnt the language. So we were, in a very real sense, the mechanic's father's patrons.' She laughed again. ‘I told him we were living in a democratic age, but it took several visits before he and I were comfortable with him coming into my drawing room and sitting down for a cup of tea.'

I could almost hear bells going off in my head. Turkey again, and now it appeared there was actually someone there who might be able to find out if Taimur had ever lived there. ‘He comes often to visit you?'

‘Oh, no. Once, maybe twice a year. For the first few years I knew hardly anything about him. He just wanted me to tell him tales of Dard-e-Dil, and I was so pleased to have someone around for whom all those names had meaning that I rattled off all sorts of indiscreet things. When Samia came to visit she was amazed at how much he knew about her. And he's so involved in our lives, because of those stories. I remember when I told him Akbar had died – I thought he was going to cry. And Mariam he used to be quite fascinated by. Who wouldn't be? Although he hasn't asked anything about her since the elopement. I think he thinks I'm embarrassed by it.' She shrugged. ‘I'm not, you know. Just in case you were wondering.'

‘He sounds like someone whose company you value.' I was holding myself in, almost unable to breathe, although I wouldn't have been able to articulate why exactly that was.

‘Oh, yes. He has all sorts of tales about Dard-e-Dil himself. His parents kept in touch with their relatives there, and every so often he'll mention some lovely detail he found in his father's letters. And he and Apollo get on wonderfully. As do his wife and I. Now when he visits he
brings her along. Sometimes the children and the grandchildren, but I'm afraid they regard me as a foreign relic'

‘Do you cook vats of your
murgh mussalum
to give him a taste of Dard-e-Dil?'

‘As a matter of fact, yes. But the last time he came to see me, just a few months ago, he brought over, oh my mouth waters at the thought of it,
shami
kebabs that were positively Masoodian.'

‘Impossible.'

‘I'm not joking. He said they were from a new restaurant in Istanbul that is driving everyone mad! Apollo tasted them and suggested we move to Turkey.'

I was trying very hard not to clutch at straws and pull them together as though they were jigsaw pieces which would form a clear picture if I just got the edges right. I was trying very hard.

‘What's the name of the restaurant?'

Meher Dadi shrugged and stood up. ‘Don't know. Suppose I could find out.'

‘Please.'

She looked at me sharply. ‘Why?'

‘Please.' I thought my heart might explode.

‘All right. If you insist.'

I handed her Dadi's mobile phone.

‘Now? And on a mobile? That'll cost absurd amounts of money.'

‘Bonnets. Bees. What can one do? I'll reimburse Dadi.'

She checked her watch and calculated the time difference, took the phone and dialled. ‘Apollo?' she said, and reeled off strange syllables. For some reason I'd always imagined they spoke English to each other.

Why is it that when people speak in a language you can't
understand they think all meaning is lost on you? If she'd been speaking in English she'd have lowered her voice, kept it steady, but in Greek she allowed all emotions to write themselves across her face and in her tone. That she missed him, that Dadi's fall had given her a fright, that she and Dadi had spent the evening reminiscing with tears and with laughter, that I had some strange notion in my head which required him to find out the name of a restaurant – all this I heard without understanding a word.