Trespassing (12 page)

‘Fine,’ said Nini. ‘You’ve got crumbs in your mustache.’ She brushed them off.

They crossed the hockey field. On one side loomed the classroom building, also the color of cat vomit. Every morning, students assembled there while the college principal tried to talk to all five hundred of them without a microphone. Most of the women either skipped the assembly or stood around discussing last night’s TV drama, the various joras made that week, shaadis attended, and who was seen with whom. The principal, a handsome woman in her fifties, was best loved for her saris. When Dia and Nini joined the women, those in the front row had passed their verdict. It was trickling down to the middle rows and eventually to the back, where they stood. Today’s sari was a blazing orange French chiffon with yellow swirls. Very bold. Very bubbly.

The assembly over, the two friends ambled to the far side of the field, passing the stone benches that studded its length. These were claimed immediately after assembly by those who’d passed the verdict on the day’s sari. They wouldn’t get up again till 2.00 p.m., when the college closed. The benches glittered with nail polish, lipstick, hair curlers,
thread, wax, combs and clips. The college offered courses in beauty care without even having to hire staff.

Around the corner from the cafeteria was a walkway leading to a Catholic school that Dia and Nini had attended. Students from the two institutes were not meant to intermingle, but the policy was laxly implemented. As children, they’d sneaked over to the college and spied on the women that to them were all beautiful and wise, ruling over themselves like queens, while the schoolgirls were mere nun-toys. They’d grow up to be stolid commandos, just like the women! But now, it was the reverse. College women visited the school with longing, envying the girls that believed in them.

Hibiscus and jasmine bushes bordered the path. Behind these towered trees planted when the grounds were first laid out, in the early 1800s. The pebbled tracks between the trees offered Nini and Dia more space to wander in than all the city itself. Here they were unhampered by the eyes and hands of men, or the women of the white benches. The grove was clean and quiet, and there wasn’t an armed guard in sight. This was not to say there weren’t any – both the college and the school had sentinels at their respective and enormous front gates. But here it was easy to forget they were there.

It had been three days since they’d last met, at the Quran Khwani, and two since their telephone conversation. Dia didn’t know how to start on the topic of the boy.

‘What did you do yesterday?’ attempted Nini.

‘I went to the farm. Then I read. Alone and to Inam Gul.’

‘How’s it going, your studying for the retake?’

‘It’s going nowhere. The books are so stupid.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Nini muttered.

Nini, as always, had passed all the tests. She’d always been a gifted student. She did what she had to do – memorize and spew like a parrot – keeping her independent views on what she spat to herself. Nor was she, unlike Dia, at all bothered by the cheating that went on during the exams. She’d shrug
and say, ‘God watches us. That should be enough.’ In her English accent it sounded funny: God wolches es.

They’d been friends since the day a teacher brought the terrified child to Dia’s class. Nini chewed her nails when asked to read out loud because her accent provoked giggles. Dia soon learned that Nini had been taught none of the customs her family, recently migrated from England, suddenly demanded she uphold. Nor could Dia, who wasn’t expected to do the same, help. Alone, Nini determined to learn what was desired of her. She visited relatives regularly; picked up key Urdu phrases and used them on cue; learned to cook; excelled in school; groomed immaculately; behaved with modesty. She embodied two conflicting worldviews, modern and traditional. Like the fabled Hansel (or had it really been Gretel?), the young Nini had the presence of mind to mark her way back to a home she’d never been encouraged to know.

And now she wanted to leave it.

And leave it the traditional way.

She’d never bring shame to her family. They’d made what they set out to make.

Dia looked at her. ‘Explain it again. I’ve tried, but just don’t understand.’

‘You don’t
want
to, that’s the problem.’ Nini spun around. ‘You have fixed notions. Mind blocks. You think you know my future?’

Dia croaked, ‘I’ve never known what’s going to happen. If you don’t know that, you haven’t known me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘What if marrying this stranger makes your life worse? Then where will you be?’

‘Don’t be such a pessimist. What if it gets better?’

‘But that’s a gamble. Think of all the women who’ve gambled and lost.’ She began to recite their names. She was on the ninth – Sana, who’d married an engineer in America, and left her home and family only to find the groom had another wife, and two children besides – when Nini cut her off with a
laugh. It was a hard, world-weary laugh. Dia wondered who the greater cynic really was.

She had her answer when Nini said, ‘You and I know nothing about freedom, Dia. Look at us. Always stuck behind walls and in cars. If we step out, what is there? If it’s not physical danger, it’s gossip.
Did you see Tasleem’s daughter Nissrine, romping around so boldly on her own?
How many times have I been warned never to provoke that? My parents’ image is my headache. You call that freedom? Come on!’

‘My point,’ Dia insisted, ‘is that you’ll have the same headache
plus
many others.’

‘You haven’t mentioned the ones whose marriages work,’ countered Nini. ‘Some women have more flexibility around their husbands than their fathers. Look at your mother. She blossomed after marrying a man she didn’t know and has been an inspiration to so many other women. Karachi’s becoming a city of entrepreneurial mothers. They get what they want. They just have to give in first. It’s simple mechanics.’

Dia turned away. Yes, her mother had thrived, and yet her warning echoed in the grove.
Marry out of love. Not obligation.
Dia pictured her parents sauntering between the trees. Strangers, not friends. ‘If that’s as good as you think it can get, it’ll never get any better. We’re more than simple mechanics. It’s okay to aim higher, or have dreams.’

‘And where do dreams get us?’ Nini shook her head. ‘I worry about you. If you’re not careful you’ll end up lonely, like …’

‘Oh please,’ Dia cut her off. ‘Like Ama? She used to be our role model, remember?’ How conveniently Nini used Riffat when it suited her and condemned Riffat when it didn’t. That was just how the public treated her mother – as a useful name to drop. Nini was as two-faced as the rest of them.

They sat in silence on the ground, facing a bed of periwinkles. Behind the flowers rose the school wall, its top a heap
of glass shards. Nini took Dia’s hand. ‘You know I love your mother.’

Dia looked at her tennis shoes, then Nini’s. Several months ago, on a whim, they’d sat exactly like this in her garden, under the mulberry tree, feet together, shalwars pulled up high above the knees, and spray-painted the shoes. With eyes clamped shut, they pressed and heard the colors wheeze out. Laughing, they agreed not to open their eyes till the job was done. Dia felt the cold chemicals settling around the canvas on her feet. She favored circles while Nini went for zigzags. Now, feet together, Dia saw how the pattern still fit exactly. Every purple swerve begun on one foot ended on the other. A golden slant rising on Nini’s right small toe descended on Dia’s left small toe.

Dia inhaled deeply. ‘What makes you so eager now? When you got proposals before you weren’t keen.’

‘Why now?’ Nini repeated and shrugged. ‘Time.’

‘Time?’

‘There are things that simply happen when they should.’ Her tendril-like fingers clasped Dia’s shorter ones. ‘I felt it when we left England. It was time for it, somehow. And now it’s time for another move. There are moments when you ought to let yourself be carried away.’

Dia snorted. ‘You sound fifty. Next time let’s spray-paint our hair. I’ll do yours white, and you can do mine, I don’t know,’ she threw up her hands. ‘Orange!’

Nini let go Dia’s hand. ‘I’m doing my best to be sympathetic. You aren’t trying at all.’

‘You’re barely twenty, Nini!’ Dia said aghast. ‘You’ve got
loads
of time.’

Nini glowered. ‘After the disaster at the Quran Khwani, his mother’s probably changed her mind. In case she
hasn’t
– God knows I
would
– we’re only talking about an engagement now. The marriage will come after his graduation, when he’s got a job.’

Should she bother to ask the obvious? Why not? ‘Since he’s going to be the breadwinner, shouldn’t you be sure he has a job? And a pretty good one?’

‘His father was a great doctor. The son’s likely to follow in his footsteps,’ Nini replied adamantly.

‘Do you even know what he’s studying?’

‘Well,’ she twirled her hair. ‘He’s supposed to be very bright. After all, he got a scholarship to study in America. I’m sure he’ll be hugely successful.’ She gazed absently at the wall, as though it were a crystal ball.

Dia felt vaguely nauseated. ‘So the answer is you don’t know?’

Nini glowered again.

‘Talk about dreaming,’ Dia hissed.

A bell rang. It came from the direction of the college. The first period had ended. ‘I suppose we ought to go,’ said Dia.

But neither moved.

At last Nini stood up. ‘Since your twenty questions are up, I suppose we should.’

‘Eighteen,’ countered Dia, still sitting.

‘What now?’

‘If his mother rescinds, or if for some other reason the engagement doesn’t materialize, and if you feel
it’s time,
does that mean you’ll simply agree to the next proposal?’

‘I wondered why you hadn’t asked that one yet. The answer is: if it’s as good as this one, yes.’

‘So it’s entirely chance – this man or that. X or Y. Random?’

‘That’s twenty. And yes, dear Dia, chance has a lot to do with it. If I fell in love, chance would have a hand. If I marry at thirty, chance will have a hand. If I have triplets, guess what: chance. I don’t see why this offends you.’

‘Some things you can control,’ Dia snapped back. ‘I suppose by “good” you mean his name and his American education?’

‘That’s twenty-one,’ said Nini, sealing her lips.

‘And this is twenty-two: How much of your faith in chance has to do with your father’s slumping business?’

Nini’s mouth twitched. It was her turn to look away.

Dia wanted to be the one to take her hand now. She wanted to say, You’re beautiful, desirable, and will have many chances yet. Good chances. But she couldn’t. Nini had given herself over to desperation and Dia hated her for it. Brushing her uniform she rose, and began walking back toward the path that linked the school with the college.

After the assault, his left ear transmitted sound like a cowry pressed to a normal ear and slowly withdrawn: the world had become the echo of a fading sea. At rare moments, when aroused by fury or desire, the pitch rose to an ominous roll of a drum, as if the ear cavity had filled with water again, just as it had the day the fourteen-year-old was battered by the egg-thief, and tossed into the chipped slate waves. At such times the pain was so severe the young boy embarked on a mystic quest to contain the thundering turbulence within him like a dam he swore to never let a soul unlock, not even the girls from the city he was soon to scope.

Days were busy. He helped at a teahouse run by his grandmother, a place exclusively for women. When he first began, soon after his grandmother found him bashed and beaten, rocking in the sea, he’d been the oldest male to ever set foot in the ramshackle hut. Initially, customers complained. But the proprietor argued her grandson was neither emotionally nor physically fit for either the city or the sea, to which a
few stubborn fishermen still set out every evening, competing in vain with the trawlers that had stolen their sea space. Besides, she pleaded, the boy was deaf. He could not spoil the luxurious privacy of their female sanctuary. Reluctantly at first, the clients conceded. It was hard to argue with a woman who served good tea.

Within a few months, the boy’s mysterious silence, his calm, and most of all, the ease with which he did women’s work – scouring pots, refiring hookahs, weaving fish-baskets – endeared him to them. Some even enjoyed flirting with a youth who was neither man nor boy. They poured their secrets into him.

At night, after the women returned to their homes, he helped his grandmother clean the tavern. Then he walked along the beach alone. The lights of the huge trawlers blinked, warning him away. But he’d stay, picturing their immense conical nets at the bottom of the sea, swallowing what his father’s net should, and shouldn’t.

He remembered clearly the face of the man who had lunged for the turtle’s egg, two years ago. He saw himself again as on that night, a child with long black ringlets, smoking a K2, watching the reptile shovel her nest. He saw the shadow on the dune, the woman in only a flimsy tunic waiting for the prize her man had promised. He shut his eyes against the pain surging in his eardrum, but still went on remembering.

He is running. The man is a hulk of a rogue, at least six foot four, soon joined by others. Together, they overtake him. His locks are ropes with which to drag him out to sea. The salt burns his eyes as he rocks, back and forth, back and forth. He keeps his stinging eyes glued to the rising sun, a stargazer writhing in a net. And just when it seems the sea will swallow him, he touches a giant marbled shell. It carries him over watery hills till his path is smooth. He presses his cheeks into the turtle’s hump of a home, going where she goes.

On the beach, calm descended. The flickering lights of the trawlers anchored too close to shore no longer infuriated him. The drums died. His ear once more registered sound like a cowry. In the two years since the attack, he’d learned the secret of overcoming the torture of memory: focus on one beautiful thing.