Trespassing (30 page)

She’d step cautiously along her brilliant green lawn, absorbing it all: a residual raindrop on a single leaf, causing it to shudder like a hiccup; hoverflies swilling mist; bulbuls diving for dancing gnats. She’d feel things so poignantly it was as if the flaccid sky had sunk into her bones, teaching her to see life
up close, closer than anyone else. When a thin, flaxen light cut through the clouds – the clouds that were
in
her – she could hear earthworms die, and aphids sweat honeydew. When the sun descended and the air turned tawny, bulbuls sang more vibrantly, as if the rain had cleansed their vocal cords. At nightfall, she’d slip into the deliciously chilled, damp sheets that smelled of rain, and think, as she so often did at the farm: God is here; God is detail.

But this year the before period never came. The first storm continued for three days, and Dia felt a reality devoid of meaning press against her. On the drive back from their last meeting at the cove, Daanish’s car had stalled several times and she’d had to flag a taxi. Slick with mud, she’d passed Inam Gul on her way up to her room. She hadn’t wanted to get into a Sumbulesque discussion, so insisted she’d been at Kings and Queens. He was silent, tentative – not the Inam Gul she knew.

Since then, Daanish had called to say his car had still not been repaired. None of the mechanics were picking up their phones and he couldn’t go out looking since all the roads around him were knee-high in putrid waste. They wouldn’t be able to meet again for days. He was leaving in less than three weeks.

Her own neighborhood was cloaked in a darkness only earthworms would celebrate: for the last twenty hours they’d had no electricity, and in the refrigerator, food was beginning to rot. Mosquitoes invaded, as did the drone of generators.

On the fourth day, she squatted on the muddy doorstep, looking helplessly around her. The rain fell like a sheet of armor. It had a point to make, and would continue making it as obstinately as it damn well pleased.

The creatures that thrived on its fury taunted her, for they were free to court each other, while she and Daanish alone were not. A bright emerald frog hopped by her damp feet, croaking with gusto. Its throat ballooned to three times the
size of its head and it blinked with lust. Slugs wrapped frilly feet around each other in wild abandon. She thought, Daanish would love to see this. Perhaps he did, at that very moment, in his own house. So why weren’t they together?

She began to see her world from his eyes, as if the rain had pulled her into the sea, and all the land dwellers had changed to their earlier, watery state. Insects like the leather jacket suddenly looked more like a cuttlefish, tentacles rippling as it slid along the wet ground. A spider hanging nearby carried an egg cocoon in her arms, reminding Dia of the argonaut Daanish had spoken of. Sopping ivy was seaweed. How she longed to hear him speak of such things in his lilting voice! But the rain beat down, building a wall inside her garden wall.

In that other place of his, which he said was just the same, did weather get in the way of love? She was beginning to think like that. In her mind, phrases were increasingly punctuated with in
this
country, or, in
other
countries. She’d never done that before. This had always been the only place she knew, loved, and wanted to be immersed in. It was Nini who’d dreamed of that
other.
Not her.

But she was getting entangled in aspects of that faraway world Daanish reluctantly shared with her. To get to his classes, he had to cross a sloping wooden bridge above a stream that in winter rang with icicles and in spring, teemed with carp. She’d never known ice. Rain, yes, but not a bank of singing frost. In fine weather, he said students walked the campus barefooted, and discussed assignments with professors under the shade of towering oaks. It all sounded wonderfully intimate and fabulous to her. And though he claimed otherwise, she could read his eyes well enough to know there was magic there for him too. And so she was beginning to understand what he meant when he said he was divided.

The thought of him leaving filled her with more anguish than she’d ever known. It had come to this: in less than a
month she’d allowed him to tear most of her old skin off. When they weren’t together, she wanted it all back. And there was no one – no Nini any more – to cry to.

Two days ago, she finally phoned to tell him this. She was amazed at his response: ‘Going away will be easier for me because we’ll always be together, won’t we? I’ll be back in the winter and you’ll be here, waiting, and nothing will change. Now my life has direction, Dia.’

Out on the doorstep, under cover of the seaweed-crawling roof, Dia shivered. The wind picked up. Rain fell at a slant and her clothes were soaked through. She’d been in drenched clothes a lot lately. Lightning ripped the sky, and the rain crashing on the ground sounded like a herd of camels, racing toward her.

You zip me up, he’d said.

She held herself tight, cold and miserable. The opposite was happening to her.

Days later, it still rained. The electricity returned then shut off again. Riffat, exhausted from nights of blistering sleeplessness and days of surviving drivers whose aggression feasted on bad weather, stayed home. With no power at his office, her brother, the computer engineer, did too. The household was inebriated with stale air and even Inam Gul was more juvenile than usual. Their company was driving Dia mad.

Candles were lit in every room, casting shadows over walls and floors. ‘I feel a mysterious presence!’ the cook said, pop-eyed.

Dia clicked her tongue in irritation. ‘It’s the KESC. And there’s nothing at all mysterious about them.’

He waved skinny, veined hands. ‘No. It’s the unseen.’

Dia nodded, ‘The KESC.’

From Riffat’s room sounded a snort. Hassan’s. Dia could hear desperate gusts of wind blow as he waved a paper fan. The fan flashed white in the light from the candle on Riffat’s bedside table. ‘The thing I hate the most about power
breakdowns is how
useless
they make me feel,’ he offered uselessly.

Riffat said, ‘It’s cozy. In a sweltering sort of way.’

Dia listened to the chatter by default. Around her, shadows caressed paintings of nudes, and Riffat’s art books slipped in and out of sight, as though jostled by unseen hands. The rugs and cushions smelled of mildew. Inam Gul continued to look around him like a child in a haunted house. Sleepless nights were catching up with them all.

On the roof, the rain continued to pound. Once, it had been sweet music to her ears. Now only the telephone was. It hadn’t rung for her today. Possibly, Anu was swamping Daanish. Bitterly, Dia remembered how she herself had warned Nini: the woman was recently widowed and had only one child, that too a son.

Riffat too was a widow. She too had suffered, and Dia did not ever want to be the cause of more suffering. As her mother’s sweet, sleepy chit-chat blew in the dark rooms Dia’s stomach clenched. Both she and Daanish betrayed their mothers.

She wondered if, like her, this bothered Daanish more because his father was dead. And whether he’d give anything, even his time with Dia, to have him back again. Just once. Would she?

Riffat said, ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Well,’ replied Hassan, ‘we can always avail ourselves of the scrumptious food in the refrigerator. The
functioning
refrigerator.’

Dia exhaled loudly, enough to let him know he was a pompous beast.

‘It’s sort of like sleeping over at the farm,’ Riffat continued. ‘We could have a picnic. Sandwiches and lemonade …’

‘Warm lemonade,’ Hassan interjected.

‘… It’s been so long since we had a picnic.’

‘Eating in the house you’ve lived in all your life,’ declared Dia, ‘isn’t exactly a picnic. Lights or no lights.’

Inam Gul drifted by again, still spooked. The soles of his rubber slippers squeaked and he spun around, spooking himself. He tried to settle quietly beside Dia on the damp rug but quickly jerked up again, ready for battle.

Dia clicked her tongue once more. ‘What’s the matter with you, Inam Gul?’

‘What irks
you,
darling?’ Riffat called from inside her room. ‘You’ve been rather sullen lately. Is it still Nini?’

Dia blinked back tears. She rose, took a candle from the shelf, and without answering, walked into the dining room. She stared at the telephone, the one that had transmitted her first conversation with Nini about Daanish. She moved quickly to the bathroom and locked herself in.

Setting the candle down near the soap dish on the sink, Dia unhooked her shalwar. She didn’t really need to go – these days most of it was sweated out. But she lingered on the toilet seat, glad for a quiet moment alone. The yellow tiles of the wall were dotted with moisture, and a tiny mushroom spore was beginning to form. It held her attention for several minutes before she forced herself back out.

In the kitchen, Inam Gul was squeezing two lemons while Riffat opened a tin of cheese. She sliced and arranged it between pieces of bread. Hassan had already begun on a sandwich. Between great mouthfuls, he reported how dry they were. Then his chatter turned to politics, over which he and Riffat always disagreed.

There was talk that the President would depose the Prime Minister again. ‘The army should do it,’ he proclaimed. ‘It should just take over.’ Inam Gul handed him lemonade.

Riffat, her back to him, said, ‘Will we ever have a civilian government for more than two years? Generals and presidents have to let elected leaders run their course.’

‘You can hardly call them leaders,’ he chewed. ‘And who knows if they were really elected.’

‘Ditto for the generals.’

‘They might bring more peace at least. Fewer strikes and riots. God knows Karachi needs a break from that.’

‘Imposed peace is not peace. People will only simmer more.’

‘Simmer,’ Hassan nodded, ‘but at least not boil.’

‘If elected leaders could complete their term,’ Riffat insisted, ‘the anger would boil away.’

‘Eventually, maybe. But after how much more bloodshed?’

‘You forget,’ said Riffat testily, ‘the bloodshed began when a general ruled.’

Such references were the closest Riffat ever came to discussing her husband’s murder. Hassan understood this. So did Dia, standing in the darkened doorway.

‘That was,’ Riffat continued, ‘during the third military rule. How many more do we need to understand our mistakes?’

Hassan, though mouthy, was by temperament skittish. He shrugged, and attempted to get out of the question by teasing Riffat. ‘You just want to see our poor, martyred, “daughter of the east” back again, don’t you, Ama? You’re Sindhi to the core.’

Riffat, exasperated, answered, ‘I just want to leave politics to the politicians. God knows from whom you inherited your coup mentality!’ She sat down, adding, ‘There’s biscuits.’

Dia entered the kitchen.

‘There you are,’ Riffat looked up.

‘We’re having a gala time.’ Hassan champed on a second sandwich, speaking with moist cheese on his tongue. ‘I know someone who said you submitted your exam blank.’

‘Oh?’ Dia pulled out a chair. ‘Did that someone tell you she cheated?’

‘It was a he. And no, his sister did not tell him she cheated. Not all sisters do.’

She glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’re right, Ama. She’s very cranky lately.’

‘I didn’t say cranky,’ Riffat gently interceded. ‘I just think something’s bothering her.’

‘Do I have to be referred to in the third person when I’m at the same table?’

‘You see,’ Hassan nodded.

Inam Gul coughed in the dark. He ate alone in a corner, listening.

‘Well, the last time I addressed you,’ Riffat said, ‘you walked away. So I didn’t want to chase you out again.’ She watched closely while nibbling cheese.

Dia tried to eat.

Riffat pursued, ‘What happened at the exam? I saw you studying. Was it hard?’

Dia peeled off a slice of the bread. There was too much butter and Hassan smelled bad. ‘I just didn’t want to be there,’ she replied. ‘Everyone was making me feel ill.’

‘Oh, poor baby,’ cooed Hassan.

‘You didn’t have to focus on them.’ Riffat’s tone was neutral. Not accusing, but not sympathetic either.

‘I don’t want to talk about this.’ Dia stood up.

As she left the kitchen she heard Riffat call, ‘You’re going to have to some time, Dia. Because I want to know why a brilliant girl like you …’

She drifted back through the room where the telephone beckoned, hesitated, then wound around to the front door. Here her father’s portrait met her. The portrait she hated. The one that did not capture what she’d known of him: the soft jowls shaking with laughter as she read to him; the tattered, cotton banyaans and coconut oil; the heavy, ungainly walk in contrast to Riffat’s vixen trot; the tree-climber. Her fat, agile father was turned into a still life in a suit with a gilt frame holding him in, forcing those eyes to stare in horror at the future looming close.

Holding a candle up to his face, Dia peered, as she had so many times before, for something familiar. But the only thing
that was common to both the person and the portrait was that she couldn’t see a trace of herself in it. Where did her large, amber eyes come from? The deep dip between her nose and upper lip? Dark complexion?

She blew out the candle and pressed deep into the portrait. In the dark, she could believe he was as he’d been when she’d read to him almost every night from her Book of World Fables. They carried pillows up the mulberry tree, a light (it had to be electric, dias were too flammable), and in the still, dry months, paper fans. While she read, he enjoyed the pictures. His breath smelled vaguely of brown sugar, and his arms of milk bread. She did not know it at the time but the crafty pages of the book were trapping his scents, blending them with their own old, ligneous sigh, so she was left less with the stories, and more with his vapor. She had to work hard to conjure up solid memories of him, but Dia
felt
her father everywhere.

To have more than this, to have him back even once, could she really give Daanish up? To go back to the night before his death, before Riffat huddled with her children, muttering,
I shouldn’t have told him.
To have a different branch of the river flow into the sea, not the one that had swept her alongside Daanish. To be, instead, sitting with her family in the kitchen, watching a mother and father who were strangers, not lovers, yet loving them both. And back even further, to whatever it was her mother shouldn’t have told him. Before, before, when she was just a tiny mulberry knot, slipping howling into the world. Before the lines on her palm were even scratched. Before she must choose who she wanted to be.