Moth Smoke (21 page)

After she leaves I’m alone, all by myself in the house. Alone even when I feel better.

Until the phone rings.

‘Um, hello?’

‘Who is this?’ I ask.

‘Shuja.’

‘How are you?’

‘Okay. Do you think I could get some more hash?’

I laugh. ‘You can’t already have finished what I gave you.’

‘No, I didn’t. But it’s all gone. I, um, gave some to my friends.’

He sounds tense. ‘Is everything all right?’ I ask.

‘Yes. So can you sell me some more?’

‘Of course. Come by this evening.’

‘Do you think you could come here?’

I wouldn’t mind getting out of the house, but something in the tone of his voice makes me uneasy. Then again, he overpays like no one else I know. ‘Where do you live?’

He tells me.

‘I’ll be over in half an hour,’ I say.

‘Do you think you could come a little later. Like in two hours?’

Again I feel suspicious. ‘Why?’

‘My, um, my father’s home. But he’ll be gone by then.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to come here?’

‘Yes. I can’t.’

‘Fine. I’ll be there in two hours.’

When I arrive at Shuja’s family’s compound, I notice the boundary wall is topped with jagged glass that glints in the sunlight. I read the name above the house number and recognize it. So Shuja’s from a big feudal family. Who would have thought it? He seems so Westernized.

Instead of uniformed security guards at the gate there are a bunch of men with serious mustaches and shotguns slung over their shoulders. They look enough like village thugs to make me nervous. And there seem to be quite a few of them. But they open the gate without any questions and I walk in. The house itself is gaudy, huge and white, with massive columns and pediments and domes and even a
fake minaret, as if it’s uncertain whether it wants to be the Taj Mahal or the Acropolis when it grows up.

The gate swings shut behind me with a loud clang, and some of the men with shotguns start walking in my direction. Palm trees line the driveway. I hear them rustle in the hot, dry wind.

I walk up to the house and ring the bell.

The door opens to reveal Shuja and a stern older man I somehow know is his father. I guess Shuja was wrong about his going out, and I’m about to pretend I’ve come to the wrong house when Shuja’s father says, ‘Is this him?’

I don’t like the way he says it.

Shuja nods. He looks scared.

His father gestures, and two men grab hold of my arms from behind.

I’m frightened and my heart is pounding hard. ‘What is this?’ I say, but my voice sounds weak.

‘You sold drugs to my son?’ Shuja’s father asks me.

‘No.’

One of the men holding me slaps the back of my head, and suddenly it all makes sense. They’re going to kill me. Shuja’s dad is a sick bastard whose son does pot, and I’m going to pay for it.

My mind disappears behind desperate terror.

Surging forward, I break loose from one of the men and slam my fist into the face of the other, feeling his nose
crunch. And then I’m free, running. But there are too many of them, and I’m swinging, hitting hard, but the world spins, my legs slip out from under me, and I curl into a ball as they kick me, waiting for them to stomp on my head, screaming until I lose my breath.

I pass out once or twice, briefly. When my eyes open, Shuja’s father is standing over me, saying something. He’s pointing a shotgun at my head, and I can only whimper, blood and foam spraying from my lips. Then he kicks me in the face.

I come to on the bonnet of my car outside the gate. They’ve smashed all the windows. The gunmen are watching me. I try to stand, but I collapse and lie next to the road, slipping in and out of consciousness. Cars pass, so many cars, but no one stops. I sit up and crawl into my Suzuki, throwing up on myself from the effort and the nausea that comes when I see my hand. I slump in the seat. They wait for me to start the car, but I can’t. One of the gunmen finally drives me to the hospital, and he tells me that Shuja’s father will have me killed if I say anything to the police.

Later the doctor tells me how lucky I am. I only have a concussion, a dent in my skull, a broken nose, a broken rib, a compound fracture of my left forearm, cuts totaling seventy-one stitches on both legs, one arm, my neck, my shoulder, my eyebrow, and the spot where I bit through my lip. I’m
missing one of my front teeth. The small finger of my left hand was partly torn off, but it’s been reattached and I may be able to use it again with time. There’s no internal bleeding, my brain seems to be working even though I’m groggy, and my eyes may look bad but the retinas are still attached.

‘Who did this to you?’ the doctor asks.

‘Auto accident,’ I say.

He shakes his head.

I’m Aurangzeb. Ozi to my wife, my friends, and even those of my friends who sleep with my wife. But mostly I’m Aurangzeb. And regardless of what you’ve heard, I’m not a bad guy.

You see, the problem is, I make people jealous. Which is understandable. I’m wealthy, well connected, successful. My father’s an important person. In all likelihood, I’ll be an important person. Lahore’s a tough place if you’re not an important person. Too tough for my best friend, apparently.

Some say my dad’s corrupt and I’m his money launderer. Well, it’s true enough. People are robbing the country blind, and if the choice is between being held up at gunpoint or holding the gun, only a madman would choose to hand over his wallet rather than fill it with someone else’s cash. Why do you think my father got into it? He was a soldier. He served in ’71. He saw what was going on. And he decided that he wasn’t going to wait around to get shot in the back while people divided up the country. He wanted his piece. And I want mine.

What’s the alternative? You have to have money these
days. The roads are falling apart, so you need a Pajero or a Land Cruiser. The phone lines are erratic, so you need a mobile. The colleges are overrun with fundos who have no interest in getting an education, so you have to go abroad. And that’s ten lakhs a year, mind you. Thanks to electricity theft there will always be shortages, so you have to have a generator. The police are corrupt and ineffective, so you need private security guards. It goes on and on. People are pulling their pieces out of the pie, and the pie is getting smaller, so if you love your family, you’d better take your piece now, while there’s still some left. That’s what I’m doing. And if anyone isn’t doing it, it’s because they’re locked out of the kitchen.

Guilt isn’t a problem, by the way. Once you’ve started, there’s no way to stop, so there’s nothing to be guilty about. Ask yourself this: If you’re me, what do you do now? Turn yourself in to the police, so some sadistic, bare-chested Neanderthal can beat you to a pulp while you await trial? Publish a full-page apology in the newspapers? Take the Karakoram Highway up to Tibet and become a monk, never to be heard from again? Right: you accept that you can’t change the system, shrug, create lots of little shell companies, and open dollar accounts on sunny islands far, far away.

I’m really not that bad. A victim of jealousy from time to time. But definitely no hypocrite.

Speaking of hypocrites, let me tell you a thing or two about good old Daru.

Daru’s an educated fellow. No foreign degrees, it’s true, but he went to the most prestigious school in the city. A very exclusive school, mind you. A school that’s difficult to get into. The sort of school unlikely to admit a boy if he comes from a no-name middle-class background, if his father’s main distinction is being dead.

So how did Daru get in?

My father got him in, that’s how.

You see, my father knows something about loyalty. Captain Shezad (that’s Daru’s dad) died of a rotting shrapnel wound in East Pakistan. But before he died he went to the military academy with my father, served for a time in the same regiment, got married the same December, had a son the same age. My father and Captain Shezad were like brothers, and my dad treated Daru like his son. He sent us to the same school and paid both of our tuitions. My father gave Daru his pedigree.

You didn’t know that, did you? I didn’t think so.

But you did know my father got him his precious bank job? Well then, you must admit Daru has some nerve calling himself a self-made man, whining that he’s the victim of the system, that he never took advantage of anyone, that he was wronged, and wronged by us, by me of all people.

He’s full of it.

Now, I’m a money launderer, right? Money launderers are bad, right? Bad because they take dirty money and make it look clean. Bad like Pol and Idi and Adolf and Harry and the rest of the twentieth century’s great butchers of unarmed humanity. Oh, not quite that bad? Thanks, you’re too kind.

Well, what about the guys who give out the Nobel Prize? What are they? They’re money launderers. They take the fortunes made out of dynamite, out of blowing people into bits, and make the family name of Nobel noble. The Rhodes Scholarship folks? They do the same thing: dry-clean our memories of one of the great white colonialists, of the men who didn’t let niggers like us into their clubs or their parliaments, who gunned us down in gardens when we tried to protest.

And what about the bankers of the world? What about family fortunes held in accounts that make more in interest than the income of every villager in the Punjab put together? Where did all that money come from? How much of it was dirty once, how much came from killing union leaders and making slaves pick cotton and invading countries that wanted control over their natural resources? Would you like your money starched, sir? Box or hanger? Thanks for using GloboBank.

Luckily for the downtrodden, in the midst of all this money laundering, of transforming ill-gotten gain into
prestigious titles and luxurious mansions, we have a Champion of the Good. Tan-ta-ta-ran! It’s Darashikoh Shezad. But wait a minute. What does he do? He’s a banker. An account manager, as a matter of fact. And whose accounts does he manage, what clients does he please, whose asses, if you’ll pardon the expression, does he kiss? Men like my father’s. So enough of this nonsense about me being the big bad money launderer and Daru being hung out in the wash. We’re all in this together.

And let me tell you something else about Daru. Just before she left me, Mumtaz hired a houseboy. A very hard-working kid. Good-natured. Sweet. Cooks. Cleans. And I was glad to have him, because, jokes aside, it’s difficult finding good servants these days. Anyway, the boy’s name was Manucci, and it turned out he used to work, if you can call slave labor work, for Daru. For the man of the people himself. Why did he run away? Because Daru beat him, humiliated him, and didn’t pay him, sometimes for months. That’s right: self-righteous Daru is a hypocrite and a menace. Ask Manucci. As soon as his knees stop knocking together, he’ll tell you.

So take another look at us, Daru and me. I may clean dirty cash, but I don’t beat defenseless children and I don’t screw my friends’ wives and I stand by my father when push comes to shove.

Not convinced? Still think I’m the bad guy? Then do me a favor and try to put yourself in my shoes. Just for a moment. Don’t think you can? Well, let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there were two boys. Let’s call them Hero and Villain, or Ro and Lain for short. Ro’s a pudgy little kid, quiet, studious, with a runny nose. He has no real friends. You know, one of those social misfits you had in your junior school class who hung out together because they were ostracized by everyone else.

Anyway, this kid, Ro, drives to school every morning with another kid, Lain. They’re driven by Lain’s dad’s driver in Lain’s dad’s car. Lain sits in the front and Ro sits in the back, and they hardly exchange a word, because Lain’s ashamed of Ro. Lain, you see, is a stud, even at age five. He’s not the fastest sprinter in the class, the best batsman, the most brilliant student, the scrappiest fighter, or the cheekiest prankster. But he can run fast, he is good with a bat, he does get solid marks, he will stand up to bullies, and he isn’t scared of getting caned if a joke is funny enough. And most important of all, people like him. He can make friends with a grin, and he knows it.

Yes, I won’t deny it, Lain’s a little asshole.

Lain isn’t mean to Ro. Not exactly. He just ignores him. But the more he does, the more Ro looks up to him with puppy-dog affection, ready and eager to do Lain’s homework whenever Lain will let him.

Anyway, this pathetic state of affairs lasts until the end of junior school. Until the arrival of Ataris in Lahore, to be precise. Lain is the first kid in the class to get one, and his father forces him to invite Ro over to use it, which Lain does rather ungraciously.

The funny thing is, fat little Ro is actually good at it. Combat, Adventure, Space Invaders: by the end of a day he’s teaching Lain new tricks. And a friendship begins to form between the two, not much of a friendship, it’s true, but something. They start playing every weekend. Ro spends a night once. Twice. Then sleepovers become more regular. And because Lain’s parents force them to go to bed when they’re still wide awake, the two boys find themselves chatting until they fall asleep. Neither has a brother, so each is getting to know another boy really well for the first time in his life.

Lain has a wild imagination. He’s always liked to pretend that he’s stranded on a desert island, or fighting in a war, or whatever. And the boys are now getting to an age where make-believe is uncool. But to Ro, everything Lain does is cool, so Lain feels comfortable playing games with Ro he wouldn’t play with his other friends, and telling him things he’d never tell anyone else. And Ro, for his part, turns out to be the most loyal friend imaginable.

Well, things might have stayed like that, Ro remaining Lain’s loving pet forever, but Defender came to town. By
now, many boys in school have Ataris, and they decide to have a competition at somebody’s house, a video-game battle to find out who really is the best of the best and who’s just talk. And naturally, the game for the competition is Defender.

The week before, Lain practices every day. And by the time the weekend rolls around, he’s ready. When the dust has settled and all twenty-eight boys have taken their turn, it’s official: the highest score goes to Lain. He’s the champ. And Ro, the video-game wunderkind, is number two.