Trespassing (13 page)

His head held high, Salaamat gently kicked the phosphorescence around his feet. Then he walked back to his house, one of the many quarters in the maze of crumbling walls that comprised the villages of the coast of Sindh. Packs of stray dogs rolled in the sand in front of the compound. They panted. Curiously, he could hear that. Sometimes he could hear much more than that.

He passed his grandmother and the other elderly women stationed in front of the complex. They were the sentinels of the village. His grandmother had been sitting here the night he’d nearly drowned. She’d seen his body loll in the waves and called for help. She sat here long into each night and then again at dawn, pitching her thoughts out to sea as her sons had once pitched their nets. But no one could trawl in her waters. She beckoned him to her.

He settled near a tailless black dog with bald patches. It scratched its chin against his heel. The old woman pulled on her hookah. He could hear this too. The urn was of glass, shaped like a large water drop, with bands of colored thread twisted around the middle. He watched the smoke rise and swirl around the water in the urn. He heard the low gurgle, and the high-pitched suck as the smoke traveled up the long slender pipe, then flew out in two sinewy ribbons from his grandmother’s nose. She passed the hookah to the woman on her far side. Then, slowly, she took a long sip of her famous tea. He alone knew the reason for its fame: liquor. She brewed her own. The row of elderly women was almost intoxicated. Almost. They never crossed that line. Only their
husbands did. It was one reason the women kept the teahouse for themselves.

‘It is time for you to go now,’ said the old woman.

He looked up, surprised. Two years ago, his father had wanted him to try his luck in the city, but she’d insisted he stay, arguing he hadn’t regained his strength since the assault. She’d forbidden the subject to be broached again. But now she opened it herself.

‘Go? But where?’

‘Where else,’ she replied flatly. Her voice was husky, and as always, uncompromising. ‘There is little left for you in this village. The fish are gone. Your spiritless father lies in the darkness of his room, willing the current to turn back to the days of his forefathers. It will not. Those ships are here to stay.’ She spat, and sucked on the hookah again.

The dog beside Salaamat rolled on its side, revealing five swollen teats. He thought angrily of his father, who mourned uselessly at home, while his mother labored at a shrimp-peeling factory set up by the foreigners. He looked at the gaudy hulks anchored nearby. She worked for
them.
She swallowed her outrage and gave her life to the enemy. They gave back five rupees for every kilo of stolen shrimp she cleaned.

The secrets of the women who met in the teahouse rang in the ear that only he and his grandmother knew was not entirely deaf. Some of those women were here now. Like him, they did not want to go inside. Their stories sprayed and splattered at his feet like the hissing surf. There was Farya, whose cotton nets were lost to the nylon needs of the trawlers. She sought comfort in jeering at Shireen, who sold her body to feed her husband’s heroin needs. And there was his poor mother, whose punctured, obnoxious hands his father pushed away. It was Naila who gloated over that, right in his ear.

‘You will go to the city and gradually, the rest will follow.’
Then she looked at him. ‘Beware the strangers. Hold them at arm’s length. Good luck, my son.’

He glanced up at the moon, textured like a turtle’s egg, like the one he’d tried to save. He’d watched turtle hatchlings long enough to know their first journey to the sea was made all alone, purely by instinct. Their mother would depart when all her eggs were laid and never return. The fishermen said only one in a hundred hatchlings survived the perils that awaited them, and if the survivor were female, years later, she’d return to her birthplace, to lay her own eggs. He pulled a wet curl away from his eyes and wondered what happened to the males.

He learned new words fast. Sand was replaced by granite, mud with cement, fish with scraps of rubbery mutton, and that too on good days. He smelled no salt in the air, only smoke and gases that made his chest burn. The moon was dimmed by lights a thousand times brighter than those the trawlers had burned. The brightest were for weddings: little colored bulbs strung from trees and rooftops. An entire house could light up like a private galaxy. Women did not sit outside homes, wedding or not, smoking. At first, he barely saw any at all. And there were ways to cross the rivers of asphalt without being hit by wheels.

For days after entering the city Salaamat sat on roadsides watching, stunned by the variety of wheels. On the beach, he’d seen weekend visitors ride down the shoreline on motorcycles, but he’d never known how many kinds of vehicles there could be. Now here they were, whizzing by him, vehicles each with names he longed to know. At a paan and tea stall (the tea was wretched but he learned to drink it) that hired him,
he asked regulars to teach him. While painting the paan leaves with betel juice, he timidly repeated: Nissan, Honda, Suzuki, Toyota. It helped him forget how differently those around him spoke. Here he was not merely half-deaf but half-dumb. Avoiding speech, he quietly studied how the car models changed depending on the year, and formed opinions on which color best suited each style.

But what he loved most were the buses. He accidentally said so one day. The customers laughed, sucking on supari. ‘Every man dreams of having a car and you dream of buses!’

He explained his tastes to no one.

The buses were decorated as lavishly as boats for the annual fair at his village. They were boats that rocked on a solid sea. He studied the designs, drank the rich colors, memorized the names of the shops that made them, all in Qaddafi Town. He learned this was near the eastern outskirts of the city and as soon as he’d saved enough money, Salaamat hopped on to one such bus.

The interior was pink and gold, and in each corner was a different picture: fish dancing; storks wading; a lofty crown; parrots with girlish eyes, preening. The tranquility of each scene contrasted with the activities of the commuters, who spat paan juice everywhere, extinguished cigarettes on fish fins, blew their noses on crown jewels. The sea salt he’d been unable to smell since coming here ate into the paint and left the interior crusted with rust. The bus shook with its load; five men hung from each of its doors and many more stood on the fenders, thumping the bus when it was time to jump off. Salaamat kept asking the conductor for Qaddafi Town. Finally, the man grabbed his kurta cuff and pushed him out.

Knees wobbling, Salaamat entered the first bus workshop he passed. It was called: Handsome Body Maker.

Seven buses were parked inside, in various stages of construction. A large man stepped out of an office, gruffly asking what he wanted.

‘I … I want work,’ Salaamat replied.

The man turned toward the office, shouting something incomprehensible. Two others appeared. The mighty one, who was Handsome, opened his palm and shook it rudely under Salaamat’s chin. ‘Wah! We should thank the Almighty the foreigner has come to us!’

Only one of the others, bald as an egg, laughed. Touching Salaamat’s locks he said in a high-pitched voice, ‘A pretty boy like you should have no problem finding work.’ He turned to Handsome, adding, ‘You are Handsome but he is Pretty.’

‘But he’s so dark,’ protested the rose-cheeked Handsome between chuckles.

‘It’ll rub off!’ said the bald man.

The third man was the smallest. He had a thin mustache and heavily oiled hair, and as yet had not cracked a smile. He squinted, ‘Where are you from?’

Salaamat tossed his head proudly and named his village.

‘A machera!’ the skinny man sneered. ‘No wonder he’s black.’

‘There are no fish here, meri jaan,’ said the bald man, wagging a finger. ‘Of course, if you’re clever, you can catch other things.’

Salaamat cleared his throat. ‘I’m clever and can learn a new trade. I ask only for food and lodging and will work as many hours as you need me to.’

The men looked at each other. Handsome said, ‘For an ajnabi, you speak confidently.’

The bald man again fondled Salaamat’s locks. ‘Keep him. He speaks well.’

Handsome smacked his back and declared, ‘Then, Chikna, I’ll let you decide what to do with him.’

The skinny man interjected. ‘We can’t allow an ajnabi in here.’

‘Since when have you owned this place?’ Handsome retorted.

The skinny man said nothing, but Salaamat understood his gaze. This was the one to watch.

There were four doors behind the buses. Toward these Chikna now led him. Pointing to the small bundle in Salaamat’s hand, he asked, ‘Is that all you have?’

Salaamat nodded, looking closely for the first time at the seven buses. He stared, trying to understand their progression from one stage to the next. The first was just a skeleton – a brown mass of metal plates with four wheels. But the last was a glinting gem.

‘That’s called a chassis,’ Chikna pointed to the first. ‘The bus owner gives us that and we do the rest.’ After a pause, he added, ‘How old are you?’

‘About seventeen.’

Chikna shrugged. ‘I’ve been working here since I was seven. Maybe it’s too late for you.’ He pushed open a door to a storeroom. The floor was strewn with painted strips of steel, chains, wires, paint cans, stickers, hubs, brushes, lights, a pile of crowns and lopsided, childlike sculptures of eagles and airplanes. ‘You can sleep here.’

Salaamat dropped his bundle inside.

‘There’s a toilet at back,’ Chikna continued. ‘Our families live in there,’ he pointed two doors down. ‘You can eat with us, but we’ve had our lunch. Can you wait for dinner?’

Salaamat nodded. He hadn’t eaten but wasn’t going to say so.

Outside, more workers were arriving. ‘What can I do now?’ asked Salaamat.

‘Today, just watch. Tomorrow you’ll start with me.’ He walked away.

Salaamat shut the store’s door and moved toward the buses. He wound his way around each, coming finally to the last. He then stood and took in every detail.

The exterior was painted a glittering magenta. Along the sides were nailed the strips of metal with garish floral patterns
that he’d seen in the storeroom. The bottom edge of the bus was ringed around with chains ending in hearts. Wings figured elaborately everywhere: there were flying horses painted near the headlights and a sculpture of an eagle with a foot-long wingspan attached to the fender. The top wore a sort of palanquin, a bed of intricately worked metal, with the front decked in one of the airplane structures also in the store. The plane looked like a ship’s figurehead. Attached to one wing was a national flag, while on the other a sign read: PIA. Whoever painted the bus had not simply wanted it driven but sailed, and not simply sailed but flown.

But the best awaited him at the back. Here was the most beautiful woman Salaamat had ever seen. She had eyes the size of his palm, a sensuous nose, and plum-like lips half hidden behind a flimsy cloth held in a henna-dipped hand. On her right side was written, Look. On her left, But With Love. She did exactly that to him.

Salaamat was spellbound. The harder he stared the more certain he felt that she blinked, then blinked again. Her lips twitched in a smile she attempted to restrain, but failing that, she covered more of her face with the transparent dupatta.

‘Ah, I see you’ve met Rani,’ said a voice. Salaamat forced himself away from the picture. It was Chikna. ‘She’s a naughty one, I’d be careful. And don’t let Hero see you get too close. He’s very jealous.’

‘Hero?’

‘Him,’ Chikna pointed to the skinny man who was painting two buses down. ‘You two already started on the wrong foot. And now Rani seems to find you as pretty as I do.’ He tilted his head and raised a brow saucily.

‘What does Hero do here?’ asked Salaamat.

‘He’s our painter. He made Rani. He loves everything he does. He’s in love with himself.’ Chikna tweaked Rani’s cheek roughly.

Salaamat had to stop himself from fighting him, for he
could hear Rani wince. ‘I want to make a bus just like this one,’ he blurted. ‘I want to learn to make all these things. Including her.’ Rani hid behind her cloth and Chikna threw his bald head back and laughed.

For the next several months, daily, Salaamat was told to go back home. Everything about him – his looks, accent, language, carriage – was mocked and shredded by the thirty or so workers who poured their lives out on bus art. All of them belonged to one of two groups. The Punjabis, like Handsome and his family, did most of the metal work. And the Pathans, like Hero, handled the painting. Salaamat alone belonged to a third group. He became the ajnabi. The alien.

Perhaps Chikna told Hero what Salaamat had confessed his first day: that he wanted to paint as well as him. Since the very next day till the end of Salaamat’s first year, Hero would never let Salaamat near him while he worked. If he came too close, Hero would wrinkle his nose, ‘Where’s this rotten smell coming from? Oh! It’s the fish.’ And then he and the other Pathans would frantically wave the imagined odor away.

Though he kept his left ear to them, it was hardly a friend: it carried enough taunts to make the drums roll and the dam
threaten to break. How dare they call
him
the outsider when it was
his
people who were the original inhabitants of Karachi? All around him – the buses, streets, shops, migrants from other provinces, and now, refugees from Afghanistan – all were mere appendages to a place that for centuries had thrived as a tranquil fishing village. But now those villages were pushed to the periphery, and the native populations forced to work under outsiders who claimed the city belonged to them. In a sense, his employment here was no less shameful than his mother’s at the shrimp factory; they both worked for those who displaced them. Perhaps hers was less shameful – he’d still not earned a paisa from his labor. He fumed, banging strips of chamak pati into twisted shapes, peeling off stickers from Japan, putting the lot together on the body of the glowing buses. And then he stepped back and admired what he’d done. The old technique of overcoming rage returned to him.