Tunnel Vision (17 page)

‘
He
'
s very kind to his children.
'

‘
He
'
s a kind man.
'

‘
I know.
'

‘
You shouldn
'
t take advantage of it.
'

‘
I won
'
t.
'

She turned to go back inside, then changed her mind and headed for the wall, where she retrieved the hammer from where the neighbour had left it.

‘
Di,
'
Mamu called.

‘
What?
'

‘
Next time I
'
ll ask him.
'

‘
I know you will. You
'
re a smart man. You always learn from your mistakes.
'

She went back into her room, locked the door and didn
'
t come out for the next two days, at least not when there were other people around. I moved Adil
'
s things from his room into mine, stripping it bare of all his Wasim Akram posters and toys, leaving just the small bed for Mamu to sleep on. At night Adil and I huddled together under my blanket, listening to my mother pottering about the house. Drawers would open and shut, a dining room chair pulled out and squeaked back into place, the TV came on and went off.

‘
Ashoo,
'
Adil whispered into my armpit,
‘
what is she looking for?
'

A suicide note, I thought.
‘
I don
'
t know Adil,
'
I replied.

‘
Will she stop looking soon? It
'
s hard to sleep with all the noise she makes.
'

‘
She
'
ll stop looking when she finds it.
'

‘
Will she know when she finds it?
'

‘
I don
'
t know. Go to sleep Adil.
'

‘
I can
'
t, there
'
s too much noise.
'

Something fell outside, the crash punctuated his sentence.

‘
Concentrate on something else.
'

‘
Like what?
'

I racked my brains.
‘
Like Airwolf, like its control panels. Can you remember how many flashing lights there are?
'

‘
It depends on what it
'
s doing. If it
'
s battle-ready, then there are more.
'

‘
Imagine its battle-ready then, and you
'
re flying it to meet some horrible enemy.
'

‘
What happens when I get there?
'

‘
You and Airwolf have to destroy it.
'

‘
With guns?
'

‘
Yes.
'

‘
I thought guns were bad.
'

‘
Depends on who
'
s using them.
'

‘
Oh.
'

Adil drifted into thoughts, trying to wrap his mind around the good-bad paradox I had introduced into his ten-year-old psyche. I thought he had fallen asleep.

‘
Ashoo,
'
his poke in my tummy pulled me out of a fitful sleep.

‘
What Adil?
'

‘
That doesn
'
t make sense, what you said about guns.
'

‘
Okay, it doesn
'
t matter.
'

‘
It does. Either something is bad or it isn
'
t. You shouldn
'
t try to confuse me.
'

‘
I wasn
'
t trying to confuse you.
'

‘
I might be small, you know,
'
he turned away and pulled his legs into his chest,
‘
but I
'
m not stupid.
'

We both fell asleep eventually. In the morning, Mamu and I cleaned up the mess in the lounge and dining room while Adil made jam sandwiches for breakfast. He left one outside Ammi
'
s door on a plate after sliding a piece of paper under it.

‘
What did you write?
'
I asked him.

‘
That it
'
s difficult to sleep without Abba in the house.
'

The day passed like the one before and the one after it.

MUNNA ROCKET

BACK OF RICKSHAW

~

P
eople came and went but no one had news, only questions. Mamu and I fielded them together, when he was around. Generally it fell to me.

‘
When is the soyem?
'

‘
We don
'
t know that he
'
s dead.
'

‘
He was such a family man. He would have called.
'

‘
Maybe he was kidnapped.
'

‘
If he was, wouldn
'
t we have heard about it?
'

‘
How
'
s your mother?
'

‘
She
'
s resting.
'

There were many looks of pity, and something else as well. My mother had always managed to make other women feel she was condescending to them. There was a certain smug satisfaction in the air when some of them came calling, a sense of justice having been done.

‘
That bit of meat could do with some tenderization,
'
I heard one portly matron whisper to another as I ushered them out after saying thank you for coming, and explaining that Ammi didn
'
t feel up to meeting anyone just yet.

Similar sentiments surfaced often during the next few days as all attempts by
‘
outsiders,
'
i.e. not immediate family, to participate in our grief were rebuffed. Being together in celebration and tragedy was the bedrock of our culture, the base from which all social interaction rose, but my mother
'
s behaviour made it impossible. If someone came to call, to condole, to assist, they expected gratitude and solemnity, not aggression and histrionics. And even if someone was angry, it was understood that anger would not be vented on the guests. We could not guarantee that, so we eventually started making excuses for not letting most people in. There was also the small fact that we didn
'
t know what had happened to our father. We had reported him missing, the Mamus had been around to the hospitals and the morgues, but there was no trace, no indication of what had happened to him and whether he was alive or dead. So a soyem was out of the question, and it was easier to ignore people altogether than it was to answer their many questions with politely modulated
‘
I don
'
t knows
'
. Our stock in the neighbourhood plummeted. No one sent food after a while. Mamu took to the kitchen, with disastrous results.

The kitchens in most old houses in the area were long and narrow with the stove against one wall and the sink opposite, next to the door. Mamu had been boiling rice to go with the yellow daal concoction that was the only thing he said he knew how to cook. He turned to wash the dishes in the sink, leaving the cloth used to handle hot pots dangerously close to the flame. It caught fire.The whiff of smoke alerted Mamu and he turned and grabbed it, thinking he would douse it in the sink, but it ignited the front of his kurta as it rose on the breeze from the open kitchen door. His screams brought Adil and me running. There was a pan of soapy water in the sink, I grabbed it and threw it on him. Miraculously, he was unhurt.

‘
I
'
m fine, I
'
m fine,
'
he mumbled, brushing Adil and I off,
‘
just a little fright that
'
s all. No harm done.
'

We insisted on examining him anyway, before declaring him fit to continue with his life. He seemed very relieved when I insisted he let me finish in the kitchen. As Adil led him out we heard the door slam shut. Mamu stopped outside Ammi
'
s closed bedroom door and cleared his throat.

‘
No need to worry Di, I
'
m fine.
'

There was no answer.

The three of us ate in silence. When the dishes were cleared, I soaked the pans and settled down with Adil to make phone calls and find out from his school friends what he and I had been missing in class. Mamu set out to meet Baray Mamu, who had said he had located a
‘
source
'
in the police that might help them show more interest in finding out what had happened to Abba. He came home late, after I had sent Adil off to, if not sleep, at least lie in bed. We talked loudly outside the room Ammi had barricaded herself into so she could hear us.

‘
They said they
'
d do their best,
'
Mamu cleared his throat,
‘
but cases like these are hard to crack. Tomorrow your Mamu and I are going to the Citizens Initiative. Sometimes they find people when the police has given up hope.
'

He looked tired, crestfallen, as wrinkled as his kurta.

‘
Why don
'
t you rest then, Mamu? I
'
ll lock up. You go ahead,
'
I nodded reassuringly,
‘
I have the house under control.
'

Patting my head and mumbling something about how I should be worried about my studies not the house, he went to bed.

Before going to join Adil in our nightly game of Who Shall Fall Asleep Last, I left a plate of daal chawal prominently displayed on the counter.

When I stumbled in bleary-eyed to make tea the next morning, it was gone.The clean empty plate was stacked with the others in the drying rack.

Adil slipped another note under the permanently closed bedroom door in the afternoon.

‘
What did you write this time?
'

‘
That you and Mamu don
'
t cook like she does. That Mamu nearly made Mamu ki bhujia. And that I
'
m missing lots of coursework at school and …
'

‘
And?
'

‘
And that Mamu said the CI can find people when no one else can.
'

‘
Were you listening at the door when you should have been asleep?
'

He nodded.

‘
You know you
'
re not supposed to do that.
'

‘
You used to do it all the time.
'

That was true.

‘
All right then. Want to play some Ludo?
'

We settled down to a game.

‘
Ayesha you know you snore very loudly.
'

‘
I do not.
'

‘
Yes you do. It
'
s okay. I don
'
t mind. It actually helps me sleep. You know why?
'

‘
Because you
'
re a strange little boy?
'

‘
Because it reminds me of Abba.
'

‘
On a Sunday afternoon?
'

‘
Mouth open, legs sprawled …
'

‘
One arm dangling …
'

He
'
d looked like a body in one of those forensic shows, I realized as I lay in AKU. All that had been missing was the tiny bullet hole in the centre of the head, the open eyes staring vacantly into space.

YAADGAR ANDAZ, SAWARI LAJAWAB

BACK OF RICKSHAW

~

I
n addition to my life, my love life, and the ideal Pakistani woman according to idiotic Pakistani men, my coma also mimicked my father
'
s departure. From the outside, there was no evidence that I was truly gone, and also none to indicate I was truly here.What did
‘
truly here
'
entail anymore? Floating through life rudderless, practically friendless, thinking constantly of destruction yet pretending to enjoy life. When Abba disappeared, part of me had wanted to fall apart like Ammi had, wanted to dedicate the rest of my days to some tragic love story that was doomed, doomed, doomed; the male lead having disappeared. But I couldn
'
t.The mother had disintegrated into some sort of demon lover wronged by fate, the brother was too young, the Mamus too ineffectual. So it was
‘
once more into the breach!
'
Or was it once more into the courtyard? The hospital had a nice courtyard.

I used to look at the human millipede, many legs and one thought –
‘
survive
'
– crawling by. There had to be others like myself, female heads of families, unacknowledged and unappreciated. I would recognize them if I saw them. They would be palpably different from those around them. It would be something in the stance, erect, back straight, legs apart, arms not crossed protectively over breasts unlike most other women around them in the presence of men, not ashamed of what made them women. It would be something in the clothes, a lack of frills and overt girlishness; instead clean, simple cuts, strong colours or one colour and always, the sensible shoes. Most of all, it would be something in the eyes. Pupils. That would be a good start.