Tunnel Vision (24 page)

I opened the door and moved out.

‘
I saw him the other day, you know. In a powder blue Corolla with a beautiful woman. They pulled up at the traffic light next to your Mamu and I. She had streaked hair and diamonds on her fingers. They were laughing. He couldn
'
t take his eyes off her!
'
she yelled after me as I opened the gate and got into the car. I tried to shut her out but I knew the car, and the girl. Powder blue, streaks, diamonds, laughing, Najma
'
s sister Faryal. Rich bitch. Kill them all.

‘
You
'
re over the hill! Over thirty! Over the limit!
'
Ammi pounded on my car window,
‘
leave him now and we
'
ll find you a fifty-year-old divorcee with two children.
'

I inched the car back down the driveway, not paying particular attention to whether Ammi
'
s foot was in the way. She would take care not to hurt herself, regardless of how out-there she was. Hurting was for other people.

‘
It
'
ll be fun. The kids will be older so you won
'
t have to clean any shit but your own!
'

I screeched off down the narrow lane, leaving the gate wide open behind me and forcing old Mrs Pereira to lift her dress and hop nimbly onto the pavement. I couldn
'
t care less.

AWARAGARDI MAIN HAD SAY GUZAR
JANA CHAHIYAY

LYRICS OF POPULAR GHAZAL RENDERED RECENTLY
BY PAKISTANI POP SINGER SHARIQ ROOMI

~

S
aad was waiting for me outside the dealer
'
s showroom, standing beside his car looking fresh and at ease, as if the whole of Karachi
'
s industrial traffic wasn
'
t passing behind him. He had that quality, that ability accessible only to the very centred or the very rich, of carrying his atmosphere with him. Regardless of the surroundings, he seemed to exist in a bubble of purified air. Enlightened? Oblivious? Who knew what he was?

‘
I hope you haven
'
t been waiting long,
'
I began as I parked behind him and strode over.

‘
Just a few minutes.
'

‘
Sorry.
'

‘
Oh it
'
s okay. I was actually just enjoying the sights,
'
he sighed with pleasure, eyes practically glazing over. I turned to look where he was looking and saw row upon row of well-groomed luxury cars, their squeaky clean glass windows reflecting the soft morning light, all the cars seemed petrified in soft focus.

‘
They
'
re just boxes with wheels, you know, to use for getting from point A to point B,
'
I said as we began walking over to the nearest one,
‘
why must you invest them with this spiritual depth they don
'
t have?
'

‘
Who said anything about spiritual depth? I like cars because they
'
re a combination of exact and inexact science, mechanics and beauty, it
'
s really very simple.
'

‘
If you say so. Have you thought about a colour?
'

‘
That
'
s why you
'
re here.
'

‘
Hmmm,
'
the jealousy crocodile surfaced in the scum-covered pond of my mind and began creeping towards shore, where the rest of me lapped gently at the water,
‘
what about a powder blue Corolla?
'

‘
You know,
'
there was no hesitation in his voice,
‘
it
'
s funny you should say that because Najma
'
s sister has one of those and I have to say I was tempted.
'

‘
You were?
'

‘
Oh yeah. But she let me take it for a test drive and it just didn
'
t feel right.
'

‘
It didn
'
t?
'
Oblivious, that
'
s what he was. Not rich or enlightened, just plain clueless. Stupid.

‘
I think the powder blue was all wrong. Great car. Pretty girl, even,
'
he grinned and glanced mischievously at me,
‘
but I didn
'
t think you would look that good in it.
'

‘
Oh I won
'
t?
'
I might as well marry that old divorcee and raise someone else
'
s children, I thought, Saad
'
s would probably all have significant birth defects, not to mention be buck-toothed and dense,
‘
though of course most women would pale in comparison to Faryal.
'

‘
How do you know her name?
'

‘
We met her at Najma
'
s once, remember? Or did you forget I was there?
'

‘
Don
'
t be crude,
'
he said, and I flared up, the spark from my bout with Ammi becoming a conflagration.

‘
But I am crude. I haven
'
t had the benefit of your exalted education and opportunities. The sandpaper of privilege hasn
'
t polished me. The only way I
'
d be caught in one of your clubs would be in the bakery with the other tarts.
'

Saad laughed, then stopped abruptly when he got a look at my face.

‘
What
'
s wrong?
'

‘
Nothing
'
s wrong.
'

‘
Something
'
s wrong.
'

‘
Back off,
'
I said fiercely,
‘
can
'
t you just leave me alone?
'

Saad recoiled, and for a second I saw myself as he did, wide-eyed and snapping jaws, a street cat lunging for him. Bitter as glass and twice as sharp. That was me, his great girlfriend.

‘
All right,
'
his civility shamed me. He should have snapped back.
‘
Why don
'
t we go someplace for breakfast? Someplace quiet.
'

‘
No. We came to find you a car and we
'
re not leaving till we get you a car.
'

‘
Seriously Ayesha, we can do this some other time, when you
'
re not upset.
'

‘
What makes you think I
'
m upset? Maybe I
'
m just like this every morning? We
'
ve never met so early before. Maybe this is how I am before I get into work, the real me.
'

‘
You
'
ll feel better after we eat something.
'

‘
I
'
ve already eaten.
'

‘
So early?
'
Saad
'
s breakfast was brought to him at his desk every morning at 10 o
'
clock by a white-coated peon retained for that very purpose. Freshly squeezed orange juice, hot buttered toast, one half-boiled egg prepared meticulously in the
‘
executive corner
'
of the cafeteria kitchen, as per instructions from his mother. Spoilt brat, driving around with hot girls in powder blue Corollas, I hoped he
'
d crack his soft-boiled egg some day to find a perfectly developed chick, killed by his gluttony.

‘
It
'
s not early Saad. Look around you,
'
I gestured widely,
‘
you see all these people walking or driving by? Well most of them have been up since before dawn, praying, preparing, ironing, cleaning, dropping kids to school, beginning the long commute to work, burning their fingers on hot pans. These are normal people. I
'
m a normal person. Most of us don
'
t get served breakfast every morning by a white-coated waiter with instructions from Mommy.
'

‘
You don
'
t seem very normal to me Ayesha,
'
he said gruffly. Accusations of undue privilege always got a rise out of him.

‘
The only thing abnormal about me Saad, is you.
'

‘
What
'
s that supposed to mean?
'

‘
It means you and I, we aren
'
t right.
'

‘
There you go from point A to point F again. I don
'
t know what the matter is but can you please try and localize the explosion instead of letting it ignite everything?
'

‘
Everything is connected, you idiot. Everything. Why don
'
t you get that?
'
My unhappiness and his oblivion. His privilege and my misery.

‘
Can we please have this conversation somewhere else?
'
Saad lowered his voice,
‘
everyone is looking at us, including the dealer. He opened the showroom especially for me because he
'
s a friend of my father
'
s. I don
'
t want this getting back to my parents.
'

A crowd had gathered around as the argument, my side of it anyway, had escalated into shouting. An audience on tap: that was just one of Karachi
'
s myriad charms.

‘
But your parents would love to hear of it. Brawling in a public place, they
'
ll say, we told you that girl had no class. Drop her now and get into Faryal
'
s powder blue Corolla immediately.
'

‘
You don
'
t know anything about my parents.
'

That stung. It really did. I didn
'
t know anything about his parents, apart from the sense of boundless entitlement gleaned from meetings with his father the Overlord, because he had never formally introduced me to them. I
'
d never spoken to his mother on the phone even, forget be invited to her milad soirees like Najma and her sister. Saad had told me I was lucky, they were the most boring and pretentious events imaginable, having more to do with diamonds than deities. But I would have liked to experience it for myself rather than imagine it.

‘
I don
'
t know anything about them. Of course I don
'
t. I
'
ve only ever met your father twice, and that
'
s counting the AGM. You
'
ve never introduced me to your mother, you don
'
t like to talk about them so how am I supposed to know anything about them?
'
My voice rose to a shriek then tapered off. I could see Saad
'
s lips moving but couldn
'
t make out what he was saying, his reply was lost in the din of a passing tanker
'
s horn. The instant audience poured closer to compensate for traffic sound. Folding chairs, it struck me, that
'
s what they need, folding chairs to carry from place to place.

‘
What did you just say?
'
but Saad had already turned away and was walking back towards his car. I caught up with him, fell in step.

‘
What did you just say?
'

‘
It doesn
'
t matter. We
'
re going to be very late if we don
'
t leave.
'

‘
We
'
ll go in a minute. Tell me.
'

‘
It doesn
'
t matter what I said, you
'
ll hear something horrible and negative anyway, the way you
'
re behaving right now.
'

‘
So I
'
m badly behaved, am I?
'

‘
See?
'
Saad had reached his car, was opening the door, looking sadly at me over the top.

‘
Why don
'
t you train me then, you son of a bitch? Like your friends do with their dogs at the Kennel Club? I don
'
t have much pedigree but I
'
m eager to please.
'

Why was I grinning? I could feel my mouth stretching upwards to my ears, but I don
'
t know which part of my brain had sent it there.

Saad got in. In a flash, without thinking, I opened the passenger door and slid in next to him, the captive audience safely out of earshot. He didn
'
t look at me, just gazed into the distance over the steering wheel.