Tunnel Vision (9 page)

There was a couple and their son, obviously out-of-towners. Their carry-bag proclaimed that they had come straight from the bus station. The man stood protectively over his wife, huddled in a corner, a chadar enveloping her baby
'
s torso as she breast-fed him, rocking back and forth in a timeless rhythm.

Officious-looking men scurried up and down with files tucked under their arms, clerks or administrators, PAs bringing some big shot
'
s test results to one of the many doctors who consulted here. A relatively affluent looking family stood waiting for the single elevator, the hulk of a son insolently gawking at nurses whizzing by. Then the elevator doors opened and he was lost in the tide of humanity that had erupted from within. They had merely looked uncomfortable, that family, not overwhelmed. Visitors, then. In-patients
'
families would surely look more grim, tense, and faintly yellow. Exposure to the reality of government hospitals did that to the most resilient of people. That
'
s why I rotated the destination roster of my sales team. Incessant exposure to the grind robs you of energy and passion quicker than anything else. The best sales people need those in abundant quantities if they want to rise above the commission queue at some point in the future.

A woman began to wail off to the left and people converged on her. The nursing mother covered her child completely with her chadar, as if to protect him from the truth of loss. Up ahead, Adil and Mamu moved through the door at the end of the ramp with another man. Well-dressed, barely visible since his back was to me, but I
'
d recognize the shape of that head anywhere. It was Saad.

Saad! I thrashed and screamed, frantic to reach him, see him respond, even be able to simply look at him, but it was like yelling into a vacuum. He moved away, out of sight.

I didn
'
t pay attention when they moved me to the ambulance. It was becoming harder to remain interested. How sweet it would be to lie down next to me, look deep into my own eyes, and fall asleep together.

MAIN KAISI LAG RAHI HOON?

BACK OF TAXI

~

W
hen my father didn
'
t come home that night, Ammi reacted with anger. She generally did, when anything or anyone threatened to spiral out of (her) control. Anger, in her philosophy of life, was the best way to deal with pain. Fear. Loss. A missing toothbrush. It pushed away whatever happened to be pricking your bubble, and suspended you in the warm nimbus of rage. By 10 p.m., Ammi had worked herself up to the point where she called her eldest brother and said,
‘
That
'
s it, I
'
ve had enough. The children and I are coming to live with you for a while. Maybe then he
'
ll learn to appreciate me!
'

We only heard one side of the conversation, but Ammi had calmed down a little when she hung up the phone.

‘
Ayesha, go bring me your father
'
s telephone diary. It
'
s in the bedside drawer.
'

But it wasn
'
t there. It wasn
'
t in his cupboard drawers either, or his jacket pockets, or the locked tin where he kept his identity papers, nikahnama, or other things of value to him. In fact, the box itself was missing. My mother finally began to worry as well as fume.

‘
Call your Baray Mamu and ask him to come over. Tell him to bring Najam as well. It doesn
'
t matter if he
'
s asleep.
'
My younger Mamu was living with his elder brother at that point. Before that he
'
d lived with his parents. Now that I think about it, I don
'
t think he
'
s ever lived alone.

Ratatatatat. Tat. Ratatat. The sound from the open window was ominous. Gunfire was common in our part of town in those days, but it was also the twenty-third of March. We had learned to tell the difference between shots and firecrackers. These were gunshots. It didn
'
t mean there was trouble necessarily, some thick-headed, trigger-happy villager might just be celebrating. It was still ominous though, too many people had been randomly pulled from their vehicles and shot recently. But my father was an organized man, he even carried a Red Crescent blood group card with his name, address and contact information. If something had happened to him, surely we would have been notified.

When the two Mamus appeared, they brought bad news. Baray Mamu had dug up the number of an old friend of my grandmother
'
s whose nephew had worked with my father in the provincial government. They had both been inducted into the government at the same time, part of an
‘
unofficial
'
quota to demonstrate to the vocal opposition that Punjabis were not, actually, the centre of the known universe. They had both given up fairly lucrative private employment to
‘
do their bit
'
.
‘
Earn their bit more profitably,
'
as Baray Mamu was fond of saying. It had been a hot topic of conversation at our table at one time, with complex explanations of socio-cultural etiquette and the reciprocal expectations of a family connection, however faint it might be. The nephew and his family were not invited to dinner after all. Ammi sulked for days, saying Abba was rejecting a possible catalyst for progress, until Abba took to spending all his waking time with us and ignoring his wife altogether, at which point Ammi decided forgiveness was the Islamic thing to do.You have to love modern Muslim thought; Islam is a complete way of life, whenever it
'
s convenient for you to inhabit it.

Anyway, according to Abba
'
s co-worker, Abba had not shown up for work that day.

‘
Then something must have happened to him when he left home this morning.
'
Ammi
'
s anger was returning to the root of anxiety from which it had sprung.
‘
He might have had an accident.
'

‘
He always carries identification Ammi, someone would have contacted us by now.
'

‘
Not if they stole his wallet. You know how this city is. Dacoits, cutthroats, pickpockets. If they saw an injured man they would rob him rather than help him.
'

‘
Let
'
s not jump to conclusions,
'
Mamu interjected,
‘
Jahan, you have to be calm right now so we can figure out what to do.
'

But Ammi had the bit firmly between her teeth now.
‘
Especially if it was planned.You know they are getting people like us right now.They
'
re mowing us down in plain sight.
'

‘
Jahan, if something like that had happened, we would have known about it by now. It would be on the news.
'

‘
When has Karachi ever been on the news? Huh? When? It
'
s all the president this, or prime minister that. Seventy-five people can die in Karachi in one day and that Shaista Zaid will still pretend nothing happened. The only information they give about Karachi in the Khabarnama is the humidity level.
'

‘
He
'
s a government employee Jahan. They take care of their own.
'

‘
Take care of their own! You yourself have said to me it
'
s the government who
'
s behind those butchers!
'

Adil was looking like he was about to burst into tears. At seventeen, I
'
d had a couple of years to ease into the atmosphere of persecution and mistrust that permeated the code of business of so many of our community. Adil was ten. The only thing he knew about
‘
our
'
people was that they liked to wear pajamas. His father was missing, and his mother was suddenly wailing about butchers.

‘
Adil, do you want to watch Airwolf with me?
'
I hated that show; even if that pilot had a certain squinty look working for him, he was too white for my taste. Like something uncooked.Adil nodded mutely. Stringfellow Hawk would know what to do if his father disappeared.

Hand in hand, we retreated to the small TV lounge. He fell right into the ridiculous plot. Terrorists. Bad guys. Pretty women. A helicopter gunship that lived in a mountain, it was all so unreal. I preferred McGyver myself. Over the clatter of Airwolf
'
s guns, I could hear high-pitched dialogue exploding from Ammi
'
s lips like the rounds of an assault rifle.

‘
What about the Pathans then? It must have been that crowd on the hill, you know they
'
ve wanted this property for years. Just last year they smashed our windshield and threatened to kidnap our children if we didn
'
t sell. It must have been them.
'

So that
'
s what happened to our aged Mazda. We had been told the standard story of boys and balls.

No one was supposed to live on the low hills that circled Hussain D
'
Silva town, but the number of lights winking in the darkness above us on a moonlit night had been steadily increasing for some time. Some of the Christian residents had begun to leave already, in some cases moving out of the country altogether.

‘
You be careful of yourself, child. Don
'
t walk alone on the street anymore, you hear? These savages don
'
t respect anyone or anything,
'
kindly old Mrs Pereira had pinched my cheek as she spoke,
‘
and a young girl as pretty as you … well, never mind.Times are changing, is all I
'
m saying.
'

The Pathans as a corrosive tide lapping hungrily at the edges of our town; there were others who subscribed to Mrs Pereira
'
s line of thought.

BURI NAZAR WALAY TERAY BACCHAY JIYAIN,
BARAY HO KAR TERA KHOON PIYAIN

BACK OF BUS

~

T
he orderly in the St John
'
s ambulance was a Pathan. Zarin Khan, the nameplate read. He looked uncomfortable in the white trousers and the short-sleeved shirt, with the classic fairness of skin, high cheekbones and light eyes that make so many Pathans look like a movie version of Jesus. His eyes were kind. Despite my mother
'
s rabidity towards all things and people
‘
tribal
'
, I had known too many of
‘
them
'
after Abba disappeared to buy completely into her prejudice anymore. Sure, I blamed the Afghan Pashtun for bringing drugs and ammunition to Karachi, but I didn
'
t see a whole lot of other ethnicities marching beneath the peace banner either. Motorcycle murders, sociopathic law enforcers, the hathora gang, torture chambers, drilling through kneecaps, there had always been violence in the city. That was just the nature of the beast. And all those fossils who moaned about how
‘
things used to be different
'
and
‘
you know the water came all the way to the bridge
'
just couldn
'
t bend their tired minds around the thought of the town growing into the city. But that
'
s always been our attitude towards the maturing of something we loved. Stop it now! Control, that
'
s what it was all about.

Zarin Khan settled himself back into a corner after fiddling with the collar placed around my neck for the journey. How appropriate. All I needed now was a leash, and I would be Saad
'
s faithful little mongrel bitch, just like Ammi said I was.

Zarin left room for Adil to sit by me.

‘
Ammi couldn
'
t come with you, her knees,
'
he explained helpfully to my closed eyes.
‘
She wanted to though,
'
he added.

How sweet. Mummy
'
s little favourite comforting the underdog. But then Adil did display flashes of sensitivity every once in a while, perhaps gleaned from an adolescence spent mostly around women. Like Saad, whose extraordinary level of sensitivity (for an Asian man) became understandable once I realized just how much of a mummy
'
s boy he was. I
'
d never met his mother; Clue 7 to why we had that fight this morning. And indirectly, why I went head-first through my windshield. I hated her already.

The ambulance came to a halt at a traffic light. I wished the driver would turn the siren off. It was giving me a headache and no driver moved aside for it anyway, not since those horns with fire, police and ambulance siren settings had started flooding the market. Adil looked pained and kept glancing out of the window as if willing the traffic that enveloped us to move. The FTC loomed through the windows on my right. I realized I was back at the scene of my accident. Was there still coloured glass left by the side of the road from my lights? The devil
'
s car lights? Dear Allah Mian, let me at least have done some superficial damage to his car. And what had happened to my car? Was it a candidate for the yearly safety campaign?

I
'
d always loved the rationale behind the campaign, in which the decimated hulks of cars totalled due to rash driving were displayed at roundabouts around the city. It was so reflective of our attitude to mistakes, from big ones to the slightest ones.
Mess up and the only function left you is to be a lesson to others.
And as an avid student of destruction, like any modern urbanite, I loved the wrecks themselves. The structural damage done to the cars and occasional bikes they chose was immense, guaranteed to immediately inspire the question of,
‘
would anyone survive that?
'