Exigencies Read online

  I pulled on my jeans, hiked a thumb into the belt, and hitched them up. When I said nothing, she wrapped the condom (which looked in the half-dark like a curled lizard) into a tissue paper and slipped out the door.

  And in my dream a little girl slipped once. She recovered and skipped rope past a dead dog with birthday streamer intestines spilling out of a ripped belly. “Sahib-jee, Sahib-jee. Today I’m free. Today I’m free,” she said as she hopped and smiled. Dream-thickened, her features blurred till a pale teenager with a strapped vest emerged, frightened and lost. “Where are the infidels?” he asked, and blew us all up.

  “No sir. I’m quite certain we don’t have any collection called The Daroo Diaries.”

  I was standing at the oak desk of Quaid-e-Azam Library under the shade of a rusted fan that scythed the air weakly. The burly man at the desk wore piss-colored spectacles, his eyes narrowed through the thick lens. He stared at me as if he didn’t know what to do with me.

  “Are you sure, bhai sahib? I talked with Professor Ali Khan at Punjab University some time ago and he told me specifically that it is here in the archives.”

  The burly man leaned forward and smiled. His uneven yellow teeth poked through a gutter-hole lined with tobacco stains. “We don’t have it,” he said. “What part of that don’t you understand?”

  I understood. I slipped a hand in my pocket, brought a fifty out and pressed it into his palm. “Friend,” I said and smiled. “That may be Manto’s last collection of reminisces. You’ve heard of Sadat Hassan Manto, the legendary short story writer? Of course you have.” I kept my voice carefully neutral. “That may be his last book—never published because it disappeared from his room after his death. I came from abroad to find that book. I’m writing an article about it.”

  Smiling more broadly than ever, Burly Man pocketed the money and nodded, his potbelly jiggling under his colorless half-sleeve T-shirt. “Yes, yes. Manto sahib. Great writer. Alcoholic too. Pity he died so young. This year could’ve been his hundredth birthday is what the newspapers have been saying.” His fingers drummed on the desk. “Pity we don’t have that collection here. You may want to try the Punjab University library or Karachi University.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have it? You must have some sort of catalogue of books housed in Pakistani libraries.” My voice was rising. I felt the familiar neck pain stretch across my shoulder and press the bad spot behind my right ear.

  His smile vanished. “Sahib, keep your voice down. This is not your house. It’s the public library.”

  “Damn right it’s the public library and I’m the public. I want to find that book.”

  “Then go find it.” The smile returned. He glanced at my collectible Disney watch with Mickey and Minnie holding hands, looking deep into each other’s eyes, while Pluto grinned in the background. I know all your secrets, said that grin. It was a birthday gift Hina gave me a few years back when she was still giving me gifts.

  “What are you, a child, sahib?” Burly Man laughed, putting up his hands behind his head. “You must be an expatriate from England or America, am I right?”

  I flipped him the finger slowly, deliberately. That damn smile never left his face. I turned to go.

  “Fuck you too, chootiyay,” he called from behind; then: “Welcome to Pakistan. I hope someone kidnaps you.”

  Haider lit the joint and held it out. I shook my head. He raised his eyebrows. “Abay gandoo, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “Told you, man. Quit all this shit some years ago. I got a family now.”

  “What’s the harm in a fucking kathee?”

  “I don’t like the taste. It nauseates me.”

  He leaned back, holding the joint between his thumb and index, and took a drag. The afternoon was surprisingly mellow for Lahore, and quite a few couples and teenagers were hanging out by the pool tables or the Shisha bar. I glanced around. “It really has changed, hasn’t it?”

  Haider was staring at a thin twenty-something girl wearing a red sleeveless T-shirt proclaiming If you’re lookin’, keep looking, pal, her bra strap visible on a tantalizingly brown shoulder. She sat alone, puffing on a hookah pipe, looking at the teenagers without interest. “What has?” Haider said.

  I sipped my Coke and said nothing.

  “Where are bhabi and Salloo?” he said, still eyeing the girl who’d caught his glance and was looking back at him, a trace of a smile on her lips.

  A sense of déjà vu. He had always been good at that. Young or old, they always responded to him.

  Got some that don’t look like stepped dogshit?

  “Out shopping at Siddiq Center.”

  “How’re things at home?”

  “Good.”

  “Good.” Haider waved at the waiter, turned back and fished out his wallet. “You know I envy you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Good-looking wife. College Queen,” he said, not looking at me but the thin girl. “Decent paying job in America. Nice family life. What more could a man ask for?” He never smiled at the girl. Just looked at her with those blue Pathan eyes of his. “And here I’m stuck in Paki-land doing the same old Dad business shit.” He brought his black leather Montblanc watch close to his eyes. “Shit. Okay, man. I gotta hit it.”

  He smacked a five-hundred-rupee note down on the table, and my half-empty Coke overturned, the dark liquid sloshing over my white shalwar. “Oops. Sorry, man.”

  “It’s fine,” I said automatically and grabbed a few napkins to dab at my wet crotch. How many times had I said that to him over the years? It’s fine and It’s okay and You go ahead. I understand. Yeah, I’m sure. We’re not dating anymore. So why the fuck not?

  “How’re Miraj and Nandoo?” he said as he got up and stretched. When I didn’t respond, he glanced down at me. “You met them, right?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I’m here on official business for my magazine. Not on vacation.”

  He shrugged. “Nandoo works for Depilex. He may be able to help you out.”

  “What’s Depilex?”

  “Some sort of beauty magazine. He knows people in the business, or so I hear. He may be able to help you with that...that article or whatever.”

  “You got his number?” I said, and wished I hadn’t. Now he would know I hadn’t been in touch with the others for a long time. Hell, he probably already did. He was an asshole but not a dumb asshole.

  Haider held my gaze for the briefest of moments. Then he flicked his iPhone’s touchscreen and rolled his thumb around, swiping and circling. “Ready?”

  I nodded. He gave me the number and turned to face the thin girl. Paused. “How long you in town, Jamal?”

  “Two more weeks.”

  A shadow swam overhead: cloud cover across the hot Lahore sun. Haider looked like he wanted to say something. Something played in his eyes. Then his shoulders slumped. He smiled, a full wide smile I remembered from a time when the world was not so full of misery or hollowness. When the French fries from a lean, sunburned vendor tasted better than McDonalds. “It’s good to see you again, you dick.”

  “Sure,” I said, not sure that it was. Not sure in fact whether this encounter in the heart of New Lahore was real or meaningful at all.

  He flexed his back, stretching out the stiffness from sitting. “Yeah, whatever. Gimme a call before you leave, okay?” Without another word, he went to the girl, his tall, broad, toned silhouette moving gracefully against the sun.

  I got up and left Mini Golf. As I passed them sitting together, the thin girl smiled up at me.

  Haider didn’t smile again.

  “I told you I didn’t want to come, didn’t I? I told you.”

  Little Salloo was screaming, his left cheek bright red. Slapped-Cheek Syndrome, the short, acne-pocked Punjabi doctor had called it when I took a limp, febrile Salloo to him. Nothing to worry about. Common childhood virus. Take a few days to go away.

  “He said it cou
ld have happened at daycare too,” I said, but Hina still glared at me as she patted Salloo on the back, which my little one took for encouragement to bawl even harder. “It’s a common childhood virus.”

  “I don’t care.” Her lower eyelids were red, the way they turned sometimes when she was tired or depressed. “Those damn cousins of his gave him that.”

  “Be reasonable, Hina,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t do the opposite. “Are you taking your pills?”

  She flinched. Salloo stopped crying, startled by the motion. Hina stared at me, her hawk nose flaring. “How dare you,” she whispered. Her voice rose before I could hold up a hand in explanation. “How dare you make this about me. My son is sick. He’s sick, you hear me, Jamal? Your son is sick. And what do you do?” She smiled, baring her teeth. “You run all over town, partying with your dirty, filthy friends.”

  “Gimme a break, Hina.” My neck was throbbing. There it was, the familiar buzzing in my right ear when the muscle stretched taut and pulled at my uncinate joints, or so the neurologist I’d seen in Orlando said. A wisha wisha wisha of tinnitus that played like a phantom surf inside my head. “I haven’t seen those guys in a long time. They’re my friends.”

  “Yes. They are, aren’t they?” she said, and Salloo squealed in her hands. Hina looked down, surprised. She was clenching his butt too tightly. She turned him over and patted him. “Friends are as friends do. And Haider with his mean weird eyes...” She stopped, breathless, holding Salloo hard against her breasts. “He brings back bad memories. I don’t want to see them again.”

  “You won’t. We’re done hanging out.”

  Her eyes were unreadable, but when she spoke, the vehemence had left her. For the first time in months there was something other than death and dullness in her. “You remember when we were in college? All of us together? Such a long time ago.” What was that in her voice? She looked around at the room, her eyes wide as if seeing everything for the first time: the mahogany headboard of the ancient bed my mother brought in dowry; the bare walls with the PIA: Great people to fly with clock hanging like a dead thing, its metallic tongue lolling; the shod carpet with the corners lifting up; the old mirror smeared with juices of dead mosquitoes and flies.

  Hina sighed, a sound that filled the room like a soft, sad dream. Salloo rocked in her hands. The PIA clock ticked loudly. We looked at each other through slitted eyes.

  Hina turned and drifted out the door.

  Saadat Hassan Manto and I were walking the streets of Anarkali. It was early morning and the cockerels were still crowing. A soggy fog drifted in the alleys. Somewhere a donkey brayed.

  “It must have seen me,” said Manto sahib and turned to me with that mustached smile of his. “They say donkeys bray when they see the Devil.”

  I said nothing. In this place and time I was content to let Manto sahib lead the way. The alley twisted and we found ourselves in front of an old bookshop. Manto sahib turned the knob of the screen door. It opened. Without glancing back he entered. I hesitated, then followed.

  Manto sahib was lying on a jute charpoy with a broken post. The charpoy tilted vertiginously. His face was jaundiced, his eyes yellow like egg-yolks sitting in a spoilt omelet. His hands twitched and flapped weakly. A moonshine bottle lay lidless on the floor near his hand; it swayed in an unfelt wind. The dark glass reflected his face, twisting and wrenching it into a grotesque mask.

  When I entered, he looked up and tried to smile. “You made it,” he said, his voice hollow as if sighing through a reed flute.

  He was naked except for a loongi that covered his crotch and thighs. His chest was caved in, but his abdomen was bloated, the navel popped out like a floating cork.

  “I’m dying,” he said, and his lips and tongue quivered. “But you can save my soul. Uncle Sam, save my soul.” He managed a weak grin. “Have you read my Letters to Uncle Sam?”

  I nodded, my eyes burning, heart thudding in my chest.

  This country has gone to cunt-city,” he said. His eyes rolled up and he died, one finger lying gently on the bottle rolling back and forth on the phlegm-covered floor.

  We went to Shalamar Bagh.

  The van ride was bumpy and hot. Salloo cried most of the way. When we got there, the Mughal gardens were covered with thin and fat Lahorites, their half-naked spawn jumping up and down in the piss-yellow fountains. The oak and banyan trees were stained with white slugs and slug-juice. Papa and Mama walked Salloo up the marble steps leading to the terraces. Hina and I held hands tentatively, looked at each other, and smiled.

  Haider and Nandoo showed up around midday. A silver Land Cruiser screeched to a halt in the graveled parking lot, pluming a rooster tail of red dust behind it. When Haider stepped down, his sunglasses glittering, Hina turned to me. Her eyes were frantic and furious. I shrugged. They had called me and wanted to meet one last time. She jerked her hand away.

  Nandoo and I walked side by side, our first meet in ten years. His hairline had receded more than mine, and his face was chubbier, but otherwise it was the same old Nandoo. We had talked on the phone about The Daroo Diaries, and Nandoo sounded delighted to hear my voice—although he regretted to say he had bad news for me.

  “It’s a fake manuscript,” he said.

  Two college kids at the National College of Arts had prepared it. The fabrication had been exposed months ago and hushed up by an embarrassed academia. There was no last manuscript by Manto.

  No unfinished business in Lahore for me.

  “How’s life, Jamal?” Nandoo said now, smiling that easy smile, that brave smile in the face of our youth’s adversities. Dear old Nandoo who had never refused me anything. Who always ran to fetch my kites when they floated like giant wasps on steamy, blindingly white summer days.

  “It’s good, man.”

  We walked in silence for a while. A fruit vendor yodeled his wares. Two brown children cut across our path and a tall swarthy security guard paced the garden, his AK-47 slung over a thick shoulder.

  “Why’d you never call?” he said at last. “I tried to stay in touch, you know. You didn’t.”

  I scratched the back of my hand with a fingernail. What could I say? That time is a dying snake eating its own tail? That years come and come and we move through them like unhappy ghosts in limbo? That my wife looked at strangers in the park near our suburban Florida home with more clarity in her eyes than at me?

  “I’m sorry, I guess.”

  He laughed. “Same old Jamal. Your ass is sorry and you don’t even know it.”

  Awkward, I laughed too.

  We turned a corner, and came upon Hina and Haider. They were sitting together. He was gesticulating wildly. She was gazing at the ground, but her face glowed. Oh, how it glowed. Brighter than this hot miserable day from hell. Her eyes were dreamy and they were clear. Her T-shirt was mussed up, its tail out of her jeans. When they saw us, she jumped away from him, stumbled to her feet awkwardly, and walked quickly toward us.

  “Where’s Salloo?” she said, breathless. Then, “I’m going to get him.” She turned and fled.

  Haider came toward me, his eyes hidden beneath gold-rimmed Police sunglasses that I could never have afforded when I was young and penniless in college.

  “How’s it going, boys?” he asked and smiled.

  I was confused. That smile.

  Nandoo hawked and spat a creamy wad at Haider. The spit landed at his feet. “You’re such an asshole. Is that why you came here?”

  Haider looked at the spit. Looked up. His sunglasses slid down his nose, and his eyes were defiant and blazing. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Nandoo glared at him. Wordlessly, he turned and pulled me away. “Let’s go.”

  I stumbled after him, not knowing what to do.

  That evening, without telling anyone, I went to Heera Mandi.

  Past Cuckoo’s cafe I walked, looking for Tibbi Gali. It was there, a narrow lightless alley bulging with a dozen or so fat hookers. They wore cheap and gaudy clothes,
and huddled together like bloated factory-farmed chickens in a coop. They smiled and pawed at me, and I stopped and moved and paused again. I didn’t see her. That sad dusky face with the fruity breath. What was her name? In sudden despair I ran down the alley, and a pimp sidestepped, startled and wary.

  She was not there. She must be thirty now, mustn’t she? She’d said thirty-year old fat whores went to Tibbi Gali.

  But Tibbi Gali was empty of her, barren and silent.

  We left for the U.S. the next day. Mama and Papa stood waiting at Lahore Airport as I talked to the attendant at the desk. I came back, sporting a wide smile on my face. Mama sobbed, and Papa held his book of Rumi poetry in his hand. Salloo goggled at them both and my mother kissed the top of his head. Her tears gleamed in his brown hair like pearls.

  “Listen to the story told by the reed,” said Papa. I noticed something I hadn’t before. The hair on the back of his neck had turned white; it stood out in wilting bunches. “Of being separated. Ever since I was sliced from the reedbed, I have made this crying sound.”

  Hina handed me Salloo’s stroller. I slipped Salloo inside and fastened the belt.

  “Anyone separated from someone he loves,” said Papa. Mama looked at us, her face lined, her black liner smudged down her cheeks in rivulets of grief, “understands what I say.”

  I moved forward and hugged my parents one after the other. Mama hugged me frantically, and I felt her bones pushing through her doughy flesh. When I embraced my father, he kissed my cheek and my earlobe. He whispered, “Remember what the Maulana says, son. Few will hear the secrets nestling within the notes. May you be one of the few.”