Kamila Shamsie - Kartography

Before anyone could answer Uncle Ali’s question, Zia’s father had barrelled into the study, where he picked Zia up by the collar and shook him wordlessly. Zia did nothing more than look down at the floor, but when I saw his father’s face contorted in the manner of someone who’s trying to remember how to cry I recalled that Zia’s brother had been killed by a stray bullet when he was a toddler, back in the days when stray bullets made front-page news.

Zia turned red and extricated himself from his father’s grip. ‘Let’s go, Dad. It’s late,’ he said, and with a final apology to my parents Zia left, his father two paces behind him.

‘If they didn’t spoil him so much,’ said Ami, with a sigh. ‘Still, I understand the impulse.’

Zia never talked about the brother he never knew and the only time I tried to bring up the subject, he said: ‘Stray bullet. Funny expression. As though all that bullet needed was a good home and a bone to chew on.’

Karim went straight to his mother as she entered the room, and threw his arms around her, which seemed a little bit excessive considering he hadn’t been anywhere near the bullets. Another one of his dramatic moments, I thought. I looked at my mother, and wondered if it would help to fling my arms around her. No, she’d see right through me. My father, on the other hand, would melt if I put my arms around his waist and started crying. How good it would be to put my arms around his waist and start crying. If my mother tried to speak strongly to me after that, he might just tell her I’d suffered enough. The question was: if Zia called me up next week and asked me to go for a drive late at night, just the two of us, would I say yes? Yes. And Ami knew it.

I squared my shoulder, ready to face what was to come, but my mother seemed determined to keep me in suspense, and continued some pointless conversation about the flaws in Zia’s parents’ child-rearing techniques. So I was almost grateful to Uncle Ali for saying, ‘Bloody stupid, Raheen. Zero out of ten for responsibility and honesty. And anyway, as Mercedes go, that one’s not very appealing.’ I started to smile at him, but stopped when he turned to Karim and said, ‘As for you, young man. Bribing police officers? Do you think that makes you a hero?’

‘I think it got Zia out of jail.’ Karim crossed one ankle over his knee in an exaggerated posture of adulthood.

‘Shh, Karim, don’t talk to your father like that.’ Aunty Maheen sat down next to Karim and stroked his hair. He half-turned, rested his head on her shoulder, and linked his fingers through hers.

Uncle Ali switched the table lamp on and off and on again. ‘So if you want to be a good friend, you bribe a policeman. If you stand on ethics, you’re a lousy human being.’ He looked at my parents. This was clearly a continuation of some other conversation. ‘This is not about accepting grey areas any more; it’s about a value system that’s totally bankrupt.’

‘And your solution?’ Ami said, her face illuminating and disappearing into shadows by turn as Uncle Ali continued to fidget with the light switch.

‘His solution is to leave,’ Aba said. ‘Isn’t that the most bankrupt choice, Ali? To turn your back on something you love because it’s grown unmanageable?’

‘It’s not as though you were never on the verge of doing the same,’ Aunty Maheen said softly, still stroking Karim’s hair.

What were they all talking about? For heaven’s sake, I’d just been shot at.

Aba picked at something lodged beneath his fingernail. ‘That was completely different: ’71 was madness.’

‘But perhaps it would have been best if you had left,’ Uncle Ali said.

The reaction to that statement was baffling. Ami started plumping cushions into shape, muttering something about drycleaning; Aba leaned forward towards Uncle Ali and said, ‘Have you gone mad, mate?’ and Aunty Maheen’s hand on Karim’s hair started shaking. ‘Oh, Ali,’ she said. ‘Ali, of all the things…’

Uncle Ali put up both his hands in a defensive gesture. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. God, Zaf, you know I wouldn’t. Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re all being ridiculous. I meant maybe we should all have left and…I mean, there is madness here now and it’s getting worse, that’s what I meant. I meant the country, I’m talking about the country, the government, the people. I don’t mean…it wasn’t personal.’ I had never seen him so agitated. He stood up, sat down again, and resumed switching the lamp on and off. ‘I need a drink, Zafar.’

‘Sorry,’ Aba said. ‘Had to give Bunty my entire supply of the hard stuff. His bootlegger’s gone on Hajj, and he was worried about running short for his party.’

‘This is what I mean! What kind of country has this become?’ Uncle Ali appeared unaware of my mother moving the lamp away from him. ‘Bootleggers! No one in a civilized country should use that word except in jest.’

‘Zia and Raheen get shot at and what’s worrying him? The illegality of alcohol.’ Aunty Maheen rolled her eyes. Precisely. ‘Listen, baba, Prohibition happened in the dark distant past, back when I could eat three chocolate eclairs and still look good in a bathing suit the next day, back when you were still…’ She stopped and looked at Karim, who hadn’t moved at all during this whole exchange. That sick feeling I had begun getting whenever Uncle Ali and Aunty Maheen started on at each other in this manner crept over me now. I wanted to announce that I could still hear the gunshots echoing in my ears. I wanted to lean against Uncle Ali’s shoulder and cry so that Aunty Maheen would sit down right next to him in order to put an arm around me and tell me it was OK. I wanted to stop thinking, as I looked at them, And what else? And what else? I wanted most of all never to mention any of this to Karim.

Uncle Ali turned to my mother. ‘Poor Maheen. Stuck with a husband such as I. How long can any woman put up with such suffering? I think some of the Ghutnas are taking bets on that question. Do you think they’ll let me place a wager?’

‘Karim, Raheen, green tea,’ Ami instructed. ‘Oh, and call Sonia. I think we managed to make her panic about you.’

Glad to have a reason to leave the room, I accompanied Karim downstairs to the kitchen and called Sonia while he put the water on to boil.

‘Oh, thanks God,’ Sonia’s mother said, when she heard my voice. ‘Everything theek-thaak?’

‘Everything’s fine.’ She told me to hang on while she called Sonia, but even after she had gone and there was no one on the line I continued to speak—‘Yes…umm hmmm…I’m sorry to have caused you concern’—just so Karim would think I was sufficiently distracted not to see his shoulders shake with weeping as he stood with his back to me.

‘Who are you talking to and where were you guys?’ Sonia shouted into the phone.

I ignored the first part of the question and answered the second, the words falling out of my mouth as though they were a recording. I was looking at Karim’s shoulders and thinking how small they looked, how thin, and thinking that if he ever saw me crying he’d put his arms around me, and make me stop.

Sonia said, ‘So did you go back? To find the cat?’

If I stayed put and did nothing, he would stop on his own, out of embarrassment. But if I went to comfort him, perhaps he’d start talking, perhaps he’d tell me what I never asked and he never mentioned: what it was like to live with his parents when my parents weren’t around to re-channel the conversation. I suppose I had known it for a long while, but that evening was the first occasion I really allowed myself to think that Karim lived in sadness some of the time. The thought was so painful to me that I had to let go of it, had to tell myself that being shot at was making me melodramatic.