Kamila Shamsie - Kartography

Karim rested his elbows on my knees and leaned forward, his forehead touching mine. ‘Transmitting images into your brain,’ he intoned. ‘Images of teachers in red leather thongs.’

‘Gross!’ I pushed him away, laughing. He fell back, resting on his elbows, the toe of his sneaker pressing against the toe of mine.

‘I almost wish you’d been there,’ I said a little later, when silence had replaced the laughter.

‘I wish I’d been there, too,’ he said, turning a jigsaw piece over and over in his hand, looking at the precise irregularity of its edges. ‘Because then I’d be thinking of how the bullets could have hit me, instead of sitting here imagining those bullets hitting you. All those bullets.’ His face took on one of those expressions again: the one with which he receded away from me.

‘You can’t think things like that. I wish you’d never think things like that.’

‘Tell me something funny, Raheen.’

I’d been saving this one up for him, for a moment when he’d really need it: ‘One of the names the British used to refer to Karachi, in the days when it was little more than a fishing village, was Krotchy.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Nuh uh. We could all be Krotchians. Or Krotchyites.’

‘Krotchyites! Sounds like a kinky communist party.’

I hadn’t yet finished rolling my eyes about that when Uncle Ali opened the door. ‘Let’s go, son. Way past your bedtime.’

In the hallway, my parents stood awkwardly with Aunty Maheen, no one speaking. Ami and Uncle Ali exchanged ‘what-just-happened-there?’ and ‘what-brought-that-on?’ looks. Aunty Maheen started walking quickly towards the door, and Aba speeded up too and touched her lightly on the shoulder. At first I thought she was going to ignore him, but then she turned round and shrugged, half-apologetically, half-not. ‘Forget about it,’ we all heard her say. She looked over Aba’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Karim, let’s go.’

Karim held my wrist for a moment, then followed his mother out.

‘Talk to her,’ Ami said to Uncle Ali.

‘Yasmin, I’ve forgotten how.’

Then he left, too.

Later that night, unable to sleep, I went towards my parents’ room, where I heard them through the part-opened door.

‘Why after all these years?’ Aba said.

‘Given what’s going on with her, why wouldn’t she think of how else her life might have worked out? Why wouldn’t she get angry that things didn’t happen differently?’

‘Do you think Ali knows? You know, about—’

‘I think that’s part of the reason he wants them all to move to London.’

Whatever it was they were talking about, I knew they’d stop if I walked into the room. And, ordinarily, I would have turned and walked away, nothing more discomforting than lurking in shadows listening to conversations that weren’t meant for you, but this had something to do with the possibility of Karim leaving Karachi, so I had to stay. I had to know.

‘Has she said anything to you?’ Aba said, after a hesitation that suggested he wasn’t sure he wanted to take the conversation any further.

‘No, of course not. She knows I’ll feel I’m betraying Ali if I do anything except censure the situation.’

‘You would?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

Spell it out, I silently urged them on. S-P-E-L–L.

‘I think I would be compassionate about the situation without feeling I’m betraying Ali. And, let’s face it, if we portion out loyalties mine should belong with Ali and yours with Maheen.’

‘Quite the reverse, if we’re honest about it. Come on, Zafar: if Maheen told you she’d robbed an old woman you’d feel compassionate.’ Her voice became accusing. ‘You don’t feel you’re entitled to be anything but compassionate towards Maheen.’

I couldn’t help lifting up my arms in exasperation. Why make compassion seem like a crime?

‘Why so cold, Yasmin?’

‘Because many years ago we decided to square our shoulders and say, this is what we have done; we will live with it. We will make it something less than a waste and an unmitigated cruelty. And you’ve backed out of that, Zafar. You look over your shoulder and squirm as if to say, what is past is past, all I can do is look abashed and change the subject as fast as possible. When Raheen was born we both promised ourselves that wouldn’t happen.’

‘Raheen has nothing to do with this.’

‘Raheen has everything to do with this. Zafar, you were there when Ali told us Raheen’s been asking questions about the past. You were there, but you were the only one of the four of us who seemed to think it’s some passing curiosity that she’ll soon forget about. You want to know what brought on Maheen’s outburst? She knows that when Raheen asks questions, Karim asks them, too. She knows we’re all going to have to start marshalling facts, making our cases. She knows we’re all going to have to start thinking about it again.’

‘Not yet. Yasmin, not yet. We can’t tell Raheen yet.’ His voice was desperate, pleading.

‘Then when?’

‘When she’s old enough to know the impossibility of tracing backwards and saying, here, this is where love ends and this is where it begins. When she’s old enough to understand that sometimes there is no understanding possible.’

‘It’s possible. It’s always possible. It’s just occasionally easier not to interrogate it too closely.’

‘She doesn’t have to know yet, Yasmin.’

‘Zafar, sometimes I think I love you more than is good for either of us.’

‘You mean, you acquiesce.’ There was relief in his voice, and I exhaled deeply as if a hand had unclenched my own windpipe.

‘That’s only part of what I mean. But it’s the only part you’ll remember in the morning. Good-night.’

I made my way back to bed as noiselessly as possible. I had brought this on. Whatever it was that made Aunty Maheen use that terrible voice to Aba, whatever it was that made Uncle Ali and Ami exchange those looks of concern, almost fear, whatever it was that had my father near to tears in his need to protect me, I had brought it on.

I wouldn’t ask any more questions, I swore silently. Not even to myself. Not even if it killed me. No truth was worth such upheaval. My heart was still racing and I found my lips moving in prayer, giving thanks that whatever it was they were talking about, I didn’t know.

My bedroom door opened, and I heard Aba come in. He sat on the edge of my bed, and reached for my hand.

‘Are they going to move to London?’ I asked.

His grip tightened on mine. ‘It isn’t definite by any means,’ he replied, and I knew he said it because he couldn’t bear to tell me the truth.

Aba drove through the puddles left by the evening’s monsoon shower, his headlights picking out steel billboards in a state of obeisance, bent over almost double by the weight of wind and rain, unable to return to an upright stance. Swish-swish of wheels traversing wet patches. Somewhere in front of us, almost out of hearing, a car with a burst silencer. Scent of a rinsed city.

‘Nice of Bunty to lend us the Pajero. Couldn’t manage six of us and luggage otherwise.’

‘Probably wouldn’t have made it this far in your car. That drain overflowing back there…’

‘Yes. That poor Suzuki…’

‘Remember the time your Foxy stalled and we had to wade home?’

‘Your brand-new Italian shoes ruined.’

Something reassuring about Aba and Uncle Ali’s voices from the front seat, engaged in meaningless talk as though there were no need to inject every statement with the weight of the occasion. Something reassuring also about Ami and Aunty Maheen silently holding hands, as though they were girls again; girls who no longer had pop stars and furtive smoking and shared crushes to bind them together, but who found that friendship was binding enough, even though there was little but friendship that now bound them to the school-yard twosome who broke every rule and got away with it.