Kamila Shamsie - Kartography

Zia turned into an alley, slightly wider than the first, and drew up to a gate that looked brown but turned out to be rusted. He parked his car half on the street, half on the narrow pavement that ran along one side of the road.

Karim and I stepped out of the car at the same time, and Karim stretched, his shirt rising up as he did so, revealing a raised chicken-pox scar just above the waistband of his jeans and a line of hair leading downwards from his navel. He caught me looking at the scar and glanced at it self-consciously.

‘I have one,’ I said, and showed him the discoloured scar on my elbow. He touched it.

‘Mine’s bumpier,’ he said, and raised his shirt so I could see it again.

‘Is it?’ It obviously was. I ran my finger over the scar. He breathed in suddenly, just as I touched him, and a gap opened up between his flat stomach and his jeans.

I didn’t move my hand away, and he smiled, stomach muscles still contracted. ‘You’re cold. Gave me a shock.’

‘You have goldfish on your boxers,’ I said, looking down, and he laughed and exhaled.

‘Are you guys coming?’ Zia called out. He was peering over the rusty gate, and holding up a hand in greeting to someone on the other side. A man with a white streak in his hair — paint or pigmentation? — opened the gate. We walked into a large open space, littered with billboards and prone steel poles; various men who’d been sipping tea and talking in the compound stood up and drew near Zia as Bilal — the man who had opened the gate — called Zia’s attention to a billboard standing flush against the far wall.

‘Oh!’ I couldn’t help exclaiming.

It was Zia. Or Zia’s head, rather, ten times its usual size, looking with delight at Zia’s ten-times too large hand squeezing white liquid out of an inflated pink glove into Zia’s wide and fleshy mouth. ‘Uh, Zia?’

‘I have no idea, Raheen. I have no idea what that is.’

Karim had been wandering around the compound, examining brushes stiff with paint and pretending to make a feat of balancing on the wide poles, but now he came up and looked at the painting and as soon as he started laughing I knew exactly what the pink glove was.

‘Bet this is where the slogan goes,’ I said, pointing to a blank patch of canvas.

‘But what am I selling?’ Zia said.

Karim and I grinned at each other.

‘Some new brand of milk,’ I said. ‘Probably with a name like human kindness.’

‘And the slogan: UDDERLY FRESH!’ Karim said.

We exchanged glances and burst into laughter, laughing so hard we had to hold on to each other for support. And then we weren’t laughing any more, but his arms were around me, my chin on his shoulder, his neck just centimetres away from my mouth, and I thought, how easy it is, how easy it can be. Where have you been all these years, Karim? Where have I been?

At the periphery of my vision, I was aware of Zia looking at us, his mouth open, a look of surprise, almost wonder, in his eyes.

Bilal had disappeared into the small concrete shelter in one corner of the compound and now he emerged with tea in flower-patterned cups. We took a cup each, and Karim sat beside me on a horizontal pole, his legs crossed at the ankles. He didn’t say anything, or even sit as close as I hoped he would, but my world shimmered at the languor with which he caressed the flower pattern on the teacup, tracing the petals with his index finger, sliding his thumb up and down the stem, just prior to raising the cup to his lips. It was enough to make me wish I was porcelain, hollow and filled with hot liquid. I pulled his ear lobe and he smiled and kicked me gently.

‘So I’m sorry about that last letter to you,’ I said. ‘I pretty much harangued you, didn’t I?’

‘Yeah, well, I’m sorrier about mine. The cut-up letters.’

I bit my lip and turned my face towards the sun so that he couldn’t see the tears that had rushed to my eyes. Until he said it, I’d had no idea how much I needed to hear that from him.

‘I had only just found out,’ he continued. ‘I guess you must have known for quite a while by then. But I only found out the day before I got your letter, and when I read it I thought I heard certain traits echoing.’ He stopped to look at my face as I struggled to remember. What must I have known for quite a while by then? Was there some mass carnage, or something along those lines, that made my comments about ‘Mr. Compassionate-Sitting-in-London’ and ‘when we laugh it’s survival’ particularly tasteless?

I ran one finger along his eyebrow, feeling the soft hairs ruffle against my skin. ‘Things look different when you’re living here, Karim. Now that you’re back, you’ll see that.’

Karim pulled back and caught me by the wrists. ‘What are you saying? That none of it made you angry?’

‘But what good would that have done?’ Did he think my anger would terrify the city into stopping its crazed behaviour?

He leaned forward, his chest pressing against my palms. I thought he was going to kiss me, and I glanced around — a Karachi girl’s instinctive move in such a situation — to ensure Bilal and the others weren’t looking. But his face remained several inches away from mine. ‘Ra, you can tell me the truth. We don’t have to be on opposite sides.’

‘I am telling you the truth.’

He let go of my wrists and stood up. ‘Raheen, you wouldn’t have sent me that essay if you didn’t… The two people in that city, what’s that damn name, Ray… Rye… Ray…?’

‘Raya? What does that have to do with this?’

‘Raya. Yes, the ones who reflected the attitude of that Faiz poem. The selfishness, the weakness, of certain kinds of love.’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I was trying to say…well, I was trying to say that I wish you hadn’t left.’

Karim blinked once, twice, three times. He turned around, his back to me, and put his hand over his eyes. ‘That’s it? That was about you and me?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘No,’ he said. It was a wounded sound.

I stood up and put my hands on his shoulder. ‘Karim, I don’t understand why that letter of mine made you so angry.’

He went completely still. ‘You don’t understand?’ He looked around him as though trying to find his bearings. He faced me again and his lips moved, as though he were rehearsing words, but nothing came out.

I didn’t know what to say or do, so I simply took his hand in mine.

He wrenched away from me. ‘I’m tired. I should probably go to Zia’s and sleep for a while.’ He walked towards the gate without looking back, calling out to Zia that it was time to leave. On his way out, I saw him reach back to his shoulder blade. He brushed off the rooster feather that had fallen from the branch above, and continued walking.

Minutes later, Zia’s car stalled.

We weren’t out of Mehmoodabad yet; Zia had attempted a short cut which brought us into a narrow, deserted alley lined with shops that still had their shutters down. The painted sign above one of the shops said ‘mata hari school uniforms’, but although both Karim’s eyes and mine turned towards it neither of us pointed it out to the other.

Zia and Karim got out of the car and Zia propped open the bonnet, but it was clear he did that only because people in movies always responded to breakdowns in that manner. I got out also and stood beside them, despite the internal voice that sounded a lot like Sonia warning me I’d only call attention to myself, and who knows what strange types were wandering around the deserted streets at this hour, and perhaps I should at least cover my bare arms with my dupatta.

‘We’re near Parsi colony,’ Karim said. ‘Uncle Zerxes — my father’s friend from the linen industry — lives there. Ten-minute walk.’ He was looking at Zia, assiduously avoiding my eye.