Kamila Shamsie - Kartography

‘It’s not that simple, Zafar,’ Ali said, folding his napkin neatly into a little square.

‘Well it’s not the little numbers game you make it out to be either, Ali.’

Maheen put a hand on her fiancé’s arm. ‘Jaanoo, Ali’s right. Look, Asif, I wish — really, really, I wish and pray — that everything could be easily resolved, but you’re deluding yourself if you think the Bengali people’s demands are going to go away, because I don’t know if they’ll even accept a federation at this point when the word Independence has gone around and it’s such a more soul-stirring word than federation.’

‘Ah, but you don’t know what I know,’ Asif said.

‘And what’s that?’

‘That just today Yahya told newsmen that his talks with Mujib were satisfactory, and that Mujib will be the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. They’ve reached a compromise, Maheen; I’m sorry, but your soul will have to do with being a little less stirred.’

‘God’s sake, Asif, she’s lived all her life in Karachi,’ Yasmin said. ‘She’s not…’

‘Not what?’ Maheen turned to her friend. ‘One of them?’

There was a yelp from below. The waiter had spilt a drink on Laila. Her husband stood up and cracked a slap across the waiter’s cheek. ‘Halfwit Bingo! Go back to your jungle.’

Zafar stood up. Ali and Asif pulled him down.

Laila grabbed her husband’s arm and whispered something. He looked up at Maheen, and turned red. ‘It’s a new sari,’ he called out in Maheen’s direction, pointing at Laila’s stained clothes. ‘I got angry, can you blame me? No hard feelings, OK, Maheen?’

Maheen shrugged noncommittally, which seemed to satisfy him. He sat down and resumed eating. Laila continued looking up, but Maheen refused to meet her eye.

‘It’s going to get worse,’ Yasmin said.

‘How much worse can it get?’ Zafar sighed. He slipped his hand into Maheen’s palm beneath the table, but her fingers didn’t curl around his in response. She was looking at the Bengali waiter. He walked past and caught her eye, and for a moment the barriers of class and gender became porous and something passed between them that Zafar couldn’t quite identify. Maheen’s hand slipped out of Zafar’s. He turned his face away from her, and saw Yasmin and Ali looking at Maheen, their faces moulded into identical expressions of concern. It was so brief he was almost unsure it happened, but for an instant he felt a most alien and inexplicable sensation of jealousy.

‘A lassi stand. I’m going to set one up right here,’ Yasmin declared. ‘I’ll mint millions.’

‘Right here? In the middle of the racecourse stands? Excellent idea. And how do you think Ali will react to being married to the Lassi Lassie?’ Zafar asked, fanning Yasmin with his newspaper.

‘Oh, that’s heaven, Zaf, thanks. Ali is not one of those Neanderthal men who expect their wives to stay at home. Done the crossword yet?’

‘No. You like crosswords? Is that Neanderthal comment a swipe at me? What makes you think I’d want Maheen to stay at home?’

‘It’s not about what you want, Zafar, it’s what Maheen wants that matters.’

Zafar tried to work out exactly what he’d said that was so objectionable. Hard to tell with Yasmin. Ever since that time she’d rebuffed him in the Nasreen Room he’d been too aware that he frequently misread her. For a moment he stopped to wonder how different things might have been if she had responded with more warmth to his suggestion. Impossible to imagine. Already it seemed a lifetime ago, and he honestly couldn’t remember why it was that when Ali had reintroduced him to Maheen and Yasmin, both of whom he’d known only vaguely before Oxford, he’d looked longer and with more interest at Yasmin. ‘I always manage to irritate you, don’t I? Even when I’m in complete agreement with you. I really wish you liked me more.’

Yasmin looked at him, surprised. ‘I don’t dislike you. But you were a bastard to me once and I haven’t quite forgotten it.’

‘Me? When? I would never… What did I do?’

Yasmin shook her head. What was she doing? It could only do harm to revisit the past, particularly when he was wearing the same black shirt — why did he always have to wear black, even in the heat of Karachi’s days, and why did he always have to look so good in it? She gripped her finger with its engagement ring. And more important than that, why did she still have to entertain these thoughts about this…boy, when every day she learnt something new about Ali, and every day felt more strongly than the day before how lucky the two of them were to have found themselves alone on that balcony on Asif’s farm. ‘Never mind. Nothing. I’m just joking. Oh look, there’s Anwar.’ She pointed out the curly-haired man on the other side of the racecourse stands. ‘Poor Anwar and Dolly. There can’t be anything worse than the death of a child.’

‘Rumour is, it wasn’t a stray bullet at all.’ Zafar looked at his watch. ‘Where are Maheen and Ali? The race is about to begin.’ Below, the horses were being led on to the track.

‘Oh, rumours are all the rage these days,’ Yasmin replied, relieved he’d changed the subject. ‘Just heard one that the fat cats are going to have the National Assembly building in East Pakistan bombed; that way work on it will never be completed and the National Assembly will never convene and Mujib will never become PM. You don’t really believe what they say about the shooting, do you? How could Dolly and Anwar continue living where they do if that were true?’

‘Speaking of rumours, I think we’re going to start one if the two of us are seen alone at the races.’ He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. Was that an inappropriate comment, Zafar wondered. He hastened to return to the earlier subject of conversation. ‘I hear Dolly wants to move. But Anwar’s been acting so strangely. They say he still hasn’t shed a tear about the whole thing. And look who he’s sitting down with. Here, look through the binoculars. See him? With a bunch of your aforementioned fat cats. He’s been avoiding all his old friends since the…since. Only ever see him now with the kind of people who should make anyone sick.’

‘Maybe they’re all talking about bombing the National Assembly.’

‘Probably talking about Bhutto’s little speech yesterday.’ He drummed his fingers on the newspaper headlines.

‘Revolution from the Khyber to Karachi if the NA convenes without him. It would be nice to dismiss that as rhetoric. Some nights I can’t sleep for terror.’ If this is how I feel, Yasmin thought, how must Maheen feel, a Bengali living in West Pakistan? And every day someone new seemed to succumb to the madness that was sweeping the country, someone new said things that defied all understanding, and it was hard to say which were worse: the people who stopped dead, mid-sentence, as soon as Maheen entered the room, or the ones who kept on talking.

‘The race really is about to begin now,’ Zafar said. No escape from talk about it, not even here at the racecourse with Yasmin. It was a physical ache, this burden of trying to be some kind of refuge for Maheen; every day more comments to deflect, ignore, make light of. In the beginning it was easy enough: hell, it came naturally. But now, oh God, now… ‘Where are they?’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Ali was supposed to pick her up half an hour ago.’

‘Do you think there’s been some kind of trouble?’

Don’t think about it, don’t start believing it. ‘What, the start of revolution?’

‘I’m serious, Zafar. Maheen should get out of the country. Something could happen.’

Zafar looked down at his hands. ‘Any good at palmistry, Yasmin?’