Kamila Shamsie - Kartography

‘Will you do it? Will you write something? Write a story or something. Write about the motia-seller and the car thief and Zia and Sonia and falling in love.’

‘What exactly should I write about falling in love?’

‘Write, “There was a boy called Karim who never fell in love.”’

‘He never fell in love?’

‘No. There was no falling. He was born in love with her, and he was borne by love all the way back to her, even though there was a period of total stupidity in between.’

I bowed my head. The grace of this moment. Remember this always.

‘You keep going silent on me.’

I pressed the phone as close to my ear as possible. ‘Karim, you bastard, I’ll kill you.’

He laughed. ‘What? You really thought I called you up to tell you to help me make a map?’

‘Stop being obnoxious. Say something sappy.’ From Uncle Asif’s collection of seashells and fossils, I picked up a cuttlebone and traced the outline of my hand with it.

‘Maple syrup.’

‘Are you feeling kinky?’

‘It’s made from sap.’

‘I’m going to hit you. Should I fly back to Karachi or will you come here? Which is faster?’

‘I’ll come there. Supposing I was being kinky, how would you have responded?’

‘When you get here, I’ll tell you. When’s the next flight?’

‘Hang on, girlio. I can’t make the next flight. I really am going to do this map thing, you know. ‘Cause you know what I realized? There’s bound to be a map somewhere. The police, the Intelligence Services, maybe even the post office, they have got to have a street map of Karachi.’

‘I guess.’ I couldn’t help laughing at how we’d come full circle. Rahim Yar Khan and maps and the two of us. But how far we’d travelled to get back here.

‘Don’t guess. It’s true. Zia’s father spoke to someone — one of his shady contacts — who said he’ll get me a map. So Zia’s father is coming over right now with a police escort to take me to meet this guy and get the map. I’ll bring it to Rahim Yar Khan and we’ll start thinking of ways to use it as the basis for our Internet map. But we won’t worry about that in a hurry. Right? All the time in the world.’

‘Karim, no.’ Despite my happiness, I felt a shiver of apprehension. ‘The worst way to start a project like this is to start it with Zia’s father’s help.’ I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him now. The man who still hadn’t cried over his son’s death. His grief mutated past redemption.

‘I’m going to start squeezing toothpaste from the middle of the tube. We’re obviously just searching for things to argue about. Oh, car’s here. I’ll call you from the airport with flight details, OK? Hey, one last thing. Your name. How come you never told me it means “guide”?’

When he hung up I stayed as I was, phone pressed to my ear. ‘Karim,’ I said. ‘Karim,’ I whispered, tasting his name in my mouth.

I turned the cuttlebone around in my hands. Why didn’t he take the next flight? Why wait to be taken somewhere with Zia’s father? No good could come of any interaction with Zia’s father.

I pictured Karim sitting at the desk, pencil poised above a sheet of paper, eyes consulting base maps and aerial mosaics, one arm resting on the desk, palm up. Clifton, Defence, Gizri, Sea View, Bath Island… I said, wrapping my fingers around each of his fingers in turn, learning by touch the length of each digit. I dipped my thumb in ink and ran it over his palm: heart line, fate line, Mound of Venus. Boat Basin, I said. I unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve. With the tine of a fork I traced his vein, from wrist up to elbow. Mai Kolachi, I said. He held the tip of my ring finger against his elbow joint, moving the fingertip back and forth along the groove: The Beach Luxury Hotel Road, he said. I pushed the shirtsleeve further up his arm, and ran a fingernail down a raised and knotted scar. So then, what would this be? I asked. He turned his map towards me and pointed out Napier Mole Road. Can you handle these logistics? he said.

If I can’t handle, then I’ll toothle them, I said, and bit his bicep. A drop of blood glistened on his skin. My tongue curled around it.

Hey, that’s mine, he said, laughing. Give it back.

I gave it back. He ran his inked palm over skin, under cloth, in between teeth, leaving imprints of his destiny all over my body, and I returned the tattoo, his heart line passing from palm to cheek to abdomen to hip to crisscrossed paths to routes unmapped. Our sweat smelled of unwritten words. Ink tastes different on the skin of the man you love. Strange hieroglyphics of desire. The rain drummed down on the long, long windows, leaving streaks that were roads and veins, arteries and arteries.

I stepped away from the desk; it really was raining. I pushed open the windows, back arched and mouth open to catch the liquid sky on my tongue. My hands rested on a globe by the window; mountain ranges embossed on its surface, embedded in my skin. I twirled the cuttlebone. Thought of everything that had led us here. I am so sure now that as I stood there I knew something of what was happening on the dusty streets of home. The rain clouds moved towards Karachi, where Karim was getting out of a policeman’s Pajero, collar unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, veins on arm and throat pulsing blue in a drab landscape. The sky was low, pressed down by rain, clouds impaled on lightning. I pulled off my clinging shirt, rivulets running down skin, tributaries and waterfalls at my shoulder… Karim pushing open a door, Zia’s father carrying keys to filing cabinets behind him… Zia in New York turning an identical key over and over in his hand unable to consign it to fire…fireflies dancing around me in rain…opposing thoughts dancing through Sonia’s mind as she looks from burning matchstick to the slip of paper with Zia’s New York number on it in my handwriting… Zia twirls the key… Sonia twirls the matchstick…the globe spins off its axis and careens towards the window…armed men charge through the gaping doorway… Arabian Sea leaps out to slap my face…glass from broken window everywhere…glass from bullet-shattered window everywhere and nothing the police can do but fire blindly…through the noise of bullets Zia’s father screams that every stranger is an enemy… Karim watches pools of strangers’ blood spread across maps…pools around my feet…the globe still bouncing…world spinning round me…spinning round, the only gunman still alive points his weapon at Karim…one final mindless act with what strength he has… Zia’s father cries, my son, my son …he throws himself between gunman and boy…a bullet carves an alley through a heart…one object consigned to fire, one not… Zia’s father’s twenty-four-year-old tears unfreezing, falling, drowning him, me, everyone…

and I can only dimly understand the startled peace when the boy closes the man’s sightless, tear-rimmed eyes and the globe hurls all its oceans at us,

wave

after wave

after wave.

In Karachi’s streets even the mourners turn their faces skywards to the rain and falling leaves. Between sheets of water, indistinct figures dance together.

I take Karim’s hand and pull him into the music.

‘Follow me,’ I say. ‘I know the way.’

KAMILA SHAMSIE’s first novel, In the City by the Sea, was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. After her second novel, Salt and Saffron, she was named one of the Orange Futures “21 Writers for the 21st century”. A recipient of the Award for Literary Achievement in Pakistan, she lives in Karachi and London, where she writes frequently for The Guardian. She often teaches in the U.S.