Kamila Shamsie - Salt and Saffron

Seriously, though, I know things can’t be easy. What little news we get from your part of the world is pretty frightening. Tell me it’s just the US media up to their old tricks. I miss you, girl. When do you return stateside?

Love,

Your favourite I-claim-to-oppose-decadence-but-live-in-a-system-steeped-in-it American.

I dashed off a reply:

C–In the kind of movie you’re talking about our heroine wouldn’t be inspired by a Euro-American; she would be a Euro-American. Possibly shown the light by some mystical but ineffectual Eastern type.

More later.

Love,

A.

Sameer came through the door, holding two glasses of Coke in his hands and two packets of chilli chips between his teeth. ‘Hey!’ he said, and the chilli chips fell on to the desk beside me. ‘No saliva on them, I swear. Miracle of miracles … Is that actually a message from my sister?’

I didn’t want anyone, not even Sameer, to see me reading a message about Khaleel, so I clicked from the in-box back to Celeste’s message, and turned to the chilli chips. I crushed the packet between my palms and shook it vigorously to ensure an even distribution of masala. I once asked Masood if he could make chilli chips that tasted like the ones in the packet. He bit into the chilli-red potato stick I proffered him, and looked pained. ‘Would you have asked Ghalib to write a letter to the telephone company for you?’

I pushed my laptop away. ‘I’ve just developed a theory, Reemas.’

‘Well, spill all, Brer Fox.’

‘No, moron. It’s your name backwards. Reemas.’

‘Oh, Reemas. Not Remus of Uncle fame. Nor Remus, even, of Romulus fame. Moron yourself.’ He kicked my chair, and I tried to imagine coming back to live in Karachi if Sameer wasn’t here. It’s all very well to love a place, but in the end what matters most is the people who live there. Why did Taimur leave Dard-e-Dil?

‘Your theory, professor?’

‘Snobbery is based on fear.’

‘Already it sounds highly unoriginal.’ He tipped a handful of chips into his mouth and followed it with a sip of Coke to accentuate the taste of the masala.

‘No, no, not fear of a revolution or anything like that. Fear of squalor. Fear of being entirely powerless, entirely overlooked. It’s not that we can’t empathize with those on the lower rungs of society; the problem is that we can. We can imagine what it feels like to be so deprived, and it’s our fear that we could, or our children could, end up like that which makes us keep our distance from the have-nots. Because at a distance we don’t have to think about it.’

‘Tell me you just came up with that and haven’t had time to think it through.’

‘Why?’

‘First, are you saying there’s no distinction between class and wealth? Haven’t you heard your Dadi, or even your parents, or my parents, talk about the nouveau riche? Are we lower down the class ladder than the Mushtaq family next door, who pull out their teeth just so they can have them replaced by solid gold?’

‘We don’t know that they pull out their teeth.’

‘Yeah, right. Their family suffers from a rare disease called tooth dropsy.’

‘Forget about the teeth. Let’s get back to my theory. I think our family’s attitude towards the nouveau riche is another symptom of fear. We’re uncomfortable around them because they remind us that class is fluid; the Mushtaq parents may be considered nouveau riche, but their kids are being sent to finishing school to acquire polish and within a generation they’ll marry into respectable but no-longer-rich families, and they’ll start turning up their own noses at the nouveau riche. This reminds us that status is not permanent; as the Mushtaqs rise, someone else will fall, and that someone might be us.’

Sameer pulled my laptop towards him and read Celeste’s message. ‘I see.’

‘What?’

‘You’re feeling guilty about not devoting your life to helping the needy, and it salves your conscience to say your snobbery is related to your great empathy. Oh, baychari Aliya. Too sensitive to hang out with the poor! That’s a Starched statement if ever!’

He was right, but so was I. ‘What would you do if you saw Masood tomorrow?’ How odd that I’d never thought to ask him this before.

Sameer shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Say hello, I suppose. Tell him my palate misses him. If you’re asking if I’d invite him home for tea, no I wouldn’t. And if I did, he’d refuse.’

‘But suppose … Remember he used to say he wished he could read English? What if Mariam Apa taught him? What if he’s read, I don’t know …’

‘Frantz Fanon?’ Sameer made a dismissive gesture. ‘Are you saying it’s all about education? The great leveller. You think if you read John Ashbery all differences cease to matter. Come on, Aliya. You’re smarter than that.’

I felt my face flush at the mention of Ashbery. ‘That’s not fair, Sameer.’

‘To hell with fair. You spend half an hour with this Khaleel — sorry, Call — he alludes to your favourite poets, and now you can’t handle the fact that your biases are conflicting with your hormones, so you try to convince yourself that you’re not a snob, you’re just empathetic. You don’t discriminate; you just have more in common with people who are educated. And you’ll rewrite everything in the past which conflicts with this theory, including the way you feel about Mariam and Masood.’

I thought of Khaleel drinking tea out of a saucer. How desperately I still wanted to believe that he only did it to test me. All the poetry in the world couldn’t change that. ‘Okay, go away.’

‘Aliya, Aloo, cuz. Listen to me. It doesn’t work. I tried it. With a girl from work. She wasn’t lower down on the social ladder or anything, she was just from a really different type of family. Like to like makes the most sense. Look, if it makes you feel better, tell yourself you’re pulling away because of difference, not because of snobbery. Tell the truth: can you see yourself getting married to this guy? Can you see yourself coming to Karachi for the holidays and staying with his family in Liaquatabad? Don’t tell me the thought doesn’t appal you.’

The thought appalled me. ‘Who’s talking about getting married?’

‘You’ve got to think long-term. If it’s obvious from the start that it won’t work out, cut your losses. Why start something that can never progress?’

‘Mariam did.’

‘Do you think she’s happy?’

‘Do you think he is? Why don’t we ever ask that?’

‘You know why we never ask that.’

Why did he go back to his birthplace? After his father died. Why did he go back? Was he sick of the pretence? Was it his version of an ultimatum? I’d never thought of their relationship as something with squabbles, and jealousies and demands. It was as though I could only begin to understand the relationship — why couldn’t I just say ‘affair’? — by making it some mythical, two-dimensional thing, larger and also so much smaller than life.

How did he hear of his father’s death? How did he tell Mariam of it? When did he decide to leave?

My parents had a dinner party at our house the night before Masood left. Masood burnt the naans and had to cycle out for more, delaying dinner by a few minutes. It’s a strange detail to remember, but I remember it particularly because I had only just learnt to drive and I offered to drive him round the corner to the naanwallah, but Masood said no.

‘Don’t you trust my driving, Masood?’ I laughed.

‘It won’t look right. You chauffeuring me around.’

‘What rubbish. I’ll get the keys. Don’t leave.’

But he did. Mariam Apa was standing in the driveway when I walked out, keyring in hand, and yelled for Masood. She shook her head at me and spun her index fingers to mime bicycle wheels.