Kamila Shamsie: Salt and Saffron

Samia’s brother, Sameer, once said, ‘There is no digression, only added detail.’

So, as I was saying, I was seven or eight and a school friend was dropping me home from someone’s birthday party, except I was in no mood to go home so I directed her driver to Sameer and Samia’s house instead.

No one saw me enter my cousins’ drawing room, where a large crowd of my relatives was gathered around. All attention was focussed, instead, on a silver-haired woman in a sari who lit a cigarette and said, ‘Cigarettes are to me what coffee spoons were to Prufrock.’ I pictured this Prue Frock: a tall, thin redhead in a dress. I thought she must have been an Englishwoman from the Raj days of this stranger’s youth, and I imagined her lifting the stem of a spoon to her mouth and exhaling silver smoke. I remember wanting to impress the stranger — except I didn’t think of her as a stranger. There was something familiar … Is this memory or hindsight? But I did want to impress her, I know, so I fingered the bullet hole, hoping to draw her attention to it, to me. Instead, Sameer’s mother — my aunt, Zainab — appeared in the doorway behind me and sent me home with her driver.

‘One of Zaheer’s relatives was over for tea,’ Zainab Phupi explained to my mother later. ‘And as luck would have it a whole pultan of my relatives landed up as well, so I was going crazy and one more child in the house to keep an eye on was not what I needed.’

To try and distract attention from my disgrace I asked my father, ‘Who is Prue and what does she have to do with cigarettes and coffee spoons?’

He could offer no explanation, but the next day when he repeated this remark to Dadi I thought she was going to die. She put a hand over her heart and with the other hand caught me by the shoulder, her fingers digging into my flesh.

‘Zaheer Phupa’s relative,’ I said, and repeated the silver-haired woman’s remark. ‘Dadi, what’s wrong?’

Dadi pushed me aside and reached for the phone, her ring-laden fingers trembling as they dialed the six digits of her niece’s number. ‘Zainab, where is she?’ Dadi demanded into the receiver. ‘I know she’s there. I’m coming over.’

I was close enough to the phone to hear Zainab Phupi say, ‘She was only here for the day. She’s on her way to England.’

Dadi’s eyes closed and her head swayed from side to side. I don’t remember any sound escaping her, but it must have because Zainab Phupi said, ‘We were all so sure you didn’t want to see her. You’ve always said—’

‘Always! What do you know about always? We were girls together.’ That word — ‘girls’; she said it as a deposed monarch might say ‘king’. ‘More than thirty-five years I haven’t seen her and you just assumed you understood my always. Blood is thicker than time, blood is thicker.’ And she sat on the cold marble floor and wept.

It must be an instance of imagination plugging up a hole in my memory, but I could almost swear I remember Mariam Apa wrapping her arms around Dadi and rocking her into silence.

Samia nudged me and I raised my head away from its resting position against the smudged window of the Tube. ‘Jet lag. Our stop already?’

The train was hurtling on, so Samia didn’t even bother to answer. ‘Racy desi viciously and vigorously checking you out. Sitting next to purple-haired woman.’

I casually flicked my hair aside, shifting the angle of my head as I did so. ‘Where?’ I said.

‘He’s on the move,’ Samia whispered.

I looked up at the man walking towards me and felt a terrible urge to stand up as well, meet him halfway between purple-haired woman and Samia and wrap my arms around him.

‘Hi, Aliya,’ he said, sitting down opposite me. ‘Remember me?’ He crossed one foot over his knee and rested his hand on his sneaker. His hand span extended comfortably from the toe of his shoe to his ankle bone.

‘The aeroplane,’ I said, as casually as possible. ‘Aisle seat. And you handed me my suitcase.’

He extended his hand. ‘Cal,’ he said.

‘You don’t look like a Caleb,’ Samia said, taking his hand before I could. ‘I’m the older cousin.’

‘Hi, the older cousin. Actually, I’m a Khaleel. But when you live in the Western world, and your last name is Butt and you’re born in a town spelt A-T-H-O-L, pronounced “Athole”, things are bad enough already. You don’t want to add to the humiliation by admitting to a name that sounds to certain ears like you’re expectorating. That “kh” you know.’

‘Could be worse,’ Samia grinned. ‘You could be a Fakhr.’

‘That’s my older brother.’

‘Liar,’ I said.

He turned to look at me again. ‘Maybe. But a good storyteller never tells.’

‘All the way from Boston to London I could see your fingers tapping on your sneakers,’ I said. ‘That’s some hand span.’ On occasion, evil demons take hold of my voice box and force out remarks like that one. I reached across and held my hand against Khaleel’s, palm to palm. His fingers bent forward at the topmost joint, pushing down against the tips of my nails, and his thumb rested lightly against the mole on my index finger. I thought of mosques and churches and prayer mats. Hands clasped together; one hand resting atop the other; fingers interlocked to mime a steeple. What sacred power is invested in hands?

This is not to say I was having pious thoughts.

I pulled my hand away.

‘So it’s safe to say your family didn’t arrive in Amreeks via the Mayflower.’ Samia has the Pakistani knack of finding out all she deems it necessary to know about someone’s background within the first five minutes of conversation.

‘PIA, actually. No, my parents are like Aliya. And like you, I guess. Karachiites. I’ve never been there, but there’s a chance I might, really soon.’

‘Are you related to Bunty and Yousuf Butt?’ Samia’s foot was pressing against mine as she spoke, signalling He’s Gorgeous But Okay You Saw Him First.

‘Bunty Butt! I don’t think so. No bells ringing. But I wish I were. Aunty Bunty Butt.’

The train squealed to a stop at Green Park. ‘Isn’t this our stop?’ I said.

Samia shook her head. ‘So where’ll you stay? If you come to Karoo?’

‘With relatives. Place called Liaquatabad. What’s that like?’

Samia jumped up, pulling me along with her. ‘Aliya! It’s our stop. Hold the doors please. Cal, nice meeting …’ And we were out, watching the train pull away.

‘I cannot believe you …’ I closed my eyes and the world rocked around me.

‘Sorry, Aloo. Arré, hold on.’

I pushed past Samia and ran, and kept on running until I was above ground, cars whizzing everywhere, and across the street the PIA office with a cardboard cut-out flight attendant smiling at me from the window. I was horribly jet-lagged, and as London jostled around me I thought, I want to be five again and willing to lie down in the middle of a busy London street to declare I’m tired; willing to weep that I want to go home to Mariam Apa; willing to talk to anyone who seems nice, regardless of where they come from and where their families live.

‘Listen to me.’ Samia put her arm around my neck in a gesture that was both affectionate and immobilizing. ‘Have you ever, in all your days, in all your meanderings when Sameer first learnt to drive and you chuker maroed the city for the best bun kebabs, have you ever been to Liaquatabad? If I asked you how to get there would you have the faintest?’

‘Go away.’

‘Not an option. Oh, ehmuk, he’s an American. Green card and all that. If he really is planning a trip to Karachi his whole extended family is probably lining up its daughters as prospective brides.’