Kamila Shamsie - Broken Verses

There is this narrative, too, in my life, I thought, late in the afternoon when everyone was filing out, and more than one of the female cousins near my age whispered, giggling, ‘Don’t die a virgin!’ as they left. There has always been this narrative. Just for this one day I will not be hostage to that other past of mine.

Next door, the phone started ringing.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Rabia said. ‘It’s been going every fifteen minutes for the last couple of hours.’

Here we go again.

I went into my flat, picked up the phone. No answer, no originating number. I disconnected the phone, trying not to notice the tiny fibrillations of my heart that occurred each time I heard that ring, and the rush of gratitude I felt when I answered to hear a voice on the other end, even if the voice belonged to no one I had any interest in speaking to.

I took a long siesta that afternoon, with dreams in which the sound of a ringing telephone followed me everywhere, even though I was transported back in time, trekking in the middle of desert and rock in a world in which I knew phones hadn’t yet been invented.

I forgot about that dream when I woke up, but it returned to me later that evening as I was driving to Shehnaz Saeed’s for dinner, replaying the day’s amusing moments in my head and finding that I had almost entirely exhausted my determination to laugh at the world. I turned on to Chartered Accountants Avenue and, in the rearview mirror, I saw a motorcycle weaving its way through traffic towards me. I heard an echo of a phone ringing in my head, recalled the dream, and the nausea I felt then came from the realization that the motorcycle had been following me through the dense Eid traffic for over ten minutes now, ever since the Bar-B-Q-Tonite roundabout, just a short distance from my flat. The man driving had large dark glasses on, and the man seated behind him had a shawl loosely wrapped around him, though it wasn’t really cool enough to warrant such attire.

The traffic stopped and the motorbike drew level with me. I was boxed in on all sides by cars. The man with the shawl looked in through my rolled-up window, and slowly — unbearably slowly — removed his hand from the driver’s shoulder and reached beneath the shawl.

‘Eid Mubarak,’ he mouthed, the hand beneath the shawl scratching his stomach, and then the motorcycle continued to snake through the traffic and turned towards Gizri.

I bit my lip and willed myself just to continue driving, without any further looks in the rearview mirror unless they were necessary to prevent an accident. A few minutes later, it was with the relief that travellers in the desert greet Bedouins bearing palm fronds and coconut water that I saluted the chowkidar at Shehnaz Saeed’s house when he opened the gate for me.

The front door was ajar, and as I walked up to the doorway I saw Ed standing in the hallway, arms crossed, looking at the paintings of his mother.

I was absurdly glad to see him. ‘Hey, stranger.’ I walked up to him, not sure whether to hug him or kiss him on the cheek or put my arms around his neck and see what followed

He turned around, arms still crossed, making all three options physically awkward to manage. ‘Hello, Aasmaani.’ He didn’t smile or show a sign of anything except indifference at my arrival.

‘Well, this is a strained moment.’ He half-shrugged. ‘I see. And getting worse by the second. Should we try polite chitchat? When did you get back?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Uh-huh. And how did filming go?’

‘Fine.’

‘Glad to hear it. And clearly the rugged wilds of Pakistan allowed you to get in touch with your inner Heathcliff. How is that experience going for you?’

‘Oh, stop it, for God’s sake.’ He strode into the nearest room, slamming the door behind him.

I heard footsteps and turned in their direction. The woman who had let me in when I came for lunch with Shehnaz Saeed was walking down the tiled hall towards me, her clothes white this time, as though she had switched sides in a game of draughts. ‘When he does that it means he wants you to follow him in,’ she said.

‘Maybe I should just leave him alone.’

She shook her head. ‘Even as a little boy he used to think he needed to do all kinds of drama to get attention. Because his mother was so busy with her acting.’ She held up a hand, cutting off a statement that I hadn’t been about to make. ‘I won’t hear any criticism of her. That husband went off and left her without any money, what could she do but work? But my little Adnan,’ she pointed towards the door, ‘he was too young to understand that. So he’d jump out of trees and break his legs to make her stay at home. His heart,’ she beat her hand against my chest, ‘it’s so large he doesn’t know what to do with it.’ And then she was grinning suggestively at me. ‘Maybe you can teach him.’

In a surprisingly quick motion, she opened the door and pushed me inside.

I was in a study, dark save for an up-lighter on the floor, directed at a large mirror which reflected the dim light on to the bookshelves and sofas and Ed, sitting in an armchair, rocking a millefiori paperweight in his hands. The door closed behind me.

‘Is this about me or are you just in a bad mood?’ I asked, staying near the door.

‘Too much these days is about you. I don’t know how that happened. I can’t seem to stop thinking about you.’

‘And this is a terrible thing?’ I walked up to him as I spoke, resting my hand on his shoulder when I came to the end of the question.

‘Why did you call me?’ He was looking down at the paperweight, which he was twisting as though to pull the clear glass off the enclosed blue, green and yellow flowers. ‘I had just convinced myself that you wouldn’t call, that you weren’t thinking about me. That it was over before it had really begun. Then you called. And hearing your voice, Aasmaani, it was like… like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door and the world is colour. Remember that haiku of yours? How did she recognize emerald, ruby and yellow when all she’d known was grey? She dreamed of colour, that’s how she knew. And that’s why she had to return home to grey Kansas. Because there’s nothing more frightening than stepping into the dream closest to your heart. If it lets you down, you won’t even have a dream of colour any more, you’ll have nothing but grey.’

‘Is it really so impossible to believe I won’t let you down?’

He looked up at me, finally. ‘You already did. When I realized you weren’t calling because of me. You were calling to ensure you kept getting those damned messages from your beloved Poet. If it was the CEO giving you the letters, you’d have been calling him instead.’

I sat on the arm of his sofa. ‘Do you know the story of Merlin and Nimue?’

‘Yes. She imprisoned him in a tree.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it. She needs something from him. But she can’t get it unless she falls in love with him.’ Then I did what I’d been wanting to do since the first time I saw Ed. I ran my fingers through the thickness of his hair. ‘I don’t deny the Poet’s messages are what brought us close, or that they continue to make it essential that you don’t step out of my life. But, Ed, do you really think that if the CEO had been the one to give me the messages I would be sitting here playing with his hair?’

‘No. He’s bald.’ He glared at me as he said it. And then — it was like alchemy — he smiled. He put an arm around my waist and pulled me on to his lap.

‘Eid Mubarak,’ he said. ‘How’s your day been?’

‘It’s had a couple of low moments, but on the whole, pretty wonderful.’

‘Am I the low moments?’