Kamila Shamsie - Broken Verses

‘You’re not the first man to be fascinated by the enigma that is Aasmaani, Ed. And you won’t be the first to—’

‘You aren’t even remotely enigmatic. I’ve never met anyone less opaque. Are you fashioned of different material to everyone else in the world, Aasmaani, and is it possible that I’m the superhero whose only talent — whose unparalleled talent — it is to see you clearly, down to the atoms of the stuff of which you’re made? I’ll take that superpower over all others in the world, even if I’m promised nothing more than just the seeing.’

Memory prickled the back of my neck. Omi had spoken of my mother in those terms. Mirza had once asked him whether he thought that by marrying my mother the mystery would go out of their relationship, and Omi had said, ‘There is no mystery — that’s the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is.’

The paisleys were a bridge between us across the blue sea of the carpet, each one the footprint of a god as he searched for his Beloved.

‘Are you going to start wearing a cape and spandex leggings, SuperEd?’

‘Whatever works,’ he smiled back. I started to move towards him and he held up a hand. ‘First promise me something. Promise you won’t go asking more questions about the Poet. Promise you’ll keep yourself safe.’

‘I don’t even know where to go looking…’

‘Promise me. Promise me you won’t ask questions. Promise me that.’

‘Ed, I have to find him. However I can.’

‘Then rely on him. Rely on his letters. If you start asking questions—’ He looked around as though something in the room might end his sentence for him. When nothing did, he settled for, ‘I don’t want to think about what they could do to you.’

‘I have to be willing to risk something. You have to be willing to risk some things when the stakes are high enough. Don’t you see that?’ There was my mother’s voice coming out of my mouth, her very words.

‘But what if you alert them?’ He came up to me and took me by the hands. ‘What if your questions arouse their suspicions and they find out about the letters?’

‘I don’t know how not to fight for this.’ Mama, how long have you been hiding inside me? ‘Don’t talk to me as though there’s a choice involved. I must do whatever I can.’

His grip on my hands was almost painful. ‘If you won’t protect yourself, protect him. Secrecy is your ally here. If anyone knows you’ve discovered he’s still alive…’

I leaned my head on to his chest. His heart was like a piston. I was no threat, but Omi was. If anyone started to wonder why I was asking questions and traced the encrypted letters back to him…

‘Yes.’

‘What?’ he said.

‘You’re right.’

He exhaled and kissed the top of my head.

‘This doesn’t mean I’m giving up, Ed. I’m just going to have to think through my next move carefully.’

‘Can I think with you?’

‘It’s really not your mind I’m interested in, spandex boy.’

He put his arms around me and laughed. ‘Ditto, darling.’

There was no gloom any more in the shadowed room; the dull light was a softness of colour against which I could close my eyes to transmigrate into that darkness in which all discovery occurs through touch and smell and taste. Sea-blown citrus, and the sliver of skin at the borderland of stubble and lip.

And sound. There was also sound. A hand jiggling the doorknob.

Ed and I pulled apart, each of us stepping backward along the paisleyed bridge as the door opened and Shehnaz Saeed entered.

In her chiffon sari, with a diamond bracelet around her wrist, Shehnaz Saeed looked so utterly the part of the star that it was possible to believe the rectangle of illumination she stood in hadn’t been thrown by the bright lights of the hallway but simply followed her everywhere she went.

‘Oh, there you are. I thought I heard you drive up. Eid Mubarak, Aasmaani.’ She walked over and kissed me on the cheek, then looked at Ed and raised her eyebrows. ‘Am I interrupting something?’ she said low into my ear.

‘You don’t have to whisper.’ Ed’s voice was cold, even more so than it had been when I first walked in. I glanced at him, wondering what I had missed. I was suddenly very conscious that this was the first time I was seeing the two of them together.

‘And you don’t have to be so edgy,’ Shehnaz Saeed said in that not-in-front-of-the-guest tone which I had often given Beema reason to employ during my adolescence.

Ed picked up the paperweight again and tossed it from palm to palm with affected casualness. ‘You should have walked in a few minutes ago. We were having a conversation I’m sure you could have added a lot to.’

‘Oh?’ She seemed not to see that he was baiting her. ‘What about?’

‘Mothers and sex.’

‘Ed!’ I couldn’t believe he’d actually said it.

Shehnaz Saeed looked from him to me, her cheeks colouring. ‘What has he been saying to you?’

I shook my head, mute with horror at the impropriety of it all.

‘I haven’t said anything, Mother.’

She continued to look at me, and I shook my head again, this time to indicate no, he hasn’t said anything.

At last she turned back to him and said with simple dignity, ‘Aasmaani and I will be in the lounge. Join us when you’ve had time to grow up.’ She put her hand on my arm. ‘Come on, darling.’

‘Get your hand off her,’ Ed said, his voice still icy. ‘Otherwise I’ll tell her all those things you don’t want told, and she’ll push you off herself.’

‘Ed, enough with the Jekyll and Hyde bit,’ I said.

At that, Shehnaz Saeed dropped her hand from my arm and turned to her son again. ‘You’d be a fool to let me get between you and her. I can’t undo what I’ve done, or who I am. Tell her. Go on. I don’t mind. I’m not ashamed of it. And I won’t have your shame over it — over me — wreck your own chance of happiness.’

All of a sudden, Ed looked as though he was going to weep. ‘I’m sorry, Amma.’ He came up to her and leaned his head on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘My boy,’ she said, stroking his hair. ‘My baby boy.’

I stood to one side, wishing they weren’t between the door and me so that I could simply slip away. My God, Ed, have you any idea how lucky you are that she’s still here to forgive you? Let her do that. Do yourself a favour, and let her forgive you for everything. For all the accusations, all the hurt, all the betrayals, all the ways in which you weren’t enough.

‘Aasmaani?’ Shehnaz Saeed held a hand out to me. ‘The horribly awkward moment is over. Come on, let’s go into the lounge.’

We walked into the hallway together, all three of us, and in that magical way in which families can be restored to good humour seconds after they’ve all but cut out one another’s hearts, Ed and his mother had their arms around each other, their voices as they spoke consisting of nothing but lightness.

‘Have you told Aasmaani about the dictionary man?’ Shehnaz Saeed said. ‘Aasmaani, did you hear about the dictionary man in Multan?’

I shook my head, and Ed and his mother laughed.

‘You tell her, Amma. You tell it better than me.’

‘I wasn’t even there when it happened.’

‘Never mind. You tell it.’

Shehnaz Saeed stopped walking and put a hand on my wrist. ‘So Ed’s in Multan last week, filming the Ramzan special. And at the end of a long day he’s relaxing in the coffee shop of his hotel…”

‘Drinking instant coffee.’

‘Drinking instant coffee. And in walks this irate man with jowls so droopy they could carry him away in a strong wind. And he’s got a book in his hand which he starts waving at Ed like a fanatic holding the Word of God, ready to produce the black-and-white evidence that drinking anything other than percolated coffee is an unpardonable sin.’