Daniyal Mueenuddin - In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

At the end of the week Harouni and his retinue drove back to Lahore, Rafik, Saleema, and the rest.

The servants had a game that they played, with Rafik surprisingly enough not just acquiescent but the ringleader. Up in Rafik’s native mountains marijuana grew everywhere, along the sides of the roads, and thickest along the banks of open sewers running through the rocky pine woods below the villages, the blooming plants at the end of summer competing in sweetness and stench with the odor of sewage. Hash smoke clouded the late-night air in the little village tea stall when he was a young man. Now, every spring Rafik planted a handful of seeds behind some trees in a corner of the Lahore garden, and in the fall he dried the plants and ground up the leaves. He played tricks on the others, making a paste called bhang and slipping it into the food of one or another servant. Sometimes they would taste it and stop eating, but often not.

A few weeks after the visit to the Harouni farm at Dunyapur, Rafik began secretly compounding a batch of his potion in his quarters, with the help of Saleema. Kamila Bibi had gone back to New York, but Saleema had been kept on, through Rafik’s intervention. The accounts manager Shah Sahib had been planning to tell the master that the girl was ‘corrupt’ and a ‘bad character’ — saying these words in English — and toss her out. But now he held his tongue, not wanting to cross Rafik. And Rafik spoke for her one evening as the old man went to sleep, with Rafik massaging his legs.

‘I beg your pardon, sir, about the maid Saleema who has been serving Begum Kamila. She’s a poor girl and her husband is sick and she’s useful in the kitchen. She makes the chapattis . If you can give her a place it would be a blessing.’

The old man did not merely lack interest in the affairs of the servants — he was not conscious that they had lives outside his purview.

‘That’s fine.’

Now Saleema watched in Rafik’s quarters as he boiled the dried leaves in water over an electric ring.

‘Hey, girl, close the door, don’t let anyone see.’

She sat down on the edge of the bed, swinging her bare feet, kicking off her sandals, which fell by the door. Rafik squatted, stirring the leaves with a wooden spoon and peering into the cauldron. They still hadn’t made love, though now he would lie with her in the afternoon during the servants’ naptime, his hand on her breasts. He made no attempt to hide their relations, and all the servants thought they must be sleeping together. She would fold him into her body, and stroke his thinning hennaed hair while he slept.

‘This is a strange kind of cooking for an old man.’

‘You’re the strange one, following this old man around like a little sheep. Most shepherds are young boys.’

‘Please don’t say that.’ She never in her life had spoken in these gentle tones.

He looked up at her, eyes smiling, pointing with the spoon. ‘Be careful or I’ll give you a taste of this!’

‘No thanks.’

‘No, I’m serious. When Mian Sahib goes to ’Pindi I want everyone to take some. I’ll have it too.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘It’ll be fun. And we’ll be together. You can trust me.’

Two days later K. K. Harouni flew to Rawalpindi, to attend a meeting of the board of governors of the State Bank — one of the few positions he still held, a sinecure — the real policy was decided elsewhere, Harouni and other eminences unknowingly acting to camouflage self-serving deals and manipulations.

Shah Sahib, who had accompanied his master to the airport, stood next to Samundar Khan in the parking lot, leaning against the hood of the car, wearing a gray suit with excessively broad lapels.

A jet taxied out and came hurtling down the runway, then climbed smoothly through haze, toward Rawalpindi to the west, locking its wheels up.

‘Let’s go,’ said Shah Sahib.

As they drove out the airport gate, Samundar Khan said, ‘May I take you home?’

Shah Sahib glanced over at him. ‘I need to pick up some things for my wife. Then you can take me home.’

‘Well, Shah Sahib’s out of the way,’Samundar Khan said, walking into the kitchen.

Hassan stood at the stove over an enormous pot of boiling oil, cooking the samosas, which Rafik and Saleema were assembling at a table, filling them with meat and bhang . Rafik had told the servants that he would be passing around samosas to celebrate good news from home, but everyone saw through this. The drivers and their gang were fully on board, and had sent Samundar Khan to make sure they got a heaping plate. The old gardener had left, but the younger one had sidled into the drivers’ quarters and wanted to join in. The oldest of the sweepers, a thin balding man with a meek, servile expression, sat out in the courtyard hoping that he would be included. Whenever he could afford it he would buy himself a stick of hash to smoke at home after the day’s work.

All the bhang had been used up. A pile of samosas steamed in a plate.

‘Okay, now it’s us,’ said Rafik.

Hassan turned his back and raised the lid on a saucepan. ‘Not me.’

But he ended up having some.

Saleema and Rafik sat in his room eating samosas . At first she had refused, but he pressed her.

‘Now what?’ she said.

‘Sit here and tell me a story. Tell me about when you were a girl.’

Neither of them had spoken much of their pasts or their homes. She knew that he had a wife and children, two sons, and shied away from anything bringing it to mind.

‘What shall I say? I was brought up with slaps and harsh words. We had nothing, we were poor. My father sold vegetables from a cart, but when he began smoking heroin he sold everything, the cart, his bicycle, the radio, even the dishes in the kitchen. Once a man — a boy — gave me a little watch — he brought it from Multan — and my father pushed me to the ground and took it from my wrist.’

‘Poor girl, little girl, how could he do it?’ He rolled her over onto the bed and kissed her neck, under her chin. Stopping for a moment, he stood and locked the door.

She didn’t tell him the worst, much worse things. Her father came into her room at night and felt under her clothes. For the first time, Rafik touched between her legs. She opened the drawstring of her shalvar, then took off her shirt, sitting up on the bed. Her small breasts stood out, her ribs.

He turned off the lights, but she said, ‘No, I want to see you.’

‘This old body? Leave it, there’s nothing to see.’

‘For me you’re not old.’

The bhang had begun to affect her, she felt the dimensions of the room, the light, the calendar on the wall that showed a picture of the Kaaba, the black cloths covering the stone and crowds circling around it. How strange, she had never before seen the roof, made of bricks and metal rods, the little high window to let in air. She felt aroused, yet wanted to get up, to go somewhere. She took off his clothes, peeling off his tan socks. Their skin touched. Standing up and going to the corner, she bent down on purpose to pick up her shirt, letting him see her. She saw reflected in his eyes the beauty of her young body. They made love, he came almost immediately, then lay on her.

‘Stay inside of me,’ she said.

Her thoughts were racing, from idea to idea. Oh would he marry her, and she knew he wouldn’t. She had been taken by so many men; could have given herself to him so much more pure.

‘Now turn off the lights,’ she said.

‘No, let’s go out in a minute. Let’s go in the garden and look at the flowers.’

In the garden he even held her hand. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘If you have strange thoughts, remember it’s the bhang . Be happy.’