Uzma Khan - Trespassing

‘That’s exactly what the Prime Minister wants us to believe,’ cautioned the doctor. ‘Why else is he suddenly supporting the Islamic groups? Why else are all the liberals in exile or in jail?’ He pointed to the waiter circling them with a tray of drinks and demanded, ‘Is this to be my last public beer?’ While the waiter poured, an argument erupted.

Amongst the women, the topic ranged from births to beauty parlors to who had been seen at the last grand luncheon where exactly the same three subjects were discussed with equal zeal.

‘You should try Nicky’s instead of Moon Palace, darling,’ said the Hyderabadi wife to the Iranian wife. ‘She gets the curls just right.’ Looking disdainfully at Anu, who wore her hair in a frizzy bun, she sniffed, ‘That is, if you want to stay in touch with things.’

‘Mah Beauty Parlor is far superior,’ said the wife of the Punjabi. She was from Bangalore, and in the past, had confessed her husband couldn’t stand her for it. She was pregnant with their third child. ‘I had my hair set there just yesterday. And you won’t believe who was having hers done beside me!’ She looked around expectantly. ‘Barbara!’ While gasps and exclamations issued, the woman continued, ‘And I found out that her grandmother was my grandmother’s neighbor’s khala’s mother-in-law’s best friend’s sister!’ More gasps and exclamations.

The wife from Delhi, whose husband had taken the doctor’s warning to heart and was on his third beer, piped, ‘I believe it’s her daughter who recently had twins.’ She was not a popular woman. In her absence, the others declared she always overdid it. Anu had to concede they had a point. Today her hair had taken coils to new limits.

But Anu remained silent. Wanting in names to drop, she was fundamentally awkward in high society. She had not been born into it. Nor had the doctor for that matter, nor many of those present, but somehow she alone showed it. She was twenty-three, married at sixteen, educated only till class nine, clever enough to understand English but could speak it with an accent that was hateful to her in English-speaking company. Besides, she would only ever have one child. Soon after Daanish’s birth, her ovaries had had to be removed. It seemed that in her presence, the women always took particular pleasure in repeating the names of those who’d better proven their reproductive worth. But they would never have the pink bloom on her cheeks that her pure blood gifted her.

Across the table, the increasingly incensed doctor was saying, ‘What is the point of banning horse racing? I tell you, people will continue to do as they please but under the table. The Prime Minister is sowing the seeds of corruption with one hand and buying off Islamists with the other.’

‘We’re heading for another military coup,’ sighed the Iranian. ‘Another US-backed martial regime.’

The meal arrived. Hers was placed before her: stuffed shellfish. She disliked eating fish. She preferred them drifting between her ankles, at the mouth of the cave. They were silver and gold then, but cooked they simply stank.

‘Don’t use the fork,’ the doctor leaned across and whispered.

What was she to do, eat with her fingers, here? She flushed. Some of the others heard and laughed — at her.

‘The spoon,’ he urged.

She glanced nervously around the table, and her worst fears were realized: all eyes rested on her plate. She broke the cheese crust with the end of a spoon. It was surprisingly cold. Scooping up a small morsel she began nibbling miserably. Then she noticed something like a bullet where the fish’s belly must have been. She did not want any more.

The doctor boomed loudly, ‘Don’t you like it?’ Laughter.

‘Not hungry,’ she muttered.

‘Just two more bites,’ he urged.

She picked up the spoon again and probed around the bullet. There was another one. And another. Her face would explode with the blood rushing into it. Giving her husband a last, desperate look, she plucked out the first lump with her fingers. Seven more rose with it. The crowd gasped: she held a string of gray pearls.

He helped her wipe them, then fell into a lengthy description of the rarity and size of Tahitian pearls. ‘I’m afraid the meal is uncooked,’ he said more to them than her. ‘I couldn’t possibly have had them bake it!’ Uproar. Applause. Her hands and clothes a sticky mess, smelling putrid. Her insides as hard and lifeless as the gems. He couldn’t afford this. She’d tried to tell him as much each time he gave her gifts. So now he performed in public.

‘How eccentric!’ a sophisticated wife shrieked, eyeing the doctor with a mixture of fascination and horror.

‘How lucky,’ the one who overdid it whooped.

And the one who met the film star at the parlor declared, ‘What an entertaining husband he must be!’

As their enthusiasm grew, she understood they expected her to wear the necklace. She left for the toilet, returning with the polished stones around her neck. Even when dessert arrived no one noticed she had not eaten a thing, though her neck was the object of the ladies’ minute, chilling study, and the doctor of their coquetry and awe.

But then the following morning, optimism returned.

The six-year-old Daanish was in the television lounge with the doctor. She worked in the kitchen, preparing a picnic for the cove. Woozy with the heat, she decided to carry the small tub of lentils she was washing to the breezy lounge. On the television appeared a dusty old white man. His fingers and face were chafed beyond any others she’d seen in his race. Nor did his voice carry the smooth, metallic timbre typical of goras. Most amazing of all was what he did with his hands: exactly what she did! He dipped a crewel-like pan into a river, brought up sand, and sifted — but for what?

‘Gold,’ the doctor explained to Daanish. ‘He’s content to live a life waiting for the odd nugget to fill his cup. Though he’s spent over half a century doing it, he’s still as poor as the dirt that hides his fortune. Some men won’t give up.’

Well! thought Anu, her fingers pausing in the yellow-tinted water. She studied the prospector’s sturdy, startling blue eyes and ropy physique. She followed the cracked gray mouth as it spewed strange, chewy sounds. Her fingers idled pensively. She smiled. For a brief, exciting moment she connected with a man. Not the one stretched across most of the couch (who’d still not noticed her bunched at the end) but the one from a different world. The one who understood that it was the spirit with which she waited that made the effort worthwhile. That commitment itself was reward.

A commercial break. A cheerful Anu packed the lunch and tea. The prospector was a sign of better things to come.

It was time to go to the beach. On the way out, the doctor asked her to wear the pearls. Her face fell. The shame of yesterday threatened to rekindle. Should she ignore him? Deciding against it, Anu hurriedly clasped the string around her neck.

At the cove, the doctor and Daanish cleaned their masks, adjusted their snorkels and were gone. She settled in the cave with her lace, working today on a tablecloth. Once again, she wondered what they would see. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine it. But something was wrong. Her sewing was uninspired. The cave, instead of being the respite she’d known it to be, felt alien. The giant’s foot pressed even closer to her head. She knew what it was. She was feeling the weight of the pearls. They circled her collarbone like lead pellets, each to her what it must have been to the crustacean itself: a blemish, a pustulate growth. Sand in her rediscovered joy. Cysts on her ovaries. She tried focusing on the salt blowing on her lips that was always strangely healing, and on the guipure in her hands, but neither offered any comfort. She thought of the prospector with hands like hers, always sifting, searching. But even he eluded her now. She put away the cloth and began laying out the sandwiches.