Uzma Khan - Trespassing

He clapped his hands. ‘No!’

‘This is no cause for celebration, you know.’

He shook his head. ‘No, no. No cause at all.’

She watched him.

He watched her.

‘Go on,’ she said, smiling a little at last. ‘Ask away.’

He steered her gently from the dining room into the TV lounge. He fluffed up the pillows on the couch. He clasped the remote control.

‘Oh no you don’t.’ She snatched it.

He again sucked on his gums.

‘You’ve gone through all those films a dozen times already.’ She pointed at the stack of videos in the cabinet. ‘They have to be returned, you know.’

‘Maybe we can watch the old one with Reena Roy again? Just once.’

‘Then I’m not staying.’

He gazed longingly at the blank screen. Then his face lit up. ‘In two days? What will you wear?’

‘Nini also cares about that,’ she said peevishly. ‘I’m not the one on display, you know.’

He nodded soothingly, then snatched the remote control quickly from her fingers and pressed power.

‘How childish you are.’

Together they watched a brightly-attired young woman sitting on her haunches, pink and blue bangles up to her elbows. Hair fell pleasingly into her eyes as she dipped those festive arms into a tub of suds, scrubbing a shirt collar as if her life depended on it. Apparently it did. In marched a large, mustachioed man with another shirt in his hands. He tossed it in her face and bellowed, ‘You can’t even make one thing shine!’ And just then, a packet of the perfect detergent fell into those soapy, bangle-ringing arms. The woman was so ecstatic Dia wondered if that ugly man had actually, finally, died. Maybe it was her first orgasm.

She leaned over Inam Gul and pressed the power button.

He sulked, but she could see the amusement in his eyes. ‘When is your friend getting married?’

‘Well she’s not getting married yet,’ Dia insisted. But her voice dropped. ‘Although it does seem she’s getting closer.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Tell me a story or something.’ She looked away. ‘Distract me from Nini and the fact that I ought to be studying for tomorrow.’

He patted her head, confessing softly, ‘I heard.’

‘I don’t know why she got so angry,’ Dia burst out. ‘She wouldn’t say. Why doesn’t she want me to go there? It wasn’t like her at all. And what’ll I do without Nini?’

He muttered and cooed. ‘Calm down, beti.’

Dia tried.

She looked at Inam Gul, so old and frail, his shriveled bones clear beneath the thin muslin shirt. He’d comforted her numerous times in the seven years he’d worked here. ‘Inam Gul for ever,’ she used to whimper. Now she just thought it.

She liked his calling her ‘daughter’. He meant it. Maybe she helped him dwell less on his lost son, Salaamat, whom she occasionally saw at the farm. If he saw her too, he greeted her kindly. The only other person Salaamat spoke to that way was his sister Sumbul. Maybe he always remembered Dia as the girl who beat her brothers at cricket. She laughed at this.

‘There,’ said Inam Gul. ‘You’re better now.’

‘No,’ said Dia. ‘Now I’m embarrassed.’

‘Embarrassed? In front of me?’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been told two conflicting things. Nini insists I be with her on Tuesday. Ama wants me never to see that boy and his mother again. What should I do?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Inam Gul. ‘There is no conflict. Your mother says to never step in that house again. The meeting is at Nini’s house.’

She tilted her head. ‘Sometimes I wonder: are you a befuddled old man or secret service agent? Is there anything you don’t know?’

He shook his head.

‘Well, you’re absolutely right. No one shall be betrayed.’

‘That’s my daughter,’ he patted her again, gazing once more at the screen. Slyly, he pushed the VCR button and began rewinding the tape.

When the video played Inam Gul snapped his fingers as Reena Roy bounced before her love.

‘Romance is just a spectator sport,’ mumbled Dia, remembering the conversation with her mother yesterday. Love lurks in unexpected places. Yes, in fantasy. In her storybooks and in Inam Gul’s videos. She said to him, ‘You marry your daughter off and watch other women prance about on television.’

He looked up and pouted. Then he turned up the volume.

There were two grilled windows. The shadows of the bars fell on the linoleum floor and a shaft of light lit a tiny space in the center. There were only two ceiling fans. Dia was under neither. The room was meant to seat twenty-five. Forty examinees were packed into it as Head Supervisor listlessly passed out exams.

To Dia’s left sat a very tiny woman with a desk covered in books. She offered Dia, with great warmth, any one of them. It was not an open-book exam.

To her right, another woman began peeling scraps of paper out from inside her bra. ‘I thought there’d at least be some monitoring,’ she told Dia, peeved at all the trouble she’d taken to make subtle her deceit.

Dia had still not looked at the exam. Foolishly, she was waiting for the official, ‘All right now girls, you may turn over your papers and begin.’ But Head Supervisor was off in the shadows, sniffing out her tombstone. Dia saw: Economics. She read the first question. How many units of x … The words began to swim.

Behind the woman whose bosom was steadily shrinking, another began unwinding a bandage around her arm. Others conferred with sneaker soles and the palms of their hands. The tiny woman to her left was getting tired of consulting books. She snatched Dia’s paper. Realizing it was blank she tossed it back with a look that made Dia feel filthy. It reminded her of the detergent ad. She hadn’t been scrubbing hard enough.

Everything she’d studied in preparation for the test entirely left her. Her thoughts turned to Nini. What was she doing at this very moment — going through her wardrobe? Planning a menu for tomorrow’s tea? Practicing how to carry the tray for her prospective mother-in-law?

She shook herself back to the paper. Long liquidation … basis points … short-term frustrations and difficulties … What made the letters shimmy like that?

Before the exam, there’d been rumors that Lubna, daughter of a minister rumored to be one of the prime smugglers of Afghan heroin, would pay someone to do her test for her. This someone was not even meant to take the retake, but here she was, beside Lubna. And she was doing her test. Lubna filed her nails, yawned, painted her nails green. Head Supervisor skated by.

There were other stand-ins. Not all got a fee. Gulnaz had threatened hers in the following way: Huma, who’d scored highest in all her exams, had been seen slipping out of the college grounds with a boy. Gulnaz’s mother’s friend’s sister’s husband was Huma’s father’s friend’s sister’s brother-in-law’s friend. Gulnaz had only to say the word, and the ball would roll straight into Huma’s father’s lap. Huma sat beside Gulnaz. She did her test.

Dia took to seeing how many smaller words could be made from Economics. Nose. Moon. Come.

How could she face the widow again? She remembered her from the Quran Khwani: a soft, dumpy woman with long frizzy hair. Oh, Nini was cruel.

Forty-five minutes remained.

Lubna could have simply bribed her teacher instead of the stand-in but obviously didn’t care for shortcuts. Maybe she’d inherited her father’s sense of adventure. Now her green nail polish was being mopped off for a brown one.

Why on earth was she dwelling on Lubna?

She stared down again. But the invisible line that connected the words to her eyes and on to her brain had snapped. Briefly, she worried that this was a permanent thing.