Uzma Khan - Trespassing

Or was she?

Since college was out for the summer, neither had run into the other. After the tea, days had passed before Nini finally called. Her abusive rampage had only made it easier for Dia to continue with Daanish. But then a week later, Nini had visited.

She’d looked terrible — bags under her beautiful bright eyes, complexion wan, gait uncertain. How had Dia appeared to her? Glowing?

They sat opposite each other on Dia’s bed, each determined to let the other begin. After ten minutes of steely silence, Nini left without a word. Dia whispered: Run. Rush into her arms and beg to be forgiven, you fool. But she sat still. Daanish’s reasoning echoed in her head: There’d been nothing between Nini and him. They weren’t married or engaged or even friends. There was nothing but an interest on their mothers’ part. Nini had become a stranger before Dia had even met Daanish. She let Nini recede down the corridor.

Sara, Inam Gul’s niece, was talking. Dia blinked. ‘Hmm?’

‘I said you look a little tired,’ Sara repeated.

‘I suppose I feel it a bit. Did these hatch today?’ She pointed to the tray being replenished with fresh leaves.

‘Yes. This is the third time I’ve fed them since the morning. Six more to go.’

Dia felt silly gliding along the table in her self-absorbed daze while the women around her toiled. How many around her had time to daydream? Sara looked as though she’d long since stopped trying.

Without greeting the other employees, an agitated Dia left the lab and walked toward the adjoining shack. On her way she met Sumbul, rubbing her fourth baby’s nappy under the tap outside. The child was suffering from diarrhea and Sumbul washed his clothes almost hourly. She squatted, hair in her eyes, worry on her face. The fifth child was beginning to show.

Dia hunkered, nauseated by the sight and smell of the boy’s watery shit. ‘Hopefully by tomorrow this will end,’ she consoled. ‘The medicine will start to work.’

‘Hopefully,’ Sumbul forced a smile. She wrung the cloth and rose, leaving it on a branch to dry.

They entered the shack together. The baby slept on a well-worn sofa, a cushion on his free side preventing him from falling. Sumbul adjusted it and settled beside him. The telephone was in the other room. Dia didn’t want to talk to Daanish in front of Sumbul. Salaamat had obviously been reporting their trysts because Sumbul was growing increasingly inquisitive. She’d even begun insinuating that if Dia’s mother advised staying away from Daanish’s family, she should. As if it was her business!

Pretending to busy herself, Dia picked the top off the pot on the burner — the staff’s lunch. ‘Smells good,’ she muttered foolishly. On the couch, Sumbul wound her hair up and started humming.

Then: ‘Are you going to see him again today?’

Dia blurted, ‘Salaamat at the cove, you here, Inam Gul and my family at the house. Even the guards. There’s no privacy in this country. Only secrecy. We’re not doing anything wrong. In fact, what could be more right? Yet, I’m the transgressor. I’ve become the gunnah gaar.’

Sumbul looked up, hurt. ‘We’re just all worried about you, Dia Baji.’

Couldn’t she see the irony? Sumbul, at exactly Dia’s age, was bogged down by four children, an ill-tempered husband, and a fifth pregnancy. Yet it was Dia, the one in love, whom everyone worried about.

She marched into the next room and shut the door. Sumbul could listen at the keyhole if she wanted. She dialed Daanish’s number.

‘Hi. It’s Dia.’

‘Khurram! What a surprise!’

‘Oh, no. You too? Who’s there, your mother?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Well call me back, will you? I’m at the farm.’

‘That’s a great idea. I’ll come over right away.’

Falling back on the bed, she inhaled deeply. That was rewarding.

While waiting for his call, she breathed his crisp, ruddy scent. It had lodged deep in her pores. A quiver swept across her cheek and down her neck.

She thought of the other men in her life — brothers, both virtual strangers; the eternal Inam Gul; a father till age fourteen. Then there was romantic love — crushes on gangly boys met at desperate parties. Kisses in strangers’ toilets. Little else. No nudity. No sex. Daanish had made it clear he desired both. Did she trust him? She remembered her own warning to Nini: He’ll have fun with foreign women but marry a local one to please his mother.

So where did she fit in?

Dia turned on her side. Pride prevented her from asking how many others there’d been. Or still were. Yet the thought irked her. One moment she flushed at the mere futility of it, the next she concluded it wasn’t futile. It might help determine whether she could trust him. After all, if a man were more experienced than a woman, wouldn’t she always feel like a child? Wasn’t that part of his thrill?

The phone rang. ‘Yes?’

‘Sorry,’ he sounded more relaxed. ‘Anu’s become insufferable.’

‘What happened?’

‘She’s figured out Khurram doesn’t have incisors like yours.’

Dia gasped. ‘She actually asked how it happened?’

‘No. She saw him on the street when he and I were really at the cove, necking.’ Over the receiver, Daanish slobbered and drooled.

Someone was chuckling in the background. ‘Is that him?’ she giggled.

‘Yup. He says this is the most fun he’s had since shopping in Amreeka.’

She laughed again. ‘So now what?’

‘Now,’ answered Daanish, ‘I might as well use our rickety car. I’ll just drive away on my own and if she asks where I’m going — which she will — I’ll think of something else.’

‘No Salaamat,’ she felt a rush of relief.

‘No. Just you and me and a lot of space to do as we please.’ He paused. It was the most calculated silence in the world. And the most exciting. Then, ‘Can I pick you up tomorrow?’

They decided on the fast-food joint to rendezvous at. Then he blew her a kiss and they hung up.

When Dia walked back out Sumbul eyed her disapprovingly.

She’d moved to the floor, where it was easier to change the whimpering baby. The dirty linen — a piece of an old kameez of Dia’s — lay bunched beside the boy and the room began to stink. Sumbul gave him more medicine. ‘One more drop. Shabash, how brave you are!’

She could help Sumbul tend him. But Dia did not want to. And Sumbul wouldn’t speak to her again that day. Her mother, her best friend, and now even her favorite employee; because of Daanish, she was losing all three.

In the car, Dia’s tension grew threefold. She hated deceiving Riffat, feared the rioters, and panicked at the thought of losing herself to a man she wasn’t even sure she knew.

The day before, yet another strike had been called. Streets were desolate and shops closed. Were they mad to be out alone? Both knew that if stopped, they could be in serious danger. Dia half-missed Salaamat. He looked like he could protect her. Daanish didn’t.

Daanish held her hand, steering with his other. ‘You’re very quiet.’

She squeezed his hand. ‘The city looks so sinister. Like a vacated bombsite.’

He nodded. ‘I was thinking the same.’

A bus passed them, flashing messages of love, belching gallons of carbon monoxide. The back featured kohl-rimmed eyes that teased, Dekh Magar Pyar Se. Look, But With Love. Swarming around the eyes were pink parrots with heart-shaped flowers in their beaks and limbs of passengers trying desperately to stay on board.

‘Everything’s so complicated.’ Dia rolled up her window against the fumes. ‘What was it like in America, having the freedom to see whomever, whenever?’ She balked at her own nerve.