Uzma Khan - Trespassing

At the farm, Sumbul hammered her with questions. Dia found she didn’t even enjoy the silkworms any more. She neglected her graphs. She couldn’t read. Inam Gul was in the way. So was her family. Alone at night, she felt his palm on her stomach sliding slowly down. He marveled at her softness and said the scent of her dampness on his fingers would linger. It was what helped him survive the hours they weren’t together. She asked him to describe it. He brought his hand up first to his nose, and then hers. ‘I want to say like mushrooms simmering, only that doesn’t sound as good as it is. But I love mushrooms, you know.’

She slept in a cloud of heat and green apples. And in her dreams, admitted: I don’t know him.

The thought plagued her once in daylight, while they lay together in the sand. He was nuzzling her armpit, she watching his slick penis sway, discreetly testing the air, searching. She gently pulled away.

Rubbing the back of his neck, she said, ‘Daanish, you never speak of your life in the US.’

He looked up and frowned. Then: ‘I appreciate that you don’t ask me to.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s just too much to think of. Specially,’ he sniffed her hair, ‘when I’m so peaceful with you.’

‘Can we walk?’ She sat up and dressed.

He sighed, but pulled his shorts on.

Neither had the courage to amble naked down to the surf. Though they never said it, the cove’s insulation made them even more nervous when they left its only mooring — the boulders. They both looked anxiously around as though still naked.

The gray clouds drooped even lower than in past weeks. There was lightning to the west and the thunder clapped nearer than ever. They hopped over bluebottles, examining the creatures washed ashore. There was a foot-long deep-sea fish without eyes, and even, to Dia’s dismay, a porpoise. She paused, moved by the beauty of its sleek snout, the rings of its closed eyes, and the smile, kind and forgiving, even in death. ‘Water kills,’ she murmured.

‘No. It brims with life.’ He kissed her forehead.

She told him then about failing her exam.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Nothing else.

She watched him pluck cowries and walk into the waves to rinse them. He’d gone to another place. He could do that — simply squeeze into a knot and shelve the wad away. It was why, after nearly a month, she had to admit — Oh Sumbul, why are you haunting me! — she didn’t know him. And in another month, he’d go completely to that other place.

‘Daanish, I want you to share more of your other life with me.’

His face closed.

‘You know everything about the only one I have.’

‘I know only what you choose to tell, and the rest is all right.’

He walked one step ahead of her. His spine was a dark, sinewy ladder. She lifted a finger to touch each bow of muscle, but changed her mind. He raced on, two paces ahead now. Finally, she said, ‘This isn’t turning into a very good day.’

When he turned back his eyes were stern, chiding almost.

‘You look so angry!’ she cried.

‘Fine. What do you want to know? How can I satisfy some warped, magical notion you have of this other life of mine? How about the fact that it’s where you learn to be despised, absolutely? Sound like fun?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Daanish. What have I said?’

‘Well then think before you speak.’ He was shouting. ‘Dammit, don’t be all pathetic like my mother.’

Turning away, she walked quickly back up to the boulders. Tears streaked her cheeks and she started to run. She was still running while collecting her sandals and purse, as if stopping would be the end of her. When he caught up she started running toward the rocks on the far side, over which lay the road. He pulled her arm and she screamed, ‘Drive me back. Now.’

‘Stop a minute.’

‘Now.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he tightened his grip. ‘Sorry.’

‘I want to go back home.’

‘Just let me explain something. Please.’

They were standing at the mouth of the cave. The tide dashed up her legs. She’d worn her kameez backwards but wasn’t going to take it off in front of him again.

He released her. ‘Dia. Let’s go back to the other end. Please. Five minutes. Then if you still want me to, I’ll drive you back.’

She didn’t like standing here, with the sea crashing into the cave and the walls bellowing like a furious monster awakening. Thud! Ewow! The mild terror she always felt when the ocean wrapped around her was all the more acute now, with the fiendish cave on one side, and a fiendish lover on the other. She knew which one to walk away from.

He squatted in the sand between the boulders and patted the space beside him. She sat on her haunches. ‘Dia, how can I put this? Being with you helps ground me. Yes, it’s as simple as that. May I?’ He sneaked closer, winding an arm around her shoulders. She sat still.

He said that ever since leaving his country, three years ago, a tiny rent had formed in the center of him. ‘Right here,’ he put her finger in his navel. ‘Like a zip unfastening. I wasn’t even aware of it till I came back. And now I realize the zipper has fallen so low, I’m sort of, well, divided. I think that’s what happened to my father. These days, I look in the mirror and see him.’

It was the first time he’d mentioned him, outside the context of the doctor’s quarrels with his wife. Dia could never bring herself to speak of her own father. She leaned into his shoulder.

‘You’re lucky you’ve never left home,’ he continued. ‘And I guess I don’t want you to. When I speak of America, I take you there. But I want you to stay here. Put crudely,’ he kissed her forehead again, ‘you zip me up.’

She considered this, but didn’t like it. Was this another way of saying she was only good to him if kept ignorant?

‘You speak of the cheating at your exam,’ he pressed on. ‘There’s cheating there too, you know. Everyone thinks there is different. It isn’t. The deceit is more covert. The shell is more beautiful. But the interior is just the same.’

When she still said nothing, he added, ‘Do you think we can forget my outburst?’

He spoke more, as on their first time alone. This made her love him again: he’d learned his voice soothed her, just as he’d learned how to touch her. He described a town with gray-stone buildings in fields of rolling green. His campus had no gates; the windows bore no grills. She let her head slide into the crook of his arm, imagining turrets and buttresses, concocting sharper smells in a climate with four seasons and little dust. He wasn’t making his other life sound like this one at all.

She thought of the rooms in her college: airless and dingy, with wooden benches women had to fight over to make room for themselves. The stench always made her head reel, but all that was nothing compared to the books and the instructors, who tested students on how well they regurgitated passages, word for word. No discussions. No questions. When the teacher got tired she asked one of her ‘pets’ to read, and more than once, Dia had seen a teacher lay her head down and sleep.

No, she didn’t believe Daanish. He, who had the opportunity to see more of the world than most, was cruel to deny her even the option of hoping it held more than a room in an attic, with women squeezed into each other, a teacher snoring on her desk, and no questions asked.

His heart pounded under her cheek. She asked, ‘Could we do this there, Daanish?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Could we hold each other, just because we wanted to, and not have to hide it? Because if so, how can you say it’s just the same?’

He traced her jaw with his thumb and tightened his hold.