Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

‘It’s a man’s habit, but I love it,’ she says, taking another puff. Her voice is throaty, like Mumtaz’s, but much deeper.

Then she points one henna-decorated finger at me. ‘Have I seen you before?’

‘No,’ I say.

The woman chuckles. ‘Of course not. Your father, perhaps, but not you.’

A disturbingly young girl with long eyelashes brings in tea. She wears bells on her ankles that chime as she walks, and I find myself hoping this is the only service she’s made to provide, although I doubt it very much.

‘You’re not bad-looking,’ the woman says to Mumtaz, who smiles and lowers her gaze politely. ‘A nice face. And good hips. But your breasts aren’t generous. You should eat more.’

Mumtaz starts to laugh. ‘They’re bigger than they were. I’ve fed a boy.’

‘With those?’ The woman considers. ‘Perhaps it’s because you have broad shoulders that they seem small.’ She smiles. ‘Are you looking for work?’

Mumtaz flashes a sly grin. ‘Your tea is delicious, Dilaram.’

‘Thank you. Like all things in my profession, it is a learned art.’

‘How did you come to begin learning?’ Mumtaz asks, slowly taking out a minicassette recorder.

Dilaram laughs solidly, her body rippling. ‘It’s quite a funny story really. I was a pretty girl, like this one here.’ She smiles at our adolescent tea server. ‘Only younger. The landlord of our area asked me to come to his house. I refused, so he threatened to kill my family. When I went, he raped me.’

Mumtaz shuts her eyes.

Dilaram chuckles. ‘I was so skinny. Not like a woman at all.’

‘He paid you?’ Mumtaz’s voice is so soft I can barely hear her.

‘No.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘He kept making me come. He let his sons rape me. And sometimes his friends. One of them was from the city. He gave me a silver bracelet.’

‘Why?’

‘He said it was a gift. Then I became pregnant.’ She laughs. ‘Imagine, my mother was also pregnant at the time.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘The landlord told me the man from the city wanted to take me to Lahore to marry me. I didn’t believe him. But the villagers told me it was the only way to recover my honor, so I went.’

‘Did he marry you?’

‘No. He took me to a hakim who ended my pregnancy. Then he told me he had bought me from the landlord for fifty rupees. He said I would have to give him fifty rupees if I wanted to go back to my village.’

‘But you didn’t have the money.’

Dilaram chuckles. ‘He brought me to Heera Mandi and made me have sex with men until he had his fifty rupees.’

I look at Mumtaz, but she doesn’t notice me. The women are completely focused on each other.

‘Then did he let you go?’

‘No. He told me the villagers would not accept me back because I had lost my honor. I believed him. The others knew stories of girls who had returned to their families and were killed by their fathers or their brothers. So I stayed on. I worked for many years, until I was no longer young and had few clients. By then the man had grown old. He needed my help to run this place. Once it was clear to the girls and the clients that I was in charge, he died. Some people said I poisoned him.’ She laughs silently, shuddering.

I light a cigarette as the interview continues, and not seeing an ashtray, I tip the ash into the palm of my hand. Dilaram seems a little too well-spoken for an uneducated village girl, sounding more like a wayward Kinnaird alumna to me, actually, and I begin to wonder whether she’s making up her story as she goes along.

Occasionally I turn to look through the curtain of beads behind us. The giant pimp observes us closely, his arms crossed in front of him. I don’t see any of Dilaram’s prostitutes or their clients, but through the walls I hear sounds which convince me that business is continuing despite our presence.

When the interview is over, Dilaram watches us go, laughing to herself. Our eyes meet for a moment, and I’m startled by the anger in her glance.

Neither Mumtaz nor I say anything until we’re on the canal. She’s driving fast, shifting up through the gears, and I want to ask whether she believes Dilaram’s story, but something in her expression makes me think better of it.

I light a cigarette, the last from her pack, and pass it to her.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she says.

She passes the cigarette and we share it, each taking a few drags before passing it back. Soon we’re back in New Muslim Town, near my house. I want to touch her, to make some connection before she drops me off and I’m alone again. But she does it for me.

She pulls up to my gate and stops. Then she turns and kisses me on the cheek, her hand curling around the back of my head, touching my neck and my hair. We stay like that for a moment, and I don’t move, my arms at my sides, afraid of doing anything to make her leave. But she leans away from me and smiles, and I have to get out. We don’t say goodbye.

I watch the taillights of her car flash red, and then she’s gone around a turn. I know I’m standing still, but I feel like I’ve stumbled and I’m starting to fall.

The day after I become privy to the secret of Zulfikar Manto, I find myself in a suit and tie, my shoes shining more brightly than new coins in a beggar’s bowl.

Butt saab is a master of the French inhale. He sits behind his desk, smoke slipping out of his mouth and up his nostrils, and watches me with the half-lidded, red-eyed superiority of a junior civil servant, which I’m told he once was. A flick of his tongue sends a tight gray ring drifting over my curriculum vitae. Mercifully, it disperses before reaching me.

‘Normally, I wouldn’t have agreed to see you,’ he says. ‘We have a hiring freeze in place at the moment. But your uncle is a friend, so I’m making an exception.’

Eight banks, eight c.v.’s, seven flat-out rejections. This is my first actual interview. ‘Thank you, Butt saab.’

‘Where else are you looking?’

I tell him.

‘And what have they told you?’

‘They say I don’t have a foreign degree or an MBA.’

‘And?’

‘They haven’t given me an interview.’

Butt saab drops his cigarette into his almost-empty teacup. It hisses and he lights another. ‘Listen. I don’t have a foreign degree. And I don’t have an MBA. And we’ve hired three people this year, despite our hiring freeze, and they don’t have foreign degrees or MBAs either. Well, two do have MBAs, actually. And, come to think of it, one has a foreign degree as well. But you have a master’s and a fair amount of experience. You’d be as good as any of them, if I had to guess.’

Sounds promising enough, but there’s no encouragement in Butt saab’s expression. ‘I know banking,’ I say. ‘And I’m hungry for a chance. I’ll work hard.’

‘That’s the problem. Work hard at what? There just isn’t that much work these days.’ Another French inhale. ‘We have more people than we need right now. And the boys we’re hiring have connections worth more than their salaries. We’re just giving them the respectability of a job here in exchange for their families’ business.’

I nod. There doesn’t seem to be much for me to say.

‘I’m meeting with you, to tell you the honest truth, as a favor to your uncle,’ Butt saab continues. ‘Unless you know some really big fish, and I mean someone whose name matters to a country head, no one is going to hire you. Not with the banking sector in the shape it’s in.’

I try to smile. ‘I take it your country head doesn’t know my uncle.’

Butt saab laughs. ‘Mr Shezad, I know your uncle. He’s a good friend of mine. But if I were country head right now, I still wouldn’t be able to hire you. Things are tight these days and favors are expensive.’