Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

The party turns out to be a real insider’s affair. Just a hundred people, the who’s who of the Lahore party crowd, all hip and loaded and thrilled about Santorini in June. Even the music isn’t the standard club collage but rather some remixed desi stuff that I’ve never heard before (because, I’m soon told, the DJ mixed it specially for this party and sent it in from London).

I wander around, checking out the scene. Our host, Pickles’s cousin, is wearing a white linen shirt, thin enough to suggest an underlying mat of chest hair even though he has only the top button open. His sleeves are rolled up over thick, veiny forearms, and one of his fists clenches a bottle of rare Belgian beer. Long hair is moussed back along his scalp, giving his forehead a greasy gleam, and his nose sits like a broken gladiator above the huge grin he’s flashing at everyone and everything around him.

I’d smile, too, if I were him. His party is a smashing success. The dance floor is packed, and the dancing sweaty and conversation-free. Businessmen and bankers crowd the bar, fetching drinks for models with long, lean, nineties bodies. A lot of skin is on display, like something out of a fundo’s nightmare or, more likely, vision of paradise. Tattoos, ponytails, sideburns, navel rings abound: this is it, this is cool, this is the Very Best Party of the Off-Season.

And I’m single, with no job and no money, and no real hope of picking up anyone.

Nadira’s here, some hotshot in tow, and I try to avoid her even though I know the party’s too small for me to hide successfully. I wish I’d brought some hash.

I look around for Raider. I don’t know how he does it, because he isn’t rich or anything, but the better the party, the more likely he is to be there. I find him kissing Alia under a mango tree.

‘Daru,’ he says, clearly delighted. ‘Where have you been, partner?’

‘Do you have a joint?’ Alia asks.

‘I was just about to ask you guys the same thing,’ I say.

They exchange grins. ‘No joint, yaar,’ Raider says. ‘But I have you-know-what.’

‘Raider, if I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you were Lahore’s number-one ecstasy supplier.’

‘Who’s that?’ Alia asks, looking in the direction of the house.

I see Mumtaz and wave. She walks over.

‘Does anyone have a joint?’ she asks.

Raider and Alia laugh and introduce themselves. ‘I like you already,’ Alia says to Mumtaz.

‘I was just telling Daru that we have some ex,’ Raider says.

I wish he would learn to be more discreet.

‘Really?’ Mumtaz says, with unexpected enthusiasm.

‘Only one,’ Raider says.

Mumtaz looks at me. ‘Do you want to?’

‘Do you think it’s a good idea?’ I ask her.

She takes my answer as a yes. ‘How much does ex cost here?’

‘Nothing,’ says Raider, handing her a little white pill.

‘Two thousand,’ I tell Mumtaz, hoping the price will discourage her. What would Ozi say?

She takes out some cash, peels off two notes, and hands them to Raider. Then she places the pill in her palm and breaks it with her thumbnail.

‘Cheers,’ she says, downing her half.

I look at the broken pill in my hand: smooth curve, rough edge. Might as well. ‘Cheers,’ I say, placing it on my tongue and swallowing.

‘It won’t kick in for a while,’ she tells me. ‘I’ll see you guys in a bit.’

I nod and she heads back inside.

‘Wow, I think I’m in love, yaar,’ Raider says admiringly.

‘So am I,’ says Alia. ‘Who is she? I’ve never seen her before.’

It somehow sounds inappropriate to say, ‘Ozi’s wife,’ so I say, ‘Just a friend.’

They both laugh. Then Raider starts stroking Alia’s arm, and I can see that I should leave. ‘Check on us from time to time,’ Raider says. ‘We’ll be right here till dawn.’

I wander around, making small talk and avoiding Ozi, because I’m still upset at not being invited for dinner and also because I’m feeling guilty about having ex with his wife. But eventually he catches my eye and weaves his way over, half-dancing to the music, flashing his famously irresistible grin.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asks.

‘Nothing.’

He puts me in a headlock and messes up my hair with his free hand, laughing. I push him away.

He looks surprised and hurt, and I feel bad, because I pushed him with more force than I’d intended. ‘Sorry, yaar,’ I say, trying to sound playful but failing miserably.

‘You’re mad at me, aren’t you?’

I shrug.

‘You think I’m doing a little social climbing,’ he goes on. He’s slurring slightly.

I don’t answer.

‘Lahore’s boring, yaar. Deadly dull. They provide some entertainment.’

‘They seem like good friends,’ I say, acid in my voice.

He embraces me, and I know the ex must be kicking in, because I’m very aware of the contact between us, his shirt, slightly sweaty, the muscles of his back, our breathing.

‘That’s why I love you, yaar,’ Ozi’s saying. ‘You always look out for me. But I don’t want to be friends with those people. We’ll be friendlies at best. People who party together. But that’s good enough. That’s all I want from them. They’re the best party in town.’

I feel my attention drifting with the ex, flowing in and around his words, and my gaze slips around the room, looking for Mumtaz.

‘It’s not my crowd,’ I say, trying to hold up my end of the conversation.

‘That’s because you can’t afford it. But you’re lucky in a sense. Being broke keeps you honest.’

I stare at Ozi’s mouth. I’m not sure if I thought those words or if he said them. But I want to get away from him. I need to breathe.

‘Let me get us some more drinks,’ he says.

I nod, but I’m starting to ex with unexpected intensity, and once he’s gone I head outside to be alone as I adjust, as I shed my sobriety for a newer, livelier skin. The stars look big tonight, and I float over the lawn in the direction of the mango tree.

‘Partner,’ someone calls out.

I look. ‘Hi, guys,’ I say.

Raider and Alia are giggling. ‘She went that way,’ Alia says.

‘Who?’ I ask.

‘Mum-taaaz,’ she says, stretching the word lovingly.

I walk in the direction she tells me. I feel my pores opening, sweat and heat radiating out of my body. A firefly dances in the distance, leaving tracers, and if I turn my head from side to side, I see long yellow-green streaks that cut through my vision and burn in front of my retinas even after the light that sparked them has gone.

I emerge from the mango grove into a field. In the distance unseen trucks pass with a sound like the ocean licking the sand. A tracery of darkness curls into the starry sky, a solitary pipal tree making itself known by an absence of light, like a flame caught in a photographer’s negative, frozen, calling me.

A breeze tastes my sweat and I shiver, shutting my eyes and raising my arms with it, wanting to fly. I walk in circles, tracing the ripples that would radiate if the stars fell from the sky through the lake of this lawn, one by one, like a rainstorm moving slowly into the breeze, toward the tree, each splash, each circle, closer.

And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she’s there, chemical wonder in her eyes.

‘Hi,’ she whispers.

‘Hi,’ I say. It’s as if she’s not Ozi’s wife but someone new, someone I haven’t met before. ‘What’s your name?’ I ask.

She smiles. ‘My name?’

‘Your full name,’ I say, the words coming slowly. ‘Before you were married.’

‘Mumtaz Kashmiri. It still is. I didn’t change it.’

‘Kashmiri.’ I let the word flow over my tongue, my lips kissing the air in the middle of it.