Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

I shut my eyes and lean against the pipal tree, my world tactile, a dandelion of feeling. Cotton flows over my body, dancing with my breathing, and through it the slender tree trunk at my back, its grooves, its notches, its waves on my skin, tendrils of nerves smiling. It trembles. Kashmiri is leaning against the tree and I feel a hint of her weight pushing through the trunk. My shoulders sense the nearness of hers, but nothing more, no touch, the tree between my neck and hers, my spine and hers.

I want to touch her, to kiss her, to feel her skin. My hands explore my own arms, the arms they come from, my skin pure pleasure, exciting me.

And terrifying me. With a shock of knowledge, of waking while dreaming, I know what I’m thinking is wrong, that the woman behind me isn’t Kashmiri but Mumtaz, Ozi’s wife, and I can’t betray him, betray her, betray them by touching her.

I push against the tree and run away, stumbling, the unreal night playing with me, gravity pulling from below, behind, above, making me fall. And I run through a world that is rotating, conscious of the earth’s spin, of our planet twirling as it careens through nothingness, of the stars spiraling above, of the uncertainty of everything, even ground, even sky.

Mumtaz never calls out, although a thousand and one voices scream in my mind, sing, whisper, taunt me with madness.

Then I’m in my car, driving home. I lose my way, but this is Lahore, and by dawn I’m in my bed, the growing heat welcome as pure, reliable sensation.

My back begins to ache as I sleep, waking me, and by midday spasms of pain rip down my vertebrae, arching my body like a poisoned rat’s, forcing me to grit my teeth and hug my ribs against this, my ecstasy’s aftermath.

I’m lying in bed with the taste of Panadol in my mouth, trying desperately not to move, when Ozi comes in and, before I’ve recovered from the surprise of his unexpected appearance, tells me the neighbors have gone nuclear.

‘Shit,’ I say.

‘Why are you still in bed?’

‘I sprained my back.’

‘Bad?’

I nod.

‘Sorry,’ he says, sitting down. The foam mattress stretches with his weight, tugging at my back like a torturer tightening the rack.

‘How do you know?’

‘Everyone knows. It’s mayhem outside. I had to drive through a demonstration just to get here.’

‘So what happened?’

‘They tested three. A hundred kilometers from the border.’

‘How symbolic.’

Ozi shakes his head. But he’s grinning. And in spite of the spasms ripping quietly through my back, I notice I am, too.

‘Why are we smiling?’ I ask him.

‘I don’t know. It’s terrifying.’

‘You know the first place they’d nuke is Lahore.’

‘Islamabad.’

‘No, Lahore. If they nuked Islamabad, no one would be able to stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Us. From nuking them.’

‘We’ll nuke them if they nuke Lahore.’

‘No, we’ll nuke them before they nuke Lahore.’

‘What do you mean?’

I try to stop grinning, but I can’t. ‘We’ll nuke them first. They’re bigger. They don’t need to nuke us. Some skirmish will get out of hand, they’ll come marching our way, and then we’ll nuke them. One bomb. For defensive purposes.’

‘And then they’ll nuke Lahore?’

‘Where else?’

‘What about Karachi?’

‘Too important. If they nuke Karachi, we’ll nuke a few of their cities.’

‘Peshawar?’

‘Be serious.’

‘Maybe Faisalabad.’

‘That’s true. They might nuke Faisalabad.’

He looks at me and starts to laugh. ‘Poor Faisalabad.’

I try to fight it, but I’m laughing, too, holding my ribs against the pain, strangling each chuckle into a cough that bounces down my back like a flat stone cutting the surface of a lake.

I laugh until tears run down my face. ‘They’re screwed.’

‘Faisalabad.’ Ozi can hardly breathe, he’s gasping so hard.

‘One more reason not to live there,’ I say when I can speak again.

Ozi sighs, shutting his eyes, his face exhausted, spent. ‘That hurt,’ he says.

‘Imagine how I feel.’

He leans forward. ‘Do you want a cigarette?’

I tilt my head. ‘What do you mean?’

He pulls a pack out of his shirt pocket. ‘Reds?’

‘Reds.’

He lights one for me, taking a long drag without coughing. ‘Here you go.’

I take it from him. ‘I thought you’d quit.’

‘I have. That was my first puff in years.’

Suddenly I’m aware of a connection I haven’t felt in a long time, a bond of boyhood trust and affection. I look at Ozi and see my old friend’s image, a younger face projected onto this fatter, balder screen. A hundred of my teenage adventures must have begun with Ozi inhaling a cigarette and blowing the smoke out the side of his mouth, the same side that smiles when he flashes his usual half-grin. That grin used to make me wonder what it would take to pull a full smile out of him. And his crazy ideas were like answers to that question. I remember the time we jumped the wall of Ayesha’s house and her father set his Dobermans on us, whether because he thought we were robbers or because he was overprotective of his daughter, we never discovered. We had to climb a mango tree to get out: the top of the wall was too high to reach by jumping. And Ozi let me climb first.

I take a hit, jointlike, from the cigarette he’s given me, filling my lungs and holding it in. ‘Thanks, yaar.’

He looks away.

I shut my eyes and savor the smoke.

When I open them again, he’s watching me.

‘I’ve been having some problems with Mumtaz,’ he says unexpectedly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think she’s unhappy.’

I feel guilt pinch me on the ass and grab a quick feel. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, yaar.’

‘What makes you think she’s unhappy?’

‘Little things. She never wants to talk. She’s always tired. She’s snappish with Muazzam.’

‘Lahore isn’t New York. Maybe she doesn’t like the city.’

‘That isn’t it. She was like this in New York. Besides, she wanted to come back.’

‘Then what do you think it is?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe you should ask her.’

‘I have. I do. I ask her all the time.’

‘What does she say?’

‘She says she’s unhappy.’

‘Then she probably is.’

He smiles. ‘I know.’

‘How long has she been like this?’

‘Months. Maybe a year.’

‘It could have nothing to do with you. People go through difficult times.’

‘But I don’t like to see her this way. I miss her.’

I nod, finishing off the cigarette and stubbing it out on the table. One more burn mark in a constellation of burn marks.

Ozi is pinching the point of his chin as though he’s discovered he missed a spot shaving this morning.

‘You know,’ I say, trying to cheer him up, ‘they really might nuke Lahore.’

He stops playing with his chin. ‘We’re going to test, too.’

‘When?’

‘Who knows. I hope we do it soon.’

‘Why? We know we have the bomb.’

‘We want them to know.’

‘They know.’ I say it casually. As casually as I can. Because unsaid between Ozi and me, unsayable, is a possibility, a doubt: What if our bomb doesn’t work?

Ozi’s sweating. His face shines and he wipes it with the tips of four curved fingers held together. ‘It’s damn hot. How long has the power been gone?’

‘Just a couple of hours,’ I lie.

‘Load-shedding or a breakdown?’

I shrug.

‘You need a generator,’ he tells me.

Ah, Ozi. You just can’t resist, can you? You know I can’t afford a generator. ‘Do I?’