Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

‘Of course. How can you survive without one?’

‘Most people do manage to, you know.’

‘I wonder if we still have the small one from the old house. If we do, you might as well take it.’

‘I’m fine.’ I don’t need your secondhand generator, thanks very much. And I don’t have the money to buy fuel for it in any case.

‘I’m surprised I didn’t notice the heat until now.’

‘Nothing like nuclear escalation to make people forget their problems.’

He winks. ‘And on that note, I’d better push off. Some of us have to work, you know.’

He says it as though he’d like to be unemployed.

I feel myself getting angry, and the connection between us snaps in silence. ‘Not if they nuke Lahore,’ I say under my breath.

He leans over and puts the pack of reds on my bedside table. I don’t want it now. But, as with all his gifts, I take it anyway.

My back is better by the time Ozi kills the boy.

It’s a Sunday, the neighborhood nuclear test count is up to five, and I’m on my way to Jamal’s office. Strange that my sixteen-year-old cousin should have an office, but he’s been working for a week now, on weekends and in the evenings, after school.

The address he’s given me turns out to be a house in Shadman with two nameplates: a white one above with Alam in faded black lettering and a sleek silver rectangle below which reads chipkali internet services. I enter through a side door marked Headquarters and shut it silently behind me, feeling the chill of air-conditioning at full blast.

Jamal and his partner, a short boy with bad posture and a white boil on his neck, just under the straight line of his clipped hair, sit with their backs to me, staring at a computer screen the size of a television. Various pieces of hightech equipment are scattered about the room, connected by wires and plugged into an enormous surge protector. I sneak up on them and tap Jamal on his shoulder.

He turns, startled, then smiles and gets up. His partner looks embarrassed.

‘What are you two doing?’ I ask. ‘Looking at naughty pictures?’

They blush together and begin to explain.

‘No, Daru bhai –’

‘We were just –’

I move them apart with my hands and glance between their shoulders at the monitor. But instead of naked women I see a jerkily expanding mushroom cloud, a burst of digital pastels. ‘What’s this?’ I ask.

‘We downloaded it from one of the sites covering the nuclear tests,’ Jamal tells me.

We watch the clip run through in somber silence. People have begun to say we might be attacked before we can get our own bombs ready.

‘But I thought their tests were underground,’ I say.

‘This isn’t one of theirs. It’s an American test. An H-bomb.’

‘We’re going to use it for a client’s site,’ his friend adds, his voice a nasal whine.

I pull my eyes away from the screen. ‘A client? You have clients?’

‘Three,’ he says proudly.

‘And what do you do for them?’

‘We design and host Web sites,’ Jamal explains. ‘Completely customized, maintained on our server.’

I smile. ‘And how much do they pay you?’

‘It depends on the work. They can pay us once, up front, a lifetime fee that covers design, maintenance, everything. Or they can pay us monthly.’

‘And how much do you expect to make on average, from one client?’

Jamal tells me. And I’m shocked.

‘But why would they have you guys do the work? Why wouldn’t they go to professionals?’

Jamal’s friend turns his face away haughtily. ‘We are professionals.’

I’ve decided I don’t like him.

‘We’re cheap,’ Jamal says. ‘And we’re really good, Daru bhai. Besides, we’re learning fast. And our first three clients aren’t paying that much. We’re giving them a discount, as an introductory offer, you know, as we get started.’

‘How much of a discount?’

‘Ninety percent.’

‘That still isn’t bad. And have they paid you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘I’m expecting a dinner from you when they do.’ It’s a joke, but immediately after I’ve said it, I feel ashamed, because I could actually use a free meal.

‘Of course, Daru bhai.’

They offer me a chair and take me on a tour of their handiwork, showing me sites they admire and want to copy, as well as the Chipkali Internet Services home page, which they designed themselves. I’m happy to see Jamal so excited, but the more he tells me, the more worried I become. The equipment all belongs to his friend. The office is in his friend’s house. The clients have come to them because of his friend’s family. The entire venture is being bankrolled by his friend’s father, who works in Bahrain and happily buys his son any computer-related gadgetry he wants. And unlike wide-eyed Jamal, with his delicate fingers and soft, protruding lower lip, his friend looks very business-savvy. I feel uneasy. I hate to see Jamal depending on this guy and being hurt. But there’s nothing I can do. And maybe there’s nothing to worry about, maybe I’m just unsettled by the fact that my little cousin, who’s still in school and twelve years younger than I, is working and I’m not.

I don’t stay long.

Stepping out into the hot day, I shiver at the sudden change in temperature. The sun beats down on the roads, searing the last blades of green from otherwise completely brown dividers of parched grass. I stop at Liberty Market for a long glass of fresh pomegranate juice.

The shopkeeper looks edgy, and the boy who brings me my drink doesn’t smile. Probably tense about this nuclear thing.

Or maybe it’s just the heat.

I sip slowly through a waxed-paper straw while I watch two dogs in the shade not far from my car. An emaciated bitch lies on her side, so thin it seems the skin covering her ribs will soon dissolve in the heat, exposing the white bones of her skeleton. She looks dead except for the slow rise and fall of her flank as she breathes, too tired to be bothered by the flies or the big, healthy pup who nuzzles at her dry tits, his tail moving rapidly from side to side as he sucks the last drops of life out of her.

Paying up, I drive off.

I’m on Jail Road, stopped at Samugarh Chowk, when I notice a Pajero in my rearview, the polished red of its exterior striking on a road where everything else is dulled by a layer of dust. A squint and I recognize Ozi, so I roll down my window to give him a wave. On my left a boy pushes off unsteadily to cross the road on a bicycle that’s too big for him.

Ozi hasn’t noticed me. He’s bearing down on the red light at full speed. Out of the corner of his eye, the boy sees the Pajero and he bends forward, pumping hard. I feel sorry for the kid, constantly afraid of being hit by maniacs like Ozi, and the arm I stick out my window starts flapping up and down instead of waving, telling my friend to stop even though I know he hasn’t seen me and doesn’t mind putting a little fear into people whose vehicles are smaller than his.

Ozi’s Pajero roars by me, piercing the intersection. The boy is staring straight ahead, his eyes desperately focused on the opposite curb, now not far away, when his foot slips from the pedal and he wobbles, his pace broken, and I think, Shit, Ozi’s cutting it too close. Then the quick flash of brake lights, a sudden scream of rubber sliding like skin on cement, too little too late, the front of the Pajero dipping like a bull ready to gore, a collision unheard because of the squeal of locked tires. A brief silence. The sound of an engine gathering itself as the Pajero charges away.

The boy’s body rolls to a stop by a traffic signal that winks green, unnoticed by the receding Pajero.

I drive to where the boy lies on the asphalt. His head has been partly crushed, flattened on one side, but the rest of him seems almost untouched except that one of his shoes is missing and a little brown foot sticks out of his shalwar. I think he’s dead, but as I stand over him his arm twitches and someone says, ‘He’s alive.’