Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

‘He’s asleep,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you take him to bed?’

Ozi carries the boy out and I light our cigarettes.

‘I’m not allowed to smoke when he’s in the room,’ she explains, picking a newspaper off the table. ‘Do you read this?’

‘Sometimes. There’s a story today about a missing girl in Defense. The police suspect her family killed her when they discovered she had a lover. Her lover claims the police did something with her after the two of them were caught on a date by a mobile unit and taken into the station. And her family insists she never had a lover. Strange stuff.’

‘I read it. By someone called Zulfikar Manto.’

‘That’s right. I hadn’t heard of him before. Good article.’

She nods once, her eyes on the front page.

‘Let’s talk about this quitting-smoking thing,’ I say to Ozi when he returns, unwilling to let him off the hook so easily.

‘It’ll kill you,’ he says.

I flick some ash into the ashtray. ‘That’s no reason to quit. You have to weigh the benefit against the loss.’

‘And what exactly is the benefit?’

I spread my hands and take a drag to demonstrate. ‘Pleasure, yaar.’

‘Didn’t you tell me smoking ruined your stamina as a boxer?’

Mumtaz raises an eyebrow, the curved half of a slender question mark, black, in recline.

‘Ruined is a strong word,’ I say.

‘You never won.’

‘I won all the time. I just never won a championship.’

‘It takes years off your life.’

‘It helps fight boredom. It gives you more to do and less time to do it in.’

‘I must not be that bored. A wife and son do keep life interesting.’

I look at Mumtaz, cigarette in hand, but refrain from pointing out that the pleasures of having a husband and son haven’t eliminated her desire for the occasional puff.

‘What sort of person,’ Mumtaz asks, exhaling, ‘tries to convince someone not to quit smoking?’

‘Only a good friend,’ I respond. ‘Who else would care?’

‘It’s too late,’ Ozi says. ‘I haven’t had a cigarette in three years.’

‘You’ve been away,’ I point out. ‘Surrounded by health-crazy Americans. I’ll have you smoking again in a month.’

‘Don’t corrupt him,’ Mumtaz says to me, pulling her legs up onto the sofa and resting her head on Ozi’s shoulder.

‘I’ve never corrupted anyone,’ I say.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she says.

She’s finished her cigarette but hasn’t put it out properly, so it’s still smoking in the ashtray. I crush mine into it, grinding until both stop burning. ‘I never lie,’ I lie.

She smiles.

By the time I leave for home, I’m happily trashed. Not a bad reunion, all in all. Ozi and Mumtaz see me out, we shake hands and kiss cheeks, respectively, and I’m off, driving under the hot candle of a shadow-casting moon that’s bigger and brighter and yellower than it should be. There are no clouds and no wind, and there are no stars because of the dust. The road sucks on the tires of my car. Great night for a joint, but I don’t think I’m sober enough to roll one, and I should have been paying more attention because I’ve run into a police check post and it’s too late to turn. There’s nothing for it. I have to stop. I light a cigarette to cover my breath and open a window.

A flashlight shines into my eyes and I can make out a mustache but little else. ‘Bring your car to the side of the road,’ the mustache says.

I do it.

‘Registration,’ says the mustache. ‘License.’

I give them to him, anticipating the list of possible bribe-yielding items he’ll ask me about. I hope he doesn’t smell the booze.

‘Get out,’ says the mustache.

They search my car: the dickey, the glove compartment, under the seats. Nothing. Now if I’m lucky the mustache will let me go. But I’m not lucky and he continues hunting.

‘Where are you coming from?’ asks the mustache.

‘My parents’ house.’ Always a safe answer.

‘Where do they live?’

‘In the cantonment.’ The police are terrified of the army.

He smiles, and I think, Damn, he’s smelled the booze. He has.

‘Have you been drinking?’ he asks.

‘What sort of question is that? I’m a good Muslim.’ Stupid answer. He knows I’m drunk. I should beg for mercy and throw him a bribe.

Other mustaches gather around. ‘Let’s take this good Muslim back to the station,’ one says.

‘Do you know the penalty for drinking?’ asks the first mustache.

‘Eternal hellfire?’

‘No, before that. Do you know how many years you will be shut in prison?’

This has gone far enough, I think. One of these guys might be a fundo with a bad temper, so I’d better buy my way out of this fast. ‘Isn’t there some way we can sort this out?’ I ask.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Perhaps I could pay a fine instead,’ I suggest.

‘Shut him in prison,’ one of the mustaches mutters.

The first mustache leads me a short distance away from the others. ‘This is a very serious crime,’ he says, ‘but I see that you’re sorry for what you’ve done. Give me two thousand, and I’ll convince them to let you go.’

‘I don’t have two thousand,’ I say, relieved that we’ve started haggling.

‘How much do you have?’

I take out my wallet and shuffle through the notes. ‘Seven hundred and eighty-three.’

‘Give it to me.’

‘I’m very low on petrol. Let me keep the eighty-three.’

‘Fine.’

I drive off in a state of drunken emptiness that I know will give way to anger, because I can’t afford to throw away seven hundred rupees like that. But for now I’m still buzzing, so I take swoopy turns with a grin that’s so separate from my eyes it feels like my face belongs to two people. If there’s a camera filming my life it moves up, higher and higher, until I’m just a pair of headlights winding my way home.

I’m huddled under the sheets in my cold bedroom when I hear, above the air conditioner’s hum, a sound I don’t want to hear. It’s Manucci, knocking on my door.

‘Saab, your breakfast is ready,’ he says.

Manucci only does this when I’m late. I look at my alarm clock: ten minutes to nine. I should be leaving right now. ‘Breakfast!’ I roar. I shower and shave at the same time, cutting myself, throw on a suit, and try to gulp down the water Manucci has brought me, but it’s so cold I have to drink it slowly. I have a headache and an upset stomach, signs that last night’s Black Label might have been fake, and my shirt is missing a button.

I grab my briefcase, shovel some fried egg into my mouth with pieces of toast, and head out the door. A dog is lying in the middle of the driveway, just outside the gate, and he doesn’t stir when I yell at him or even when I send a stone thudding into his back. I look around for a stick but can’t find one, so I walk forward empty-handed to see if he’s dead. He is. He can’t have been dead for long because gorged ticks still cover his ears like bunches of grapes. There are a lot of dead dogs these days: the heat’s killing them. I push him with my foot toward the refuse pile by the gate and notice he’s already stiff, tendons like tight ropes wrapped around his bones.

Small houses hunched over shoulder-high boundary walls disgorge a few tardy inhabitants onto the narrow street. My place is plain, unlike some of the pink-painted, column-sporting mini-monstrosities nearby. A gray cement block, more or less, with rectangular windows, a couple of balconies too narrow to use, and the best bloody tree in the neighborhood: a banyan that’s been around forever and covers most of the dust patch I call my front lawn.

I drive fast, belching up the taste of egg from time to time, and I’m thinking about an appointment I have at ten which I’d rather not have at all. Still, I’m not happy when my car’s engine dies on me and a quick glance tells me that I’m out of fuel. I try to make it to the next petrol pump on sheer momentum, but there’s too much traffic and I have to hit the brakes. I take off my jacket, roll up my sleeves, open the door, and push with one hand on the steering wheel until the car is by the side of the road. People honk at me unnecessarily as they drive past, and my white shirt is turning translucent in spots.