Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

He probably didn’t even know I was chasing him.

I circle the roundabout, five hundred rupees richer, and I think I’d be willing to pay all of it for the chance to hit him, just once, on his double chin. Making money this way isn’t worth it. These rich slobs love to treat badly anyone they think depends on them, and if selling them dope makes them think I depend on them, I just won’t do it.

But as I’m sitting at home I realize that I sold him a hundred and twenty-five rupees of drugs for five hundred. That makes me feel a little better. Not much, but definitely a little. I promise myself never to sell to any of these rich bastards unless I can rip them off. Let them think they’re getting a fair deal. And if they’re nasty enough, maybe I’ll slip a little heroin into their hash, just to mess with them.

Making money this way isn’t pleasant, but it’s easy, and easy money is exactly what I need, even if there isn’t enough of it to pay an electricity bill.

I spend most of my time smoking and thinking of Mumtaz. It’s been a week since we went to Jallo Park and I miss her. I tried to reach her on her mobile once, but Ozi picked up and I had to ring off without saying anything. I wish she would come to see me.

Every time I roll a joint I keep it for a while, hoping she’ll appear so I can share it with her. But she never does. And Manucci must be leaving the screen doors open, because there seem to be more moths in the house every evening, circling candles, whirring in the darkness. I kill them when I can catch them, until my fingers are slick with their silver powder. But most of the house is dark at night, and there’s little I can do about the invasion. Sometimes, when Manucci’s asleep and I have no one to talk to, I get stoned and take out my badminton racquet to smash a few. Occasionally the biggest ones make a pleasing little ping as I lob them into the ceiling, but more often they just explode silently into clouds of dust.

One night I’m doing this, sweating in the heat, my body lightly powdered with moth dust, when a car honks outside the gate.

It’s Mumtaz. She says nothing when she sees me, shirtless and clutching a badminton racket. I take her up on the roof.

‘Ozi’s out of town,’ she says. ‘And Muazzam’s crying like mad. I left him with Pilar. I had to get out for a while. I wanted to see you.’

‘Would you like a joint?’

‘Please.’

I have one rolled and waiting in my cigarette pack, so I light it and pass it over.

I watch her face in the glow of the burning hash and tobacco. She seems worried.

‘What are you thinking about?’ I ask.

She passes the joint back to me and watches me smoke it, but she doesn’t answer. Then she reaches out and wipes sweat down my shoulder with the blade of her hand. ‘What were you doing?’ she asks.

My fingers are trembling and I drop the joint so she won’t notice. The tip breaks off, smoldering separately from the barrel between my feet. ‘I was killing moths,’ I say. My shoulder burns where she touched me.

‘I want to kiss you,’ she tells me.

I can hear my breathing.

Her fingers curl through mine and I close my fist, holding them there. Our eyes meet and I look away, but she leans forward, leans until her forehead presses against mine and her hair falls around my face and her breath touches my lips.

She kisses me.

And we’re touching and tasting, roving each other, and I’m overcome and afraid of her and willing all at once. We shiver, the hair on our bodies rising as the night heat bakes dry the sweat and saliva on our skin. I’m pushed down on the roof, worn brick pressing into my back. She takes a condom out of her handbag, one hand stroking my throat. Then we make love, and as my eyes follow the curve of her body above me, I see the moon, round, perfect, the color of rust, burning like a flame to her candle.

She takes me and keeps me.

It’s like someone’s died. I hold her tight, muscles tense, pulling away from the bone. And I know she knows what I’m feeling, because the tears on her face mix with mine.

Afterwards, when she leaves me lying there, I smell the moth dust mixed in with her sweat and my sweat on my body.

I’m sure we’ve already met, Lahore being such a small place and all, but let’s reintroduce ourselves so there’s no mistake. I’m Mumtaz Kashmiri. You’re probably anxious to know about Daru and me, everyone else is, but you’ll have to be patient, because I’m going to tell my story my way and Daru doesn’t appear for a while.

Where to begin? Certainly before Muazzam was born. Definitely before I got married. Before I went to America? Hmm. No. We haven’t the time to go that far back just now.

Let’s start in New York City, my senior year in college. The scene is the East Village, a little before midnight, on the steps of a fourth-floor walk-up on Avenue A. The date is important: October 31. Halloween. I’m dressed as Mother Earth (rather ironic, as you’ll come to see). My roommate, Egyptian, English major, is improvising around the Cleopatra theme again. This year there’s a sun motif. Ra, you know. Last year it was more Leo.

So there I am, trudging up the steps, the wheat stalks on my head hitting the ceiling, when I see this cute desi guy in a white shirt and black trousers, looking ridiculously out of place but very comfortable at the same time. He catches my eye as I pass and says ‘Hi,’ but I ignore him, because the last thing I want to deal with tonight is some conservative boy from the homeland with nothing to say. I just hope we aren’t related and don’t know anyone in common.

The party is great. I down some excellent ex, low on zip but high on joy, if you know what I mean, and make out with one or two acquaintances. But at some point (you saw this coming) I find myself on the fire escape with the brown boy I’d seen before. We’re dancing, just the two of us, and his name is Ozi and he’s wickedly sexy, and what the hell, we spend the night together.

So that’s how it all began. Nine months later we were married. My fault, of course. Because I should have known better. I should have known I wasn’t the marrying sort, even then. But I didn’t. Besides, I was in love.

Let me say a few more words in my defense. Ozi was magnificent. He was gorgeous, a fantastic lover, open-minded, smart, charming, funny. And he was, is, the most romantic man I’ve ever met. He feels love deeply and he’s almost belligerent about showing it. Not that he isn’t horrible to most of the planet, he is. But if Ozi loves you, you know it. You can swim in it, get a tan. Or rest in its shade, if you’d rather.

Still, I shouldn’t have married him. He proposed during a snowstorm in March, looking cold as only a Pakistani man in America can. And I said yes. Because I was in love with him, and I had no idea what marriage really meant, and I didn’t know myself, yet. And because of all the other wrong reasons, because of what every mother, aunt, sister, cousin, friend, every woman from home I’d ever known had always told me: that an unspeakable future awaits girls who don’t wind up marrying, and marrying well (well being short for ‘wealthy Pakistani bachelor’). All of that advice, which New York had laughed out my window and into the Hudson, came rushing back to me, sopping wet, in that instant, and stupid or not, I said yes.

Before I knew it, I was showing him off at South Asian Student Association parties, enjoying the horrified jealousy on the faces of my prim and proper colleagues. Yes, Mumtaz, that slut, had bagged herself a prince, which meant there was one less out there for them. My friends adored him. My parents were thrilled. The summer after we graduated, he from law school and I from college, we were married in Karachi by the sea.