Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

The stench released is unbearable.

Like burning skin.

I walk inside. But the smell stays with me. On my shoes maybe, on my clothes. It lingers even after I shower.

Even after I dump my clothes in a tub of soapy water.

It clings to me. Wafts over the wall. Makes me want to retch.

I wish Murad Badshah would give me some more hairy. But we’re partners now, and I need him, so I never ask him for any when he comes by. Wouldn’t want to worry the old boy. Instead, we discuss strategy: the boutiques he’s scoped out, the gun he’s going to buy for me (the cost will be deducted from my share of our eventual take), when we’re going to do target practice, et cetera. I want to get on with it, but he keeps telling me to be patient, saying that planning is nine-tenths of the work.

‘I’m running out of things to sell,’ I tell him. ‘Yesterday someone bought my television.’

He adjusts himself inside the folds of his shalwar. ‘I wish I could help, old chap, but the rickshaw business has been dead since the tests. My customers are worried about food prices. They prefer to walk.’

Luckily, I have another idea where I can get some hairy. I’ve seen fellow aficionados chilling out in the old city near Badshahi Mosque.

I wait until late at night. The last prayer of the day has been prayed, and there isn’t much traffic in the area except for revelers and diners on their way to Heera Mandi. I park my car and walk down the street, the walls and minarets of the mosque towering up to my left. Scattered beneath them, sitting or staggering about in their moon shadows, are the very people I was hoping to meet: junkies.

I know I’m in the right place by the smell, and by the faces floating in the great womb of the drug, content to stay there until they die. Which shouldn’t be long, by the looks of some of them.

I hunt for someone to buy from, but he finds me before I find him.

‘Heroin?’ he asks from behind me.

I turn. He has awful teeth, a rotting smile. But he’s clean, unlike the addicts. Without waiting for an answer he puts out his hand and says, ‘One hundred.’

I give it to him, and he passes me something that I slip into my pocket.

‘How do you know I’m not a policeman?’ I ask him.

‘It doesn’t matter if you are. Same price, same price.’

I grin, but he seems to find nothing funny in what he’s said and wanders off, prowling around the addicts like a shepherd tending to his flock.

At home I’m apprehensive until I try the stuff, wondering if he’s sold me rat poison, but it turns out to be fine. I spend much of the night smoking and wake up exhausted the next evening. The curtains are wide open. A murder of crows flaps around the gray sky, coming to land one by one on power lines across the street. Somewhere a dog offers up a token bark, but they ignore him and go about their business in silence.

I know I need a meal, even if my stomach isn’t bothering to say it’s hungry, so I fry myself a couple of eggs and toast some bread over the gas flame. Sometimes hairy kills my appetite.

The other thing hairy kills is time, and that’s good, because when Murad Badshah isn’t visiting, which is most of the day, I have nothing to do. My only fear is that some relative or unwanted visitor will drop by and see me and my house in the state we’re in, which is filthy. So I keep the gate locked and don’t answer unless I hear the right open sesame: beep beep bee-bee-beep.

I’m getting good at moth badminton. I now play sitting down, and I try to be unpredictable so the moths will never know when it’s safe. Sometimes they whir by my face or even land on me and I leave them alone. At other times they fly at full velocity several feet away and I slam them with an extended forehand.

Here are my rules. I play left hand versus right hand, squash-style. That is, I switch hands whenever I try to hit a moth and fail to connect. At first, I gave a hand a point just for hitting a moth. Then I made it more difficult by adding the ‘ping’ test. According to the ‘ping’ test, a hand scores only when the moth makes a ‘ping’ as it’s struck by the racquet. If I hit a moth but there’s no ‘ping,’ it’s a let and the hand must ‘ping’ a moth on its next attempt, or the racquet switches to the opposing hand. Three factors come into play here: moth size (small moths rarely ‘ping’), stroke speed (only delicate swings produce ‘pings’), and racquet position (most ‘pings’ come from the racquet’s sweet spot). My racquet is made of wood, and I’ve managed to misplace its racquet press, so it’s beginning to warp in the humid monsoon air. As a result, finding the sweet spot and successfully ‘pinging’ becomes increasingly difficult. Scores drop rapidly, until a good evening ends with a tally of left four versus right two, or something like that. I’m right-handed, but my left seems to win more often than not, which pleases me, because I tend to sympathize with underdogs.

I often find myself smiling when I’m playing moth badminton. What amuses me is the power I’ve discovered in myself, the power to kill moths when I feel like it, the power to walk up to someone and take their money and still put a bullet in them, anyway, just for the hell of it, if that’s what I want to do. And I’m amazed that it took me so long to come to this realization, that I spent all this time feeling helpless. Self-pity is pathetic. Hear that, little moth? Ping!

Murad Badshah drops by at night. I try to interest him in some moth badminton, without success. He’s decided on a boutique, a shop in Defense near LUMS.

The thing is getting serious. For two days we take turns staking out the boutique, recording what time police patrols pass and guards change. Sometimes I smoke hairy and doze off on my shifts, napping in my car right in front of the place we’re supposed to rob. As a result, my reports are impressionistic rather than empirically accurate.

Even though I’ve stopped scratching myself, I can tell Murad Badshah still wonders if I’m on hairy. The doubt makes him angry. When he gets angry I can see why people might be afraid of him. But I deny it, and he never hits me. Which is good for him, and for me, too, because I don’t want to break up our partnership. Besides, he has thick bones, the kind that can hurt your hand if you aren’t wearing a glove.

Always remember to lock, I tell myself. The gate, the front door. There isn’t much of value in the house that’s light enough to be carried away, just a powerless AC and fridge, really, so sometimes I get careless. And when Dadi comes in, waddling as she has since she broke her hip, and Fatty Chacha follows behind her, then I shut my eyes for an instant, at once desperate to disappear and furious with myself for letting this happen, before I get to my feet and greet them.

A half-filled aitch-in-progress crumples in the fist of my left hand. A smattering of tobacco peppered with hairy falls quietly from my right. It’s dark inside and sunny out, a rare bright afternoon, and I’m hoping their eyes haven’t adjusted enough to make out what I was up to.

‘I’ve been trying to call you since your birthday, but there was no answer.’ Fatty Chacha’s voice trails off. Dadi is staring at me.

‘I’m so happy you’ve come,’ I say, gesturing to the sofa. ‘Please.’

They don’t move. Finally, Dadi speaks. ‘What happened to you, child?’

I force a laugh. ‘This?’ I say, raising my cast-encased forearm. ‘It’s nothing. A car accident.’

Dadi’s eyes are watery but still keen. She touches my face. ‘You’ve been hurt badly.’ Her horrified expression makes me want to recoil. She strokes my scars, her shriveled finger remarkably soft.

‘But when did this happen?’ Fatty Chacha asks.