Mohsin Hamid - Moth Smoke

I want to lie, but I’m afraid they won’t believe me. ‘A month ago,’ I admit.

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘I didn’t want you to worry.’

‘Foolish boy,’ Dadi says, sitting down.

Fatty Chacha remains standing. ‘What’s happened to the house? It’s a mess.’

‘Manucci left.’

‘Impossible.’

‘He walked out on me.’

‘But why?’

‘He wanted more pay.’ I can see that Fatty Chacha is doubtful, and I’m about to say more when Dadi calls me over to sit beside her and pats me on the cheek.

‘Do you know,’ she says, trying to reassure herself, ‘your father never told me when he broke his nose at the military academy. Just like you.’

‘He was far away,’ Fatty Chacha points out, sitting down. ‘There was nothing we could have done to help.’

‘But I’m fine,’ I protest.

‘You don’t look fine, champ,’ Fatty Chacha says. ‘Is there some kind of infection? You seem ill.’

‘No infection. It was a bad accident.’

‘You must have lost twenty pounds.’

I force a grin. ‘I’m back in my weight class.’

Dadi takes a proprietary hold on my upper lip and pulls it back. ‘You’ve lost a tooth.’

‘So have you,’ I say cheekily.

She chuckles, but I can see she’s still shaken. She asks how the accident happened, and I invent a story, claiming I don’t remember many details because of the shock. Dadi strokes my good hand as I speak and Fatty Chacha keeps shaking his head, whether in sympathy or out of disbelief it’s hard to say.

To change the subject, I ask about Jamal’s business.

‘He’s doing well,’ Fatty Chacha says. ‘They have two new clients, with no discount this time.’

Dadi offers to move in with me and stay until I’m better, but I manage to convince her not to. She tells me I must promise to visit her every day or she will worry. When they ask if I have tea I admit that I’m out of milk.

As they leave, visibly reluctant to go, Fatty Chacha insists on giving me five hundred rupees. Taking hold of my upper arm, he says quietly, ‘Come to see me tomorrow. I’m serious, Daru. I’m very worried about you.’

And with that, I’m alone again. I lock the gate and the front door. Then I retrieve the battered aitch from my pocket and see what I can salvage.

The day I go to the hospital and have my cast cut off and emerge from the last of my cocoon, the day I can again see the muscles in my forearm when I flex my hand into a fist, is also the day Murad Badshah finally takes me out of the city for some target practice. He’s bought me my gun: a 9-millimeter automatic, black, used, Chinese. Just a tool, really, like a stapler. A stapler that can punch through a person. Pin them. Drive blunt metal through flesh and bone.

I’ve always had steady hands, so I’m surprised to discover that I’m a bad shot. Horrific, really. At twenty paces, I can hit a tin can about one time in five. As for moving targets, I have no hope. Walking from left to right, I don’t hit it even once in fifteen minutes of shooting. Murad Badshah tells me not to worry. There will only be one guard, and with my gun pressed against his head there should be no reason to actually shoot, and no way to miss if I do. At the end of half an hour of practice we start running low on ammunition, and we can’t afford any more. So that’s it: our prep work is over and we now have no reason to procrastinate. Time to move on to the real thing.

At home I keep playing with the gun, unloading and reloading the magazine, chambering rounds, popping them out. It’s strange that pistols are such inaccurate devices. If I designed something with the power to kill people, I’d want it to give the user a little more control. But I’m not complaining. There’s something appealing about it, something wonderfully casual in the knowledge that when you squeeze the trigger you might kill someone or miss them completely. I like that. After all, moth badminton would be less fun if my racquet wasn’t so warped.

My father gets off his motorcycle and runs his hands through his short hair, cropped close in accordance with military academy regulations. He gives his olive suit a once-over, making sure that nothing is amiss, and heads inside. For three coins the white-gloved attendant at the ticket box gives him a seat, not in the most expensive section, but not in the least expensive one, either.

He chooses a well-upholstered couch behind a group of young ladies, students at Kinnaird College who pretend not to notice him, and lights a cigarette. Refined conversation fills the enormous cinema with a gentle murmur. Once all have risen for the national anthem and then sat down again, once the lights have dimmed and the projector has whirled to life, only then does my father reach forward and squeeze the hand my mother extends back to him.

At intermission they eat cucumber sandwiches and sip tea, standing next to each other like strangers. Although he does bow slightly to her as he passes a plate, and her friends cannot help smiling with their eyes.

The Regal Cinema did at one time deserve its name.

Now I sit on a broken seat at the very back, a seat, not a couch, with a crack that pinches my bottom when I move, munching on a greasy bag of chips, trying to ignore the shouting of the men next to me as Chow Yun-Fat kicks his way to another victory for the common man, for good over evil, for hope over tyranny. I love kung fu flicks from Hong Kong. They’re the only movies I go to see in the cinema anymore. Everything else is better on a VCR, without the smells and sounds of the audience. But not kung fu.

A fight breaks out somewhere in the middle rows, with much yelling and hooting. People surge up and at each other as Chow flashes a six-foot grin over the scene. One of the men to my left throws a packet of chips into the scuffle. There are no women to be seen here, except on screen, and when those appear, the men in the audience go wild, whistling joyously. Maybe the real ones are in private boxes. Maybe they know better than to come to see Chow Yun-Fat on opening night. Or to go to the cinema at all. No woman I know goes unless the entire cinema has been reserved in advance. Reserved for the right sort of people, that is.

I sit for a while after the movie is over, watching the unruly audience make its way out, sad at what’s happened to this place since my parents were my age. Look at us now: we can’t even watch a film together in peace. I cover my face with my hands and it feels hot, my entire head feels hot. I’m on edge. I think I need some hairy.

The cinema is almost empty when I realize someone is watching me. I stare at him, and he hesitates for a moment before walking over, motorcycle helmet in hand. Thick black beard. Intelligent eyes. Looks about my age. Salaams.

I return the greeting.

‘Have we met before?’ he asks me. Calm voice.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Were you at GC?’

‘I was, as a matter of fact.’

‘I remember. You were a boxer.’

I nod, surprised.

‘So was I,’ he says.

I extend my hand. ‘Darashikoh Shezad.’

He shakes it firmly. ‘Mujahid Alam. I was a year junior to you. Middleweight.’

‘Now I remember. The beard is new.’

He looks around the deserted theater. ‘I came over because you looked upset.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say, a little taken aback.

‘Did you find today’s spectacle disturbing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘All the shouting, the fighting, the disorderliness. Our brothers have no discipline. They’ve lost their self-respect.’

‘One can hardly blame them.’

He lowers his voice and continues in a tone both conspiratorial and friendly. ‘Exactly. Our political system’s at fault. Men like us have no control over our own destinies. We’re at the mercy of the powerful.’