Mohsin Hamid: Moth Smoke

‘I know. He’s a charmer. Women love him.’ I finish rolling the joint. ‘Do you want me to go and get him?’

She shakes her head. ‘No, let him enjoy himself.’

I light up. We share it. She takes one hit and starts coughing, but she takes another before handing it back. I don’t say anything, shutting my eyes and smoking slowly as we keep passing the joint. When it’s done, I flick it into a hedge.

Both of us are silent. I stare straight ahead.

‘What’s wrong?’ asks Mumtaz.

‘Nothing. I shouldn’t have come.’

‘I’m sorry if Ozi forced you.’

‘It’s not that. I had a bad day.’

‘What happened?’ she asks.

The joint has made my throat burn and my eyes water. ‘I got fired.’

Mumtaz brushes my face with her fingers. They come away wet. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

My stomach constricts. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ I shut my eyes and bend over, coughing through my nose.

Mumtaz puts her arm around me. ‘It’ll be okay,’ she says gently. ‘Don’t be scared.’

I stay bent over like that for a long time, until the coughing stops, and I wipe my face on my jeans before I sit back up. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘Please go in to Ozi.’

‘I’d rather stay outside with you for a little bit. If you don’t mind.’

My coughing seems to have loosened the tightness wrapped around my chest. I take a deep breath, my lungs raw like I’ve been for a long run. ‘This bastard told my boss I was rude.’ I start to laugh. ‘I wish I’d known I was going to get fired. There are a few more things I’d have liked to say.’

Mumtaz laughs with me. ‘I can imagine.’

I love her voice. It has the soul of a whisper, meant only for the person she’s speaking to, even when she isn’t speaking softly. ‘Are you stoned?’

‘You know, I’m really stoned.’

I nod. ‘This is good hash. Courtesy of a friend of mine, Murad Badshah.’

‘Murad? Did he go to school with you and Ozi?’

I smile. ‘No. I met him while I was at Punjab University, when Ozi was off studying in the States.’

‘Well, his hash has certainly given me a buzz.’ She moves her arm back and rests both of her hands in her lap. I find my mind tracing the line her skin touched as it curved around me.

‘I’m pretty stoned myself,’ I say.

‘You look less unhappy.’

‘I feel completely empty.’

‘You’ll find something to fill you.’

‘Such as?’

‘I’m sure you’ll find something.’

I light a cigarette.

‘May I have one?’ she asks.

‘I’m sorry. Of course.’

I light it for her.

A bird passes overhead, invisible, the sound of agitated air.

‘Did you ever study with Professor Julius Superb?’ she asks me.

I grin. ‘Do you know where his name comes from?’

She laughs. ‘No, but it’s fabulous.’

‘His great-grandfather was the batman of a Scottish officer who tried for years to get him to convert. When the Indian Mutiny broke out, the old Scot wound up with a knife in his chest. Julius’s great-grandfather came to him on his deathbed and said he’d decided to become a Christian. And the last thing the Scot could croak before he died was: Superb. Julius is the fourth generation of the line.’

Mumtaz is laughing so hard she has to hold her sides. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she gasps.

‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘Professor S. told us himself.’

‘No.’ She’s smiling at me and shaking her head.

‘Seriously.’ I smile back. ‘But how do you know him?’

‘I came across an article of his today. It’s called “The Phoenix and the Flame.” Have you read it?’

‘No.’

‘Let me read a piece of it to you.’

‘You have it with you?’

‘Just one page that I tore out. Do you think that’s odd?’

‘No.’

‘It is odd, isn’t it? Whenever I read something interesting, I tear out a piece and keep it as a talisman until I find something new to replace it with. It’s a sort of superstition. I did it once and it helped me break out of writer’s block, so I’ve done it ever since. Librarians must hate me.’

I look at her, surprised. ‘What do you write?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

I shake my head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m teasing. I used to write for some magazines in New York.’

‘That must have been fantastic.’

‘Not really. I wrote boring stuff.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I’ll read you this article.’ She opens a little bag and takes out a folded piece of paper. ‘Could you keep your lighter lit so I can read this? Thanks. Here’s what it says: “My father liked to wonder aloud whether the phoenix was re-created by the fire of its funeral pyre or transformed so that what emerged was a soulless shadow of its former being, identical in appearance but without the joy in life its predecessor had had. He wondered alternatively whether the fire might be purificatory, a redemptive, rejuvenating blaze that destroyed the withered shell of the old phoenix and allowed the creature’s essence to emerge stronger than it was before in a young, new body. Or, he would ask, was the fire a manifestation of entropy, slowly sapping the life-energy of the phoenix over the eons, a little death in a life that could know no beginning and no end but which could nonetheless be subject to an ever-decreasing magnitude? He asked me once if I thought the fires in our lives, the traumas, increased our fulfillment by setting up contrasts that illuminated more clearly our everyday joys; or perhaps I viewed them instead as tests that made us stronger by teaching us to endure; or did I believe, rather, that they simply amplified what we already were, in the end making the strong stronger, the weak weaker, and the dangerous deadly?” That’s it.’

The gas coming from my lighter hisses, suddenly audible, until I relax my thumb and extinguish the flame. Back in my pocket, the metal radiates heat into the skin below my hipbone.

‘That’s vintage Superb,’ I tell her, a little wistfully. ‘He teaches economics, but basically he’s a freelance thinker.’

‘I like the image his article brought to my mind, of this old Punjab University fuddy-duddy hard at work in his office.’

‘He’s a comrade.’

‘Comrade?’

‘Communist.’

‘Are there many?’

‘Not anymore. The unshaven boys are the new populists. But they leave Professor S. alone. I think they’ve decided he’s harmless. Or irrelevant.’

‘What about the other Communists?’

‘Most of them have become experts at couching their beliefs in religiously acceptable terms. The academic version of Sufi poets, you might call them.’

‘And the rest?’

‘Some professors were roughed up. They left.’

‘How sad.’

I shrug. ‘Good old Professor S. is still writing away. Which brings me back to you. You haven’t told me what you’re writing now.’

‘I have a question for you first.’

‘What?’

‘Tell me about boxing.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything. What’s it like? How did you get into it?’

‘Family tradition. I was an out-of-shape little kid. Very soft. One day my uncle took me aside and said, “The time has come,” or something like that. He trained me in the evenings: jump rope, speed bag, heavy bag. He was pretty lazy, so he usually sat on a chair and smoked while I pounded away, but every so often he put on his gloves and knocked me around so I’d learn not to be scared. I boxed until the end of college.’

‘You said you never won a championship.’

‘No. But I made it to a couple. And I won more fights than I lost.’

‘Did your mother approve?’