Mohsin Hamid - How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

“Would you like a drink?” the pretty girl asks.

“I’m not supposed to,” you say.

“A half glass of wine?”

You nod.

She retrieves an opened bottle from the refrigerator. “Sit, sit,” she says, and pours for you both.

The two of you sip at your glasses. A silence descends.

“Should we just go to my room?” she asks.

“Yes.”

She leads you by the hand and shuts the door behind you. She does not turn on the light.

“One second,” she says, heading to her bathroom.

You worry about your balance in the darkness.

“Where’s the bed?”

“Oh, sorry.” She directs you with a palm at your waist. “Here.”

You sit down. The mattress is firm. You grope with your hand and, finding a wall, carefully lean your cane against it. A faint light emerges from beneath the door of the bathroom, and sounds emanate from within, scraping, running water, the flush of a commode. You need to use a toilet yourself, but you suppress the impulse. The pretty girl is gone for a while.

When she returns she sits beside you. You kiss. She tastes of mouthwash. She has changed into a nightie and through its fabric your hand can feel her ribs, her belly, the unbelievable softness of her breast like a second set of skin. She helps you undress. She tugs at you rhythmically, and fortunately you become hard, perhaps benefitting from the pressure of your full bladder on your prostate. She applies between her legs an ointment from a jar on her bedside table, and lies on her side with her back to your chest. You fumble a bit but are able to enter her. You move. She touches herself. You hug her with one arm.

Neither of you reaches your finish. You begin to deflate before that moment comes. But, I should add, you do reach pleasure, and a measure of comfort, and lying there afterwards, temporarily thwarted and a little embarrassed, you unexpectedly start to chuckle, and she joins you, and it is the best and warmest laugh either of you has had in some time.

THIS BOOK, I MUST NOW CONCEDE, MAY NOT HAVE been the very best of guides to getting filthy rich in rising Asia. An apology is no doubt due. But at this late juncture, apologies alone can achieve little. Far more useful, I propose, to address ourselves to our inevitable exit strategies, yours and mine, preparation, in this lifelong case, being most of the battle.

We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create.

As you create this story and I create this story, I would like to ask you how things were. I would like to ask you about the person who held your hand when dust entered your eye or ran with you from the rain. I would like to tarry here awhile with you, or if tarrying is impossible, to transcend my here, with your permission, in your creation, so tantalizing to me, and so unknown. That I can’t do this doesn’t stop me from imagining it. And how strange that when I imagine, I feel. The capacity for empathy is a funny thing.

As an illustration, let us consider a fish unable to burp. We can see it now, suspended in its glass bowl, floating weightlessly in a cloud-puffed sky. Its water is so transparent as to be invisible, and were it not for its bowl, it would look as if it were flying in the air, perhaps propelled about by the fluttering of its little fins. It has escaped from the seas, from the lakes, from the ponds, and it dangles now, free, bathed in sunlight and in warmth. And yet it is deeply troubled. It has a pang, a bubble trapped in its fish esophagus. Though heavenly, angelic, still it suffers. It strains. And do our hearts go out to it? Yes, they do. Burp, dear friend. Why do you not burp?

Meanwhile, directly below this aerial ichthyological drama, a mountain’s height lower to be more precise, and therefore back on earth, an old man lives in a small townhouse with an old woman. You and the pretty girl have moved in together. She has lost a tenant, and your mind has begun slightly to drift, not always, but on occasion you are unsure where you are, and for this reason residing in a hotel has become problematic. You do not share a bedroom, the pretty girl never having done so before and being of the view that it is a bit late to start, but you do share much of your days, by turns cheerfully, grumpily, quietly, or comfortingly, and when the mood strikes you both, your nights, and you pool your dwindling savings, which are fast being eroded by inflation.

The two of you venture out less often, and the only other people you see with regularity are the pretty girl’s one remaining tenant, the actress, and the pretty girl’s factotum, who assists you when you are disoriented, and who reminds you of your father, even though physically they are dissimilar. Maybe this is because he is an obedient man, and a house servant, and close to the age at which your father died.

Sitting on a reupholstered chair, a newspaper in your lap and loud music in your ear, to which the pretty girl nods her head as she smokes, and enjoying a temperate autumn afternoon, you are surprised to hear the bell ring and find yourself in the presence of your son. You had forgotten he was coming. You stand to greet him and are swept up in a ferocious yet protective hug. He kisses the pretty girl’s cheek, and she too perceives time ripple as she sees a reflection of your younger self, albeit a better-dressed version with a mincing walk quite unlike your own. She offers him a cigarette, and to her satisfaction he accepts. You can sense she is taking a liking to the boy, which makes you happy. He has grown, though that must be unusual for a man of thirty, and even seated he towers above you.

It is the first visit in many years for your son, finally a citizen of his new country and free to travel, and you try to suppress your undercurrent of resentment at his decision to absent himself from your presence in so devastatingly severe a manner. You feel a love you know you will never be able to adequately explain or express to him, a love that flows one way, down the generations, not in reverse, and is understood and reciprocated only when time has made of a younger generation an older one. He tells you he has just been to meet your ex-wife. She is well, he says, and their reunion was tearful and affectionate, and he agreed not to speak of certain things and she for her part did not ask.

For a month you and the pretty girl are caught up in a whirlwind of engagements, mostly at home, your son cooking for you or bringing over a film, but twice outside also, at restaurants of his choosing, swanky places with newfangled decor, where he pays with his credit card. Then he is gone and your world shrinks to the townhouse once again. He has left you some cash, which is fortunate. A blast at a nearby bungalow, purportedly utilized to hold and interrogate suspects by an intelligence service in the past, shatters your windows, and you use the money to have them replaced.

The city beyond is an increasingly mythological space. It intrudes in the form of power and gas outages, traffic noises, and airborne particulates that cause you to wake wheezing in your bed. It can be glimpsed around curtains and through iron grilles. Television and radio also bring in some news of it, usually frightening, but then that has always been the case.