Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

A splendid subject, an education in thinking, without the encumbrance of knowledge. Tell me, Zafar, my boy, what takes you to Kabul?

I thought you’d never ask, I said.

Now that, young man, is the first untruth you’ve told me.

* * *

Looking back, I am better able to see the change in Zafar’s exposition, particularly as he started on those turbulent times with Emily. But despite my growing impression that there was something he was not talking about, something he was skirting around, I could not but be struck by how much about himself he was also sharing. At first, I saw it as an enormous change in the man I knew, but that notion did not survive reflection. What presumption is involved in attributing change to him when all that can be said is that I had come to know something about him that I had not known before? One ventures, therefore, that what one takes to be a change in another person is in fact only an improvement of one’s own understanding of that person, or that what we thought we knew is shown to be a false presumption of our own making. It might even be the object’s perception of a change in the subject, the observed’s perception of a change in the observer , that permits the observed to behave in a way that had hitherto been suppressed — did Zafar feel I could now listen when he had before felt I couldn’t? Might the only real change to have taken place be a change in myself? If such a possibility is disconcerting, one must ask: Why?

* * *

I need to go to bed, Zafar said.

He looked exhausted.

But there are so many questions. Who was this colonel? What did you say to him? Did you stay there that night?

Yes, that evening I stayed as a guest of the colonel. He was hosting a dinner party, to which he invited me. As if he thought he was addressing my concerns, the colonel said that his guests were house-trained and would refrain from asking me why I was there or where I was going, though they might ask where I was coming from. Very un-American, the colonel had remarked.

And the UN? I asked Zafar.

We’ll come to all that tomorrow. I must sleep.

At that, Zafar stood, picked up his glass, and downed the rest of his whisky.

I listened to his slow steps receding up the stairs. It was early December, and in the few months he’d been staying with me, I’d grown accustomed to the presence of another person in the house. When Meena had been here, she’d been away so much, at work late, at work on the weekends, that the house had felt unoccupied. One’s own presence was confirmation of emptiness. I liked having my friend around.

He occupied the space as if it were his own, and that pleased me so deeply I was afraid of it ending. He would come and go, sometimes disappearing for days, but he was a grown man and didn’t need to be asked where he’d been. I did not want him to feel I was poking my nose in his business; he would tell me if he wanted me to know. But once, after an absence of a few days, I did ask him, and his glance showed his surprise at my asking.

I was in Wales, he said.

We were sitting in my study. I had heard him entering the house, then his steps going up the stairs — taking his bag to his room, I thought — his steps coming down, and then the tinkle of glass in the kitchen. Zafar had ordered a crate of champagne the week he arrived. He came into the study, bottle of champagne and two flutes in hand, where I had been sitting in the armchair, leafing through the FT , finding nothing more to read. I took my feet off the ottoman.

After opening the bottle, pouring two drinks, and handing me one, he parked himself at the desk and pulled a coaster onto the green tooled leather surface.

Cheers! I said.

To life! he replied.

I never heard him say that in other company. I suppose he might have done so when I wasn’t around, but I like to think not. One takes such tokens of affection as one can find.

What’s in Wales? I asked.

Happy days. Good times.

You went there with Emily?

Yes, he said, looking away.

At the beginning?

Yes.

And did you get what you went for? I mean this time.

I wanted to see what effect returning would have, what I might feel.

I’m sorry, Zafar.

No. It’s quite all right. I stayed in the same cozy little inn, in the same room above the inn’s wood-paneled drawing room, and I lay on the same endless bed, surrounded by the fireplace, the tasseled rug, and a Queen Anne dresser, where she sat and fixed herself in the morning. I felt nothing. It was as if someone else had been there. Not me.

Zafar was quiet again. And again, the question came back to me: Did he love her? Was it difficult for him to face — to face what? He was sad; it was in his eyes and mouth, which now looked unfamiliar, as if he’d pulled on a mask or pulled one off. The muscles around the face were slack, which is when perhaps emotion in its retreat lets go the reins.

There’s a line, he said, in Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt: It is well to have a few memories of extravagance in store for hard times.

Was Wales an extravagance?

He was wrong, you know?

Who?

Greene.

How’s that? I asked.

It’s the memory of extravagance that makes other times hard.

Are these hard times?

Do you remember those bops in college?

The ones you never went to?

The ones where half the men stood around watching everyone else dance.

Which means you were watching the men watching, I said.

What can I say? I like to watch.

Creep.

They always played the same tunes.

“Tainted Love” by Soft Cell and lots of Morrissey, I said.

And that tune, “Sit Down,” wasn’t it? Rather ironic for a dance song.

By James.

Yes, of course, he said. What’s so funny?

I was chuckling.

How do you know about stuff like that?

Zafar didn’t respond, and I suppose that was fair enough.

There was a line in that song, he said presently, that comes back to me: If I hadn’t seen such riches I could live with being poor.

Yes, if only you didn’t know that the Joneses next door just got a top-of-the-line lawn mower.

Something like that.