Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

The initial moment of panic when he looked at the questions was nothing new. For years he’d been familiar with this sickening sense of free fall as his eyes jumped from one question to the next, unable to finish reading one before darting forward, individual words and phrases from different questions clumping together in his mind to create an unintelligible mass. But then he’d steady himself, force his mind into quietness and read more slowly — and meaning would attach to the words, answers flying from his pen to the paper as quickly as he could write. There had been times, through these Inter exams, when the moment of panic had lasted longer than normal, and it took three or four attempts of reading through the questions before everything fell into place. But that afternoon, that final exam of his school-going days, nothing fell into place. The jumble of words only grew more jumbled, bright spots of light appeared before his eyes as he tried to read, and nonsensical answers to questions he didn’t even understand kept coming to mind in Japanese. He knew he had to calm down, that panic only bred panic, but then he remembered that this was a compulsory paper, failing it would mean failing everything, and how would he ever look his father in the eyes again? As soon as he thought of Sajjad Ashraf — pictured his trusting, expectant face — everything emptied from his mind. And then, the examiner was collecting the papers. Just like that. And his was blank. He picked up his pen, wrote firmly on the page, ‘There are no intermediaries in Islam. Allah knows what is in my heart,’ and handed in the paper.

When he emerged from the examination hall, there was a group of his friends clapping him on the shoulder. ‘All done, hero! We really can’t call you Junior any more, college boy.’ One of them — Ali — slung an arm around Raza’s shoulder and called out to a group of girls walking past, ‘Who wants to go for a scooter drive with my friend, the college boy? Top marks this one will get.’ He dropped the keys to his Vespa into Raza’s hand, and pushed him towards the group of girls, two of whom were smiling directly at Raza, no coyness, no pretence, in the way that college girls smiled at college boys. Right then Raza knew he wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. For a few more weeks he could still be Raza the Brilliant, Raza the Aspiring, Raza the Son Who Would Fulfil His Father’s Dreams.

When his mother sat down in the passenger seat he handed her the newspaper and pulled away from the pavement, his voice strangely calm as he said, ‘I didn’t pass. I left the final paper blank.’

A small noise of shock and disappointment escaped her mouth before she stopped herself and said, ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know.’ He wished she would shout at him so he could be petulant or resentful in return. ‘I couldn’t understand the words on the exam paper. And then time was up.’

She had been a teacher long enough to know things like this sometimes happened to the best of students.

‘This was your Islamic-studies paper?’ When he nodded, she allowed herself a long, luxurious expression of disgust, though it wasn’t directed at him. Devotion as public event, as national requirement. It made her think of Japan and the Emperor, during the war. ‘And why do you need that to study the law? Ridiculous!’ She stroked the back of his head. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier, Raza-chan?’

The childhood endearment brought tears to his eyes.

‘I don’t want to be the new neighbourhood Donkey.’ Abbas, who used to live down the road from him, had acquired that nickname when he was eight and had to repeat a class year after failing his exams. For three years he barely scraped through, coming at the bottom of the class, and then he failed again. After that, no one called him anything but Donkey. Failure was the ultimate embarrassment in the neighbourhood, a disgrace to the whole family, and the children picked up on this early, distancing themselves quickly from it through insults and jeers.

‘Raza! No one will think of you that way. It was only one paper. You’ll retake it in a few months. Everything will be fine.’

‘But how will I tell Aba?’

‘I’ll tell him,’ she said firmly. ‘And if he says one word in anger to you I will make him regret it.’ At his smile of relief, she said, ‘In return you have to do one thing for me. Tell me what you really want from your life. I know it isn’t the law.’

Raza shrugged and gestured to the electronic shops. ‘I want to have everything that’s in there,’ he said grandly.

‘I’m not asking what you want to possess. I’m asking what you want to do.’

They were stopped at a traffic light, behind a rickshaw that had a pair of sultry eyes painted on it, beneath which was emblazoned, in Urdu, LOOK — BUT WITH LOVE . Raza’s mind found itself instantly translating the words into Japanese, German, English, Pashto — a reflexive response to any piece of writing he glimpsed as he drove through the city’s streets.

‘I want words in every language,’ he said. His hands briefly left the driving wheel in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘I think I would be happy living in a cold, bare room if I could just spend my days burrowing into new languages.’

Hiroko rested her hand on Raza’s, not knowing what to say to that unexpected moment of raw honesty. To her, acquiring language was a talent, to her son it was passion. But it was a passion that could have no fulfilment, not here. Somewhere in the world perhaps there were institutions where you could dive from vocabulary to vocabulary and make that your life. But not here. ‘Polyglot’ was not any kind of practical career choice. She was overwhelmed by a feeling of sorrow for her boy, for that look in his eyes which told her he knew and had always known that he would have to take that most exceptional part of himself and put it to one side. She knew what Sajjad would say if she tried to discuss it with him: ‘If the greatest loss of his life is the loss of a dream he’s always known to be a dream, then he’s among the fortunate ones.’ He’d be right, of course, but that didn’t stop this pulling at her heart. There was something she had learnt to recognise after Nagasaki, after Partition: those who could step out from loss, and those who would remain mired in it. Raza was the miring sort, despite the inheritance he should have had from both his parents, two of the world’s great forward-movers.

When they arrived home she went inside first, leaving Raza outside, leaning against the car, until she talked things over with Sajjad.

First, he was disbelieving, convinced she was playing a ridiculous joke on him. Then he raised his voice, bellowed that the boy didn’t study enough. But when she told him which exam he’d failed, and what had happened, Sajjad just shook his head in disbelief and sat down, his anger unable to sustain itself, as always.

‘He’ll take the exam again in the autumn,’ Hiroko said, sitting next to him and clasping his hand. ‘The results will be in before college starts, and they’ll hold a place for him pending that one result. It’s happened with our students before.’

For a few moments Sajjad was silent, but finally he nodded and brought her hand to his lips.

‘All right, I won’t be angry with him. It might not hurt him to miss a rung on a ladder. Next time, he’ll leap right over it.’

He went outside to find his son, to tell him — Hiroko instructed him to use these words — ‘These things happen’. On his way out he cursed under his breath the government which kept trying to force religion into everything public. His mother, with her most intimate relationship with Allah, would have personally knocked on the door of Army House and told the President he should have more shame than to ask all citizens to conduct their love affairs with the Almighty out in the open.