This Saturday himself, Mohammed, is seated in back of conveyance. Reena follows him, bending to enter, her dupatta pulled across her face. She is shy; she is unaccustomed to cars. They are passing down National Highway and now past Sind Club and offices of Saudi Airlines. His brother Yusaf, he is working as labourer in Saudi; his cousin is working Dubai-side. His family is from Peshawar. The Middle East it is topful of Pathans, these are strongest men. Sometimes they are living twelve in one room but they are sending home plenty of cash. When Yusuf is returning the last time, during Eid, he is carrying as gift transistor radio. Mohammed is wanting, too, job in Middle East. Even though he is cook-bearer to English family with knowledge of English language, it is not he who is big man in family now, but his brother Yusuf. He himself cannot buy Sony Transistor with cassette built-in.
The doctor’s office is backside of Gymkhana Club; outside there is brass sign. Memsahib is parking the car. Mohammed has only been to doctor at Jinnah Hospital, where he is standing in queue for one morning, and then one morning more. He walks up the stairs, his wife following but at a distance; she is brimful of fear. He tells her to hurry quick and not keep memsahib waiting. She is country girl, from Tatta; she is not towns-person like himself. Her skin is dark, in common with the Sindhi peoples, but she is good wife and plump, no bones sticking out like memsahib Manley. Besides country girls are best, everybody is in agreement over this, they have no bold city habits; they have no family to chatter with all day long, even upon the subject of their husbands. His wife, she has just one disadvantage, but this will soon be remedied by Dr Farooq.
Within this waiting-room there are no queues; in fact there are no other persons present. There are fine carpets on the floor. For moneyed persons, everything takes no time. Already Dr Farooq is conversing with memsahib. He himself stands, to show that he is at his ease; he even is lighting a cigarette. He cannot in truth understand the conversation, but now memsahib is smiling and talking to his wife. He hears the word ‘easy’.
If so easy, he wonders more persons in his position do not have it performed to their wives. He is still unsure of exact method but does not like to speak and show ignorance. He presumes that Dr Farooq has new wonder-drug from the United States of America, or will perhaps be performing some small surgery. Mohammed strolls from one side of room to the other. After he is working in Saudi, he also will afford this Dr Farooq.
Dr Farooq turns to himself, Mohammed, and says in Urdu: ‘Please wait a few moments while I take your wife into the surgery.’
He nods his head, man of the world, and puts ash into brass ashtray large as dinner plate. The door closes.
Memsahib smiles at him, seats herself and is opening magazine. He too sits down on settee. This is costing memsahib, no doubt, two hundred or even three hundred rupees. He is proud that his wife is coming here rather than offering prayers at shrine of the Pir. He is also pleased that memsahib, who has not been seeming to understand the Pakistani customs, has so truthfully seen into his own heart. He lights one more cigarette and picks up a magazine, looking at the pictures.
He hears voices through the door. His wife is suddenly speaking loud and fast, this is most unlike her. He cannot hear the words. Dr Farooq is speaking louder too, and then he is laughing.
There is more loud talking and then the door opens. His wife is hastening out and is whispering something in his ear. He tells her to be quiet; memsahib is speaking with Dr Farooq. Without doubt his wife is disgracing him in this place.
Dr Farooq is laughing. His wife pulls his sleeve. This time he is hearing one of her words. Now he listens. He does not move.
For a moment every person is silent. Memsahib has red face; it is now covered with her hands. She is laughing with a high noise. Dr Farooq is smiling also. His wife has covered her face with her dupatta.
Dr Farooq is talking with him now in Urdu, as if Mohammed is small child. ‘I think there’s been a little misunderstanding,’ he says, still smiling, ‘between yourself and Mrs Manley. You were sending your wife here because you already have four girl children, I’m right? And your wife is three months pregnant. Your wife seemed to imagine I could give her some pill or something to remedy this next time, so that she could give birth to a boy. This is correct?’
Mohammed cannot speak. He moves his head.
‘Mrs Manley seemed to understand something rather different. She thought that you wanted to ensure some method of birth control.’
Mohammed is keeping his eyes on carpet. He is no longer man of the world. He is fool. He feels humiliation of the deepest kind. What man is he, that he cannot understand? That he is causing this Dr Farooq such high amusement? This night Dr Farooq will be saying to his rich friends: ‘Today a very simple man came to see me. Let me tell you what happened.’
They are now in the street. Memsahib herself is looking all at sixes and sevens now. Mohammed enters back seat of the car; his wife follows him. He wants to strike her; he wants to strike himself. Mostly he wants to strike Dr Farooq.
Now they are driving down highway. At crossroads they are stopping for policeman. Memsahib is turning around. Her face is still red colour.
‘I’m sorry,’ she is saying, and something else he does not understand.
He is trying to make conversation. He finds some words. ‘Pakistani womens,’ he says slowly, ‘more better . . . boy childs.’
‘I know.’ She is hitting her head: she points to it. ‘Idiot.’
He is trying to find the words to explain. Memsahib is waiting for explanation. He must oblige. How there are prayers and the brown liquid to drink, that make ill some women. His own wife has been lying on charpoy three days, the last time she is drinking it. And still she is bearing baby girl after that. He is trying now to explain other method to ensure the baby boy.
‘Bus,’ he says. ‘Vroom. Rickshaw. Make journey to shrine – holy Pir.’
‘Pir’s shrine? Where?’
He counts on his fingers. ‘Some miles from Karachi.’ He is making his fingers wiggle. ‘Water. Garum pani. Hot water.’ Coming out of the earth, he is wanting to say. ‘Also womens . . . no childs . . . want baby. Making journey.’
The policeman is now waving them onwards. But she does not make a move.
‘No children?’ she says. ‘No baby?’
‘Tikka.’ He spreads his hands and shakes his head. ‘No baby.’
‘Yes. I see.’
The taxicab behind them is making loud hooting. The policeman he is blowing on his whistle.
‘They go to Pir,’ he says. He is trying to find the words. ‘To hot water man.’
‘A hot water man?’
‘For praying, to make child.’
11
It was sunset before Duke got away. It had been a Saturday of crossed lines and frustration. He had sat in his office above Khyber Carpet Emporium, he had bellowed down the phone. The room was small and hot, he had paced from side to side, knocking his shin against the desk. He could not get through to the Planning Department, he could not get through to Minnie though he had booked the call yesterday. ‘Make a friend at the central switchboard,’ someone had advised him. ‘You won’t find any problem then.’ He wanted to hear Minnie’s thin, far voice. He wanted her to hear his. The operation was taking place at midnight tonight, Karachi time.
The beach lay ten miles south of the city, through the slums that nobody passed unless they were going to the seaside. K12 Housing Society, the offices, hotels and prime locations all lay to the north. He drove down the road. To one side lay the salt marsh; drained land. To the other stood the slum blocks with washing hanging from their windows. They were new but already dingy, rising out of the dust. In this city nothing ever seemed finished. Nearly, but not quite. Nobody applied the last coat of paint; nobody cleared the debris. The apartment blocks stood gaunt amongst stagnant creeks and subsiding huts. Chickens wandered into their doorless entrances. Country buses, grey with dust, were jammed at all angles in any available parking space. Nothing was
planned in this frenetic, but torpid city. Projects were started with hectic speed then what happened? They kind of dissolved, defeated. He should have gotten used to it by now. He would sit in some guy’s office, progress being made or so he would believe. Then, halfway through, the man’s eyes would have that far-away look and he starts on about the nature of temporal phenomena. It all subsides, like those new buildings nobody has quite finished. There’s the smallest hitch – a perfectly understandable setback – and suddenly everyone gives up. It’s the will of Allah. But his Translux was planned, and when it was built it would be landscaped, down to the last damn flowerbed.
Evening prayers were starting. In the little plaster mosques the muezzins were calling; green neon lights shone in the minarets. Men squatted in rows watching the passing trucks; humble, public evenings. Despite his frustration, this place got to him. The highway branched. One route led through the industrial sector out towards the site where his Translux would be built. In that direction stood the pink pasteboard hills of Baluchistan. They glowed in the evening light, they seemed near enough to touch. It was a trick of the sunset. His hotel seemed so near but so far. Could he trust anything in this baffling country?
He branched to the left, towards the sea. The cluttered city was behind him now. He speeded across the cracked, grey desert. Ahead glinted the water but each pool was a mirage. When he approached it disappeared and another further ahead took its place. See, you never arrived. But beyond that lay the true silver strip of the Indian Ocean. The beach huts stood like teeth stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. There were hundreds of them, most of them owned but seldom used. They stretched from one side all the way to where the Baluchi hills met the sea, where the power station stood. Way beyond that, the sensitive Afghan border was closed to civilians.
What he, Duke Hanson, could do with a place like this. The city of four million was growing day by day and this beach was its natural resort. Down near the shore the Tourism Development Corporation had made some kind of effort. The guys had tried. They had built a little roundabout; on account of the power station they had named the highway Reactor Road. On either side, shrubs drooped from smartly-painted oil drums. He had arrived now. The placard saying Welcome to Hotel Splendide had collapsed in the sand; it had lain there ever since he had arrived months before. The hotel was a larger version of the concrete beach huts that lay to either side. It resembled a derelict public convenience; he had never seen a sign of life there.
Cars passed him travelling in the opposite direction, back to the city after a Saturday at the beach: cars crammed with men and crates of Pepsi; sometimes a family car, the men sitting in front and the women in the back. But few people came here; not enough. The only entertainment this place offered was riding on skinny horses and camels, the Pakistani girls squealing as the animals jogged. The beach huts were shuttered. They were recently built, like most everything else, but already they were cracked and pitted. Their broken steps led into the sand.
Outside Shamime and Aziz’s hut, however, several cars were parked. He climbed out. The hills had faded to the softest mauve. Beside him a palm tree shed, with a thud, a slab of rind. He heard the laughter of young folk. Beyond the roof of the hut, smoke drifted up into the luminous evening sky. The hills were changing colour as he looked at them. Jesus the evenings were so beautiful here.
Aziz was still wearing his swimming trunks. He and his friends had obviously made a day of it; they had all the time in the world. Aziz roared with laughter as he did in the Sind Club. Shamime must be in the hut. Duke would like to tell somebody about the barbecues he made back home in Wichita, his boys’ faces laughing in the light of the flames, but they would not find that too interesting.
Christine Manley approached. ‘Isn’t it lovely here. I’ve never been to the beach before. I don’t feel watched here.’
He put down his boxful of contributions. He wished he could have built up the fire. That was something he could do.
‘We’re going to try and find a beach hut,’ said Christine. ‘Duke, do you know this man?’ She rummaged in her shoulder bag and held out a card. ‘Sultan Rahim.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s kind of hard to find a hut. They all belong to families who never use them. Perhaps this guy will fix you up.’
‘His cousin’s a taxi driver. He says this Rahim man will fix anything.’
‘That’s the way they work.’
‘Of course, it’s not right. I mean, it’s a barricade of huts. Ordinary people have to creep through the gaps to get down to the sea.’ She looked along the beach at the other buildings, murky in the dusk. Outside this hut the fire blazed.
‘I’d do it different,’ said Duke, ‘if I had my way. I could develop this place. I’d open it up.’
‘It reminds me of a beach in Kent where I used to go for my summer holidays. The bunkers looked just like these. But that was to keep the Germans out.’
Aziz put his hand on Duke’s shoulder. ‘A drink, old chap? Let’s go into the hovel and find Sammy.’
Inside, spirit lamps glared. It was a bare concrete place, furnished with a few chairs; a place to act out the simple life. Shamime was giving instructions to a bearer. Her hair was loose, as it had been at the Coffee Shop the day before, but tangled now. She wore green clothes the colour of seaweed. She hurried over, smiling.
‘You shouldn’t have. We didn’t ask for any more.’ She looked at the cold box. ‘You’re just like Father Christmas.’
‘Just a few things from the Commissary.’
‘Ah, your super-exclusive American supermarket. You look like a Christmas present yourself, in your jolly shirt.’
‘You don’t like it?’ He looked down. ‘I bought it in Hawaii.’
‘It’s great fun.’ She peered closer. ‘All those little palm trees. You’re a walking tropical paradise.’
But it was she who looked exotic. She glowed; the jewel winked. He unclipped the box.
‘Ah, pumpernickel,’ she breathed. ‘Californian wine, cold beer . . .’ She lifted them out one by one. He was not Father Christmas, he was her father. He loved seeing her face.
Christine came up. Shamime turned to her. ‘At school my English friends called me Piggy. Me, a Muslim. One of them came out once and stayed with us. My parents nearly died when she called out Breakfast time, Piggybins.’
The two girls were sitting on the floor. ‘Just tell me what you want,’ said Duke. ‘Either of you, of course. It’s all flown in fresh.’
Christine said: ‘American woman do their teeth with soda water, don’t they, so they won’t get contaminated.’
He looked down at the fuzzy head. He did not reply: Minnie did too. Christine squatted in her embroidered tunic. Her bare feet looked more nude than Shamime’s brown ones. He liked Christine’s husband but he had not figured out Christine yet. Her pink face looked confused; Shamime’s walnut skin looked closed and sure: mysterious.
‘So you went to school in England,’ said Christine.
‘Some boring suburb,’ said Shamime. ‘Nobody knows how to educate their girls here. Not the bright ones. They send them to university in England and France but they think it’s only sort of mental flower-arranging. Then the girls come back and find their marriage has been arranged for them.’
‘The double standards.’ The frizz nodded.
‘My best friend from Karachi – she went to Oxford and had a wild affair with her tutor. She went on to do a Ph.D. in London. She had thousands of job offers. She had another affair, with an East End painter. And then she came back to Karachi.’
‘And what happened?’ asked Christine.
‘She married the son of her father’s business partner. She changed, just like that. She sat at her wedding, all obedient on her little chair, covered in tinsel and rupee notes, her eyes lowered like a good virgin.’
‘Gift-wrapped,’ said Christine.
Shamime laughed. ‘I’ll take you to a wedding, Chrissy. They’re something else. They go
on for weeks. The bride and groom don’t speak, they’re just decorated and shunted from place to place.’ She touched the garment Christine was wearing. Duke thought it had seen better days. ‘Your kurta, that was made for a wedding – a poor, country wedding. Her mother and her sisters would have been at it for months, stitching that. The more stitching, the more status for their daughter.’
Christine’s head bent to gaze at it. ‘I never realized. A garment of bondage. It is a bit tight under the arms.’ She paused. ‘And you?’
‘We’ve had stiff little tea parties when the two mothers excuse themselves halfway through. Ministers’ sons, businessmen’s sons. The son of the chief of customs, now there’s a useful lad. Pity he only reaches to my elbow.’ She lifted her head. It glowed below Duke. ‘What about you, up there? We’ve only got to know each other since the Manleys came. Do you have a daughter?’
‘I have three sons. Chester’s in his college football team, they call themselves the Rangers. Johnny’s in his last year and Duke Junior’s in business, he’s an executive with I.B.M.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Shamime. ‘Who wants daughters? Out here, anyway.’
‘I didn’t realize till this afternoon . . .’ Christine stopped, gazing at a can of beer. They waited but she said nothing more.
Duke was silent. Minnie had in fact borne a girl, a miscarriage at six months. His daughter would have been the same age as these two girls at his feet. She too might have rummaged through the gifts he had brought her. Yet these girls seemed older than that, too: they discussed things better than he did, with their educations behind them. But that was why you made children: to improve upon yourself. There was no point in working, otherwise.