Moth Smoke

11 six

I take the turn as fast as my car lets me, my road grip half a handshake away from letting go, from flipping my Suzuki onto its back, and cut through traffic with a smile on my face because I’m thinking of Mumtaz. The card in my shirt pocket presses into my chest, its corner painful, but I finish sucking the life out of my joint, curling my lips at the heat and smell of burnt filter when it’s done, before I take the card out and put it on the seat next to me.

I’m going to a kiddie party.

The old chowkidar lets me in with no trouble, and I see maybe a dozen cars in a long driveway. I’ve shaved today and even treated myself to a haircut, my hairdresser taking it close to the scalp as he flirted with me, so I look as young as I can. But I’m definitely older than these kids, and they notice. This is the pre-college crowd, still in school and worried about the O levels and APs and SCs and SATs that stand between them and the States and Merry Old England, the only places they’d ever dream of going for an education.

One of them asks, um, excuse me, who I am.

‘I’m a friend of Raider’s.’

‘Raider?’

‘Haider.’

‘Oh.’ He looks around to make sure we’re not being watched. Naturally everyone’s staring at us. ‘Do you have it?’ he asks, lowering his voice.

‘Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?’ I notice they only have Murree vodka. How cute. These kids are still learning to walk: they have the cash for Scotch but they don’t yet have the contacts.

‘Well, it’s not really my party.’

Come on, kid. Not you, too. At least try to pretend that I’m more than just a drug connection. I’m well dressed, hip. A little hospitality wouldn’t hurt. ‘Whose party is it?’

‘It’s sort of all of ours. But it isn’t my house.’

‘Are you saying you don’t want me to stay?’

‘No, I’m not saying that.’

‘Great. I’ll have a drink, then.’

He looks almost frightened.

I smile. ‘Just teasing, yaar. Don’t worry, I won’t steal any of your girlfriends. Take the stuff and I’m off.’

‘Do you mind if we go outside?’

‘No.’ We head out onto the lawn, away from prying eyes. I hand him my fourth and last pancake of hash.

‘How much?’ he asks.

‘A thousand.’

He gives it to me without another word. This is incredible. He’s buying it for eight times what it cost me, and he actually seems happy about it. I like this kid. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’

‘Shuja Rana. Yours?’

‘Darashikoh Shezad. Call me if you ever need more.’

‘What’s your number?’

I tell him, and he takes out the stub of a pencil and writes it down.

‘I’m sorry you can’t stay,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t mind at all. But some of these people are such snobs.’

There you go, kid, putting your foot in your mouth. You can stand my stench even though your friends can’t, is that it? You’re lucky I need your money.

‘That’s too bad,’ I say, lighting a cigarette. ‘Run along. I’m going to have a smoke, and then I’m leaving.’

It’s a big lawn, and I stand in the middle, watching the house, wondering how many of these kids will grow up into Ozis. Quite a few, probably. Our poor country.

A couple walks out together, holding hands, but when they see me they turn around and go back inside, leaving me uncertain whether they think of me as a chaperon or a servant.

When I get home I’m still a little angry.

It’s the wrong time for Manucci to ask for his pay.

‘I don’t have it,’ I say.

‘Saab, you haven’t paid me in two months.’

I raise my hand and he flinches, but I don’t hit him. ‘Enough. I’ll pay you when I pay you. I don’t want to hear another word about it.’

He runs off, looking upset. I feel a little hard-hearted, but I tell myself I did the right thing. Servants have to be kept in line.

I go to my room with a candle and fish the heroin Murad Badshah gave me out of one of the drawers. Heroin and charas mixed. ‘I’ll call you hairy,’ I say, pleased with the name. My curiosity has been killing me, but I haven’t yet tried the stuff. Tonight I feel reckless, feel like having sex on the roof in the moonlight, except that Mumtaz hasn’t called since that crazy night, and this hairy will have to do.

I roll a jay, or maybe I should call it an aitch, since I’m using hairy. It frightens me a little bit, so I use about half the amount I would if it were hash. I light up and puff delicately, but it doesn’t taste so different from what I’m used to, and it doesn’t seem to be any more harsh on my throat. I finish the aitch and sit back to see what it does to me.

The first feeling is jointy, a head throb from unfiltered nicotine in the tobacco. A light hash buzz slides in after that, nothing spectacular, just a medium-level high. I wait to see if anything else will follow, relaxing into the sofa and shutting my eyes. When I open them again, the candle has gone out and the moon is riding higher in the sky, its faint colorless light peeling off the wall opposite me. Long shadows. Should light another candle, but feel very comfortable, in no rush to move. My watch says an hour has passed. Skin itches, but in a good way, and hand slips under shirt to scratch it. Soon the moon’s so high that I’m sitting in shadowless dark, but my eyes have adjusted and I can see well enough without a candle, so I stay put.

I would like a cigarette, though. Where are my cigarettes? I just made an aitch, so I must have some. Ah, here they are in my shirt pocket. How convenient. Now if I could find a lighter without getting up I would be so happy. Open the pack and there one is. Wonderful. Now the next question: aitch or cigarette? Aitch’s too much work. But cigarette’s boring. What the hell. Sit up. Roll one.

Light up.

Ahhhhh. World floats at body temperature. Very nice, very nice. I’m in a good mood. My head is clear. Thoughts are coming one at a time, nicely formed. I like this. Well, I might as well admit it: this hairy is damn pleasant. Damn pleasant, do you say? I do indeed, my dear sir, damn pleasant. Nice little interior dialogue, that.

What do you know? It’s three o’clock. Well, Daru, time for you to give your bladder a release. Get up now, that’s a good fellow. One, two, three. Up. There you go. Takes a lot of effort, and energy level seems low, but no problem with motor control here. Stroll over to the bathroom. Turn on the light. Oops, no electricity. What’s this? A little nausea? Let it out, then. There. That wasn’t bad at all. And again? No problem. Just let it come on up. Perfect. Now sit down, let your bladder relax, too. Great. Rinse your mouth and head back to the couch. Take a detour for a glass of water. Here’s a glass. Here’s the water.

Sit down on that couch and have some rest. You’ve earned it. What time is it? Four in the morning. That’s a surprise. You should give Mumtaz a call. Can’t: Ozi. But Ozi’s out of town. Should you, then? Pick up the phone. Ringringrrring. Hang up. Don’t want to wake her.

Well, you can chill out by yourself. This is nice. Must thank Murad Badshah. Look, the sky is getting lighter. Just slightly, from black to blue. Shocking. Time for bed. This couch is so comfortable. Pull your feet up and stretch out and exhale.

Hhhhhhhh.

I’m woken in the evening by Manucci shaking my arm. ‘Go away,’ I tell him, desperate to return to sleep.

‘Your guest is here, Daru saab.’

I feel a moment of panic. I don’t want to face anyone at home, with no electricity and nothing to offer, unshaven because I don’t have a job. ‘What guest?’ I ask, opening an eye.

‘Mumtaz baji,’ he says, looking down like a blushing bride.

Relief comes twice, a double release, because the guest is the one person I want to see, and because it’s been a week with no contact since we made love and I was beginning to get anxious.

‘Tell her I’m coming down.’

I head into the bathroom and grip the sink. The sun is setting and it’s getting dark, but I can make out the circles around my eyes and I can see the uneven stubble of my beard, the growth thickest above and below my mouth. I feel my gorge rising and spit once, but there’s no real nausea, so I brush my teeth with a mangled toothbrush, white bristles spread and soft from too much use. I scrub my tongue and palate, unable to banish the bad taste I woke up with.

I need a shower, but haven’t the time. I wash my face without soap, feeling as I rub them that my nose and eyelids are greasy. Then I throw on a pair of jeans and a white shirt, the only semi-ironed one I have, and head downstairs.

At least I had a haircut.

Mumtaz is sitting on the sofa, legs crossed, with Manucci squatting on the floor beside her. He’s chatting away, which annoys me, because I don’t like it when the boy forgets his place. It makes me look bad, as though I’ve fallen so far my servant thinks there’s no longer any need for him to behave formally.

‘It was hard to catch me, Mumtaz baji,’ he’s saying. ‘I ran very fast. I knew all the hiding places.’

‘But when they did catch you?’ she asks.

‘Then sometimes they beat me.’

‘Is he telling you about his adventures?’ I ask loudly, in the ringing tones of a master of the house making his presence known. Manucci falls silent. ‘He has the soul of a poet. It’s hard to stop him once he gets started.’

Mumtaz looks me in the eyes and smiles. ‘Hello, Daru saab,’ she says.

I feel awkward with Manucci in the room, uncertain whether I should give her a kiss on the cheek. I do my best to seem calm and in control, but I find myself confused, very conscious of her physical presence.

Mumtaz is perfectly at ease. ‘Quite the early riser, I see.’

‘Bring tea,’ I tell Manucci.

‘Saab, there’s no milk.’

I open my wallet like a card player, as casually as I can but very careful to tilt it toward me so Mumtaz can’t see how little it contains. ‘Run to the market and get some,’ I say, handing Manucci a fifty.

‘Hi,’ Mumtaz says once he’s gone.

‘Hi.’ I feel silly sitting across from her. ‘How have you been?’

‘Good. I’m working on a new article.’

‘About what?’

She lights a cigarette. ‘All the money that left the country before the government announced the freeze on foreign currency accounts.’

‘What’s the story?’

‘It depends on who you ask,’ she says, inhaling. ‘The version I like is that they knew they would have to freeze the accounts when they tested, because it was obvious every-one would be nervous about sanctions and start converting rupees into dollars, and our foreign exchange reserves would have been too low to keep up. But of course some of them had their own money in those accounts. So they tipped off a few insiders, and just hours before the accounts were frozen, millions of dollars left the country.’

‘And Zulfikar Manto is trying to discover whether this happened and who was involved?’

‘Precisely, my dear Daru,’ she says.

‘I should give you the names of some banker friends of mine who might tell you who pulled their money out.’ I think of my numerous c.v.’s dangling in the water with not even a nibble. ‘Hopefully they’ll be more helpful to you than they have been to me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. My job hunt isn’t going particularly well. It isn’t going at all, actually. The economy is completely dead right now, with the rupee skyrocketing on the black market and bank accounts frozen.’

‘Have you ever thought of finishing your Ph.D.?’

‘I can’t afford to.’

‘I thought tuition was basically free.’

‘It is. But I can’t afford not to work. I need an income.’

‘Did you finish your course work?’

I nod. ‘I was working on my dissertation. And I suppose I could do that part-time. Or full-time at the moment, since I have nothing better to do. But the whole thing is ridiculous.’

‘Your dissertation?’

‘It was on development. What a joke.’

‘So you think nothing can be done?’

‘I spoke to a lot of people. I think nothing will be done.’

‘I think you’re wrong. A lot can be done. There’s just a shortage of good people willing to do it.’

‘It’s easy to be an idealist when you drive a Pajero.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Sorry. Let’s change the subject.’ I glance at her, hoping she won’t stay offended, and I see what I think is a willingness to let our disagreement go.

‘You look exhausted,’ she says.

I consider telling her about the heroin and decide not to. ‘I couldn’t sleep. It’s so bloody hot.’

Manucci returns with the milk and quickly serves up some tea. I sip slowly, feeling the heat rise from the cup and open pores on my face. I’m used to sweating all the time now, so it doesn’t bother me. And Mumtaz doesn’t seem to mind, either.

As it gets darker, Manucci starts lighting candles, and I pray that tonight we will have fewer visiting moths than normal, but here my luck leaves me. Mumtaz raises an eyebrow more than once at the whirring guests who join us for tea, bumping noisily into walls and windows.

Once Manucci’s gone, Mumtaz puts her arms around me and pulls me close. We kiss, and she gives me a long lick, like a cat tending to its paw. I hug her, squeezing, and her ribs flex with the pressure. I feel my face flush with excitement, and at the same time I’m surprised by how comfortable this is, how new but also familiar.

‘Sorry about the Pajero comment,’ I say.

‘Don’t worry.’

We kiss again, harder this time.

‘Why did you write that article about prostitutes?’ I ask her.

‘Manto often wrote about prostitutes.’

‘But why the fascination with Manto’s subject matter?’

She pulls back slightly and looks at me. ‘A few years of marriage and motherhood, I suppose. Finding I don’t quite fit into what’s expected. I’m interested in things women do that aren’t spoken about. Manto’s stories let me breathe. They make me feel like less of a monster.’

‘You’re not a monster.’

‘Don’t be sure.’

I massage the back of her neck, kneading with my thumb, pulling with my fingers, following the line of her spine. She has soft hair there, thin and smooth, and I feel the long cords of her muscles flaring gently as she moves her face forward to stroke my cheek with hers.

Unexpectedly, I find myself thinking of Ozi smiling at me on a rooftop many Basants ago, as I hold a red ball of string for his kite. The sun is behind him, hurting my eyes. I remember not paying attention for a moment, turning to watch some girls in the courtyard beneath us. My surprise as the ball jumps from my hand and falls, knocking over a tray being carried by a bearer far below. Ozi’s yelp as his kite is pulled from his hands. Shouts from the girls. And the two of us staring at each other, wide-eyed, laughing, with our hands on our knees. We really were brothers, once. And now I’m kissing his wife, my arms encircling her possessively, our bodies pressing together.

But I also remember being angry with my mother for no reason, being upset after Khurram uncle’s visits to our house, maybe because they reminded me of the permanent absence of a father I never knew but imagined vividly. I remember Khurram uncle’s rough hands as he taught Ozi and me how to hold a bat, the slaps when we made mistakes, not hard but not gentle, either. I remember his hands touching my mother’s elbow after giving me presents I needed but almost didn’t want.

I stroke the side of Mumtaz’s neck with my teeth, tracing two lines in her skin. Then I think of Manucci and take her upstairs. She turns to me in the darkness of my room and we make love like we’re furious with each other, silently, brutally. And when we’re spent I lie with my head on her chest and she strokes my hair and I fall slowly, slowly asleep. My dreams are so deep I wake with no idea of where I’ve been, and I don’t know when she left me during the night.

Fatty Chacha has never given me a lecture before in his life, not really, so he keeps looking down as he speaks, as though he wants to apologize for what he’s saying. And his embarrassment more than anything else makes it impossible for me to be annoyed with him.

‘You know how proud we are of you, champ,’ he’s saying, rubbing his hands together. They’re big for his size, broad but not long, with strong fingers. Good boxer hands. Hard to break. ‘You’ve always done so well. You worked at a top bank. You went to a prestigious school. You have friends from the best families.’ His gaze drifts up from my feet to my chest, then sinks back down. He tries to laugh. ‘You probably made more money last year than I did.’

I don’t say anything. I’ve never made much, just a low-level banker’s salary, and Fatty Chacha’s remark, if he’s right, is more of an insult to him than it is a compliment to me.

He goes on. ‘But now I’m a little worried by what I see. You’ve stopped looking for a job. You sit at home doing nothing.’

‘There aren’t any jobs,’ I interrupt. ‘The rupee’s at fifty-five. People are pulling their money out of banks to buy dollars, now that their foreign currency accounts are frozen. All the imported stuff is disappearing from the markets. There’s no business to be done, and no one is hiring at banks or anywhere else, not unless they owe your father a favor.’

‘You need to keep trying. Maybe you’ll have to accept a more junior position. Nothing will happen if you give up.’

‘I haven’t given up. But I’m not going to work at a mindless job for ten a month.’

‘Ten a month is enough to feed yourself and have lights instead of candles.’

‘Ten a month is four bottles of Scotch. It isn’t enough to turn on an air conditioner.’

Fatty Chacha smiles and finally manages to look me in the eye. ‘You sound like your father. He would say something like that: four bottles of Scotch.’

‘I don’t know how to live on ten a month.’

‘It’s better than living on nothing a month, champ. You have rich habits, but we aren’t rich. You can’t afford to turn down work because it’s beneath you.’

‘I haven’t turned down anything. I don’t think I could find a job that paid me ten a month even if I wanted one. There are a hundred guys for every opening, and the one who gets hired is the one with connections. I’ve given my c.v. to twenty companies. I’ve had twenty rejections. Only one even pretended to consider me seriously, and that was because he didn’t want to offend you.’

Fatty Chacha cracks his knuckles, one by one. ‘I know it’s difficult. Especially for you. You’ve always succeeded so easily. But you must keep trying.’

I don’t say anything. It’s strange to hear myself described as someone who’s succeeded easily. But compared to Fatty Chacha I suppose it’s true enough. He never really succeeded at all. He didn’t marry until he was forty. And even now he barely manages to support his family.

I tell him I’ll do my best, and he seems relieved, tapping a beat on his belly with his hands. This conversation was clearly difficult for him. And I think it gave him an appetite, because he looks at his watch and wonders aloud what might be waiting at home for dinner. When he asks me to join the family at his place, I lie and say I’m going out with friends.

A freshly bathed Manucci, his hair still wet, comes in just as Fatty Chacha is leaving. My servant is wearing an old kurta shalwar I gave him after one of my little cousins spilled a bottle of ink on it. But Manucci must have bleached it or something, because the stain is hardly visible, and although it isn’t starched, it has been freshly ironed. I look from myself, in my dirty jeans and T-shirt, to Manucci, in his crisp white cotton, and feel a strange sense of unease.

‘Well, well, Mr Manucci,’ Fatty Chacha says. ‘Looking very smart this evening.’

Manucci’s face breaks into an enormous smile.

‘Go clean my bathroom,’ I tell him. ‘And scrub behind the toilet. It’s getting filthy.’

I show Fatty Chacha out myself.

I think it’s safe to say Mumtaz is already at least a tenth mine. At least. I saw her sixteen hours this week. I know, because I timed it. And even though a tenth of someone is a lot to have, she has more than a tenth of me. I’m always dreaming of her, or thinking of her, or fantasizing about her, or waiting for her to come or to call. Even when I’m with her I miss her.

And she cares about me.

‘I tried heroin,’ I say, my lips touching the soft skin where her jaw meets her neck.

‘Was it good?’

‘Unbelievable.’

‘That’s bad. Don’t do it again.’

I’ve already decided not to, but I say, ‘Why not?’

‘Some things are too good. They make everything else worthless.’

‘Like you?’

‘Say you won’t do it again.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You won’t what?’

‘I won’t do it again.’

Mumtaz has six moles. Two are black: behind her ear and on her hip, in the trough of the wave that crests at her pelvis. Three are the color of rust: knuckle, corner of jaw, behind knee. And one is red, fiery, at the base of her spine, where a tail might grow. I touch them and know them because I watch her like a man in a field stares up at the stars, and I love her constellation because it contains her story and our story, and I wonder which mole is the beginning and which is the end.

I have no moles. Not even one. I didn’t know that, but Mumtaz has looked and looked, and now she’s given up.

Manucci adores her. He brings us tea without us asking for it and leaves it outside my bedroom when the door is shut. Mumtaz likes chatting with him. She says someday she wants to write an article on young pickpockets in the old city, and Manucci has promised to take her on a guided tour of his former haunts. Once, when I haven’t seen Mumtaz for a couple of days and she wastes half an hour talking to Manucci before she comes upstairs to wake me, I get upset and tell her I don’t understand why she would rather spend her time with him than with me. She says it’s cute that I’m jealous. And I become angry, asking how she could even suggest I’m jealous of my own servant. She says she was only joking, and then I feel completely embarrassed, and when we make love I keep looking at her to see if she’s laughing at me.

Then one night Mumtaz asks me if I’ve done heroin again, even though I haven’t, and it turns out Manucci has told her I spend all my time sitting on the sofa, rolling joints and smoking. I decide enough is enough. I go to the servant quarters with a leather belt and tell him I’ll thrash him if he talks about me behind my back. He pulls his bedsheet up around his eyes and stares at me. But he doesn’t do it again.

The next day I see Mumtaz cry. Not just shed tears but cry, with furious gasps and shouts of pain. Her voice is always throaty, almost hoarse, but when she cries she chokes off her words, and it hurts me to watch.

When she stops trembling and sobbing and can speak, I ask her why.

‘I’m a bad mother,’ she tells me.

‘You’re not.’ I stroke her hair.

‘You don’t know,’ she says, frighteningly serious, her eyes wide and sharp. ‘You don’t know.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Muazzam told me I don’t love him.’

‘Why?’

‘He wanted me to read him a story and I came here instead.’

‘Read him a story when you go back.’

‘I don’t want to. That’s the problem. I don’t want to.’

I don’t understand Mumtaz’s relationship with her son. Sometimes she does so much for him, too much, everything he asks, from the time he wakes until the time he goes to bed. But she never seems to do it because she wants to, only because it upsets her when he gets angry with her. And sometimes she won’t do anything for him, leaving him at home with his nanny all day.

We think Ozi still doesn’t know about us. Mumtaz rarely stays with me for more than a couple of hours at a time, unless he’s in Switzerland or the Caymans. I’m surprised he doesn’t smell me on her. Maybe he doesn’t care, but I doubt it. Part of me wants him to know. Part of me is afraid. When we were small Ozi was a bully, but then he was just a boy, and if you were bigger than him he went away. Now he’s not a boy. He’s a man and his father’s son, and what they want done can be done and done quietly.

Maybe I should ask Murad Badshah if I can borrow his revolver.

When I’m not with Mumtaz, I usually have nothing to do. When I’m not with Mumtaz and I do have something to do, I’m generally selling hash. It isn’t much money. And even if it does buy me petrol and food, I don’t like doing it. I don’t like the way I think I look to other people when I’m doing it, and I don’t like the way they treat me.

One day I catch Manucci taking a hundred-rupee note, washed out and red, from my wallet.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask him, coming into the living room.

He drops my wallet and the note onto my jeans and starts to back away. ‘It was to buy groceries for the house, saab,’ he says.

I take hold of him by the flesh of his upper arm and squeeze until he cries out. He’s never been so eager to do the grocery shopping before that he couldn’t wait until I woke up.

‘You weren’t stealing from me, were you?’

‘No, saab.’

‘If you ever steal from me, I’ll make you wish my mother never took you off the street.’

‘Please, saab.’

I let go and he runs into the kitchen. I know I haven’t paid him in a long time. But he isn’t going hungry: he eats food from my kitchen and sleeps under my roof. Sometimes servants only want their pay so they can leave, and if that’s his plan I won’t make it easy for him. Not that he has anywhere else to go.

One day I’m at Main Market, picking up a paan and a pack of smokes from Salim, when I see Pickles get out of his Land Cruiser and walk over to a Pajero. He embraces someone I haven’t met in a while, and I go to say hello with a big grin.

I tap Arif on the back. ‘Oh-ho,’ he exclaims, hugging me with enthusiasm. ‘This is turning into a reunion.’

I like Arif. A bit slow, he was the butt of our section’s jokes in senior school. Luckily for him, his family owns half of Sialkot.

Pickles and I shake hands. ‘Listen, boys,’ he says. ‘I’m having a little get-together for some of our batchmates at the Punjab Club this evening. You must come.’

The ‘must’ may be meant more for Arif than for me, but I smile anyway and say, ‘I’d be delighted.’ It’s not every day I’m invited to the Punjab Club, after all.

‘Batchmates only,’ Pickles says. ‘So no wives or fiancées. And jacket and tie, Daru.’

That night, as I’m getting ready, Manucci reminds me he can’t iron my shirt without electricity. ‘Boil some water and put it in the iron,’ I say. ‘Do the best you can.’

I pull into the Punjab Club, curving around the tennis courts, and park in front of the bakery. The car next to mine is a Suzuki Khyber, which makes me feel good, because most of the spaces are filled by huge monsters.

A uniformed bearer greets me as I enter and directs me out the back to the swimming pool area, where I see thirty or so very familiar faces, rounder, of course, their flesh hanging more loosely from their bones, but still familiar.

Ozi waves me over. ‘How are you, yaar?’ he asks, shaking my hand.

‘How are you?’ I respond, wanting to look friendly but aware that the smile on my face is forced. I hold on to him longer than is comfortable, trying and failing to think of anything to say, and I avert my eyes before letting go. I’m confused and a little out of breath, unsure whether what I’m feeling is fear or anger or guilt or dislike. Probably a bit of each. I force myself not to think about it as I drift about, chatting and embracing old buddies, but I’m deeply unsettled, and it’s some time before I manage to relax.

Dinner is a delicious march through colonial culinary outposts like mulligatawny soup and roast beef and caramel custard. As I eat, I find myself starting to enjoy the evening, temporarily taken back to the days when I had a crew cut and a sportsman’s colors on my blazer. It’s amazing how quickly old school friends slip back into remembered relationships. For an hour I’m not the poorest person here by far, the only one without a job or any secure source of income, but a schoolboy good at academics, a solid athlete, and a heroic prankster with a legendary raid on our headmaster’s house to my credit.

Then I meet Asim and reality slaps my beaming face.

Asim was our section’s arm-wrestling champ. I haven’t seen him in years, but it looks like he’s taken up bodybuilding.

‘Oye, Daru,’ he yells.

It’s clear he’s drunk, and I wonder where he’s hidden his booze.

‘Oye, Asim,’ I yell back.

‘Is it true you’re selling charas now?’ He says it in a loud voice that I’m sure is overheard.

‘Very funny,’ I say quietly.

‘That’s sad, yaar, sad.’ He shakes his head.

I’ve had enough. ‘What’s your problem, sisterfucker?’

‘Don’t speak to me like that.’

‘Suck me.’

He grabs me by my shirt, and I’m about to knock his teeth in when we’re pulled apart and I hear Pickles cry, ‘No fighting, no fighting.’

‘Bloody charsi,’ Asim yells, struggling against the hands that restrain him.

‘Ignore him,’ Ozi says, leading me away.

But I can’t ignore him. The words have been said. I’m sure everyone wants to know what the scuffle was all about, and by the end of the evening they will.

Remember Daru? He’s selling drugs now.

I pull away from Ozi and head for my car.

To hell with them all.

This time I buy a thousand worth from Murad Badshah. I’ve sold half of it when Shuja calls. He wants some more hash, so I tell him to come and get it.

He arrives later that night, in a car with a driver.

‘How old are you?’ I ask him as I take him inside. I’m stoned, as usual, and a little lonely because I haven’t had anyone to talk to today.

‘Sixteen.’

I wonder whether sixteen’s too young to be smoking hash. Then I decide it isn’t. I wasn’t much older than that when I started, and kids today are doing everything earlier than we did. It’s the MTV effect.

Manucci watches as Shuja and I exchange the hash for a thousand, a disapproving look on his face. I give him a quick glare, and he ducks back into the kitchen.

‘How long have you been a doper?’ I ask Shuja.

‘Oh, you know.’

‘I don’t know. Six months? A year?’

He looks uncomfortable. ‘A month, maybe. A couple of my friends tried it before that, but we never had anyone to buy from.’

Maybe I shouldn’t sell it to him. But he pays a thousand when all my other customers pay five hundred. Besides, he’s nothing to me.

‘Don’t do too much,’ I say.

‘I won’t. My father’s strict. He’d thrash me if he found out.’

I walk him out and stand in the driveway long after his car has disappeared, smoking a cigarette and trying hard to see even a single star through the night haze. I hear Manucci come up behind me. He doesn’t say anything.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Saab.’

Something in his voice makes me turn around. He’s looking at the ground, and when he looks up I’m surprised because he’s so afraid.

‘What?’

‘Don’t do this.’

I take a drag of my cigarette and then drop it onto the driveway, putting it out with my shoe. ‘Do what?’

‘Sell charas.’

I feel the anger coming, slow and dry, the air moving through my nostrils, the swelling in my torso. This will not happen. I won’t permit it. My servant will not tell me what to do.

‘What did you say?’ I ask, my voice a warning.

‘This is wrong, saab. You shouldn’t sell charas.’

I look at Manucci, this boy now almost my height, at the sparse, dirty curls of his newly arriving beard, the food stain beside his mouth, the slack hang of his lips. And I can’t wait any longer.

I step forward and slap him across the face with all my strength.

His head snaps to one side and he stumbles, falling to the ground. He cries out softly, a low sound, rough at the end, and covers his mouth with his hands. Then he looks up at me, the fear gone from his expression, leaving only seriousness and a gleam in one watering eye.

My hand is numb. I walk into the house, rubbing it.

I wake up with my head pounding, sweating hard. Two blades of the ceiling fan come together in an insane grin, the whole contraption absurd as it hangs over my face, dead in the heat. I yell for Manucci, and the effort sends blood rushing into my skull.

Damn that boy. Where is he?

I yell again, so loud it hurts, and still he doesn’t come. An uneasiness settles into my stomach. I drag myself into the bathroom and sit down, my thighs sweating against the plastic seat of the toilet. As a general rule, I’m not one to wake and bake. But today I feel like making an exception, so I hollow out a cigarette, repack it with some hash, and take a long hit just as a shaft of pain knifes through my rumbling bowels.

Liquid. Completely liquid. And acidic. The worst kind. Frothy and all that. I need some Imodium, a double dose double quick, or I’ll be dehydrated by sunset.

I clean myself, wash my hands in the hot tap water with a sliver of soap, take my bedsheet, wrap it around my waist, and trudge out of my room in search of Manucci. The house is quiet, dead moths on the floor and sooty marks on the ceiling above candles that burned themselves into puddles of wax overnight. Not only has the boy forgotten to sweep, he’s wasted perfectly good candles by not blowing them out. He’s in for it when I find him.

But I can’t find him. I’m smiling now, the kind of smile that stretches over clenched teeth. When I step outside, gripping my bedsheet with one hand, and see the gate open, both metal doors flung outward, I tilt my face up to the sun and cover my eyes with my fists. Then I stand there, naked, the taste of blood in my mouth, holding the first knuckle of my fist with my teeth. A woman walks by the gate, leading a little boy with a balloon of hunger in his belly and hair bleached by malnutrition. Neither of them sees me.

I shut the gate, stare up and down the street from behind it. Somehow I know that he won’t come back. Manucci is gone. My own servant has left me, left because of one little slap. That boy had better pray I never see him again. To think that I fed him, sheltered him, for all these years, and this is his loyalty, his gratitude.

I can feel the heat radiating from the metal of the gate.

I head back inside, and my stomach is so bad that I vomit before I can make it to the bathroom. Then I curl up on my bed, exhausted. When the sun goes down, I get up again, take a cloth and bucket, and clean up the mess I’ve made, gagging from the smell. Even when I’m done, the stench lingers in the house. I head out to the medical store to stock up on Imodium and rehydration salts. I also pick up a packet of biscuits, but when I try to eat them, I can’t.

I wake up the next morning feeling weak, but I haven’t had any vomiting episodes or bowel movements during the night, so I know that I’m not in danger of dehydration. Besides, I’ve finished off several packets of salts, taken three times the recommended amount of Imodium, and downed a full two-liter bottle of water. Excessive, I know, but I hate being sick.

The only person I see for the next two days is Mumtaz. She buys canned soup and heats it for me, saying I shouldn’t have high expectations because she’s a horrible cook. I tell her about Manucci, and she gets angry with me. She seems to think it’s my fault. I’m too tired to argue, and I don’t want her to know I’ve been selling charas, so I sip my soup and keep my mouth shut.

After she leaves I’m alone, all by myself in the house. Alone even when I feel better.

Until the phone rings.

‘Um, hello?’

‘Who is this?’ I ask.

‘Shuja.’

‘How are you?’

‘Okay. Do you think I could get some more hash?’

I laugh. ‘You can’t already have finished what I gave you.’

‘No, I didn’t. But it’s all gone. I, um, gave some to my friends.’

He sounds tense. ‘Is everything all right?’ I ask.

‘Yes. So can you sell me some more?’

‘Of course. Come by this evening.’

‘Do you think you could come here?’

I wouldn’t mind getting out of the house, but something in the tone of his voice makes me uneasy. Then again, he overpays like no one else I know. ‘Where do you live?’

He tells me.

‘I’ll be over in half an hour,’ I say.

‘Do you think you could come a little later. Like in two hours?’

Again I feel suspicious. ‘Why?’

‘My, um, my father’s home. But he’ll be gone by then.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to come here?’

‘Yes. I can’t.’

‘Fine. I’ll be there in two hours.’

When I arrive at Shuja’s family’s compound, I notice the boundary wall is topped with jagged glass that glints in the sunlight. I read the name above the house number and recognize it. So Shuja’s from a big feudal family. Who would have thought it? He seems so Westernized.

Instead of uniformed security guards at the gate there are a bunch of men with serious mustaches and shotguns slung over their shoulders. They look enough like village thugs to make me nervous. And there seem to be quite a few of them. But they open the gate without any questions and I walk in. The house itself is gaudy, huge and white, with massive columns and pediments and domes and even a fake minaret, as if it’s uncertain whether it wants to be the Taj Mahal or the Acropolis when it grows up.

The gate swings shut behind me with a loud clang, and some of the men with shotguns start walking in my direction. Palm trees line the driveway. I hear them rustle in the hot, dry wind.

I walk up to the house and ring the bell.

The door opens to reveal Shuja and a stern older man I somehow know is his father. I guess Shuja was wrong about his going out, and I’m about to pretend I’ve come to the wrong house when Shuja’s father says, ‘Is this him?’

I don’t like the way he says it.

Shuja nods. He looks scared.

His father gestures, and two men grab hold of my arms from behind.

I’m frightened and my heart is pounding hard. ‘What is this?’ I say, but my voice sounds weak.

‘You sold drugs to my son?’ Shuja’s father asks me.

‘No.’

One of the men holding me slaps the back of my head, and suddenly it all makes sense. They’re going to kill me. Shuja’s dad is a sick bastard whose son does pot, and I’m going to pay for it.

My mind disappears behind desperate terror.

Surging forward, I break loose from one of the men and slam my fist into the face of the other, feeling his nose crunch. And then I’m free, running. But there are too many of them, and I’m swinging, hitting hard, but the world spins, my legs slip out from under me, and I curl into a ball as they kick me, waiting for them to stomp on my head, screaming until I lose my breath.

I pass out once or twice, briefly. When my eyes open, Shuja’s father is standing over me, saying something. He’s pointing a shotgun at my head, and I can only whimper, blood and foam spraying from my lips. Then he kicks me in the face.

I come to on the bonnet of my car outside the gate. They’ve smashed all the windows. The gunmen are watching me. I try to stand, but I collapse and lie next to the road, slipping in and out of consciousness. Cars pass, so many cars, but no one stops. I sit up and crawl into my Suzuki, throwing up on myself from the effort and the nausea that comes when I see my hand. I slump in the seat. They wait for me to start the car, but I can’t. One of the gunmen finally drives me to the hospital, and he tells me that Shuja’s father will have me killed if I say anything to the police.

Later the doctor tells me how lucky I am. I only have a concussion, a dent in my skull, a broken nose, a broken rib, a compound fracture of my left forearm, cuts totaling seventy-one stitches on both legs, one arm, my neck, my shoulder, my eyebrow, and the spot where I bit through my lip. I’m missing one of my front teeth. The small finger of my left hand was partly torn off, but it’s been reattached and I may be able to use it again with time. There’s no internal bleeding, my brain seems to be working even though I’m groggy, and my eyes may look bad but the retinas are still attached.

‘Who did this to you?’ the doctor asks.

‘Auto accident,’ I say.

He shakes his head.