Moth Smoke

15 eight

I hear over the sound of the car’s engine the ringing of a gunshot fired close to my ears. It diminishes in volume without subsiding into silence, becoming more and more irritating, too quiet not to be imaginary, stealing my attention from the road.

Murad Badshah doesn’t speak. He holds his gun in his lap, the barrel pointed at my kidneys, and although he faces straight ahead, I know he’s watching me out of the corner of his eye.

At home I wait in the car as he gets out, so we don’t have to look at each other or talk. He stands for some time in the driveway, thinking, then climbs into his rickshaw and drives off. It’s raining. He forgot to give me my half of our night’s take, and I forgot to ask.

I can’t sleep. I stand in the open door of my house, a candle behind me, light glittering off raindrops until the instant they pass into my shadow, smoking a cigarette, straight up, no hash, no hairy, snapping out smoke rings the monsoon washes away. When it’s done I go back inside and sit down, the badminton racket beside me. But I can’t bring myself to touch it, and I hardly notice the moths as they pass.

I worry a thumbnail, trying to make the edge smooth, until I peel a long sliver still embedded in flesh and the pain makes me suck my thumb. Then I start to squeeze with my canines, harder and harder, covering one pain with another, and when I take my thumb out of my mouth it’s almost numb, sensation-free except for the throb of my pulse deep inside the flesh.

The morning comes gradually, with color in the sky, the deepest blue not black. Shadows appear. I know what day this is. I know Zulfikar Manto checks his mail today, and I know where. But I don’t know when, so I’m in my car, outside the post office, waiting well before it opens.

Across the street, the flow of people from bank branch to money changer’s stall builds steadily, rupees shifting into dollars in the wake of the nuclear sanctions, the exchange rate ticking into the high fifties, the low sixties. Some families ride with gunmen to protect the contents of safe-deposit boxes they intend to take home. In a car beside me four men with beards jot down license-plate numbers. A ripple in the city’s crime wave.

I wait for Mumtaz.

A letter writer near the post office entrance starts to eat a paratha. Oil mixes with the ink stains on his fingers. When he wipes them on a greasy newspaper, they leave blue streaks.

I didn’t see Mumtaz enter the post office, but I see her now, emerging, and my first thought is to leave, to slip the car into reverse and slide back onto the street. The wind and rain have made a solid mass of her hair and it hangs in clumps beside her face, curling, thick. The way it does when she sweats, after boxing, after sex on a hot day. I know what it must smell like.

I’m startled by her walk, how familiar it is: shoulders back, chin up. For all the world invulnerable, perfect, until she stumbles on the uneven pavement in front of the post office, a quick trip followed by an even quicker smile, a smile I’ve seen countless times, what her mouth and eyes do when her guard slips and she laughs at herself.

I don’t know what I can say to her. I don’t know why I thought she would be different. I wish the sight of Mumtaz had brought my memory of her into even the slightest doubt. Because this, seeing her as she was, makes me want to run away.

I don’t run, though. I get out of my car. Wet dust on cement, smooth like paper, like silt, retains my footprint. I take two steps and wait. She stops. Then she walks over. We stand for a moment, watching each other. She doesn’t speak.

Something hot rises inside me, like a sob on fire, demanding release, and I tilt my head back and shut my eyes, my mouth in line with my throat, my face flat to the rain. And gravity pulls me down, overcoming exhausted muscles, an unfed, unslept body, bending weak legs, bringing me to the earth, leaving me on my knees. The air lacerates my lungs as I breathe, the world turning against me, existence an agony.

Then a shock as I feel her hands. She strokes my hair gently, cradles the back of my head with long fingers, pulls me to her, buries my face in her loins. And I lean against her legs, upright only with her support, my arms at my sides, my chest against her thighs, as she caresses me from above. It lasts until I’ve stopped waiting for her to let go. When she walks away my body remains erect. And when I open my eyes I find I have the strength to stand.

The police come for me that afternoon. I hadn’t expected them, but I go quietly. In the back of their mobile unit, one asks me why I did it. I don’t answer him.

‘Why were you in such a hurry?’ he asks.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The boy you killed because you couldn’t be bothered to stop for a red light. What was so important you couldn’t wait for him to cross the road?’

I look at him, not understanding.

‘He was probably rushing to meet a woman,’ another says.

They laugh.

And as I look out the open back of the mobile unit at the intersection falling behind and people on firm ground receding as though carried away by the earth’s spin, I begin to remember and to understand. I feel something, wild anger and confusion perhaps, but I’m so tired I can’t place the emotion, and it, too, slips away as I shut my eyes.