Moth Smoke

5 three

May arrives with a burst of heat that leaves nine dead in Jacobabad, but one evening a flirtatious breeze makes the trees swell and it looks just bearable enough for me to step outside with a cigarette in my mouth and another behind my ear. These are my last two smokes and I smoke them like an addict consuming all that’s left of his stash, half-preoccupied with the thought that each drag brings me closer to the point where I have to get some more.

Just as I flick the second butt over the wall and turn to head indoors, I hear a rickshaw sputter up to the gate and honk. Murad Badshah’s massive form is squished into the driver’s area, and he waves a hello when he sees me, sending a stream of paan-red spit over his shoulder. I open the gate and he pulls inside like an adult riding a tricycle. ‘Greetings!’ he exclaims, hauling himself out of the rickshaw with some difficulty.

‘Hello, gangster,’ I say to him.

Murad Badshah’s my dealer: occasionally amusing, desperately insecure, and annoyingly fond of claiming that he’s a dangerous outlaw. He speaks what he thinks is well-bred English in an effort to deny the lower-class origins that color the accent of his Urdu and Punjabi. But like an overambitious toupee, his artificial diction draws attention to what it’s meant to hide.

His hand engulfs mine, and I find myself pulled into a damp and smelly embrace, the side of my face pressed against his shoulder. ‘A very good evening to you, old boy,’ he says.

‘Do you have any cigarettes?’

‘But of course.’

‘My savior.’

‘More than you know.’ He flashes a grin down at me. ‘I also have some first-class, A-one quality charas.’

We climb a rickety ladder to the roof of my house and sit down on the bench I keep up there for pot smoking and kite fighting. I roll a joint, and as we smoke it, Murad Badshah asks me how my job search is going.

‘Badly. They want foreign qualifications or an MBA.’

‘It’s all about connections, old boy.’ He takes a hit. ‘How did you get your previous job?’

‘Through a family friend,’ I admit. Ozi’s father, as a matter of fact.

Murad Badshah grins. ‘Perhaps you should see the gentleman again. What he did once he can do twice.’

‘Maybe he can.’ But I don’t want to ask for Khurram uncle’s help.

I look up, squinting into the sun. A hawk circles in the sky over my neighbor’s house, where a baby lies naked on a sheet on the lawn. His ayah keeps a careful eye on him: he’s too big for a hawk to carry away, but not too big for one to try.

‘Quite frankly, Darashikoh Shezad, you’re better off this way. Pinstriped suits are cages for the soul.’

‘At least a caged soul is well fed by its handlers.’

‘Well fed, my left buttock, if you’ll pardon the expression. A man who works for another man is a slave.’

I take the joint back from him. ‘Yes, but you need capital to start a business. I’m broke. The other day I received a notice that my electricity is about to be disconnected.’

‘All you need is human capital: a strong mind and an obedient body.’

I look at Murad Badshah’s obedient body. Even in the loose folds of his shalwar kurta, I can see the love handles sagging away from his waist.

‘I have a proposition for you,’ he says suddenly.

‘What?’

‘I don’t want to shock you, old boy.’

‘Just don’t ask me to drive one of your rickshaws.’

He reaches under his kurta and pulls a silver revolver out of the waistband of his shalwar. It gleams like well-polished cutlery, big and shiny and more than a little ridiculous.

‘Is it real?’ I ask him.

He looks offended. ‘Of course,’ he says.

‘Why are you carrying it around?’

‘Darashikoh Shezad, do you listen to nothing that I say?’

‘You don’t need to impress me.’

He snorts. ‘Here, take it.’

I drop my joint and put it out with my shoe. The gun is heavier than it looks.

‘You are holding a Python. Three-fifty-seven magnum.’

I nod and hand it back to him. ‘I don’t like guns.’

‘Why don’t you fire off a few rounds?’ he asks. ‘Just point it up in the air. But be careful: it jumps.’

I think of my mother and look away. ‘No thanks,’ I say. Sometimes indulging Murad Badshah can take more effort than it’s worth. ‘Can you get me some ex?’ I ask, reminding him that he’s my dealer first and my friend only a very distant second.

Murad Badshah looks at me as if he wants to say more about his proposal. Then he seems to decide against it and says, ‘What is ex?’

‘Never mind. It’s a drug.’

‘The best I can do is charas, old boy. And heroin. I can always get you heroin. But I wouldn’t recommend it.’ He puts his arm around me. ‘Come. Let’s roll another joint.’

I’m thirsty, and the smell from Murad Badshah’s armpit is overpowering. I want to get rid of him. ‘Can I offer you a beer?’ I ask, standing up.

He shakes his head, still seated. ‘You know me better than that, old boy. I want the pleasures of the afterlife. Charas is a gray area, but alcohol is explicitly forbidden.’

‘Some men drink the blood of other men, all I drink is wine,’ I quote.

‘Saqia aur pila. Wonderful qawali. But I think the verse refers to the wine of faith, my friend.’

Once I’ve paid Murad Badshah for the pot and I’m alone again, I open a bottle of Murree beer. I don’t like it when low-class types forget their place and try to become too frank with you. But it’s my fault, I suppose: the price of being a nice guy.

Settling in front of the television, I watch videos on Channel V, and remind myself that when I have some cash coming in I need to call a technician to adjust my satellite dish. The sound quality just isn’t what it should be. I eat my dinner on a TV tray and open a beer. Manucci has fallen asleep at my feet. He loves to sleep in the living room when the air conditioner is on, and I don’t blame him, because the servant quarters are too hot in the summertime.

The phone rings and wakes me up. I’ve dozed off in front of the television. Manucci’s still asleep.

It’s a woman’s voice, husky, like she’s just gotten out of bed. ‘Daru?’ she says.

‘Nadira?’

There’s laughter on the other end. ‘It’s Mumtaz. Who’s Nadira?’

My mouth tastes awful. ‘No one,’ I say. ‘Just a friend.’

‘Listen, Daru, can you do me a favor?’

‘Is everything all right? Where’s Ozi?’

‘Everything’s fine. Ozi’s in Switzerland on business. I need to go to the old city, but I don’t know the roads in that part of Lahore and I don’t want to take a driver. Do you think you could come with me?’

This is very strange. Why is Ozi’s wife calling me up in the middle of the night to go for a drive? ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it’s important to me and I’d appreciate your help.’

‘Where are you?’ I ask her.

‘Outside your gate.’

‘What?’

‘I’m calling you on my mobile.’

Her mobile. How classy. I think quickly: What can be wrong in going with her? Ozi would want me to help her out. On the other hand, the last thing Ozi probably wants is for his wife to be cruising around Lahore with single men while he’s out of town. But my curiosity gets the better of me. ‘I’m coming,’ I say.

It’s dark outside. None of the streetlamps work and the sharp crescent moon does little to light the night. Mumtaz’s car is parked with the engine running.

I get in, and she turns the music down. It’s Nusrat, remixed and clubby, but damn good as always.

‘Hi,’ she says with a grin.

‘What’s up?’

‘I’ll tell you as we go. Cigarette?’

I take one and she reverses onto the street, slips the car into first while it’s still moving backwards, and accelerates away from my house.

‘What have you been up to lately?’ she asks.

‘Looking for a job.’

‘Any luck?’ She takes a turn fast and I tense my legs.

‘No.’

‘What sort of job are you looking for?’

‘The standard: banks, multinationals.’ We’re on the canal now, zipping past weeping willows.

‘Do you really want to work for a bank or a multinational?’

She seems distracted, intent on her driving, and I’m irritated that she’s being flippant about what for me is a serious problem. ‘What do you mean?’

She flashes her beams at a truck and it pulls to the left to let us pass. ‘You don’t seem like the sort of person who’d enjoy being a slave to a faceless business.’

This is the very sort of attitude that pisses me off with most of the party crowd. They’re rich enough not to work unless they feel like it, so they think the rest of us are idiots for settling for jobs we don’t love. ‘I need the money,’ I explain to her, as I would to a child. ‘I don’t have a choice.’

‘I know the feeling,’ she says as we descend into the Ferozepur Road underpass.

‘Do you?’

She turns and gives me a surprised look. ‘No need to sound so condescending.’

I realize that I’ve offended her, and suddenly I’m upset with myself. ‘I’m sorry.’

She looks ahead again. ‘I wasn’t talking about needing money. I was saying that I know what it is not to have a choice about working. I have to work, too.’

I thought Mumtaz was happily unemployed. ‘What sort of work do you do?’

‘It’s a secret.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m going to tell you. I have to, I suppose, since I’ve dragged you out here with no explanation. It’s very sweet of you to do this, by the way.’ Her hand touches my knee, briefly, before returning to the gearshift. ‘I have this thing about friends and secrets. Sometimes when I meet a person I like, I tell them a secret they don’t know me well enough to be told. It lets me judge their potential as a friend.’

‘But what happens when they don’t keep your secret?’ I ask.

She opens a power window and flicks her cigarette out. ‘I don’t know. They always have so far. But I don’t meet many people I like.’

I light another cigarette and pass it to her. ‘I’m flattered.’

She accepts the cigarette with a nod. ‘You should be.’ We speed through the Jail Road underpass. ‘But let me tell you what I think about secrets before you decide if you want me to tell you one. Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you’re with them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can see.’

I think of the look Nadira gave me at the party.

Mumtaz turns to me and smiles. ‘Do you still want me to tell you?’ she asks.

‘How could I not?’

‘But if I don’t feel good about it once I’ve told you, we’ll probably never be friends. Doesn’t that possibility frighten you?’

‘It is pretty drastic,’ I admit. ‘But tell me and let’s see what happens.’

She looks at me and I see that she’s smiling at herself. ‘Here it is. I know the identity of Zulfikar Manto.’ She takes a left on Mall Road.

‘The journalist?’

‘Precisely.’

‘The one who wrote that article about the missing girl in Defense?’

‘Among other things, yes.’

‘But I didn’t know his identity was a secret.’

‘It is. He submits his work by mail and collects his checks from a post office box. No one knows who he is except the editor of the paper that publishes his pieces.’

She downshifts to second in front of Bagh-i-Jinnah and overtakes a group of teenagers in a car with big alloy wheels and a spoiler.

‘So who is Zulfikar Manto?’ I ask.

She laughs. ‘Me.’

‘You?’

‘Me. I am Zulfikar Manto.’

I start to laugh, too. ‘But why? Why don’t you just write the articles under your own name?’

‘That’s a little complicated. Anyway, life is much easier if I’m not working as a journalist and Zulfikar Manto is.’

Mumtaz assumes a mock-serious expression as we pass a mobile police unit near Charing Cross, and I feel like a character in an espionage film.

‘That’s incredible,’ I say.

She nods.

‘Are you glad you’ve told me this?’ I ask.

She’s silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she says finally. ‘It felt good to tell you, but I’m a little uncertain about how I feel just now.’

I’m concerned. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means we’ll have to see what happens.’ She shrugs. ‘But no more questions. This is where I need your help. We’re getting close to the old city, and I don’t know my way from here.’

We pass the High Court. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Heera Mandi.’

I start to laugh. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘I’m dead serious. I have to interview the madam of a brothel, and I can’t be late.’

This is turning into a very strange night, but I’m enjoying myself. I like the way Mumtaz drives, with a sort of controlled aggression. Actually, she drives the way I like to think I drive. I direct her, glad she never asks how I know where Heera Mandi is, and point out the sights along our way like a tour guide: ‘That’s Town Hall. Take a right here, on Lower Mall Road. That’s Government College to your right. Take a left. That’s Data Darbar. You should check it out sometime. This is Circular Road. See Badshahi Mosque? Minar-i-Pakistan’s behind it. Okay, slow down. Take a right. This used to be a gate. Now we’re in the old city.’

‘Who are all those people on the left?’

‘Heroin junkies. We’re almost there. You do realize that there won’t be many young women dressed the way you are?’

‘I hope not. It’s been a long time since anyone accused me of dressing like a prostitute.’

‘What I mean is, we might attract the attention of the cops.’

‘I can handle cops. Besides, I’ve brought a lot of cash.’

Soon enough we’re there, and even though it’s a little late for Heera Mandi, the place is still crowded. Mumtaz says we’ll wait in the car, for what I’m not sure. People stare at us, making me nervous. Then a man almost as big as Murad Badshah knocks on our window, his eyes bloodshot and the ends of his mustache curled into points.

‘Let’s go,’ I say.

‘Wait,’ she says. ‘Open it.’

He leans in, ignoring me. ‘Are you here to see Dilaram?’ he asks Mumtaz.

‘Yes,’ she answers.

‘Come quickly.’

We open our doors and get out, but he stops me with one hand. ‘Not you,’ he says.

I lock eyes with him and remove his hand from my chest.

‘It’s okay, Daru,’ Mumtaz says. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back soon.’

I continue to glare at the pimp, my heart pounding. I wonder if Mumtaz would be impressed if I beat the hell out of him.

‘Please, Daru,’ she says. ‘You don’t know how hard it was to arrange this interview.’

‘It isn’t safe for you to be here alone,’ I tell her.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she says, tossing me the car keys.

‘Why can’t I come?’

She tilts her head to one side, smiling like she wants to rumple my hair. ‘You look so disappointed. Let me ask her. If she agrees, I’ll come back for you.’

Before I know it, Mumtaz is running off with a giant pimp into some back alley in Heera Mandi and I’m sitting alone in her car. I am such an idiot for doing this. What will I tell Ozi if anything happens to her?

She isn’t gone for long, but I’m already imagining an elaborate rescue scenario when she reappears. ‘You can come,’ she says. ‘But only if you promise not to do anything macho.’

‘I promise.’

I have to walk quickly to keep pace with Mumtaz and the pimp. We pass a few men in the alley: satisfied customers, judging by their vacant smiles. Definitely stoned. Maybe even a little heroin. One is fastening his nala with both hands.

Then we enter a building, climb two flights of steps, pass through a door that opens only when the pimp knocks out a little code, part a curtain of beads, and find ourselves in a room with a shuttered window, dimly lit by a clay oil lamp which sits on a low table.

Reclining against a long, round cushion is a middle-aged woman with finely plucked eyebrows, her fleshy body well proportioned and voluptuous. She takes a gurgling puff from the hookah beside her and with the tiniest dip of her chin indicates that we should sit.

‘It’s a man’s habit, but I love it,’ she says, taking another puff. Her voice is throaty, like Mumtaz’s, but much deeper.

Then she points one henna-decorated finger at me. ‘Have I seen you before?’

‘No,’ I say.

The woman chuckles. ‘Of course not. Your father, perhaps, but not you.’

A disturbingly young girl with long eyelashes brings in tea. She wears bells on her ankles that chime as she walks, and I find myself hoping this is the only service she’s made to provide, although I doubt it very much.

‘You’re not bad-looking,’ the woman says to Mumtaz, who smiles and lowers her gaze politely. ‘A nice face. And good hips. But your breasts aren’t generous. You should eat more.’

Mumtaz starts to laugh. ‘They’re bigger than they were. I’ve fed a boy.’

‘With those?’ The woman considers. ‘Perhaps it’s because you have broad shoulders that they seem small.’ She smiles. ‘Are you looking for work?’

Mumtaz flashes a sly grin. ‘Your tea is delicious, Dilaram.’

‘Thank you. Like all things in my profession, it is a learned art.’

‘How did you come to begin learning?’ Mumtaz asks, slowly taking out a minicassette recorder.

Dilaram laughs solidly, her body rippling. ‘It’s quite a funny story really. I was a pretty girl, like this one here.’ She smiles at our adolescent tea server. ‘Only younger. The landlord of our area asked me to come to his house. I refused, so he threatened to kill my family. When I went, he raped me.’

Mumtaz shuts her eyes.

Dilaram chuckles. ‘I was so skinny. Not like a woman at all.’

‘He paid you?’ Mumtaz’s voice is so soft I can barely hear her.

‘No.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘He kept making me come. He let his sons rape me. And sometimes his friends. One of them was from the city. He gave me a silver bracelet.’

‘Why?’

‘He said it was a gift. Then I became pregnant.’ She laughs. ‘Imagine, my mother was also pregnant at the time.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘The landlord told me the man from the city wanted to take me to Lahore to marry me. I didn’t believe him. But the villagers told me it was the only way to recover my honor, so I went.’

‘Did he marry you?’

‘No. He took me to a hakim who ended my pregnancy. Then he told me he had bought me from the landlord for fifty rupees. He said I would have to give him fifty rupees if I wanted to go back to my village.’

‘But you didn’t have the money.’

Dilaram chuckles. ‘He brought me to Heera Mandi and made me have sex with men until he had his fifty rupees.’

I look at Mumtaz, but she doesn’t notice me. The women are completely focused on each other.

‘Then did he let you go?’

‘No. He told me the villagers would not accept me back because I had lost my honor. I believed him. The others knew stories of girls who had returned to their families and were killed by their fathers or their brothers. So I stayed on. I worked for many years, until I was no longer young and had few clients. By then the man had grown old. He needed my help to run this place. Once it was clear to the girls and the clients that I was in charge, he died. Some people said I poisoned him.’ She laughs silently, shuddering.

I light a cigarette as the interview continues, and not seeing an ashtray, I tip the ash into the palm of my hand. Dilaram seems a little too well-spoken for an uneducated village girl, sounding more like a wayward Kinnaird alumna to me, actually, and I begin to wonder whether she’s making up her story as she goes along.

Occasionally I turn to look through the curtain of beads behind us. The giant pimp observes us closely, his arms crossed in front of him. I don’t see any of Dilaram’s prostitutes or their clients, but through the walls I hear sounds which convince me that business is continuing despite our presence.

When the interview is over, Dilaram watches us go, laughing to herself. Our eyes meet for a moment, and I’m startled by the anger in her glance.

Neither Mumtaz nor I say anything until we’re on the canal. She’s driving fast, shifting up through the gears, and I want to ask whether she believes Dilaram’s story, but something in her expression makes me think better of it.

I light a cigarette, the last from her pack, and pass it to her.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she says.

She passes the cigarette and we share it, each taking a few drags before passing it back. Soon we’re back in New Muslim Town, near my house. I want to touch her, to make some connection before she drops me off and I’m alone again. But she does it for me.

She pulls up to my gate and stops. Then she turns and kisses me on the cheek, her hand curling around the back of my head, touching my neck and my hair. We stay like that for a moment, and I don’t move, my arms at my sides, afraid of doing anything to make her leave. But she leans away from me and smiles, and I have to get out. We don’t say goodbye.

I watch the taillights of her car flash red, and then she’s gone around a turn. I know I’m standing still, but I feel like I’ve stumbled and I’m starting to fall.

The day after I become privy to the secret of Zulfikar Manto, I find myself in a suit and tie, my shoes shining more brightly than new coins in a beggar’s bowl.

Butt saab is a master of the French inhale. He sits behind his desk, smoke slipping out of his mouth and up his nostrils, and watches me with the half-lidded, red-eyed superiority of a junior civil servant, which I’m told he once was. A flick of his tongue sends a tight gray ring drifting over my curriculum vitae. Mercifully, it disperses before reaching me.

‘Normally, I wouldn’t have agreed to see you,’ he says. ‘We have a hiring freeze in place at the moment. But your uncle is a friend, so I’m making an exception.’

Eight banks, eight c.v.’s, seven flat-out rejections. This is my first actual interview. ‘Thank you, Butt saab.’

‘Where else are you looking?’

I tell him.

‘And what have they told you?’

‘They say I don’t have a foreign degree or an MBA.’

‘And?’

‘They haven’t given me an interview.’

Butt saab drops his cigarette into his almost-empty teacup. It hisses and he lights another. ‘Listen. I don’t have a foreign degree. And I don’t have an MBA. And we’ve hired three people this year, despite our hiring freeze, and they don’t have foreign degrees or MBAs either. Well, two do have MBAs, actually. And, come to think of it, one has a foreign degree as well. But you have a master’s and a fair amount of experience. You’d be as good as any of them, if I had to guess.’

Sounds promising enough, but there’s no encouragement in Butt saab’s expression. ‘I know banking,’ I say. ‘And I’m hungry for a chance. I’ll work hard.’

‘That’s the problem. Work hard at what? There just isn’t that much work these days.’ Another French inhale. ‘We have more people than we need right now. And the boys we’re hiring have connections worth more than their salaries. We’re just giving them the respectability of a job here in exchange for their families’ business.’

I nod. There doesn’t seem to be much for me to say.

‘I’m meeting with you, to tell you the honest truth, as a favor to your uncle,’ Butt saab continues. ‘Unless you know some really big fish, and I mean someone whose name matters to a country head, no one is going to hire you. Not with the banking sector in the shape it’s in.’

I try to smile. ‘I take it your country head doesn’t know my uncle.’

Butt saab laughs. ‘Mr Shezad, I know your uncle. He’s a good friend of mine. But if I were country head right now, I still wouldn’t be able to hire you. Things are tight these days and favors are expensive.’

A boy brings in another round of tea, our second in ten minutes, and sets the tray on top of my c.v. Butt saab offers me a cigarette that I accept, but my attempt to match his French inhale gets caught somewhere up my nose and makes my eyes water. I content myself with a smoke ring instead.

Outside the bank I sit in my car and watch them go in, guys my age in blue shirts and light suits. Sunglasses, longish hair slicked back. Bored, a little sluggish after lunch, but comfortably certain of an afternoon that won’t stretch out too long and a paycheck at the end of the month. I never particularly liked my job, and wanting now what I didn’t like but once had is enough to make me look down when former colleagues glance in my direction. It’s too hot to sit in my car, so I turn the key in the ignition and head home, my perspiration smelling of an old iron and too much starch.

On Sunday I go to the weekly family luncheon. I tend to avoid these things because they depress me. But I make an exception today, because I’m bored and a little lonely, and I don’t feel like sitting around the house by myself with nothing to do. Besides, my cash is running low and I could use a free meal.

The family luncheons are invariably at Fatty Chacha’s place. My house is small, but my uncle’s is smaller. He has no satellite dish, one car, and three kids, and his wife is so quiet that Dadi, who lives with them, calls her daughter-in-law ‘the philosopher.’ Dadi is the real spirit behind these get-togethers. She hates being separated from family, hates rifts and divisions, maybe because she’s lost so much to partitions: her husband on a train from Amritsar to Lahore, and her eldest son, my father, in Bangladesh.

When I walk into the house through the open front door, Dadi, Fatty Chacha, my aunts – Tinky Phoppo and Munni Phoppo – and their spouses and children are already eating. They look at me in surprise and then surge in a collective welcome that leaves my cheeks damp and marked with lipstick and my right hand a tad sticky from the food they were consuming.

It’s all a little too eager. I sense something somber sitting behind their enthusiasm, something not-so-normal behind their normality. A little paranoia crawls into my lap, purring loudly, making me think maybe I’m the cause, reminding me how obvious it must be that my life is going nowhere.

My cousin Jamal gets up so I can sit, but I wave him back down.

‘Come here,’ Dadi says, patting the arm of her sofa.

‘Yes, Dadi?’ I say, sitting there, my head several feet above hers.

‘Where are you these days?’ she asks.

‘Where am I these days?’

‘Have you found a job?’

‘Not yet.’

‘When are you getting married?’

‘As soon as you find me someone, Dadi.’

‘Two such lovely girls are sitting right here.’

Tinky Phoppo smiles. Her daughters blush and look down.

‘Let him eat,’ Fatty Chacha says, handing me a plate piled high with food.

‘Do you need any money?’ Tinky Phoppo’s husband asks, his wife’s elbow pressed firmly into his side. He isn’t corrupt, so they survive on his pitiful salary and a small inheritance, including the Swiss watch that he likes to drop into a glass of water from time to time to demonstrate that it’s waterproof and therefore authentic.

I start eating. ‘I’m okay for now,’ I lie, because they have no cash to spare.

Muhammad Ali, Fatty Chacha’s son, tugs on my sleeve. ‘Daru bhai, do boxing with me.’

‘Show me what you know,’ I say.

He puts on a few moves. Not bad for a six-year-old. ‘Amazing,’ I say. ‘You’ll be better than Muhammad Ali.’

‘I am Muhammad Ali,’ he points out.

‘The greatest boxer ever was also named Muhammad Ali,’ Fatty Chacha explains.

Muhammad Ali laughs. ‘Noooo,’ he says.

‘Yeeees,’ says his dad.

Fatty Chacha was a boxer when he was younger, although to look at him now, you wouldn’t guess it. I think he was a bantamweight, but he’s since put on a generous paunch, so he’s basically a big belly with skinny legs and arms. He learned from my father, who learned from Dada. And Fatty Chacha taught me.

Jamal extends a plate to me and says, ‘Mango?’

I cut one open and eat it with a roti.

Dadi nods in satisfaction. ‘This one is really my grandchild,’ she says.

‘I’m also really your grandchild, Dadi,’ Muhammad Ali says, grabbing her from behind.

‘Of course, of course,’ she says, laughing. ‘You are all my grandchildren.’

Munni Phoppo looks at Jamal anxiously, but he gives me a brave wink. Jamal knows he’s adopted, and he makes no bones about being happier with his fingers on a computer keyboard than in boxing gloves. Maybe he’ll be the first Shezad male to make a success of his life.

I wink back at him.

When we’re done eating, Dadi tells me that her shoulder is hurting again, which is her way of telling me to massage it. She likes my massages. She says I do it like my father did. I bend to my task behind her, pressing away, my eyes on the few wisps of white hair which grow on her bald head. Dadi feels as ancient as she looks, and when she tells me to do something I do it instinctively, as though the command passes to me through my genes rather than my ears.

Except, of course, that I won’t marry one of my cousins.

After the meal is done and the family has finished chatting and digesting, a process which takes a couple of hours, there’s a break in the cricket match we’ve been watching on TV and the clan begins to disperse. Jamal, who’s been learning to drive, demonstrates his reversing technique to me on his way out. Then he pulls away from the house with a little screech, probably for my benefit, and I can see his parents screaming at him as their old VW Beetle zips down the road.

Once my aunts’ families have gone, Fatty Chacha and I go to the children’s bedroom with some tea. The room is small and plastered with fading stickers. The fan above gives a metallic groan on each slow revolution.

‘So, champ,’ Fatty Chacha says, ‘how are things?’

‘Fatty Chacha, I’m not having any luck.’

He shoves his hand inside a box of Marie biscuits. ‘How about my friend?’

‘Butt saab,’ I say, stressing the saab, ‘told me other people were better connected.’

He bites into a biscuit and it breaks, parts of it falling into his lap. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

I shrug.

He brushes some crumbs onto the carpet. ‘I’ll have another talk with him.’

‘It won’t help. He said there was nothing he could do.’ I put down my cup. ‘Fatty Chacha, this tea is awful.’

‘I know. I don’t understand how you can make bad tea, but this new boy manages to do it every day. You don’t know how lucky you are to have Manucci. Here, have a biscuit.’ He offers the box to me.

‘Thanks,’ I say, taking one.

‘Your father was the well-connected one, champ. I don’t know anyone else who owes me a favor and might be of some use to you. But let me make some calls.’

‘Thanks, Fatty Chacha.’ The biscuit is stale, but I eat it anyway.

‘Do you need some money for the time being?’ He offers the box of biscuits again.

‘Could I borrow two thousand?’

Fatty Chacha looks uncomfortable. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Let me give you five hundred now, and I’ll take out some money from the bank tomorrow.’

Maybe I should have asked for less, but I don’t want to embarrass him by withdrawing my request and I really need the money. I sit with Dadi for a while, but she’s fast asleep, and as much as I’m enjoying the air-conditioning in the living room, eventually I have to go.

Fatty Chacha insists I take the leftovers with me: three glass bowls capped with tin foil. They make my car smell, and the smell makes me hungry even though I’ve just filled my stomach with as much as I thought it could hold. Lately I’ve been eating more than usual, and I wonder why my body has chosen this moment to give me such an appetite, when I can least afford it. Then again, animals tend to fatten up in anticipation of lean times ahead. I belch loudly as I drive, quite a roar, freeing up some space inside.