January 13, 2008

MY mother gets her wish. We’re moving to Lahore. Nana takes me for one last walk in the Margalla Hills, still in his soft leather chappals. They’ve become thin and worn and annoy his varicose veins.

‘There are no such forests in Lahore,’ he begins.

It’s cold for early November, as if the year has skipped this month and fused with the next. I bury my hands in my sweater sleeves as we walk to our pool.

Mehwish is at home with my mother and two of her cousins and two of their friends. I dub them TB: The Begumhood. Their conversation couldn’t be more different from the ones Nana has with me and his friends. TB conversation flows:

‘Aur?’
(‘Women are so sensitive.’)
‘Aur?’
(‘Women care too much.’)
‘Aur?’
(‘My daughter-in-law does not know suffering.’)
‘Aur?’
(‘My son has abandoned me!’)

Poor Mehwish! I still don’t know what my opposite is, but I know I want it to be The Book of Affliction.

I take a long drink of the cool forest air.

Nana continues: ‘There are lovely parks. A zoo I will take you to. Colleges that were once outstanding. But new Lahore is filled with potholes, rickshaws, smog. Its heart cries Village, but its head indulges a foolish dream: Dubai. Lahore is a country child that once saw a skyscraper and longed to become it. So it chopped down the trees that already gave it height. It is giving up lassi for Pepsi as we speak.’

Nana has been angering a lot of people at the university where he teaches. He points out what others overlook: while the Soviets bomb Afghanistan for the seventh year, Pakistan Television no longer broadcasts weather forecasts because predictions of rain have become witchery. Science and history books are being rewritten. Teaching evolution is banned. Nana says to learn is to search for what isn’t written, or rewritten. He has become a dangerous man.

He continues for a while: ‘All that old feudal money… The children sit and sit and inherit and inherit!’ He walks quickly, adding, ‘Many of the people who want me sacked are in Lahore.’

I didn’t know he could lose his job.

The pool is probably freezing so I keep my socks and shoes on. I perch on the same mound of limestone I’ve always sat on.

‘You didn’t check for snakes,’ Nana scolds gently, squeezing in beside me before announcing, ‘Lahore is property, meat, and late nights!’

Across from us a mother peels oranges while a father chases a boy around an acacia tree. The son models the rage of the decade: sweatbands. One around each wrist, a third at his forehead. He strikes an imaginary ball but doesn’t know where to run. His parents cheer. Fists clench in glory. Everyone wants to be a star but no one has a court.

‘What will you do if you lose your job?’

He doesn’t hear me. ‘They call me western. As if scientific discoveries belong to the West! Are we to forget that Omar Khayyam gave us a calendar more accurate than today’s? What about antiseptics? Who remembers Al Zahrawi? The war is giving this government the power to divide East from West, and to do it in the name of God!’

We say nothing for a while.

I’ll miss these walks. And our house, which faces these hills. I can see their dark outline from the wide windows of my room at night. Geography first exists in the mind. Without these hills, what marker will I have?

Nana looks away from me. ‘I have always felt you are too wise for your years. Good for Mehwish, but maybe not so good for you.’ He pauses, continues as if he did not hear this last sentence. ‘Now what were we saying? Yes, people will even kill for divisions in the mind. Mixing is bad politics. Big fish know that.’

The war in Afghanistan is never introduced, yet we’re always talking about it. Nana said to Aba once that because the conflict lives both inside and outside the mind, because there’s no border there, it’s more real than God. ‘And when it’s over, it won’t be over, not for Amal’s generation, nor future ones, just as Partition is never over for my generation, and yours, and Amal’s, and so on. Just as God is never over for a believer ... So, is the closest analogy to God — death?’ Aba stormed out of the room. No one talked after that, but no one was silent.

Now I kiss the thin skin of Nana’s cheek and he finally looks at me.

The child in sweatbands shrieks as his father picks him up. His mother wipes dirt off her kameez. They walk away, leaving a pile of orange peels. Troops of bluebottles begin their attack, homing in on blue-veined wings, antennae flaring, eyes cold. They’ve already ravaged imli wrappers, glass bottles, and packets of Peek Freans.

I hear voices from up the trail, where the white oaks that catch fire easily grow. From my street, I’ve watched thick smoke curl downhill before surrounding us — the fat and the skin and bones. It hangs for days, sometimes weeks, because someone left a cigarette burning. Apa Farzana would say God did it, because this land is His ashtray.

Nana stretches his legs. The first warning. ‘Listen to me, Amal.’ The second. I know that tone. ‘I told you to be Mehwish’s eyes and you listened. Good girl. She is six years old now. A curious child like you were, and that will make your work harder in Lahore. Here you can pull her along while your head is up in this forest. It’s hard to get lost here. And the manholes have covers, drains don’t leak, drivers don’t run red lights. But Lahore is different, and your mother still can’t take care of Mehwish. You must keep doing it. You will have to stop looking up and all around, the way you do here. For Mehwish, you must develop the habit of looking down.’

Leaves rustle. Deer, or maybe a paradise flycatcher.

‘I know you’ll miss these walks and talks.’ He keeps looking into my eyes now. ‘But they’re inside you, and there is no need to be rid of them.’

The sun bows to the trees. Inside my sweater sleeves, warm hands courier heat to my shoulders, while the rest grows stiff.

‘And now,’ he smiles, ‘we should talk about your future. You want to be like me, don’t you?’

‘What will you do if they sack you?’

‘What? Oh.’ His smile vanishes. He calls it back quickly. ‘I’ll leave the Punjab in a Jeep. Yes, why not? I’ll park it on the Khunjerab Pass and walk into China.’ Looks at my knees again. ‘But we were discussing your future.’

‘It’s Mehwish’s bath time.’

He nods vigorously.

As we descend the hill, I wonder if he’ll wear slippers all the way to China. n
 

Excerpted with permission from
The Geometry of God: A novel
By Uzma Aslam Khan
Rupa.Co, New Delhi, India
Available with
Liberty Books, Karachi
ISBN 81-291-1279-8
331pp. Rs525