Karachi Raj

By Anis Shivani

The collective, indeterminable madness of Karachi
And how is one to extract Karachi from oneself? The city gathers wanderers and dreamers into its bosom, contradictory, impenetrable, endlessly jostling its subjects to make room for new ones. And in this city of subterranean terrors and surprising bouts of goodness, a brother and a sister grow into their own. Seema and Hafiz, born into a Basti, long to make something of themselves. But when Seema wins a scholarship to attend university, she finds that social barriers are not easily defied, and when Hafiz finds himself smitten by a coworker's wife, he learns of the mutability of love and friendship. Meanwhile, Claire, an American anthropologist, discovers that while her professional training will only take her so far in her quest to unravel Karachi, living in the Basti is an education in itself. Anis Shivani's debut novel is an ambitious work that aches with intimacy even as it encompasses an entire generation into its bold, panoramic vision. Karachi Raj is the sort of book that will shape our understanding of urban Pakistan for years to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fourth Estate India
• Release date: Nov 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9789351160823

Anis Shivani

Anis Shivani's books include Anatolia and Other Stories and The Fifth Lash and Other Stories, both longlisted for the Frank O'Connor award. He has also written My Tranquil War and Other Poems and Soraya: Sonnets. Karachi Raj is his first novel. He has received a Pushcart Prize and his work appears in many major newspapers and magazines. His fiction, poetry, and essays appear in leading journals like Yale Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Boston Review, The Threepenny Review, Antioch Review, Meanjin, The London Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, The Cambridge Quarterly and elsewhere. He is currently writing a new novel, Abruzzi, 1936, and a book of criticism on new interpretations of realism in the contemporary American novel. He was educated at Harvard College, and lives in Houston, Texas.

Book preview

AUGUST

The strongest man on the job fell and hurt his back and ended up in the hospital for weeks, abandoning a lovely young wife to temptation and scandal. Things were never the same again for Hafiz, not at the godown, not anywhere else.

Independence Day was just around the corner. Some of the men argued that it ought not to be celebrated this year, all things considered: the ruinous economy, the threat of war, the insurgencies and rebellions from north to south. Rain was a menace every day, as on this soporific morning, but it never came. It had been one of the driest seasons on record.

The godown where Hafiz worked was three stories high and occupied nearly a whole block—a shiny dome would have suited its majesty. Its location on Bunder Road, not far from the colonial-era Karachi Port Trust building, made it prime real estate. Its value had gone up exponentially since Hafiz’s employer, his old schoolfriend Majid, bought it a scant two years ago. It felt like the kind of building, clean and new, that ought to be immune to accidents.

Men grown muscular from overwork slammed bales of fabric against the ground, harder than necessary, producing the aching thud of obligatory work. A squealing truck backed out of the gates, its rusty hydraulics producing a whoosh of resistance.

‘What’s there to celebrate?’ one of the resident sceptics droned. ‘Will there be a Pakistan next year? Will there be five Pakistans? Will we go bankrupt? We’re already bankrupt, they just don’t want us to know. Are we independent of the international banks? Are we independent—’

That was when they heard the ominous thump from the far left where a man lay pinned to the ground.

It was Shafiq, the godown braggart. He’d lost his step on the rickety ladder everyone had been warning him about. One moment he was leaning precariously towards a stack of cartons. The next moment there was empty air, filled with the horror of accident.

They all rushed towards him. He looked like a rigid doll, his face resting sideways on the sawdust-covered floor as though on a lover’s bosom, his back curved strangely. A rheumy film coated his eyes and his toes wriggled like itchy claws. His paan-stained mouth made no sound as his fellow workers discussed his fate.

‘Should we move him?’

‘I think his back is broken.’

‘He’s as good as dead.’

‘Look at his broken neck.’

‘He never should have.’

‘That ladder, that arrogance!’

‘The hospitals won’t take him.’

‘A pretty young wife, it’s too bad.’

‘I think he’s dead.’

Abdul Haq, their grizzled old supervisor, cleared his way to the front. ‘Hato hato! Move aside! What’s this, a tamasha? Let me handle this.’ Shutting his eyes, he bent to take Shafiq’s pulse. ‘The pulse is good.’ He rubbed Shafiq’s chest, stomach, thighs, knees, head, arms and feet in turn. ‘Where does it hurt?’ Shafiq groaned. ‘Tell me where your problem is.’ Shafiq made an effort to move but couldn’t. Abdul Haq groped all over again. When his back was pressed, Shafiq issued a frightening moan, upon which Abdul Haq snapped his fingers. ‘We know where the problem is, and that’s half the solution.’

Hafiz’s knees went watery. Here was his own sickening future. He willed Shafiq to shout, rise, break the spell, but no such luck. The man had been prone to boasting: ‘Look at my balance, I can do the impossible, my body follows my command to do anything, anything!’ He’d been married for a few months to a beautiful nineteen-year-old named Bibi, who he claimed was a distant cousin whose family had seen better days.

Abdul Haq commenced a monologue. ‘The closest is the private hospital, but they’d kill a healthy pehelwan in an hour. The chief nurse is a slut. Civil Hospital is farther away, but the best guarantee in a serious case. We could call an Edhi ambulance, though they might take a while, they prefer to rush to the sites of terrorist attacks.’ He yelled at Hafiz, ‘Get a cab and put him in the back, so we can transport him to Civil Hospital. The rest of you go back to work. This is not some tamasha your mother and father paid for.’

By the time the cab arrived, Shafiq was gasping for breath. Why wouldn’t he speak? Everyone was relieved to see him vanish. Hafiz folded the ladder at fault and dragged it to a dark corner of the godown.

Hafiz was one of the youngest workers, though a pair of dark-skinned twins claimed to be fourteen-year-old orphans. He owed this job to the owner of the import-export business, Majid, who’d done miraculously well for himself.

He thought of the furniture workshop owned by his father’s old friend in the Aram Bagh area, where he’d once inquired about work. Workers surely didn’t fall out of the sky at the timeless furniture workshop. Hafiz had spurned that job because it would have meant lifetime commitment. For years he would have been an apprentice bound to the whims of a grumpy master. Only relentless demonstration of skill would have elevated him. His own work would have been meaningless without group effort: the varnisher waiting for the chair’s legs to be put together, the painter in turn expecting the varnisher to finish his job on time—a moving assembly where many hands worked in increments to create a product owned by no single individual. It was too much discipline, while he wanted to remain free for adventure. Other men had dreamed and fled their confinement. Why not him?

In the afternoon, Abdul Haq returned from the hospital angry, his narrow black eyes on fire. ‘Idiots, we shouldn’t have moved him! I’ve seen these cases, moving can cause damage. His spine is probably ruined. What will we tell his young wife? Get back to work, imbeciles!’ No one dared ask what had transpired at the hospital or point out that the decision had been Abdul Haq’s.

‘You, of all people, should have known better,’ he accused Hafiz.

At closing time, without his customary sarcastic farewells, Abdul Haq jumped on his sky-blue Vespa scooter, kicking the starter hard. He had a way of stretching his body before propulsion, standing upright, then crouching over the scooter’s handlebar as though searching for something lost on the ground ahead. He would intentionally wobble at the start, a daring feat for a man his age. Today, he performed the ritual with more than his usual panache.

But he turned around after only a hundred yards.

‘Come with me to the hospital,’ he ordered Hafiz. ‘About time you learnt some responsibility.’

Abdul Haq was not a man to be denied. From the beginning, he’d taken a proprietary interest in Hafiz. He talked of Majid Seth as though they had a secret bond. He only needed to say the word for Hafiz to rise in the ranks. Hafiz’s father hadn’t taught him discipline. Abdul Haq would rectify that. There was a personal element too. Abdul Haq had started inviting Hafiz to his home in Malir—a well-kept white bungalow occupying three hundred yards. There, Mariam, Abdul Haq’s grand-niece, flirted with Hafiz, treating him like a plaything. ‘There isn’t much of an age difference between us,’ Mariam would say when she was feeling exuberant. She was dangerously attractive, like a Mughal courtesan or a fast-talking, wild-haired reporter for one of the independent television channels. Sometimes she looked forty, sometimes her face softened to sixteen. She was prone to humiliating Hafiz: ‘Your manners need work, you eat like a ganwar. Just because you live in the Basti doesn’t mean you have to act like one of them.’ Always the Basti, the reminder that he lived in an unauthorized city within the city. He couldn’t decide if Mariam had ever been married. She gave hints both ways. Mariam’s mother, a garrulous red-haired woman, regaled Hafiz with stories of her parents arriving penniless in Pakistan at the time of the Partition. She gave the impression of never having been touched by a man, Mariam having come forth from a virgin. Mariam had been sharp with Hafiz the last time, berating him in front of Abdul Haq for making slurping sounds while eating daal. Invitations had been on hiatus ever since.

Hafiz loathed hospitals. The last time, a dentist had pulled a tooth and left his jaw swollen. His father’s older brother had entered the hospital with a mild case of tuberculosis and come out dead. Didn’t the television doctors tell you that tuberculosis had been vanquished? When Hafiz thought of hospital bedsheets, he was reminded of the kafan, the white shroud for the corpse.

As he rode the back of the Vespa, he prayed for dear life. Abdul Haq drove like a madman on Bunder Road, daring buses and trucks to trample on them. He pulled up inches short of a donkey cart on the wrong side of the road. The donkey snorted in Abdul Haq’s face, snot pouring from its nostrils. The driver whipped the animal, even though there was no way forward. A twenty-foot film poster, in flaming red and yellow, fronted a crumbling building, the broad-faced moustachioed villain crushing a tiny fake blonde in his arms, like a gorilla. The driver of an Edhi ambulance drove onto the footpath with impunity, parked the vehicle and squatted on the ground to smoke.

They paid ten rupees to park the Vespa at Civil Hospital. It was difficult to tell if the greasy parking attendant was legitimate, but they had little choice. An elderly couple haggled with a rickshaw driver over the fare. Militant flies swooped down in formation over snack carts, going for virgin food rather than sugarcane and mango spills on the ground. Abdul Haq had some trouble locating his favourite falooda stall. ‘My memory is going,’ he fretted, ‘I thought it was in that corner.’ He ordered two large glasses. The ice cream and sherbet in the milky noodle drink made Hafiz’s teeth ache. ‘Sip, sip, take bigger sips, it’s not poison,’ Abdul Haq commanded.

At last they entered the forbidding arches of the fortress-like building. Relatives of the stricken put on brave faces as they streamed in and out in their best clothes. Elderly women worked rosary beads, muttering ‘Subhanallah, Subhanallah.’ A fight was in progress at the front desk over the disposal of a corpse and Abdul Haq decided to add to the trouble.

‘You were supposed to move my man to the general ward. If he’s past danger, make it easier by not burdening him with debt,’ said Abdul Haq, blithely ignoring the fact that Civil Hospital happened to be completely free. The clerk protested, but Abdul Haq was on a roll. ‘The government can’t run anything. Why should I pay taxes to support hospitals, post offices, steel mills, none of which work?’

The arrival of an authoritative person in a suit and tie silenced Abdul Haq’s tirade.

The young clerk became emboldened. ‘What is it you were saying about fees and debt, janab?’ he goaded Abdul Haq.

To get to the casualty ward on the fourth floor, they had to traverse a long corridor on the ground floor, opening onto operation theatres. Doctors, hunched over and streaming with sweat, exited swinging doors with the air of priests having performed sacrificial rituals, rubbing gloved hands. The public announcement system squawked over and over: ‘Doctor Qasmi, please report to the front desk.’

Shafiq’s ward was at the end of the corridor, where the door stood half-open—or broken. The patients were immobile to the point of seeming dead. There were about a dozen men sleeping under large permanently sealed windows, and no visitors were visible other than Shafiq’s wife Bibi, who rose to greet them. Abdul Haq bounded across the room to press her shoulder, pushing her down.

A quick glance at Bibi was enough to overwhelm Hafiz. He didn’t have eyes for the shrunken Shafiq, whose face was covered by a moist white towel. He manoeuvred himself to the other side of the bed to get a better look at Bibi. Streaks of tears ran down her pale cheeks—tears worth their weight in gold. She had large singing eyes, pouty red lips and tiny doll ears. Her long eyelashes were tangled with tears. Her broad forehead was bared, as was her lustrous hair, black with touches of henna. In hospitals, the usual rules of modesty were in abeyance. Hafiz suddenly felt happy about Abdul Haq having compelled him to come.

Bibi addressed Abdul Haq in a soft programmed voice, like a television announcer slowing down for comprehension. ‘Shukria for sending me the message. Your man went to a lot of trouble to find our flat. We use a neighbour’s phone but it’s been out of order, that’s why you couldn’t reach me. I turned off the stove and took a taxi the minute I heard.’

Clearly, a woman of refinement. Hafiz shuddered as he recollected the crude women of the Basti who roamed the lanes swaying their wide hips. Hafiz didn’t recall Abdul Haq telling anyone to inform Bibi. Shafiq himself must have managed to instruct the hospital staff.

Abdul Haq didn’t correct the misimpression. ‘Some of my employees were too eager to move him. We should have waited for the ambulance. No, not him,’ he gestured at Hafiz, ‘others, who don’t mind their own business. Still, I’m sure there’s been no damage.’

‘We don’t know anything yet. They’re doing tests. A young doctor was just here, looking worried.’

‘They all look worried at that age, they want you to think it’s serious. It’s their job. I can assure you there hasn’t been any harm.’

‘Why won’t he speak? He mumbled his mother’s name, his sister’s name, his niece’s name, but not mine. He looks like he’s concentrating hard but can’t put it in words.’

‘I don’t know why.’

‘A fracture can take a while to heal,’ she reflected, inserting a delicate pink finger in her gold earring, twirling it round and round.

‘If it’s his wages you’re worried about, don’t be,’ said Abdul Haq. ‘He’ll be taken care of for time missed.’

‘It’s not the wages. I just want him to be strong like before. He could lift a Suzuki with his bare hands.’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Once he recovers, you should tell him to be careful.’

Why was Abdul Haq lecturing this sweet young thing about her undeserving husband’s indiscretions? He went through a litany of Shafiq’s recklessness, making Bibi’s eyes moist. Hafiz wished he could slap the old man.

‘Look, he’s moving,’ Hafiz lied, ‘he wants to say something.’

Abdul Haq didn’t fall for the distraction, keeping his focus on Bibi.

‘He’s a good worker,’ Bibi insisted, ‘he does more than his share.’

‘That’s not the point. It’s the example he sets.’

When would this torture end? How would the poor girl be relieved?

The anxious young doctor returned. ‘You’re relatives all? Accha,’ he said without awaiting confirmation, ‘we’ll need to put on a brace to keep him from moving. The fracture should heal soon. He’s not saying much since he’s on painkillers which make him drowsy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some urgent cases to attend to.’

Bibi rose again. ‘Shukria, doctor. You’re an angel, you saved my husband’s life.’

‘I did no such thing,’ the doctor refuted her from the broken door. ‘It’s a minor case. You should see the ones who come in here with mangled bones from car accidents and roof falls. Like Humpty Dumpty, I can’t put them together again. I’m a doctor, not a magician.’

Bibi was close to tears. Why did everyone want to make her cry? Hafiz wished he’d cleaned up, to show off his long dark hair and strong jaw. He wished he were wearing new clothes. The dust in his hair and the chalky film all over his body made him look old.

‘And you, are you a friend of Shafiq’s?’ Bibi startled him.

No one was a friend of her husband’s. At best, Shafiq was tolerated. How could a ruffian like him have landed Bibi? It was always that way, good men were left empty-handed, while bad ones took the ultimate prize.

‘We talked often, and he’d tell me how happy he was.’

It was true. Shafiq showed off his wife’s picture at every opportunity. Had anyone within earshot made an inappropriate comment, he would have beaten the man to a pulp, but he wasn’t averse to silent admiration.

Piqued at being excluded, Abdul Haq hurled an accusation seemingly directed at Hafiz. ‘Men ought to get married young, when they’re in their prime.’ This prompted Bibi to look down in shame.

Hafiz longed to take a leisurely shower under water that didn’t shut off, rub coconut oil in his hair, trim his nails, clip his nose hairs. The more his sister Seema paid attention to her appearance, looking fresh and rosy for the university each morning, the less careful he’d become about his own looks.

When they were leaving, Bibi trilled, ‘Please come again,’ and Hafiz was convinced she was addressing only him. ‘His sisters should be here soon. They love him like a child. It’s good not to be alone in an emergency.’

On the way out, Abdul Haq didn’t fuss with the desk clerk about moving Shafiq to a different location. Television monitors, mounted at dizzying angles, showed a bus explosion in interior Sind, the police responding with vigour. Not even an hour had passed inside. In the parking lot, men formed an impromptu prayer assembly led by a mumbling imam.

‘I’ll drop you off at the bus stop,’ Abdul Haq offered. ‘You don’t need to walk.’

Bibi’s goodness rubbed off on everyone. That was the type of person she was. After the heavenly interlude, the Vespa appeared like a harmless toy. She had an endearing mole on her neck, didn’t she?

‘Ey Seema, open the door! What, thieves will come and rob you, so you have to hide inside all the time?’

Hafiz’s twenty-year-old sister, the unacknowledged pride of the Basti, was in fact hiding out. Late afternoons, when her parents and brother were away at work, were a precious time to study. She’d grown fond of solitude but the neighbours had other ideas.

Mithi Bai was having a Qur’an-khwani for her youngest son’s circumcision. He was eight years old, late for the ritual. The humiliation the poor boy would undergo! He’d be in bed for a week, the target of jokes. He’d miss school, normally cause for envy, except in this instance. The word circumcision was never uttered publicly. Instead, euphemisms circulated. Sunnat, the way of the Prophet.

Seema opened the door with hesitation. The wart on Mithi Bai’s cheek looked bigger than ever—it used to be the moon, now it was Jupiter. She had two daughters who were married to office workers, Mithi Bai’s proudest claim.

‘Amma isn’t home, but if I can help you—’

‘Of course you can help me. You can read the Qur’an, can’t you?’ Mithi Bai flung her chadar over her shoulder, as though daring a marauder to violate her dignity. ‘All this college-shollege, if they can’t teach you the Qur’an, what good is it? The women who usually come mumble the words. They come for mithai, not blessings. They take guesses at the difficult words and skip entire sections to finish quickly. Thirty women, thirty surahs, it should be over in an hour. So are you coming? Or do you have better things to do? Maybe some college function, a mixed party with boys and girls?’

‘I’ll be there. I have nothing else to do.’

‘I didn’t think you’d look down on one of your poor neighbours—I, who have known you since you were a baby, running around naked in the lane, almost getting drowned in the rains. I was the one who saved you. I knew you’d never become a nakhrewali looking down her nose at us poor folks. After all, we didn’t go to college. Nobody in our family ever went past matric. We wake up at dawn, get in line for water, make nashta at our broken stove, put on ragged clothes, get in line for the bus, where we are squeezed like ants in a matchbox, and so the day goes. How can you find time for college in the midst of all this jhamela, how can you?’

‘You can’t, of course you can’t.’

Mithi Bai took giant steps inside, looking like she intended to rifle through the drawers of the lone cabinet to discover if by chance Seema’s family possessed any articles of luxury.

‘Make me some tea,’ she ordered Seema.

Mithi Bai settled on the charpoy, browsing through pictures of film stars in old magazines. ‘This one, Reema, she’s grown fat. They like plump girls in Punjab. They call it being healthy. They eat makhan and ghee and have heart attacks at forty. This body is the only one Allah has given you. If you lose an eye or a leg, can you replace it? I wanted my Rashid to be a doctor, but he would have had to go to college, which is impossible for people like us. How would he go to college to learn to cure fat film stars if he has to be jammed in the bus every day to support his poor mother and father?’

Mithi Bai was sweating as she accepted the cup of tea. ‘Turn on the fan, hai, your poor khala suffers in the heat.’ She took a big sip. ‘You make first-class tea, rich and creamy. You’d make a first-class wife. Don’t be like other college girls who give up getting married for the sake of a job. Job-shob, it’s here today, gone tomorrow, what lasts is family. When I’m old, my Rashid will be my support. He’s not one of those modern boys who abandons his parents to please his modern wife in a modern home with modern children, living so far no rickshaw can take you there.’

‘Khala, when is the Qur’an-khwani?’ Seema didn’t recite the Qur’an fluently, but she couldn’t very well admit this to Mithi Bai.

‘Don’t try to change the subject!’ Mithi Bai slapped her thigh. ‘You smart college girls, you need to be watched, otherwise you make fools out of us. I was saying, Do you know any good boys in college? You should get married the day you finish. So who is he, who are his parents, have your parents met his? I don’t abide by superstitions. If you can find a boy on your own, no need to go through matchmakers who take your money to fix you with the wrong person. Some people call me a matchmaker. That Sauda Bai in the next lane, now she’s a matchmaker. Me, I just like to bring people together. I’ve never charged a rupee for my services. So who’s the lucky boy?’

‘Khala, there’s no boy.’

‘Who do you think you’re trying to fool? I knew you when you ran around naked in the lane, floating like a duck in the flood, sharing toffee with the other kids, obeying your nice khala. You were always a sweet girl.’

Seema was thankful that Mithi Bai’s son Rashid wasn’t old enough for her. Sometimes Mithi Bai came on strong, then lapsed into melancholy. Something was not right with the stars, an ancestor had set them on the wrong path so that poverty and misery would be their lot for generations. What was the original mistake? Disloyalty to an employer or a ruler? Where had the fork in the road occurred? Mithi Bai pondered the unknowable. Today was one of her better days.

‘Friday at four sharp! Don’t forget. It’s Independence Day, so no one will have the excuse of being at work.’

At last she left and Seema locked the door. She had an hour to read before the house came alive. She set the table fan so it blew straight into her face, making herself comfortable on the charpoy Mithi Bai had just vacated. The heat of her body still warmed the sheets. Her favourite person in the whole world, Professor Ashiq Rasool of the history department at Karachi University, had loaned her a book on behind-the-scenes activity among the negotiators who had finalized the Partition, a memoir by a British diplomat, written when he was in his eighties and recalling events with an intimacy unseen in textbooks. He wrote of the foibles of men who had been elevated to gods: Jinnah, Nehru, Mountbatten, Gandhi, men who ate, slept, drank, fought, cheated, yelled and betrayed like any other men.

The hour went by quickly. She rubbed her fingers along the book’s spine, caressed the cover as if it were a kitten’s head, breathed in the smell of the paper—conjuring old ships or fortresses. It was difficult at times to understand the motives of writers, but at least they had the courage to commit their thoughts on paper. She was painfully aware of her own shyness, knowing she tried to please too much. Some ominous authority figure at the university was bound to pull her aside any day and ask her to vacate the premises for good. ‘You don’t belong here,’ she’d be warned, a lathi brandished for good measure. Hafiz was the confident one. He hadn’t read many books, but he never betrayed fear. Try as she might, she could never dispel him of the notion that she had embarked on a life of privilege. He had spoken little to her since she won the scholarship from the Basti to attend the university. Mithi Bai should be inquiring after Hafiz, not her. He was the one who needed to get married. Had Seema been more self-possessed, she would have made it her mission to fix him up with a girl from the university.

Replacing the book in her bag, she wondered if she should return it the next day, even though she hadn’t finished it. It would be an excuse to see Ashiq.

The great adventure of her life had been the secret visits to Ashiq’s flat for the last two years. She was afraid she was committing a blunder, venturing into something from which there was no return. Yet her heart no longer thumped when she arrived at his place, dressed in her nicest clothes, knowing he was aware of how good she smelled. It had become an ordinary affair, two friends chatting about books and politics, gossiping about teachers and students, venting their frustrations. Ashiq was a little older than her father, yet often behaved like a boy. It pleased Seema to be able to make him act like that. If her family ever found out, it would be the end of their trust. She told herself she hadn’t betrayed them by crossing any moral or physical boundaries. Was it so wrong to spend time with someone older who didn’t make her feel stupid, unlike silly classmates her own age who discussed nothing but cars and clothes?

Her father came in with a light rap on the door. Muhammad Khan sniffed, as though to satisfy himself that nothing was askew.

‘Seema, get me some chai.’

He liked strong milky tea with cardamom. She turned on the stove, grateful as ever for electricity. She would have a cup herself.

Muhammad stretched out where Mithi Bai had perched, kicking the magazines out of the way. He had no time for such frivolities.

He started fiddling with his foot. He had been limping for weeks, explaining that he’d slipped when he was carrying a sewing machine. But Seema’s mother refused to believe him: ‘You’re not allowed to carry a machine, that’s the job of others. Haven’t you told me the boss gets mad if he sees supervisors do the work of labourers? You never do anything the boss doesn’t want you to do.’ In turn he’d become irritated: ‘I did something to hurt it, it’s not like I was playing football.’ Every night, Seema’s mother rubbed ointment on his foot, making it smell like a dead cat.

‘Sit down, I want to talk to you,’ Muhammad said to Seema, when she kept fiddling with the stove.

‘One minute, Abba.’

They didn’t have a proper kitchen, but there was room to hang pots and pans. Intermittent water from a tap drained into a hole in the ground. Cutting and chopping had to be done on the floor. Years ago, they didn’t have these facilities. It was a miracle how her mother had cooked for them and fed them. They had a small refrigerator, but the electricity was unreliable, so it was best to finish whatever they cooked each day. The bathroom in the back, with periodic water flow, was another work in progress. Installing a private latrine had been the happiest moment of their lives, happier even than when Seema won the scholarship.

She sat across from her father, feeling sorry for his grey hair. How young and sprightly Ashiq looked by comparison! Her father never laughed anymore—only half-hearted chuckles, which quickly became muffled sobs. She wished she could hear the old laughter. People thought parents needed grandchildren to keep them young. Her father was a good-looking man with strong shoulders and back, his big dark eyes hinting at mischief. But he was getting old. While she spent many an afternoon listening to Ashiq talk about revolutions and insurgencies, her parents slaved at a garment factory where their wages barely kept up with inflation. Yet to listen to her father, their employer was the kindest man on earth, giving employees privileges other factory workers only dreamed about.

‘How was your day?’ Muhammad sipped tea as though his life depended on it.

‘Nothing new. How was yours?’

‘Tell me about yours. How were your classes, what did they teach you?’

He seemed to believe the teachers made them crouch on the floor with slates and chalk and write the same sentence a hundred times. It was her duty to oblige him with a detailed account on days when he wasn’t tired. She made up a good story, telling him about how she went from class to class, making the professors sound exciting like film stars when they were really more like forgettable technicians; how a friend related a funny anecdote about his grandfather losing his wheelchair; how the manager of the cafeteria articulated his dark prophecy about the Afghanistan war swallowing up Pakistan; and ending with a flourish about how a friend had offered her a ride home in her car.

‘Did you go with her?’

Seema hesitated. No such friend existed. It hurt her when at the end of the day clusters of girls dispersed, laughing at the cosmic joke only they understood, in shiny black cars that kicked up trails of dust. ‘I prefer the bus.’

‘Why not ride in the car?’

‘I didn’t feel like it.’

‘You take things too seriously, Seema. The friends you make now will shape your future. You shouldn’t spend all your time cooped up in the library ruining your eyes. I can already see dark circles.’

Seema’s mother arrived, rescuing her from further dissemblance. Her parents came and went separately because her mother’s schedule at the factory started later. Aisha Khan always looked energized upon returning from work, as though she’d just consumed a hearty meal of saffron rice and meat instead of bending over a sewing machine for eight hours. She was stout and healthy in a way that Seema, reluctant to eat, could never be; she looked like she could fight off a band of goondas single-handedly, with time to spare for a film magazine as she waited for the police to arrest the tied-up ruffians. She looked like a mother should, capable and efficient, never at a loss for words, aware of the mysterious remedies known to women in league against conspiring doctors everywhere. She was forty-five, like her husband, but vigorous and firm, and she never asked Seema to recite the goings-on at the university.

The kitchen was soon in a state of frenzy. Aisha had bought vegetables on her way home. At closing time the sellers at the bazaar in the Basti gave away the day’s remainders for very little. Aisha whipped up a quick curry with cauliflower and peas, while Seema warmed up wheat rotis from the day before. Muhammad did nothing, neither dozed nor read. Unlike most people in the Basti, they didn’t have satellite television. Her father didn’t like to watch television because the news gave him nightmares.

‘Where’s that boy, late as always!’ Aisha slapped the stove. ‘We’ll eat by ourselves if he isn’t home soon.’

When Hafiz arrived, he had a lost look on his face. Something had happened, someone had taunted him or he’d taken a joke too seriously.

‘Why are you late?’ Aisha asked, thwacking Hafiz’s back to dislodge the dust.

‘Someone almost died at the godown today.’ Hafiz took off his shoes and rubbed his feet. ‘Fell off the ladder and deserved to. The show-off had been asking for it. You don’t feel sorry when something bad happens to someone so stupid. It serves him right that he almost broke his neck.’

They expressed various degrees of shock but couldn’t understand why Hafiz had to be dragged to the hospital. Civil Hospital was no picnic, and they voted for Abdul Haq, the cantankerous godown supervisor, to be shipped off to one of the mental asylums which were cropping up all over town with as much frequency as Internet cafes and yoga studios.

While their parents rehashed their grievance over Civil Hospital killing the tubercular uncle, Seema’s eyes met Hafiz’s. Family outings had become fraught because, more likely than not, someone would recognize her and offer their best wishes for her future while completely ignoring Hafiz. She saw how that hurt him; she also saw deception and a longing in his eyes that she didn’t like, and wondered if he saw the same in her.

Later that night, when the taps went dry, Hafiz went outside to the public water pump to fill the buckets. The water pump, which drew from a different supply line, always flowed.

Seema followed Hafiz outside. The Basti was dark and quiet, and even the cats and dogs had become ghosts. In the shadows, Hafiz stooped like a butcher at work, his shoulders massive and threatening.

‘What are you doing here?’ He kicked at a stone. ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed? Tough day ahead at the university, you need your rest.’

Seema ignored his barb. ‘Are you in trouble at work?’

Hafiz didn’t say anything.

‘Is someone bothering you? If it’s something terrible, you should tell Majid.’

‘What do you know about real life? You’ve never earned an honest day’s wage, you hang around with rich friends and will one day work in an office. You’re wise enough to give me advice?’

He was right, she didn’t know. Helpless, she started walking back to the house.

When she turned around, it looked like Hafiz was waving at her and getting ready to apologize. But he was only stretching his limbs.

A stone whizzed past Claire’s ear.

She buckled, the fall broken by her arms thrusting against the hard brown earth. The probable culprit, a boy wearing only knickers, fled around the corner. The stone was big, it could have killed her.

An old man with black teeth languished on a doorstep, his loins nearly exposed in a lungi. He laughed, exposing the dark hollow of his mouth. ‘Bhago, behenji, bhago!’ Run, sister, run.

Two tall men holding hands passed by as she scraped off the dirt. They made no effort to help. Her scarf was askew, so she straightened it. Dyeing her blonde hair had been an early concession she’d made to avoid trouble.

What next, gangs pursuing her? Her feet had already acquired blisters from treading the stony earth. She’d tried wearing thick sneakers, but they were a distraction during interviews. People wondered why a woman would wear sporty shoes with shalwar kameez. She knew the Basti’s people didn’t always trust her. This was the hardest part of fieldwork, as she established the ground rules, figured out whom she was working with.

She’d spent weeks criss-crossing the Basti’s lanes to map out the demographics, assessing population distribution among its different sectors, from the shacks on the swampy borders to the solidly built houses in the elevated centre. The Basti was bound by creeks on two sides, busy commercial roads on the other two. Her best guess was that about half a million people lived in these seven square miles, which would make it fairly large among Karachi’s katchi abadis.

She wanted to be done with the census, but it was difficult when even personnel at the Basti’s own clinics and schools tended to be suspicious. A well-educated nurse had recently tried to trip up Claire when she explained that her previous fieldwork was in Uttar Pradesh—hence her strong grasp of Urdu.

The round-faced nurse was aghast. ‘You mean you lived in India before you came here? You’re an Indian citizen?’

‘No, I’m an American citizen, I only visited India.’

‘You must have been paid well by the Indian government.’

‘The Indian government didn’t pay me, they had nothing to do with my work.’

‘Then who pays you?’

‘My university in America. They pay my salary.’

‘You’re earning wages while you live in the Basti for a year?’

‘Of course.’

‘You won’t be teaching, you’ll be living among us, yet you’ll get a salary.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to explain.’

‘Then you don’t work for the American government.’

‘The government has nothing to do with my work.’

‘It’s your hobby?’

‘It’s my work. I spend time with different people and learn how they live. Then I carry home that information.’

‘People in America want to know how we live?’

‘Some do, yes.’

‘Why would anyone be interested in us?’

‘People are curious.’

‘You mean your government? They pay you well?’

Only a fool tried to explain things rationally in Pakistan. The smarter approach was to establish an intuitive relationship, find some common ground. A child you could fawn over. Sewage, water, electricity. The price of food. Nothing abstract or philosophical, not at the getting-to-know-each-other stage.

With time, her feet would get stronger. Her stomach already was. She could drink as much tea as she wanted. Eggs were safe and milk, boiled well, caused little discomfort. Fresh yoghurt, poured into a plastic bag by the most reputed doodhwallah in the Basti, delighted her in the