Austenistan Page 11

I didn’t get the time to think about any of it for the rest of the day as my schedule was so heavy this semester that I had to half-jog towards my undergrad class a few blocks away from my office to make it on time.

  The weather was beautiful – a light breeze and and a grey, overcast sky thick with clouds. Lahore lapped up the last dregs of the monsoons before the onset of winter.

  I’d been at the Lahore School of Media Studies for two years now and though it was hard work I loved it. Teaching hadn’t always been the plan, I’d had some rather grand hopes about hosting an art and culture show for television. But then came a combination of me not making the cut and also the revelation that people who watch TV aren’t actually that interested in the arts.

  Initially I’d hated the long commute to the suburbs. Chocolate brown cows and lethargic buffaloes grazed in fields broken up by the enormous farmhouses of Lahore’s new money.

  I was three minutes late to class. Opening the large whitewashed door set in a red brick exterior, the room was loud and noisy – clearly in overdrive. Asfandyar was intently watching me enter, his face flushed.

  Last week I’d asked the batch of thirty-three to write a few paragraphs about something that inspired them: a scene, a memory – anything, to prepare them for a bigger feature writing assignment before their mid-terms. He’d handed in a few scrawled lines, barely coherent, reflecting a complete lack of effort. I’d given him a D.

  He was giving me the stink-eye while I took attendance and immediately after, sauntered over, crackling in a very starched white shalwar kameez.

  ‘Ma’am?’ he said, waving his assignment in my face. ‘Ma’am this is a really bad grade. I didn’t deserve this.’

  ‘I think I was quite generous given your work.’

  ‘That’s not fair ma’am, I think I deserved a better grade.’

  Should I also award you a Pulitzer while I’m at it?

  I’d always had trouble with him. His father, Mian Khurshid Chaudhry, a landlord and politician, who had recently joined the ruling political party as an MNA didn’t have the cleanest reputation in town. Only a few months ago, one of his close associates had been accused of the rape of a girl who had gone missing a week after the news broke. But as was the case with most sordid scandals involving powerful perpetrators and powerless victims, news outlets conveniently forgot the story soon after.

  ‘Asfandyar,’ I said, ‘Your handwriting was unreadable, and the content suggested that you hadn’t been following the classes at all.’

  I looked down at the attendance registrar signalling the end of our tête-à-tête.

  ‘Ma’am?’ he said, coming closer, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Do you know whom my father is?’

  I sucked in my breath and held his gaze, taking in his unibrow, the landscape of his cheeks covered in a mountain range of pimples, speckled with dots of pus.

  ‘Whom? Who, you mean. You’re not being graded on who your father is, Asfandyar – back to your seat now,’ I said, looking down again.

  Asfandyar sputtered with rage and marched out of the classroom, banging the door on his way out to an assortment of gasps from the class.

  He’s not welcome in this class ever again, I thought. ‘Show’s over’ I said, trying to start the class after the dramatic distraction, as I started rigging the laptop up to the projector, partly to distract myself from the fact that I was, for all my bravado, scared.

  No point worrying, I thought. I’ll speak to the university administration when I get a chance.

  ‘Ok class’, I said, as cheerfully as I could manage, ‘I’ve got something interesting to discuss with you today!’ lining up the sickening clip of a TV anchor raiding a park looking for young people trying to hook up, as is normal and healthy. There’ll be no shortage of things to discuss in class today!

  ###

  Sobia was sitting upstairs in a corner at The Deli. She was hunched over typing something out on her phone with a look of great concentration on her face.

  ‘I almost didn’t recognise you without the five pounds of jewellery.’ I said, smiling.

  Sobia jumped up and gave me a tight hug.

  ‘Okay woman, what the hell is going on? You had me worried on the phone.’ I flagged down a waiter and we got ordering out of the way. ‘Now,’ I said, taking a quick look at the largely empty tables around us to make sure we had sufficient privacy, ‘Talk.’

  She steepled her fingers and looked at me, clearly dreading the conversation. Dressed in skinny white jeans, and an apple green kurta with a gold choker against her pale skin, she looked almost adolescent for a twenty-four-year-old.

  ‘Please don’t share what I’m about to tell you with anyone, okay?’ she said.

  ‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘You know I won’t, what happened?’ I asked, holding her hand.

  She picked up a saltshaker and twisted it in her fingers nervously.

  ‘Here’s the thing, when Asad and I made our way back to our hotel room after the ceremony, it didn’t go as I thought it would...’

  ‘What do you mean, exactly?’ I said, with a fairly decent idea of what she meant.

  She gulped and fidgeted in her chair. ‘Once we were in bed, he turned over and that was that.’

  ‘What did you do? Did you say anything?’

  ‘Well, yes, I mean I hadn’t bought a truckload of Victoria’s Secret lingerie from Dubai for nothing,’ she laughed uneasily before continuing. ‘I stroked his back and kissed the side of his cheek. He didn’t move. I thought he was tired, you know how crazy the wedding was.’

  I nodded, thinking if he’d been tired on that one night, Sobia wouldn’t be sitting here right now, a week later, telling me about it.

  ‘But then the next night, and the night after that…’

  ‘Same thing?’ I asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘I was furious. I felt dismissed and rejected. This wasn’t the way I’d imagined marriage to be.’

  Tears began rolling down her face, I handed her a napkin. She blew her nose loudly.

  ‘I mean I’d waited for this my whole life,’ she said, ‘Always played it safe, made sure I never dated even though my friends jumped from relationship to relationship. I saved myself knowing I was going to give myself to my husband – that’s the way we’ve been raised, haven’t we, Sam?’

  Pained, I remembered Ameer, his stupid mushroom haircut and how he’d shattered my heart into a million pathetic pieces when I was Sobia’s age.

  I reached forward and held my cousin’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry Sobz, but we can sit here and make a thousand assumptions, but… look it’s only been a week, – give it a little time. Who knows what’s going on with him, maybe it’s just something that needs an adjustment period.’

  Alarm bells were clanging loudly in my mind but I tried to believe the words coming out of my mouth. Even before Sobia came to me with this awful revelation, I’d had my concerns.

  ‘Sam, it gets worse,’ she said. ‘Last night, I was crying in bed as quietly as I could, I thought he’d gone to sleep. He got up and told me to get on my knees. I was so pathetically grateful even for this… so I got on my knees and then, nothing, the bastard dry humped me with his shorts on. Then he went for a shower, came back to bed and fell asleep within ten minutes.’

  I held Sobia’s hand tightly. I had no words, just suspicions that I didn’t dare to verbalise.

  ‘He doesn’t think I’m attractive’ Sobia said, crying again. ‘Do you think he’s in love with someone else? I wonder who she is.’

  Or he, I thought, not wanting to introduce the possibility I strongly suspected.

  The scenario was all too common. Being gay carried such a stigma that even if parents allowed themselves to suspect such a thing of their child, their ‘solution’ was marriage, to hell with their lives and the lives of the poor women who never got their chance at love.

  My colleague Nafisa had gone through this. Her husband refused to consummate the marriage a good six months into their newlywed
life. And even when they did it, it was forced, brief and impersonal. He never desired her.

  It took Nafisa three years to figure out her husband swung the other way, and that too, by chance, when she stumbled on multiple gay porn websites bookmarked in her husband’s laptop. Given their conventional upbringing, and the fact that the couple had two young children, divorce wasn’t even an option.

  ‘Don’t think like that, Sobia, you know you’re a beautiful girl – you’ve had scores of proposals. You chose Asad. Now listen, you monitor this, take it a day at a time, okay?’

  She nodded, twisting the colossal rock on her finger round and round.

  What lame advice I was shovelling out to my baby cousin. But what more could I have said? File for a divorce just days into her marriage? Or in her case, an annulment?

  I was grateful for a hiatus in the conversation when the waiter arrived, bringing coffee, Caesar salad and late lunch of spicy Penne Arrabiata for me. It was a quarter past three and I swooped down gratefully on my pasta. ‘Oh by the way,’ Sobia said, sipping her coffee, ‘Asad said his friend Hashim thought you were cute.’

  With a forkful of pasta in my mouth, I half-choked, remembering the man who broke my fall at the wedding and blushing all over again.

  ###

  Mum was in the kitchen peeling a head of garlic when I got home. Her movements were slow and deliberate. I noticed for the first time that her wavy salt and pepper coloured hair was thinning from the top. I was finally beginning to accept that she was getting older and more vulnerable, that I was becoming the parent in many ways. It was a complicated thing, sometimes I resented her for needing me so much. I’d helped keep the household afloat since she walked out on my father. I’d never say it but sometimes I even blamed her for leaving him, though most of the time, I was angry that she’d spent so much time in an abusive marriage with the man.

  I kissed her cheek.

  ‘Your father’s sent you a package,’ she said, pointing to the door with her knife.

  I picked up the thick DHL envelope lying on a side table in the living room. Looking over my father’s UK return address at the back of the package, I ripped it open and pulled out a belated birthday card and a book of poetry by Nayyirah Waheed; Salt.

  The card featured two white kittens playing with a ball of wool.

  How odd, I’d thought, my father knew I hated cats. But at least he remembered I loved poetry.

  Flipping it open, there in the large, loopy handwriting of a self-absorbed man, were my father’s words:

  Dear Sam,

  Apologies for sending this to you so late but I just returned from a trip to Scotland with the Mrs. Had a dogsitter look after Fifi and Max. Anyway, Happy 33rd, kiddo! Come visit us sometime.

  Papa.

  Yeah, you fucker, like I can muster up a lakh on a teacher’s salary to fly out to see you, I thought bitterly.

  A picture of him and Rebecca slipped out from the card from their holiday. In it he looked fit, his arms toned and his skin glowing with a golden tan . He had a head full of thick white hair, his left cheek with that familiar, handsome dimple. He was a picture of contentment and had his arm draped over his young English wife’s shoulders. She was wearing a canary yellow tea dress and had been photographed in the process of tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. They both looked like they were laughing at some big, grand joke, in unison. Sparkly teeth, sunny first-world happiness.

  It felt insulting and made me feel poor.

  They’d met when my father had been working as a hotshot editor of a popular bi-monthly publication on current affairs, News Link. Rebecca had taken a trip to Pakistan to intern as a reporter and experience ‘exotic’ Pakistan while she was at it. They’d fallen in love in the newsroom during daylight hours while my father beat my mother black and blue in the evenings. I don’t think my mother would’ve had the courage to leave him if she hadn’t discovered his affair.

  I touched my father’s face with my thumb, hoping to rake up the last few dregs of love in my heart for him. But there was no trace of me in his shiny eyes, or of the life he had in Pakistan.

  I ripped up the photograph and threw it in the bin.

  ###

  Sanober, the Accounts Manager, had delayed my paycheque as usual. Since he was avoiding my calls, as was the norm in the accounts department, I walked over to their office to give him a piece of my mind one quiet afternoon when I’d stayed back late to catch up with some marking. I was walking back when I saw Asfandyar, gelled hair and glimmering Rolex, glaring at me. Looking away, I upped my pace towards the car park at the opposite end of the college compound. I glanced as casually as I could manage over my shoulder. He was still there, walking about eight feet behind me.

  I looked towards the exit gate in search of Khan Baba, our trusted security guard who was nowhere to be seen.

  I had at least spotted my car, I rummaged in my satchel for my key trying not to panic, listening to the sound of gravel crunching beneath my sandals.

  I felt a firm grip on my shoulder. Before I could turn around, I was shoved against my car door. Hitting my head on the window, I slumped to the ground.

  Looking up, my vision was filled with Asfandyar towering over me, his mouth twisted in a snarl.

  ‘Don’t you ever insult me like that again, you piece of shit!’

  With that, he brought his boot down into the side of my ribs.

  The pain was jagged and forceful; I buckled over, convulsing.

  ‘Never forget your place, you NOBODY,’ he screamed, ‘I can have you picked up, raped and torn limb from limb!’ With that, he spat on me, delivering another blow to my shoulder.

  His eyes, blazing black with hatred, reminded me of Papa barging through the house breaking vases, plates, my mother’s crystal decoration pieces; flinging them at my mother, as she cowered over me, protecting me from the blows that followed.

  All of a sudden I heard a scuffle break out; men were shouting profanities in Urdu and Punjabi, Asfandyar yelled and then came the sound of a sickening crunch. Warm blood trickled in a sliver down from a wound near my scalp and into a tiny pool in my ear. I felt fingers gently wipe my forehead as I winced.

  ‘God no, it’s you. We have to stop meeting like this.’

  Hashim held me, lifting me up carefully. A sharp pain shot across my ribcage as I tried to take a deep breath, now totally disoriented. Was I hallucinating? What was the man from Sobia’s wedding doing rescuing me in a parking lot?

  ‘Listen, let me carry you to my car, we need to get you to a doctor.’

  ‘No no, I’ll walk, don’t worry,’ I said quickly, suddenly conscious of my weight, of all ridiculous things.

  I took mincing steps to his Civic and collapsed into the passenger seat. He turned and looked at me with an expression that made me feel sheer relief.

  ‘Wait, what are you doing here?’ I asked

  ‘The Dean hired me last week as a visiting faculty member for their postgrad programme. I came to sign the contract today.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m serious,’ he looked over at me smiling, ‘I decided to quit working for Lahore Beat,’ he said, referring to a local news channel, ‘Tried to catch up with you when you left the accounts office but you were sprinting away,’ he paused, grinning. ‘Anyway enough of that, where does it hurt? Don’t worry, we’re getting you to a doctor right now.’

  With that he revved the engine and pulled out of the parking lot before I could say a word.

  ###

  I woke at noon the next day.

  Hashim had taken me home after we left the closest hospital to the campus and escorted me into the house where my mother feverishly ran to and from her bedroom checking on me and arranging extra pillows to prop me up on. Lying flat was painful.

  Luckily I just had some cuts and bruises. I was prescribed a few strong painkillers.

  Wincing, I turned over and checked my phone, remembering Hashim’s face as he’d spoken to my mother
at the front door on his way out. I was in pain and in shock from the trauma but I couldn’t help but notice how handsome Hashim was.

  My phone beeped.

  Samina, hope you’re feeling better. You’d be pleased to know that the Dean expelled Asfandyar this morning. Not that he was on campus. They’re registering an FIR against him at the police station.

  I typed out a response and added two smiley faces but then quickly deleted it. It felt silly. I decided to respond later with a clearer head.

  In his WhatsApp display picture, Hashim had his glasses propped up on his head and was squinting and smiling at a little boy in his arms. Dressed in a white onesie printed with little blue ships and anchors, the toddler had a fist full of Hashim’s right cheek in his chubby hand and was grinning a toothless baby grin back at Hashim.

  That child had to be Hashim’s nephew, or a friend’s son, I reasoned. I mean, he’d hardly go about telling Sobia he thought I was cute if he was the married father of a newborn. Right? I pressed to the edges of my consciousness the things I knew men were capable of. Turning over, I pulled the duvet over my head and closed my eyes. The room was deliciously cool as I drifted into a deep sleep.

  ###

  Two weeks after the incident, I walked into campus and was met by the Dean, my students and a stream of anxious colleagues. The Dean approved my request to be excused for the remaining duration of the term.

  Asfandyar was in hiding.

  There was talk that he’d fled to Dubai. A lawyer appointed by the college was aggressively pursuing the case. It was getting a fair amount of media attention. The hashtag #Jail4Asfandyar had been trending on Twitter.

  Since the attack, Hashim came to see me every second day. There was a hint of winter in the air. Over cups of tea, conversation was easy and silences were comforting. I found out that he loved graphic novels, had backpacked through Europe when he was eighteen, and that he was divorced. He’d fallen in love with his college sweetheart and married her soon after graduating from Cambridge. They had a son, Hamza, now four. When I probed further one evening about how often he saw his son, Hashim fell silent and then swiftly changed the topic. I made sure never to bring it up again.