Kartography

. .

Karachi’s air was heavy. I could feel it press down on me as I alighted on to the platform, and I had to open my mouth and imagine there was a Hoover in my lungs in order to inhale the amount of oxygen that had flowed through my nasal passages with one swift sniff in the rural atmosphere of Rahim Yar Khan. So the way we breathe is habit, I thought, and paused to wonder what was not habit. What, in my life, would I never forget, never unlearn, never attempt to do without?

‘Home,’ Karim said, jumping out of the compartment doorway with no regard for the steps.

When we were children, Karim always disregarded steps, or disregarded as many of them as he could. He leapt through the world, and not always cleanly. There were twisted ankles, bruised knees and, once, exposed bone, but none of these deterred him from throwing himself at the wind. When I try to understand how memories happen, Karim’s leaps confound me. By which I mean, I ca

And, yes, I know how he looked jumping on to the platform at thirteen. Not beautiful, though the notion of a leaping boy is beautiful. Some growth that still hadn’t earned the right to be called a moustache had started to occupy the place between his nose and lip; his face and stomach still clung on to the previous year’s puppy fat but his limbs were begi

Except Zia, you might expect me to say.

I keep forgetting how crazy I was about him then. I forget that, and I remember other things which surely can’t be real memories. For instance, the drive home from the train station. I seem to think I remember Karim looking out of the window as we snaked through the congested parts of Karachi with its colourful buses maniacally racing one another, men selling fruit and vegetables from wooden carts on the side of the road, deformed beggars dextrously making their way through traffic, laundry flapping from washing lines on the latticed balconies of low-rise apartment buildings. But I can’t really remember that, can I, because even if Karim had already started imagining what it would be like to be a stranger in Karachi, even if he were jumping ahead of his own life and seeing the city with the eyes of someone who views Karachi as contrast rather than norm, I had no inkling of it at all. And so I would not have paid any attention to buses or beggars or balconies, and I would not have paid any attention to Karim paying attention to them. I would, I’m quite sure, have been thinking of Zia instead.

He was waiting for us at my house, when Uncle Ali’s driver dropped me off. Something wobbly happened to my knees when I saw his car parked outside. He was waiting at my house, not Karim’s. He was waiting for me.

‘Oh yes, I forgot to tell you. Zia’s whisking the two of you off for breakfast. I told him we’d stop at your house first, Raheen, on our way back from the train station. I’ll call your parents at work and tell them we’ve arrived safely. But promise you won’t go too far away. Things have got better, but they’re not OK yet.’

Karim and Zia greeted each other with whoops of delight and high-fives while I struggled to pull my suitcase out of the trunk of the car. Uncle Ali rolled down his car window and yelled at the boys and they both came ru

‘Zia, I’ll take that inside. I need to use the Louvre in any case.’ Karim took the suitcase and disappeared indoors, and I was left alone with Zia.

‘Hi, Raheen. Suno, if you want to take a shower or something before we go for halva puri, no problem. Karim and I can hang about for a few minutes.’

I looked down at my crumpled shirt and the caked farm mud that clung to the hem of my jeans.

Zia laughed. ‘No, I don’t mean you look as though you need to. You look fine. Really good, in fact. Your parents are at work, aren’t they?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, a voice in my head shouting ohmygodohmygodohmygod. ‘Why?’

He pulled a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket of his denim jacket. ‘Don’t want them to see me smoking.’

I watched him unwrap the cellophane sheath, flip the packet open with his thumb and turn one cigarette upside down in the pack, for good luck. He took a box of matches out of his pocket, attempted to strike the flint against his shoe, and then realized he was wearing sneakers. He gri

‘Vole,’ I said. ‘Damn vole.’

‘Huh?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Karim, our friend’s gone mad,’ Zia shouted over my shoulder. ‘She’s talking about voles.’

‘Get in the car and drive, Zia.’ Karim came up to me and brought his fist down on my shoulder. ‘Vole, huh? I thought you’d say “I rush cats”.’

It’s a crush? Lord, no, I thought. If it’s a crush and nothing more, what must love feel like?

‘So are we picking up Sonia?’ I got into the passenger seat and passed a bunch of tapes back to Karim. He rejected tapes labelled ‘Grooooves’, ‘Selexions’ and ‘Mewzic Micks’ in favour of one marked ‘Vybs’.

Zia snorted. ‘Her father’s gone mad. Won’t let her out of the house because he knows someone who died recently in Korangi or Orangi or some such area, and that’s made him completely paranoid about his darling daughter’s safety.’

‘It’s not that absurd, Zia,’ Karim said. ‘I mean, our parents made us leave the city, and they don’t even know anyone directly affected by what happened.’