Hashim leaned back against the slimegreen wall of the Government hospital, straring blankly at the fluids flowing through the various IV-lines hooked up to his brother’s battered body, and this one line kept looping inside his head: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!”
He’d been trying and trying to remember where he’d heard that line. A childhood memory? For sure. A good memory, too. A happy one. And it sounded so… familiar. If his brother could speak right now, this may well be the first thing he would say to Hashim.
“Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into, bhai jaan!”
And Hashim had to admit that he would have a point. After all, whatever the state of the cause-and-effect cycle in the broader scheme of things, it was, sensu stricto, Hashim’s fault that Khadim had been present, wrongtime-wrongplace, at the site of the blast. “Hashim bachha, we’re out of Marmite,” Ammi-ji had said. “Meri jaan, zara run down to Agha’s na, and get me small pot. Your father will be back from office soon.”
Hashim’s father had, post-Ramzan, taken to munching slices of buttered and Marmited bread with his post-office pre-dinner tea. Before that it had been buttered-scones-ooh-la-la, lathered with homemade raspberry jam and – before that – any one of Ammi-ji’s world-famous mixed-fruit chutneys with roghni roti. Ammi-ji was an enthusiastic preserver. Of jams and pickles and unhappy memories. And of the fragile sanity of a family loosely bound together by the tightest of lips.
Abba’s most notorious evening snack, the one they all remembered with wrinkled noses and wry smiles, had been sevruga caviar on melba toast. That menu item had lasted just three days (thank God). That is, for as long as the solitary tin presented to him with much fanfare by Basit Uncle on his return from Baku had lasted. Abba had offered to share it with them, but all had politely declined. “Heh, so much more for me then,” he had smiled, before gingerly taking a bite.
Ammi-ji later told Hashim and Khadim that Abba couldn’t really stand the stuff, and only ate it cos that’s what sophisticated English pipples ate, y’know, y’know. And so he could brag about it at the Marine Club, or whenever he met Basit Uncle and his cronies at some high-funty shaadi or other. “I’m telling you,” she had smiled, “your Abba heaved a sigh of relief when that foul stuff finally finished.”
“Ammi-ji! Do I have to go?” said Hashim. “Let Khadim go, na? He won’t mind. You know he needs any excuse to drive the car, and it’s not like he won’t be able to find Marmite.” This approach always worked, cos Ammi-ji could never resist an opportunity for her twee li’l Khadim jaan to show how independent and reliable he was, the “mmm-waaaaah, schweety-pie.”
Thus Khadim was despatched to procure Abba’s tea-time condiment, which shouldn’t have taken him more than half an hour or so. Abba came home an hour later and there was no sign of Khadim. When he discovered that his Marmite hadn’t arrived he threw a right old fit.
“Aray, why did you have to send that good-for-nothing lafanga?” he asked Ammi-ji. He pointed a finger at Hashim. “Why not this good-for-something fellow? Voh moti-choor ka luddoo hai na tumhara, must be leaning against some greasy pillar eyeing all the fat-bottomed chhokris.” He turned to Hashim. “Call the bugger on his mobile.” But the line was engaged.
“Uffo! Kaunsi chhokri hai this time?” exclaimed Abba testily. “Jao, take my car and find the fellow. Or… no, no, just get me my bloody Marmite.”
A few minutes later an almighty bang shook the house, shattering all the upper-storey windows.
That night, all night, the media circus big-topped the blast with its customary gusto. “Karachi on fire,” was the most commonly heard phrase on tv. Fatality estimates of the many networks varied between sixty-three and seventy-nine. There were as yet no clues to the identity of the obliterated perpetrator, though at least three known terrorist groups had claimed responsibility, including the loathsome TTP. Next morning’s newspapers front-paged the story. A suicide attack of this magnitude, striking at the very heart of Burgher Central, could be said to rival the apocalyptic assault on the once-grand Marriott Hotel. At one point a baritoned anchor for an English-language tv channel referred to the crater that was once Schon Circle as “Ground Double Zero.” It wasn’t clear whether he’d come up with the line himself or had read it off the teleprompter. The phrase was not heard again, at least not in this context.
One Urdu language ’paper, after logging the names of the deceased, published a partial list of those injured in the blast. At number two hundred and forty-nine was one Qadeem [sic] Farooqi, vald Zaeem Farooqi.
* * *
After witnessing his brother’s disconnection from all the life-support gizmos and lengths of tubing, time of death having been duly noted, Hashim turned on his heels and strode out of the hospital, the sound of his mother’s funerary sobs fading away behind him. There were papers to sign, but he had told the admin types his father was around and would return at some point to sign them. Nobody asked why the father had not been present. Nobody said much of anything.
He got into Abba’s car, adjusted the rear-view mirror, the electrically-operated wing-mirrors. Strapped on his seat belt. Lit a cigarette. Cranked the engine. Took a long, deep drag and slammed the gearshift into drive, fishtailing out of the parking lot. His face, which had been the consistency of putty in the hospital, had set to granite. Only his blazing eyes betrayed any sense of purpose. And his hands – gripping the steering wheel so hard the knuckles were turning green.
Avoiding known bottlenecks, he arrived at his destination not long afterwards, screeching to a halt alongside the boundary wall of a not entirely modest house. Its ornate, though rusting gates, unlike almost any house in Karachi, stood wide open. Inside, on the wide, neatly tiled driveway, stood a dark-blue fin de siècle Honda Civic and a coffee-coloured Cadillac of Ayubian vintage. Both looked well-maintained. To one corner, amidst a clutter of parts and tools strewn around, stood a partly dismantled, partially mantled motorbike, as unHarleylike as one could ever wish for, hallelujah. Hashim called it The Workshop That Jackshit Built.
