The Scatter Here Is Too Great Read online

  DEDICATION

  FOR AMMA, ZAIN, AMNA

  FOR YOUR PRAYERS, LOVE AND SUPPORT:

  I OWE YOU EVERYTHING

  EPIGRAPH

  We are continually living a solution to problems that reflection cannot hope to solve.

  —VAN DEN BERG

  Bashō told Rensetsu to avoid sensational materials.

  If the horror of the world were the truth of the world, he said, there would be no one to say it and no one to say it to.

  I think he recommended describing the slightly frenzied swarming of insects near a waterfall.

  —ROBERT HASS,

  “WINGED AND ACID DARK”

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  A Writer in the City

  Blackboards

  Sukhansaz

  After That, We Are Ignorant

  To Live

  Lying Low

  A Writer in the City

  The Truants

  Sadeq

  Turning to Stones

  Good Days

  The World Doesn’t End

  A Writer in the City

  Things and Reasons

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  THE SCATTER HERE IS TOO GREAT

  Ever seen a bullet-smashed windscreen? The hole at the center throws a sharp clean web around itself and becomes crowded with tiny crystals. That’s the metaphor for my world, this city: broken, beautiful, and born of tremendous violence.

  One way to give you this account is to “name the streets and number the dead.” Another is to give you this scatter I have gathered: to make sense of things, go beyond appearances, read the crystal design on the broken screen.

  My mind is a stiff skein of voices. I will yank out the threads and find the edges.

  Listen.

  A Writer in the City

  Blackboards

  I have protruding teeth and because of this everyone at school called me parrot, parrot. One day I beat up this one boy who called me parrot, parrot even though I did not say anything to him. He had short brown hair. I caught him by his hair and then I beat him. But I did not know I said bad words to him and his father and his sister too. This happens when I am angry. One of the other boys later told me I used the sister-word to abuse that boy-with-brown-hair, his father, and his sister. He said that I said bhenchod to him. It is not a word I would say. Not to his father. But everyone says that I said this word. Everyone cannot lie.

  My teacher called Baba to school. Baba did not believe that I knew the words my teacher said I used when abusing her and the boy. She said I abused her when she was trying to pull me away from the boy. I had pulled him down with his hair and climbed on his chest and slapped his face many times. In return, he scratched my face with his nails. I remember all this but not the swearing.

  At first, Baba doubted the teacher, but when other people also told him that they heard me abusing, he was angry and stopped talking to me. I said sorry, sorry to him so many times, but he would not say anything or even look at me. Then I became angry and started to cry. And I shouted at him as well. My sister and mother were very scared when I was shouting at Baba. My mother was eating when I was shouting; she stopped chewing her food and just kept looking at me. I saw her looking but I only knew I was angry and I was crying. I did not know what I was saying. Amma beat me with the big steel spoon for getting angry at Baba. Also because I shouted at him. She had bought this spoon from the bazaar two days back and it was dipped in the curry bowl. When Amma hit me, it was hot and I could smell the curry on my hand all night. But I was already crying so her beating did not do anything to me. There were red marks on my arms later. But I am strong. After that everyone became quiet. I was sitting alone on the sofa. My mother took my sister in a corner and told her to make me eat food because I had not eaten. They thought I did not know what they talked about in the corner. But I know. My sister came with the food. She fed me food with her hands, and she told me that I should say sorry to Baba.

  I apologized but nothing really happened. He kept quiet. He said to Amma, “I do not know where he learned this language. He is so small.”

  Baba had two jobs. He worked in an office and he wrote little books of stories. He said he wrote them for kids like me. I told him I was not a little kid. He read me all his stories. They were in little eight-anna books and they were all about brave people who fought bad people.

  Very few people at school fight. But that is because no one calls them parrot, parrot. Soon I left that school. Not only because of fights but because Amma said it had a bad environment. Then Baba started to teach me. He taught me everything in stories. He showed how all numbers were animals and you have to watch them do things and say what has happened to them at the end of the story: plus means animals gather together. Minus means they leave each other. Multiply and divide happen when there are different types of animals. It’s easy: 4 x 2 means there are 4, 4 animals of 2 kinds, like 4 sheep and 4 cows, and together they are 8. And divide happens when you have to find out how many groups are there of each one of them.

  At school I had problems learning spellings and tables. Baba taught me about the blackboard we have in our minds, and we can use it to draw in our heads with colored chalks. I used to close my eyes and draw on the blackboard. And whenever I wanted to remember spellings, I copied them from the blackboard. After that I did not find it difficult to remember things. I even drew things on the blackboard when I went to sleep at night.

  I taught Baba to draw on the blackboard also. When he came back from the office, I took off his glasses, sat on his stomach, and then we closed our eyes. Initially, Baba drew only sceneries: one house and one sun and six hills. But then I explained to him that we had a big board, and we could draw anything, with any color. So then we drew Pakistan’s flag. I drew small flags, I liked them. Baba said his flags were large. While drawing I would sometimes forget what I was drawing and listen to the chalk’s sounds—tak-takka-tak-tak and sss-hisssss. But I did not tell Baba this. I knew he would not understand. I just told him to make things: fish, grass, stars (they were the easiest), a big-size sun. I would always make three suns: one sun for the morning, one for the evening, and one for the night. Whatever scenery I made, I had a sun there. I liked the sun. Sun contains light in it. I liked the bulb as well. Lightbulbs are suns. Small suns. But I like the big sun that no one can turn off. Sometimes, I would just tell Baba to fill his blackboard with light. We did this with yellow chalk. Then one day, just like that, Baba and I started drawing cars and big houses, with big terraces. We chose different colors for rooms and cars. And then, when we finished drawing, we would tell each other what our cars looked like, what the shape of the windows was, what all we could see outside, what color the floors in the house were. I always told Baba about my drawing first because if he told me his I would forget mine.

  After I finished my homework, Baba told me stories from storybooks he brought from his office. My favorite story was a story Baba wrote himself. It was about a brave little blue fish who was a boy like me and who lived in a pond and goes to the big river and meets other big fish and helps them. It is a story about being brave and always saying the truth. After reading the stories, Baba smoked his special tobacco, which made hot white smoke, and then with the smoke and his fingers made animals in the stories—little ducks, sparrows, eels, snakes, other fish. It sometimes made him cough a lot and Amma said it was bad for him and I should not make Baba do things that were bad for him.

  I also left school because we had become poor. Baba lost his job at the office where they printed children storybooks. My father wr
ote some of those storybooks, like the story of the blue fish. And the new job was not good. The old uncle Baba worked for was shot while walking out of a bank. Two people on a motorcycle tried to snatch his money. When he refused, they shot him. After that, uncle’s brother took over the business. But he did not like Baba because Baba always spoke the truth.

  One night I heard Baba saying to Amma, “I don’t think they are happy with me. I had a fight today as well. No, they did not say anything. I just don’t like to fight the family I have worked for all my life. His brother and his family have been our guardians for the past eight years. But if they want to change their ways, I don’t know how I will get along.” Amma was quiet. Everyone was sleeping. They were talking in the dark in low voices. My sister was sleeping, but I was awake. Baba and Amma talked every night like this. Baba said little and then Amma said little. And then they would turn quiet. And then they would say little, little things again and again. And then everyone would go to sleep.

  On the day I shouted at Baba, he was completely quiet that night. Amma said, “He is so small. He will learn.” Then she went silent for some time. I thought they were asleep. She spoke again, “Someone must have taught him at school.” I heard her hand rubbing Baba’s chest. “You must not worry so much about him. He is so small.” Usually they laughed lightly when they talked about me. They would just laugh lightly. But that day Baba was not saying anything to Amma. Just like he was not saying anything to me. I heard him breathe. He said, “I think we will have to take him out of school. I don’t think I will have this job for too long.”

  I felt Baba was drawing a night on his blackboard; a night with a lot of rain and the wet lights of cars, but no sun.

  Before we were poor, we used to go out to some nice place to eat every week. I liked that place along the sea where I had spicy barbecue chicken. My chicken piece was so spicy that I used to get tears. But then we became poor. But Amma tells me I should not say we are poor. After all, we have enough to eat and drink, and have a place to sleep and we are better than millions. So one day when I started crying, Baba told me, “Don’t cry, don’t cry. Let us go to the sea on the bus.” I had not been on the bus before, so I was happy and wanted to go with Baba. Baba says that it is one and the same sea everywhere around the world, but he also says there are only very few cities that have the sea. Karachi has a sea.

  Amma made me wear my nice dress-pants and put a lot of powder on me so that I would not get skin rash from the heat.

  The bus did not stop. It moved and we had to sit in it while it was moving. Baba lifted me onto the bus, the conductor pulled me in, and then running, Baba also got onto the bus. The conductor was the last one to get in. It was dangerous. My heartbeat grew fast. At such times I do not feel good. Our doctor-uncle has told me not to play too hard, and not to fight. Because then I become ill for long. And because old uncle is not here, Baba will have to pay the doctor’s fee. Old uncle always used to pay our doctor’s bill.

  Baba paid the conductor, who had all the money in his hands. I asked Baba, “Why doesn’t the conductor keep the money in his pockets?” Baba said because there is too much of it and someone might steal it from his pocket. But why don’t people steal from his hands? Baba said because he is always watching his hands. When you don’t want your things to be stolen, you must always watch them. We were sitting at the back of the bus, and Baba was looking out of the window. The bus seats were red and looked dirty. I did not touch them but I was sitting on them. There were designs on the roof with glitter on them. I closed my eyes, opened my blackboard, and made those same designs in one of the rooms in my house. The big eagle, white horse with wings, lots of green hills, a big light pink rose in the middle of the green hills, and shining gold, red, ruby red colors surrounding them. It is difficult to make shiny things on blackboards, but I had a trick. I threw water on the chalk to make it shiny. The floor of the bus was dirty. It had greaselike things all over it. You should not draw dirty things on the blackboard.

  The man sitting next to us leaned out of the open door which is always open and spat out every few minutes. I looked away. Baba did not even notice the man, who wiped his face with his sleeve after spitting.

  The bus was going very fast and the wind blowing in from the windows was very hot. So I hid myself behind Baba. It was like being in a shadow. Shadows are empty places in things. The color of shadows is also black, which is the color of empty things. Blackboard is also black when it is empty. No one can draw shadows on blackboards because shadows keep on changing. You cannot draw changing things. But this happens, you know; you draw and you look and it has changed.

  Then a fat man without a leg got on the bus. He was even fatter than Baba. He was smiling. He got on the bus and made a joke. “Aray bhayya! Slow down! If I fall out of the bus, my wife will not wash my clothes!” Everyone smiled. The conductor also smiled. He paid the conductor in coins. The conductor gave him a discount.

  The fat man without a leg looked at me and smiled and gave me a cow-toffee. It made me think of my Comrade-uncle who also brought cow-toffees for me when he came to see Baba. Baba told Amma that he was a sad man. “He left his family and everything for his work. He keeps thinking of them but I don’t think he realizes that.” I knew he was sad because he smelled sad like tired and sweat mixed.

  The fat man without a leg was a nice man. My Comrade-uncle is also nice. He was even nicer when he lived with his family. He was tall and everyone liked him. He brought me toffees; many kinds of toffees, and biscuits. The skin under his eye is black because he fought the police. He does not say his prayers. He says there is no Allah. Many people say he is so sad and without his family because of that. He shouts at them who tell him to pray. He was not like this before. He used to smile. He is a Communist. That’s the name of people who do not pray.

  The fat man asked me my name, my school, and what I would become when I grew up. I told him I will be a pilot and fly fighter planes and fight with India. He told me that fighting is not good, and told me to fly planes to carry people from one place to another. I said but those planes do not fly fast. He said they are very fast. I said but I do not like the way they looked, like eggs. I told him I did not like egg-planes. He started laughing. His stomach moved even more than Baba’s when he laughed. His teeth were very dirty. He gave me the cow-toffee. Baba said I should thank him. Then Baba told the fat man about me. He said this boy is very naughty and loves to fight and beats his classmates. I said that is because they call me parrot, parrot.

  Then I went to sleep. Baba put his arm around me and I was in the shadow and the hot wind coming in through the door did not touch my face and I went to sleep. I woke up when someone was shouting. Three thieves had come in the bus. One of them sat next to the back door, on Baba’s side. The other was at the front door. And the third one stood in the middle with his gun. They all had shiny guns and their faces were covered with cloth, which kept falling away. (We all saw their faces. One of them had a thin mustache. The other had a thick, short beard; he was chewing the hair of his lower lip.) The one standing in the middle of the bus was shouting loudly. We were all scared. He said, “Close the windows!” One window would not close. It was stuck. The thief was shouting at the man sitting next to that window asking him to shut it. I was so scared. I thought the beard-thief would shoot this man for not shutting the window. But then he told him to leave it. He also told the conductor to close the doors.

  The bearded thief-man shouted at us, “Whatever, whatever you have, drop it on the floor in front of you. If I find anything near anyone, I swear to God, I will fire a bullet through his head without a thought.” The thief-man sitting next to us stood up and started taking everyone’s money. He took it first from Baba. I wanted to fight him. But I was scared. No one stood up to fight him.

  The thief-man who was at the front sitting with the driver said to the ladies in the front compartment: “Do not fear. You are like our mothers and sisters. We will not bother you. We do not need your mone
y.” When he said this, the fat man said, “Please let us go. Aren’t we like your brothers and fathers?” The thief thought that the fat man was trying to make fun of him. He looked at him straight in his eyes, “What did you say? Haan?” and then slapped him. It made a loud sound. He put the gun on his head, “You find this very funny, haan? Funny, haan?” And he slapped him again. Everyone turned to see the man being slapped. It was like in the class. When the teacher slapped one boy, no one spoke again.

  The thieves took all the money but kept riding the bus with us. They took the money from the conductor. The conductor was watching his notes when the thief took it from him. One of the thieves took the money and put it in his bag. Everyone was looking at them doing this.

  Then one thief started telling the driver where to go and how to drive, when to slow down, when to drive fast. He also hit the driver once on his head; it did not make any sound. The slaps on the fat man’s face were louder. The thieves took the bus very far and after driving for a long time they told the driver to stop. And then suddenly two thieves quickly jumped out and the third thief started shouting at the bus driver and everybody else. “IF somebody steps out, we’ll shoot straight in their head. NOBODY comes after us NOBODY. UNDERSTAND?” When he shouted like that I hid my face under Baba’s arm.

  The bus driver then drove so fast and everyone on the bus stayed quiet because we were all afraid that the thief who was shouting might shoot us from behind the bus.

  The bus driver stopped the bus at the sea, and said it would not go any farther. “Get on other buses if you want to go anywhere.” Everyone suddenly became angry. They started to fight with him because thieves had taken their money.

  Baba and I got off at the sea. The fat man without a leg was also going to the sea. He was not smiling now. His face was red. Baba had a secret pocket in his shalwar where he always hid some money. He gave a few notes to the fat man. Then he took me to the sea.