By Faiqa Mansab
The invitation had been for five o’clock. But no one showed up till seven. What good was keeping time, when it kept repeating itself anyway? A decade ago, an exhibition of nude paintings wouldn’t have been nearly as crowded as Saqib’s was that day. He should consider himself lucky.
The thought was fleeting. He didn’t.
Open windows offered Saqib a clear view of the rooms belonging to the more sought after tawaifs of Heera Mandi. Several of the young girls, their long hair adorned with flowers, stood watching the estimable Lahoris in his studio, with as much fascination as was being accorded to them. The younger prostitutes had made an effort with their appearance, indicating that they entertained the wealthier, more fastidious clients. The beat of the tabla, and the sitar strain she remembered, had been replaced with upbeat Bollywood songs.
Saqib marveled at the alertness of old Iqbal, who sat like a sultan on the stone platform in front of his little dhaba. He yelled occasionally to be heard above the din, and every time he did, his voluminous belly shook with the force of his voice.
Rida, fifteen years old, and one of the youngest in her trade, smiled shyly from her window. She probably thought she was in love with him. And maybe she was. Or maybe she was looking for a father substitute and, like most women, had confused the two.
The staccato bursts of obscenities mingled with raucous laughter, blending and clashing with the soft music emanating from his mother’s old gramophone. A woman’s rich laughter drifted on the air. He didn’t recognize the retired prostitute who’d laughed.
How could a woman with the life she’d led be happy?
But then, laughter isn’t happiness. Not really.
‘The same as everyone else’s, I suppose.’Â
‘Jani, I’ve bought two already! They’ll look fabulous in the study.’
‘They’ll look fabulous in your drawing room, Niggi. The color scheme is very similar.’
‘Jani, don’t be silly, I can’t have nudes just anywhere in the house. My mother-in-law would have a heart attack.’
‘Then hang them in her room.’
The women tittered and gossiped. Men laughed and bandied with each other. Saqib chatted with those who sought him out, for pictures or to rekindle a vague acquaintance, and then he edged back towards the window.
The food street below was lively as ever. The touristy residents of Gulberg and other posh localities, sporting jeans and discomfiture, were instantly distinguishable from the regular patrons, the overweight, mustachioed men in shalwar kameez. They called the serving boys cheerfully by name, threw friendly insults at them, ensuring that they got their dinner fast. Their loquacious chatter, punctuated with laughter, was littered with inventive obscenities.
The dented, scratched, and rickety metal table before them was too small for the shallow stainless steel platters piled with mutton chops and chicken karahis . It comforted Saqib in a strange way to know that they were still using stainless steel. There was little danger that the small hands that washed them late into the night would break them.
He’d missed the aromas of cumin, mustard seeds and ginger, of sheep fat sizzling on hot coals and the occasional whiff of the garbage that somehow elbowed its way into the melee of smells. Feeling cathartic satisfaction at finding home almost exactly as he’d left it, he turned away from the window.
And Khayyam walked in with a group of her students.
She was attracted to celebrity. And he was a painter of acclaim. She’d come, as he’d known she would. His eyes were still on her when she found his, and gave him one of those warm smiles he hadn’t forgotten in ten years. She smiled as if his self-imposed exile had been nothing more than an extended holiday for kicks. And just like that, the unsettling doubts only she could trigger began to gnaw at Saqib.
She took her group of youngsters to one of his paintings and started talking to them about technique and subject. She hadn’t been much older than them when they’d first met.
‘Professor Khayyam…is it okay if we wave to those girls?’ one of her students asked, her eyes riveted on the young prostitutes across the street. It was a daring act for the over-protected girl. She was giving the gift of acknowledgement to a fallen woman, and it would make her feel good about herself. It was rather clever of him to use the neighborhood as backdrop. He owed his mystique in a large part to it, after all.
‘How old do you think those girls might be?’ Khayyam asked, as if they’d spoken only yesterday. He answered in the same vein.
‘Teenagers mostly.’
‘They look older.’
‘Because they’ve seen too much.’
‘Haven’t we all?’
After a pause, she added, ‘I took your old job at the University.’
‘You took much more than that.’
‘Gave back quite a bit too.’
They watched in silence as one of the prostitutes disappeared through a doorway with a middle aged man, who wore his guilt lightly, his desperation openly.
‘What’s his story, do you think?’
‘The same as everyone else’s, I suppose.’ Saqib contemplated saying something cutting about the past. Instead, he said, ‘My mother used to say men who come here are seeking what they’ve lost to their women.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘Their mothers emasculate them and their wives demonize them.’
She laughed, but his smile faltered as the familiar, faint murmur, the buzz that traveled with him everywhere, rose in pitch and volume – became audible. It was the echo of a whisper he’d first heard when he was five, and it had been echoing in his ears ever since.
‘His mother was a prostitute, you know. All of his paintings depict this area and these women.’
‘Seriously? How sad.’
‘Hasn’t he been in South America since, like, forever?’
‘Is she still alive? The mother, I mean?’
‘I don’t know. Why’s that important?’
‘Well…he’s so well-known and respected; I guess it would’ve made her happy.’
Youth was so romantic. Everything was a tragedy. All whores were victims, and all bastards made good. But every time Saqib heard the whispers, he heard the silence too, where the unasked, all important question resounded. Silence that was as loud to him as the voluble branding he’d received all his life. Who was his father? Or was that important, because his mother was a whore?
‘That’s a nice look for the man of the hour.’ Khayyam whispered, looking at him. Saqib made an effort to smile and said, ‘Let me show you something.’
He led her towards the back of the studio.
‘Look at you, all famous and rich!’
‘Almost famous…and not at all rich.’
Making a mocking expression of disbelief, she linked her arm through his, enjoying the envy of the other women at her familiarity with him. Then she caught sight of her portrait, and gasped.
‘Is that me?’ Abandoning him, she went to take a closer look.
Saqib watched his work with forced detachment. He’d put his dreams to sleep on canvas after canvas, crystallized in a vice of color and form. Some had emerged as twisted nightmares, others as singed vestiges of shattered hopes.
This painting was both.
Like the woman, it had exacted much from him. He’d brushed and stroked in a frenzy of ecstasy or despair, till she emerged out of its blankness in the arms of another man, a faceless lover. But those almond-shaped eyes looked towards Saqib, forever following him.
‘Well, this is a surprise.’ Khayyam’s voice was tinged with irony, ‘I’m not sure if I should thank you for…what was it you said? Putting me on display?’
Saqib realized that he was voyeur and conspirator, sinner and judge, plunderer and savior.
Still looking at her portrait, she said, ‘I might as well. So, thank you, Saqib.’
‘I think it’s one of my best.’
Most of all, perhaps, he was seeker and agnostic. Soon, she was thronged by the socialites, and everyone had something to say about her bold decision of posing nude.
Saqib wandered back to the window, once his escape into other sounds from the ones that came from his mother’s room. The low, soft speech that she only ever used with those drifting men, the tinkling laughter, or those other disturbing noises that drowned in the colorful violence of sights, smells and sounds the window offered. His intimacy with the brutality and the beauty, the crassness and the charm of this small sliver of humanity, condemned him to replicate it; or perhaps, inspired him to apotheosize it.
He saw a boy, barely ten, watching a table of feasting men with an unwavering gaze. The boy shifted between two pillars outside the awning of the ramshackle restaurant. His clothes were torn at places, stained, dirty, and despite the cold, he didn’t wear anything warm. Saqib didn’t have to look to know that the boy wore no shoes either. The boy swallowed as his mouth watered. One of the men at the table, sporting one of the lushest mustaches he’d seen in a while, gold chains and rings glinting in the light of naked bulbs, noticed the boy. The man muttered to his companions. They laughed. With his eyes still on the boy, the man picked up a chop, took quick bites to leave as little meat as possible on the bone, and then flung it across. The boy darted forward. A stray cat too, sprang at the discarded bone with a yowl. The men laughed when they saw the boy wrestle over the bone with the cat.
Scratched and triumphant, the boy gnawed at the bone hungrily. He didn’t hear the laughter of those men. He didn’t see the glances of pity. Nothing existed but the scraps won in a battle he’d have forgotten by morning because it wasn’t unfamiliar or remarkable. A cat today, a boy tomorrow, maybe a shadow in the thick of night…every day was a different battle, and who knew how many scars he’d have until finally, he’d be stripped of anything remotely childlike long before he ceased to be a child.
People began to leave in twos and threes – some with his paintings. But even as something inside him swelled with satisfaction at the recognition, he wanted to snatch the canvases back. This was like giving bits of himself to strangers. This was a violation.
By the time he’d seen the last of the people out, only Khayyam and some of her students were left. She was standing before one of the nudes he’d done of an ageing prostitute, who’d been kind to him growing up. He’d captured her like she was, hanging flesh, wrinkles, misery and all. But he’d also managed to transfuse some measure of that indefatigable, fierce spirit that hadn’t cowed before Time or Life.
‘This is magnificent Saqib.’
‘She was magnificent.’
‘Professor Khayyam?’ One of her students came forward, looking worried. ‘It’s getting really late. I told my father I’d be back by twelve.’
Saqib nearly laughed out loud. Middle class girls were still keeping Cinderella-time. Apparently, parents continued to believe their daughters were more liable to fall victim to their baser desires after the clock struck twelve. Perhaps they thought the boys they were with would turn into humping frogs after midnight. Or was it that the frogs would turn into men, at their daughters’ expense? Not that he blamed them. That was the first thing he’d done every chance he’d gotten.
Khayyam nodded at the girl and looked at him, almost apologetically.
‘Well…’
It was unlike her to be unsure. His own regret was sharp, and unexpectedly, held a trace of panic. She confounded him the same way his birthplace did. He could never determine what drained him more, his love for them, this woman and this city, or that terrible anger they induced in him. They held him captive, but neither his love nor paint was enough to hold them. They eluded him, his vision, and his dreams, mocking his desire to claim, or own them.
Khayyam walked away with her students without a backward glance.
For a long time he stood listening to her footsteps dying away on the stone stairs and into the still cold night. He remained standing there, listening expectantly, until his ears began to ring with the silence.
He returned to the window. Maybe he’d still be able to catch a glimpse of her.
The boy lay curled up in a corner with a skinny dog. Two strays…no, three, if he were to count himself, the eternal stray. Some prostitutes, older, less attractive, were now combing their hair, perched on the window sills, eyeing the few stragglers, who were still eating kebabs and tikkas and enjoying the dangerous aftereffects of homemade liquor, which could just as easily kill as intoxicate.
The wood paneled windows began to close one by one, as if the city were shutting him out. The metallic smell of cold hung in the air. The street had disgorged its human burden back into the holes they’d crawled out of, or into the welcoming arms of the women who provided a simulacrum of love.
The boy stirred in his sleep. He shivered and snuggled closer to the skinny, mangy dog. The street was almost empty now, except for the drug addicts, who slept on the pavement every night with other homeless men and women. These women were like animals, mounted and slaughtered at will. These streets had seen so many newborns in its refuse bins, or abandoned in plastic bags where hungry dogs found them. No one commented on it any more. Those who survived lived to die another day.
In the stillness of the night, the sound of footsteps echoed on the stone stairs that led up to his studio and his rooms. The small leap of his heart, the ripple of relief that increased with each footfall getting closer, pushed back the fears and doubts. He turned. She appeared in the shadowed doorway, not shy or hesitant, but glorious and challenging, intimidating him with her fearlessness, so that he snapped at her.
‘Are you sure this time, Khayyam?’
She laughed.
‘You asked me that the first time you found me here too, when I was all of twenty. Maybe I should tell you I’m always sure, or perhaps that I’m never sure of anything.’
A drunken man’s voice rang out, a snatch of a song, a shout – Motherfucker! Laughter. She came and stood by him, put her head on his shoulder. Together, they looked out into the night.
Saqib’s eyes closed for a moment, perhaps in prayer, or gratitude – if agnostics prayed, he gave thanks. He turned towards Khayyam, took her face in his hands, blocking out the other images, all other images. He ran his fingers through her short cap of glossy hair. His hands still remembered the silken feel of it, even after ten years…
His hands dropped to his sides.
‘Khayyam, it’s been a long time. Do you really…’
She tossed her head and muttered, ‘Don’t, Saqib.’ Her breath held a trace of tobacco and smoke.
And Saqib had a sudden, brief recollection of the bitter, smoky taste of it on his tongue. And then her breath dissipated into the air and he lost it.
‘Where’s the alcohol?’ She asked.
‘You know where it is.’
She went to the little cupboard at the far end of the room. Neither of them had forgotten anything it seemed. They slipped back into old habits they hadn’t practiced together in years.
She poured them both a drink and caught him watching her.
‘I was hoping you’d have learned to respect women and their wishes by now, Saqib. I don’t think I could stomach one of your moods just yet.’
‘I’m the last man to not respect women, Khayyam. Your idea of respect is quite warped, you know.’
She smirked.
‘You think doing the “right thing†and “protecting†women is respecting them. That’s not true. It’s romantic and suffocating.’
‘And you think I haven’t changed? What made you come here tonight?’
She shrugged and sipped her drink.
‘Nostalgia. You. I heard you’d come back, but I wasn’t sure if you were ready to see me after…what happened. But I came nonetheless. I had to see you.’
He laughed.
‘After what happened? You mean how you used me as the catalyst for your rebellion and then cast me aside? I often wonder why you chose me for that particular role…was it the romance of my family tree?’
‘I didn’t cast you aside, Saqib. You tried to put labels where none were required.’
Saqib took the glass she offered.
Maybe she was right, maybe he couldn’t respect women. How could he, growing up the way he had? A woman’s body was both sacred and profane, and Khayyam had given herself to him so easily, as if it didn’t matter. And maybe to her, it didn’t, because he’d expected her to at least try and blackmail him into marriage. She hadn’t. And that had shocked him, maybe even disillusioned him a little.
Her eyes, full of mirth, held his, as if she knew all of his fearful doubts, and found them laughable. Time is a great healer, it was said. Time could also be irrelevant. Time could inflict more wounds, even as it healed the old ones. And now, Khayyam standing so close, her face lifted to his, her hands on his chest, almost made him forget the lapse of Time.
She’d walked back into his studio of her own free will. She liked the celebrity attached to him now. She’d laid claim to it all evening. Her answer could be different this time.
And so later, when they lay together, limbs and hands entwined, feeling secure and content, he said, ‘I have a small flat in Rio. It’s in a part of the city that’s quite similar to home. The vibrant chaos, the smells, the noise…Often I used to think, if Khayyam were here, I’d show her this or that.’
He kissed the top of her head and said, ‘You’ll like it there. Maybe you’ll start painting again.’
She clucked her tongue against her teeth, in irritation.
‘Please tell me you’re inviting me for a holiday, and this isn’t going where I think it is?’
It was so unlike her to be coy. But he said what she needed to hear, ‘I think you know exactly where this is going. Why else would you be here after all this time?’
‘Ten years, Saqib! It’s been ten bloody years. Grow up, move on.’
She turned away from him.
‘Like all men, you have a Pygmalion complex, and that’s just too boring for words. And you know what? I don’t even think it’s me you want. It’s not my past that you want to rewrite, Saqib.’
He laughed and the sound resonated in the hollowness of the night, and he almost remembered something…or someone. But it evaded him, and he had to make her understand.
‘You don’t have to marry me at once, just come with me.’
She lit a cigarette and said, ‘I don’t know what it is you keep looking for. What do you expect to see, Saqib, a whore in every woman, or a mother in every whore? The painter in you knows me better than you do. And it was always the painter I couldn’t resist…even if he chose to put me amongst his whores.’
The night was very still. The smoke curled from the end of her cigarette, and the burning, woody smell of it permeated the room. She wasn’t looking at him, but staring out through the open door of his bedroom at her own portrait that was dimly discernible in the distance. Saqib knew, even as he heard them, that her words would replace that old echo he’d lived with for the major part of his life. These were the words he’d hear for the rest of his life.
Faiqa Mansab is currently doing her MFA in Creative Writing from Kingston University London. She has published two novellas with Indireads, an e-publishing venture. Faiqa is currently working on a novel.
