The Centre(11)
Sometimes, it felt like, at the core of it, I was still yearning for those ten blissful months when the two of us had shared a body, before I was shocked by the cold and the distance after being yanked out of her. I chided myself for longing, even in my midthirties, for this imaginary, perhaps idealized, maternal love. But whatever. Broken heart emoji. Truth is, this wasn’t always the case. Because when Amma was really with me, when we were both able to meet with open and happy hearts, she was fucking extraordinary. And during that trip with Adam, we often met that way. Partly because Adam had neutralized our tension, as I knew he would—we were always nicer around guests, had fewer expectations of each other and somewhere else to focus our energy. Also, Amma was excited at the prospect of my finally bringing a man home. It was the first time I’d done so. Not because I was more in love with him than the others but because I thought it was about time that I broke with the old rules. When I was younger, I hadn’t even been allowed to speak to boys, and the idea of sex before marriage had been absolutely taboo. I’d explained this to Adam once, telling him about how my nani had told me that an unrelated man and woman can’t, like, literally physically cannot, be in a room alone together because the moment they are, then pop! A third being appears. It is Shaitaan, coming to join them.
“She made me feel as if boys were only interested in one thing,” I’d confided in him.
“Imagine if she knew that, actually, you were the one only interested in that one thing,” he joked, which, admittedly, I found both highly funny and supremely tragic.
Anyway, my parents and I had been quietly walking toward a new kind of reality around the men-and-sex thing throughout my twenties and especially my thirties, and so, it felt only now appropriate to bring someone home. He still slept in a different room though. Obviously.
·
On our first night in Karachi, we were sitting around the dinner table when Adam came out with the Urdu. He started by simply saying shukriya when Amma passed him the roti. She beamed in response.
“Iss ne thora buhut seekh bhi liya,” she said to me.
“Haan, thora buhut,” he responded, and she turned to him in shock.
“Arre wah!” Abba exclaimed and clapped his hands together.
They continued the conversation in Urdu, to my parents’ delight.
“He speaks better than you, Anisa,” Amma said.
“Not really,” I responded. Adam, noting my annoyance, toned it down.
Every day after that, my parents showed off their daughter’s Urdu-speaking gora “friend” to anyone who walked through the door. And it’s true, he did speak better than me, except that he would sometimes get his pronouns wrong, accidentally calling my parents’ friends tum instead of aap, as if he were older than them. But he would correct himself straightaway, and they would gush. I don’t want to be a baby about it, but, honestly, it was too much gushing, and anyway, I was meant to be the clever one around the dinner table. Plus, he had cheated.
“How did he learn?” Abba asked me while Adam and Amma chatted away.
“Oh, he’s a linguist by trade. It’s easy if it’s your profession. Just a trick, like learning maths.”
“I don’t think it’s easy,” Abba said. “He’s very intelligent. They’re generally sharper, you know. As a people.”
“Oh my god, Abba.”
“It’s true. Have you seen the Dyson hoovers? Only the goras could make something like that.”
“Him and his Dyson,” Amma said to Adam. “This man secretly wishes the queen of England was his nani amma.”
“I don’t,” Abba said. “But they’re so organized there, you can’t deny it. For everything, they queue. Even at the bus stop, they queue. Queuing bodies make queuing minds.”
“Haan, bilkul. Queuing to bomb us,” Amma said, and, turning to Adam, she continued. “You know he started drinking Fiji water after finding out that’s what your Queen Elizabeth drank?”
“How do you think she lived so long?” Abba said, giving me a conspiratorial look. “That water must be the best if she drank it.”
“I don’t think the Dyson guys are that ethical,” Adam said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“Accha?” Abba asked.
“Yeah … I’ve heard they’re being investigated for dodgy labor practices,” Adam replied.
“Oh no, they’ve denied all that nonsense,” Abba said, waving the matter away.
“You learned Urdu for her?” Amma said, changing the subject. I could tell she was taking his acquisition of the language as a personal compliment.
“Kind of,” Adam said shyly, and my parents both smiled quietly.
·
Adam and I did all the usual touristy things while in Karachi: Mohatta Palace and French Beach, restaurants and cafés and dhabas. One day, we went to Zainab Market. Adam was mesmerized. In one shop, he picked up a beautiful antique copper paan daan. I explained to him what it was even though he was examining and handling it as if he were more familiar with it than I was. I turned to the shopkeeper to ask how much. The shopkeeper took one look at us and instantly quoted the foreigner rate. Adam replied to him, in Urdu, that he liked the paan daan very much and asked if he could have it for less. The shopkeeper looked at Adam quizzically.