The Centre(39)

“I really do understand,” she said.

“It’s enough to drive you mad, this no-distractions thing.”

“Listen. I have an idea. Why don’t you come to mine tonight? I can’t let you do emails or anything, but we could watch something together on my laptop. What do you think?”

“Is that allowed?”

“Not really, but I could sneak you in. We could watch a series on Netflix.”

“You won’t get into trouble?”

“We’ll be careful.”

“Oh god. That would be amazing. Are you sure?”

“Honestly, I’d love the company. It gets boring for me, too, on my own. Let’s meet after dinner.”

Dinner that evening was, as always, mouth-wateringly good—the starter was, I think, crispy rolls filled with mincemeat and potatoes, served with mint chutney. Then, a Moroccan-style tagine made with olives and apricots and served with couscous, followed by baklava for dessert. I ate hurriedly, excited to finally take a break from a schedule that was starting to badly grate. Afterward, I made my way to my room and waited.

My room was in a different part of the Learners’ area this time around, smack in between the two halves of the building. The transition from old to new was more obvious on the inside, and as I lay on the bed, I gazed at the conflict between the two halves of the ceiling above me, wooden beams colliding abruptly with steel and plaster. It was quite beautiful, in a sense, but at night, the ceiling would creak and groan in a way that felt increasingly like a warning.

Finally, Shiba knocked on the door.

“You ready?” she asked with a cheeky smile, as if we were planning an escape from a prison cell.

“Let’s do it.”

The courtyard was still and silent as we carefully let ourselves out of the Learners’ area and crept along the sides of the building toward the staff quarters. Shiba pulled out a large key ring from her pocket and unlocked the heavy gray door. It opened into an entryway, where an imposing mahogany staircase with ornate banisters led upstairs. To our right was another door, stainless steel, protected by a keypad.

Shiba gestured for me to follow her up the stairs, but just as we were about to ascend, she stopped and turned around.

“Actually. I have an idea,” she said. “Wait here.”

She turned toward the stainless steel door and punched in a code to open it: 9989.

I know I said that thing about my curiosity being stoked, but I truly hadn’t peered over her shoulder with any agenda in mind. It was more like a habit from childhood or maybe a personality trait. When I was young, my mother would often catch me rummaging through her makeup drawer or my father’s desk. And if she was on the phone, I always wanted to know who she was speaking to.

“Curious cat,” she would say, ruffling my hair, and I wore the title with pride.

My father was similarly amused and used to tell me I would make a top-notch spy. Once—I must have been about ten at the time—he came home from a trip abroad with a present for me: a spy kit. On the front of the box, there was a picture of a man in a long beige trench coat, with one enlarged eye peering out through a magnifying glass. And inside the box, I found a magnifying glass just like the one in the picture, along with a notebook and a pen filled with invisible ink that would only reveal itself if you held the page up to a flame. There was also a badge, a silver star that read “FBI.”

“I think that means ‘for big investigators,’” I said to Abba, and he nodded.

“Sounds correct, Beti.”

I was obsessed with this spy kit. I started hiding behind sofas, writing down people’s conversations, and secretly following the servants. I remember during one of these expeditions, I spied Muneer, our cook, digging into a jar of Nutella with a spoon. Nutella, in those days in Karachi, had to be purchased from Agha’s, the fancy shop that carried imported goods, and it was expensive—five or six hundred rupees, a lot at the time. It was therefore out of bounds for household staff. But there he was, I saw through the crack beneath the kitchen cabinet, eating our Nutella. I told my parents, and when he was away for the day, they went into his room. I followed behind them. There, we found various items that he had stolen, including perfume bottles and Barbie dolls and, bizarrely, several pairs of my mother’s high-heeled shoes, lined up against the wall just beneath his bed. I remember thinking afterward, Maybe I’ll understand this better when I’m older. Anyway, he was fired. Now, I look back on this incident with some shame and confusion, but somehow, it is the one that pops into my head when I remember sneakily watching Shiba punch in the code. Maybe because I felt a similar kind of self-reprobation afterward, wondering if it had been any of my business in the first place. At the time though, I felt the euphoria of a mischievous child, proud of her excellent spying skills.

9989. I made the added James Bond gesture of a sharp swivel of the head just as Shiba turned to see if I had seen. So smart, I thought of myself then. A top-notch spy. Only to realize, not much later, how very much this wasn’t a game at all.

Once, when my mother used that familiar phrase for me, I asked her, “Are cats really curious?”

“They are,” she said. “That’s why they need nine lives, hena? Always getting into places they shouldn’t.”

Shiba emerged from the padlocked door a few minutes later, grinning and holding a bottle of wine.