Gravel Heart(17)

I did not know why I had to be taken away from him. My father had no desire for me, and hardly anything to do with me. I took him his lunch and carried away his empty dishes, and I sat with him at times while he silently darned his ragged clothes and talked to him about whatever I pleased. It did not seem to matter what I said, my father rarely asked me anything or remarked on what I said. Sometimes he looked at me for a moment longer than I expected as if untangling a detail in what I was saying, and sometimes, unaccountably, he smiled at me with a kind of relish that confused me, and sometimes he exclaimed words that I did not fully understand. I thought his head must fill up with air sometimes. When we passed each other in the streets, we did not always speak.

When Uncle Amir mentioned my father in conversation, which only occurred very rarely, he called him Masud and never said anything cruel. What I overheard him say through that hole in the wall was spoken with the freedom of a familiar thought, and it made me understand that this was Uncle Amir’s suppressed opinion of my father and I found that I minded and wanted to defend him from such disregard, even though it was something he had brought upon himself with such dedicated self-neglect.

When I finished school and the offer to go to London was passed on by my mother, I asked her why Uncle Amir was doing this, and she said because you are like a son to him. I did not ask what she had done for him that he wanted to pay her back for. I was not supposed to know Uncle Amir had said that. I found that when the invitation came, all my doubts evaporated and I could not resist the opportunity to go and see what was out there, could not resist the glamour of living in London. After that, preparations for my departure overtook all other feelings and concerns for a while.

I knew that my mother was considering a move to a flat her lover had rented for her. Munira was then three, and her father wanted to see more of her and was insistent that they should move to more spacious accommodation. He did not want his daughter growing up in a hut, I said, to wound my mother. She was hesitating because of me. She knew I wanted nothing to do with that man whose name I never spoke, and that I would make a fuss about moving. I had given up my campaign of sabotage by then but had not relented in my hostility to her lover, and perhaps she feared I might renew the campaign and come up with another atrocity in the new flat. In short, I knew I would be in the way, and when the London offer came up, I was happy to go to that fabled city and see what I could make of myself there. What harm could it do?

It was the last Friday in July when I went to see my father for the final time. He was only forty years old but he looked older, aged. I told him that I was leaving that afternoon, and my father sat very still for a moment and then turned to look at me. It was a long, considering look, towards the end of which I thought I saw something like a gleam in his eyes. What did it mean? Was it amusement? Had he arrived at a new understanding in that long moment? It was unsettling. What was going through the old Baba’s mind? It never occurred to me that it could be distress. I had told him about going to London before, but he had not appeared to take any notice. It was when I said, today, this afternoon that he turned that long, considering look on me.

‘I’m going to London to live with Uncle Amir and his family,’ I told him, ignoring the feeling of unease this gave me. ‘He asked for me and he’ll send me to school. They both asked for me to join them. London, can you imagine?’

My father nodded slowly, as if thinking about what I had said or maybe whether he needed to say anything. Our eyes briefly touched as they glided past each other, and I shivered slightly at the intensity of the contact. His eyes looked dejected. ‘You won’t come back,’ he said. Then he sighed and looked down and spoke firmly but softly, as if to himself. ‘Listen to me. Open your eyes in the dark and recollect your blessings. Don’t fear the dark places in your mind, otherwise rage will blacken your sight.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked him. My father sometimes spoke incomprehensible words, like an inchoate poetry, and it took me a long time to realise that these were often quotations from something he had read. He had taken to reading his father’s old texts and papers, which he had asked me to fetch for him from the trunk where he had stored them. I wondered if this little gem was from there. ‘Where does that come from?’ I asked again when he did not reply.

‘It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s just a thought,’ he finally said. ‘Recollect your blessings, that is the beginning of love. That is from Abu Said Ahmad ibn Isa-al-Kharraz.’

I was not sure if this was a real quotation or something my father made up. When he came up with his Ahmed ibn Khalas al Khalas al-Aduwi or whoever, I sometimes wondered if there really had been such a person or if my father was showing off in learned epigrams, doing his mayaani yaani.

‘Can you say it again?’ I asked, and he looked up and repeated what he had said. Recollect your blessings, that is the beginning of love. Asking him to repeat it was a mean trick to see if it would come out differently the second time, but it did not. Repetition did not make the meaning of the words any clearer though.

‘It was one of my old father’s nutmegs,’ he continued. ‘Listen to me: I have been nowhere, but as you travel keep your ear close to your heart.’

This was a conversation by our standards, but I was not sure what my father meant. Was it a warning about what was to come or just a general reminder not to forget where I came from? Was it wisdom? Was it a test or was he rambling? Should I just forget it? I smiled non-committally, allowing my expression to mean whatever he would like it to mean, and watched as my father glanced back at me and shook his head, his smile broadening. That shake of the head meant that he knew I had not understood him but he was not going to explain. It was at moments like these that I was convinced of his lucidity, and wanted to say to him stop this, stop acting so defeated, let us be up and doing and talk about hopeful things. What has got into you to allow yourself to be crushed like this? Tell me about the dreams of your youth. Come, Baba, let’s go for a walk with a heart for any fate. The breeze under the casuarina trees will be sweetest at this time of day. But I did not, because my father’s sadness had hardened over the years and his silence was impenetrable, and I was too young and did not have the self-assurance to break it. In a way, I was awed by his misery, by his lethargy, by his self-neglect, and I imagined how deep his disappointment at the loss of my mother’s love must have been for him to live like that with such resigned dedication. Then even as I watched, my father dropped his eyes and retreated to his hiding place. As I rose to go he rose too and somewhat hesitantly touched my shoulder.