In the City by the Sea by Kamila Shamsie

Author:Kamila Shamsie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1998-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

At first Hasan thought it had merely been hunger. French toast and sweet, milky tea dispelled all stomach somersaults so completely Hasan began to think the fear he had woken up with was merely a hunger so intense it defied immediate categorization. But when Ami entered the kitchen, red cracks at the corners of her eyes gravitating towards her pupils, Hasan’s stomach turned gymnastic again.

‘Any news about Salman Mamoo?’ he asked, pushing away his plate.

Ami moved aside a jar of tea-leaves and reached for the coffee at the back of the cabinet. ‘No. Nothing. The Bodyguard reports nearly a hundred people were killed in the riots yesterday, in the City alone. I have a feeling you’re not going back to school for a while.’

‘Is Aba going to the office?’

‘Not today. ACE has extended the strike indefinitely.’

‘POTPAF,’ Hasan corrected her, but it didn’t seem to lighten her mood. She stirred boiling water into her coffee and came to stand beside Hasan.

‘You hate coffee,’ he reminded her.

Ami wrinkled her nose in agreement and pushed the mug away. ‘Gul’s moving in. Your father’s taken her to pick up her things.’

Hasan had thought he was the first one awake. ‘I wonder what prison’s like,’ he said.

Ami covered Hasan’s eyes with her hands. ‘A blank canvas,’ she said. ‘See it?’ Hasan nodded. Five blank canvases, joined together to form the five sides of a cube. Floor, ceiling and three walls. The canvases grew four, six, eight feet tall as he watched them, and became the grey of dirt and sweat and thoughts staled by repetition. Slashes of light rent through the far wall of canvas and shaded the grey to end its monotony. Salman Mamoo appeared in a shaft of light, arms akimbo, and surveyed the canvases. He did not see Hasan standing behind him in the place where a sixth canvas was needed to complete the cube. Hasan didn’t mind.

Salman Mamoo walked over to a wall-canvas, produced some glinting object from his pocket and began to scratch the grey paint. He’s trying to scratch through the canvas, Hasan thought. That’ll take for ever. But no, Salman Mamoo was etching calligraphy on the wall, etching snakes and diamonds of Urdu verse. Hasan looked closer at the words and his faltering Urdu took flight; his brain translated the words into English, while his heart beat in time to the original metre.

Though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed, in rooms where lovers are destined to meet, they cannot snuff out the moon, so today, nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed, no poison of torture make me bitter.

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