Hot Water Man Read online

  She would not let him go out and find a taxi. He would get one quicker, of course. It awed her, the underworld that existed in K12 Housing Society. Bearer knew bearer, everyone was somebody else’s cousin. Turn to your servant and snap your fingers for fish; in five minutes a man would appear out of nowhere with his damp basketful.

  She stood for half an hour. Mohammed could not see her. It was his siesta time and besides she was standing some way down the street. The sky glared, whitely. She wore a sleeveless cotton dress; the wind blew from the far-off sea, blistering against her body. Down the road stretched stucco walls and half-built plots; dusty kittens played in the bushes. At last a rickshaw puttered into sight, trailing a cloud of exhaust.

  ‘Juna Bazaar.’

  She ducked under its plastic canopy. In a waggish moment Donald had called these things ‘three-wheeled farts’. They were built-up on motor scooters and used by the humble. She gazed out from under its tassels; they were on the highway now, a dual carriageway that connected the Housing Society to the city. Beside the road stood petrol pumps and half-built blocks of flats; Karachi was growing so fast, soon it would be solid buildings from the Society to the centre.

  They were in town now; the respectable business part. Under the jigging fringe she saw the rows of offices – Air France, Pakistan International Airlines, the Khyber Carpet Emporium Fully Air-Conditioned. Europeans strolled along the pavement; cars were parked outside the Intercontinental Hotel. They passed the Sind Club walls. Beyond them this lunchtime Donald had been sipping, no doubt, a bowl of Brown Windsor soup.

  The rickshaw swerved; she clutched the metal frame. No safe lunchtimes for her. Within touching distance sat her driver, his head bound up in a dirty cloth. Hunched in his rags he was her guide into the unknown. Her heart thumped; the meter clicked.

  Down in the old city the streets were choked. She coughed with the exhaust smoke. The rickshaw pushed its way past camel carts and loaded buses with men hanging on to their windows. It stopped.

  ‘Baksheesh!’ Children crowded round. A mother pushed to the front, holding out her baby. The buildings here were yellowed and crumbling, their balconies draped with washing; between them ran alleys jammed with people. The stench was appalling. She climbed out.

  She was in the spice bazaar. It was like drowning, being amongst all these people. You could not stop; the current swept you along. Bodies pressed against her. Someone pinched her arm. The booths’ wooden shutters were open; men sat there weighing things on scales. Sacks stood in rows; they were filled with powder – dun, ochre and crimson. Cameron Chemicals had introduced cling-film to Karachi; this year they were launching their big marketing drive. If they had their way bazaars like this would be replaced by a supermarket full of packets. She had long arguments with Donald about this.

  But she missed him now. She felt so exposed. Somebody pinched her buttock, hard. In this dress, too much of her body was bare. She could not stop to look at anything. When she did, people saw who she was. Then they struggled against the current to stop and watch her. A crowd had gathered. People nudged each other and stared. A woman shouted something at her. She tried to push on. She was damp. In passing, she glimpsed things she longed to stop and inspect – a man telling fortunes with parrots, tribal women grinning in grease-stiffened dresses. But she could not pause.

  She reached a tea house – a pukka place with rooms behind dirty windows. She hurried inside and sat down at a table. She was breathless. I am enjoying myself, she told herself. The café was crowded but everyone had stopped talking. Without looking around, she knew there was not one woman in sight. The menu was a stained sheet of cardboard, with Urdu one side and English the other. Stembled Eggs, she could have, or Two Egg Boil. Alone, she could not smile at this. With some difficulty she managed to order a cup of tea. She kept her gaze on the tablecloth, the dented tin ashtray and the glass of tea like liquid toffee. Behind her, part of the café was curtained off. ‘Family Rooms’ said the sign. These were cubicles; beneath the hem of the curtain she saw women’s feet. Men were looking at her and whispering; thank goodness she could not understand what they were saying. She could not take her tea into a cubicle; not now she was sitting here.

  The curtains were a faded green. (The same colour as those of the clinic cubicles when she went in for her examination. Behind curtains like those she had lain on a paper sheet, her legs open. Nothing wrong, said Dr Ahmed, unpeeling his gloves. Not as far as we can see. I would suggest that you and your husband keep trying.

  In an English hospital Pakistani fingers had explored her. I’m going to live in Pakistan, she told him as she dressed. The company my husband works for, it makes the Pill there. He did not smile at the irony. Because his finger had poked inside her, she had felt rebuffed as she pulled on her tights.)

  Here in the café they were leaning in their seats and staring at her legs. Was it with desire or disgust? They nudged each other and gazed at her breasts. Stupid to have worn this dress. She could not look out of the window because it was now blocked with faces.

  Outside they moved back to let her pass and closed in behind her. She walked briskly up an emptier alley, trying to look casual. The air smelt corrupt. Boys played beside an open drain; one of them threw a stone at her. Men were following her. She turned the corner. A beggar waved his arm at her; it was a brown stump, mottled with pink. She did not break into a run. She was lost in a maze of alleys like slits between the buildings. There were no stalls here, just beggars and footsteps following her. She must not panic.

  She turned another comer and she was back in the cloth bazaar. Pushing through the people she made her way to a booth. She climbed up the step and sat down in a chair, catching her breath.

  It was empty except for the shopkeeper, a middle-aged man dressed in shirt and trousers rather than the loose pyjamas most of the other men wore. A crowd gathered at the entrance.

  ‘Cloth,’ she said, pointing to the shelves. ‘Long.’ She stretched out her arms.

  ‘Ah yes.’ He disappeared into the back of the shop and emerged with a tunic under his arm. Lime-green rayon, it was embroidered with fancy stitching. ‘Tourist memsahib? American memsahib?’ He held it up. ‘Very good colour. All memsahibs like.’

  ‘No, no. Cloth – long cloth.’

  ‘All good cloths here.’

  ‘Not clothes, cloth. Scarf, big scarf. Purdah cloth.’

  She pointed to the shelves. He pulled out material, shaking the folded stuff loose. Finally she found what she wanted. It was a long pink scarf made of chiffon.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Dupatta.’

  She had forgotten the word. Pakistani girls – the more liberated ones – wore dupattas modestly wrapped around their heads and breasts.

  Some men were giggling. She wound it around her head and draped it over her shoulders. Pressing through the crowd, she held it against her mouth. It kept slipping off. If only she could cover herself completely but she had seen none of the full-length bourquas on sale. Besides, bourqua vendors would be bound not to understand English.

  She tried to find her way back to the main road, hurrying down an alley, past stalls of dates sticky as sin. Flies stuck to her face. She wound the dupatta around her bare arms; the road was through here somewhere, she must not look as if she were panicking. What did I presume, coming here? She could not stop to try and remember the direction; she must keep walking.

  She turned the corner. Music played and faces peered out between the shutters of the houses. Rosy light shone in the rooms. She hesitated. Up on a balcony, a woman laughed at her. There were faces in the doorways, she realized. She was just thinking that this seemed a friendlier place when she saw that all the faces were painted. One of them winked at her; she was fat and wearing a satin mini-dress.

  Christine started trembling. She tried to back out and turn but the men were closing in. A man shouted at her. Through each of the doorways she glimpsed a bed. She must hurry through, there was no turning back. Leaning in the doorwa
ys, the women’s rouged and powdered faces grinned at her; one called out in a deep voice. It was only then that she realized they were not women; they were men.

  She was running like a rabbit. Three turnings; four. She was back at the main road and waving for a taxi.

  It took some time for her to be able to speak. ‘Adamjee Plaza,’ she said at last. This was the building where Donald worked.

  The driver adjusted his mirror to look at her, and shrugged.

  ‘Intercontinental Hotel then,’ she shouted. Everyone at Karachi knew this. He nodded and started the engine.

  They drove through the streets. She wiped her face with her veil. She was sticking to the plastic seat.

  ‘You English?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘You in bazaar only?’

  Only? He must mean ‘alone’. She nodded.

  He shook his head. ‘No good,’ he said, like Mohammed. ‘You want marble maybe? You want carpets?’

  She shook her head, politely. He seemed a nice man. He had saved her.

  ‘My cousin, he is important man. He get marble, and air-conditioner if you are liking.’ The man turned and passed her a card. It said Sultan Rahim: Rahim Estates and an address.

  ‘You want beach hut? He fixes beach hut for Americans and Frenchies.’

  ‘Beach hut?’ She looked at the card. Her hand had stopped trembling now. She put the card in her handbag.

  She relaxed only when they stopped outside the Intercon. A cockaded doorman waited, his jacket bright with braid. The fountains dazzled her. Just last week she had told Donald how she despised the Intercon – plastic and American, she had said. Sealed off from the nasty smells and the real city.

  She smiled at the doorman; for the first time she could meet somebody’s eye. The grass was green and damp; through swing doors stepped blonde air-hostesses making for the pool. They all understood English. Fancy tongas waited for the tourists; between the shafts the horses were as polished as conkers, unlike the wretched creatures she had seen this afternoon, a mile away. Just a mile.

  Inside the hotel it was cool. Businessmen strolled. A girl in the briefest sun-dress looked at postcards. Christine, heading for the Coffee Shop, unwound her dupatta and stuffed it into her handbag.

  7

  This country of yours needs our Translux Hotel. I’m speaking to you straight. It’s a great country, this Pakistan. Leastways it can be great. You have the possibilities, you have great growth potential. Your businessmen have their heads screwed on. I’ve worked with Muslims – me, Duke Hanson, I’m what they call a field product development executive. I set up the deal, I find the site, I find the engineers and the architects and the designers, I’m here to see they come up to Translux standards, we have a 500-page manual specifying Translux standards right down to the hemstitch on the bedlinen. We see that these, standards apply to each one of our hotels across the globe, in Africa, in Japan, you name it. Our motto is You’ve Never Left Home. We have it on our napkins, our menus, we have it stitched on to the uniforms of our staff; each bellhop is a reminder that our service is the finest American service and that means it’s the finest you can find. It don’t matter if outside the windows it’s the Gobi Desert. Inside it’s Translux.

  Look at it this way. To get the business you need the businessmen, and to get the businessmen you need to get the hotels. And that means hotels of international class. That means telex and telephones that work. Laundry, room service – put it like this: only when you don’t notice the service is it a hotel with calibre. Here in Karachi you have one five-star hotel, the Intercontinental – high-class shopping arcade, banquet and conference facilities, block-bookings for the airline crews. You have three more coming up, the Hilton, Sheraton and Holiday Inn, that airport highway is one big building site. Fine sites, fine hotels, but they have one thing in common. They’re downtown. Sure, downtown’s where the business gets done but even Karachi’s biggest fan – and that’s me, there’s something about this place, I love it – even he can’t call this place the most beautiful city in the world. Like it doesn’t have too many tourist sights. They travel thousands of miles, they arrive and what do they see? There’s a couple of old mosques, there’s the Monument to Islamic Progress, there’s your quaint Bohri Bazaar. But it’s kind of dirty, it’s crowded and it’s full of traffic. That’s what development means, sure – the new buildings coming up, the industrial growth. But you have to have the relaxation facilities too, if you’re going to keep your businessmen happy. A refreshed man works harder the next day. He’s more committed to the country. He can bring his wife out to join him. And you have to get the tourists. As you say, tourism’s your big growth industry. That’s where the Translux comes in.

  Sure, I’ve worked with Muslims. Eighteen months in Kuwait I lived out of a suitcase, I left my family back home, did I miss them, but now the Kuwait Translux is a hotel all nations can be proud to enter. When that happens my job’s done. I like it out here. I like the heat; I like to sweat it out. My wife calls me a puritan and that way she’s correct. I like it tough; the more I sweat the more I achieve. There’s something about the air here and the big dry spaces; the potential. The American West was like this once. I come from the West; there are still the big wide spaces but now they’re yellow with corn. We’ve farmed them and made them function.

  And I respect your Islam. It’s a clean religion. No mumbo-jumbo, no incense and plaster figurines cluttering up your heart. I step inside your mosques and I see water faucets and white tiles, and in your holiest place what do I see? A blankness. A niche. I’m a religious man myself. Baptist born and bred. Our chapels are bare too. Our God speaks direct to us; we’ve always been God-fearers as you yourselves are – a spare, fighting religion, nothing soft and easy about it. It’s the same hot white sun up there and the same God; we’re not so different from you, we believe in plain living, in rigour and denial. I’ve seen your Ramadans, with simple men flagging from thirst; fasting in the heat as they lay the highways across Saudi. It’s always the simple men.

  ‘It’s not tea leaves, you know.’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘You’re staring into it so intently,’ said Shamime. ‘And it’s only milk. Do you want me to read your future? You’d have to believe me because I’m brown. There are some advantages. Can I sit down? I came here to see a client but he hasn’t turned up.’ She sat down on the other side of the table. ‘So unreliable. You must find us maddening.’

  Duke mumbled something polite. He was sitting in the 24-hour Coffee Shop at the Intercontinental. Only place you could get a glass of milk in Karachi.

  ‘I enjoyed that party last night,’ she went on. ‘That sweetie British Council couple, straight out of Somerset Maugham. I hadn’t really talked to you before. I see you coming into the office and disappearing into Frank’s room, now Donald’s room. I suppose it’s not really my department.’

  ‘It’s nobody’s department yet. I mean to say, nothing’s happening.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘I won’t trouble you with it.’

  ‘Go on.’ She leant forward, chin resting in her hands. In this light her skin was greeny-brown. She was wearing a multicoloured blouse; she looked like a dusky butterfly. Each time he met her she unnerved him. ‘Bore me.’

  ‘We have the site, we have the plans drawn up, the tourist board is right behind our project one hundred per cent. It’s just what this place needs, a leisure centre just a half-hour from the city. We’ve done the soil tests, we’ve ordered the materials, we’ve fixed the tenders for the electrics – yesterday I completed that.’ He stopped. He could not discuss cement contracts with this girl with a jewel in her nose. ‘You’ve nothing to drink.’

  ‘Know what I crave? An ice cream.’ She lifted up the menu. The sleeve fell back from her arm.

  Duke took a menu. Tempt Yourself, it said. Our Ice Creams Are Full of Eastern Promise.

  ‘I mustn’t,’ he said.

  Shamime was gazing at the menu. Toda
y her hair was loose. She pushed a strand behind her ear. ‘Sheik Charmer,’ she read. ‘Mango Ripple Water-Ice Drenched in Sun-Kissed Orange Sauce.’

  ‘I’m dieting,’ he said. ‘I’m watching my weight.’

  She smiled over the rim of her menu. ‘I’m not.’ Idly she scratched her arm; the bangles clinked. ‘I’ll have a Knickerbocker Glory. I’ll be American.’ She read out: ‘Veiled Mysteries. Can You Resist Our Surprise Dessert? Go on. I’ll feel so greedy all alone. Try a Monsoon Mousse. They’re out of sight.’

  He controlled himself. ‘I’ll join you in another glass of milk.’

  Her ice arrived, heaped up in a tall glass. She dipped her spoon into it. Duke did not really want this second glass of milk but he must be polite. He thought of the kitchen back home, when the boys were younger. The freeze box was always crammed with those big family tubs – Strawberry, Rum ‘n’ Raisin. Chester had his own tub of Pistachio because that was his favourite. When Minnie came back with the groceries the boys would crowd round, jumping up like puppies.

  Shamime was licking a blob from her finger. Turkissed Delight: Smooth Dark Chocolate . . . He and Duke Jnr, his eldest; they had a weakness for chocolate. The Hershey Bars the two of them got through. He’d always kept a supply in the glove compartment of the Buick. Age three, Duke Jnr knew. No flies on Duke Jnr.

  ‘Go on,’ said Shamime. She was holding out the spoon. ‘I’ve saved you the cherry.’ She leant over; he opened his mouth.

  ‘So what happens next?’

  Duke stopped. ‘Happens?’

  ‘Or doesn’t happen. You’ve got the equipment . . .’ She took another mouthful. ‘You’ve got the site.’

  ‘Sure we’ve got the land, though we haven’t signed the contract yet. That’s just a formality. But we’re still waiting for the planning permission to come through. It should be a formality too. Trouble is, seems to be something holding us up. There’s big money involved. Things can be made difficult. Like you know, there’s power fighting going on – these politician guys have their fingers in all kinds of pies. And you know how unsettled it is now, up at the top. There’s people being replaced for no reason. One word in an ear and overnight it’s all changed.’