PROLOGUE Karachi 1991

He parked his car where he`d been told to and then he waited.

Somebody will come to get you, he`d been told. The voice on the phone had been deep and it had a ring of authority. It sounded like the voice of a man who was used to issuing commands, somebody who was used to having those commands obeyed.

Then the voice had continued, `And you will not tell anybody about this meeting, you understand? I have to be careful. I`m taking a very, very big risk meeting you, I`m taking a risk even speaking to you on the phone.

The minutes ticked by.

It was almost midday and, even though he had the air-conditioning switched on, it was hot in the car. He looked around to see if he could spot anybody who might be his source.

He was parked in a crowded part of a busy shopping street and there were a lot of people and vehicles around.

The instructions had been specific: he was to park outside the juice shop near the main traffic intersection, and then wait. He was here now, waiting.

He watched the flies buzzing around the piles of oranges and sugarcane displayed at the front of the juice shop and wondered if the source had changed their mind and if this was going to turn out to be a no show. But just then, he was startled by a loud rap at the window behind his.

The man standing by the back door gestured to him impatiently that he should unlock the door. He hesitated.

Then he rolled down his own window. turned his head toward the man and asked, `Yes?` `Hurry up, open the door.

Rasheed Sahab said to take you to him,` was the gruff and irritated response, so he reached around awkwardly behind him and pulled the lock up. The man got into the back of the small car and leaned across to unlock the front passenger door, another man got into the car quickly.

The man sitting in the front passenger seat looked over at him and said, `Now drive out of here. Go towards the left, then, at the traffic light, turn left.

He reversed out of the market area and drove, a sense of anticipation and excitement now rising up inside him. As he steered his car left at the traffic light, he noticed that the man sitting next to him was holding a pistol discreetly at lap level. It was pointed in his direction.UNDER OR OVER? `So, under, or over?` His uncle had just asked him something about toilet paper.

`What?` Akbar said, jolted back from his thoughts about the cynical remarks his colleague Zed had made in the newsroom the other day. Something Zed had said about a particular article in their paper, The Star, being about as worthless as used toilet paper. Toilet paper? What on earth was his uncle on about? God, he needed a cigarette.

`We`re trying to determine if there`s a link between a personality type and the way people place toilet rolls on holders, Akbar`s uncle replied, sounding irritated at his nephew`s lack of attention. `Do type A personalities place rolls with the toilet paper placed over the top? Or does their particular logic dictate placing it so that it`s under the roll, rather than rolling forward off the top?` Uncle`s hand was placed firmly on Akbar`s shoulder and he was leaning forward, keen to hear what his nephew had to say. But Akbar had nothing to say, he found his uncle extremely exhausting and all of his conversation pretty pointless. He was trying to think of a suitable reply but then, luckily, he was saved by the sound of his mother`s imperious announcement that lunch was served, `Khaana lag gaya chalo! Akbar ushered his uncle towards the dining room, handed him a plate and then escaped to the back garden to recover with a quick smoke. He really did need that cigarette. He`d spent the last few hours with the extended family, who were over for the annual Eid lunch. There were many cousins. Many, many cousins. He had trouble remembering all of their names, and they all seemed to have been rather busy breeding, as there was a whole new crop of children he`d never seen before.

And then there was his uncle, his eccentric uncle who was visiting from the US, the uncle who Akbar`s mother insisted was actually a genius, even if the world didn`t recognise this... his uncle with all his intensity and strange theories and, increasingly, bizarre research.

And, of course, there were the aunts. They spoke very loudly and all at the same time. Today, they were doing their usual thing: giving unsolicited advice and making intrusive comments. They had told him (as they always did) that he must hurry up and get married.

They`d also told him what he should be writing about and how. Akbar was the journalist, he was the one who worked for a national newspaper and wrote and edited for a living but it was they, apparently, who had all the editorial and journalistic know-how... “Write on this topic Akbar!”, “Write about Uncle’s re-search naa”, “What you people should cover is…” They just went on and on.

As Akbar stood in the shade of the veranda, he noticed that, despite all the water shortages and the scorching heat, the small back garden was looking quite pleasant. The grass looked green(-ish) and the plants and flowers in the row of flowerpots lined along the side seemed to be flourishing. The bougainvillaea cas-caded over the peeling paint of the wall and exploded in mauve and orange bunches. The bright col-ours of the flowers and leaves were muted slightly by a film of dust. Everything in Karachi always seemed to be covered by a film of dust.

It was hot in the veranda, the typical clammy heat of Karachi. Hot and bright: the daylight almost blinding as it hit your eyes, the heat seeming to seep right through your pores.

It was the family Eid gathering at his mother’s house but Akbar wished he was at work today. It was a much more interesting place to be. The paper always had such a buzz to it, there was always something happening there, always a sense of excitement and anticipa-tion in the building. But Eid was a newspaper holiday and, even if it hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have been needed, his work no longer involved producing the daily paper, his promotion had changed all that.

It was very hot but Akbar decided to have another cigarette, just so he could spend some more time away from the relatives and wait until the commotion of the lunch calmed down slightly. But soon he heard them calling his name. It sounded like his aunts were asking where he was, it sounded as if they were worried that he had not had lunch.

Akbar threw down his ciga-rette and stubbed it out underfoot. As he turned to face the house, he saw his cousin, Ayaz Bhai, watching him from the lounge window. Was it a disapproving look? Probably. Ayaz Bhai was one of the religious cousins and he had become a rather more visibly devout Muslim of late. Akbar now felt even more apologetic in his presence than he had when he was growing up — and he had felt quite apolo-getic, even inexplicably guilty, back then. He’d always sensed a level of disapproval there because Ayaz Bhai seemed to regard Akbar’s family as rather ‘modern.’ Modern meant as more of a reproach than a compliment.

Akbar nodded politely to his cousin as he went inside. Ayaz Bhai had spread out a prayer mat and was just about to start his afternoon prayers. Just as well, thought Akbar, he would start his prayers so there’d be no need for any sort of small talk. Ayaz Bhai would surely not have approved of him dragging on a cigarette in the shadows of the veranda.

In the dining room, they seemed to have progressed to dessert now and some of the aunts greeted Akbar with reproachful, ‘where were you’? exclamations. He submitted to their loudly voiced concerns and then went over to the sideboard to get some food. He piled spoonfuls of the aromatic lamb biryani on to his plate, it wasn’t steaming hot any more but what did it matter? It was that wonderful Eid biryani, the spices clinging together thick and oniony, the meat cooked to tender, melting perfection, the long grains of white rice speckled in shades of orange and yellow.

Akbar helped himself to some of the smoked aubergine raita and then took his plate over to the sitting room, where everybody had now settled. He perched on the arm of the sofa next to an elderly great-aunt. Colonel Rashid, the husband of one of his aunts, was holding forth and everyone seemed to be listening attentively…

“So, you see how bad it is?” asked Colonel Rashid, “They are so corrupt, they demand money for everything. And it is not even hidden or underhand, it’s open, they are shame-less!”

There was a general chorus of agreement. The prime minister and her government were not popular with Akbar’s family, who were middle class, urban elites and deeply suspicious of the nationalist slogans of the Populist party.

Akbar’s eldest aunt piped in indignantly, “She’s letting her husband do as much corruption as possible,” she declared, as if she herself had witnessed money changing hands. “He’s told everybody that they have to meet that bureaucrat, Salman Effendi, and give him the money before they will even consider looking at any project. And they are asking for five lakh rupees just to have a meeting!”

Akbar was astonished by his aunt’s vehement tone and he blurted out, “Who told you that Khala?” His question was greeted with a derisive chorus of, “Everybody knows that!” as his relatives shot him looks of both contempt and pity.

He tried to focus his attention on the biryani as the familiar diatribe continued and his family — that large group of busybodies comprised of lawyers, doctors, teachers and generally educated folk — painted a woeful picture of the dismal state of the government. But when another aunt declared, “And they hate Karachi because they are jealous of us mohajirs!”, Akbar reacted once again.

“But Khala… the prime minister’s family lives here, in Karachi,” he blurted out. His aunt glared at him and replied dismissively, “She lives here because those feudals want to suck all the money out of Karachi and kill all of us.” There was a general hum of agreement from the various relatives.

“So, Akbar, you’re still a Populist Party supporter, are you?” asked cousin Ayaz who had just come back into the sitting room. Ayaz Bhai was looking quite pious, his white cap still on his head, his checked scarf over his shoulders and his appearance seemed to advertise the fact that he had just said his prayers. His question, in this politically intolerant and volatile gathering, created a weird vacuum of sudden si-lence. As the busybodies stared at him in horror, Akbar felt a surge of hatred for cousin Ayaz.

“Not really,” he replied, defiantly looking directly at his cousin, “but at least they’re not liars and murderers like the Jamaati types you support.”

The uproar following his re-mark was much less than it might have been five years ago. Now many of his relatives had moved their sympathies away from the religious party, the Jamaat, to the new and well-organised grassroots group, the Mohajir Movement or the M.

Akbar continued, “Yes, Ayaz Bhai, really one can quite understand why the M hate the Jamaatis!” and he then quickly withdrew to the dining room, leaving them to battle it out amongst themselves.

Akbar’s older brother, Azam, came over to the sideboard where Akbar was helping himself to some dessert. He put his arm around Akbar’s shoulders and chuckled. “You should be careful, Akoo. You should be careful what you say.”

Akbar laughed and replied, “I was just doing my duty as a host — you know, providing some entertainment! And,” he added, lowering his voice, “that Ayaz Bhai is so damn irritating, all holi-er than thou and disapproving.” But his brother, despite his smile, looked a little worried. It struck Ak-bar again how protective Azam Bhai always was of him — even now — and he felt a spark of gratitude and affection for that.

Unfortunately, the Eid lunch ended rather unpleasantly, as a couple of the cousins almost came to blows. The M lot muttered polite threats to the Jamaatis as they left, and the Jamaatis, in turn, retorted with Quranic quotations and vaguely menacing religious instruction.

Akbar’s mother was very cross with Akbar for his provocation and the ensuing unpleasant-ness. But really, she blamed the prime minister. “It’s that witch, always making trouble, always. Just like her father.” The only thing that could get Ammi off the subject of the PM and her Populist Party was the arrival of Akbar’s other brother, Akmal.

Akmal and his wife Husna had been at the Eid lunch at her parents’ house. This choice of lunch venue was a sore point with Ammi. After Akmal’s marriage, Akbar’s mother had expected the couple to attend her annual Eid lunch but Akmal’s in-laws had wanted their daughter and son-in-law at their family lunch. Akmal had opted for his in-laws’ gath-ering and he’d taken a stand on this point — thus proving himself in Ammi’s eyes to be “a spineless boy and a traitor to his own mother and family.”

The couple arrived bearing a fancy-looking, boxed ‘Eid Mubarak’ cake from an expensive bakery. Husna was as well-dressed as always, and wore her familiar fake smile. Ammi’s energies were then diverted into being very polite, but as cold as pos-sible, to them. She was especially annoyed that they had not brought their little son with them and had left him with Husna’s parents. She kept throwing into the conversation remarks on “the decline of manners” and “how greeting one’s elders and coming to say salaam to them on Eid day was a basic protocol.”

Luckily, Akbar’s older sister, Aliya, arrived soon afterwards with her husband and little daughter, and the child’s antics lightened the tension and made everybody feel much happier about everything. Except that, occasionally, Akbar’s mother would throw him knowing and conspirato-rial looks, indicating that he should notice how Aliya and Azam Bhai’s wife were rushing around serving tea and goodies and clearing up and helping out, while Husna just sat back, didn’t lift a finger to help and seemed to glance at her watch rather too frequently.

Akbar suddenly thought of Un-cle’s research as he looked at Husna — so perfectly turned out, so perfectly plastic. How, he won-dered, were the toilet rolls in her immaculate flat aligned — under or over?

***

TEA OR COFFEE?

Tea or coffee?

Akbar’s moth-er frowned at him as he asked the question. She was accustomed to rarely offering guests coffee as an option. It was not that she disliked coffee, it was just that, through most of Akbar’s childhood, cof-fee had been a luxury item, expensive and rare.

Of course, that had been in the era when the country had aspired to some form of socialism, when there had been ration cards for every mem-ber of the household, fixed quotas for sugar, oil and flour, and very few imported foodstuffs available in the market.

But coffee had been mentioned, so now Akbar’s mother repeated the ques-tion to his cousin, Fareeha who, in turn, referred it to her husband — who chose tea (much to Ammi’s delight). Akbar dutifully conveyed the tea request onwards to their old cook, Khan Sahab, who was in the kitchen adding the finishing touches to the arrangement on the customary guest trol-ley.

Akbar returned to the sitting room to be the dutiful host for a little while longer. It was turning out to be the usual Eid holiday: an endless stream of visiting relatives, friends and neighbours, an excessive amount of rich food, never-ending rounds of tea, and repeated outings for the food-laden trolley.

The Eid lunch the previous day had consisted of his mother’s family, since his father’s side of the family had mostly settled in Lahore after migrating from India following the Parti-tion of 1947. But Fareeha, his father’s niece, now lived in Karachi and, over the past few years, she and her husband had made a habit of coming to visit on the second day of Eid. Akbar didn’t know them very well but the husband, who was a bureaucrat in the provincial government, had been extremely helpful with the funeral arrangements and all the red tape and paperwork following his father’s death.

Fareeha and her husband were always respectful to his mother and very proper in all their dealings with her, and Akbar appreciated that. While they were not as flamboyant or eccentric as his mother’s relatives, he liked their traditional, rather mundane demeanour. It was comforting since, as he often joked with Azam Bhai, it indicated that “We don’t have madness on both sides of the family.”

“How is work?” Fareeha’s husband Ahmed Bhai enquired, smiling at Akbar. “Oh, not too bad,” Akbar told him. “I was writing a column in the main paper, and also working on the city pages, but now I’ve been appointed editor of the new magazine.”

“Oh yes, I read your columns,” Ahmed Bhai replied, nodding.

“Really?” Akbar exclaimed, experiencing the usual mixture of excitement and anxiety he always felt whenever he heard somebody had actually seen or read his articles. He listened keenly as Ahmed Bhai continued. “I find them to be something fresh, alt-hough the language is a little like slang. But still, better than all that raving and ranting by those angry old men that usually passes as a column in our papers.”

Praise! Akbar felt smug and elated.

Ahmed Bhai nodded again, then he said, “Your boss, that Jaleel, has been trying to get more ads for some supplement or new publication you people are doing.” He looked grim as he add-ed, “Those people are such blackmailers.”

Akbar guessed that the advertisements he was talking about had probably been for the new magazine but he was very surprised by Ahmed Bhai’s tone and the blackmail accusation. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“It’s the same old game,” replied Ahmed Bhai. “They try to get government ads, they hint that they could publish ‘em-barrassing’ stories about the prime minister or her family, or her government. They keep doing this. It’s pure blackmail.”

“Well, Ahmed Bhai, honestly… it’s the other way around,” Akbar re-plied indignantly. “It’s the government that’s always pressuring the media. The pressure is always on journalists. I mean, yeah, the laws have changed now but, before, it was even so difficult to get a pub-lishing licence or enough paper to actually print copies. That’s how they turned the screws on us. Like when I was at The Sun, the government wouldn’t give us a publishing licence for a Lahore edition, and they withdrew most of our ads, and before the election they’d object to the coverage we gave to the PM. The government is always the one doing the blackmailing…”

Fareeha’s husband smiled wryly.

“Akbar, I have first-hand experience of how these things work — do you think I’m lying to you? It’s really not that simple you know — these people, these newspaper owners, they’re businessmen, they have no scruples. You think they have suffered? Well, let me tell you — they will never be victims. Don’t be fooled by them, it’s all about money and power.”

Their conver-sation was interrupted by Ammi’s interjection, as she called Akbar over to get the tea she had finished pouring. Akbar passed Ahmed Bhai and Fareeha plates and napkins, followed by the platter of samo-sas and the chutney that his mother told him to offer around. Then he brought over both Ahmed Bhai’s and his own tea cups from the trolley.

“I simply cannot resist these samosas,” Ah-med Bhai exclaimed, smiling at Akbar’s mother, “and your special green chutney Chachi — always so very delicious!”

Ammi beamed. She was quite delighted by his compliments and she there-upon informed Fareeha that she’d have to take a jar of the chutney home for her husband.

After they left, Akbar kept thinking of what Ahmed Bhai had said — surely, his remarks reflected the arrogance of the government and the smugness of the bureaucracy? But what he said had unsettled Akbar. And he would remember Ahmed Bhai’s words later, much later, after his life had been turned completely upside down. 

Excerpted with permission from Akbar in Wonder-land by Umber Khairi and published by Moringa Books

The author is a UK-based journalist, columnist, and a former BBC producer and presenter. She also co-founded the magazine Newsline and runs the Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture Series