I patted his arm in thanks as though he were an old uncle and he shook his head, laughing again, and said, ‘If I were even ten years younger than I am…’
‘Instead of being at least ten years older than you claim to be?’
‘Aasmaani, Aasmaani. So much like your mother. You whet words and use them to skewer our weaknesses, and we only adore you for it. Those of us who have any sense do, at least.’ He took my hand and scribbled an address on it. ‘That’s where you’ll find the Archivist.’
The Archivist was something of a Karachi institution. For over three decades now he’d been clipping out articles of interest from all Karachi’s English and Urdu newspapers and filing them away according to an elaborately ordered system. The All-Pakistan Newspaper Association had, some twenty years ago, passed a motion requiring that a copy each of all daily Karachi papers be delivered to the Archivist free of charge. The Archivist responded by saying that since he took his scissors to the newspapers he’d appreciate it if the motion was amended to require that either two copies of each paper be delivered to him or that the papers started printing articles on one side of the page only. There was some grumbling about ingratitude, but he got his two copies.
In all the years since I’d first heard about the Archivist, I had imagined him in a huge house with multiple floors, paper strewn everywhere. But it transpired he lived in a block of flats, near Clifton Bridge, and when he opened the front door to let me in my first impression of his flat was of extreme orderliness.
‘What particular news item are you looking for?’ he said, without waiting for an introduction. He was an entirely ordinary-looking man, old but not remarkably so, in nondescript beige shalwar-kameez, with thinning hair and a slight stoop.
‘The Poet’s death.’
He looked disappointed. ‘Well, that’s not very original. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer the kidnapping of a top bureaucrat’s son in 1982? I’ve been transferring my files on to a computer and I just came across that old story.’
‘Thank you, but no. It’s the Poet I’m here for.’
The Archivist sighed, but beckoned me into the flat and led me down the brightly lit corridor past rooms without doors, each filled with floor-to-ceiling-high filing cabinets. In one of the rooms I saw a man standing on the top of a ladder, reaching into a cabinet near the ceiling. ‘Some young scribe searching out information on the Builders’ Mafia,’ the Archivist explained. ‘You need a good head for heights to be an effective researcher around here.’
We walked towards a room with a door and I stopped in front of it, wondering what top-secret files must lie on the other side.
‘It’s where I work,’ he said, pushing the door open to reveal the voice of a perky American aerobics instructor (‘One and two and work those abs!’) coming through the television speakers. Across from the television was a large table; the chair at the end of it was pushed back to suggest the person who had been sitting in it had only got up to answer the door and intended to return to that spot with a minimum of delay. A scissor lay on top of the front page of one of the morning papers, which had a block of flower-printed plastic in place of a lead article. It took a moment for my brain to understand I was looking at a section of the tablecloth. Multiple stacks of papers, which had clearly already been through surgery, were on the floor near the chair, and a smaller stack, still unattended to, was on the table.
‘You do this every day?’
He pointed at the aerobics instructor, who was now exhorting her viewers to ‘Feel it! Feel it!’
‘We all have our obsessions. At least I’m leaving something behind with mine.’ He stepped over to the table, finished cutting out an article which was attached to the front page by only one corner, and placed it in one of the several piles of clippings in front of him.
‘Do you enjoy it? Doing what you do?’
He looked up at me and smiled. ‘This isn’t what I do. It’s who I am.’ He looked at me a little more closely and nodded. ‘And I know who you are.’
‘I’m a researcher for STD television.’
‘No, no. That’s what you do. What I’m saying is, I know who you are. Those eyes. I’ve only ever seen one other set of those eyes. You’re the daughter who can’t let go. I’ve heard about you. What’s it been? Near fifteen years now? Young lady, you put even me to shame.’
For a moment I considered turning on the ceiling fan, but instead I straightened my shoulders and waited for him to show me what I had come to see.
All he said was ‘Hmm.’ Then he walked out of the room, gesturing for me to follow, and led me into a room larger than any of the others we’d passed so far. ‘This is the murder room.’
I looked at the cabinets, wedged together in the white, uncarpeted, sun-drenched room, and felt dizzied. Extraordinary, how anyone in this city could walk around with the pretence of normality when there was so much horror pressing around us at all times. But the Archivist seemed immune to such thinking as, humming the song that had been playing in the background of the aerobics programme, he pointed to a cabinet level with his chest and said, ‘That’s the one. 1986.’ He opened the cabinet, ran his fingers along the hanging folders and pulled out one which was disappointingly slim. He handed it to me and I read the tab, ‘31–7–6. Nazim: aka the Poet. Unsolved.’
‘Please, no eating or drinking in here. And if you’re using a pencil or pen keep it well away from the clippings. There’s a reading room next door if you require it. When you’re done, put the folder back in its place, and if you aren’t sure where it goes, come and find me. Don’t feel the need to say goodbye when you leave and don’t take any item with you when you go, not even if you intend to return it within minutes.’ He said all this with a slight air of boredom as though he’d said it so often the words no longer had any meaning. But then he leaned forward to me. ‘What is it you hope to find here?’
I didn’t entirely know. Something. Anything. Words to tell me he was dead. ‘A reminder.’
‘About the Poet’s death?’ He laughed. ‘All you’ll find in there is journalists parroting the official line, with one or two subtle suggestions that there’s more to the story than they can say.’
‘Such as?’
He expelled air noisily from his mouth. ‘Who knows? Even the journalists didn’t.’
He left the room, shaking his head. I opened the folder. The inside cover had two lines of handwritten text on it:
Master File: 1–10–1.
See also: Akram, Samina. Master File: 1–24–76.
See also. Was that the equivalent of reducing her to a footnote in his life?
‘Bastard,’ I muttered under my breath in the direction of the Archivist’s room. I sat on the window sill, which looked down on Clifton Bridge with its steady stream of traffic, and turned my attention to the first clipping, pasted on to stiff white paper. The first thing I saw was a banner headline: WEEP, PAKISTAN!
The memory of his death stepped into my mind.
It was just a sound at first, a low sobbing. And then a taste — guava. I had been in the back garden of my father’s house, eating fruit that wasn’t yet ripe enough to be eaten without consequences, and my stomach hurt. So when I walked indoors and heard the sobbing I was in no mood to be sympathetic towards Rabia, weeping over her favourite pair of jeans which the dhobi had lost.
‘Stop the melodrama!’ I yelled towards the room from which I could hear the weeping. ‘You’ll find a replacement soon enough.’
The door, which was slightly ajar, opened, and I saw my mother through it, her face grotesque with mascara tears, looking at me with such shock that I knew I had given rise to an emotion within her which she never before knew she could feel towards me. Then Beema walked through the door, shut it behind her and put both her hands on my shoulders.