Baby Khaki's Wings Read online

  At the end of half an hour, the timekeeper called the boys back to shore, where they emptied their sacks of oysters onto the hot white sand and started to shuck them with great anticipation. Nizar had collected the most, about twenty, so he knew his chances of finding a pearl were better than anyone else’s. He laughed out loud as he imagined all the praise he would receive when he gifted the Imam with the pearls. His father would be so proud!

  Underwater, Shamshu suddenly felt a sharp, painful tug on his trunks, and before he knew what had happened, he was pulled up to the surface where Nizar and the other boys dragged him to the beach. Shamshu lay bewildered on the sand, his arms and legs splayed open, his hair sticking straight up, and at his side, his sack of oysters.

  Nizar kneeled next to his brother, turned him to his side, and slapped his back over and over again. “I knew you shouldn’t have gone down. Idiot!”

  Shamshu couldn’t speak. He continued to cough, not because he had water in his lungs but because his body was not used to being on land. The force of air being pushed down into his throat and lungs filled him with dread. He yearned to be back in the weightlessness of water.

  The boys circled Nizar and Shamshu. Nizar straddled his brother. “Are you okay? Answer me, for God’s sake.” He shook Shamshu by his shoulders, then leaned down and placed his ear against his brother’s heart—but it was beating so intensely that the sound pierced his inner ear and Nizar quickly retreated.

  One of the boys reached down for Shamshu’s sack of oysters, turned it upside down. Hundreds and hundreds of oysters fell out.

  —

  THAT NIGHT, Shamshu dreamt about Fatima. She was a perfume seller at bazaar and he, a nomad passing through her town. She sat cross-legged on a Persian carpet with tins of perfumes in the shape of fish sprawled at her feet. People walked by her stall, pinching their noses. Fatima spotted Shamshu in the crowd. She shot up from the ground and called out to him. “This way, my love. This way.” Shamshu rushed to her like a wave to a shore and when he reached her, he fell to his knees, overwhelmed by her scent. As Fatima sat down, she took his head between her palms and led him down to her lap. She turned a bottle of perfume oil upside down onto her finger, then massaged it into his temples as she recited Pir Sadr al-Din’s ginan “Sakhi Mari Atama Na Odhar” to him like a songstress. “O Friend, the bed-swing sways back and forth with the rhythm of my every breath. O Friend, the saviour of my soul, do not go away and stay apart from me.”

  —

  BY THE NEXT DAY, word about Shamshu’s success had spread through the celebrations like a firecracker over the sky. Nizar tried to downplay the stories, but they grew day by day so that they became impossible to stop. People longed to learn Shamshu’s secret of staying underwater for so long. Some called him a master diver, others joked that perhaps he was part fish like Abdullah in One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, or that he had gills instead of lungs (after all, he had always been such an unusual boy); some speculated that he had cheated in some way (perhaps he had tied stones to his ankles like Gilgamesh), while the girls, even the prettiest ones, giggled and now stared at him with great admiration. Shamshu’s father also congratulated him. “Finally showing your Jiwa side! Well done, son.”

  Shamshu was unaccustomed to all the attention he was receiving. He felt strange and awkward. He didn’t quite understand why everyone was fawning over him. After all, he was only doing what came naturally to him, just as he had before, when he read poetry or spent the day imagining entire worlds. Why was this so different?

  By day three, some of the men had organized daily bets on how many oysters Shamshu would harvest or how long he would stay under. Too much fun, bana! And because the community valued consistency and fairness, some men asked Shamshu to remove his trunks before each dive—so as to ensure that he was not using any sort of contraption. Shamshu obliged; he had nothing to hide.

  Each day, growing crowds gathered to watch and cheer Shamshu on. Girls now arrived in groups with gifts of cake or handkerchiefs with their initials sewn next to his. One girl, the daughter of a shipping tycoon, even presented him with a twenty-four-karat gold bracelet. Wa-wa! yelled the crowd. But Shamshu refused the gift. “No thank you,” he said. Shamshu had never fancied jewellery, especially the clunky gold rings and heavy chains that his father wore. The crowd shook their heads in disbelief. Don’t be silly, Shamshu, you deserve it—you are a champion, bana. Go on now, you can’t say no to such a pretty girl. Aye, other boys would kill for such affection! Several men grabbed Shamshu and held his arm to the shipping tycoon’s daughter, her eyes sparkling. She smiled coyly as she wrapped the chain-link bracelet firmly around Shamshu’s wrist. The men raised Shamshu’s arm above him. The crowd clapped and hollered. Suddenly, a strange but infectious warmth swirled around Shamshu like an eddy and then pulled him into its centre, where he felt as if he was swimming, for the first time, with a school of fish instead of bobbing endlessly like a cork in the ocean.

  When the men released Shamshu’s arm, the sudden weight of the bracelet forced it down like an axe. His fingers tingled with numbness. Fatima, who had been standing outside the circle, broke through the crowd and handed Shamshu a note before rushing away. Shamshu could barely wrap his fingers around the paper. A sudden gust of wind blew the note out of Shamshu’s hand. It fluttered away and landed at the water’s edge. A wave swept in and carried it out to sea.

  —

  ON DAY SIX, Nizar, to everyone’s surprise, dropped out of the competition. “What was the point of competing when there was no way of winning?” he had said to his father.

  Mr. Jiwa reprimanded the boy. “Excuses will get you nowhere.”

  Nizar tried to protest, but his father refused to accept his arguments. Nizar felt cornered. If he competed, it would be in vain. If he didn’t, he would be seen as a weak. For the first time, Nizar understood the perils of competition. How could it ever be fair if everyone did not have the same advantage? This thought suddenly made Nizar feel apathetic. It no longer mattered what he did. He mumbled some words to his father and then walked out of the house.

  On the same day, Fatima was the first to spot Shamshu emerging from the water. She ran to him before the distant crowd swarmed closer. “Did you like the poem?” she asked, huffing and puffing.

  Shamshu dragged his bulging kikapu sack out of the sea and onto the shore, his feet making deep imprints on the hot sand. “What poem?” he asked.

  “The one I gave you yesterday.”

  “Oh yes, that one,” Shamshu said. He did not want to tell her what had happened to her note, partly to spare her feelings and partly because he was more interested in emptying his sack and getting to the business of searching for pearls.

  “So, did you like it?” Fatima asked as she tugged her earlobe.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “My favourite part is the beginning. ‘Stay close, my heart, to the one who knows your ways; not all eyes possess vision, not every sea…’ ”

  The crowd, buzzing like a swarm of bees, clapping and waving their hands, approached from behind, drowning out Fatima’s voice. They circled Shamshu like vultures. “How many today? How many today?” asked the men, many of whom had staked their week’s earnings on today’s bet.

  Fatima continued, shouting over the men’s voices. “Not every sea is full of pearls. If…”

  People stared at her in disbelief. Who did she think she was? Going on like that, speaking in tongues. Was she a lunatic, or what?

  Shamshu surveyed the crowd and immediately realized that no one was interested in what Fatima had to say. He felt his face flush pink. He was embarrassed for her and wished for her own sake that she would stop. “Please, Fatima,” he said, “why not wait until later?”

  “But I was here first,” Fatima retorted, and then continued her recitation.

  Suddenly, Shamshu had the urge to put his hand over her mouth. “Shut up!” he yelled.

  At first, everyone was silent, people looking at one another in shock, bu
t then they erupted with laughter and thunderous applause.

  Fatima stopped speaking, her eyes fixed on Shamshu.

  Shamshu turned his gaze away.

  “We have no use for you, girl,” said one man, wagging his finger at Fatima.

  “Exactly,” piped in the shipping tycoon’s daughter, a glint in her eye.

  Soon, the crowd pushed Fatima out of the circle and tightened themselves around Shamshu like hands around a throat.

  —

  WITH EACH DAY, Shamshu continued to receive an abundance of praise from community members and leaders, not to mention the many gifts and notes of adoration from more and more girls. He had no idea that life could be this easy, this uncomplicated. A new question arose in Shamshu’s mind. Why had he spent so many years spoiling his time with reading and writing when there was a more immediate path to love? It was those champions of the irrational—the poets! It was their fault. They had seduced him with the vague possibilities of union with the divine and the search for the meaning of life and truth. And what all for—fleeting moments of distilled joy? The external world, it seemed, was much more reliable. After all, it provided a defined path to follow and it provided so many rewards—instant rewards, not only with material value (because those are inconsequential really) but invaluable, intangible rewards like Respect and Recognition—things that had eluded Shamshu all these years. How could anyone blame him (or anyone else really) for choosing this path? It was natural, after all, to seek pleasure, not pain. And didn’t a constant search inward create a life of loneliness, if not pain? Suddenly it all became clear to him: He had been putting his efforts in the wrong place. Shamshu vowed to carve out a path for himself, to make a name for himself in this world.

  —

  FOR THE TENTH and final day, the boys had agreed to dive in the morning so that they could all make it to the Diamond Jubilee weighing ceremony on time. Shamshu had forty-three pearls; the other boys had sixteen amongst them. Shamshu had clearly won, but even still, he was determined to collect more. He decided that he would aim for forty-nine—a multiple of seven to represent the seven heavens. In order to collect six more pearls, Shamshu knew he would have to start the final dive well before the other boys, especially since his typical daily harvest yielded only three or four pearls. Yes, he was bending the rules, but what of it when your goal was such a pious one?

  That day, when Shamshu arrived at Oyster Bay, he found Fatima waiting for him. She presented him with a small paper cone filled with seven almonds. “To wish you luck,” she said. “Open it.” Inside, she had inserted a poem.

  Because the meeting of two souls is never accidental. Yours, F.

  From myself I am copper,

  through You I am gold.

  From myself I am a stone, but

  through You I am a gem!

  (p.s. I think Mowlana Rumi wrote this for Pir Shams.)

  Shamshu scanned the page, barely reading it. “I have to go.”

  “It doesn’t matter how many you find. It’s the search that matters, don’t you think? That’s what will touch the Imam’s heart.”

  For some reason, Fatima’s voice now resonated with Shamshu, creating ripples through his body like a stone thrown in water. Suddenly, he felt as though he was already underwater and that perhaps she was a mermaid, because his nostrils filled with the smell of fish. He leaned in, sniffed her neck.

  Fatima stepped back. “What are you doing?”

  Shamshu ignored her. An intense power surfaced from inside him. He continued to run his nose up and down her body. He started with the crown of her head, sniff, lifted her hair (oh, hair as smooth as pearls), sniff, her cheeks, sniff, opened her mouth with his fingers, sniff, nuzzled into her tender chest, sniff.

  “Stop it!” Fatima said, her hands against his chest as she tried to push him away.

  Shamshu fell to his knees and grabbed her foot, sniff. She fell backward onto the white sand; he climbed on top on her, sniff.

  Fatima struggled but knew she shouldn’t scream, because in the end no one would forgive a girl for coming to the beach unescorted. Instead, she pushed him with all her might and he toppled off her.

  Fatima quickly stood up and dusted herself off. “Have you gone mad?”

  Shamshu could hardly breathe. He rubbed his face in the sand and tried to shake off this overwhelming feeling.

  Fatima was about to leave when she saw Shamshu’s eyes through his sandy face—like an animal’s in a cave—and she realized that he must be in love with her. Why else would he be acting like this? Yes, she knew it: they were soulmates. She had guessed this much the night of their discussion outside the library. After all, it was the first time she had met a boy who was almost as smart as she was. Fatima now wanted to know him as she knew herself—so that there would be no him, no her. They would be one.

  “Please, will you take me diving with you?”

  “Are you joking? My talent can’t be shown. I was born with it.” Shamshu stood up and turned back to make sure the other boys hadn’t arrived yet. “Besides, I don’t have time.”

  Fatima reached for him, letting her finger follow a trail of sand from his chin to his neck, circling the bulge of his Adam’s apple, then continuing down his chest and stopping at the elastic waistband of his swim trunks.

  Shamshu pulled her to him. “I can show. Come on, let’s go.”

  Fatima pushed him back. “No.” Why was he being so brash? “Not today—I have to go and get ready for the weighing ceremony.”

  Shamshu let her go, shrugging. “Fine. Your loss.”

  Fatima watched a wave crash to shore. “But I don’t even have my swimming suit…”

  Shamshu leaned in and smiled. “It doesn’t matter—come like that.”

  As they started their descent, Shamshu wrapped his hands around Fatima’s waist. She squealed—a little nervous, but excited to discover his secret. Shamshu descended faster than she did; his hands slipped from her waist down to her knees. He looked up. He was keen to gauge her reaction—did she like it? Wasn’t this wondrous? But her skirt had flown up and billowed out so that all he could see was the lower half of her body. She buoyed above him like a giant mushroom—her skirt, the cap; the pleats of her skirt, the gills; her legs, her strong legs, the stalk; and him, like Ganesha, the guardian to her watery femininity. He felt intoxicated under her and resolved never to let her go.

  —

  SHAMSHU ARRIVED at the Aga Khan Sports Club just before the weighing ceremony. It was hot afternoon and the grounds, which had the feel of a fancy country fair, were decorated with red and green flags and banners, strung with lights, welcoming the Imam. As Shamshu made his way through the crowd, looking for Councillor Sahib, he slipped his hand in and out of his suit jacket and fingered the little velvet bag that contained the pearls—forty-nine of his own (what an accomplishment!) and another nineteen from the boys. From a distance, it looked as if a faint tarnished light shone from under his body. Shamshu spotted Councillor Sahib, who, like the other dignitaries, was dressed in a long red robe and gold-coloured headdress.

  Councillor Sahib took the velvet bag and shook Shamshu’s hand heartily. “Well done, young man. You make us all proud.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Noorani, Fatima’s parents, rushed up to them. “Councillor Sahib! Have you seen our daughter?” Mr. Noorani asked anxiously.

  “Fatima?”

  “Yes, yes. We are in a panic, Councillor Sahib.”

  Shamshu turned and inspected the grounds, which continued to fill with more people.

  “Kamru-bhai, she’s probably wandered off with her friends.” Councillor Sahib stretched his arms out. “Look at the crowds here—over seventy thousand! The population of Dar has doubled because of the festivities, you know. Thousands have come from all over Africa—convoys of cars from Congo, Abyssinia, Uganda, South Africa, you name it. Not to mention all those who have come from India, the Middle East—even Europe, if you can believe.”

  “Yes, you’re probably right. But as
God is my witness, when we find her, she is going to get such a royal beating.” Mr. Noorani shook Councillor Sahib’s hand. “Thank you. If by any chance you see her, tell her we’re looking for her.” He then reached for Shamshu’s elbow. “You too. Spread the word with your classmates, haya?”

  Shamshu nodded, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare, then turned to Councillor Sahib. “So you’ll gift the pearls to the Imam during the ceremony?”

  “I’ll do my level best, young man. It’s not in the plans, but let me see what I can do.”

  “Oh, I see.” Mr. Noorani shook his head. “You are the fish-boy everyone is taking about, hanh? Such a brilliant boy! What is your full name, please?”

  “Shamshudin Karmali Jiwa.”

  “Very good. You’ve made us all proud. Such a good example for all the youth.” Mr. Noorani cupped Shamshu’s shoulder. “Please come for tea soon, okay?”

  Shamshu nodded, and Mr. Noorani shook Shamshu’s hand, then walked away with his wife.

  The boys—with the exception of Nizar, who chose to sit with his sisters—found seats fairly close to the front. They were only twenty-some rows behind the first row, which was filled with merchant princes, representatives of the diplomatic corps, viziers to the Aga Khan and their Ladies, and the governors of Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda. People watched as title-holders from the Ismailia Volunteer Corps and other organizations paraded past in colourfully decorated floats. No one could wait for the Imam’s arrival!