Capital

who was next in line to get married, would have it much worse, and so would Ahmed, who while safe on the marriage front, would be the brother who had to put their mother up, and who therefore would be open to multiple bases for advice, criticism, fault-finding, factual correction and silent disapproval: the way he ran his business, the way he ate and how much he ate, the way he brought up his children, his conduct as a husband, as a Muslim, as a son. Mrs Kamal visited roughly once every two years, and no one looked forward to it. This would be her first visit since the immediate aftermath of Mohammed’s birth.
    ‘It’ll be nice to see Mrs Kamal,’ said Rohinka, sweetly. Ahmed swivelled around and glared at her. But Rohinka – it was part of what made her sexy – was a genius at mock-innocence. She fluttered and dimpled at Ahmed from her place by the sink. He gave a snort.
    Shahid realised that he was sitting with his head in his hands. His mother would without question be on at him about getting married, an arranged marriage at that – she might well have a candidate in mind. If she didn’t have a specific person she would certainly have a plan. She would bully him into agreeing to come to Lahore to assess suitable candidates. He had done this once before, two years ago, and it was excruciating, like a sustained assault on his sense of himself, on everything he wanted to be as a man, a free spirit, a traveller, a citizen of the world, a man who had seen and done things but was still young; sitting in a series of Lahore rooms with a series of variously embarrassed Pakistani women, some of them as reluctant as him, some (and this was much worse) evidently quite keen on the idea. At this point, it would be hard to find anything he more exactly didn’t want to do than go to Pakistan and leave Iqbal in his flat with his smelly feet and his opinions . . . Then Shahid had an idea. Maybe he could use the fact that he had to go to Lahore as a way of getting Iqbal out of his flat . . .
    ‘She’ll be on at me. What have I done to deserve this?’ said Shahid. He would like to say more – would like to say much more – but it was hard to, because Rohinka and Ahmed had had an arranged marriage, so it would be grossly insulting to go into his objections. And there was also the difficult-to-ignore fact that their marriage was a self-evident roaring success. Ahmed loved Rohinka and she (less explicably in Shahid’s view) loved him back; and she was also seriously foxy. So arranged marriages were outdated, wrong in principle, demeaning, no better than a form of licensed prostitution (but then so was Western marriage), patriarchal, sexist, and yet on the other hand if you ended up with someone like Rohinka . . .
    ‘Aren’t you going to denounce arranged marriages?’ asked Ahmed, guessing what Shahid was thinking, since Mrs Kamal plus Shahid meant a guaranteed row on exactly this subject. Shahid thought about saying, not everybody is as lucky as you – but he didn’t, because it was true, and would give Ahmed too much pleasure.
    ‘Ahmed, how much weight would you say you’ve put on since you got married?’ said Shahid. ‘It must be at least ten kilos, wouldn’t you say? Usman, don’t you think our brother is about twenty-five pounds fatter?’
    Rohinka returned from clattering around at the far end of the room with a tray of Indian sweets – kulfi, gulab jamun. Mohammed slapped the sides of his high chair to make sure his interest in this new development was generally known. ‘Boys, boys,’ said Rohinka, in a voice which made it clear that she hadn’t been really listening, and beneath that, implied that male conversation never really advanced the state of knowledge much anyway, but should be tolerated all the same, as long as it didn’t get in the way of important things.
    ‘I’ll go through and get some Häagen-Dazs from the shop,’ said Ahmed. He wanted some ice cream, and he was also giving in to the need to check on Hashim. Fatima got down from the table and came over to take his hand. She had strong opinions about ice cream.

36
     
     
    The Refuge was a double-fronted late Victorian house in a Tooting side street. It was near the Common, near the Tube, not too far from the Lido, and handy for shops and amenities. There was a kitchen and two communal areas, one of them dominated by a large old cathode-ray television, the other furnished with battered sofas. The garden was untidy but functioning;