A momentary lapse

Faraz Rana

“Don’t move,” Pasha reminds his uncle, and only then lets go of his calloused hand. He swings one leg and then the other over a metal railing lining the edge of Lyari Expressway, a colorless overpass that stretches over Karachi. 

On the other side of the railing, he stares into a dried-out canal. Bottles and plastic bags sparkle, trinkets in the brown sand. Pasha holds the bottom tip of his tunic between his lips and unties the drawstring of his shalwar and then lets it fall to his ankles. A smattering of his piss darkens the sand, the pressure of the stream digging in to form a small pond of liquid. The stream trails down the incline. He wonders about the canal: was it once flowing with water or is it just a man-made creation to separate the highway from the houses on the other side, or does it, like so much else in this city, have no purpose altogether, just another slab of empty land slid into a haphazard pile that could all topple over anytime?

His mouth is dry. Some droplets of his piss hit his toes. Against his feet, the wetness feels fresh, like a December breeze from the interior. He looks down at the top strap of the left sandal, the one that came loose this morning when he was running outside with his brother playing a game of pithu, trying to knock over some pebbles with a fuzzy yellow ball they had found on the side of the street. Then, his mother had called him inside. Was he going today? He could tell, by the way she didn’t look at him, that she felt bad for even asking. 

At the bottom of the curved valley, a dog frolics with the excitement of the desperate, moving from one piece of trash to another, his tail short like a raised nose, his ribs like painted stripes. Pasha points the stream in the dog’s direction, curious if his act of generosity will quench his thirst. The dog stops at the bottom of the incline and looks up at Pasha, still several feet away. They stare at each other. The dog’s eyes are screaming. Pasha has heard of wild dogs attacking. He notices the unevenness of his fur. Someone has cut off, or burned off, its hair. Or maybe it has fallen off for no reason, like the unexplained patches of baldness at the back of his own head. 

“Let’s go,” he tells his uncle when he climbs back over the railing. 

Pasha takes his uncle to the same spot every day, a break in the highway where cars are forced to take a U-turn before entering Sahara Town, a new housing complex on the outskirts of Karachi. The spot is valuable, one that a well-wisher had recommended, not too many days after Pasha’s father was buried in a white shroud. Have the boy take him, you’ll make plenty, said the man to his mother, pointing to her blind brother’s inside-out eyes and then nodding to Pasha. 

He and his uncle assume their position, his uncle’s right palm cupped and facing the sky. The sun is glistening in the haze today, making it hard to breathe. Cars come and go. They stand for two hours. It is a slow day until a commotion, a stalled, broken-down car at the gated entrance to the complex, backs up the other cars and holds them stationary. 

“They’re blocked,” Pasha informs his uncle. A traffic jam can be a lucrative few minutes. 

A beige Honda City stands in front of them. In the back, a woman wearing large black sunglasses is talking on her phone. Next to her, a boy, about Pasha’s age, is seated near the window. The boy has plastered his face to the glass, his eyes fixated on Pasha. They are four or five feet away from each other. The boy is wearing a green collared polo shirt; his face is plump.

The boy manufactures two circles around his eyes by holding the tip of his index finger and thumb together like pretend spectacles. Pasha avoids his stare, but the boy persists. Then Pasha feels the crack of a smile on his lip. He thinks of how much he laughed this morning chasing his brother down the street.  

Pasha whips out his tongue. The boy does the same. Pasha does it again; this time he holds his tongue out longer, and the boy holds it at the same time, his tongue gripping the window pane. Pasha lifts his nose with his finger, his nostrils flaring. The boy laughs. Pasha sees a twig lying next to him. He picks it up and whips it around like a play sword, his chin held high, his ribs inflated with air. He pretends to fight his blind uncle who is staring ahead, stationary, his cupped hand still in the air.

Pasha hears the rumble of an ignition. The cars near the gated entrance are starting to move. In front of him, Pasha also sees movement. The mother in the car hands the boy something. The window lowers. The boy’s hand reaches out. It is a red, hundred rupee note, an amount they might make over a week. Normally, he would run over and render the Almighty’s blessings on the occupants of the car. But Pasha looks away, pretending to scan the other cars. 

The note flaps in the wind, or perhaps the boy flaps his hand. The Honda City begins to edge forward. Eventually he sees just the back of the black car speeding away towards the entrance. The boy’s arm has disappeared back into the car. Pasha throws the twig, his pretend play sword, in their direction. It flails in the air and lands just a few feet from him. 

“Let’s go,” he tells his uncle. “There is nothing for us today.”

Faraz Rana is a Brooklyn-based writer originally from Pakistan. He came to the United States when he was eleven and much of his fiction moves between the two places. Rana runs a small business full time and previously practiced law.