Sunday afternoon, and a tall, straight-backed man rang the doorbell. Zahra was the one to greet him through the bolted screen door with an inquiring “Hello?” He responded with a pointed “Asalaam-a-laikum” that made her apologetically retreat into a “Walaikum-asalaam.” By now her father had walked into the corridor and the man looked through the screen and called out, “Haboo!” which was a nickname only his old school friends used. Her father called out enthusiastically enough in response and embraced the man when Zahra unbolted the screen door and let him in, but then he said, more loudly than necessary, “Last I heard, you were a colonel. Where have you got to now?” and Zahra knew this was a warning to Zahra and her mother of what shouldn’t be said, what couldn’t be assumed, in this man’s presence.

  The man was a brigadier. Zahra’s mother had a cousin in the navy and her father had a nephew in the air force, but a brigadier in the army was something else entirely. “Why is he here?” Zahra said, following her mother into the kitchen. Shameema Apa was having her midafternoon rest, so Zahra arranged the tea trolley while her mother poured oil into the karhai for the pakoras.

  “You heard what he said,” her mother said. The man had said he was driving by and thought why shouldn’t he stop in and see his old friend Habib, whom he watched on TV every week but hadn’t seen in person for too long. But he hadn’t said how he knew where his old friend lived, given the decades they’d been out of touch.

  “How does it feel to have a celebrity husband?” the Brigadier said when Zahra’s mother, followed by Zahra, returned to the living room, wheeling the trolley ahead of her. “Everyone watches his show, everyone. You know, the President himself is a fan.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Zahra’s mother said, and her father said, “Is he really?”

  Zahra’s parents smiled, looked appreciative but unconcerned, her father gestured to Zahra to hand the Brigadier a plate and some pakoras, her mother asked him how he liked his tea.

  “Well, you know General Zia is a great cricket fan,” the Brigadier said, taking the plate, showing no sign of noticing that Zahra was extending her arm as far as it could reach so that she didn’t have to stand any nearer to the man than necessary. Her father gave her a warning look and she moved closer. “He was the one who convinced Imran Khan to come out of retirement and lead the team to the West Indies. You know that, don’t you, Haboo?”

  “Of course,” her father said, “of course.”

  The Brigadier took a bite of the pakora. “Baita, any ketchup?” he said to Zahra.

  An image came to Zahra’s mind of the empty ketchup bottle in the kitchen, which should have been replaced earlier in the week. She’d gone into Deltons to buy a few things while her father was buying vegetables between traffic, but when she placed the shopping basket next to the cashier, he’d snapped at her for keeping the sanitary pads on top. Such things must always be kept out of sight, he’d said, while swiftly engulfing the pads in a brown paper bag, which he placed in a polythene bag, the handles of which he tied firmly into a knot that left no opening for anyone to peer inside. She’d exited, flustered, forgetting to take the second polythene bag that the man had placed the rest of her shopping in, and then was too embarrassed to explain to her parents what had happened and said she’d simply forgotten to buy the ketchup and orange squash. Yesterday she’d turned the old ketchup bottle upside down to get out whatever remnants possible to eat with her chips, and now there was nothing left in it and the Brigadier would have to eat his pakoras dry.

  “There’s chutney,” her mother said, holding out a bowl.

  “Much better,” said the Brigadier, and Zahra felt a slight loosening in the constriction of her chest.

  “I wondered . . .” the Brigadier said, dipping the pakora, “I wondered if somehow, Haboo, you were the only person in the country who didn’t know that the President’s intervention was the reason that Imran led the team so spectacularly in the West Indies—of course we would have won the series if it wasn’t for the umpires. Everyone is so angry at those umpires, even you the other day on TV, but I say they are patriots, they didn’t want their players to lose to a foreign team. I can understand that. I can even appreciate it.”

  Zahra was standing, plate of pakoras in hand. Her mother had poured the tea but wasn’t handing out the cups. Her father’s smile had turned wide and thin.

  “We all recognize the President’s role,” her father said. There was a long pause, during which the Brigadier held out a hand, and Zahra’s mother apologized and passed him his cup of tea.

  “And are grateful,” her father said, his voice very small.

  “I’m pleased to hear you say that,” the Brigadier said. “These pakoras are really excellent, and just the right amount of mint in the chutney. Because, you know, last night I was thinking that even when the series was ongoing and you used to talk about it every week and then last night again, you’ve never mentioned General Zia. As I said, he’s a fan of the show, so he would have been watching. He’s not a man who asks for praise or thanks, but even so, he’s a human being. My guess is—and I’m only guessing here—that he’s a little hurt.”

  Zahra’s mother came to stand next to her husband with a cup of tea for him. He looked up at her, and then at Zahra, before turning back to the Brigadier with that smile of a stranger.

  “Next time I mention the series, I’ll remember to give him credit.”

  “Perhaps in next week’s episode,” the Brigadier said. “A few words of gratitude on behalf of the nation.”

  “Oh, it’s no use trying to get my husband to reveal what he’ll say in next week’s episode,” Zahra’s mother said lightly. “He treats it like a state secret.”

  The Brigadier laughed, a deep laugh from the belly. “He never liked giving anything away, even in school. Has he told you about that time he pulled that prank with the teacher’s bicycle? How old were we? Ten?”

  He didn’t stay long after that. A few anecdotes, some reminiscing, polite questions about Zahra’s mother’s school and Zahra’s own education. He knew where Zahra went to school, and he knew where her mother was principal. When he stood up to leave, he embraced Zahra’s father again and said, “We are friends, Haboo, despite all the years.”

  “I’m very grateful for it,” Zahra’s father said, and for the first time she thought of the other ways in which this message could have been delivered and it occurred to her not to hate this straight-backed man but to want to kiss his hands.

  The Brigadier left and Zahra’s mother bolted the screen door and both locks on the main door. Her father walked onto the balcony and stood there awhile; when he finally turned and nodded to her mother, Zahra knew the man had driven away.

  “What’s going to happen?” Zahra said.

  Her parents sat down on the sofa, close together, and her father patted the cushion beside him. But Zahra stood where she was, raising one leg off the floor, flamingo-like, for no reason except that the act of balancing gave her something to concentrate on beyond this caving-in feeling.

  “You could say something factual,” her mother said.

  “The success of the series would not have been possible without the captaincy of Imran, who as we all know came out of retirement at the request of the President,” her father said.

  “Is that a little . . . pointed?” her mother said, reaching for the pakoras, which she hadn’t touched while the Brigadier was there. “We all know. Is that saying, Why are you making me state the obvious?”

  “They want you to thank the President,” Zahra said. “You have to thank him.”

  “I’m not thanking that man, jaani. I have to be able to look Iqbal in the eye.”

  Iqbal, her father’s friend and onetime colleague, had been one of the journalists who staged a hunger strike to protest the press censorship enacted in the first years of military rule. Along with three other journalists, he was arrested and flogged. Ten lashes each. Zahra was four years old at the time. She remembered walking into her father’s room and seeing him lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, an odd texture to his face that turned out to be tears. It was one of her earliest memories, though it wasn’t until years later that her parents gave her the information to understand what the memory was about.

  “Please, Aba, please,” Zahra said.

  “What is this?” her father said, coming to her, arms holding her close. “What are these tears?”

  “They’ll hurt you,” she said. They’d tied Iqbal’s hands and feet to a wooden frame and used a belt to secure his torso in place.

  “Oho,” her father said, kissing her hair. “For this kind of thing they don’t do that kind of thing. At worst, they’ll ban me from the airwaves, like they did to Iqbal Bano for singing a Faiz poem. It’s okay. I’ll still have the newspaper column.”

  “They’ll have to change the name of the show or find another cricket expert called Ali,” her mother said.

  “Much easier to find another Ali,” her father said.

  They were being flippant for Zahra’s sake, but she could see the fear in them. As long as she could remember, there had been this feeling of threat stalking her, everywhere. Say the wrong thing, turn down the wrong street, allow yourself the mildest transgression, and some creature awful and unknown would swoop down on you, talons tearing into your flesh. And now it was here, in their midst, and it had entered in the guise of an old friend just to drive home the point that nothing, no one, nowhere was safe. She held on to her father, feeling the softness of his flesh, the breakability of his bones.

  “It’ll be okay,” he told her, more foolish now than he’d ever been.

  Another Wednesday, and Zahra and Maryam lay on the floor of Maryam’s bedroom, the marble cooler than any other surface as the third hour of a power breakdown rolled along. They had agreed, minutes ago, that all effects of the central air-conditioning had dissipated and it was time to open the windows to let in what breeze there was, but neither of them could bear the exertion of standing up.

  Maryam was on her stomach looking at the printout of possible new logos for Khan Leather that she’d designed using MacPaint. The blocky ornate capital K and L of the existing logo looked old-fashioned rather than classical, but she suspected her grandfather wouldn’t be convinced by the lowercase letters that she was advancing as an alternative, the stalks of the k and l mirroring each other with identical loops. Zahra was using Maryam’s back as a pillow, reading a magazine article about Nelson Mandela, or pretending to, though Maryam hadn’t heard her turn the page in a very long time and her usual reading speed was lightning-fast.

  “Are you annoyed with me?” Maryam said at last. She knew Zahra had heard Hammad say, Call you tonight, as they passed by each other in the schoolyard at home time, and had expected an interrogation to follow. But Zahra hadn’t said anything about it. In fact, she’d hardly said anything at all through the day.

  “No,” Zahra said, in a strange voice.

  “What is it, then?”

  “Nothing,” Zahra said. Then, after a pause, “Family stuff.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, if you feel like discussing anything . . .”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  The door opened and Maryam’s father looked in. “There’s ice,” he said. “Outside.”

  The girls peeled themselves off the floor and followed him out into the garden, where one of the guards was using the butt of his Kalashnikov to hammer a slab of ice into chunks, splinters sparkling in the air. It was ice from the bazaar, which meant it couldn’t be consumed but it could be placed in wide plastic basins, with water from the garden hose streamed on top.

  “Ahhhh,” said Maryam and Zahra, sitting side by side on the grass, their feet sharing a single basin of iced water. Maryam’s parents sat on cane chairs with a basin each. The gulmohar trees, their flowers flame-red, provided essential shade. The youngest two of the family took a basin and walked off to the other end of the garden, where they could giggle together about whatever secret they were sharing these days.

  Maryam’s father had carried a peach out of the house and he cut that in half, the scent of it perfuming the air. The guard walked back toward the driveway, wiping his hand against the butt of his Kalashnikov and smearing the cold water on his neck.

  “What do you think?” Maryam said, holding up the piece of paper she’d brought out with her. “A new logo design.”

  Her father leaned forward. “Is this for your computer class?”

  “No, it’s for the company,” she said.

  Her father made a noise, both indulgent and dismissive, as he pried the corrugated pit out of the yellow-gold peach flesh.

  “You really like doing things with computers, don’t you?” said her mother. “Do you think there might be a future in that?”

  “Do I think there’s a future for computers?”

  “No, for you to do something with computers.”

  “At Khan Leather? Yes, of course. We’ll soon be using computers for everything.”

  “No, I meant . . . if you had to imagine some other kind of future, somewhere else.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Zahra, you’re planning to go to university abroad, aren’t you?” Maryam’s father said. “Do you think you might stay there?”

  “I don’t have a family business here.” Zahra touched her fingers against Maryam to say that whatever her parents were trying to do here, she was on Maryam’s side.

  “There are so many opportunities out there,” Maryam’s mother said, coming to sit next to her daughter. But as she lowered herself down, her palm touched the damp soil where the water had spilled out of the basin, and she ended up hovering awkwardly in a squat to keep her clothes off the ground. “Many opportunities and no bomb alarms in school and guards at the gate.”

  “You don’t need the guards. They’re just a status symbol because all your friends have them,” Maryam said.

  “Do you know how many of our friends have been held at gunpoint in their own homes?” her mother said.

  What Maryam knew was that all the tales of armed robberies in the middle of the night had made Zeno insist that her daughters sleep in “modest” clothing rather than the long T-shirts to which they were all accustomed, and that everyone who had been held up had emerged unscathed, with increasingly competitive stories to tell at parties for weeks after.

  “Anyway, Dada and I have decided,” Maryam said. “I’m going to university abroad and then I’ll come back and start work at the company.”

  “We are your parents,” her mother said, standing up. “Even if both you and your grandfather seem to forget it.”

  “Zeno!” her father said in a warning tone.

  Maryam’s mother raised her hands in the air. “What is it going to take?” she said.

  “That’s enough for now,” her father said, handing a slice of peach to his wife and holding the plate out to his daughter and Zahra.

  Maryam reached forward to take the peace offering, glad that whatever this unnecessary conversation was all about, invoking her grandfather’s authority had brought it to a close.

  After that initial conversation following the Brigadier’s visit, Zahra’s parents had refused to discuss the matter in her presence. Her father had been to see friends for advice—school friends who knew the Brigadier, journalist friends who had spent years navigating a path between conscience and consequence. But all he said to Zahra was, “Stop worrying, it’ll be all right.” If he was so sure it would be all right, why had he taken the whole family to their favorite restaurant, Yuan Tung, on a school night? Why had he been so insistent that Zahra put aside her schoolwork and come for a long walk along the seawall, during which he told her stories from his childhood? Why did he hold his wife’s hand when they watched video rentals at night?

  “What did he say?” Zahra said to her mother when she came to pick Zahra up from Maryam’s, while her father was still at the TV studio pre-recording the show for the evening broadcast.

  “I don’t know,” her mother said. “He still hadn’t decided this morning.”

  Zahra usually retreated to her bedroom with its boom box when she came home from Maryam’s, but that afternoon she sat in the living room so that she’d see her father as soon as he opened the front door. Her mother came to sit on the sofa with her, a pack of playing cards in her hands. They played Snap, over and over, throwing cards down fast on the cushion between them.

  Halfway through a game, Zahra felt all the strength leave her limbs. She put her cards down, looking at the king of clubs staring up at her, a sword in each hand, a face of indifference. Why didn’t whatever was going to happen just happen? She couldn’t bear another day of normal life in which nothing was normal. The most unexceptional acts—passing the saltshaker to your father—could suddenly feel weighted with significance. What if they took him away and you never passed him a saltshaker again? And everything was made stranger because her parents had said she couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, which meant Maryam didn’t know and couldn’t make everything better simply by knowing.

  She could hear her father singing as he came up the stairs. “Oh no,” Zahra said. He was singing “Hum Daikhain Gay,” the banned Faiz poem that Iqbal Bano had performed at the Alhambra in Lahore two years earlier, driving her audience into a frenzy that culminated in cries for revolution. One of the nation’s most beloved singers, she would never perform on TV or at official functions again.