Free Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid Page B

hot. I’ll have a glass of milk and a sliced mango. Then run to the bazaar and get some candles. And some hand fans.’
    He starts to shut the door to my room and then stops. ‘Saab, money?’
    ‘What happened to the money I gave you?’
    ‘It’s finished.’
    ‘What do you mean, finished? Stop smiling, you crook, this is serious.’ I take two hundred rupees out of my wallet and give them to him. ‘I want a full accounting when you get back.’
    I take a shower and plop down on my bed, still wet, with a towel wrapped around my waist. At least I’m not hot this way. Having the power cut is serious. I was a month behind on my payments even before I lost my job, unprepared as usual for the summer spike in my bill that sucks a quarter of my paycheck into the air conditioner, and now I owe them half a month’s salary. Power prices have been rising faster than a banker’s wages the last couple of years, thanks to privatization and the boom of guaranteed-profit, project-financed, imported oil-fired electricity projects. I was happier when we had load-shedding five hours a day: at least then a man didn’t have to be a millionaire to run his AC.
    I’m eating the mango when the phone rings. A voice jumps out of the receiver like a snappy salute, and even though I haven’t spoken to Khurram uncle in quite some time, I know at once it’s his. He has an unmistakable tone of command I associate with Sandhurst and the experience of sitting comfortably in an office while ordering men to die.
    ‘Darashikoh,’ he says, ‘Aurangzeb tells me you’ve encountered a spot of difficulty finding a position.’
    So he knows I’ve been fired. ‘Yes, sir,’ I answer.
    ‘Well, son, I think it’s about time you called in the heavyguns. I know Aurangzeb has requested your presence at the house this evening. Come by my quarters at twenty-two hundred and we shall see if I can’t straighten things out.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Very good.’
    Khurram uncle was my father’s best friend at the military academy. He occupied a cushy staff position as an ADC in Rawalpindi in ’71, while my father died of gangrene in a prisoner-of-war camp near Chittagong. Then he slipped into the civil service, specializing, it’s said, in overpaying foreign companies for equipment and pocketing their kickbacks.
    I have no real memories of my father. I turned two the summer his regiment was sent east. His photos and the stories I’ve heard have built in my mind the image of a quiet, courageous man, a soldier’s soldier. He was the best boxer at the military academy, and he drove a motorcycle. I have his ears, people say. Strange things to inherit, ears. Small and lobeless, like a pair of half-hearts. Otherwise we look nothing alike.
    Khurram uncle was the first person to notice the similarity. I must have been seven or eight. Ozi and I had come back to my place from a football match and my knees were bloody. Khurram uncle was paying a visit to my mother. As she cleaned my cuts with Dettol, and I cried because of the stinging, I remember Khurram uncle taking one of my earsbetween his thumb and forefinger and saying, ‘Strange ears. Connected to the jaw. Just like his father.’
    Khurram uncle visited our house fairly regularly. He always asked if we needed anything, and he often brought me presents. Sometimes he gave me clothes from abroad. I remember my first pair of high-top sneakers. Ozi told the boys in school that they were meant for him but were too small, so his father gave them to me.
    I saw less and less of Khurram uncle as I grew older, especially after Ozi left for America. The summer my mother died, I went to a restaurant with some friends and found her having lunch with Khurram uncle. She told me he had found me a job at a bank. I don’t remember being happy at that moment. Maybe no one wants to stop being a student.
    The last time I saw him was at her funeral. He was crying. Ozi’s mother was sick and couldn’t come. Khurram uncle told me