Free A Season for Martyrs: A Novel by Bina Shah

her thirties, the wife of the head of some multinational corporation, was even wearing a bikini, and although nobody was going topless, the sight of her in that daring outfit cheered Ali up a little. He felt sorry for them, could see they felt safe being here, far away from the city and its problems, protected by Masood’s contingent of armed guards, who kept a respectful distance from the beach hut, ferocious with their Kalashnikovs clutched under their arms.
    Besides the foreigners, there was a gathering of local guests: Jehangir was there, Ahmed, Omer, Zulfi, and some of the girls that Masood knew: Leela, Zainab, Mishi. The guys were sprawled on the stairs that led down to the sea, the girls hiding from the sun except for Leela, who sunned herself boldly along with the goris, turning her palms up to tan along the insides of her arms.
    French Beach was the best of Karachi’s beaches; far better than Clifton Beach, where the sweaty hordes, as Jehangir called them, came to frolic on the weekends. Clifton Beach was purely for lower-class families, men in shalwar kameezes, women in burqas, six or seven children to each family arriving in Suzukis and vans and on the backs of motorcycles. They splashed in the water fully clothed, they ate freshly grilled corn and drank juice from roadside stalls, they ran around on the beach and flew kites; and nobody of any social standing or class ever went there, except for some of the residents of the Seaview apartments, who liked to take morning walks before the riffraff showed up.
    Sandspit, the next beach up, lay beyond the city, flat and boring like its name, and then came Hawkesbay, rockier and more desolate. The waves catapulted strongly against the rocks and there was a dangerous undercurrent in the summers; the best time to bathe there fell in the winter months, when the tides were calm and there were no jellyfish in the water. The entire coast of Sindh had been spared from the tsunami of 2004, the beaches left intact. Ali didn’t like to imagine what would have happened to the fishermen who lived all along the coast in tiny villages. He was glad God had saved them from that kind of disaster.
    And then there was the Rolls-Royce of Karachi beaches: French Beach, so named because in the seventies all the French people who were working in the city owned weekend huts here, leasing the land from the villagers on terms more favorable to the French than to the locals. And not just the French: Americans, Germans, Dutch, British people flocked here to windsurf, barbecue, tan, and drink, and you could hardly see a Pakistani anywhere on the beach. In those days the foreigners lived in Karachi without fear, their children went to international and local schools, and everyone loved having them around, hosting them at dinner parties and picnics.
    These days the children weren’t allowed to live in Karachi anymore; the few goray left moved around the city in cars with armed guards and blackened windows, scurrying from their heavily guarded homes to their work and back again.
    It was not just the distance from the city that drew people to French Beach: it was strikingly beautiful, a natural cove enclosed in the hug of two rocky arms that extended out into the sea. You could climb the rocks and find crabs and small fish in the pools left there at low tide. The water sang deep blue, and beachgoers even snorkeled around the shallow reefs and windsurfed in the bay.
    Sunita and Ali decided to go for a walk onto the rocks, away from the party. They rarely got to be together so openly in Karachi. As soon as they were clear of the huts, Ali took Sunita’s hand and helped her to clamber up onto the craggy hill. They turned around and surveyed the stretch of golden sand, the huts that followed the gentle curve of beach, and far in the distance, the city buildings shimmering like mirages in the haze. Here there was no sound but the endless drone of waves breaking on the shore, the wind that soughed in