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and heaved himself on to the seat.
    â€˜Azra has invited me to a party on Sunday,’ he said after a while.
    A huge mosquito struck his cheek. He looked at his uncle. Ayaz Beg’s was an open face on which every flicker of emotion could be clearly read. Naim saw unhappiness.
    â€˜You weren’t taken there to deliver a speech,’ Ayaz Beg said. ‘You well know that even a mention of Tilak is tantamount to terrorism. Had we not been in Roshan Mahal the matter wouldn’t end there. You could possibly be arrested.’
    â€˜I am sorry, Uncle,’ Naim said. ‘He is such a hero to us all.’
    For a while, the two were silent. Then Ayaz Beg spoke, not in anger, but slowly, haltingly, in remorse. ‘Our family has been destroyed just because of such things. I took you away – educated you – put my life’s ambition in you –’
    They swayed and swung in their seat, holding on to its sides, as the behli left the area and travelled along pitted roads.

CHAPTER 3
    I T WAS AN unusually warm day. On the lawn of the big house the party had already begun. At the main gate stood a high-roofed black car. Pervez was standing there chatting to the car’s owner as Naim arrived. Pervez introduced him to the young man. His name was Sahibzada Waheeduddin. He had been a year senior to Pervez at college, had recently passed the Civil Service competitive examination and had been posted to the Department of Education. The three of them were walking along the driveway when an English girl crossed over from the left wing of the house. Pervez introduced her to Naim.
    â€˜Sorry; my hands,’ she said, rubbing the soot off her hands with a duster. ‘Glad to meet you.’ She stepped on to the lawn.
    There was a loosely dispersed crowd under a century-old bargad tree. No chairs or tables were to be seen on the lawn, just a couple of low stools on which sat talking two boys and a girl. Next to them, two slightly younger people lay on their stomachs on the grass leafing through picture magazines. A few paces away Azra was trying to light a large oil stove. She was surrounded by four or five boys and girls, dispensing instructions. Two girls were coming up from the left wing, one of them carrying a cane basket, the other holding a large iron kettle by the handle. The English girl kneeled down on the grass beside Azra and whispered to her.
    â€˜Look, your handsome friend!’
    Azra looked up. Her eyes lingered on Naim for a few seconds.
    â€˜But today,’ continued the other girl, ‘he is looking a proper person without his red cap.’
    â€˜Shush, Lydia,’ Azra said to the girl. ‘Salam alaikam,’ she said to Naim and immediately took his hand, unconsciously transferring some of the soot from her hands to his.
    â€˜It was Lydia’s proposal to make tea out here on this silly old stove. Thatwill make it a “real” picnic party, she said. And look what happened.’ She spread her hands.
    She had come away, leaving a bunch of them to struggle with the stove. Her face was red from working. Her mouth stretched a bit too wide as she smiled, thought Naim; but the full lips made his heart fly.
    â€˜Waheed,’ a girl in a straight-cut pyjama trousers and kameez said, ‘you haven’t thrown us a party to celebrate your appointment.’
    â€˜Yes, yes,’ enjoined Lydia, ‘now you are in employment, you owe us a party. Come on, pay up, Miser Tom.’
    â€˜You’ve had so many from me and you call me a miser?’
    â€˜But not one for crawling out of a state of unemployment.’
    â€˜What is it about Mrs MacMillan, Waheed?’ asked Pervez. ‘You go to the Civil Club.’
    â€˜What about her?’
    â€˜Rumours that she forced her husband to resign?’
    â€˜Rumours, yes. I don’t know the whole story.’
    Bored with the boys’ conversation, the girls walked away. Finding himself with just Pervez