‘So they were the first not-quite-twins?’ I ran my fingers over their names. When Baji nodded, I said, ‘But then the myth is untrue. The first not-quite-twins didn’t bring ruin to the family. Okay, so they didn’t do Qadiruddin any good, but as far as the Dard-e-Dil family goes, they were … that is, Kulsoom was, I mean … Oh my God.’

Baji clapped her hands and sat back, watching Samia and me gape at each other. ‘We’re all descended from the illegitimate child of a wet nurse,’ Baji giggled. ‘As likely as not.’

‘So you see,’ I told Khaleel, ‘the Liaquatabad problem isn’t about lineage as such. If it were, if that was the issue I was having to struggle with, I wouldn’t just be reprehensible, I’d be stupid. Right?’

‘Er … well. Hey, is that your cousin?’

In a newsagent’s doorway stood a woman I’d never seen before, with dark hair and beautiful eyes. ‘We all look alike to you, don’t we? You Americans!’

He checked to make sure I was teasing, and then laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t see the resemblance. But no, I guess it’s pretty obvious that woman is not related to you.’

‘Why’s that?’ By now we’d walked past her, and I looked back once more because really, she did look a little like Samia.

‘Didn’t you see her hands? She’s clearly not from a privileged background.’

‘What, you read her palm as we walked past?’

‘No. But she’s grown up having to do some kind of manual labour. Didn’t you see the veins bulging out from the back of her hands?’

There was a bench nearby, so I sat down. I looked back at the woman with beautiful eyes whose collarbone was hidden entirely beneath her high-necked shirt. Khaleel said my name, twice, and when I didn’t answer he put his hand to my forehead, his wrist just inches from my lips. His other hand rested on my knee and when I looked down I saw him holding the half-eaten apple, his teeth marks embedded in its flesh. I looked up at him and smiled. ‘As I was saying, it’s not about lineage or, to give it its more modern term, family background. It’s not that simple.’

The woman with beautiful eyes walked by, talking to a man. I heard him say, ‘How’s the new sculpture coming along?’

‘A sculptor. Hence the hands.’ I stood up. ‘I was just about to go up to her and say … I don’t know … Show me your clavicle, or something equally suave.’

‘So what is it about if not lineage?’

‘Do you know what I found out today? That I’m fated to bring ruin to my family. Me and Mariam.’ I said it, and then I stopped to think about it for the first time. Oh, I told the stories often enough. The curse of the not-quite-twins. The inevitability of destruction trailing in their wake. But if you’d asked me whether I believed, truly believed, the stories, I’d have laughed. But seeing that star against my name, seeing that other star against Mariam’s name and thinking of what she’d done and how my family had reacted, something more primeval than logic or cynicism or nineties cool had made me feel — still made me feel — so sick, so trapped.

‘Cal,’ I said, taking the apple core from his hands and dropping it in a garbage can. ‘In another life, maybe even in another year, we’d meet each other’s friends, we’d watch movies together, we’d talk on the telephone about nothing, and I’d order such meals for you in restaurants! But, instead, I’m going to get on a plane tomorrow and go home. And it’s still May. This time I booked my ticket back for May. And look, Khaleel, we’ve reached my flat, and I can see Samia through the window, so even if it had occurred to me to invite you up, now I won’t. So you’re right. Let’s shake hands and say goodbye.’

‘Aliya, I’m not going to shake your hand. No way. No civilized goodbyes, or sorry-our-timing-was-bad speeches, okay?’

‘What then, Khaleel?’

Samia was watching television when I walked into the flat, minutes later, but she turned it off when she saw me. ‘Where have you … What’s wrong? You look mighty odd.’ She walked closer to me. ‘Are you drunk?’ She leant in, smelt my breath. ‘Is that cider?’

Chapter Eight

That I hadn’t told him what time I’d be leaving in the morning did not prevent me from looking for him as I exited Palmer House and moved towards the waiting cab. Samia, her tongue thick with sleep, told me not to be a fool, and no, I didn’t have a few more minutes before I had to leave and, please, did I really expect her to believe I wanted those extra minutes because I hated saying goodbye to her.

‘Well, I do,’ I said.

‘Are you getting misty-eyed?’ She blinked and stared at me. ‘You are! My God, Aliya, I haven’t made you cry since that time you had mumps and I told you the only cure was surrounding yourself with dirty undergarments. What did I say MUMPS stood for? Malodorous Underwear Might Provide Succour.’

It’s a family tradition. When you leave, you leave laughing.

But airports and aeroplanes kill all laughter. Things I find funny anywhere else seem like signs of the coming Apocalypse in an airport. This time was no different. While I was still queuing up to get my boarding pass an airline official walked past, checking that everyone had passports and tickets ready, and told me my suitcase was ‘not appropriately proportioned’. Was it too large? Too wide? Too high? He sniffed and conceded, no. And walked on. At the ticket counter I was told that the computer ‘doesn’t seem to want to recognize you’. ‘Well, force it,’ I said. The man behind me whispered, ‘Farah’ and started humming the Charlie’s Angels theme. It’s what every airport experience needs: a touch of seventies magic. But at least the airline person took me seriously and thumped on the computer until it yielded up my name. In return for this affront, the computer gave me a seat in the smoking section.

Aboard the flight, I waited patiently for take-off and the subsequent extinguishing of the no-smoking sign, at which point a small group of men — blatantly ignoring the earlier breathy instructions of the flight attendant — got up from their seats in the no-smoking section and walked back to light up, scant feet from my face.

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Would someone mind swapping seats with me? I don’t want to be in the smoking section.’

‘Who does?’ said a man with beautifully manicured hands, puffing away at his Marlboro.

But by now I had spotted my targets. There were three Pakistanis grouped together, labourers by the look of it, and for their benefit I repeated the question in Urdu.

‘Give the lady your seat,’ one said, gesturing at a wiry, bearded man.

‘Yes. Do you want her to travel in discomfort all the way to Karachi?’ another said. ‘Didn’t anyone ever teach you any manners?’

The wiry man turned to me. ‘Our seats are 8D, E and F. Go and sit in any one. We’ll decide who should stay here.’

I took the aisle seat. Sat down and closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep by the time two of them came back, having left the wiry man amidst the swirl of smoke.

The man in the seat next to me said to his companion, ‘Why is it that the desire for a cigarette is even stronger on a flight during take-off than it is just before Iftari, even when Ramzan falls in summer and you’re without a smoke for over fourteen hours?’

There are only two things I can do to while away time on a plane: talk, or remember.

I remembered Ramzan.

Officially the month of fasting, Ramzan has always seemed to me synonymous with feasting. Through the first eighteen years of my life, abstaining from food and drink from sunrise to sunset had less to do with religious devotion than it did with culinary devotion. For in order to truly appreciate the Iftari meal that Mariam Apa ordered — yes, since her arrival she had been the one responsible for ordering meals and everyone swears that, though Masood had been a fine cook to begin with, he only became a magician when she started telling him what to cook. (I might be inclined to view this comment with suspicion if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve seen people attempting to replicate Masood’s recipes in their kitchens, even going to the extent of borrowing his pots and pans and chopping board and knife, but never, not once, has anyone succeeded in producing a meal that could be mistaken as Masoodian. ‘Haath mein maza hai,’ Dadi always said — the delight is in his hand — but perhaps the delight was really in Mariam’s voice.) Regardless of cause and effect, what I was saying was that to appreciate the Mariam — Masood Iftaris we had to build ourselves up to a pitch of hunger that enabled us to sit and eat and eat for an hour and a half without pause.