“Get up, right now,” said Shamas, “and do what your mother says.”
Immediately after what happened next, Kaukab’s first thought was of death, that whenever Allah decided to take her, He should take her while Shamas was still alive, because were he to go ahead of her she would be totally alone in the world. But it was equally unbearable to think of him stumbling around the no-man’s-land of old age without her hand to steady him, a widower whose children were past caring, his corpse awaiting discovery at the bottom of the stairs for hours, days, perhaps even weeks.
What happened next was this: Ujala brought out his hand from under the covers and jerked his fingers at them where they stood in the door so that the swipe of semen flew across the room in an arc to spatter their faces, smelling of bleach, runny like the whites of a quarter-boiled egg.
THE MOST-FAMOUS TAMARIND TREE IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
Shamas picks up the package that had arrived yesterday from India, containing foliage from the most-famous tamarind tree in the Indian Subcontinent, the tree that spreads over the tomb of the legendary singer Tansen, who had brought on the rains just by singing about them, and whose golden voice had led the Emperor Akbar to proclaim him one of the nine gems of his court. Even today, Tansen’s renown is such that singers travel to his tomb in the city of Gwalior to pluck foliage from the branches of the tamarind tree to make into throat concoctions, in the hope that their voices will become as pure as that of their illustrious predecessor, he who had caused the palace lamps to light up by singing the Deepak Raag, four centuries ago.
This one bent into the arc of cursive script, this one leaping back on itself to form a bangle — the long feathery leaves have come from India, and although their final destination is Pakistan, they have been sent to England. The hostility between the two neighbours makes it necessary for a letter to Pakistan from India, or one to India from Pakistan, to be posted to a third country — to a friend or a relative in Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia or the countries of the Persian Gulf — from where it is forwarded to the intended recipient in a new envelope, the entire procedure reminiscent of a rubber ball being made to bounce off a wall by the left hand to be caught on the return journey by the right one. Direct correspondence is often destroyed out of pettiness disguised as patriotic duty, or violated by the authorities who are quick to see a regular communicator with the other side as a traitor. Countless thousands of families wait for the news of their loved ones from the other side of the border — a wall that also effectively cuts the whole of Asia in half — but what they feel is less important than nationalistic ideals.
A friend of Kaukab’s a few doors down is originally from Gwalior: the foliage has been sent by her and will be passed on to Kaukab’s father — so he can maintain the suppleness of his vocal cords with which he calls the faithful to prayer.
If Shamas’s aunt Aarti had been located over there in India he would have arranged the supply of foliage through her. The thirteen-year-old girl who had become separated from her brother during the bombing of Gujranwala in April 1919 would be ninety-one this year — if she’s alive. At the time of Partition she must have left the Gujranwala — which was part of Pakistan now — and moved to India. Shamas’s parents would try to find her and the rest of the family shortly after his father’s true identity and early past came to light, but there was little access to India. Nor was there any way of knowing whether they had survived the Partition massacres during the move to India.
She is lost forever. It is conceivable that, as a grown man, he would not have felt the loss of an aunt with as much intensity as he sometimes does Aarti’s — but she’s linked with the tragedy of his father, and his mind keeps returning to her for that reason. And also, it could have something to do with his advancing years: has he, perhaps, come to see life as little more than darkness and separation?
Shamas uncovers the window and looks out at the dawn. His back teeth still warm from the tea of five minutes earlier, he steps out of the house as he does early morning each Saturday and Sunday, to go into the town centre and intercept the bunch of newspapers that the newsagent otherwise drops into his closed office. He brings the office keys in case the papers have already gone out, but that rarely happens because he leaves as early as possible, sometimes setting off before dawn, these leisurely strolls in the empty roads and streets being a pleasure much looked forward to during the week. He carries the newspapers back to the office on Monday, and the stories and articles — concerning race relations — that he has circled during the weekend are clipped and filed by the secretary.
The sky is beginning to pale, but a mournful darkness still clings to the world down here.
Locking into each other like the facets of a jewel, the tilting surfaces of the neighbourhood have channelled away the water that the snows released upon melting.
When the snows began to melt, receding to lie on the sides of the roads, the white mounds looked as though they were dead bodies covered in white sheets.
Where are they? They are nowhere and yet he feels as though he is handcuffed to their corpses. It has been many months since their disappearance but Kaukab cannot be swayed: “They will return, safe and sound. What are months and years in Allah’s plans? For all we know your own father’s sister will contact you one day, after half a century.”
The truth about his true identity had returned to Chakor slowly over the years, the truth that he hid from his family for as long as possible. He had known that truth in its entirety long before he introduced into The First Children on the Moon a regular section called “Encyclopaedia Pakistanica,” inviting the readers to write the histories of their towns, villages and neighbourhoods, and a boy from Gujranwala had sent in the details of the 1919 bombing. He had looked up the accounts of that April Tuesday in history books too.
The three First World War BE2c biplanes, under the command of Captain D. H. M. Carberry, arrived over Gujranwala at 3:10 p.m. that Tuesday. He dropped his first three bombs on a party of 150 people in the nearby village of Dhulla, who looked as though they were heading for the town. One bomb fell through the roof of a house and failed to explode. Two fell near the crowd, killing a woman and a boy, and slightly wounding two men. The rest of the crowd fled back to the village, encouraged by 50 rounds from the Lewis machinegun.
A few minutes later, Carberry dropped two bombs — one of them a dud — and fired 25 rounds at a crowd of about fifty near the village of Garjhak,without causing any casualties.
Returning to Gujranwala, he attacked a crowd of about 200 in a field near a high school on the outskirts of the town, dropping a bomb which landed in a courtyard, and followed up with 30 rounds of machinegun fire: a sweet-seller was wounded by a bullet, a student was hit by a bomb splinter,and a small boy was stunned.
In the town itself he dropped a further four bombs — two of which failed to explode — and fired between 100 and 150 rounds at crowds in the streets.
When asked later why he had machinegunned the crowds even after they had been dispersed, Carberry replied, “I was trying to do this in their own interests. If I killed a few people, they would not gather and come to Gujranwala to do damage.”
His idea was “to produce a sort of moral effect upon them.”