Suraya. He remembers something Kaukab has often accused him of in the past: that he retreats from the problems around him by thinking about his work. And now he wonders if he’s trying to drive Suraya from his thoughts — yet another disowning and banishing of her. No, the thought of the negatives came to him just now out of its own accord— that’s all.
He edges away from a small Japanese knotweed tree of whose pale cream flowers — looking as though dusted with custard powder — he had tried to discover the smell of a few years ago, and found himself taking in a lungful of decay, suppuration, the shock throwing him back on his heels where he had reached up with his neck stretched like that of a hanged man’s. Perfumes come from plants; it’s animals who produce disagreeable odours, humans included. Musk, honey, milk — these are as much an exception in the animal world as those tropical plants said to produce blossoms smelling of festering flesh or this Japanese knotweed around whose shimmering flowers he had cupped both hands that day, the way a young man kisses his first girl. He’ll never now kiss her mouth again while his penis is engorged and sticky at the tip like a bull’s muzzle, or lie with her head on his chest while from somewhere nearby comes the summer noise of a bee that’s got stuck inside a snapdragon flower, a panicked wing-thrash, as it tries to back out. According to her, what she did with him was a “sin,” and she, according to her, will have to bear the “stigma” of that sin “till Judgement Day and after.” She’ll view the pregnancy as the beginning of her punishment.
There must be a way that the baby in her womb can be saved. He will not — cannot — marry her, but perhaps she could have the baby and live here in England while they begin a custody battle to get her boy away from that wife beater.
Will he have to tell Kaukab eventually?
He has been into the town centre to pick up the Saturday papers and is now walking towards Scandal Point and Safeena, hugging to himself the heavy news of all the world.
He arrives at Scandal Point, but there’s no one there. He waits for a few minutes and then sets off in the direction where she usually parks her car. The lake is striped Kashmir-blue where it reflects the dawn sky, and here and there on a higher wave a patch of red is burning from the east because the sun is rising — red as the beast blood that was poured into the mosque at the beginning of the year. The glitter is uncomfortable on the eye, and heat seems to come off it whenever the head is aligned with it at its brightest.
More details of the unconscionable crime he witnessed at the mosque involving the little child — no older than Suraya’s son, surely — have been emerging. It turns out that the junior cleric has been to prison for assaults on children at a mosque in the Brick Lane area of London. He had assaulted a seven-year-old girl and the mother had called the police. As the court date approached, a petition supporting him was circulated on mosque-headed paper. We the undersigned support the respected Imam Amjad and want him to return to his job as soon as possible. We have every confidence in his ability as a cleric. .
The parents of his victims were under enormous pressure not to go through with the court case. When the date was arranged the father went to the police and said he did not want his girl to go to court — her chances of marriage would be ruined, she will be tainted by the scandal, the reputation of her sister too ruined. The people at the mosque had written to his parents back in Pakistan, asking them to tell him to drop the case against the holy man.
But in the end the family did have the courage to go through with it, and the man was convicted of one count of indecent assault and an act of gross indecency. While he was awaiting sentencing the mosque circulated another petition for signatures. We the undersigned continue to support the respected Imam Amjad. While we regret the circumstances which led to his arrest, we nevertheless confirm that if he is allowed his liberty we will have no objection to him being employed by the mosque. .
Despite their pleas, he was sentenced to six months and placed on the sex-offenders’ register.
Shamas stands under the pine tree where Suraya’s car was always parked during her visits to the Safeena—he can see the tyre marks from last time (“The marks left by the passing of a python are exactly like the treads of a jeep’s wheel,” Jugnu said).
The man was released after three months and the police were alarmed when they learned that he was back at the mosque, but they were reassured that he was not allowed anywhere near the children. Soon he moved on to a town in Lancashire and began attending the mosques there, leading the prayers at some. From there — after another incident, his followers threatening the parents of his little victim with a gun to keep quiet — he came to Dasht-e-Tanhaii.
And here he has been caught.
It remains to be seen whether someone would approach Shamas in order to dissuade him from testifying.
Perhaps Suraya has decided to park elsewhere, and so he sets off again towards Scandal Point, madly. His temples are burning and he is sweating, unable to think about where she is or what’s going to happen in the future.
He returns to Scandal Point but she is still not there, and, after a wait, he sets off on one of the many paths that lead to the Safeena — impatient to see her, hoping to catch her as she arrives. The leaves of the rowan trees, there ahead of him, will begin to turn many kinds of yellow next month, from bright amber to the pale brown of a parchment lantern over a weak bulb, and almost as many kinds of red — sienna through to vermilion. The colours would be a reminder that what sunset is to the day, autumn is to the year.
Perhaps she has had a miscarriage during the night? Is she at the infir mary at this moment? Perhaps he should go home and try to ring the Accident and Emergency department?
No, no, she’ll be here. He goes past a bank of late-summer wild grass and his dawn shadow is sliced up into thin uniform strips on the tall narrow leaves like a sheet of black paper coming out of a paper shredder. Once, pointing to the drawing of a porcupine-like clump of grass in a book of butterflies and moths, Jugnu said, “It could be argued that this species has taken part in all stages of civilization’s progress: used for making spears, as support for vines, and, finally, wind instruments for music.” Shamas is sure he has seen that species growing behind the church of St. Eustace, and now his mind turns yet again to the controversy that the vicar has generated over the last few days. The reverend told his 200-strong congregation not to associate with two people who have left their spouses to live with each other, that the two — although regular church-goers — are adulterers who would go to Hell if not persuaded to repent. His diktat, he says in The Afternoon, is guided by Christian love for the couple and a desire to bring them back to the church.
According to The Afternoon, he had responded to an immense amount of gossip by issuing instructions in the parish newsletter. In relation to the distressing news about two people in our church rebelling against God, all members are reminded, sadly, of 1 Corinthians 5 vii, about not associating with them. He followed this by naming the two lovers in church and telling worshippers that if they loved the couple and did not want them to burn in Hell, they would support his decision. Then he published a clarification on how church members should behave towards the couple, making the points that 1 Corinthians 5 vii is not optional; that it is not loving to offer hospitality and comfort to someone in rebellion against God, because that would tend to confirm them in their disobedience, which leads to eternal death; that invitations to share fellowship should be conditional on repentance first being fully shown.