Kaukab nods. She has heard that a British passport can fetch £5000 in poorer countries.
“I know I must have faith in Him, Kaukab, but my heart sinks at the thought of what might have happened. Abdul Haq, from Gulmohar Street, was lucky but will my son be? Haq recovered last year from his fractured skull which he got after visiting Istanbul’s historic mosques. They had drugged him and then bludgeoned him, taking his passport. Accepting the hospitality of a kind local who offered him tea was the last thing he remembered.” The woman lowers her voice to an almost inaudible whisper. “Who knows what has happened? Only yesterday The Afternoonsaid that a rotting corpse has been discovered under the debris of a tower that was blown up back in the summer.”
“We mustn’t allow ourselves to despair of His mercy, sister-ji. Tower, what tower?”
“It was in the paper, but no one knows much about it yet. It was a dark-skinned boy, they say, a Pakistani or Indian or Bengali. It’s possible that he was an illegal immigrant but who can tell?”
“May Allah treat the poor boy’s soul gently,” Kaukab whispers. “He must be known to a few other illegal immigrants in the town, but they can’t come forward to say they knew him because they fear they’ll be detained and sent back.”
The woman sighs and places a hand on Kaukab’s. “You are so good, Kaukab. You have had tragedy in your own family and yet here you are, thinking of others, consoling me. You haven’t forgotten His goodness. And of course the same is true of Chanda’s mother — she’s been so forthcoming with reassuring words too.” She places a rose into the vase. “Incidentally, Kaukab, last night I couldn’t sleep and so, at about three, I decided to get up to read a few pages of the Koran and pray for the safety of my boy. I was in the bathroom, doing my ablutions, and through the window I saw Chanda’s mother standing outside Jugnu’s house.”
“Next door?”
“Yes. The poor woman obviously wanted to see the last home her daughter had had, to stand in front of it and grieve. She couldn’t do it in the daylight hours because people would have found it strange, thinking she was being disloyal to her sons. The things we poor mothers have to do, Kaukab!”
“I don’t think it’s wise for her to be out at three.”
“She wasn’t alone. She had with her that young man who they have employed as help at the shop. She was pointing out various things to him — no doubt telling him little things like which was the room filled with butterflies.”
“I have heard that they have employed someone. I personally don’t go there anymore as you know, but Sadiqa from number 121 said she had seen him a few times but wasn’t sure who he was. She was beginning to think it might be a nephew brought over from Pakistan.”
“Maybe that’s who he is. I don’t know.”
The telephone rings and as Kaukab gets up to answer it the woman gets to her feet too, saying she’d better get back and finish cleaning up the garden.
Someone from Shamas’s office is calling to say that the photographic negatives which Shamas had wanted the town council to purchase from a photographer in the town centre have been destroyed. He had asked Kaukab to telephone his office yesterday about the purchase, saying that the idea had come to him some time ago but that he had forgotten about it due to his injuries. It was a matter of utmost urgency that the photographer be contacted. He hoped it wasn’t too late, that the man hadn’t consigned the whole irreplaceable lot into a rubbish tip. But apparently it is too late. A new shop has sprung up where the photographer’s studio was, and he himself is said to be holidaying in Australia after selling the light-fittings and chairs and gilt-frames to a junk shop and throwing away everything else — the backdrops, the pictures, the negatives, the soft toys that distracted little children, the feather boas.
Kaukab carries the vase of roses to the bottom of the stairs and looks up, hesitating, summoning the courage to take it up. Because of her pain, it had taken her a full five minutes to carry the lunch tray up to Shamas earlier, and a full five down. She enters the stairwell which is dark because the bulb died out last week with a small metallic sound and it is situated too high on the ceiling for her to replace — if only her children were living at home. She arrives on the topmost step and, under her breath, tells Allah she loves Him as He’s always taken care of her.
Shamas’s eyes are closed when she comes in. His forehead is bruised an unlikely green and there is a bump the size of a plum above the left ear. His skin is bleached in several places, the colour of Imperial Leather soap. She looks away from him, as she has frequently done over the past month, sparing herself the sight; it is too distressing to contemplate and yet she is crushed by guilt every time she does avoid it.
“That was Saleemuzzamaan from your office,” she says quietly, to see if he is awake, looking around to find a place for the roses, “on the telephone just now.”
He opens his eyes.
“He said to tell you that they have made enquiries and that the negatives have been thrown away.”
She places the roses on the shelf and stands there, not wishing to move any closer to him, fearing he would become affectionate again, the condemnation and abuse of the seventy-two houris ringing in her ears. Some vulgar people ask that if a pious man will get seventy-two wives in Paradise, how many men will a pious woman receive? That of course is the height of ignorance and indecency: a pious woman cannot bear the thought of letting a man other than her husband touch her — so in Paradise, where there is nothing but ease and satisfaction, why would she be put through the torment of being groped and fondled by strange men? In Paradise everyone will have at least one companion, for there is no celibacy in Paradise, and so the pious woman would be happy just to be given an eternal place by her earth-husband’s side after Judgement Day. Kaukab sighs. Allah is all-wise. The couple will become young again and eternally beautiful and purified. There will be no urine, no faeces, no semen, no menstruation; erections and orgasms will last for decades, and men will often hear their earthly wives say, “By the power of Allah, I could find nothing in Paradise as beautiful as you.”
Shamas tries to move his lips to convey a smile to her.
She smiles back, hoping he has not noticed that she is wearing her outdoor clothes: England is a dirty country, an unsacred country full of people filthy with disgusting habits and practices, where, for all one knew, unclean dogs and cats, or unwashed people, or people who have not bathed after sexual congress, or drunks and people with invisible dried drops of alcohol on their shirts and trousers, or menstruating women, could very possibly have come into contact with the bus seat a good Muslim has just chosen to sit on, or touched an item in the shop that he or she has just picked up — and so most Muslim men and women of the neighbourhood have a few sets of clothing reserved solely for outdoors, taking them off the moment they get home to put on the ones they know to be clean. Kaukab has been wearing one of her outdoor shalwar-kameezs for five days now because she has to clean Shamas after he has emptied his bowels. One day he had diarrhoea — like an hourglass — and her hands were covered with the filth, but things are better now. She would like to use water to wash the sphincter as prescribed by the Prophet, peace be upon him, but that is impractical, the water hurting the bruised areas, and so she has been reduced to using toilet paper. So each time she touches him afterwards she can’t go past the fact that he is unwashed and unclean.