Shamas calls her to himself and she sits on the bed for a while before leaving — it’s time for the third of the day’s five prayers.
“I wish you could remember who did this to you,” she says from the door. “They say it was probably the work of Chanda’s family. And I don’t mean to cause you pain by saying this, but I blame Jugnu for doing this to us. If he had stayed on the decent pathways of life then none of this would have happened.”
“It wasn’t anything to do with Chanda’s family.”
“How do you know who it was? You say you were grabbed from behind and passed out after being hit on the head with something heavy. You are just defending Jugnu, reflexively, as always, that’s all.”
He can’t tell her the truth. Helplessly, he watches her leave — not knowing what he can do to alleviate her suffering. He closes his eyes. Out of the fog of the painkillers her words about the photographic negatives now come to him but he is not certain what she was referring to.
He does however remember everything that happened that morning and hasn’t told it to anyone lest his attackers reveal the truth of his affair with Suraya to Kaukab. It’ll destroy her.
And he hasn’t wanted the children to know about it because they might come to visit and ask intelligent questions about the events of that morning — why, when, how? Someone might catch him out.
But even if he wanted to tell someone about what happened, he is not sure he would be able to find a voice in which to do it. The very minor fracture in his trachea is beginning to heal but he’s having trouble speaking. He is not entirely mute but there have been bouts when he couldn’t put a sentence together without stuttering or stammering.
As soon as he is well enough to walk (the doctors say it could take several weeks), he’ll go to Suraya’s house. He has failed to show up twice for a meeting with her. What happened to her that morning? Did his assailants make it to the Safeena while she was still there? He feels nausea.
What has Suraya done about their baby? He hopes, for her sake, that she isn’t pregnant after all, that the pregnancy test was inaccurate. His liaison with her has complicated her life needlessly.
Chinks between the blankets are letting cold air in. He can hear Kaukab moving about downstairs, it being a small house, so little that all the doors slide into walls: Kaukab, mixing up English expressions, had said once, “There is not enough room in here to swing a door.” He can’t remember what he had been thinking about before falling asleep but now he does: Suraya had said she would welcome death, and now he’s afraid that she might try to kill herself — perhaps she already has. Suddenly he is convinced she has committed suicide; and he wonders whether he himself hadn’t died by the lakeside that morning. The two ghosts that are said to be roaming the woods near the lake — surely they are he and Suraya, their baby glowing inside her womb, his hands burning, giving out light, from the newspapers he’s carrying, the searing pain of the world? No, no, he must stay lucid: he must get up immediately and try to obtain all The Afternoons for the days he’s been bedridden — to see if a suicide has been reported. He must get up immediately. He tries to fight the drugs and stay awake but, like a doll that must shut its eyes whenever it is horizontal, he cannot help but sleep. Yes, yes, he tells himself as he drifts off: he’ll find her the way Shiva had found Parvati when she had walked away from him after a quarreclass="underline" he’ll follow her footprints on the ground, a row of paisleys — like the ones on her jacket.
Kaukab looks out to see if she can find someone on their way to the shop, to ask them to get a packet of pistachios for her. All ears, Adam’s apple, and brittle vanity, a teenager goes by but he is going in the opposite direction; he is smoking and she resists the urge to tell him like a good aunt that he should be fasting.
Kaukab shakes her head to drive away the smell of food from her head, the smell of Shamas’s lunch — it has mostly evaporated but the tip of its long tail is trapped under the lid of the enamel pan in which the leftovers lie. An Eid card has arrived from her father in Pakistan, full of pop-up doves in flight and minutely detailed palm fronds and jasmine garlands: it is impossible to open without risking a rip to the various tines and frills that stick to each other like eyelashes after sleep.
She goes to the window and looks out and sees a newspaper photographer taking a picture of the vicar outside the church; it is typical that the white people are treating their holy man as though he is ridiculous for having stood up against the moral vacuum of this obscene and degraded country. For once she would like to go from her house to, say, the post office without being confronted by the decay of Western culture.
Jesus Christ must be spinning in his grave.
Why is she stranded at a point in life where just about everything has stopped making sense? She begins to cry, wondering how what He does to humans can be called justice. Why has He chosen this life for her, written down such things under her name in the Book of Fates? May He forgive her for these thoughts. Yes, His justice cannot be defined by human terms. Let’s imagine a child and an adult in Paradise who both died in the True Faith. The adult, however, has a higher place in Paradise than the child. The Child shall ask Allah: “Why did you give that man a higher place?” “He has done many good works,” Allah shall reply. Then the child shall say, “Why did you let me die so soon that I was prevented from doing good?” Allah will answer: “I knew that you would grow up to be a sinner, therefore, it was better that you should die a child.” Thereupon a cry shall rise from those condemned to the depths of Hell, “Why, O Master, did You not let us die before we became sinners?”
It does seem unjust to us humans but we cannot fathom His ways, she tells herself. Stella, her ex-daughter-in-law, once told her that her middle name — Iris — comes from a beautiful girl of Greek and Roman myths who had iridescent wings, but lack of sufficiently varied pigments had meant that she is rarely depicted in paintings from ancient times. This is a little like how things are with Allah. We humans just don’t have enough shades and tints at our disposal to make a picture of Him. Here Kaukab is, away from her children, away from her customs and country, alone and lonely, and yet He tells her to have faith in His compassion. And that is what she should do uncomplainingly, reminding herself that she is not lost, that He is with her in this strange place. And yet she doesn’t know what to do about the fact that she feels utterly empty almost all the time, as though she has outlived herself, as if she has stayed on the train one stop past her destination.
DARD DI RAUNAQ
Ki pata-tikana puchde ho—
Mere sheher da na Tanhaii ey
Zila: Sukhan-navaz
Tehseeclass="underline" Hijar
Jeda daak-khanna Rusvaii ey.
Oda rasta Gehrian Sochan han, te mashoor makam Judaii ey.
Othay aaj-kal Abid mil sakda ey—
Betha dard di raunaq laii ey.
The words of the Punjabi song come to Chanda’s mother as she prepares to open the shop, the yellow leaves of early November scraping on the road outside because they are being blown about by the breeze. Fossilized dragonflies: there are faint marks on her cheeks and temples from the creases on the pillow where she had lain awake most of the night.