He is alone with the smile. Suddenly now it feels perishable, hard stone though it is, without the protecting walls of his perfume factory. He can see all around him, the arid dusty plains, the walls of green or blue but mostly khaki hills, the mountains beyond, and he can hear the sounds of a skirmish from the other side of the nearest hill. He sits in the shade cast by the statue head, his back leaning against the chin, his ear next to the mouth.
The school has remained shut since Dunia’s disappearance but it’s reopening soon.
‘Majrooh?’
A man had approached him last week and called him by the name he had taken to be able to marry Qatrina.
‘You won’t recognise me, sir, but when I was much younger I used to come to your house to borrow books. Your daughter and I …’
Marcus nodded and, encouraged, the man took a step towards him.
‘I have come back to Usha to take over the school.’ He smiled, and pointing to his motorbike on the other side of the street — a child with an artificial leg was sitting on the back seat — he added, ‘I was riding past just now and thought I recognised you …’
Marcus sets out in search of water, finding a patch of dampness at the base of a hill and knowing how to use the very tips of his fingers to gently persuade the spring to come out into daylight. The water quivers in the curved palm of his hand, as frightened as a small captured lizard. Nabi Khan’s raid on Usha had been unsuccessful but he has promised another in a recent shabnama. That day American soldiers engaged in a fire fight near by had got involved and had requested aerial assistance, the giant bombers arriving like lions roaring in the sky. Making the earth shake as they dropped bombs from above. Afghan officials speculate that conservative Saudi Arabians, as well as certain rogue elements within the Pakistani government and military, are financing the attacks. Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.
The human eye is trained to look for symmetry, so the fact that someone has a missing limb is obvious. Seventeen ordinary citizens of Usha died in the battle that morning in March, and twelve people — including James Palantine — lost their legs or arms. Ringing from Western countries, families and lovers always ask the soldiers about their limbs first, about their hands and feet.
He comes back to the statue and waits.
The stars — one for each life lost during the wars of the previous decades — are out by the time the young men come and lift him out of the landscape. A deep indigo evening. Half a moon with a coloured halo. There is an up-pouring of glow from the land as though in response to the moonlight.
The Buddha is lowered in the grassy field beside the Museum, the building now secured by the British Army. There are three tonnes of Afghan antiquities in a warehouse near Heathrow, reliefs, bowls and sculptures that were illegally removed from Afghanistan at the behest of various warlords and chieftains, waiting to be brought back to these impoverished galleries.
Near by are the two ruined horse carriages once used by the royal family, the insignia and medallions still bright on the otherwise weather-beaten sides and doors of the larger carriage. The six-petalled moulded flower at the very hub of the wheels is surrounded by the words PETERS & SONS LONDON arranged in a circle.
A few hours of sleep later, he looks out from the window of the room he has been given inside the museum but he cannot see the stone face.
A dawn made of mist.
When sunlight appears and the soldiers allow him out he walks through the lit haze, feeling his way towards it. He stands looking at the giant lips as though waiting for the answer to a question. Apollo, the lord whose oracle is at Delphi, who neither speaks nor keeps silent but offers hints.
He enters the building and asks if someone would be kind enough to take him to the city centre in a while. He is meeting someone there who could be Zameen’s son.
June 2003 — August 2007
Acknowledgements
This is a work of fiction. The characters and organisations depicted in it are either the author’s creation or are used fictitiously. No resemblance is intended to any persons living or dead, to any organisations past or present. When a fictitious character is present at a real event — for example, David Town at the Islamabad embassy siege in chapter three, or the child Casa at the burning of the Ojhri Camp ammunitions depot in chapter six — the results are fiction.
The verses on page 304 are by Yevgeny Vinokurov (tr. Daniel Weissbort, Post-War Russian Poetry, Penguin Books, New York, 1974). The poem on page 16 is Note on the Terazije Gallows, 1941 by Vasko Popa (Collected Poems, Anvil Press Poetry, London, 1997). The italicised line on page 403 is from Aamer Hussein’s Turquoise (Saqi Books, London, 2002). The two lines that end the section on page 415 are a paraphrased couplet by Jigar Moradabadi. Casabianca, the poem, is by Felicia Hemans. Mark Bowden’s essay ‘The Kabul-ki Dance’ (Road Work, Atlantic Books, London, 2004) informs the paragraphs about the flying sorties over Afghanistan in chapter seven. Another helpful book was Inside the Jihad by Omar Nasiri (Basic Books, New York, 2006). The author is grateful to Beatrice Monti della Corte of Santa Maddalena Foundation in Italy where a section of this book was composed in 2005. Thank you to the Lannan Foundation, Dr Naeem Hasanie, the gentlemen at ICUK, to Muneeb and Mughees Anwar. A special thanks to Victoria Hobbs and A. M. Heath. And to Salman Rashid — Khizr and guide during travels in Afghanistan’s cities. Kathy Anderson. Diana Coglianese. Maya Mavjee in Toronto. To Angus Cargill in London and Sonny Mehta in New York.
About the Author
Nadeem Aslam is the author of the highly acclaimed Season of the Rainbirds (1993) and most recently Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the IMPAC Prize and was awarded the Kiriyama Prize and the Encore Award. He was named Decibel Writer of the Year in 2005. Born in Pakistan, he now lives in England.