Maps for Lost Lovers, page 34
“Your father managed to climb the stairs?”
Kiran places a hand on her breast. “I know I have let you think I came to hear the verdict today as an act of friendship towards you.”
“Didn’t you?”
“I was there because of Chanda’s younger brother—Chotta. I thought you knew about me and him. We tried to keep our relationship a secret, but some people in the neighbourhood found out. I’ve always wondered if you were one of them.”
“And he walked in on you while you and . . .”
“I had given Chotta a set of house keys. He saw us and went away shouting abuse, pulling off and shattering all those mirrors I have hanging in the staircase. A thousand broken mirrors: there was an eternity’s worth of bad luck in his wake. It all awoke my father. I had to tell him everything. I resisted at first, saying, ‘I cannot tell you what I have done.’ But he retorted, ‘A good person cannot do what others may not know.’ I am sorry, Shamas.”
“You don’t have to apologise, Kiran. Who am I to deny you the comforts of a companion?”
She buries her head in his shoulder.
He places a hand on her head. “Did you love Chotta?”
“I’ve cried for him, which is the same thing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“And I do have to apologize to you, perhaps even ask for forgiveness. You see, that night was the night Chanda and Jugnu are thought to have been murdered. I ran after him when I had put on my clothes but couldn’t find him anywhere. He must have been in a rage. I don’t doubt for a moment that I contributed to the anger he unleashed on Chanda and Jugnu. I am terribly sorry.” She looks at Shamas and then withdraws her gaze from him. “Please say something.”
A bird sits on a bare tree outside, as though waiting for it to grow leaves and flowers.
Kiran is saying, “He refused to see me all during the coming weeks. I’d stop in the streets on seeing him but he would turn back or slip into a lane. I caught up once, tried to put him in good humour with a dozen cajoleries, but he said women were nectar-coated poison, puffs of coloured dust, dancing butterflies, and pushed me away.”
“When did you begin seeing him?”
“I think it must’ve been around the time Chanda and Jugnu began seeing each other.”
“And it also ended the night their story ended.”
“The fact that they were happy while he had just been betrayed must’ve made him resent them, perhaps.”
Daylight has faded altogether now; the road outside has become a river of car headlights heading home. The bus passes the Ali Baba carpet warehouse. Plastic fish are strung by their mouths on a sagging string above the fishing equipment shop, looking like the washing line of small mermaids.
Chanda and Jugnu are out there somewhere.
And Suraya.
Perhaps she returned to Pakistan? But: an unmarried woman with a child in her womb—she’ll be arrested for the sin of fornication. No, no, she’s still here in England.
Perhaps she aborted the child to be able to go back: her husband was about to marry another woman, and so she did all she could to be in Pakistan to disrupt and prevent the wedding—?
He has tried to get information from Kaukab about “Perveen,” but apparently she has not been in touch since that first time. “Other women of the neighbourhood got to her, no doubt,” she said with regret. “Telling her lies about me, turning her against me. And, between my own illness and your injuries, I haven’t had time to go to her street.”
Kiran asks, “Do you want to know how it began?”—and goes on without waiting for his answer: “I heard a knock—very gentle—on my door one night. It was about ten o’clock. I opened the door and he asked me if he could come in. I recognized him from the shop, and although I was taken aback by him asking to be let in, I brought him into the kitchen. He said he wanted to talk, but he kept his eyes on me quite blatantly as I moved about making tea, and it was only after a while that I realized he was drunk. And it must’ve been soon after that that he stood up, eyes still trained on me. We both knew what he wanted to do but neither made a move for many minutes. Things refused to come to a boil. My father asked from his bed who was at the door, and I said no one. That was his prompt. The fear that I would shout if he came near me was what had kept him from making a move but now he knew I wouldn’t. So he lunged.” Without looking at Shamas she says, “I didn’t resist.”
“I think I understand why you didn’t go to the police to offer information or come to talk to me.”
“It was because people would have called me names.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“After Chanda and Jugnu disappeared there were rumours about Chanda’s family’s involvement. Chotta had refused to talk to me or see me after that terrible night but it was several weeks later that he came around one day and confessed to the murders. I never saw him again. I am so sorry.”
“Are you saying you could have helped put the whole matter to rest sooner?”
“No, no. He told me everything after the policemen from England had got their testimonies from the people in Sohni Dharti. I am sorry.”
“I don’t know what to say. You did what you had to do to save your name, Kiran. Even he tried to preserve your good name: what happened with you that night isn’t mentioned in any of the testimonies—that that was part of the rage unleashed on Chanda and Jugnu. He didn’t tell it to anyone.”
The bus is pulling up at their stop. They both go down the stairs and the winter’s chill hits them in the face when they get out. Each day after the trial, Shamas has gone home and told Kaukab the details of what happened at the court. Based on what he learns at the court, they put together the sequence of events that led to Chanda and Jugnu’s murders, adding new details each time he returns from the hearing, moving the narrative of the couple’s last few hours forward each day. But he’ll have to keep secret what Kiran has just told him.
He and Kiran stand together for a few moments before going their separate ways.
“Do you know what he was doing, drunk, knocking on my door at ten o’clock that night?”
Shamas looks up at the sky where the moon is the colour of garlic peel, with a morning-sky blue girdle around it.
“He had mistaken my house for the prostitute’s next door, and when I answered he had decided to try his luck with me.”
“This December is harsher than last year’s.”
“Well, we are older and weaker by another year, remember.” She smiles. Shamas smiles in return and tells her to tread carefully on the rain-slippery roads as she walks away.
After a sentence has just been written down, a sense of unfinished business compels the tip of the pen to return to that place back there where an “i” is still to be dotted, a “t” left uncrossed; and during a distraction, the mind is vaguely aware that somewhere in the room there is an apple not yet eaten down to the core, a cup of tea with two sips still remaining in it; and so now, now that the conversation with Kiran is over, he is aware of a similar dissatisfaction within him. He locates it: he had wanted to ask her whether Chanda’s brother had ever discussed with her the matter of Chanda and Jugnu setting up home together. He and Kiran were lovers: the matter would have come up. How did he view his own illicit and, yes, sinful encounters with Kiran while condemning Chanda and Jugnu for the same thing?
As he watches her recede in the distance, he wonders whether she had told him the truth: he wonders whether she knew about the details of the murders many weeks or even months before the British police got their lead in Sohni Dharti. She just didn’t come forward because she was afraid of what people would think of her.
And just now on the bus, she was no doubt unable to face him with her guilt and had lied about it.
Nothing is an accident: it’s always someone’s fault; perhaps—but no one teaches us how to live with our mistakes. Everyone is isolated, alone with his or her anguish and guilt, and too penetrating a question can mean people are not able to face one another the next day.
And he is not sure whether he will ever be able to confront or compel her to admit the truth.
They are trapped here with each other—locked up together in solitary confinement—and there is no release.
HOW MANY HANDS DO I NEED TO DECLARE MY LOVE TO YOU?
I begin this action with the name of Allah, Kaukab whispers in Arabic. It’s midmorning and she’s begun preparing the evening meal: this house—so full of disappearances for so long—will have people in it tonight. She wonders if she had been smiling a little in her sleep last night—the daylight hours still numb from yesterday’s verdict.
Magpies, chuckling and cackling woodenly, dart in and out of the hedge outside, their markings panda-like, their tails turned up like a spoon in a glass.
From a carrier bag she takes out the karelas: the six-inch-long bitter-gourds, pointed at either end, the skin covered in tough green sine-waves like backs of crocodiles cresting the surface of a swamp. She counts the gourds and they are ten. A sufficient number: one each for the six adults, and one for the little grandson in case he wishes to experiment. And that still leaves three to prevent embarrassment and regret in case someone wants a second helping. She begins to prepare each gourd in turn. Feeling drops of moisture exploding in her face like fistfuls of rain hurled by the wind, she scrapes off the tough ridges onto the flattened carrier bag, and then carefully introduces a long cut into the skin of the gourd by running the tip of the knife from top to bottom. Inside, the seeds are large, square, and scarlet, embedded in white flannelette pulp. Her thumb gouging the vegetable delicately, she removes the seeds so that the gourd is empty. Each lime-coloured purse is to be filled later with half-cooked mince meat, wound about tightly with a yard of thread to prevent any spillage, and then cooked until the skins have softened and the mince inside fully ready. She drops the skins into a bowl and sprinkles salt over them to draw out the bitterness.
A little dance of rhythmically raised and lowered arms always accompanies this dish: one end of the thread has to be located and pulled out, the vegetable spinning on the plate like a kite-flyer’s spindle. Kaukab has never stitched the openings shut with a needle as some women do: she knows some metals can be poisonous and doesn’t want the risk.
The perfect hostess, she makes a mental note to put out a saucer on the dining table just before the meal begins, to receive the oily threads.
In a large pan the size of an elephant’s footprint (as Jugnu used to refer to it), Kaukab soaks some basmati rice. Bas—scent; mati—earth. She inhales the scent of Pakistan’s earth deep into her lungs. She washes the starch out of the grains by gently rubbing them until the water is no longer milky and the rice looks like little stones at the bottom of a clear rain-fed stream.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice, singing Allah’s praises, fills the air from the cassette player on the refrigerator. Nusrat is gone, leaving his songs behind, the way when a snail dies its shell remains.
The three cassettes, Pakistani imports, had cost £5 from Chanda’s parents’ shop two years ago; these twenty or so songs would have cost about £45 from white people’s music shops in the town centre, Nusrat being famous among them these days too. Kaukab had shuddered at the price when she was told about it: tonight’s lavish meal—stuffed bitter-gourds, grilled chicken, mutton-and-potato curry, pilau rice (in case someone doesn’t feel like eating chappatis), chappatis (in case someone doesn’t feel like eating pilau rice), shami kebabs, cauliflower-and-pea curry, fruit salad, sweet vermicelli decorated with edible gold leaf, all spiced and flavoured with the finest and freshest spices—will cost just over £39. It would feed six people and a child tonight and the leftovers would be consumed by Kaukab and Shamas over the next day or two.
Islam is said to forbid music, Kaukab remembers as she marinades the chicken breasts with natural yoghurt mixed with Australian wildflower honey and the juice of two lemons, puréed onion, grated ginger and garlic, but she has always reminded herself that when the holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, had migrated to Medina, the girls there had welcomed him by playing the duff drums and singing Tala’al-Badru ‘alayna, which is Arabic for The white moon has risen above us.
From the cupboard under the sink, with its dark light of a forest floor (Jugnu again), she takes out the packet of desiccated Arabian dates that she had hidden there: hidden there from herself, dates being a weakness of hers. She steadies herself against the counter as she straightens—the bending has resulted in a spike of pain in her lower abdomen.
She opens each date to check that it doesn’t have insect eggs inside, takes out the stone, and then washes the flesh before dropping it in a bowl of hot water. As she discards any insect-riddled fruit, she remembers being a young girl and joking with her friends that they shouldn’t throw away fruit from the sacred land of Arabia just because of a minor impurity, that they should remember the story of the Pakistani man who went to Saudi Arabia to perform the pilgrimage and, in feverish delight at being in the holy land, began to kiss the words written on the walls along the road: Arabic to him was what the Koran was written in—he didn’t know that it was an everyday language too—and what he took to be verses from the Koran was actually an advertisement for hair-depilatory cream. Kaukab sighs as she remembers her girlhood, and only then is she disturbed by the realization that she has just thought of something irreverent if not offensive to Allah.
She shakes her head.
Muslims must be alert against such thoughts: Satan, the Father of Woes, is always around, ready to urinate in your mind through your ears the moment he feels you have let your guard down!
To drive away the Accursed One, she revolves sacred facts about the Koran in her head: the text is composed of 114 chapters, 70 of which were dictated at Mecca and 44 at Medina. It is divided into 621 divisions, called decades, and into 6,236 verses. It contains 79,439 words, and 323,670 letters, to each of which attach 10 special virtues. The names of 25 prophets are mentioned: Adam, Noah, Ismaeel, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Elisha, Jonah, Lot, Salih, Hud, Shuaib, David, Soloman, Dhul-Kafl, Idris, Elias, Yahya, Zacharias, Job, Moses, Aaron, Jesus, and Muhammad. Upon all these be prayer and peace, especially on Muhammad. There are no butterflies in the Koran but nine other birds or winged creatures are mentioned: the gnat, the bee, the fly, the hoopoe, the crow, the grasshopper, the bird of Jesus, namely the bat, the ant, and the bulbul . . .
The dates, cleaned and stoned, will be cooked in creamed milk into which vermicelli—shining like a fairytale princess’s golden hair—will be added. With the potato peeler she shaves a heap of thin waxy crescents from a dried coconut, to be added to the syrupy vermicelli along with rose essence, pink-husked pistachio nuts (and the dates brought back to plump fullness by the boiling water). A square of gold leaf is safe from damage between two rectangles of rough paper: it is to be stuck onto the surface of the prepared dessert. The gold leaf flutters, aware of the slightest air current, when Kaukab lifts the top paper rectangle at one corner for a little peek. It is almost as though there is something not-quite dead between the pages of a book, a brilliant trapped moth.
The food she is making is more than enough for six people, but, who knows, perhaps Allah has written in the Book of Fates that Jugnu and Chanda—safe and sound—are to walk in on the family just as it is sitting down to eat; in that case there won’t be any leftovers for tomorrow or the day after.
She opens the front door to throw the date stones into the rose beds. They might germinate there next year. Tall sky-touching palms, the sons and daughters of trees growing over there in sacred Arabian soil. But she has to close the door immediately because the Sikh woman Kiran is coming down the slope with the maples, between the church and the mosque.
She crosses the kitchen and throws the date stones into the flowerbeds in the back garden. The sycamores and the hawthorns on the slope behind the house are bare. She recalls how, back in spring, the hawthorns’ clotted five-petalled profusion had weighed heavy on the branches like snow. The dangling arm-long sprays had overlapped like feathers on a bird’s body. And thinking about the white hawthorn blossoms, she remarks that their scent is not too dissimilar to a Pakistani beauty soap that, according to the advertisements, was the choice of nine out of ten film starlets. The air now smells of freshly cut wood and the sun is a white hole in the sky.
There is a knock on the front door just then—and she is paralysed, absolutely sure that it is Kiran. What does she want? The knock sounds again and she opens the door to find
Ujala.
“Oh my life!”
A chunk had been bitten out of her life when he walked away from her, away from this house, and with the Ganges flowing from one eye and the Indus from the other, she wraps her arms around him, opening her hands wide to touch as much of his back as possible. When she releases him he doesn’t say anything, just gives a little flick to get his long hair out of his beautiful antelope eyes in that arrogant-seeming gesture of his. She brings him in and wants to take his face in her hands, to kiss him again and again. Get drunk, my heart. Go mad, my eye. But then she remembers what a woman had once told her at the shop concerning the latest Western theories about the bond between a mother and her son: “They say all mothers secretly want to go to bed with their sons. A bunch of people in suits and ties was talking about it on television last night.” Kaukab had felt repulsed, her mind spinning with revulsion at the idea: these kind of things were said by vulgar hawkers and fishwives in the bazaars of Pakistan, but here in England educated people said them on television. To speak in this manner about a mother’s love! This immoral and decadent civilisation was intent on soiling everything that was pure and transcendental about human existence! Mothers did check that their baby boys’ penises were stiff first thing in the morning but that was nothing more than a parent’s concern for the child, to see that everything about him was in order, developing satisfactorily; and women also quietly began to look for signs of nocturnal emissions in the bed linen and the pyjamas when the sons turned thirteen or thereabouts, and, once again, that too was no different from the eye a mother kept on her female children’s development.
