The landscape coalesced as they approached Peshawar, the outside world a rush of fruit trees. Unexpectedly, Qayyum felt a generosity — or no, it was close to the obligations of a host — towards the Englishwoman who had been sketching every crumbling old structure the train had passed.
— Peshawar. You want to see?
The Englishwoman stepped into the corridor.
— Bala Hisar.
Qayyum pointed towards the elevated fort which cast its shadow over the Walled City. The monuments all seemed closer to each other when viewed through one eye, so he saw Peshawar as accordioned, all breathing space pressed out of it.
— The City Walls. Gor Khatri. Mahabat Khan Mosque.
His fingertip touched the window as he pointed out each landmark, and faint dots appeared. A constellation in a sky of dust.
— And the excavation site: Shahji-ki-Dheri. Where the archaeologists dig. Do you know where it is?
— No. Why do the English dig for old, broken things?
— We like to find history.
— Why?
— I don’t know.
He used to think it was humility, this readiness of the English to acknowledge ignorance. But he had come to understand it was the exact opposite — to be English was to move through the world with no need to impress or convince. Was this so because they had an empire, or did they have an empire because this was so? A shadow passed across the window, turning it into a mirror. Qayyum swung away and returned to the compartment, slapping the sliding door to one side. He didn’t know what it was that was making him so angry. There was too much time and space in these days without routine, without the company of men waking and sleeping and eating at the same time as him, his life their lives. Even in Brighton he’d had that. But now, no escape from it — he was a Pashtun who had left his tribe behind in a gas cloud, in a trench, in the sightline of a thousand machine guns.
He didn’t realise the train had stopped, or that he was sitting with his head in his hands, until he heard the flint strike. The Englishwoman was sitting across from him, a long thin tube in her mouth with a cigarette at its end. She held out a silver case to Qayyum; the cigarettes inside it thinner than any he’d seen before.
— Turkish.
He took it, grateful for anything that would allow him to stay here for a few more minutes, leaving the outside outside.
— How old are you, she asked. Nineteen? Twenty?
— Twenty-one.
— If I may speak to you with the wisdom of twenty-three? Things change very rapidly; this is just the beginning.
She seemed to recognise that the words were meaningless, and when she spoke again her tone was more sober.
— At any rate, you’re home now.
— The emperor Babur said if a blind man walks across India he will know when he reaches Peshawar by the smell of its flowers.
They finished their cigarettes in silence. When he stood up to leave she rose, too, and held out an ungloved hand. He shook it, hoping his expression didn’t reveal his discomfort at her touch, more intimate than the ministrations of the nurses. He wanted to tell her his name but she might think he expected this sympathy between them to continue once they disembarked, and so he hoisted his knapsack onto his shoulders and left without another word.
July — August 1915
Viv stepped off the train into the humid afternoon. In the time it had taken to smoke the cigarette all the other passengers had exited the platform, and now the Pathan too was striding away, so there was no one to see her turn in a circle on her heels, arms up in the air to embrace the world in the manner of Tahsin Bey when surrounded by beauty. The mountains, oh everywhere, the mountains! Dark green, almost black, mountains; blue mountains; rose-coloured mountains; and away in the distance, snow-topped mountains. Twenty-five hundred years ago Scylax came through those mountains, and saw the Peshawar Valley — this stretch of earth on which she now stood. The word ‘Ours’ made its way to her lips.
While revolving she had been vaguely aware of a movement on the platform, which now revealed itself to be a Pathan boy, his hair crinkled like the one-eyed man’s and the Greek-influenced early Gandhara Buddhas’, his almond-shaped eyes open wide in bewilderment at the spinning Englishwoman. Viv reached into her pocket and flicked a coin at the boy who caught it deftly.
— Dean’s Hotel?
— Across the road. I can take you there, mem-sahib.
The view from the train had already told her that the railways tracks sliced Peshawar in two, separating the Walled City from the Cantonment. As she followed the boy out of the station it was the Cantonment they entered, with its landscape of wide roads, tree-lined avenues, church spires. Almost an English village, if not for the grand buildings set down in its midst. She pointed to the red structure set just back from the road, with its four rooftop cupolas which simultaneously represented India and the Crown, and felt it some kind of triumph when the boy identified it as the Museum.
— You’ve been inside?
— No. It’s for the English.
— Indians aren’t allowed into the Museum?
— We are allowed. But –
He raised his hands in the air, palms up, expressing the pointlessness of the Museum in his life.
— What’s your tribe?
— My grandfather’s people were Yusufzai.
— I’ve been reading about you. Your ancestors fought Alexander, at Peukelaotis.
— Pew. .?
— You don’t know who Alexander was, do you?
— An Englishman?
She shook her head. What was the cure for amnesiacs without curiosity? The young boy crossed the road, moving with the unhurried, unfaltering steps which marked those who were natives of the sun, and Viv followed. Together they walked up a long driveway with carefully tended gardens on either side which led to the pleasing simplicity of Dean’s Hotel — a whitewashed barracks-like structure which promised tranquillity and tall glasses of iced drinks. It had been recommended by a Mr and Mrs Forbes of Peshawar who Mrs Spencer had found through her cousin the Bishop, recently returned to England after more than twenty years in India. They would be more than happy to welcome Miss Spencer to Peshawar and introduce her to the close-knit British society there, the Forbeses said via telegram, though during the summer most people were in Simla. It had been a relief to discover that the watchful eyes of an aged English couple who had the Bishop’s stamp of approval was all that Mrs Spencer had meant when she promised to find Viv a ‘conventional situation’ in Peshawar. The truth was, the war had sloughed off so many rules that no one seemed to know any more what counted as unacceptable behaviour in women.
Viv turned the pocket of her linen jacket inside out, wriggled her fingers through the hole in the pocket lining and fished out a coin. The boy held up the coin she had already given him, and shook his head sternly at the offer of a second one, as though Viv was in danger of breaching a moral code.
— Do you know how far it is to Shahji-ki-Dheri?
— I can take you. Tomorrow morning, early?