— You must do what our mother says.
He stood up, and turned away so he wouldn’t have to watch Najeeb’s face as his mother told him that she would walk with him to the mosque every day after lunch, and stay there until his lessons were finished, and walk him straight home. On another day, in another time, Qayyum might have had the words, the thoughts, to be his brother’s champion, but Kalam was dead and his ghost pressed its mouth to Qayyum’s ear. Najeeb’s tears — they had started now — were those of a child who has yet to understand the world won’t shape itself to his will.
When they sat down to eat, Najeeb didn’t take his accustomed position but sat on his brother’s right-hand side where Qayyum couldn’t see him.
The nights had turned too cold for sleeping outdoors, but Najeeb had closed the door to the room they shared and barricaded it with something — books, probably. He was at the age of grand gestures, when every emotion felt perpetual. I will always hate you, he had said, a statement not of anger but anguish.
Qayyum drew his limbs close to his torso, seeking the warmth of his own body beneath the blanket. The stars were thick in the sky, cold and alone, each one of them. Kalam, on the bare hillside, bleeding to death, would have found no comfort there. Did justice demand the same for Kalam’s killer? Lure him to a lonely spot, push a blade deep into his flesh, and leave him to that terror, that overwhelming terror
— Allah
Pushing the blankets aside, he tumbled onto the ground, prostrating himself, forehead smacking brick. And if they were to come for him and find Najeeb instead and stitch his lips together and stop his breath
— Allah
And if it was him they found, only him, he should be prepared for it, he should be willing to risk anything to avenge Kalam’s death but the stars, so cold, were beautiful and the night air cut him like life itself and he wanted to stay, here, in this world for ever, in the Valley which was sometimes rose and sometimes plum and always varied, infinite. He had never touched a woman in love or watched a tree grow where he had planted it or followed a stream all the way across a valley and up the mountain to the borders of snow. How could he return to a world of blood; how could he refuse Kalam’s ghost
— Allah Allah Allah
Najeeb wouldn’t allow Qayyum to help him with the books, not even when getting into the Victoria. He sat in the carriage, his arms wrapped around them, cheek resting on the top of the pile. As if the scent, the touch of them was something to embrace. Five books, three with hard covers, two bound in leather. One with gilt-edged pages. What world had his brother entered? Classics, Najeeb had said to him in English, as if it was a word he should know.
This morning, while Najeeb was at school, Qayyum had entered the room they shared. It hadn’t been difficult to isolate Najeeb’s schoolbooks from the far more expensive ones given to him by the Englishwoman. There was the one with English on one half of the page, and on the other half letters which looked like English letters but with triangles and pitchforks and other strange symbols scattered between the recognisable ‘a’ and ‘o’. The only English letters Qayyum knew were the ones in LANCE-NAIK QAYYUM GUL. He held a corner of a creamy, gilt-edged page between thumb and forefinger. What had Najeeb been doing in the world of the English who knew so well how to make you feel that you were never so honoured as when they were the ones to honour you?
The Victoria entered the Cantonment, turned into a residential street where there was space enough for each home to sprawl across the ground instead of climbing upwards. Again he felt it, the old shame learned in France. The haphazard constructions of the Walled City a failing, a reason to sneer. He looked at his brother and wondered if any of this shame lived in him too; he could see no sign of it. Four years ago when Qayyum left to join the 40th he had thought of momentum as something he would carry with him out of Peshawar, leaving stasis behind. No one in his family would age, no one fall sick, no one acquire new habits or loves in his absence. He would be the one to come back and require rediscovering, relearning, by all around him. He hadn’t entirely let go of that notion, until now.
— What’s her name, this Englishwoman?
— I don’t want to talk to you about her.
— There are things you don’t understand.
— I understand Greek!
Qayyum pushed gently at his brother’s shoulder, trying to bring the laughter out of him, but Najeeb only angled his body away. Qayyum was still trying to decide if he should deliver a lecture on respecting your elders no matter what the circumstances when the Victoria stopped outside a house smaller in size than those around it, made of brick fronted by climbing plants. The brothers stepped down, and remained standing on the pavement as the horse cantered away; when it turned the corner, silence such as could only exist in an English world remained.
— Are you going to come in with me?
— I’ll stay here. But don’t go in. Remain where you can be seen.
— No one’s looking.
— If no one was looking no one would know that you visit her every afternoon. Stand outside, give her the books, walk away.
— I don’t want you looking at her when she comes out.
— Why not?
— You’ll do it in a way I won’t like.
— When you speak like that I know it’s right to say you can’t see her any more.
But he turned his back to the house all the same, and heard his brother take a deep breath and walk up the pathway. The door opened, a low murmur, a woman’s voice rose and fell. And then Najeeb was striding past him at a furious pace. Qayyum had to run to catch up, and when he caught his brother’s elbow and swung him round he saw a boy’s sorrow, a heartbreaking thing.
— Look Najeeb, I received my pension today. Have you ever eaten ice cream? It’s English kulfi. I’ve heard there’s a shop in the Cantonment which sells it. Let’s find it.
— I’m going to the Museum.
— I’ll come with you.
— You won’t understand anything there.
If he had yelled it out, Qayyum would have cuffed him, and taken him by the hand to find the ice cream which would return sweetness to his temperament. But he said it flatly, as if pronouncing a thought he’d long held to be true. Qayyum let go of his brother, and Najeeb walked on without looking back, pausing only to rub his elbow against a boundary wall as a Brahmin might try to rid himself of the handprint of an Untouchable.
The Museum had been built to make men feel small. Stepping into the high-ceilinged hall Qayyum was flanked by giant stone figures. At the far end, on the upper-level balcony, a Pashtun man in an English suit watched him. Qayyum looked away from him and there was another stone figure standing against the wall, holding out a stump where there should have been a hand. The smell of blood, of dead flesh. Turning, he pressed his face against the giant figure and there was another smelclass="underline" stone, ancient. Qayyum stepped back to see the statue better. It was a man, the dark interior of his navel visible beneath folds of cloth at Qayyum’s eye level. He couldn’t keep himself from reaching out to touch it; how could you achieve that effect in stone? Stepping further back, he saw the figure had its right arm bent at the elbow, the hand raised at an angle, fingers together, palm outwards. It was a gesture he had seen Najeeb make in his direction soon after his return from Vipers.