— I’m sorry for your loss. But go now. Quickly.
He thinks mourning has propelled her here, the turban a memento of a fallen brother or father. Or husband, if she appears old enough for a husband.
The men are content to step aside and let her through now that she’s retreating. As she approaches the watch shop she sees that Najeeb Gul is moving towards her, his eyes on her turban, then on her face, his expression telling her she is a miracle. Diwa runs towards him. So full of elation she doesn’t understand the cracking noises, the screams, the sharp pain in her spine; there is only time to wonder if Najeeb Gul’s arms are reaching for her or the object on her head as he, too, stumbles and falls.
23–25 April 1930
Standing on the balcony between shards of earthenware Zarina watches Diwa charge through the crowd, straight towards the wounded man. The sun catches the mirrorwork on her sleeves, light leaps up from her arms. The man speaks to her and points, she nods in acceptance and, too far away to hear Zarina’s loud cries, pushes her way to the space between the troops and protestors. If Zarina tries to follow her onto the street she’ll lose sight of her just as she lost sight of her husband earlier in the day when she left the rooftop to call him back home. So there is nothing to do but watch as Diwa picks up a fallen turban — it has to be the one the wounded man had been calling out for earlier — places it on her head and disappears back into the crowd. For a few seconds Zarina loses her. Machine-gun fire rips the air; sprays of light; there she is, near the watch-shop awning, there she is.
Did she trip? Did someone pull her down below the line of fire? Did she veer away in the time it took Zarina to blink? The street is in chaos, a chessboard overturned. Some men run towards the side alleys, some fall, some move towards the bullets to help their fallen brothers. Diwa! She draws the name out from deep in her belly, but even so her voice is a thread falling limply onto the street where panic itself is a sound. She is barefoot, but there is no question of taking the time to find her shoes before running down the stairs and out into the alley, through which soldiers are chasing Peshawari men. The ground is hot, sticky; the men run past her as if she isn’t there. She rounds the corner onto the Street of Storytellers where the gunfire is so loud it’s as if each bullet is being fired into her ear. And the smell! Fresh blood, and hours-old blood, and something else, more rank — men, terrified, have been losing control of their bodies. The flies are thick, fearless.
So quickly, this end of the street is almost empty. The armoured cars are still in place, and troops guard Kabuli Gate but most of the noise of running feet and guns now comes from the alleyways and in the direction of Hastings Memorial. A man runs past, tries to pull her along, but she shakes him off. The ground is unpaired shoes, and men, dead and wounded, and near the watch shop a long-tailed white turban soaking in fresh blood. She runs to pick it up, touches the bloodied fabric and brings her hand to her nose. If it is Diwa’s some part of her will know it; how is it possible she can’t tell Diwa’s blood from a stranger’s? But it is only blood, it could be anyone’s. There’s a sound behind her and she turns to see a man in a red shirt with his back towards her, something strange about his posture which she doesn’t understand until she sees the tip of the bayonet protruding from his back. He falls backwards and an English soldier pulls his bayonet clear of the body, blood thickening the blade. Someone else grabs her arm and this time she doesn’t resist as a man wearing khaddar pulls her along with him, into an alley.
A doorway opens, women’s hands pull her in to safety. My sister, she says, and tries to walk back out, but they stop her, hold her with force until she stops struggling. There is nothing you can do, they say.
One of them will die. This sentence is a thought she can’t unthink. Her husband, her sister. One of them will die. She backs herself into a corner of the room and sits pressed against the walls, her head in her hand. Outside the bullets don’t stop.
Three years ago on a day when she thought she fully understood terror, Zarina walked unrecognised down the street on which she had grown up, her body hunched over so her height wouldn’t give her away. Her destination was the carpet-seller’s house which overlooked the Street of Storytellers. Entering the house, throwing off her burqa, she said the words her late mother had trained her to say when the time came to be married to a murderer in repayment for her father’s death: I come seeking the protection of your house which can only be given to me through marriage. The carpet-seller knew immediately who she was and she understood then that he and her mother had agreed long ago that she would come here and invoke Pashtunwali, allowing him to become responsible for her life.
It was only after the carpet-seller said she was welcome into his family that she thought to look around the room for her husband-to-be and, in the cluster of family members who were looking at her in shock, saw one adoring face — Diwa. It was Diwa who loved her first and who she loved first in the household. Zarina holds the turban close to her chest although the smell of blood is almost unbearable. Her love for her husband came later, but once she recognised it she was able to look back and understand that the seeds of it were already there when she woke up beside him on the first morning of her married life and knew that now there would always be this secret life, these altered selves, known to no one but the two of them.
Hours later the women lift her up from the corner of the room because her unmoving limbs have stiffened into their cross-legged posture. One of the young sons of the household says he’ll walk home with her, but when he asks his mother to give this stranger a burqa the older woman says it’s safer to be uncovered so the English don’t think it’s a nationalist trying to hide.
They walk all the way to the Street of Storytellers before an English soldier stops them and tells them to return home. When the boy explains the soldier says the woman can cross the road without any help; he won’t be fooled by trouble-makers using women as shields to allow them to move around the city freely. Zarina barely hears this exchange. In the twilight gloom she looks up and down the street, trying to make sense of it. The bodies have gone, and even as she watches there’s a roaring sound and water jets out of the hose of a fire-engine at Kabuli Gate, and then another hose, and another. Where is your house, the soldier asks. She points, and he says, Go there directly, I’m watching.
She goes as quickly as possible, bare feet splashing through the bloodied water while shoes of different sizes race past her in the opposite direction. The front door of her house is ajar, and as she enters and starts to climb the stairs she hears her husband’s voice. He must be talking to Diwa — they are both here! Here, and worrying about her. But the other voice is a man’s voice, coming from the balcony. She is just a few feet away when she hears him say he can’t express his regret sufficiently, but he had to put her body down in order to help the wounded, and now she’s gone, along with all the other corpses on the street.
Zarina runs the stiff-blooded fabric of the turban between her fingers, and swears that she will kill the man who sent Diwa into the bullets.
When her husband returns home from his fruitless attempt to get past the soldiers and look for Diwa’s body she takes him into his bedroom and shows him the frock-coat with the bullet hole and the business cards lying beside it on the bed. His voice is unfamiliar with grief as he reads out what is written there: Najeeb Gul, Indian Assistant, Peshawar Museum.