“Who?” she asks her, but the daughter-in-law — her breathless haste upsetting a stack of Metro Milan joss-stick packets, which tumble to the floor from the shelf in a fragrant primary-coloured heap — is struggling with the door.
“Who is outside?” she repeats and then the olive-green boxes of Kasuri methi fall from her own hands: Chanda? “My Chanda? Where?”
She runs to the door — murmuring, “My Allah, does Your kindness towards Your creatures know any limits?”—and follows the daughter-in-law outside. The road is empty, and the daughter-in-law is looking around, now rushing to stand in the middle of the leaf-strewn road, now coming back to its edge.
“You saw my Chanda? Where? Just now?” Some hours are potent beyond measure, making wishes — uttered by heart or tongue — come true, regardless of whether they are genuinely meant.
Instead of answering, the daughter-in-law whispers to herself: “But she was right here, a moment ago.” And to her mother-in-law she finally explains, trying to keep exasperation out of her voice, “No, not Chanda, mother-ji. It was the girl who came here back in the summer. I told you about her. The illegal immigrant.” She goes to stand in the middle of the road again. “Where has she gone? She couldn’t have gone far in the time it took me to come out here. She wears one of those lockets containing a miniature Koran.”
Chanda’s mother lowers herself onto the front step, moving aside to let the daughter-in-law go back into the shop. The young woman mimics in passing what she had said earlier: “ ‘You saw my Chanda? You saw my Chanda?’ ” And hisses: “For God’s sake! She’s dead.”
Chanda’s mother stays on the front step for five minutes, looking dazedly ahead but then the daughter-in-law comes back down full of remorse and places a hand on her shoulder, telling her to come in out of the cold. “I am sorry, I forget sometimes that things have been just as bad for you. If not worse. I am losing a husband, but in your case it’s two sons and a daughter. I am sorry.” She tells the daughter-in-law not to worry about her, sends her up to dress the little girls and begins to rearrange the joss-stick packets on the shelf, mechanically picks up the olive-green Kasuri methi.
The light of the world has gone out. Above all she has to beg forgiveness from the souls of Chanda and Jugnu, for the elaborate lie she has helped construct in order to save her sons. If only there was a grave: she’d go and bury her face in the earth where they lie waiting to be questioned by the angels on Judgement Day.
She stands in the shop, holding a dozen bottles of rosewater, and brings Chanda’s face before her eyes. How to explain the bond she had with her daughter? There she was, thinking that she had had her last ever period more than seven months ago, that that was it now as far as menstruation was concerned — her breath changed odour, her heart palpitated, her hands and feet became chilled — but then one night she dreamt of Chanda and woke up to find herself flowing again from down there, the place that, in her case, had proved to be the portals both of life and of death: Chanda came out of there, as did her killers.
WINTER
A THOUSAND BROKEN MIRRORS
December; and today was the last day of the trial. It lasted a total of five days and the jury returned the verdict two hours ago. The outcome was what most people expected. There were no last-minute witnesses bursting into the courtroom. There were no new pieces of evidence. Though of course there were some people who thought the verdict would go the other way. Someone even floated a rumour that Chanda’s parents had paid a young man to say that he and his girlfriend had bought Chanda and Jugnu’s passports from them in Pakistan and had entered Britain with them. It is said that Chanda’s parents had paid a substantial amount of money — the amount varies from person to person — to the young man for telling that lie to the police. But he had taken the money and disappeared, never arriving at the police station — Chanda’s parents had not received the telephone call from the police they were expecting, telling them that the trial was being postponed, cancelled, because they had received some new information.
Shamas stands outside the courts, waiting for the bus that will take him home. The sun has vanished completely and, here and there, there is a rain of cold thin droplets that gusts of wind push closer together so that briefly they look like pale-blue veils and banners floating away in the air, swaying. The trees toss as though rubbed with itching powder.
He stands holding the black flower of his umbrella, beside the shop called The Enchanted Forest that sells sawdust-filled hummingbirds in glass jars like sweets by the dozen, flamingos so life-like they can be mistaken for artificial, trout with carnation gills, and hornbills posing on sea-kneaded driftwood, and where the tawny lioness in the window becomes a striped tigress when the sun is in the right place and the bars of the shutters throw their shadows onto it.
Only this week has he been able to get out of bed following the assault. And the first thing he did was to go to Suraya’s house — the house she had grown up in, her mother’s house, the house where Shamas and she had made love on two occasions back in the summer. But it turns out that she has sold the house. He doesn’t know where she is. He rang the infirmary because he remembered wondering in his weeks’-long delirium whether she had killed herself, whether she had had a miscarriage. He even went to the cemetery to see if he could find her mother’s grave — in the hope that she would visit — but to no avail.
It’s December and this morning there was a layer of ice on the puddles as thin as the glass light-bulbs are made of. Kaukab has been unable to attend the trial because her condition is worsening. She needs surgery for her womb but the doctors have been unable to find a place for her at the hospital; the operation will be in January. She is in severe pain, he knows, and having to nurse him back to health has not been easy.
He raises a hand in greeting on seeing Kiran walking towards him, the misty rain accumulating on her umbrella, too insubstantial to collect into beads and slip down the outer slope like children sliding down a hill.
His heart kicking, he listened as the jury convicted Chanda’s brothers today. Feeling weightless and heavy at the same time, he heard the judge say that the killers had found a cure to their problem through an immoral, indefensible act; a cure, a remedy — and their religion and background took care of the bitter aftertaste. Their religion and background assured them that, yes, they were murderers but that they had murdered only sinners. The judge said that Chanda and Jugnu had done nothing illegal in deciding to live together but, Shamas knows, that the two brothers feel that the fact that an act is legal does not mean it’s right.
Kiran was at the courts too today. Charag, his former wife Stella, Mah-Jabin and Ujala have been attending the trial too; they are staying with some friends while in Dasht-e-Tanhaii. He was surprised to see Kiran there this afternoon but appreciated her gesture in coming.
“This cold weather,” she says quietly upon arriving to stand beside him, shaking that head full of greying hair, the hair that she used to weave into a plait strong as a leather belt when younger, coiling the locks and fastening them with a series of diamond-like rhinestone pins.