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 meaclass="underline" 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.