I have maintained contact with many of the dissidents, all good people, but none of them can ever replace Matho. The question ‘Why fight back if nobody else does?’ always remained alien to him. Had he been alive I would have attempted to explain the reasons for this trip and he would have asked why I was going to dine with such an unusual lady from Fatherland and why she was staying at the Crillon, and I can read many other questions as if in your living eyes, Matho, old friend. Your absence has made you even more vivid and I can hear your music and your indignation very clearly.
To my surprise, she was waiting for me at the station, slightly overdressed and a bit tense. I didn’t immediately recognize her. It can’t be the woman I saw in London. She’s transformed. A haute couture trouser suit, makeup, immaculately cut and dressed hair and too much jewellery.
‘Dara!’
‘You should have warned me. Is it a fancy-dress dinner?’
‘Don’t be mean. Why should I spend the rest of my life mourning my past? I have a reasonable income because my only decent brother has a conscience. I’m free here to do as I wish. Don’t I have the right?’
‘That’s not a good question and never will be and you know that perfectly well. You look lovely.’
‘But you’re disappointed.’
‘Paris is always best after it’s rained a bit, the city is cleansed and the sky reverts to blue.’
‘You seemed preoccupied when I rang you. Who were you thinking of?’
‘Stendhal.’
My response triggered a memory and I laughed at myself. She insisted on sharing the joke, and realizing that her sparkling eyes and red lips would give me no rest, I told her. Once in Berlin, researching a novel soon after the Wall fell, I returned to my hotel and picked up a message to call Vera Fuch-Coady, an East Coast academic then in town working on Walter Benjamin’s radio broadcasts for children at the Wissenschaft College. I rang. She was obviously distracted. I asked whether I had disturbed her. I could ring back later. ‘No. Not at all. I’m not doing anything. Should we have dinner tonight?’ I agreed. She rang back a few minutes later.
‘Dara, you know when you rang a minute ago, I said I was doing nothing. This wasn’t exactly accurate. In fact I was thinking of Adorno. See you later.’
I was speechless, muttered something to the effect that I looked forward to seeing her soon and hoped she liked oysters, put the phone down and collapsed into laughter.
Zaynab smiled politely. ‘Who is Adorno?’
Mercifully a taxi became available at that moment. She seemed nervous, inwardly exasperated or scared. When I asked if anything was weighing on her spirits she described an episode that had taken place earlier that day. While walking in the Quarter and savouring the sunshine she was startled by the sight of a gang of policeman, who poured out of a van, surrounded an African, spread-eagled him against a wall, searched him, demanded papers that were not forthcoming and then bundled him into the van and drove away.
‘It happens in Fatherland all the time, but here, too, Dara? I was really shocked. People watched in silence and turned away.’
‘Just like Fatherland,’ I told her. ‘It happens all over Europe. In Italy they love burning gypsies and taunting Muslims. Repression and cowardice in the face of it have become everyday occurrences. Africans from the colonies, kids from the banlieus, are often treated like shrivelled leaves. Kicked into the dirt. You’ll get used to it.’
‘Have you?’
I didn’t reply.
Later that evening as our meal was being served I tried to discuss her life and Plato’s, which was after all, the supposed purpose of my trip. She was determined to discuss literature. We compromised. My reference to Stendhal had intrigued her.
‘I must confess I’m still besotted with Balzac. I can match many of his stories with real-life equivalents in Fatherland. Money and power, corruption feeding on corruption, and the origins of every rich family usually uncover a crime.’
The only Stendhal she had ever read was his compendium Love.
‘I could never identify with the crystallizing bough in the Salzburg mines. So European. Not his fault, of course. I tried to transfer his method to Sind. Here, I would say, it is the sand that is supreme. The dust storms, the hot winds that sear the skin and the mind, leaving us numb and temporarily paralyzed and distraught. That, too, is like love. Have you never read Ibn Hazm’s treatise on love? He wrote it in Cordoba, eight centuries before Stendhal. Very brilliant. I’ve surprised you. You prefer thinking of me as a martyred provincial from an Asian backwater.’
I had not been sure till then, but now I knew I wanted to spend the night with her. She read my face.
‘Did you know that my lush room with a four-poster was once a torture chamber, or so the maid told me.’
‘Are you still in love with Plato?’
‘No. I was for the first few weeks, but it was pure fantasy. He was very honest with me regarding his condition and we became very close friends. I could discuss anything with him.’
‘He’s always loved martyred provincials. Why the hell did you insist I write a book about him?’
‘Just to see if you could and would, and if you did we had to meet.’
‘I’m flattered, but did it never occur to your provincial mind that we could have met without the book?’
‘Had you been a composer I would have insisted on a Plato sonata. If you had been a painter I would have asked for a portrait, just to see how you saw him. Try to understand, Dara. I was bored.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘He told me you were once in love with a Chinese girl. Where on earth did you meet her?’
‘In Lahore. She was a Chinese Punjabi.’
‘How sweet. Tell me more.’
‘No. Provincials trying to patronize their superiors always make themselves look foolish. She’ll be in the Plato book. It’s all about milieu these days, not just the individual and his ideas.’
‘I need some advice from you.’
‘How could I dare to advise such a strong-minded and singular woman as yourself? You’ve managed pretty well on your own till now.’
‘I’m touched. Does this mean you’ll spend the night in my torture chamber?’
‘Would you like me to?’
‘Yes, but only after we’ve had dessert. It’s too delicious here.’
‘Are you sure it isn’t an ill-considered subterfuge?’
She laughed as she placed the order, and after an espresso each, I suggested some fresh air before retiring. She took my arm and we walked the Paris streets, which were slowly emptying of people as the city went to sleep, discussing its history and the ways of the world. I spoke of the country where I could not live, where people were spewed out and forced to seek refuge abroad, where human dignity had become a wreckage. Her own life was a living-death example of a human being putrefying in the filth that was our Fatherland.
‘You hate it so much?’
‘Not it, but its rulers. Scum of the earth. Blind, uncaring monsters. Fatherland needs a tsunami to drown them and their ill-gotten gains.’
She became quiet.
After we made love, she returned to the question of Jindié and I told her the story.
‘Another strong-minded and singular woman. You seem to specialize in them. How could she bear to walk off with Zahid? You were such close friends.’
‘Perhaps that’s why Plato, unlike Zahid, remains a very good friend.’
‘Don’t worry about him. He knew we were destined for each other. He told me that every woman he really loves but can’t satisfy ends up in bed with you.’