She offers us dates and lumps of holy soil to eat and spoonfuls of the water of Zumzum to drink.
Poplar pollen floats in the still air. A few of Nusrat’s cats sit in the sunlight, washing themselves. Others stitch their way through our legs, incorporating us — crosswise and lengthwise — into their invisible embroidery; the pattern also includes tables and chairs, the pillars of the veranda and the top branches of the Afghanistani tree. They are given boiled offal to eat twice a day. They cannot digest it uncooked. Someone had once asked, ‘Why don’t they run away?’ Nusrat had smiled: ‘They can’t. They get their favourite food here.’
‘It’s all ruined, no doubt, since the Russian invasion.’ She runs a fingertip along the rim of her eye and harvests a tear. ‘You hear about it in the news every day. All those refugees …’ She gives a heavy sigh and the hairs of her nostrils are visible for a brief moment. Aunt Khursheed sympathises: ‘No doubt, no doubt. Things change. It was the same with us. When we went back to India it was all so different. When they announced that there was going to be a partition, no one took it seriously. We left our horses and mules with a neighbour. A Hindu. Everyone thought it was a temporary division and that one day India and Pakistan would be a united country again. But …’ Aunt Khursheed and her husband had gone back to the place of their birth some years ago and had been unable to recognise the old street, let alone their house. The talli in the courtyard had been cut down; they found the trunk set by the outside wall. Around one of the boughs, Aunt Khursheed recalls with sadness, were two loops of rope: the decaying remains of a swing they had put up as children. She tells Nusrat of the journey they had made following the announcement of Partition, the pilgrimage they had undertaken across the bloody August of 1947. ‘We were followed by Sikhs who held in their hands moons dripping with blood.’ Her features contract in pain, her eyebrows are tense as bows. ‘Savages!’
To this, Irfan, her eldest son, would have replied, ‘That is not true. Hindus and Sikhs did not harm any emigrating Muslims. Not until the Muslims of this area, the area that is now Pakistan, slaughtered a trainload of Hindus and Sikhs going in the opposite direction, from Rawalpindi to Amritsar.’ He is constantly quarrelling with his parents. On the night before the last elections they had stayed up till three o’clock, arguing. In the morning Irfan had left the house without breakfast, before anyone else was awake, and did not come home till the fireflies. He was born on a pile of corpses as his parents were fleeing the massacre.
A bushel of peacock feathers standing in a vase on a chest of drawers watches the open door with twenty-four wide-open eyes. A kitten discovers a place never before visited and tries out new echoes.
Aunt Khursheed pushes out her elbows and stands up. Nusrat says, ‘Tell brother-ji it was very neighbourly of him to think about my well-being, but I don’t have any relatives alive.’
Outside, Aunt Khursheed whispers to us, ‘She may not have anyone now, but wait till she falls ill. Each day will see a new chacha-zad brother standing at the doorstep with a basket of langra mangoes. The house alone is worth thousands.’
Saturday
Five dry months had altered considerably the form, appearance and character of life in the town. The rains arrived at last on the night of the judge’s murder, catching many women unawares with their washing left out on the lines overnight. Thursday night was suffocating but — the monsoon had arrived — at noon on Friday the rains returned in force. The servant girls spent most of that evening sterilising with turpentine the many puddles that formed outside the houses. The infernal winds of June and July had exterminated almost all of the insects hatched in April but with the rains came the threat of another wave of mosquitoes.
‘I’ve discovered a flaw in the Maulana-ji’s argument,’ Azhar whispered, bringing his mouth up to Elizabeth’s ear.
Elizabeth opened an eye on to the dunes and caves of the dishevelled sheet — the other still buried in the pillow — and mumbled something incomprehensible to Azhar. She reached out her hand and running a finger along Azhar’s spine felt for the place on his back where an over-active follicle had produced a lone curved hair.
‘Here’s the join,’ said Azhar, touching the ridge of skin between Elizabeth’s legs.
With a little moan of pleasure and the words ‘You have no shame’, Elizabeth slapped Azhar’s back gently.
Yesterday in his Friday sermon Maulana Dawood, having no doubt read the article on the Japanese robot in Wednesday’s newspaper, had denounced all ‘misguided mortals’ who attempted to mimic the ‘Almighty’s adroitness’. ‘Allah’s curse on science and the scientists!’ He had taken great joy in the fact that whereas the robot was covered in riveted joins, the human body was free of such imperfections.
The pink haze of early morning was clinging to the edges of the objects in the room and outside a mournful drizzle was falling on the houses. Azhar stood in front of the mirror and, squeezing toothpaste directly on to his tongue, began to clean his teeth. During the brief pauses in the brushing he could hear Elizabeth humming to herself as she moved about the bedroom getting dressed. In her speech he would frequently catch fragments of this singing-voice.
She stood at the window looking out. Her hair she had tied with a ribbon and in her ears she wore tiny gold roses. In the trees and under the eaves of the silent houses clusters of sparrows were huddled together, their feathers fluffed into soft masses as they waited for the rain to clear. ‘So much rain,’ Elizabeth said at the sound of the bathroom door opening. ‘At this rate we’ll have to lift the town at one end to drain all the water from the houses.’
A set of clean clothes was laid out on the bed and Azhar began to dress in silence. He was young and muscular and his eyes sparkled with good health. He had a delicate triangular chin and Elizabeth had often wondered why its skin did not register the dimple she could so clearly feel in its bone.
‘Why are you questioning my father?’ she asked quietly. She had turned around and stood facing him.
‘Your father?’
‘Benjamin Massih is my father,’ she said. ‘He’s broken a leg, yet they still dragged him in for questions yesterday.’
Azhar continued dressing. ‘There has to be an accomplice. An insider.’
The response was quick and defiant. ‘All he does is unblock the gutters and drains in that street. Why should he be a suspect just because he’s familiar with the inside of the house? That makes you a suspect as well.’
In the brief silence which followed Azhar buttoned up his shirt. ‘We’re questioning all the servants, Christians and Muslims.’
Unsatisfied, she turned back to the open window.
‘This shirt is missing a button,’ Azhar exclaimed. ‘Look,’ he pointed to his chest.