‘Take it off,’ Elizabeth said, and without a glance in Azhar’s direction crossed the room and began to look for the needle and thread.
When she turned around Azhar had still not removed the shirt. ‘Why don’t you do it while I’m inside it?’ He opened his arms.
With a smile she looked away. ‘You watch too many films.’ She crossed her arms. ‘Now take it off.’
Azhar gave a mock sigh, undid the row of buttons and playfully tossed the shirt across the room at Elizabeth. She stretched out her arm and caught it.
Not many hours later, their breakfast was interrupted by three short rings at the front door. Azhar clicked his tongue in irritation — it was the first day of the week and he had been hoping to leave the town earlier than usual. As he stood he frowned at Elizabeth, mocking the concern on her face — she had stopped eating and was looking anxiously in the direction of the sound.
The moment Azhar opened the door the short skinny man standing on the portico straightened to attention. His extremely dark skin was the first thing Azhar registered. An umbrella was still open above the man’s head, a drop forming at each angle of the octagon. On the floor by his feet was set a small cardboard suitcase tied with a rope. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you so early but I need some directions,’ he said, searching in his pocket with the free hand.
‘Look …’ Azhar raised a hand.
‘I’ve been knocking on doors and windows for the past three hours, but no one opened up to help me.’
‘We’ve had a death in town,’ Azhar said; and then, to avoid any time-consuming questions, he quickly asked, ‘Who are you looking for?’
The man smiled a broad scatter of brilliant white teeth, and produced a neatly folded piece of paper from one of his pockets.
The ink was beginning to dissolve. ‘I don’t know him,’ Azhar said. ‘I haven’t lived here all that long myself.’ And handing back the address he suggested: ‘Either wait for the shops to open or go to one of the mosques. One’s this way and the other is at the end of the next street.’
The man moved closer. ‘Actually, it’s this man’s wife I’ve come looking for.’ He said with a smile of complicity, ‘She’s beautiful. All of us used to say that her mother must have given birth to her after eating a handful of pearls.’
The rain was falling hard now, big clear drops that exploded on impact into spider-like shapes. Azhar looked up at the sky drained of all colour. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently, ‘but as I said, you’ll have to talk to someone else.’
‘She’s an angel,’ the man said, kissing lightly the tips of his fingers and letting them blossom in the air as though suggesting an aroma. ‘Or, at least she was nineteen years ago.’
The number of years caught Azhar’s attention. ‘Does this have anything to do with those letters?’ And without waiting for the answer he asked the man where he was from.
The stranger said he had come from one of the neighbouring towns and told Azhar how at the age of nineteen — some twenty years before — he had run away from home to become a film star. On reaching Lahore, the provincial capital and centre of the country’s film industry then as now, he posed for a large portfolio of photographs which he financed by working as a labourer. In it he appeared in various get-ups: a sufi, a Chicago gangster, a she-rat hermit from Shah Dola’s mausoleum, a Tarzan. Nothing, however, came of his fantasy: after being turned away by every film studio he went back home vowing never to make another journey to the cruel city. He kept the promise he had made himself for almost nineteen years; then, a fortnight ago — on becoming the recipient of one of the lost letters — he had gone back to Lahore. As a labourer he had lodged above a cheap wayside tea-house. The cook, a large woman who smoked constantly and used language more coarse than any man, had a daughter — an illegitimate child, many said, but no one had the courage to ask. The letter — a confession of love — was from this girl. A number of inquiries in Lahore had led the stranger to this town where, he believed, the girl — now, obviously, a grown woman — lived as someone’s wife. A truck on its way to the North-West Frontier Province had agreed to carry him and had deposited him on the outskirts of the town in the early hours of the morning.
‘I never knew she loved me,’ he said. And showing his teeth again he reached into his pocket. ‘It rains on my soul all night. Would you like to read what she wrote?’
Azhar took a step backwards. ‘No,’ he said forcefully, repelled by the offer. ‘You’ll make trouble for whoever she is,’ he said, and in a different tone he added: ‘You should forget about the whole business and go back.’
To the stranger who had spent ten days travelling across the province the advice appeared insensitive. ‘The roads are under water,’ he said wearily, ‘and there are no buses. I’ll have to stay.’
‘What about your own wife?’ Azhar asked. ‘Are you married?’
The man grinned. ‘I have fourteen children.’
Azhar agreed to take him to one of the mosques.
Maulana Hafeez was getting ready to return home.
He received the traveller with a vigorous handshake and, learning that he had spent the night on the road, immediately set about improvising a bed in one of the more secluded corners of the hall. The traveller meanwhile set his suitcase in one of the alcoves — arched like the base of a flat-iron — and took out a set of dry clothes. When he went out to the baths Azhar too turned around to leave.
‘Azhar,’ Maulana Hafeez called as he finished making the bed. The word echoed in the space bounded by the empty walls and the high ceiling decorated with complex patterns of interlacing clubs, diamonds, spades and hearts.
‘Yes, Maulana-ji.’
Maulana Hafeez approached and placed a hand on Azhar’s shoulder, but remained silent — hesitating.
‘Is it something important, Maulana-ji?’ Azhar asked politely. ‘It’s just that I have a lot to do today.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Maulana Hafeez said softly. ‘It can wait. It can wait.’ He patted the young man’s shoulder and smiled. ‘Go now. May God be with you.’
The song ended. The stylus crackled for a few seconds and then the singer spoke her name. The machine clicked off.
‘Malika Pukhraj.’ Alice repeated the singer’s name as she entered the room. Mr Kasmi had just placed the small round mirror on the shelf. Alice had been waiting outside the bedroom for Mr Kasmi to finish clipping the tiny hairs on his cheekbones; somehow she knew that it would embarrass them both if he was seen to be doing this. ‘Her daughter too is a singer now,’ she said, ‘Tahira Sayad.’
Mr Kasmi eased the little scissors off the knotted joints of his fingers. ‘I didn’t know Tahira Sayad was Malika Pukhraj’s daughter.’
The girl nodded. Using a large goose wing she began to dust the surfaces in the room. Mr Kasmi crossed to the gramophone. For years he had lived with the handful of complimentary records that came with the machine, forcing himself to appreciate the songs which he would not have otherwise listened to. Then one day he found out that records could be bought separately — that a favourite song too could be owned. That very day he took a trip to Lahore and that night, even though shattered by the two-hundred-mile journey by arthritic buses, he stayed up late tapping his feet gently and shaking his head from side to side in time to melodies that were more in keeping with his romantic soul.
‘It wasn’t too loud, was it?’ Mr Kasmi returned the record to its sleeve. ‘There has been a death in town.’ He inserted the record in its alphabetical place on the shelf.