‘Like what?’ Sultan laughs.
After having thought about it Talha says, ‘Like The Satanic Verses, for instance, or anything else by Salman Rushdie. May Allah lead us to his hideout.
‘He should have been killed. But he always gets away. Anyone who prints his books or helps him should also be put down,’ says Talha. ‘I wouldn’t print his stuff if I was offered all the tea in China. He has trampled on Islam.’
‘He has hurt and humiliated us, stabbed us. They’ll get him one day,’ one of the men continues, although neither man has read the book.
Sultan agrees. ‘He is trying to destroy our soul and he must be stopped before he corrupts others too. Not even the Communists went as far as that; they behaved with a certain amount of respect and did not try to rubbish our religion. Then you have this smut from someone calling themselves a Muslim.’
They sit silently, as though unable to shrug off the darkness the traitor Rushdie has cast over them. ‘They’ll get him, you’ll see, Inshallah, God willing,’ says Talha.
In the following days Sultan stamps around Lahore to all sorts of printers, in backyards, cellars and alleyways. To manage the sheer numbers he must spread his order over a dozen or so print shops. He explains his errand, gets quotations, jots down notes and estimates. His eyes blink when a quote is especially good, and his lips quiver slightly. He runs his tongue over his lips, does a quick mental calculation and assesses the profit margin. After two weeks he has placed orders for all the textbooks and promises to report back to the print shops.
At last he can return to Kabul. This time he doesn’t have to struggle across the border on horseback. Afghans are not allowed into Pakistan, but there is no passport control on the return journey and the bookseller can leave the country openly.
Sultan jolts along in an old bus round the tortuous bends from Jalalabad to Kabul. On one side of the road massive boulders threaten to roll off the mountain. Once he sees two overturned buses and a trailer, which have driven off the road. Several dead people are being carried away, amongst them two young boys. He prays for their souls and for himself.
Not only avalanches threaten this road. It is known as the most lawless in Afghanistan. Here foreign journalists, aid workers and local Afghans paid with their lives when, by accident, they stumbled upon outlaws. Soon after the Taliban fell four journalists were murdered. Their driver survived because he recited the Islamic creed. Just after that a busload of Afghans was stopped. All those with shaven beards had their ears and noses cut off – a demonstration by the bandits of how they wished their country to be ruled.
Sultan prays by the spot where the journalists were killed. To be on the safe side he has kept his beard and wears traditional clothes. Only the turban has been exchanged for a small fez.
He is nearing Kabul. Sonya is no doubt angry, he thinks to himself and smiles. He had promised to return within a week. He had tried to explain that he could not possibly do Peshawar and Lahore in one week. But she did not want to understand. ‘Then I won’t drink my milk,’ she’d said. Sultan laughs. He is looking forward to seeing her. Sonya does not like milk, but because she is still breastfeeding Latifa, Sultan has forced her to drink a glass every morning. This glass of milk has become her bargaining chip.
She misses Sultan terribly when he is away. The other members of the family do not treat her so well when he is not there. Then she is no longer mistress of the house, just someone who has dropped in by chance. Suddenly others are in charge and they do what they like when Sultan is absent. ‘Peasant-girl’, they call her. ‘Stupid as an ass!’ But they dare not tease her too much because she will complain to Sultan and no one wants him for an enemy.
Sultan misses Sonya too, in a way he never missed Sharifa. Sometimes he feels she is too young for him, that she is like a child, that he must look after her, trick her into drinking milk, surprise her with little presents.
He ponders on the difference between the two wives. When he is with Sharifa she looks after everything, remembers appointments, organises, arranges. Sharifa puts Sultan first, his needs and wants. Sonya does what she is told, but never takes the initiative.
There is only one thing he cannot reconcile himself to, the different hours they keep. Sultan always gets up at five to pray fajr, the only hour of prayer he observes. Whereas Sharifa always got up with him, boiled water, made tea, put out his clean clothes, Sonya is like a child, impossible to wake.
Sometimes Sultan thinks he is too old for her; he is not the right one. But then he reminds himself that she could never find anyone better than him. Had she married someone her own age she would never have had the standard of living she now enjoys. It would have been a poverty-stricken boy, for all the boys in her village are poor. We’ve got ten to twenty happy years ahead, Sultan thinks and his face assumes a contented expression. He feels lucky and happy.
Sultan laughs. He twitches a bit. He is nearing Mikrorayon and the delicious child-woman.
Do You Want My Unhappiness?
The feast is over. Mutton bones and chicken legs lie scattered about on the floor. Lumps of rice have been rubbed into the tablecloth, stained dark red from chilli sauce mixed with puddles of thin, white yoghurt. Bits of bread and orange peel litter the room, as if they had been thrown around during the final moments of the meal.
On the cushions against the walls sit three men and a woman. In the corner by the door two women squat together. They have had no part in the meal, but stare straight ahead beneath the shawls, and make eye contact with no one.
The four round the wall enjoy the tea and drink slowly and thoughtfully – wearily. The important points have been decided and settled. Wakil will get Shakila and Rasul will get Bulbula. Only the price and the wedding date remain to be fixed.
Over tea and glazed almonds the price for Shakila is set at one hundred dollars; Bulbula is free of charge. Wakil has the money ready; he pulls a banknote out of his pocket and hands it to Sultan. Sultan accepts the money for his sister with an arrogant, slightly uninterested expression; not much of a price he got for her. On the other hand, Rasul draws a sigh of relief. It would have taken him at least a year longer to scrape together enough money to buy a bride and pay for the wedding.
Sultan is disgruntled on behalf of his sisters and thinks that their grumpiness cost them many dashing suitors. Fifteen years ago they could have had young, rich men.
‘They were too fussy.’
However, it was not Sultan who sealed their fate, but his mother, Bibi Gul, enthroned on the seat of honour. She sits cross-legged, satisfied, rocking from side to side. The kerosene lamp throws a peaceful glow over her wrinkled face. Her hands lie heavily in her lap and she smiles blissfully. She no longer appears to be listening to the conversation. She herself was married off at eleven to a man twenty years older. She was given away as part of a marriage contract between two families. Her parents had asked for one of the neighbouring family’s daughters for their son, and they accepted on condition that Bibi Gul was thrown in for good measure for their oldest unmarried son. He had spotted her in the backyard.
After a long marriage, three wars, five coups d’état and thirteen children, the widow has finally given away her third and second last daughters; one remains. She has held on to them for a long time; they are both over thirty and consequently not very attractive with regard to the marriage market. But then their husbands are well worn too. The one who this evening walks out of the door as Shakila’s fiancé is a fifty-something widower with ten children. Bulbula’s intended husband is also a widower, but he is childless.
Bibi Gul has had her own reasons for holding on to her daughters for so long, although many think she has done them an injustice. She describes Bulbula as not very clever and pretty useless. Bibi Gul voices this loudly, without shame, even when her daughter is present. One of Bulbula’s hands is lame and not very strong, and she walks with a limp. ‘She would never manage a big family,’ her mother says.