But instead she leant forward, saying instinctively: Kulfi, do you want to lie down?
In answer Kulfi turned, eyes glittering, and her arm went up and pointed rigidly out of the window.
Then Zindi saw her, too: a short woman in a bright orange sari, with a comfortable, homely face and a prominent upper lip, walking briskly down the street, smiling and nodding at people as she passed them by.
The men at the other tables, who had watched the two women enter the café with frowning disapproval, were staring at them now. Zindi, suddenly self-conscious, pulled Kulfi’s pointing hand down and growled: Be still, Kulfi — people are watching. Let me think. Kulfi pulled her arm free, sprang to her feet and stood poised above the table like a bird about to take flight. Zindi reached out again and this time she took hold of her sari and pulled her down hard. Kulfi crashed down on the chair with a gasp. What’re you doing? she snapped. Can’t you see? She could help us.
Wait, I have to think, Zindi began, but her voice died in her throat and then she forgot Kulfi altogether as the days-old knots of fear in her stomach uncoiled and something seemed to shoot up her spine in a warm jet, bathing her in a blessed shower of relief. Her cradled arms lifted Boss’s head to her cheek and, kissing him, she whispered: Allah! You’re saved now; saved in the middle of the desert. They’re your countrymen; they’ll have to do something for you.
Yes, said Kulfi, swaying on her chair, that’s right. I knew something was going to happen today. I could feel it in my heart. I prayed to Bhagwan Sri Krishan this morning, and he told me. He said: Something’s going to happen today. It won’t go on like this any more.
Kulfi leant forward and squinted into the sunlight. She looks very respectable, she said anxiously. Good family. She smoothed her hair back, ran her fingers through the drapes of her sari and stood up, muttering to herself: What’ll she think? Hair all in knots, no powder, nothing … in the middle of the desert.
Kulfi, wait, Zindi said quickly. You can’t just go like that. What’ll you tell her? She looks a proper babu’s wife. She’ll ask you all kinds of things, she’s bound to: Who’re you? What’re you doing here? and all that.
So? said Kulfi. I’ll tell her something.
Yes, Zindi said sharply, but what?
I could tell her something like — we got off the bus …
No. Zindi shook her head. What you’ll tell her is this. You’ll tell her that you’re tourists; that Boss is your son and that you and Alu are married.
What? Kulfi’s lips curled thinly back. Married to him? she spat, her voice jagged with contempt. Married to that thumbless half-wit? It’s no use, she won’t believe it. Not when she sees him and his withered thumbs.
Alu’s head dropped and involuntarily his hands hid themselves between his legs.
Zindi jabbed Kulfi’s thigh with a forefinger. Listen, she said, you’ll do exactly as I say or you can go on alone. You’ll tell her that Alu is your husband. Never mind his thumbs; he can hide them in his pockets. You’ll tell her that he works for an oil firm in al-Ghazira — she’ll like that. Babus’ wives like people who work for oil firms. Tell her I’m your ayah and you’ve brought me along to look after Boss. Tell her that you’ve come sightseeing; that we’ve arrived here by mistake and Boss has suddenly fallen ill, and that we need a place to spend a night or two. That should satisfy her.
She won’t believe me, Kulfi said. She’ll know I’m not married the moment she sees me. There’s no sindur on my head and there aren’t any bangles on my arms. She’ll know at once.
Tell her something, tell her you’ve lost your things — anything, it doesn’t matter.
Zindi snatched at Kulfi’s arm as she started forward. And listen, she hissed. Not one word about the Bird-man following us. Do you understand?
Do you think I’m a fool? Kulfi glared at her.
The orange sari was passing the window now. Zindi gave Kulfi a push — Go on, tell her — and watched as she darted out of the door. Then she looked up. The stretched white sky seemed to be smiling at her at last, and she smiled back. But a moment later she picked out a tiny speck, hovering like a mote in the sunlight, far above, and gazed at it with gathering unease.
Soon her smile faded away, for she saw that it was a vulture.
Actually Mrs Verma saw them before Kulfi had reached the door. She always glanced into that café when she passed it, for she had once done a series of blood tests on the owner’s wife and ever after he had always come out to greet her when he saw her walking by.
This time, looking in, she caught a glimpse of an unaccustomed shade of yellow somewhere in the dark interior. Something unexpected, something vaguely familiar about the drape of the cloth, lodged in her mind and drew her to a puzzled halt. She looked again and now there could be no doubt: it was a woman in a sari.
She started walking again, shaking her head. Miss Krishnaswamy the nurse perhaps; but, no, she’d asked her whether she wanted to come, and Miss K. had said no, she had to stay and cook lunch. And not Mrs Mishra, either; she was at home, too — she’d seen her that morning, across the square.
And neither of them had saris of quite that shade, and in any case they wouldn’t be sitting in a café. Mrs Verma stopped again and looked back in bafflement, not allowing herself to believe that it could be true: it couldn’t be; it would be too heaven-sent; too much luck; no one was that lucky in this world.
A moment later Kulfi came rushing out of the café and Mrs Verma saw that it was true; that she was indeed a woman in a sari, and quite young, too — exactly the right age in fact.
By the time Kulfi caught up with her Mrs Verma was so elated, so consumed by surprise, that she heard barely a word of Kulfi’s babbled explanations.
The only occasions when other Indians had come to El Oued in the two years Mrs Verma had spent there were when she and her husband, or Dr Mishra and his wife, invited some of their friends and acquaintances from the hospitals in Ouargla or Ghardaia, or even Tamanrasset in the far south, to come up for a holiday. Those visits needed months of advance planning; supplies had to be hoarded, parties organized and leave applied for. Those were the only Indians, as far as she knew, who had ever come to El Oued.
Of course other foreigners, mainly tourists, passed through El Oued every year, in a trickle which varied slightly with the seasons, like the height of the water-table. They were French mainly, with a sprinkling of Germans and a handful of Italians. Sometimes they arrived by bus, with rucksacks on their backs and water-bottles which could have emptied lakes. Or else they came in specially equipped jeeps or vans bristling with compasses to help them find their way south to the Mzab and the Ahaggar — the Heart, they said, of the Sahara. They often turned up at the hospital with upset stomachs or sunburn and talked to her in halting English about the legends of Légionnaires and Mécharistes and the veiled men of the Tuareg; about their childhood dreams of the desert and the promise of dangers and hunger and hardship that had drawn them there. In her first year there she had listened in astonishment and protested, thinking of the lacquered roads and swift buses, the air-conditioned hotels and brimming swimming-pools, the pylons and oil-derricks she had always encountered on her journeys south. But soon, rather than spoil their holidays, she had decided to keep her silence.