Kamila Shamsie - Salt and Saffron

(‘You always had that edge of insecurity,’ Dadi said, when he mentioned that. ‘You were the one who held yourself away, starting the day we got back from Delhi. I wasn’t even sure you liked me any more.’)

That Taimur was in love with Abida was easy for anyone to see. He turned cartwheels in the garden, sang ghazals of longing, offered to be twelfth man in cricket matches so that he could sit beside her among the spectators. But Akbar’s love was a more brooding thing, though that may simply have been because, except on that day he hit Sulaiman and then hit him again, he could always foresee consequences.

Sulaiman came upon Akbar one day, slumped at the wheel of their father’s Daimler, on the road between Dadi’s house and the palace. Sulaiman dismounted his horse and got into the passenger seat.

‘Rotten luck,’ Akbar said. ‘I suppose I should be happy for him.’ He handed Sulaiman a piece of paper. ‘Found this on the path. Abida’s handwriting.’

She’d written Taimur’s name all across the page, in Urdu.

‘So that’s that,’ Akbar said. ‘Oh, well. Better this way. No long drawn-out rivalry. Not as though this is a surprise. How could anyone choose anyone over that brother of ours?’

‘Sorry,’ was all Sulaiman could think of to say.

Akbar closed his eyes and leant back in the seat. ‘Abida.’

Sulaiman got out, walked around to the driver’s side, pushed his brother over to the passenger seat, and drove him home, the horse cantering after them.

The next day he saw Taimur, sitting on an old garden swing, looking forlorn.

‘What?’ Sulaiman said.

Taimur looked up. ‘I overheard Meher talking to HH.’

‘Oh, yes? Hard to imagine Meher and Binky having anything to say to each other. Were they discussing affairs of state?’

‘Affairs of the heart. She thinks Akbar’s so down today because he’s in love. With Abida. Is he?’

Taimur’s obliviousness to his brother’s feelings shocked Sulaiman. ‘What if he is?’

Taimur kicked the ground. ‘If he is and I haven’t seen it then maybe there are other things I haven’t seen. Maybe she’s in love with him.’

Sulaiman knew right then that the whole matter had to be straightened out as quickly as possible. ‘She’s not. She is in love, but not with Akbar. And Akbar knows it. She’s in love with someone else. Wait here, I’ll bring you written proof. In her own hand.’ And off he went to find the paper which Akbar had crumpled up and tossed in the back of the car the day before.

It was Sulaiman’s need for the dramatic gesture which did it. He couldn’t just say, ‘She loves you, Taimur.’ He had to go and find the paper, had to give Taimur those moments of suspense, had to see Taimur’s face when the suspense was over. But how can we blame Sulaiman for not anticipating what would happen next? Who could have? Taimur saw Sulaiman rush off, saw him run into Abida on his way to the car, saw her put an arm on Sulaiman’s sleeve, and leapt to a conclusion: Abida had written Sulaiman a love letter.

‘That’s why he left,’ Sulaiman told Dadi as the moon angled its rays on to her bed, creating the illusion that she and Sulaiman were still young and raven-haired, the moonlight alone responsible for the silvered quality of their manes. ‘He was gone before I returned. He thought you loved me.’

‘But, the other woman?’ Dadi gasped.

‘What other woman?’

‘The one he took the ring for. The one who was the reason for that letter he wrote when he left. There had to be truth in the letter, there had to.’

‘More truth than we cared to acknowledge. He wrote that because he was angry with Akbar and me. With me because he thought you loved me. With Akbar because Akbar loved you but seemed to have found a way to live without being loved by you, a thing Taimur knew he couldn’t do. So he wrote in anger, but also in truth. There was truth to what he said about Akbar and me. And also — Abida, he was eighteen — he knew that letter was the one way of angering the whole family sufficiently to keep us from searching for him.’

‘But Sulaiman, the ring.’

Sulaiman reached into his pocket. ‘I went to London thinking I’d sell this.’ I knew what was in that little velvet box even before he opened it. Dadi sighed, a woman past surprises now that this had happened. She touched the tip of a finger to the emerald. ‘Explain this to me, Sulaiman.’

Taimur took the ring with him because he was eighteen and broken-hearted, and that combination often leads to a desire for symbolic gestures. He took the ring so that Sulaiman would never place it on Abida’s finger. Sulaiman knew all this because Taimur had told him so.

‘So he really did come back?’ Dadi said. I had pressed myself against the wall by now, each muscle constricted into a mass of tension. Each muscle, especially the heart.

Sulaiman pressed her hand in apology and nodded. It was just after Abida and Akbar were married. Sulaiman was in his mother’s room, watching her sleep, trying not to notice how like a claw her hand had become, and Taimur opened the window and hopped in. Even in the dark Sulaiman knew it was him. He was taller and broader and the English suits he had favoured were replaced by a long achkan over churidar pyjamas, but his smile was still pure Taimur.

‘It’s your idiot brother, Sully,’ he said. He said it in English.

Sulaiman held him and thought, Everything will be all right now.

‘Can’t let a girl get between us, can we?’ Taimur said, when he finally pulled away.

Sulaiman had long ago guessed why Taimur had left; for a moment he hesitated, and then he told Taimur the truth. Taimur tried to shrug, opened his mouth, closed it again. ‘She loved me?’ he said at length. Sulaiman nodded. ‘Does she still?’

‘She married Akbar.’

‘Oh,’ Taimur said. ‘I see.’

He went over to his sleeping mother and held her hand. A long time went by.

Summer had ended and the breeze was cool enough for some members of the family to sleep with their windows closed. Sulaiman was about to shut the window which Taimur had flung open, when he heard the window in the room next door creak open.

‘Look at that moon, Akbar,’ Abida exulted.

Taimur got up and walked over to the window. If he leant out, just a little, she would see him. He didn’t lean out. He pushed the window closed and rested his head against the wall. ‘God help me,’ he said. ‘I can’t stay. I thought I could. But I can’t.’

‘Taimur?’ It was their mother waking up.

He stayed by her side all night, telling her all the memories he had of her from his childhood. She seemed to derive greater comfort from that than from any of the medicines, or prayers, or tales of miracle cures with which she’d been regaled in the preceding months. But he barely looked at his brother, and Sulaiman knew that as Taimur sat there his rage was mounting against his brother for allowing him to misinterpret his words so completely. At one point Sulaiman tried to leave, but Taimur was up and barring his way to the door before he was halfway across the room. ‘If you leave to call Akbar I’ll be gone before you knock on his door.’

But in the early morning, when their mother finally fell asleep, Taimur turned to Sulaiman with an expression of sorrow. ‘It’s no one’s fault,’ he said. ‘And Akbar’s a far finer chap than I. Don’t tell him I was here; it’ll break his heart. And never a word to Abida about any of this.’

‘Where will you go? Where have you been?’

‘Far away. It doesn’t matter. I’m well, that’s all you need to know. Goodbye, Sully.’

Sulaiman would have done anything to make Taimur stay, so he tried the most unforgivable thing he could think of. ‘She might still love you,’ he said.