Kamila Shamsie - A God in Every Stone

He walked through the Street of Storytellers, stopping to listen to snatches of this badala or that, but nothing held him in place. All these old stories, not old enough. Perhaps he should go and find Qayyum. It was a heavy feeling to know that this felt like a duty rather than the most wonderful option in the world. His brother looked much as he used to before he went to war, it was true — the redness and swelling had gone from his eye, the scars around it were mere flecks which looked as if a bird had walked on charcoal and rested one claw on Qayyum’s face before flying away, and most days Najeeb even forgot that half his brother’s gaze was glass. But despite the healed wounds, his entire appearance was altered. It’s because he wears different expressions now, their mother had tried to explain to her youngest child. Among the new expressions was that look of disquiet any time someone mentioned the English which meant that Najeeb must keep the most important part of his life from the most important person in his life.

An unexpected sound through the thrum of the street. A woman, calling out:

— Men of Peshawar! Oh, you men of the market! How much will you give me for my daughter?

Najeeb hopped up onto the wooden leg of a rope-bed meant for a storyteller’s audience, looking over the heads of the men who were glancing this way and that at the scattering of women in burqas on the street, trying to pinpoint the origin of the shouting. The other women saw her first, all moving closer together and angling their bodies in her direction as if this were a dance they’d been practising. The men’s heads turned — everyone was silent now, and the caged songs from the nearby Street of Partridge Lovers filled the air — and there she was, a very tall uncovered woman, her hair wild, holding out a child in her arms.

A moment, no more, and a man in a long-tailed turban seized her by the elbow.

— Don’t do this! came a cry from a balcony looking down on the street. The carpet-seller who was a particular favourite with the English was leaning over the balustrade, one palm extended in appeal. The woman looked straight up at the carpet-seller.

— In Allah’s name, save us, she said. But she left the carpet-seller no choice but to look away from her uncovered face, and as soon as he did so the man holding onto her pulled her away.

Curious, Najeeb moved among the knots of men who hadn’t resumed their business and were, instead, either glancing up at the balcony or at the place where the woman had stood.

Before long he had the story. The man with the long-tailed turban was in debt, and refused to borrow money from any of the Hindu money-lenders because his piety wouldn’t allow him to accept the idea of paying interest. So he’d come to an agreement with one of the prosperous merchants — in exchange for the money his infant daughter would be married to the merchant’s son when she was of age. You’d think the man must be some kind of magician to have acquired both money for himself and a husband for his daughter. But the truth was that the merchant’s son had some demon inside him. He’d killed his first wife; the second had killed herself. A third wife had recently been found, but she would certainly be dead or mad before that child grew old enough to leave her parents’ home. And the carpet-seller? He was brother to the first wife.

Ever since Qayyum had returned from England Najeeb had started to feel that the world was filled with sadness. He saw it now everywhere. There, the boy with the crippled arm looking into a cage filled with clipped-winged birds; the man so stooped with age he had to carry a tilted mirror in his hand in order to see the reflection of the world above knee-level; the carpet-seller still on his balcony, making gestures of entreaty as though rehearsing what he could have said, what he should have said, what he would most certainly say if he had another chance to save that child from his sister’s fate.

There had been a moment when the child had looked directly at Najeeb, her green eyes bewildered. She couldn’t have been more than three or four years old, and already it had been determined that her life would be filled with cruelty.

I know the stories of men from twenty-five hundred years ago, but I’ll never know what happens to you.

Every day Qayyum waited for another messenger in the bloodstained uniform of the 40th to approach him. The first messenger had been preparation; the second would be the call to action. It was unthinkable for a lance-naik of the 40th to go to the Ottoman Empire to tell soldiers their loyalties didn’t lie with their regiment; but it was even more unthinkable for Qayyum to deny Kalam again. Every day he twisted in his snare, waiting and waiting, but by the time the days had shortened into November he came to believe that Kalam, who loved him well enough to want the power to make him suffer but too well to prolong that suffering, had chosen in the end to allow him to live his life without wrenching him in two.

It was a strange disappointment the day he reached that conclusion. So is this it, he thought, this is my life. His father had stayed home again that day — the cold that had seeped into his bones from decades of sitting outdoors in Peshawar’s winters made the onset of winter an increasing tribulation each year — and Qayyum sat at the desk with the buffalo-horn thinking, this is my inheritance, this is for ever, until the cold or the heat or the boredom kills me.

A woman sat down on the stool across from Qayyum. He wondered if she had a husband or son in the Army — in the last few months he’d lost count of the women who had come to him saying they’d heard he had been at war and would he help them in writing their letters. It wasn’t just a scribe they wanted but someone who might understand their husbands’ lives. Should I tell him his father is dead? Will it make him sad if I say I want him to come home quickly? Forgive me but please be honest; is it true that white women come into the soldiers’ barracks?

These women made him think, for the first time in a long while, of the girls who had been part of the neighbourhood games during his childhood, all of whom disappeared from view when they came to a certain age. In the first few days after their retreat some of them would send messages out with their younger sisters, such as, even with a burqa on I can still run faster than you; and sometimes a window shutter would open for a few seconds and some object of uncertain significance would fly out — a hairclip, an apple with a startled face carved onto it, a blank piece of paper balled up. But eventually all communication stopped. Now, if Qayyum were ever walking past the home of one of his childhood playmates and a figure in a burqa stepped out he wouldn’t even wonder if it was her. Even if it was, she’d be so different she might as well be another person. Boys grew into men as a sapling grows into a tree, but girls became women as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. His sisters most of all; they were nothing but flapping wings.

But the woman who had sat down did not flap her wings, did not ask about the Army, or even tell him who the letter was for. She only wanted him to write what she dictated with the care of someone who didn’t want the letter-writer to mistranscribe a single word.

Don’t apologise for the danger you put me in by sending that message. It has been the only light in my days. When my daughter is old enough for marriage I will send her to your house for protection.

He tried to keep the curiosity away from his face, as his father was skilled at doing. It was impossible to know very much about the woman from the sound of her voice except that she was young. He asked what address he should put on the envelope and she said there was no need for that. Taking the letter, she walked away, and turned into the Street of Storytellers. The unexpected figure of an Englishwoman with a pith-helmet on her head and clothes which revealed almost her entire arms and part of her legs followed after her. Even here, even in Peshawar, there were different rules for the English. No, especially here.