Kamila Shamsie: A God in Every Stone

The girl with the long braid leaves the cluster of spectators and walks past the clothes line, her hand trailing along the hanging clothes as though they are in an entirely different moment, one which allows for a woman to run her fingers along a man’s trouser without either disturbing her modesty or hiding her intentions. She yanks at a kameez which tumbles off the line. And then she is walking towards him, her gaze distant. As she passes by him she slings the kameez over his shoulder. She’s trying to shame him into joining the men who face down bayonets, of course, but he’s just grateful to be able to rid himself of the heavy black frock-coat which has trapped the late morning sun. The kameez is much too large for him, which is useful for pulling it over his neck without disturbing his turban. Its cool dampness pleasing to his skin. He knows exactly the area of fabric near the shoulder which was bunched in her fist. Stepping away from the discarded frock-coat pooled at his feet, he knows it will give him a reason to return. Knows also that while everyone else was looking down at the Street of Storytellers the woman whose handprint is on his shoulder watched him unbutton and shrug off the frock-coat. What did she make of him picking up the razor to cut the undershirt away from his slim body? (He allows himself to imagine the banter of early married life: I did it because I didn’t want to disturb my turban! he’ll say, and she’ll reply, Oh yes, oh really, then why arch your back and rotate your shoulder blades in that way which made every muscle surge, here and here and here?)

All this is a few seconds of diversion, a few seconds to imagine a future in which today is remembered for the start of love.

Gunfire again. He crashes down a flight of stairs and through a doorway, searching for a window without bars through which he can escape. There, an enclosed balcony with shutters he batters open. It takes a while before the men below hear his shouts but when they do he climbs onto the balcony railing, his back to the street. The woman with the plait enters the room, holding his frock-coat as if dancing with it in the English style, one arm at its waist, one at the wrist. They regard each other without expression and then she raises the hand which is holding his frock-coat sleeve and he sees her arm and his own wave goodbye at him.

He clamps his hands to his turban and falls. A bullet sings its ways through the place where his body had stood just a moment earlier, through the open shutters, into the room where the woman and frock-coated stranger dance. The waiting arms beneath catch him, place him on his feet. There is no way back into the room.

His red-brown shirt gives him authority in this crowd. He taps a shoulder in front of him and the man glances down, sees the colour of his sleeve, and steps aside. There are thousands here, all of them men as far as he can see. What happened to the woman with the dyed face? What is her relationship to the dancing woman? Where did the bullet go? He keeps moving forward through the scent of sweat and blood.

Two men carrying bricks in their hands are arguing with two men in Congress khaddar who want them to put down their weapons.

He comes to a small group of women, all old as grandmothers. They are trying to go forward, to shame the soldiers into putting down their weapons. The men around are trying to keep them back, away from the bullets which have stopped again.

Two men, holding hands, trade couplets about cruel lovers.

He knows he is coming to the front of the crowd when these individual tableaux fall away and the red-brown and khaddar shirts increase in density. His borrowed shirt, which had dried, is wet at the armpits. It’s hard to move now, these front rows packed in tightly, stepping forward together than falling back with inexplicable logic. He addresses the man next to him.

— What are we doing?

— If you don’t know, go home.

It’s only then he realises that every experience of his life feels pallid beside this one, including that moment yesterday in which the shape of the object in the soil of Shahji-ki-Dheri became clear.

— Inqilaab Zindabad!

He shouts the words to see what hearing them in his own voice will do to them. It feels slightly ridiculous until the men around him join in the cry. How wonderful this is.

— My brother; I must go to my brother.

He parts the shoulders of the men in front of him, and steps into the trajectory of a brick hurtling from a balcony.

The bullet travels through the frock-coat, missing Diwa by millimetres, and burrows itself into a mirror. Her arm is still raised in the direction of the bewildering man who has just dived backwards off her balcony and it takes a moment to understand the smell of burnt fabric, the crackling sound towards which she turns, and the frozen sun in the mirror, glass rays shooting out from a dark circle.

This day has been the strangest of her young life.

By rights she should still have been in Kohat with her parents and brothers, celebrating her cousin’s wedding. But yesterday when her eldest brother heard of the planned anti-British protest in Peshawar he said he was returning to join the nationalists and his wife, Zarina, insisted she would go along too. If it had been any other woman she would have been overruled, but Zarina had made clear the strength of her will when she entered Diwa’s family home two years earlier and said she refused to marry the man her family had chosen for her, and wished to marry Diwa’s brother instead. Under the laws of Pashtunwali I come here seeking the protection of your household, which can only be given to me through marriage, she had said. It was as if a woman from legend had walked through the door.

So when Zarina said she would return to Peshawar with her husband it was quickly understood that there was no point in arguing. The only one who might have tried was Diwa’s mother, but she had seen many of the women of her extended family eyeing her fifteen-year-old daughter as a prospective bride for their sons and, seeing the possibility of losing her only daughter to another city as her own mother had lost her when she married her cousin the carpet-seller, she was grateful for the opportunity to send Diwa back to Peshawar under the pretext of keeping Zarina company.

Diwa hadn’t minded at all, being sent back to Peshawar with her wedding clothes uncreased except where they had been folded for packing. If she could have had one wish in the world it would be this — to be at home with Zarina, and no one else. No one else demanding her time, distracting her attention. Only Zarina with her quick gestures, her stories and poems, her ability to be loved enough to be forgiven everything. Even rushing into a street filled with men, her face uncovered though Diwa’s mother repeatedly warned her against doing that, even this she’d be forgiven. By now she would have found her husband and he would be plying her with endearments, his hand touching hers, both wrapped around the hilt of the dagger. My warrior, Malalai of Maiwand reborn, he’d say.

Everything is turned around today. Diwa woke up to birdsong instead of the tumult of the marketplace, smelt boiling walnuts and plum instead of tea, watched her brother leave his books in order to go out and fight. When an unknown man appeared on the roof she thought, of course, on this upside-down day, why not? But when none of the neighbourhood women or their children noticed him it started to seem possible that he was there for her, not as threat but opportunity. Opportunity for what? He looked half-crazed, sweating in his black coat. And then, more crazed, he cut his clothes off himself in order to put on the kameez she had tossed in his direction as a more ventilated option. Mad, completely mad, she decided as he ran down the stairs again, leaving the coat where it had fallen.