Nadeem Aslam - The Blind Man's Garden

They have no news to give and would have had to tell them that they would be returning empty-handed. It can wait until they get home. The thought comes to him that Jeo and Mikal might die, a terror in the black leaf-encumbered forest that is his mind, but he turns away from it immediately, almost cowering.

Out on the plains a river is shining like poured metal now that starlight has caught it at the right angle and hundreds of bats can be seen passing over the sheetwater on their leather wings as they hunt for moths. Just ahead of them a church has come into view and then Basie has to bring the car to a sudden screeching halt. A bearded man, of Rohan’s own age, has appeared before the vehicle, crossing the road less than five yards ahead. He carries a weak lamp whose flame is lost in the white glare of the headlights, and he presents an extraordinary sight because he is bound heavily in thick chains. They are wrapped around his torso like thread on a spool, covering the entire area from his hipbones to his armpits. At least two dozen chains also hang from a metal ring around his neck — they fall to just below his knees and then rise, half of them joining a ring that he wears on his left wrist, the other half attaching themselves to the right wrist.

He looks directly at Rohan as everyone in the car recovers from the shock.

‘Should we get out and help him?’ Yasmin asks.

‘He just needs time to get across, I imagine.’ Basie looks back to see if there are any vehicles behind them but there is nothing and the man is in no danger.

Basie makes a small courteous detour around him and he doesn’t acknowledge them as he continues his slow walk to the other edge of the road. His beard is matted and dust-filled like the hair on his head and he is thin, his face deeply lined and sunburnt, but there is a peaceful expression.

A thick metal garment.

‘As a child Mikal thought he was our father,’ Basie says quietly as they leave him behind.

The chains must weigh as much as two healthy men at least and must be a very heavy burden — they account for the slow progress.

‘I have heard about him but never seen him,’ Rohan says, looking back. He is soon lost to view as they pick up speed but then they hear the hard metallic sound like a colossal hammer coming down on an anvil of equal proportions. A noise so loud the air itself bends.

‘Someone just blew up the church,’ Yasmin says.

‘Turn around.’

‘He could be hurt. He was crossing towards it.’

This is the second attack on a church in two days. Yesterday it was during the daylight hours and it had injured several people. Those claiming responsibility had said that since Western Christians were bombing and destroying mosques in Afghanistan, they were beginning a campaign to annihilate churches in Pakistan.

The blaze can be seen from two hundred yards away, the building engulfed in a powerful inferno and the smoke billowing up into the black sky. The explosion was on the ground floor and long flames are emerging from the windows to climb the facade. At the fire’s height the tips of the flames break off again and again, vanishing into the darkness.

They park by the roadside and get out and Rohan feels the light like a hard rain on his face, on his eyes, and he has to look away every few seconds. The fire inside the church is brighter and hotter — the outside flames dull by comparison. One blaze seems to be escaping another more ferocious blaze.

Even though it is night there is soon the beginning of a traffic jam and in the chaos people are getting out to help, bear witness or complain. Yasmin and Basie tell Rohan to stay beside their car as they themselves go forwards, to see if they can be of assistance.

Though he doesn’t say anything, standing with his back to the bright light, he doesn’t want them to go. There could be a secondary explosion, meant to injure the people who are trying to save the building. Or men on motorbikes could drive by and spray the rescuers and onlookers with machine guns. Fearfully he looks over his shoulder and watches them leave.

The burning gives off a roar that reaches the last little place inside him, where each man keeps his courage, and when the wind pivots there is nothing but that roar, a reminder that the noise of fire had resounded on earth before the speech of man.

Basie and Yasmin both teach at the Christian school in Heer, and the thought comes to him that they could be in danger when they return, with their school and the church attached to it a possible target.

A few in the crowd around him are delighted. To them this isn’t madness but, on the contrary, is beauty .

*

Rohan is some way from the Grand Trunk Road when he sees the lamp lying on its side in the grass, still intact, still burning. He sees the knee-high mound of chains under a wayside cypress tree, each link someone’s wish, and his first thought is that they have been torn from the fakir’s body by the explosion, that he would find the body somewhere nearby, but now the heaped-up metal gives a stir and an uncertain hand comes into view.

Rohan moves forward with the lamp as the fakir sits upright in a dazed condition, and begins to pick the debris off his chains. He must have been close to the church when the device exploded, and has come away and collapsed here. In all probability he has been saved by the chains, the armour of other people’s needs.

Sometimes when Allah does not take pity on him — does not hear his prayers on others’ behalf, making the links vanish — the chains continue to grow, so that he has to drag several yards of them behind him.

Rohan watches him as he stands up in a series of gradual accomplishments — that incredible weight.

He begins to walk away, removing bits of brick and stone that the explosion had thrown onto him to be embedded in the links, as another man might brush off dust from his clothes.

‘Brother, are you all right?’

He stops, the chains continuing to swing.

‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ Rohan says.

They are a dozen or so steps from a pond and with his lamp and the clinking of his chains he walks in up to his knees, making the water golden with the lamplight as he leans forwards and lowers his face to the water. As if to take its odour. Then he begins to sip.

Rohan watches him alertly lest the weight make him lose balance, fearing he would drown within the coils, but he straightens and returns successfully.

He places the lamp on the ground and then lowers himself onto the ground beside Rohan and they look towards the east from where the sun will rise.

‘I am waiting for my daughter and son-in-law.’ Rohan points to the line of trees behind them, where the sky is a dark orange from the church fire.

The fakir looks for a long moment in that direction, his breath steaming weakly in the air of the October night. The chains must be cold, Rohan thinks. The wrists are calloused where each thick ring or bracelet has been rubbing against the skin for decades.

‘We have been away from home for some days,’ Rohan says, surprised by the tears he is trying to control. ‘Looking for my son and foster son.’

A need to talk. After trying to appear courageous before Yasmin and Basie over the past few days.

The man gazes ahead. He appears to be a soul without a self.

‘How can anyone explain the world?’ Rohan says to himself, looking down at his hands. ‘Sometimes I despair that it can’t be done.’

The man clears his throat gently and the voice is almost all rasp when it comes. ‘It can be.’

With great care, as though writing the words instead of uttering them, he begins to speak. ‘It can be done. Ahl - e-Dil and Ahle-Havas . We all are divided into these two groups. The first are the People of the Heart. The second are the People of Greed, the deal makers and the men of lust and the hucksters.’ He pauses to gather sufficient energy to continue. Some say that he is a djinn, and also that God has graced him with the lifelong innocence of dervishes, and also that he had used the chains to capture a djinn in the wilderness who had then converted to Islam. After his silence he says, ‘The first people will not trample anyone to obtain what they desire. The second will. Here lies this world.’