Nadeem Aslam - The Blind Man's Garden

‘Oh.’ She held the picture at arm’s length. ‘It’s not as plain and simple as our flag, is it? Would I have to stitch on the stars too?’

‘Yes. I think there are supposed to be a hundred. Or is it eighty? I can’t remember. Just fill the whole blue area in the corner with rows of them.’

‘When do you need it by?’

‘It’s for after the Friday prayers next week. It has to be large, about the size of four bed sheets. And can you please make sure that it is of a material that doesn’t burn too fast or too slowly? The flames have to look inspiring and fearsome in the photographs.’

Just before leaving he had asked her respectfully if there was anything he could do, and she had told him to replace the dead light bulb at the top of the stairs, the socket being too high for her to reach even when standing on a chair and she did not want to ask Sharif Sharif.

She spends the rest of the day setting fire to small strips of cloth to measure the texture, intensity and evenness of the various flames — linen, cotton, the textiles named after women’s films and novels, Teray Meray Sapnay and Dil ki Pyas and Aankhon Aankhon Mein . She settles eventually on a mixture, interspersing the fast burners with the more languidly flammable. She cuts up strips from a bolt of white KT — as pure as the pilgrimage to Mecca — and she makes red strips from a length of red linen. For the dark blue rectangle in the flag’s corner there is a large leftover piece from the indigo tunics she sewed for the uniforms of a nearby girls’ school. Blue as the colour a candle flame is said to become when a ghost is near. As she measures it she says a small prayer for the school’s caretaker who cannot afford the expensive operation he needs for his heart.

For the stars she makes a template with a piece of cardboard and begins to cut them out of white satin, pleased with the fact that the material is shiny, dropping them on the floor one by one where they lie around her full of gloss. She must do this well, in case the boy is dissatisfied and pays less than the agreed amount, and so again and again she consults the picture he drew for her, rubbing her knees occasionally because there is a touch of November in her joints. But pain at her age is no longer a surprise and she continues with the work, wondering what the various elements of the flag signify.

Are the white and red stripes rivers of milk and wine, flowing under a sky bursting with the splendour of stars?

Or are they paths soaked with blood, alternating with paths strewn with bleached white bones, leading out of a sea full of explosions?

Perhaps the blue in the flag means that the Americans own all the blue in the world — water, sky, blood seen through veins, the Blue Mosque in Tabriz, dusk, the feather with which she marks her place in her Koran, her seamstress’s chalk, the spot on the lower back of newborn babies, postmarks, the glass eyes of foreign dolls. Muhammad swore by the redness of the evening sky, and Adam means both ‘alive’ and ‘red’. Do the Americans own these and all other reds? Roses, meats, certain old leaves, certain new leaves, love, the feathers under the bulbul’s tail, dresses and veils of brides, dates marking festivals on calendars, garnets and rubies, happiness, blushes, daring, war, the Red Fort in Delhi, the spate of violent robberies after which people from the neighbourhood had gone to the police and were told to stop being a nuisance and hire private security guards instead, soda pop, the binding of her Koran — these and all the other shades of red, crimson, vermilion, scarlet, maroon, raspberry, obsidian, russet, plum, magenta, geranium, the tearful eyes of the woman from three doors down, who had told Tara she did not want her to sew her daughter’s dowry clothes after discovering that Tara was possessed by the djinn, fearing Tara would stitch her bad luck into the garments, the red flags of the revolution dreamt by Mikal and Basie’s parents, the Alhambra in Spain, the paths in Rohan’s garden, carpets woven in Shiraz, shiny cars that the rich import into Pakistan only to find that there are no good roads to drive them on. The setting sun. The rising sun.

She works without pause, the large flag materialising slowly in the interior as the hours go by, half the size of the room. She looks at Naheed but the girl remains asleep, hair sweat-pasted to the edges of the face. Winter will arrive soon like a blade opening and the room is cold. She lights a brazier of coals and places it next to Naheed whose body is now chilled. She turns up the volume of the radio a little when it is time for the news and the bulletin informs her that Kabul has fallen earlier today, that the Taliban have fled, after looting everything in sight including six million dollars from the national bank. Afghanistan is liberated and American troops are being handed sweets and plastic flowers by the free citizens of Kabul, music shops are being reopened, but while men are shaving off their beards, the women are choosing to remain hidden in their burkas for the time being. And Tara knows they are wise. During her adult life there has not been a single day when she has not heard of a woman killed with bullet or razor or rope, drowned or strangled with her own veil, buried alive or burned alive, poisoned or suffocated, having her nose cut off or entire face disfigured with acid or the whole body cut to pieces, run over by a car or battered with firewood. Every day there is news that a woman has had these things done to her in the name of honour-and-shame or Allah-and-Muhammad, by her father, her brother, her uncle, her nephew, her cousin, her husband, her husband’s father, her husband’s brother, her husband’s uncle, her husband’s nephew, her husband’s cousin, her son, her son-in-law, her lover, her father’s enemy, her husband’s enemy, her son’s enemy, her son-in-law’s enemy, her lover’s enemy. So now Tara commends the women of Kabul for being wise enough to stay in their burkas, because more often than not there are no second chances or forgiveness if you are a woman and have made a mistake or have been misunderstood.

She works until midnight and then 1 a.m. and it seems no one is awake but her. She alone is Islam.

*

Naheed opens her eyes and sits up.

‘You do believe me when I say I didn’t do anything, don’t you?’ Tara asks. ‘I threw the substance away. I didn’t put it in your food after the first few times, I swear on the Koran.’

‘I know,’ Naheed says weakly.

‘Sometimes Allah Himself does what He knows is the best thing for us.’

‘I went to a nurse and asked her to give me some injections,’ the girl says. She looks at Tara. ‘It wasn’t Allah. I did it myself.’

The leaves of the Sorrowless Tree are abrasive and therefore ideal for polishing. Workers from the furniture shop at the crossroads often come to ask for them. As he answers the doorbell this morning, that is who Rohan thinks is outside the house.

‘You don’t recognise me?’ the man says.

‘Forgive me, but I don’t.’ Perhaps he is a seller of bees.

‘I came to your house back in October to put up bird snares. I am Abdul, the bird pardoner.’

In his mind’s eye Rohan sees the bicycle with the giant cage attached to the back.

‘I have come to get back my wires.’ The man looks up into the canopies above the boundary wall of the house. ‘I can’t see them. They must have been taken down.’

Rohan finds himself staring speechlessly at the small soft-featured man, the light brown skin stubbled white at the jaws, a side tooth missing in the mouth.

‘You don’t seem to remember me at all,’ Abdul says.

‘I do. Come in, we have your wires.’ Rohan had spent an entire morning untangling them and then neatly winding them around foot-long sections of a rosewood branch.