Nadeem Aslam - The Blind Man's Garden

‘Yes,’ the bearded man answers. ‘He was the one who sent all of us to the mosque. He told us to gather here and wait to be taken out of Afghanistan.’

Mikal counts the men and they are twenty-two including him. $5,000 x 22 = $110,000.

And now his hearing picks up the outermost ring of a wave of sounds, something just on the limit of being audible, his heart giving a great leap and then seeming to go still in recoil. There is a questioning stir from everyone and then they too catch the reverberation of American helicopters arriving overhead. Cautiously, Mikal moves towards the mosque door and reaches out his hand to part the panels, but the door is opened suddenly from the other side just then and blinding snowlight fills his eyes and there is a confusion of shouts. Several figures overpower him and he watches the aged gentleman begin to run to the other side of the prayer hall, watches as an American soldier picks up a chair and launches it towards the man across the long space: a clean, effortless arc is described and then the chair connects with the fleeing man’s shoulders and he falls with a sharp cry. Mikal’s hands and feet are fastened with zip-locks and he is carried outside to the big bird with the twin propellers. He hears gunfire from the building and the screams of women and children. They leave him on his stomach beside the machine and go back inside and he watches as one by one the other men are brought out and made to lie on their stomachs beside him.

Naheed is in the glasshouse with Rohan.

‘I have been thinking,’ Rohan says. ‘The best method of recalling the colour red is to touch a warm surface. That sensation to the hand is what the colour red is to the eye.’

‘Your eyes will heal, Father.’ She makes sure to say it with a certain lightness, hoping the words will contain audible hints of her smile.

There are bandages over his eyes.

‘And the stars,’ he says, ‘the twinkling of them. I will remember them by holding the palm of my hand in the rain.’

She imagines him trying to find equivalent sensations for everything that is lost to him. The sky. His own hand. The transparent case of a dragonfly’s head.

There is still a certain amount of vision in the eyes but the doctors they have consulted have said that it is the very last, that it too will disappear within a few months.

‘You’ll be fine,’ she repeats. ‘The specialist we will see this morning is said to be the very best in the province.’

They are tending to his Himalayan orchids. He feels along the stem and tells her where to make the cut. She holds the scalpel inside a brazier of glowing coals to sterilise the blade every few minutes, dusting the cuts with powdered cinnamon as a guard against infection. His hands rest on the table as if to steady the world, or to make it stay there. Whenever she removes the bandages it is like taking the hood off a falcon’s head. He is alert as he hunts colours and shapes. He doesn’t know when he will be given a sighted day, and on most days he sees nothing at all.

He moves closer to the brazier.

‘Are you cold? I will take you in.’

‘They are saying the snow is very thick in the north this year. May God help the poor up there.’

She guides him into the house and then along the corridor into his room. Mecca House. He settles in the armchair of faded blue brocade. On the table are some of the books she had been reading to him, having taken them out of the boxes. There is a volume of letters that an American poet wrote to the families of American soldiers, during a war within America a long time ago.

Washington, August 10, 1863. To Mr and Mrs Haskell .

Dear Friends: I thought it would be soothing to you to have a few lines about the last days of your son Erastus Haskell, of Company K 141st New York Volunteers …

She looks down at the finger she has accidentally cut in the glasshouse. Incising her flesh it’s Jeo’s blood she sees. And that of Mikal. Rohan came back from Peshawar without his vision and with the news of Mikal’s grave. Basie has visited it since. They considered reburial in Heer but it has been turned into a shrine and they will leave it there, a profusion of myths and legends around it.

‘How is the bird pardoner’s boy?’ Rohan asks. ‘I must visit the family.’

‘Basie and Yasmin went to see them yesterday,’ she tells him. ‘The boy won’t let any man come near him.’

He nods. ‘For now, Tara, Yasmin and you can visit him. We have to help the family any way we can.’

‘Yes, Father.’

She closes the book of letters and under it the Dictionary of Colour lies open.

Dragon — A bright greenish yellow.

Dragon’s Blood — The bright red resin of the Indian Palm tree, Calamus draco (or perhaps of the shrub Pterocarpus draco).

Drop Black — An intense black pigment made from calcinated animal bones.

He had wished to have colours described to him one by one, all shades and subtleties.

Jeweller’s Rouge — A powdered red oxide used to polish gold and silver plate.

Womb Red — Illustrated as scarlet but with no clues as to the origin of the term.

She walks out and crosses the garden towards the kitchen, entering through the banana grove.

‘Have you given any thought to what I said?’ Tara asks, as she bandages the cut finger.

She leans against the wall beside her mother.

‘Naheed, have you given any thought to what I said?’

‘I am not getting married again.’

‘You said you were waiting for Mikal. We now have confirmation that he too is dead.’

She doesn’t say anything. A minute later she takes the bowlful of flour from the shelf and trails her hands through it, holding the injured finger aloft as she parts and combs small ridges and peaks, working away the lumps. She pours vanilla essence and ground almonds into her half-folded hand and adds them to the cake mixture. Then she reaches into a pan and scoops out the white butter. Deftly she squeezes it through the flour. Water-thinned milk streaming down the three undamaged fingers, she forms the dough with the other hand.

‘The dead don’t return, Naheed.’

She looks at her mother and says after a while, ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

‘I don’t want to think about it either, but I have to.’ Tara reaches forward with the salt jar and adds a pinch to the bowl, something Naheed always forgets. ‘How will I face your father on Judgement Day? What will I say when he accuses me in Allah’s presence of not having given you the best life possible?’

The girl shakes her head slowly.

‘I am going to start looking for a suitable match,’ Tara says.

Naheed turns away from her. Wetting a muslin cloth to cover the bowl of dough. ‘I have to take Father to the doctor. Would you go out to the crossroads and get us a rickshaw? Tell the driver we are going to the corner where Lumber Bazaar meets Savings Bazaar.’

Tara had wanted Yasmin and Basie to accompany Rohan to the doctor. To keep both of them away from the Christian school where they teach, for however short a period. There was another explosion at a church the day before yesterday. Their safety is a constant anxiety throughout the day. She gets up and begins to put on her burka, doing up the long row of buttons at the front. ‘I hope this new doctor will say something different from the others.’

Through the window Naheed watches her go past the pink mulberry that has a honey-like taste but only if eaten under its tree, so tender is it that it cannot even withstand being transported. But Tara is back only a few moments later, followed by Sharif Sharif. Dressed in white he has a flat brown crocodile-skin bag under one arm, its zip golden. Upon noticing Naheed he takes a comb from his pocket and passes it once along each side of his head.