Nadeem Aslam - The Blind Man's Garden

She moves to the kitchen table and holds the empty cup her mother left behind. There is warmth in it still and it is transferred onto her skin. The colour red.

*

Tara leads the man along the corridor. She’d met him just outside the gate and he said he’d come to see Rohan.

She announces him and withdraws without a glance in his direction. Hate is a male domain. When she has to think of this man she feels anger instead.

‘I am here on a delicate matter,’ Sharif Sharif says. Sitting on the chair beside him he is still holding Rohan’s hand from when he shook it. ‘It concerns your daughter-in-law.’

‘Naheed?’ Rohan hears the rustle of his starched clothes, the metal clank of his wristwatch.

‘Yes. I care deeply for her.’

‘You have been good to her and her mother. The entire neighbourhood is aware that you have been taking only the minimum rent from that poor lady for some time.’

‘I do what Allah allows me to do. I seek no reward in this world. But I see that bad times have fallen on the two women again. And on you, as the only male decision maker in Naheed’s life.’ Sharif Sharif sighs. ‘But these days, with this war, it appears that Allah has decided to test all us Muslims. Anyway, I am here to tell you that I would be willing to ease your burden.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I am willing to marry Naheed to put an end to your worries and her widowhood.’

Rohan sits up in the chair.

‘I have two wives already, but our religion allows us to marry again if we can prove that we can look after the new wife financially and emotionally …’

‘Sharif Sharif-sahib, I must say I am a little surprised. She is nineteen years old.’

‘That makes her a grown woman.’

‘Indeed. But I was attempting to point out the age difference.’

He is silent. On the table are various magnifying glasses brought out of Sofia’s study and Rohan hears him touching them. With them she would study twigs, petals, beaks, feathers and pollen grains before beginning to paint, and in his sighted days Rohan has been examining the world with them, storing up information.

Sharif Sharif says at last, ‘Be kind enough to think about it. You are a wise man and must know that it’s not good for young girls to be without a man once they have been with a man. It can cause them to seek out what they once had any which way.’

Rohan stands up. ‘Thank you for your interest and your kindness.’

‘A woman’s heart is soft and trusting, she can be corrupted all too easily.’

‘Thank you for your interest and your kindness.’

‘Do think about it and let me know. But that is not the only reason why I am here. Please be seated. Please. I wished to ask about your eyes. You must need funds for treatments and operations, and I was wondering if I could help in any way.’

What exactly could this person be implying? Does he think Rohan would contemplate giving him Naheed in exchange for money? ‘I thank you for coming,’ he says curtly.

There is a silence and then he hears Sharif Sharif begin to walk out of the room. Tersely he says in the man’s direction:

‘The girl will be looked after very well as long as I am alive. And after I am gone she has Basie, who thinks of her as his sister.’

‘It appears I have offended you,’ Sharif Sharif says from the door.

‘I have raised one daughter who makes an honest and honourable living, and I will make sure Naheed too takes that path if she wishes.’

He sits down and realises he is shaking with fear and rage.

*

He listens to the streets as he travels with the girl, the rickshaw crossing the major roads and entering the density of the bazaars. She holds his right hand, her own two hands placed gently above and below it. Beneath the bandages and the closed lids there are specks of light like coloured sand in his eyes, a vast visual song of the cells expressing their internal life, and out there is another song called Heer, called Pakistan, the people buying, selling, asking, shouting, the minarets insisting on Paradise at every street corner, and in his mind he sees the shop signs painted with heartbreaking precision and beauty by barely literate men and he listens to the slap of wrestlers against each other, gleaming with oil, the arcades under which pieces of meat sizzle, cubbyhole shops selling Japanese sewing machines, English tweed and Chinese crockery, the fruit sellers standing behind walls of stacked oranges, and women’s clothes hanging in shop windows in sheaths of pure lines and colours, teaching one the meaning of grace in one’s life, and he wishes Sofia were here so he could ask her to describe these things for him, she who had made an entire life out of seeing, possessing an enraptured view of the everyday, who knew which section of the house received the most moonlight on any given night of the lunar calendar, and he wonders if this is how the dead mourn the world they have left behind, if this is how she mourns it below ground.

*

The doctor is studying Rohan’s files when they enter the office. He is a young man and has recently returned from studying in the West. He looks up, and in utter silence stares at Rohan’s face.

Removing Rohan’s bandages he lifts the cotton pads from the eyelids, parting them gently with his fingers.

‘Can you see me?’ he asks.

‘No.’

The doctor guides Rohan into the examination room adjoining the office, Naheed catching a glimpse of the heavy-seeming machinery in dull grey steel and shining chrome as the green curtain is released behind them.

She sits alone in the office, looking into the book she has brought. This specialist is the final hope. One of the others said they should stitch shut the eyelids permanently. Last week Tara had visited the cleric at the mosque, to see if any specific verses of the Koran could be read for the restoration of vision. ‘Why could you not have come to me sooner?’ the cleric had said, unable to conceal his wounded feelings. But he was not saddened or aggrieved on his own behalf. ‘You thought you were modern people, wanted to visit as many doctors as you could before turning to Allah. It seems to me to be a case of “We might as well give Him a try too.”’

Twenty minutes go by and the green curtain is lifted and the doctor leads Rohan out.

Rohan gropes for Naheed’s hand as he settles in his chair.

‘So. As I have just explained to your father-in-law,’ the doctor says to her, ‘we need to carry out a number of procedures over the next six to eight months to restore the vision.’

‘He will be able to see again?’

Before the doctor can respond, Rohan says, ‘We can’t afford the operations, Naheed.’

Naheed tries to swallow but can’t.

The doctor looks at the files. ‘I am sure we can correct his original condition too. With the new medical advances in the West there is no reason why he should ever be blind.’ Naheed cannot help but express an elated astonishment at this but again Rohan says,

‘We can’t afford the operations, Naheed.’

‘Could you not sell something?’ the doctor asks. ‘Do you still live in that building with the garden that used to be the school?’

Rohan looks towards him. ‘I wasn’t aware that we knew each other.’

‘I was a pupil of yours. You expelled me because my mother was a sinner.’

Rohan is still.

Naheed knows the story of the prostitute’s son. The boy who tried to steal a spade from the school garden. He wanted to go to the cemetery and dig up what his mother had always said was his father’s grave.

The doctor, his face utterly serious, has his eyes locked on Rohan.

‘I recognised the name the moment I saw the report, and I recognised you as you walked in.’