Nadeem Aslam - The Blind Man's Garden

Politeness. Obedience. Loyalty. Intelligence. Courteousness. Efficiency.

‘You say you are a teacher,’ the man says, ‘and you look like a respectable man. You don’t know what I witness every day. I have made you uncomfortable, I know, but you don’t know how depraved humanity can be.’

A constable opens the door and beckons the inspector. He gets up from behind his desk, detaching his knee from the woman’s hand. ‘I shall return. Certain matters require privacy,’ he says to Basie with a smile as he leaves. ‘Among the sacred names of Allah, there is the Veil.’

The woman slumps against the chair. Her scratched and grimy spectacles, lacking earpieces, are tied to her head with a fraying cord.

The children tell a joke about a man who had lost his horse. He went to the American police but it proved fruitless. He went to the British police and their investigation too failed. As did those of the Germans, the French, the Dutch. He came to the Pakistani policemen, who listened to him and went away. When they came back the next day they were leading an elephant by a chain. The animal had been severely beaten and was in bad shape and could barely walk. ‘I am a horse, I am a horse,’ it was screaming.

‘Good aunt, what is the matter?’

But she doesn’t acknowledge him.

‘Would you like some water?’

She shakes her head.

The inspector returns but then goes to the door once again and shouts to someone out there: ‘Just make sure he has a bad night.

‘So. What would you like me to do?’ he asks Basie, settling in his chair, and extending his knee a little until the woman connects herself to it again. Metal reacting to nearby magnet.

‘I was hoping you would look for her.’

‘Are you saying she has been kidnapped?’

‘I want you to find that out.’

The inspector opens his arms in exasperation. ‘How do you expect me to do that? It’s a big country, there are millions of people.’

‘Inspector-sahib, I wish to report my sister-in-law as missing,’ Basie says firmly.

The man does not like the tone but ignores it for now. ‘Let me just say that an hour ago we captured a truck that contained two dozen machine guns, dozens of pistols, thirty Kalashnikovs and thirty sacks of bullets. And you want me to waste my time with a girl who has run away from home.’

‘How do you know she has run away? Anything could have happened.’

The man waves the comment away as foolish. ‘She has run away with someone who has filled her head with his talk. When they realise how difficult life is, she’ll return. Hunger is the best cure for illusions.’

‘I wish to report my sister-in-law as missing.’

He wants a bribe from Basie before proceeding. Bribes exist in other countries too, he knows, but there they are an incentive towards performing illegal acts. Here they must be paid to induce an official to do what he is supposed to do.

‘When was she widowed?’ he asks brusquely.

‘In October.’

‘Did you discover last week that she is pregnant and now she is buried in your garden?’

‘You can come and dig up the garden.’

‘We might have to. Tell me again why you waited six days before coming here.’

‘We thought she’d return.’ When on the third day Basie had wondered aloud whether they should contact the police, both Rohan and Tara had been horrified, and Yasmin had almost cried out, ‘You might as well tattoo the word “prostitute” on her forehead.’

‘She probably will return. Come back and see us in another month if she hasn’t.’

‘A month?’

‘Yes,’ he says, holding Basie’s eye. ‘If she hasn’t come back by then we’ll come and take your statements. We’ll have to talk to the neighbours about her character and personality, about her mother’s character and personality.’ He notices Basie glance at the woman and shakes his head. ‘And stop looking at her. This doesn’t concern you.’

‘What does she want?’

‘What do criminals always want?’ the inspector says with contempt. ‘To evade justice. Left unchecked they will destroy everything. Look at America and how it is behaving.’ He stands up, pushing the woman away. ‘Now I have other matters to attend to.’

Basie vacates his chair reluctantly. ‘You are not going to do anything?’

The inspector ignores the question. ‘You teach at St Joseph’s? A school for the children of the wealthy.’

‘I wouldn’t call them wealthy.’

‘Some of them are. The school must pay you very well.’

‘It doesn’t.’

The inspector smiles. ‘Don’t worry. She’ll probably return. And when she does I want you to bring her here.’

‘You won’t look for her now but you want to see her when she returns?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘We might have to investigate her for immorality and wantonhood. She must explain to us, as agents of decent society, where she has been all these days. A charge of decadence and wickedness might have to be brought against her.’

*

Tara sits in her black burka on the steps of a shop in Soldier Bazaar, very early in the morning. There is no one around but her. She looks at the paper in her hand, the text she has composed to be printed as a ‘Missing’ leaflet. Naheed’s age, her height, the colour of her skin and her eyes. The distribution of leaflets — suggested by Basie — is something she has resisted till now, but last night was terrible, the various fears overcoming her in the sleepless dark, and after the predawn prayers she set out for the printer’s shop.

She sits waiting for the owner to arrive and open up, her head leaning against the jamb.

Today will be the eighth day of the disappearance. From the pocket of her burka she takes out the photograph of Naheed that will be printed on the leaflet. It was taken by Jeo, a month or so before he died, and in it Naheed is standing in the garden, on the path on which she lost consciousness for several minutes when Jeo’s corpse was brought home in the truck. When the neighbourhood women came in soon afterwards they found the truck driver and his assistants taking care of her, her head in the lap of the driver who poured water into her mouth. A memory comes to Tara from that day and she straightens suddenly. ‘She fainted in the presence of three men, three strangers?’ she had overheard a woman say to another during the funeral. ‘How could she allow herself to do that?’

Tara stands up as quickly as she is able. She tears up the text and walks away down the street, horrified at what she had come here to do. At the corner she stops on seeing faint marks in the dust on the ground, and she follows them, thinking the chained fakir is making his way through Heer once again, but she turns the corner to see a woman road sweeper dragging her broom behind her, about to begin the day’s labours.

*

Deep in the night thirteen days after her disappearance, Basie drives Tara and Yasmin to the graveyard, women being barred from visiting their dead during the day by the stick-wielding cloaked figures associated with Ardent Spirit. It’s 2 a.m., and as they get out of the car and enter through the wooden gate they see a hundred scattered lanterns, the faint haze of light, where other women are making their way towards dead husbands, sons and daughters, leaning mournfully over mothers and fathers.

A quietness prevails, the only sound the lift and hushed fall of feet.

He is carrying a flashlight, known as chor batti — a thief’s light. He looks at the women, their hearts seemingly in flood as they pray amid the mounds, having brought flowers, holy verses and letters — tributes in rock, ink and gesture. Tara and Yasmin, with light on their faces and on the pages of the Koran, begin to read the sacred words. And Basie stands and watches.