Nadeem Aslam - The Blind Man's Garden

‘What is your name?’ he asks without looking up. The floor at his feet is glistening in wet arcs, some small, others wide, depending on the length of the children’s arms.

‘I think I’ve told you that already,’ Mikal says.

The man raises his head and stares at him. Then he puts the dagger on the newspaper. Even his small gestures are expansive, referring to and taking in his entire mansion.

‘Tell me about the American.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I found him in the desert.’

‘Why didn’t you kill him the moment you saw him? Don’t you know they are at war with us?’

‘Where’s the leopard cub?’

‘Tell me,’ the man leans forward and says, ‘have you heard of a lady called Madeleine? No? In 1996, this lady named Albright Madeleine, the US ambassador to the United Nations, was asked on television how she felt about the fact that five hundred thousand Iraqi children had died as a result of US economic sanctions. Do you know what she said? She said that it was “a very hard choice” but “we think the price is worth it”. These are her exact words. How do you feel about that?’

‘How do you think I feel about that? And I would take your love for children more seriously if you didn’t have children cleaning your floors.’

The man watches him for a while, then says, ‘Do you think having them clean floors is as bad as starving them to death?’

‘That is not what I said.’

The man waves him away. ‘I have decided to let you go.’

‘I am not leaving without the American soldier or the cub.’

There is a laugh of mockery.

The old servant touches Mikal’s arm but Mikal doesn’t acknowledge it. ‘I am not leaving.’

The man stands up.

‘You are used to giving orders, aren’t you?’ Mikal says.

‘It’s worse than you think. I’m used to being obeyed.’

*

Mikal stands outside the house all afternoon, the sun burning above him, hearing sounds from the other side of the tall gate, the watchman conversing with someone now and then. The gate is opened when a vehicle arrives and the watchman gives him a glance before closing the gate again.

‘Is it true the American violated and then murdered the woman you love?’ he asks Mikal from the other side.

‘No.’

Just as the sun is setting he begins to walk away from the house. He walks into the street that passes through the village, the shops selling rice and cooking oil, threads and buttons, children’s sweets, gram flour, rice husk to feed horses or scrub cooking pots. He asks if there is a public telephone he might use but there is none. He buys a mango, the vendor telling him that it is the same variety that Alexander the Great had tasted, and he eats it with the skin on as he continues along the street. He encounters himself in the darkness at the back of a shop, halts, and realises it’s a mirror. He sits down to rest on the other side of the street, where the fields begin, and watches a convoy of vehicles move towards the house at the other end. He sits listening to the call to prayer issuing from the minaret — the concentric circles of sound expanding in the air, making it seem that this is the very centre of the earth. The call rising from the core of the planet. But then it ends abruptly halfway through, something suddenly going wrong with the loudspeaker. He goes into the mosque and washes the dust and sweat off his face and then stands in a row with the others to say his prayers. Afterwards he sits on the mat and tries to ask questions about the owners of the large house. He walks out of the mosque and buys food from a teahouse, flies spinning around the place like marbles swirled in a jar, and he feeds the bones from his meat to a street dog, talking to it in words and whistles, much to the displeasure of the owner and the other diners. He asks them questions about the family that owns the house. At around ten in the evening, as he sits smoking a cigarette at the edge of the emptying street, listening to the music of the crickets, he sees the old man in the distance.

Mikal stands up and walks towards him.

‘I have come to ask you to leave for your own good,’ the man says. ‘They have seen that you are still here and they want to bring you back to the house.’

‘I’ll come.’

‘No. I am here to warn you. You should leave.’

‘I can’t.’

‘If I steal the leopard for you, will you leave?’

‘No. Not just the leopard.’

‘Go,’ the man says. ‘If they catch you they won’t release you again.’

He stands there, shaking his head. ‘Have they done anything to him?’

‘I don’t know. I told you I am only a servant.’ Just then he sees a giant in a black turban walking towards the two of them.

‘He has come to fetch you,’ the old man says. ‘Run away. Go.’

‘No,’ Mikal says, walking towards the man in the distance.

*

He emerges from the house two hours later and walks into the hills, feeling himself to be an addition to the ghost-life of the night, the thousand desert stars above him, each of them blinking alone. The dark air is warm around him and his feet crush the scent from a fragrant hill plant as he climbs upwards. Looking back now and then at the village lights receding behind him, nothing eventually except the bulb at the tip of the mosque’s minaret. And then that too disappears. An hour later in a valley sculpted of rock he lies down at the edge of a stream, the trees pale as paper around him. Sleeping close to the ground, the insulted earth, he enters a nightmare … Or perhaps it is a confusion of dream and memory of what he saw a few hours ago …

Around two he wakes and realises that a beam of light passing over his face has roused him, a shaft of gluey brightness. He rolls over on his stomach and watches the four vehicles containing Americans. They pass within yards of him. Commandos or task-force soldiers or intelligence collectors. After they are gone he gets up and begins to walk back to the village as fast as he can, breaking into a run until a stitch appears at his side, letting it dissolve and then running again. During sleep he has clenched his hands in anguish and two of his nails are bloody. He passes through the dark abandoned street, whistling when a pair of dogs begin to roar at him, and they fall silent immediately. He approaches the large house from the rear and is on the roof within five minutes, climbing onto the water tank and leaping down. He goes along the wide raw-brick expanse of the roof. Climbs a set of open banister-less stairs onto a lower roof. The courtyard below is scattered about with squares and rectangles of pale light, the date trees dark, and he crosses it weaving from shadow to shadow. He pushes open the kitchen door and reaching into the tandoor finds a lump of coal and puts it in his pocket. He turns and is about to walk out when he hears a sound.

‘I knew you’d come back,’ the old man says. A core of light with blurred edges flicks on and reveals him standing in the far corner with the leopard cub. He comes forward and hands Mikal a key, the leopard and finally the flashlight. ‘The key is to the room where he is. I have also unlocked the gate. You can just walk out.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘My son is in American custody. If I am kind to him maybe they’ll be kind to him.’

‘I wonder if that’s how it works.’

‘Where will you take him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He won’t be able to walk very far.’

‘Can you get me the keys to one of the cars?’

‘They’ll hear the engine.’

‘Yes.’ He switches off the flashlight and walks towards the kitchen door.

‘Do you feel your amputated fingers?’ the man asks him through the darkness.

‘Sometimes.’