Nadeem Aslam - Maps for Lost Lovers

“I saw her earlier, just near Omar Khayyám Road,” Mah-Jabin says, withholding the fact that she was with her Hindu lover. And she wonders at the ease with which she has slipped into thinking of the roads and streets of this town by the names the immigrants of her parents’ generation had given them, the names she grew up hearing.

Kaukab is at the cooker with her back towards her, and the turned-away body in that corner of the kitchen produces a surge of homely familiarity in the girl: her mother standing over a pot, expressing her fears about what she is cooking, or attempting to tighten the loose screw on a panhandle with the tip of a butter knife during the washing up at the sink next to the cooker.

“How do you know her? Some days ago I couldn’t ease apart a plastic bowl that had got stuck into another one during the washing up, and— since I don’t have my own children around me — I looked out and walking by was the Hindu boy she had wanted to marry, so I called him in to help me. As I said, the girl is perfectly happy with the new husband her parents found for her.” She falls silent and then adds: “Ending up with an obedient daughter is a lottery, I suppose.”

Mah-Jabin does not wish to enter this perilous game that recognizes no rules, where a mere comment may be a lure to entice the other into a confrontation. “Would you like some help, Mother?”

Kaukab shakes her head but all the same brings the wooden stirring-spoon to Mah-Jabin: “You’d better taste this and see if the salt and spices need adjusting. My own tastebuds are mangled from the fasting I have just finished doing.”

“Fasting! Was it Ramadan recently?” Mah-Jabin is aghast. “I had a feeling that I had missed the Eid festival. Why didn’t you phone?”

“No, the Ramadan is in the autumn. I just fasted for two days to ask Allah to bring me peace.” She shakes the spoon to draw the girl’s attention to the matter in hand. “And you have missed two Eids. We didn’t celebrate anything last year because Jugnu was missing; but the one the year before, you did miss that. Why should I phone you: you shouldn’t have to be reminded.”

“Mother, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.” The problem, of course, is that the Muslim festivals are based on the lunar calendar and it’s hard to keep track of them from year to year. Mah-Jabin wipes a trace of the sauce onto her tongue. “Perfect. But I phone every month: you could have said something.” The response when it comes is devastating:

“It happened to be Eid the day you phoned that year.”

Kaukab has returned to the cooker. “It’s my own fault for having brought my children here: no one would need reminding in Pakistan when Eid is, or Ramadan, the way no one can remain unaware of Christmas here. The only way you’d know it was Ramadan here was that the catalogue shop in town does a brisk business in alarm clocks so that Muslims can wake up before dawn to begin the fast.” The wall before Kaukab’s eyes dissolves in her tears and the wooden spoon stops its circular motion. Mah-Jabin’s languishing feet are tangled in the thick forest of the chair-legs under the table but she frees herself in time to rush across the room with the lightness of a tugged balloon, or a paper-boat borne on a sudden downward current, to stop her mother from sinking to the floor, her young arms strong enough to hold the woman upright.

“This house is so empty,” Kaukab sobs in tight breaking heaves as Mah-Jabin had earlier, at the moment of arrival, letting the white lilies tumble to the floor with a rustle and herself falling into her mother’s arms without a word needed as explanation that she was weeping for Jugnu and Chanda, this being her first visit since the news of the two brothers’ arrest in January. So have mother and daughter always laid claim on each other, consoling to be consoled in return.

Kaukab continues to weep. “I am sure none of you will come to pray on my grave when I am dead. Sometimes I become so frightened that nobody would ask Him to have mercy on my soul.”

The porous white steam above the pan begins to turn into black smoke. Kaukab swallows her trembles neatly and rapidly back into her body, loosens Mah-Jabin’s grip from her stomach and pushes her away to give herself space. “You are going to have to check for salt again,” she attempts a smile that comes out grotesque in the chaffed face, “because my tears have fallen in.”

Mah-Jabin smiles weakly and, looking for a diversion, says after a silence, “Mother, the hair on the back of your neck is completely grey. Why don’t you dye it properly?” It is like a patch on the fur of a cat.

“Is it obvious?” Kaukab says after a while, twisting her neck as though a glimpse of the back of the head is achievable. “The white people on the street must think we ‘fucking Pakis’ are ridiculous, don’t know how to do anything right. Your father has stopped colouring his hair, you see. Before, we used to do each other’s on the same day but now I do mine myself, not wishing to trouble him or get stains on his hands. . I hope this food isn’t spoiled. . So do you think the hair looks strange? Really? But it doesn’t make much difference at my age: a red harness is not very becoming on an old mare.”

“I’ll put the dye on it properly for you after lunch.” Mah-Jabin plays with her own hair: there haven’t been enough days since for her to have discovered all the possibilities of the new cut. “I’d like to put henna on mine to get rid of its complete darkness, though it’s so black that I wonder if it would take the colour. And, by the way, I bet Father doesn’t think you are an old mare.”

“Hush, you wretched girl!” Kaukab blushes. “Sometimes I wonder if you are mine.” She leaves the cooker and rummages in a cupboard: “I think. . Yes, I have a packet of henna here.” The little sachet lands on the table before Mah-Jabin. “No, wait, there are two. Here, take this one as well. We’ll do each other’s heads this afternoon. And squeeze half a lemon into the henna: that will bleach the hair a little and then the henna will show.”

Mah-Jabin mixes the henna in a bowl. Like four cut-off spectral hands the transparent cellophane gloves that came with the two henna sachets have floated to the floor to lie invisibly on the linoleum arabesques.

“Only one chappati for me, Mother. Your chappatis are heavier than mine: I can usually eat two of mine.” Mah-Jabin had begun to be tutored into making chappatis at about twelve years old, the boys complaining and laughing in brotherly amusement at her efforts, feigning sickness as she removed one misshapen disc after another from the baking-iron, once or twice reducing her to tears, the elder calling her Salvador Dalí, but Kaukab was firm that a girl’s family must endure the earlier efforts so that the husband and in-laws can enjoy the skilled creations in the future.

Having broken three handfuls of dough from the mass in a enamel basin, Kaukab now presses one back. “Your father always says how lovely and light your chappatis are, the way they puff up on the iron. And he’s been saying it a lot recently because I’m still not used to this new baking-iron — the handle came off the last one — and my chappatis have been mediocre at best as a result. I remember when I came to England I had a baking-iron in the luggage: your father had written especially, since they were not available here then. Men used to make chappatis on an upside-down frying pan—”

“Yes I know, you’ve told us. But I think there is a thing called a ‘griddle’ in Britain that resembles Pakistani baking-irons, and of course the Mexican tortillas are cooked on—”

“If we’d had you to guide us during those early years we would have done things differently, and I apologize if I repeat something I’ve already told you but I don’t lead a life as varied as yours.” It wouldn’t tip the scales on a pin, the amount by which a comment has to fall short from the ideal in the listener’s head for it to be regarded an affront, an offence — a crime. “If I tell you something every day it’s because I relive it every day. Every day — wishing I could rewrite the past — I relive the day I came to this country where I have known nothing but pain.” Immediately after taking it off the iron, Kaukab polishes the chappati with a pat of butter that melts and is propelled forward on the hot surface like a snail secreting the lubricating slickness to move on as it goes.