Nadeem Aslam - Maps for Lost Lovers

“I was on my way to the lake. There is an Urdu bookshop there and I wanted to know the opening times,” he hears her say. Her face awaits him with the polite hint of a smile when he stops and turns around, the face that only seconds ago was tortured by doubts and dark considerations. She takes the edge of the veil and covers her head in a gesture of infinite grace, handling the fine material gently — one of those actions that reveals a person’s unspoken attitude to things; the thin sun-flecked fabric settles on her hair in a wonderfully slow yellow wave. “I think the shop is called the Safeena. It is, if I remember correctly, a poetic Urdu word for ‘boat’ and also for ‘notebook.’ ”

Like a matchstick struck on the inside of his skull, spilling sparks, the ecstatic torpor of adolescent summers comes to him in a brief warm illumination, and he experiences a thrill which is very close to happiness. “It was the name I gave my rowboat during my boyhood on the banks of the Chenab. And the shop, the property of a friend, was named by me after my boat.”

The bridge between them is made of glass and so he takes one very tentative step towards her.

She’s considering him, as though thinking deeply. “My name is Suraya.” She smiles, more openly than she had the first time, and a very pale apricot-brown mole (if it were surrounded by others like it, it would be called a freckle — it’s that pale) on the side of her mouth gets pulled into a fold in the skin, vanishes into a laugh-line.

“The shop is open in the afternoons on Saturday and Sunday, if you would care to visit,” he says. He is concerned for her safety: she shouldn’t be seen talking to a stranger. A Pakistani man mounted the footpath and ran over his sister-in-law — repeatedly, in broad daylight — because he suspected she was cheating on his brother. I only fear that by dying you will pollute the dead just as your life pollutes the living. This was here in England and, according to the statistics, in one Pakistani province alone, a woman is murdered every thirty-eight hours solely because her virtue is in doubt. He should withdraw; and he bows slightly at the waist towards her: “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must leave.”

Touching her scarf, she says, “Thank you for this. The wind kept it just out of my reach as I ran after it; but Allah had planted you in my path to help me. I nearly caught it once but it seemed to fly at the speed of thought. And I am sorry for the newspapers.”

“I’ll go into town again and get some more.” He recriminates himself for vainly thinking that she’s delaying him on purpose, that she wants his company. And yet she is looking at him intensely, and since he doesn’t know what to say, is standing here silently, her eyes roam across his body as though searching for the slot to put coins into to make him operate. Suddenly self-conscious, he raises his hand and touches his hair to see that the breeze hasn’t dishevelled it too much. With an agitated heart he turns and walks away, feeling suddenly very old, exhausted, leaving behind the pale gold English river, the glittering continuity of it, and those countless single threads of spider silk that are shining on the tall reeds, sagging in bright curves. It was there on the bridge that Chanda’s mother had approached him a few weeks ago to tell him Jugnu had been spotted in Lahore; he shakes his head and frowns to dispel the memory. Before him the columns of the flowering horse chestnuts stretch either side of the road that climbs the hill; the town centre is situated at the top. The pale shadows of the horse chestnuts are combed across the road, a white butterfly again and again turning an iridescent bluish-pink as it flies across them.

In the town centre there are horses of stone. Lions guard the entrance to the library. A granite deer looks down from the top of the train station’s façade.

The electric light inside the newspaper shop seems to be a continuation of the weak sun shining outside. He quickly explains that he has lost the newspapers to the river and asks for another batch. As always he doesn’t wish to be engaged in a conversation because it might lead to talk about the murdered lovers. They have become a bloody Rorschach blot: different people see different things in what has happened.

And so he leaves as soon as possible, speaking no more than two or three sentences between arriving and departing, finding contentedness only in wordlessness these days.

As he turns around to leave, he is aware that his eyes, as always, are lifted slightly higher than need be, to catch a blurred glimpse of the magazines on the top shelf.

With the newspapers under his arm he begins the journey home, lingering outside the florist — called La Primavera —to look at the brush-like Australian flower-heads and sprays of eucalyptus like a flinging of coins; at the wide-open lilies possessing a thick chewiness of petals; the Germolene-pink roses; the gardenias; the carnations as red as bullet wounds, luxuriant with pain; the small flowers with petals the size of his grandson’s fingernails; sunflowers that seem to be on fire; the edge of a leaning arum pressed flat against the glass like a soft marine creature in a tank; leaves of every shape, each as different in its serrated outline as the notches on different keys. There are roses in the window the colour of Suraya’s clothing, he remarks to himself in passing. .

He raises a hand in greeting at a plumber from Calcutta whose van bears the legend, You’ve tried the cowboys, now try the Indian, his heart full of anxiety that the man will stop the vehicle and come over to talk.

The breeze gives his face feathery touches.

Changeable like a cloud, a low flock of pigeons keeps flying by, the white wings taking on various tinges from the colours reflecting off the shop exteriors, and, as he watches, the flying birds form the faces of Chanda and Jugnu in the air just for an instant — two images undulating like pages on moving water. The lovers are everywhere, lying in ambush.

He can never be certain about Chanda’s father but he is sure the mother knows nothing about what happened to her daughter and Jugnu. According to the Home Office statistics 116 men were convicted of murder last year as opposed to just 11 women. Women are usually at the receiving end.

A few days after the couple went missing, the girl’s father had visited Shamas to say that he was aware of the rumours implicating his family in Jugnu’s disappearance. He sat in the blue kitchen, drinking the tea Kaukab had made, and insisted that neither he nor his wife and sons knew anything about what had happened to Jugnu. It was strange. The fact that Chanda too remained unaccounted for didn’t seem to enter the man’s mind — or if it did it didn’t seem to concern him, and he didn’t see why it should concern anyone else either. The only crime he and his wife and sons could be accused of was the possible one against Jugnu; the girl — the daughter of the parents, the sister of the brothers — belonged to him, to them, to do with as they pleased. Is that it? Would he, would they, expect a pardon if Jugnu were to turn up tomorrow, unharmed, but the girl were to remain missing?

And then he had felt ashamed at these thoughts: he knows that it is a matter of great distress for a parent from the Subcontinent — for the majority of parents on this imperfect and shackled planet, in fact — that their daughter is living with someone out of wedlock. It is likely that Chanda’s father could not bring himself to mention his daughter’s name because of the shame he felt, not wishing to see the girl coupled with Jugnu in his own speech, not having the strength to see them together even in language.

Now Shamas briefly pictures the two names merged and intertwined with each other: C J h u a g n n d u a