Nadeem Aslam - Maps for Lost Lovers

Despite understanding his discomfort, there are, however, times when Shamas imagines Chanda’s father physically preventing his wife from revealing some important bit of evidence. He imagines violence. Keep your mouth shut! This woman is a complete haramzadi! The kanjri woman didn’t say anything when it was time for her to speak and raise her badmash kutia daughter properly and now she cannot hold her tongue! It is a possibility, however grotesque; it happens in millions of homes throughout the world every day, from hamlet to metropolis. Hadn’t he himself slapped Kaukab one day all those years ago? He had torn her shirt with both hands and dragged her across the room with all his strength, one of her breasts exposed and bloody from his fingernail.

It happened in 1974, the year the younger boy, Ujala, was born. Kaukab returned home from the maternity ward on a bright April day with the sun lying like a new coat of metallic paint on the street. The two other children — all toffee-sticky fingertips and grime-covered toes in their mother’s absence — examined the baby and declared he looked like a tortoise because his upper lip was pointed in the middle, that he was the colour of tangerines, and his always-clenched fists made them think he was tightly holding on to coins.

Within hours the house was heavy with the intimately lush smell of recent birth that the mother and child gave off — it was like heat clinging to footpaths long after the sun has gone. Ujala was born in the middle of April just a few days before the Muslim month of Ramadan began. Dozens of people came to see the baby because the word immediately spread that he was a blessed child destined to be an especially pious Muslim: he was one of those rare boys who are born without a foreskin, the Muslims believing that such children have been marked by Allah for an exemplary virtuous existence in the world.

For Shamas the visits and the visitors were a headache. Kaukab, on the other hand, felt several stories high after the baby Ujala was born.

“Who else but a cleric’s daughter would have been blessed by such an event!” said one visitor, the matchmaker, in tones of wonderment and awe. “I knew someone in Peshawar who was born like that. I remember the lullaby his mother used to sing to him — O nurses with milk too white and sweet: wean him soon as can be, for the black hearts of infidel kings will be his meat. The boy had learned the entire Koran by heart by the time he was three years old, and he was teaching Arabic to the djinns by the time he was five. A number of profligate djinns converted to Islam at his hand.”

But the angels, it seemed, forgot about the baby after the birth because his health began to deteriorate after about a week: he became increasingly irresponsive to noise and other sensations, and seemed deficient in strength, so much so that eventually even the act of crying seemed to defeat him. As the days passed he lost weight despite regular breast-feeds and the minor infections he had developed began to give the doctors cause for concern despite the medicines prescribed. One afternoon, after he had been fed, Kaukab brought him to lie next to Shamas and he had leaned over the small soft heap and stroked the head, the nap of short hair on the pate like some kind of moss under the touch. Shamas’s little finger hovered closed to the baby’s lips and when the tiny mouth moved to take in the tip of the digit and began sucking at it forcefully, everything suddenly became clear. His legs shook as he went into the next room, the kitchen. She was cooking the children’s lunch, pale steam rising from the pan like morning mist from a pond.

“He is still hungry, Kaukab.”

“That’s very strange. I’ve just fed him.”

“Perhaps you should feed him again. He suckled my finger: you should’ve seen how he reacted when the finger got near his mouth. He was electrified.”

“I am empty and raw. I’ve just fed him.”

“Have you remembered to give him his medicine?” For a moment he thought he was going to black out.

“Of course I have.”

He was clenching and unclenching his fists, the palms feeling cold. “I just thought you might have forgotten: you are after all fasting, and people become forgetful when they fast. Or are you making the baby fast too? Not giving him anything — milk or water or his medicine — from dusk till dawn?”

“I don’t know what you mean. And don’t raise your voice, please.”

“What I mean is that I think you have been making the baby — your holy baby! — observe Ramadan. You have been starving him during the daylight hours.”

“If it’s true — which it isn’t — then it’s because he himself insists on it. He refuses to let anything pass his lips during the daylight hours. And don’t make light of my beliefs: he is an exalted infant. Must you talk like a heretic in this house? I blame father-ji for marrying me to a Communist.”

“Get your head out of the clouds and come give him milk right now.” He was trying to speak quietly because he could sense the other two children — the nine-year-old Charag and the four-year-old Mah-Jabin— on the staircase next to the kitchen. A few moments ago a yellow-and-green striped sweet the size of a sparrow’s egg — slipped from the hands of one of the children — had fallen and landed at the bottom of the staircase, alerting him to their presence. They must’ve been up there, listening, and now he could hear the small movements they were making.

“No I won’t come. It’s my milk. He and I will break our fast at sunset. It’s just a matter of changing the routine: I give him everything he needs during the night.”

“Has someone stolen your ears? I said come now.” The world had become stark, the colours harsh in his eyes.

“No. I have just fed him and have nothing left.”

“Show me.” They stared at each other until neither of them knew who the other one was. By grabbing hold of the neckline he tore open her kameez with both hands to reveal a soaked brassiere which he pulled at here and there until one of the cups ripped and spilled its load like weights in a sling. She had resisted and he had dragged her across the floor, her exposed breast bloody from his fingernail. In the next room he lifted the baby in its sail-white blanket and placed it in her lap where she sat on the floor, milk beading bluishly at the tip of the chocolate-coloured nipple. Inert and apparently insensible, she hadn’t moved to connect the baby to the breast and he had slapped her face:

“Feed him, you haramzadi !”

The pale steam that had been rising from the pan in the kitchen had become black smoke as the unstirred food had begun to burn, the dark tendrils choking the house. He went and turned off the gas. The acrid smell had replaced the lime-and-rosehip perfume that the geraniums in the kitchen had released when the two of them had stumbled against them in their struggle. As he turned off the gas he was aghast to see her step into the kitchen, her wide open eyes the size of rose leaves, the baby screaming in the other room. His disbelief and desperation grew fuller, becoming its own organism, out of control. He was he but less and less with each passing moment. With one jerk she freed her wrist from his grip when he grabbed hold of her to take her back. As though she were walking in a howling storm, she staggered to the sink and washed her hands:

She had been cutting up chillies earlier and didn’t want to touch her baby with those hands.

With safe hands she picked up the baby and nursed him, despoiling his fast, wincing at the pain breast-feeding had always caused her.

They didn’t speak to each other for the next six or seven months. One day he decided that he should talk to her: she listened to his apology, listened as he hinted that an apology from her too was required — and later, to convey to him that she hadn’t forgiven him, and had no intention herself of asking for forgiveness, she burnt the wedding dress on to which she had embroidered his verses years ago.