Nadeem Aslam - Maps for Lost Lovers

“I have heard that they have employed someone. I personally don’t go there anymore as you know, but Sadiqa from number 121 said she had seen him a few times but wasn’t sure who he was. She was beginning to think it might be a nephew brought over from Pakistan.”

“Maybe that’s who he is. I don’t know.”

The telephone rings and as Kaukab gets up to answer it the woman gets to her feet too, saying she’d better get back and finish cleaning up the garden.

Someone from Shamas’s office is calling to say that the photographic negatives which Shamas had wanted the town council to purchase from a photographer in the town centre have been destroyed. He had asked Kaukab to telephone his office yesterday about the purchase, saying that the idea had come to him some time ago but that he had forgotten about it due to his injuries. It was a matter of utmost urgency that the photographer be contacted. He hoped it wasn’t too late, that the man hadn’t consigned the whole irreplaceable lot into a rubbish tip. But apparently it is too late. A new shop has sprung up where the photographer’s studio was, and he himself is said to be holidaying in Australia after selling the light-fittings and chairs and gilt-frames to a junk shop and throwing away everything else — the backdrops, the pictures, the negatives, the soft toys that distracted little children, the feather boas.

Kaukab carries the vase of roses to the bottom of the stairs and looks up, hesitating, summoning the courage to take it up. Because of her pain, it had taken her a full five minutes to carry the lunch tray up to Shamas earlier, and a full five down. She enters the stairwell which is dark because the bulb died out last week with a small metallic sound and it is situated too high on the ceiling for her to replace — if only her children were living at home. She arrives on the topmost step and, under her breath, tells Allah she loves Him as He’s always taken care of her.

Shamas’s eyes are closed when she comes in. His forehead is bruised an unlikely green and there is a bump the size of a plum above the left ear. His skin is bleached in several places, the colour of Imperial Leather soap. She looks away from him, as she has frequently done over the past month, sparing herself the sight; it is too distressing to contemplate and yet she is crushed by guilt every time she does avoid it.

“That was Saleemuzzamaan from your office,” she says quietly, to see if he is awake, looking around to find a place for the roses, “on the telephone just now.”

He opens his eyes.

“He said to tell you that they have made enquiries and that the negatives have been thrown away.”

She places the roses on the shelf and stands there, not wishing to move any closer to him, fearing he would become affectionate again, the condemnation and abuse of the seventy-two houris ringing in her ears. Some vulgar people ask that if a pious man will get seventy-two wives in Paradise, how many men will a pious woman receive? That of course is the height of ignorance and indecency: a pious woman cannot bear the thought of letting a man other than her husband touch her — so in Paradise, where there is nothing but ease and satisfaction, why would she be put through the torment of being groped and fondled by strange men? In Paradise everyone will have at least one companion, for there is no celibacy in Paradise, and so the pious woman would be happy just to be given an eternal place by her earth-husband’s side after Judgement Day. Kaukab sighs. Allah is all-wise. The couple will become young again and eternally beautiful and purified. There will be no urine, no faeces, no semen, no menstruation; erections and orgasms will last for decades, and men will often hear their earthly wives say, “By the power of Allah, I could find nothing in Paradise as beautiful as you.”

Shamas tries to move his lips to convey a smile to her.

She smiles back, hoping he has not noticed that she is wearing her outdoor clothes: England is a dirty country, an unsacred country full of people filthy with disgusting habits and practices, where, for all one knew, unclean dogs and cats, or unwashed people, or people who have not bathed after sexual congress, or drunks and people with invisible dried drops of alcohol on their shirts and trousers, or menstruating women, could very possibly have come into contact with the bus seat a good Muslim has just chosen to sit on, or touched an item in the shop that he or she has just picked up — and so most Muslim men and women of the neighbourhood have a few sets of clothing reserved solely for outdoors, taking them off the moment they get home to put on the ones they know to be clean. Kaukab has been wearing one of her outdoor shalwar-kameez s for five days now because she has to clean Shamas after he has emptied his bowels. One day he had diarrhoea — like an hourglass — and her hands were covered with the filth, but things are better now. She would like to use water to wash the sphincter as prescribed by the Prophet, peace be upon him, but that is impractical, the water hurting the bruised areas, and so she has been reduced to using toilet paper. So each time she touches him afterwards she can’t go past the fact that he is unwashed and unclean.

Shamas calls her to himself and she sits on the bed for a while before leaving — it’s time for the third of the day’s five prayers.

“I wish you could remember who did this to you,” she says from the door. “They say it was probably the work of Chanda’s family. And I don’t mean to cause you pain by saying this, but I blame Jugnu for doing this to us. If he had stayed on the decent pathways of life then none of this would have happened.”

“It wasn’t anything to do with Chanda’s family.”

“How do you know who it was? You say you were grabbed from behind and passed out after being hit on the head with something heavy. You are just defending Jugnu, reflexively, as always, that’s all.”

He can’t tell her the truth. Helplessly, he watches her leave — not knowing what he can do to alleviate her suffering. He closes his eyes. Out of the fog of the painkillers her words about the photographic negatives now come to him but he is not certain what she was referring to.

He does however remember everything that happened that morning and hasn’t told it to anyone lest his attackers reveal the truth of his affair with Suraya to Kaukab. It’ll destroy her.

And he hasn’t wanted the children to know about it because they might come to visit and ask intelligent questions about the events of that morning — why, when, how? Someone might catch him out.

But even if he wanted to tell someone about what happened, he is not sure he would be able to find a voice in which to do it. The very minor fracture in his trachea is beginning to heal but he’s having trouble speaking. He is not entirely mute but there have been bouts when he couldn’t put a sentence together without stuttering or stammering.

As soon as he is well enough to walk (the doctors say it could take several weeks), he’ll go to Suraya’s house. He has failed to show up twice for a meeting with her. What happened to her that morning? Did his assailants make it to the Safeena while she was still there? He feels nausea.

What has Suraya done about their baby? He hopes, for her sake, that she isn’t pregnant after all, that the pregnancy test was inaccurate. His liaison with her has complicated her life needlessly.

Chinks between the blankets are letting cold air in. He can hear Kaukab moving about downstairs, it being a small house, so little that all the doors slide into walls: Kaukab, mixing up English expressions, had said once, “There is not enough room in here to swing a door.” He can’t remember what he had been thinking about before falling asleep but now he does: Suraya had said she would welcome death, and now he’s afraid that she might try to kill herself — perhaps she already has. Suddenly he is convinced she has committed suicide; and he wonders whether he himself hadn’t died by the lakeside that morning. The two ghosts that are said to be roaming the woods near the lake — surely they are he and Suraya, their baby glowing inside her womb, his hands burning, giving out light, from the newspapers he’s carrying, the searing pain of the world? No, no, he must stay lucid: he must get up immediately and try to obtain all The Afternoon s for the days he’s been bedridden — to see if a suicide has been reported. He must get up immediately. He tries to fight the drugs and stay awake but, like a doll that must shut its eyes whenever it is horizontal, he cannot help but sleep. Yes, yes, he tells himself as he drifts off: he’ll find her the way Shiva had found Parvati when she had walked away from him after a quarrel: he’ll follow her footprints on the ground, a row of paisleys — like the ones on her jacket.