Nadeem Aslam - Maps for Lost Lovers

She lets out a whimper.

She switches off the gas from under the pots and begins to clear some of the surfaces, thinking fast about how she can scale down tonight’s meal, her mind occupied by the complex culinary algebra. Just the mutton-and- potato curry and the pilau rice? But the white girl Stella doesn’t eat meat. So: the cauliflower-and-pea curry and pilau rice? But Shamas doesn’t like cauliflower, so she would have to fry the shami kebabs for him. She could freeze the almost-ready mutton-and-potato curry and use it at a later date. . What had she fed her son? Is he ill as a result of it? She leans her head against the wall. There would be no fruit salad and the vermicelli would have to go without the sparkling gold leaf that the grandson would have enjoyed looking at. . She reminds herself that her plan was to put the immersion heater on around about now so that the water could warm up for when the guests needed to wash their hands. Slowly she climbs the stairs and goes into the bathroom to switch it on. In the hatch she finds the piece of crumpled up paper and pulls it out, puzzled. Flattened, it looks like a soft square popadum. The handwriting looks like little black ants stuck to the popadum. . It is a story of love. . She doesn’t know who this paper belongs to.

The Television keeps informing us in the news bulletin that we are defeated yet again. The newspaper headlines scream. They say we are defeated, irrelevant, finished. And the reins are now in the hands of those who neither say their prayers nor keep the fast. On Allah’s vast earth, we small and humble Muslims are everywhere in ruins. Our lives and our lands lie like a pile of rubble. Our women have become disobedient like Western women. Our children seduced by the West into being strangers.

The heads that had never bowed before anyone but Allah are being cut off.

Kaukab frowns at the page. It reads like the text of a Friday sermon at a mosque. But what is it doing here?

It is a story of love. The caravans of the lovers of Allah are being ambushed again and again and looted. Those talking — they who “claim” to be the possessors of wisdom — say, “We should realize that we are weak and should bow down before the strong.”

From Adam to today, from Noah to Ibrahim, from Ibrahim to Lot, from Christ to Muhammad, peace be upon him: the believers carried the truth to streets and lanes. They were stoned. They were taunted. They were ridiculed by those who refused to believe. The Liars activated the laws against them. The non-believers said we won’t believe. The believers said we will believe even if they kill us, even if they burn our buttocks with live coal. (Remember the tip of my cigarette on your skin, Mah-Jabin? Keep that fire in mind. The fires of Hell are a thousand times hotter.)

Kaukab lets out a cry, and quickly turns the page around to see who this letter is from. There is no name. But, of course, she knows it is from Mah-Jabin’s husband: who else would write to her in Urdu? If so then what does the reference to the cigarette-burn imply: had his cigarette accidentally come into contact with Mah-Jabin once?

So: Is this temporary setback — the fact that the Muslims are humiliated everywhere on the planet — a defeat of the faithful? The earth and the sky say no it isn’t. The universe says no it isn’t. He who created the universe says no it isn’t. Those who side with the Liars, those who laugh at the true believers, those who wrinkle their brows every time Allah’s name is mentioned,those who claim to be God themselves — they are made an example of in the afterlife, and they are forced into burning flames day and night. This is the punishment for those who resisted the truth. They’ll have spikes in their flesh. (Remember the sewing needles in your thighs, Mah-Jabin?)

Kaukab reels and lowers herself onto the edge of the bath. Mah-Jabin has always let it be understood that her husband was a loving and caring young man. .

Yes, we — the good — do stray from the path occasionally. Satan made me enter the room where Chanda was asleep during her and Jugnu’s stay with us. I had been unable to bear the burden of need ever since my own female deserted me. Satan made me approach her bed and beg her for comfort. Satan told me she was from the West and therefore would have easy morals. She said she would make a noise and awaken my father and Jugnu in the other room. I came to my senses and left. And in the morning — as if to remove temptation from before me — Allah made Chanda tell Jugnu that she was homesick for the West, and they left that very day. I remained on my prayer mat all day and well into the night, thanking Allah for havingremoved temptation from before my eyes, but His kindness towards my soul was unending: I was still on my prayer mat, in the middle of the night, when the telephone rang and Aunt Kaukab wanted us all to know that Jugnu and Chanda were lovers, sinners. Allah, the merciful, the Beneficent, saved me from polluting myself in that polluted stream! I haven’t told you any of this before but now I want you to know in order that you may be wise to His ways.

Kaukab, not believing what she has read, rereads the lines. She realizes now that she is not to blame for the fact that Chanda and Jugnu had left Pakistan earlier than they had planned. But there is little comfort in the alternative, real, sequence of events. “Poor Chanda.” She sits with her hand in her head. “My poor Mah-Jabin.” Suddenly she gets up and, a last attempt at resistance, looks behind the drum of the immersion heater. Could this letter be a trick of Mah-Jabin’s? A forgery to torment her? A plot hatched by Mah-Jabin and Ujala and Charag and the white girl Stella and Shamas to humiliate her, to ridicule her faith? But there behind the drum is the crumpled-up envelope the letter had come in. She recognizes it, remembers that it had arrived back in spring. The stamp portrays a tree ablaze with pink-white blossoms in the distance and in the foreground a sprig containing a ruffled orchid-like flower and a leaf resembling the imprint of a camel’s foot: it is Bauhinia variegata, the wording informs along a vertical margin, and horizontally that the stamp is one of the MEDICINAL PLANTS OF PAKISTAN. She drops the envelope and continues with the letter.

We stray but we beg for forgiveness and are pardoned because we are good. The world is lit only with the light of our love for Him, we, the men who were submissive to Allah, and the women who were submissive to their men.

The book of History is recording everything, and He is making a list of the believers and a list of the unbelievers. Try thinking about which list your name is going into, Mah-Jabin, and be afraid. What kind of End awaits you after this short life of fifty or sixty years?

Having read to the end, Kaukab picks up the tattered envelope from the floor and places the folded sheet of paper into it. She sits there, staring at the stamp depicting the pretty flower of the tree that is valued for, among other things, its effectiveness against malarial fevers, the abil ity to regularize menstrual dysfunction, and as an antidote to snake venom.

The sun rounds the corner and begins to sail at the front of the house. She sits there, wondering if that’s who she is, if that’s what her image looks like in the mirror: a mother who feeds poisons to her son, and a mother who jumps to conclusions and holds her daughter responsible for the fact that her marriage ended disastrously? The realizations are still new and she is not sure what effect they will have on her soul after she has lived with them for an hour, a day, a month. The bitterness of the poison is as yet only testing her tongue and mouth: what will happen when it soaks into the veins?