Uzma Khan - Trespassing

‘This is no good. I can’t hunker like this with you, Daanish. I miss the cove, even though it frightened me. But we belong in someplace beautiful. There’s not even a tree around us.’

He had to admit: it wasn’t cozy. He sat up. ‘Well, where else?’

Instead of suggesting something, she kept complaining. ‘This place makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong. I’m not.’

He checked himself for getting impatient with her, and touched her smooth, clean-cut jaw. It curved beautifully at the chin. He traced her lips, his thumb wiping the sweat gathering on her upper lip, where a thin line of hair grew. Her large eyes were so sincere, and just now, so sad. He sighed. ‘Was it hard to get away?’

She slid a hand in his. ‘Very. Inam Gul said, “Where do you keep going, beti? Why do you not speak plainly with me?” I hate upsetting him. Plus, I’m afraid he’s going to squeal.’

‘If I were some other guy, would your mother still object?’

‘No, that’s what hurts. She’s probably the only mother who wouldn’t. Yet why should I feel guilty? We’re doing nothing wrong.’ She said it with great conviction, snapping herself out of her despair, and at last kissed him.

They lay in each other’s arms in the guestroom-to-be, blowing the sweat dry on each other’s skin. She whispered, ‘You leave for America soon.’

It was true. In less than two weeks, he’d be on the plane again. ‘We can meet here often.’

She said nothing for a while but then both of them pulled slowly away. It was too hot, too sticky, and they felt too keenly how constrained they were. Their love needed room. Here it was so capped, so smothered, how could it possibly grow?

Dia said, ‘Last summer, a black rain fell. People said it was because of the bombed oilfields in Iraq. For months, soot covered the world and fell like ink. Ama said the rain destroyed our mulberry trees, but she’d no way of confirming that. We ran short of food for the silkworms.’ Her voice was breathy and detached.

He rolled onto his side. ‘Dia, this isn’t perfect, but let’s try to make the most of it?’

They tried.

The next time, Daanish brought a thermos of ice water and they sprinkled it on each other, kissing early, before the balm withered and they were too clammy to embrace. He told her they had plenty of water now — Anu had prevailed, but she wondered why he never came home with a mechanic.

Sometimes Dia spoke of Sumbul and Inam Gul, of how their queries were increasingly intrusive. But mostly, the two exchanged stories. It was what they had to count on. Tales of beginnings, and of eternity.

One day she leveled the ground with her palm, stretched her legs and leaned into a dividing wall. She told him how the mulberry fruit got its red color. ‘I’d tell the story to my father at bedtime and he’d repeat it on the drive to the farm. It got so that each time, we had to come up with a different ending. But this is how it starts.

‘There were once two young lovers, say Raeesa and Faraz. Raeesa was lean and dark, with sparkling eyes, rich black hair and lips like fuchsia petals.’

Daanish laughed. ‘How can poor Faraz match up to that?’

‘He doesn’t,’ she smiled. ‘He was short and lumpy-nosed, but what he had was zip. More than a honeybee’s.’

‘I see, zest makes up for the fact that he’s a bonga.’

She tweaked his arm. ‘He was sweet, not a bonga. Anyway, their parents forbade the children from even looking at each other. But Faraz had to pass her house on the way to the field where he worked, so many opportunities arose for Raeesa to watch him coyly from behind her thick curtain of hair.’ Daanish combed Dia’s tresses with his fingers, arranging them over her eyes. She obliged him by peering out mischievously.

‘Faraz would linger feverishly when he spied her lithe, eel-like presence, hopping from foot to foot, terribly nervous about being caught. But he’d brave anything for a look of his beloved.

‘At night, on his way back from the field, he’d stand beside the wall of her house. There was a small crevice there no one besides the lovers knew of. While the household slept, they’d speak softly to each other through it. Her voice was kind and seductive. His lips drew nearer to drink the delectable aroma.’

Dia stalled, and Daanish gently rubbed her back. ‘Why did you stop?’

Her brows were furrowed, and she looked away before answering him. ‘I just remembered something.’ She paused again. ‘My father would always describe it as Faraz wanting to drown himself in Raeesa’s breath. It’s nothing. Just that it’s cruel, the way words twist around, take on unwanted meanings. It was a perfectly good metaphor. Now I’ll never use it.’

Daanish kept stroking her back, and it was then that Dia came to tell him of her father’s murder. ‘Technically,’ she said, ‘he didn’t really drown. I mean the coroner said he was dead before being dumped in the river. Still, his body wouldn’t have looked the way it did if he hadn’t been steeping for days.’ He held her then, struck by how her anger was still so fresh. She shed no tears but her eyes were haunted. She said she still wondered daily who’d killed him, what she’d do if she ever found out, and most of all, feared it would have to be nothing.

It wasn’t till their next meeting that she resumed the tale.

‘Nightly, Faraz was drawn to the crevice in the mud wall, a moth assembling around his eager mate — let’s use that metaphor. His fingers scratched the crack hungrily as he imagined her on the other side, where Raeesa too was tortured, where she too scraped her delicate fingers, hoping for just one caress from her love. Her fingers grew bloody, and she kissed the wounds later, while falling asleep, imagining they were his. Her sleep was a series of dreams of him. Some sweet, others so terrible she woke up keening.

‘Finally one night, able to stand it no longer, they arranged a meeting. Faraz said he knew just the place. It was under an old mulberry tree on the banks of a river, two kilometers out from the wheat fields. “Meet me there tomorrow night,” he whispered through the hole. “It will be a new moon and we won’t be seen.”

‘Raeesa listened, twirling her hair absently. She longed for a look of reassurance from her beloved. She’d never walked alone in the dark before. How far was two kilometers? What would her parents say if they found out? She didn’t want to betray them. After all, she loved them too. Suddenly, she wished to be a child again. Children knew nothing about needing to choose. That was their innocence. She was about to give up hers. Where should she go: in the arms of passion or trust? What did she want more: a new beginning or old certainty?

‘For the first time since their hidden affair, she wondered about Faraz. Was he the one for her?’

Dia looked at Daanish long and hard.

He’d been combing her hair with his fingers again and now he didn’t know whether to remove his hand or let it linger. He decided on the latter, but the hiatus gave him away. He brought both hands up to his face, deciding to make them useful by mopping up his damp cheeks. He couldn’t return her look. He didn’t know what he felt. He wished he could tell her that: I don’t know what I feel any more. About anything. Love. War. Death. Home. All mere headlines. He couldn’t touch or string them together. That was what she’d been doing for him. Was she going to stop?

He sighed, and his breath was a touch sour. Nothing crisp and ruddy about his scent here, in this gnat-ridden corner of the unfinished house. In truth, they were mad to tolerate this hovel. Humidity must be approaching one hundred per cent. They were both slick with it. She didn’t smell good either.