Uzma Khan: Thinner Than Skin

“But you are so spirited!” She curled her fingers around his.

He threw back the pint. “You tell me, was he resisting tyranny or yielding to it?”

I shifted, an intruder in a private conversation between a father and a daughter; no, between a son and a spirit.

Farhana tapped his hand. “Please stop, Baba. You’re meeting Nadir for the first time.”

He regarded her the way he must have regarded her when she was born, and his eyes grew misty. “But I already know him! Why have you told him nothing about me?”

“But he knows everything!” She played along. “Don’t you?” They both looked at me. I looked at the sidewalk.

“Then he knows that you are nothing like me, and everything like your mother. I thank God for that every day!” Now his eyes danced with mischief as he looked from Farhana to me. “At least Farhana is not married.”

I choked on my coffee.

She examined the bill.

His eyes stopped dancing. There it was at last: his assessment of me.

He paid the bill and stood up to leave. “You must show me your photographs some time.” He pulled up his jeans.

I also stood up. “It was wonderful to meet you.” The farewell sounded as stale as his interest in my work.

“Well, I’m glad Farhana is not hiding you from me anymore. The next time we meet, it should be at my house.” This, with more gusto. He had deep vertical worry lines between his brows; they seemed to grow deeper as his face brightened.

“I’d like that.” I shook his hand more vigorously.

He walked away as abruptly as his moods had changed.

Once assured that he would not turn around again, Farhana flung her arm into mine. “Okay, so he was more unpredictable than ever.”

“I like him.” It was all I could think to say.

“Who wouldn’t?” She smiled.

I could imagine a lot of people not liking him, but decided not to say so. We started walking back to the station. “So, you’ve told me everything about him, huh?”

“Well, all the juicy parts. My parents were very in love.”

At least Farhana is not married .

“What are you thinking?” She looked at me.

“What happened in Malaya?”

She frowned. “I don’t know much.”

“What do you know?”

“Only what Baba told me once, in a fit of despair, after my mother died. Whenever he’s upset, he thinks of his father. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, do you really want to know?”

“Of course.” A curl had caught in her mouth. I pulled it free with my fingers.

“It was soon after my grandfather was sent to the peninsula. A group of Indians and Malayans pointed him to a bombsite littered with reams of photographs of local Chinese women, as Japanese soldiers — many still in boots and belts — raped them. Before the war, Dada had already considered life imagery to be prohibited. These photographs haunted him till his death. The entire village had seen them. In fact, there were those who pointed out the photographs to Indian soldiers the way they’d pointed out the girls to Japanese soldiers. They called them, ‘Cheeni! Cheeni!’ They deliberately left them there, in the open, for all eyes to devour what little was left of the Cheenis .”

“They could have been left for other reasons.”

“Such as?”

“To inform.” I shrugged. “Elicit outrage.”

She shook her head. “No one had any idea what happened to the girls and no one cared. Baba said it was this episode that led to Dada’s becoming a recluse later in life — this, and his unpopularity with his friends for fighting for the British. It was as if Dada felt that he too was trapped in those photos. He believed himself to be in the power of everyone who’d picked one up, whether accidentally or deliberately, indifferently or greedily. Sooner or later, every single person who’d ever entered the village became complicit in the crime. Maybe identifying with the victims was a way of feeling less complicit.”

“That is a horrific story,” I whispered.

She nodded. We rode the train in silence, arms entwined.

Back in San Francisco, the fog had cleared and the day was surprisingly warm. I was learning that October was spring in the Bay. “Seems we’re the only ones not jogging, or walking a dog,” I said idly.

She turned to me. “Nadir, I don’t dismiss what you do. You only think I do. I just wish, well, that you were equally happy with me as when you’re alone, at night, running, without your camera.”

“I am .”

“What’s the north of Pakistan like?”

My stomach clenched. Here it comes . “It’s — isolated. Isolating. Cleansing. I don’t know how to explain. People who live there have names for what we don’t. But — you find your own.”

She did something like a hop before swiveling to face me, walking backward on the pavement as I moved forward, keeping step with me, barely avoiding a streetlamp, her pace growing in speed as she pronounced, “Oh Nadir, I can arrange for us to go!”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve applied for funding. We’ll get it.”

“We?”

“Wesley. You’ll meet him. A comparative study of glaciers in northern Pakistan and northern California. Call it a fact-finding mission, to see if I can work in my country!”

“You will get it, or — already have?”

She soared into my arms, flinging us side to side, before presenting the route she believed we ought to take. We’d fly from Karachi to Rawalpindi, then, depending on the weather, take either a bus or plane to Gilgit. From Gilgit we’d take a bus to Hunza, from where the two glaciers that would best fit the requirements of her preliminary study were easily accessible. These were Batura Glacier and Ultar Glacier. Did I know of them? Of course. Did I know how dangerous they could be? Of course. Did I need to practice climbing around here, first? I shot her a look. She brought that man called Wesley into the conversation too. They’d apparently worked together on Whitney Glacier on Mount Shasta, where they collected and “dated” ice samples. Did I care how? No, I did not.

Naturally, throughout this monologue, there was no mention of Kaghan Valley.

Later that night, back in my apartment, she let me photograph her naked for once, torquing her spine to artificially recreate the image I first fell in love with.

“Why?” I asked. “Why today?”

She peeled off her sweater, shirt, bra, still delirious with the joy of having skillfully engineered her return . And all this time I’d believed she was waiting for me to say yes. There was never any consent involved. We were going.

“Why today?” I insisted.

She giggled. It was as if she were drunk and wanting to have sex with me after refusing when sober. It was her choice, yet I was having to make it.

“Come on, Nadir. Pick up your camera. I know you’re dying to.”

“Actually, I’m not.”

“Sure about that?”

I hesitated. To say yes would mean choosing no. I picked up my camera.

I didn’t enjoy it. In those moments, I didn’t want Farhana, neither behind my lens nor in the flesh. Even when she wound her braid around her, I couldn’t see the calla lily. It was all too conscious, too rehearsed. Hadn’t she planned it all — the visit to her father, the walk home, the seemingly innocent question about northern Pakistan, the news, the news , and now this? And yet, and yet. As I put her through my lens and captured that twisting torso, her ribs so protruding tonight, a thought flickered in my mind. Was it her pleasure that was dulling mine? I shook the thought away. No, this jeannie was just fine out of the bottle (even if she bent so far out of the bottle surely her spine would crack). I snapped another dozen shots. No, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t even pleasure. More like victory. I could see it in her gaze. It had killed the wonder this moment was always meant to hold. As she adjusted her hips and I kept on snapping, I tried to conjure it up, this wonder, this thing which cannot always be there, which is entirely fleeting and numinous, which, like luck, or talent, or wealth, cannot be equally distributed between those who love, between those who mate. Snap! She was raising her chin so high. She was rising from the bed. She was turning off all the lights.