Uzma Khan - Thinner Than Skin

I’d been watching her descend the hill and move toward us for a while. Irfan now sat up, blinking in bewilderment. He’d fallen asleep again.

“You guys!” Farhana rolled her eyes. “Come on, Nadir. Wes says it’s safe.”

“Safe as a leaking boat can be,” said Wes. He’d found the potatoes and the pear.

Irfan rubbed his eyes and looked at Farhana. “You haven’t eaten lunch yet.”

“No,” I added. “We saved you sandwiches.”

“I’m not hungry.” She was looking away, at the lake, now a bowl of amber light flecked with clouds — or were those whitecaps? “Nadir’s done it before, haven’t you?” She sounded dubious.

I said I had in the past, and the boats did leak. I watched the brow furrow, the tongue slide into the indent of her lower lip. But she’d made the proposal and I knew she wouldn’t retract it. If she didn’t want to follow through, she’d want me to prevent it from happening. I’d seen the same conflict play out in the weeks running up to our departure from San Francisco. She was protecting her own fear while desiring to be free of it.

Irfan was still wiping the sleep from his eyes. From behind his fingers, I heard him mutter, “Well, if Wes says it’s safe …”

“We could take a long walk instead,” I offered. “Look for the cave.”

“What cave?” Wes sliced the pear with his penknife, presenting half to Farrah.

She took the half. It was like breakfast all over again. “What cave?” she echoed, a trickle of pear juice on her chin.

“The one where the fairy princess took shelter with her lover, Saiful Maluk. You remember, after the jinn got jealous and tried to drown them.”

“Awesome,” said Wes.

“It’s far,” said Irfan.

Farhana turned to me. “No. I want to get in a boat. With you. And the girl.”

“The girl?”

She nodded. “She’s never been in one.”

Irfan laughed. “Of course not! The boats are for tourists.”

“That would explain why you’ve done it,” she shot back.

“She may not want to.” He glared at her.

“Oh, she wants to. No one’s ever asked what she wants.”

“Have you?” He stared harder.

“Oh shit!” Wes laughed.

Irfan turned to me, said loudly this time, “If Wes says it’s safe.”

I was about ready to take the boat — by myself.

While Irfan and Farhana glowered at each other, the child hung back, behind Farhana. To be honest, I’d only been vaguely aware of her standing there till just this moment. Now I saw that she was eyeing the tents along the lake’s shore. And then, as suddenly as I spotted her, she skipped away, her bracelets jingling.

“Where are you going?” Farhana called after her.

“She’s going home,” said Irfan.

Farhana was walking away, toward the tents.

“Where are you going?” I called after her.

“To tell her family I’m taking her with us.”

Irfan turned to me. “Teach her something. She’ll be putting them in a very awkward position. They won’t want their child going off with a group of strangers and they won’t want to say no to Farhana, who’s a guest. She should accept their hospitality,” he pointed to the empty plates, “instead of pressing for more.”

“She thinks she’s doing the girl a favor.” My defense ended up sounding like criticism.

“That’s exactly the problem,” Irfan agreed.

“It’s a ride in a boat.” Wes shrugged. “You guys talk as if poor Farrah were trying to abduct her.”

Poor Farrah?

“Give her a break,” he added, maddeningly.

I followed Farhana.

Farhana followed the girl.

Irfan followed me.

Wes literally inhaled poor Farrah’s sandwiches.

It was as Irfan said it would be. The girl, whose name was Kiran, appeared fairly neutral to the outing. Her family was against it. Farhana pleaded with them and eventually, Kiran’s father agreed. At least that is how I understood his quiet responses to her fragmented Urdu, and later, while walking us to the lake, how Irfan translated their more rapid conversation. “It’s even harder to say no to a female guest,” Irfan added, Farhana ignoring him. “It’s considered bad manners.”

Kiran’s father and brother — the same boy who’d brought the food — were standing outside the tent, watching us walk away. I could hear a woman’s voice from inside the tent. Later, as I held the boat so Farhana could climb inside, I turned back to see two women watching us as well. One held a young child in her arms, and she was arguing furiously with Kiran’s father. I saw her black shirt billow in the breeze; the cuffs of her sleeves were rimmed in fluorescent pink thread and I could hear bangles chime as the arms gesticulated in protest. It might have been the same woman I’d seen by the fire. Kiran’s bangles as she arranged herself in the boat — folding her hands in her lap before unfolding them again — were like an echo of the woman’s bangles. There was such perfect synchronicity between them that it had to have been a private conversation. I knew, as we pulled away, that the woman was her mother.

I rowed backward at first, looking behind me as the bow pierced the lake’s skin, cutting a wide triangle the shape of a fin. Somewhere over my left shoulder must have loomed the actual summit of Naked Mountain, radiant in the evening light, I was sure. I could imagine the clouds circling him like a promise; he was above their promise now. Below us, in the glacial water, Queen of the Mountains’ valleys and crests plunged all the way down to a depth that was surely our own nadir.

The boat was shaped like a tub and it was heavy. It wobbled. Apart from the ungainly shape, the rocking made no sense; there was almost no breeze. I rowed out about twenty feet before swiveling the boat around to face in the general direction of Naked Mountain. The tide did not recede. It was the same tide that had confounded us when we first got here; it was the tide of his ardor for the Queen, hers for him, and we were intruders, duly rebuked by being splashed from all sides. The further out I rowed, the larger grew the swells. Kiran and Farhana shared the plank in the stern of the boat, and every time the whitecaps hit her, Kiran shifted in her seat, rocking the boat more. She was light but her disquiet was heavy. She’d been talkative with Farhana when they walked into the hills together, but not now. I asked Farhana if it was me.

“Maybe.” She frowned. Switching to Urdu, she asked, “Are you enjoying yourself?”

The girl shook her head.

“At least she’s honest,” I said.

Farhana wrapped an arm around her. “Is it because you’re cold?”

She hesitated, then nodded. Her bangles still chimed; there was still the compulsive folding and unfolding of hands in her lap. But there was no longer a reply.

A pool of water was collecting inside the tub. It was impossible to say how much was coming in from the sides and how much was the leak. The heaviness grew. It was much harder to row that day than it had been the last time I was on the lake. Farhana offered to take over but though her legs were strong, she had no strength in her arms. When I told her this she reminded me that I had none either.

“Still,” she conceded, “you do have shoulders.” In English, so the girl wouldn’t understand, she said that if we were alone we could both take a break.

I played along. “I could show you that vein in my shoulders that makes you wonder if I go running at night, or weightlifting.”

She smiled. “This air suits you. You look—” She glanced at the girl. “She doesn’t seem happy. Maybe I made a mistake.”

“I look what?”

She rubbed Kiran’s back. “Should we have brought your goat with us?”