Uzma Khan - Thinner Than Skin

Well, so would Maryam. Even if it could only be in her head. She drank. The warmth spread through her veins as when she had been a child licking the dregs of her mother’s mana with guilt. Now she was guilt-free.

Fragments of the men’s talk returned to her. As much as the words, it was the way in which they were spoken — distant, elevated — that played in her head. Her mother had taught her that women spoke to each other in a language that was direct and intimate, while men spoke in idioms, to raise them in height. But this did not mean women talked directly to men, only to each other, nor that women could not possess the power of public speech. She herself was proof of this. Who had not praised her skills? She would tell Maryam to grasp the nuances of speech before she married. She would ask, “Have you filled your mouth with flour?” It was a way of urging Maryam not only to speak, but to speak correctly. If Maryam could not fill her mouth with flour, how then could she see that a chasm could be a window, or a mountain a door?

Maryam settled at the foot of a chalai tree, though it could well be the torso of a jinn. She shut her eyes, feeling herself grow flatter and flatter. Trans-limbed, like a worm, buffeted by feathers and leaves. She slithered and she flew. She followed the foreigners north.

Almost immediately, he was there.

In the jaws of a glistening fang — the place where snow was born and ice never melted — a man lay hunkered, his shoulder braced against a fall. He was not going to fall, but he was in pain. How he got there, she could not say. Perhaps he had slipped.

The image was so dazzling in clarity, so fluid in motion, it was as though her hand orchestrated it. She could feel the pain in the right shoulder of the man who had followed her to the graves. It was not only a physical pain. And she could make it worse. If she willed him to moan, he did. If she willed him to look up, he did.

Her first vision, at last.

She heard the heavy wingbeat, just as she had heard it earlier this summer, the first time she saw the image of the man, before she realized what she was seeing. The wingbeat came closer; her vision was going to be interrupted, though she longed to see what would happen next inside the glistening fang, to the man with the pain that was not only a physical pain, the one who, like her, could not stop seeing a girl step inside a boat. It angered her that they had something in common, but they did.

The wings settled. Her vision disappeared. It was gone, the way a star is suddenly gone no matter how hard you stare at the space in the sky where it shone.

In place of the vision of the man in the mountains, there, staring down at her from a bhentri tree, was an owl.

“Hoot!” called the wings to the next world, leaning very slightly forward. Her face was ringed with braided feathers the shade of her own human hair. Her cheek was pale, her eyes, dark as a cave. Of course she would pick her beloved juniper tree to rest on, the one whose leaves she smoked, whose bark she burned, whose berries she roasted.

Maryam called back. “Have you filled your mouth with flour, Mother?”

The owl adjusted her wings, a hint of a smile at the corner of her beak.

I dreamed Farhana slept beside me again, talking in her sleep. I couldn’t decipher her words. Perhaps they were again of her mother, who blew prayers over her flesh. “And I dream of my mother when I am scared …” She slept beside me while I sat up on my elbow, watching as the moon kissed her cheek. It left a perfect circle there, a circle that shuddered very slightly, before dipping to her mouth. Her best feature, even without the moon. How many times had I gazed upon its fleshiness, admired the pale beige tinted with the softest pink, run my fingers along that subtle arch? The moon kissed and it kissed. Farhana continued talking, though I knew she was asleep, and I knew it was left to me to do as her mother had done. I lifted myself into the air like a ball of feathers, and from there, I blew cool air upon her lips, just as the moon planted a second circle, before moving to her throat. “Breath for breath. That is how you love someone.”I loved her. I loved her more than a mother, or a moon. She slept beside me in the cabin in Kaghan, and we had only just arrived, and everything was sweet. Our door was open to the night, inviting it inside. Around us rose scoops of velvet green, and beneath us, a brick red earth. It was for this we’d come, not to fall into ourselves, apart. But we hadn’t fallen apart yet, we’d just arrived, and the valley undulated like an embrace, cupping in its curves Farhana, me, and nine blue lakes, motionless and pure.

Throughout the night, in my sleep, I blew blessings over her neck, her nails and knees — wherever the moon left circles.

In the morning, I was overcome with a peculiar lethargy. I reached for her hair, a blanket to shelter in, but the space beside me was bare. I registered her absence with dull panic, the fingers of one hand switching off an alarm while the other reached for a dream. And then I recognized it as a dream. We hadn’t just arrived, so much had happened, we couldn’t undo it, any of it. And we weren’t in Kaghan; we were in Gilgit. Farhana’s space beside me had been bare for more days than I cared to count. Now, even Irfan was gone.

I glanced at the clock. Seven in the morning. I left my bed and drew back the curtain, in search of the moss-layered hills of my dream. I couldn’t see beyond the parking lot. The rain pounded Gilgit, leaving the lot slick with red dirt. It hadn’t stopped raining since our jeep pulled into this town two days ago. A mudflow of riverbed sediment had gushed a kilometer up the highway. Our way was blocked. And yesterday, I now remembered, the dream abandoning me so completely it was breathtaking, we were told we’d have to wait at least another day. Yesterday the Gilgit River had thrust into a mosque, sweeping away twelve worshippers, including three children. Two children were still missing, the third was dead. If not floods, raids. The two arrested three days ago, the blind man and the cripple, were never heard from again.

In Pakistan, it was hard to know which tragedy to dwell on most.

I lay in bed, picking at blood-crust. Two days ago, as I’d walked back to my hotel room, I’d knocked into something — a scrap of metal, a skull. My foot, in the damp, was slow to heal. I felt neither pain, nor even, at this added delay, frustration. Once I’d registered Farhana’s absence, and registered especially that it was a continuous thing, much like rain and roadblocks, I felt very little at all, except, quite unexpectedly, a sudden peace. We still had time . The longer our stay in the north, the more opportunities would present themselves to me, to us. In the meantime, I was sapped of energy. It was a peculiar feeling, and I’d never felt a fatigue like this before. It was as though I was being swept in a mudslide, swallowed and crushed. But this was okay, it didn’t hurt. Someone was blowing something over me , as I’d blown love and blessings over Farhana in my dream, except, this was neither to love, nor to bless. And it was okay.

Ironically, it was Wes who knocked on my door that day. He came into my room to ask if we should have breakfast together. I agreed. Afterward, we played Scrabble. I noticed he’d stopped shaving. Plenty of clean-shaven men around, so I didn’t think it was to fit in. He arranged his tiles on the board, unable to come up with anything better than road , and I laughed and said we were all thinking the same thing. It was very congenial, and even this was easy, because I didn’t really feel I was there with him, and it was peculiar but not unpleasant.