Uzma Khan - Thinner Than Skin

A small white box lay inches from my nose.

I still concentrated on my lips. I made a very tiny bubble but the sun took it away. I made another. I was having trouble opening my eyes. I could, however, make a slit, a very narrow one, and from between this slit I could still look out at the world, I could face the box.

I pulled the box toward me. I was facing its side. Again I touched the lid. It was not secured with a latch or even a tongue of tape. It would be very easy to tear off. I squeezed my eyes shut. This hurt, so I loosened the muscles of my eyes and counted to ten. Goodbye . I counted to twenty. I counted to a hundred. Goodbye . Two hundred. I pulled off the lid.

My eyes were still shut. I counted to three hundred. I was not dead. My lips tore as I shouted, “Hurry up! Hurry up!”

Again time passed. Again, against my will, I began to think.

Why had the bomb not detonated? Was it a different kind of device? Which? Why did I know so little? Why was I at the mercy of those who tormented me for knowing so little, when there were those who knew even less?

“Hurry up! Hurry up! You fucking cowards, hurry up!”

I was not pleading for life but for a more predictable death. This seemed reasonable. A quick death had been the promise. I would open the lid and be torn to pieces and not feel a thing. It was reasonable. Instead, the kind of death waiting for me two inches from my nose was unknown. This was not reasonable at all. This was betrayal. “You promised! You sick bastards, keep your fucking promise!” Who would do a thing like this? Who would lie to a man resigned to death? Who would do a thing like this?

What if the explosion came while I was kicking and ranting? Is that how I wanted to go? Imagine the expression on my face! My eyes squeezed shut and my mouth wide open, bleeding. What a monstrosity! No, I preferred to go in dignity. I preferred to close my mouth, around a spoon of poise. I preferred to go with hands folded, eyes shut but not squeezed, lips loose. This could not be denied me. This was in my control. I could take my life by holding my breath. It would take longer than a bomb but it might work. I pulled my ribs up to my chin and they screamed but I did not. I held them in my mouth.

“Look inside!” I heard a shout. “Get up and look inside!”

Had I grown deaf or had they grown tired? The shout was wimpy. I lifted my head off the ground, still holding my breath, but I could not see into the box. I lifted it more.

Bangles. A necklace. And what might have been two milk teeth, their ends brown.

The air surged from my mouth and I choked. Then I passed out.

I do not recall clearly what happened after that. The men must have seen for themselves the mystery I’d unraveled. When I regained consciousness, the jewelry lay smashed everywhere around me. I was aware, despite my weakness, that water was to be found somewhere. I was thinking I might scoop snowmelt onto my lips. I was thinking I might follow the migration of buffaloes and goat herders who treated me with tolerance, even kindness, inviting me near their fire for tea. On a grassy hilltop, I know I caught a glimpse of a silhouette with horns longer than my legs. A yak? A demon? I glimpsed, too, a red blur, and, squinting, saw the ends of a dark braid scatter sunlight before my eyes. She jumped before you. I saw her braid hit water . And I began to see more, the way she frowned when she untangled her hair at night. It was a very different frown from the one she wore in the boat, as Kiran fell into the water, close to me, and I simply watched. Farhana was screaming. “Grab her!” Before she fell backward into the side of the teetering boat, her left foot had brushed my arm. I heard it — the anarchy of bangles, the crack of bone — while I only watched. I heard the splash as Farhana jumped, on her side of the boat, so she would have had to swim very fast to rescue Kiran sinking on my side. And I heard the rattle, as Farhana was pulled deeper into the dungeon of silt Kiran was pulling her to. Only now, on that grassy hilltop, long after the men had smashed the contents of the box and left me with a parting kick, only now did I attempt a run toward the vision — I jumped off the boat, finally, I could see myself make that jump — but I did not know what came of it.

Eventually, I must have fallen near someone’s hut. It might not have been far from the mountain, or perhaps it was very far; I did not know where I was. I slept there for a long time, waking to bandages and a watered-down version of apricot soup. This time, I accepted the gift. I would have to consider myself worthy of the generosity of strangers again, somehow. But the gift did not sit well with me. I remembered vomiting, many times. Till one day, I did not.

I also remembered the voice of a radio. I had not been dreaming when I heard it. I had stumbled far from the fort by then, and I had been noticed, and offered water, and help, but I had not accepted the latter — not till I fell in front of that hut — in a part of the valley that was less like a village and more like dotted outcroppings of a shack or two. I remembered stopping in a corner of one such shack, surrounded by soap, flour, a cat, and a shopkeeper who turned the dial of a radio till the static stilled. I wondered if I’d just arrived in Karachi, and none of what happened had happened, because it was the same story, at least at first.

A bomb exploded in a hotel this morning, killing one foreigner and seven Pakistanis …

I left the shack, then hurried back inside when I heard this:

… Reports say the explosive was carried in a box, similar to other devices used this summer. Among the deceased was the bomber. Witnesses say he had arrived in Gilgit several days earlier, with a broken leg .

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack .

Several children were staying in the hotel at the time of the blast. Six persons were killed, including the American national. Three policemen, three women and two children were among the injured. One child succumbed to her wounds on her way to hospital. The family of the deceased American have been notified .

The woman who tendered the soup had green eyes and wound a braid around her oval face. She wanted to feed me qurut and lamb, almonds and cherries. She kept goats in the cattle pen, and spun a wool so fine it could pass through an earhole. Her children had clear skies in their eyes. Her husband healed without words. I had to ask what he was treating me for, and his daughter, giggling, said bleeding and broken bones. And worms. I must drink the flowers of arusha to expel the worms by stunning them, she added. And to stop the bleeding. And swelling. It was the bitterest remedy, with an aroma that made me see only flat things with too many legs.

Several times, a boy helped me to the hole by the cattle pen. I could not keep anything down, not even water. I told myself: Irfan had made it back down the mountain, with only a broken leg. He’d been alive. He might still be alive, if I hadn’t tossed him my pack.

But then I might have opened the box instead.

The cattle pen had a wretched stench.

Who was the American national? If a woman, the gender would have been specified.

Surely, Farhana was already on her way home to her father. But this would mean it was Wes who was the — how could I say the word —deceased . How could I hope for that?

The blast was in Gilgit, which meant they were on their way back south — without looking for me first — I abandoned him; he abandoned me — but I’d never stolen his love, his Zulekha. If he had looked for me, would I have wanted to see him?

When he opened the box, had Farhana been with him? Had they looked in my pack and noticed the box and, laughing, sat down together to share whatever they hoped to find inside?