Tariq Ali - Night of the Golden Butterfly

‘It happens in Fatherland all the time, but here, too, Dara? I was really shocked. People watched in silence and turned away.’

‘Just like Fatherland,’ I told her. ‘It happens all over Europe. In Italy they love burning gypsies and taunting Muslims. Repression and cowardice in the face of it have become everyday occurrences. Africans from the colonies, kids from the banlieus , are often treated like shrivelled leaves. Kicked into the dirt. You’ll get used to it.’

‘Have you?’

I didn’t reply.

Later that evening as our meal was being served I tried to discuss her life and Plato’s, which was after all, the supposed purpose of my trip. She was determined to discuss literature. We compromised. My reference to Stendhal had intrigued her.

‘I must confess I’m still besotted with Balzac. I can match many of his stories with real-life equivalents in Fatherland. Money and power, corruption feeding on corruption, and the origins of every rich family usually uncover a crime.’

The only Stendhal she had ever read was his compendium Love .

‘I could never identify with the crystallizing bough in the Salzburg mines. So European. Not his fault, of course. I tried to transfer his method to Sind. Here, I would say, it is the sand that is supreme. The dust storms, the hot winds that sear the skin and the mind, leaving us numb and temporarily paralyzed and distraught. That, too, is like love. Have you never read Ibn Hazm’s treatise on love? He wrote it in Cordoba, eight centuries before Stendhal. Very brilliant. I’ve surprised you. You prefer thinking of me as a martyred provincial from an Asian backwater.’

I had not been sure till then, but now I knew I wanted to spend the night with her. She read my face.

‘Did you know that my lush room with a four-poster was once a torture chamber, or so the maid told me.’

‘Are you still in love with Plato?’

‘No. I was for the first few weeks, but it was pure fantasy. He was very honest with me regarding his condition and we became very close friends. I could discuss anything with him.’

‘He’s always loved martyred provincials. Why the hell did you insist I write a book about him?’

‘Just to see if you could and would, and if you did we had to meet.’

‘I’m flattered, but did it never occur to your provincial mind that we could have met without the book?’

‘Had you been a composer I would have insisted on a Plato sonata. If you had been a painter I would have asked for a portrait, just to see how you saw him. Try to understand, Dara. I was bored.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘He told me you were once in love with a Chinese girl. Where on earth did you meet her?’

‘In Lahore. She was a Chinese Punjabi.’

‘How sweet. Tell me more.’

‘No. Provincials trying to patronize their superiors always make themselves look foolish. She’ll be in the Plato book. It’s all about milieu these days, not just the individual and his ideas.’

‘I need some advice from you.’

‘How could I dare to advise such a strong-minded and singular woman as yourself? You’ve managed pretty well on your own till now.’

‘I’m touched. Does this mean you’ll spend the night in my torture chamber?’

‘Would you like me to?’

‘Yes, but only after we’ve had dessert. It’s too delicious here.’

‘Are you sure it isn’t an ill-considered subterfuge?’

She laughed as she placed the order, and after an espresso each, I suggested some fresh air before retiring. She took my arm and we walked the Paris streets, which were slowly emptying of people as the city went to sleep, discussing its history and the ways of the world. I spoke of the country where I could not live, where people were spewed out and forced to seek refuge abroad, where human dignity had become a wreckage. Her own life was a living-death example of a human being putrefying in the filth that was our Fatherland.

‘You hate it so much?’

‘Not it, but its rulers. Scum of the earth. Blind, uncaring monsters. Fatherland needs a tsunami to drown them and their ill-gotten gains.’

She became quiet.

After we made love, she returned to the question of Jindié and I told her the story.

‘Another strong-minded and singular woman. You seem to specialize in them. How could she bear to walk off with Zahid? You were such close friends.’

‘Perhaps that’s why Plato, unlike Zahid, remains a very good friend.’

‘Don’t worry about him. He knew we were destined for each other. He told me that every woman he really loves but can’t satisfy ends up in bed with you.’

‘Surely there’ve been more than two.’

She laughed without restraint, highlighting another attractive feature of her personality.

The next morning over breakfast she asked whether she should move to London permanently. There was no way she was going back to Fatherland. She was fearful that Karachi was going to explode and there would be a civil war between the North and the South, Pashtuns versus Urdu speakers with Sindhis applauding from the side, hoping each would destroy the other but fearful that the Punjabi army would ride to the rescue.

‘And Plato?’

‘Plato is dying. I didn’t want to tell you last night, Dara, and for purely selfish reasons. I did not want you to think of anything else.’

This came as a complete shock and was deeply unsettling. For some time neither of us spoke. Another old friend was about to die and with him a large part of my own past and shared memories of catamites that we had collectively cursed. I felt a single, salty tear creep down my face and Zaynab brushing it away.

‘I did wonder when I heard his voice on the phone. It was hoarse, but he could sound like that after a bad night. What is it?’

‘Lung cancer that has spread. It was diagnosed a few months ago. I pleaded with him but he refused to come abroad. He refused chemotherapy. He lives on painkillers. All he does is paint. He said you would like his last paintings because they are from inside him, like the very first etchings. Except these are huge canvases. There is a ladder in the studio. Before I left he said, “Look at this one. My last work. This huge cat is me and I’m watching Fatherland. Look, here are Fatherland’s four cancers: America, the military, mullahs and corruption. For the cat there’s just a single one, but the cat will die first. Fatherland is on intensive chemotherapy. All sorts of new drugs are being used, but they might end up producing new cancers.” It’s a horrific painting, Dara. The inner circle of Hell. He wants you to write about it.’

‘I will after I’ve seen it, but why didn’t he tell me?’

‘He didn’t want you or Alice Stepford to know. I have no idea why this is so. And that is the real reason he was so desperate that you write about him. It had nothing to do with any request from me.’

When Plato died, Zahid and I would be virtually the sole survivors of the table around which we had all become friends. Of all of us, Plato had had the most extraordinary qualities, and while some of these were visible in his art, one always felt that he had never allowed himself to reach full bloom. He was at once the most honourable and the most unforgiving of men.

I think he felt that loss when I drove him to Cambridge all those years ago; I observed his concentrated gaze as he looked at the latest books in the field that never became his own. He had smiled in a strange way that I interpreted as regret but was probably not.

‘Do you still understand this stuff, Plato?’

‘A little, but it has moved so far ahead. Way beyond me now. The cold would have killed me. Like poor Ramanujan, incapable of tolerating the cohabitation of extremes.’