Nadeem Aslam - The Wasted Vigil

He wonders what kind of instrument produces the sounds they are listening to.

He doesn’t flinch when David comes in with a bottle of wine and uncorks it and puts it on the window sill, next to the bowl of water in which there is a fountain pen that Marcus had been cleaning earlier in the day, taking it apart like a rifle.

Before opening the dark-green bottle David asks Casa if he’d mind their drinking it and he shakes his head and smiles. The smell of alcohol reaches him within a minute. That such things are for sale in the cities of a Muslim country.

They weren’t until the West routed the Taliban.

Marcus says that in the year 988 when Prince Vladimir was casting around for a religion for the people of Rus he rejected Islam because he knew about its prohibition on alcohol. As though Casa wants to hear it. Perhaps if Russia had been a Muslim country it would not have given birth to the misfortune of Communism. As a child he had wanted to fight in Chechnya because he knew Communism and equality were a direct rebellion against Islam. The Koran clearly states in sura 16 that:

To some Muslims Allah has given more than He has to other Muslims. Those who are so favoured will not allow their slaves an equal share in what they have. Would they deny Allah’s goodness?

Marcus, who had claimed he was a Muslim, sits drinking wine at dinner. There is indeed no limit to the cunning of the infidels. He deceived the trusting and amenable Muslims of this land just to marry a woman, but at heart he is still a non-believer. No wonder Allah punished him by deranging her, by taking away his hand.

The food bitter in the mouth, he finishes the meal in silence and quickly, and then, clearing away his plate, leaves for the perfume factory, declining their invitation to stay. Walking through the orchard he passes the large aloe vera plant whose thick serrated fingers Marcus slices up with a blade every day, extracting the pulp for Lara’s neck. His head is spinning from the scent of alcohol. He drops to his knees close to the saw-edged plant, putting the lantern on the ground and waiting for the wave of nausea to pass. His left hand is in a mane of wild grass and some irregularity in the blades makes him look at them. He lifts the lamp with the other hand and is suddenly clear-headed. The half-green grass conceals a massive landmine. It is only two or so yards from the aloe plant. He withdraws the left hand slowly and stands up. He must calculate, see how this object can be used to his best advantage. He pinches the corner of his mouth between incisors as he stands thinking. A vision in his mind of the Englishman bleeding to death here. One whole sura of the Koran is dedicated to the hypocrites. They use their faith as a disguise … Evil is what they do …

He imagines laying out the Englishman before the stone idol’s head and filling up the entire perfume factory with earth, interring them both.

After Marcus is eliminated he could take possession of the house? But what about the other two?

He continues towards the factory, the sky the darkest of blues above him, almost black, the colour he imagines each of their three souls would be if it were stretched thin and nailed to the corners of the sky. Containing just a few scattered points of light.

He goes down into the factory but, unable to jettison the thought of alcohol from his mind, the smell of it still inhabiting his nose, rushes back up and vomits as neatly as a cat in the darkness, shivering, squatting beside the tall tough stems of a weed. The various components of his soul rebel at the memory of having been so close to the forbidden repulsive liquid.

The cold air hits him now. It’s as though he has taken off a metal hat.

He knows he must prevent Marcus and the others from ever venturing near the mine. He cannot bring himself to care about what happens to them, but it’s important that the mine remain intact, to be at his disposal if ever those Americans threaten him again. He’ll lure them to it. It’s his only weapon.

*

‘I read somewhere’, says Lara, ‘that when Muslims conquered Persia they burnt the libraries as instructed by Omar, the second caliph.’

‘That story is probably invented,’ Marcus says. ‘But it was invented by Muslims to justify later book burnings.’

‘When the thousands of manuscripts were set alight, the gold used in the illuminations had melted and flowed out. It’s odd that they invented this detail too.’

‘To make the myth appear convincing, yes.’

Holding a bamboo shaft at either end, they are on their way to the second storey, have been moving through the house to bring down books.

‘When in the seventh century’, says Marcus, ‘the Arabs conquered Persia, Khorasmia, Syria and Egypt, these were rich and sophisticated societies. The ignorant desert Arabs exchanged gold for silver when they entered Persia and made themselves ill by seasoning their food with camphor. One can only wonder, Qatrina would say, at what these lands could have been had they not been set back by the arrival of Islam. In Khorasmia the Arabs killed everyone who could read their own language. Only Arabic was allowed.’

He has stopped on the landing and is touching the tip of the bamboo to a thick volume on the ceiling, brown leather stamped with gold filigree.

‘But time moved on and the two peoples changed each other. Eventually it would be the Muslims who’d keep the philosophy of Aristotle alive for the Europeans through the Dark Ages.’

She thinks he is slightly drunk. Lets him talk, following him wherever he goes. Perhaps it’s ebullience brought on by all this light. Or it could just be the company. They are stirring in each other memories of other times.

David has gone outside, saying he remembers burying wine under the silk-cotton tree one year. She enters an unlit room to look for him through the window. Over half the world’s mine dogs are here in Afghanistan.

In this room there is a wall of moonlight at this hour. Something like a flock of hummingbirds sweeps across it. Mites hide in the nostrils of hummingbirds, the Englishman has told her, and when perfume begins to drift over their bodies they know the bird has arrived at a blossom — they climb down and begin to consume the pollen and nectar.

‘He’ll be back soon,’ Marcus says from the door.

She nods and joins him.

‘Were you always interested in perfume?’

‘The factory? I started it to give the women of Usha a chance to earn money. Qatrina wanted them to know they could have an independent wage. And this valley has always been known for its flowers. Later when I went to a perfume factory during a visit to Paris, with its large laboratories full of test tubes and pipettes, I told them that my own creations were just a matter of experimenting, of putting things together to see what happened. They laughed, “But that’s how we all do it, it’s all random — don’t be fooled by the fancy equipment.”’

They are sitting next to each other on the stairs.

‘I think I hear David. I should go to bed.’

‘Stay with us, Marcus.’

‘No, you go and find him.’

She watches him leave, clutching the new books. The clerics had the brilliant al-Kindi whipped in public for his words in the ninth century, he said earlier. The Father of the Perfume Industry, as well as philosopher, physician, astronomer, chemist, mathematician, musician and physicist — al-Kindi was sixty years old and the crowd roared approval at every lash. Al-Razi was sentenced to be hit on the head with his own book until either the book or his head split. He lost his eyesight.

*

It is always the case that where there is power, there is resistance, and so a parent came to the house during the time of the Taliban and asked if Marcus would help his eleven-year-old son with his studies, afraid the boy would forget what he learned in the days before the Taliban. Then more and more parents arrived with the same request, wanting to equip their sons and daughters for the possibilities of the world, rebelling against the Taliban’s insistence that the wings be torn off the children. That was how it began, Marcus, his hand amputated, deciding to secretly tutor Usha’s boys and girls in the perfume factory. Soon it was no longer a case of tutoring. It was a school.