Nadeem Aslam - The Wasted Vigil

‘What a noise the cranes are making!’ says Marcus. ‘There used to be many more, James, especially on the far shore. They have been passing through here for millions of years, but the war in Afghanistan — all that flying metal in the air, the bullets and planes — and then the war in Chechnya, has meant that they get lost easily, trying to change their paths.’

Marcus takes back the photograph and turns away towards the house, James assuring him he’ll visit again soon.

‘You’re building a canoe,’ James says as they walk towards the lake. ‘Remember ours?’

‘Of course. Do you know who she was, the girl in the photograph?’

‘You were my uncle, David, and then suddenly you broke off all contact. I asked Dad why, and when I was old enough he told me, bit by bit over the years.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘So then you must also know that Gul Rasool, the man you are protecting, had tried to kill your father. He had sent Zameen to plant the device.’

The young man nods.

‘Make sure he doesn’t find out whose son you are.’

‘Yes. But we need his help right now in fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Dad would understand perfectly. My own feelings are irrelevant when it comes to these things.’ And he adds after a pause, ‘I am not finished with him yet anyway. He too would have paid for everything by the time all this is over.’

‘I am here if you need to ask anything.’

‘Who is that guy, by the way?’ James has been watching Casa, who is busy with the canoe a few yards ahead of them.

‘He’s a labourer. He’s staying here for a while.’

James shakes his head. ‘It’s such a difficult situation. Why must the United States be the only one asked to uphold the highest standards? No one in the world is innocent but these Muslims say they are. They insist the seven hundred Jews who were taken prisoner after the Battle of the Trench were rightfully and legitimately massacred by their Muhammad. So until everyone admits that they are capable of cruelty — and not define their cruelty as just — there will be problems.’

When they draw near, Casa doesn’t look up.

‘Watch this, David. What’s his name — Casa?’ There hasn’t been a shared language between the warring sides since the Civil War, so he switches to Pashto:

‘Do you think, my dear friend Casa, that everyone on the planet will become a Muslim when the Islamic Messiah appears just before Judgement Day, and that those who refuse will be put to the sword?’

Casa straightens.

‘I have never heard that before,’ he replies. ‘You’ve been misinformed about Islam.’

AT THE HERMITAGE in St Petersburg, Lara said, glue made from the swim bladders of sturgeons was brushed onto strips of tissue and these were pressed onto van Eyck’s Annunciation when its wooden backing had had to be removed. When the glue dried and fastened itself onto the picture’s surface — onto the angel with his almost neon peacock wings, and the anxious girl — the wood it had been painted on was chipped away carefully with chisels. Leaving nothing but that layer of paint stuck to the tissue paper. It could now be transferred to canvas, the tissue with the sturgeon glue then dissolved or peeled off from the front. And playfully Lara had suggested some days ago that that was what they should do to the walls in Marcus’s house. Transfer these images onto canvas or paper, stick large sheets of tissue dipped in some gentle glue.

‘Imagine the bricks and the stones have vanished and just the pictures stand — a paper lantern the size and shape of a house.’

Marcus smiles at the thought as he swabs the wall with a wet cloth, clearing away the mud from a painted balcony. There is a girl with a red-and-gold scarf tied over her eyes. Tonight she must have a tryst in the darkness so she’s practising going around the house blindfolded during the daylight hours.

On the gusts of wind he can hear James Palantine and David talking down there by the lake. Would there be more fighting between Gul Rasool and Nabi Khan soon? Caught between the two, the ordinary people of Usha have always done their best to survive. Each time there is an atrocity, they go to the house of the murdered party and say that indeed an unjust thing has been done; then they go to the house of the murderers and say that it was indeed an unfortunate thing to have happened.

The hatred between them extends into the past for over a hundred years, innumerable deaths and crimes on both sides since then, because the right to bloody vengeance is demanded by malehood, sanctified by tribal codes, and recognised by the Koran. Believers, retaliation is decreed to you in bloodshed — a free man for a free man, a slave for a slave, a female for a female .

The abhorrence, passed down through years and decades and generations, began in 1865 when a woman ancestor of Gul Rasool, named Malalai, had temporarily found herself as the head of the tribe at the age of sixteen, the men around her having perished in an epidemic. The only males that remained alive were either little boys here in Usha or grown men away on the pilgrimage to Arabia, the journey taking several months in those days.

Malalai’s new position was regarded as sinister in Usha, people doubting if a woman could ever be counted on to take correct decisions, the cleric at the mosque wondering if Abraham’s wife would have been prepared to cut their son’s throat at Allah’s bidding.

After the cleric refused to acknowledge her requests for an audience, Malalai — hidden in a veil — went to the mosque. The man was incensed when reminded by her that the Queen of Sheba — a female ruler of a state! — was mentioned in the Koran. But he countered it by saying the Queen of Sheba was most probably not a human being, that she was half-djinn and had goat’s legs.

His attitude was menacing and so she did not have the courage to remind him that Solomon was aware of the rumours about the Queen of Sheba, and that he had had crystal strewn across the floor when she arrived to meet him. She thought it was spilled water and she lifted the hem of her gown to reveal human feet.

Subtly, Malalai continued to govern her tribe from behind the walls of the large house. After all it was Khadija — the brilliant well-connected forty-year-old business-woman — who had discovered Muhammad, peace be upon him. Khadija had given the poorly educated twenty-five-year-old shepherd gainful employment for the first time in his life, and was the first to believe him when he claimed Gabriel had visited him to announce his prophethood.

One afternoon, when the sun was at its most powerful, a maid woke Malalai and informed her that a traveller was at the door, asking if he might be loaned a mat and the shade of a tree to say his prayers. Those on the road were exempt from worship — not for nothing were Allah is ever disposed to mercy the very last words of the Koran — so she was deeply impressed by the traveller’s devotion. She had him shown into the men’s quarters, and told the servants to point out to him the niche where the family Koran was kept so that, after he had humbled himself before Allah, he may recite a few passages for the recently deceased members of the household, for the safe return of the pilgrims from Mecca.

And later the sixteen-year-old, finding herself drawn to the stranger’s voice, ended up sitting just outside the room where he read the holy words, the head of her sleeping baby son resting on her knee. After the recital, seeing as he was a traveller, she began to ask him questions from the other side of the door: Whether it was true that the earth was indeed round. Whether it was true that night did not fall simultaneously across the entire world.