Nadeem Aslam - The Wasted Vigil

And the people who want to replace the Saudi government these days don’t want an end to this barbarism: they want to extend public beheadings and whipping, and the cutting off of hands and feet, to other countries. To the rest of the planet.

DAVID FILLS A GLASS with water in the darkness but instead of drinking it he sets it on a shelf. Something has erupted inside his breast. He lowers himself into a chair and begins to weep, silently to begin with but allowing the sounds to escape as first one minute passes and then another. His face contorted and on fire in the effort to keep the sounds to a minimum, the shoulders jolting.

A sorrow the size of the sky.

This has been the principal weather of his soul for a long time.

He stands up when at last the grief subsides and moves towards the glass of water. Qatrina said another explanation for tears is that the body needs to get rid of the trace elements that cause stress, expelling certain metals from the system.

His eyelashes wet, he stills himself when he sees the figure enter the room through the window that stands open to the orchard, sees the black shape leap down from the sill.

*

Casa enters the three a.m. darkness of the house, the sky outside full of charred clouds. He knows he is being watched by the eyes of the creatures and figures painted on the walls as he moves along the unlit hallway. He can sense her presence in these interiors, the scent from her blue veil. Miles away during these very moments his companions are most probably becoming acquainted with intimacy. A few hours earlier he had said the day’s last prayers on his blanket, not waiting for her to free the mat. Since she began using it he hasn’t been able to concentrate on his worship on the prayer mat: his feet were where hers had been, his forehead coming to rest where hers was moments earlier. Her breath and scent were in the velvet nap and in the cypress trees depicted in the centre, their tips bent to signal that they too were bowing before Allah.

On his way into the house just now he passed it hanging on a low limb of the mulberry tree. She must have left it there for him to use for the pre-dawn prayers in a few hours.

Just before dinner she told her hosts she would prefer it if they didn’t drink wine in her presence, saying the idea and smell of it made her nauseous. The poised ease of her manner had surprised him. Was it really this easy for someone to let others know of his feelings and thoughts? He himself always has to hide things. And then during the meal her candour had actually shocked him: she told them that a part of her is glad America was attacked in 2001, because had it not been for that Afghanistan would still be suffering under the Taliban. Though he hid his own anger about this slandering of the Allah-loving Taliban, he was concerned the others would react with open hostility to the American part of her statement. Kind though they were, having agreed with unconcerned shrugs to her request about the wine, they had to be supporters of the USA. But their reaction to her comment was even more unexpected. They seemed to give it serious consideration — Marcus with his head bowed and eyes closed, the hair of his head and beard as white as smoke from an incense stick — and they even seemed to understand her position.

Suddenly, yet again, he had been inundated. Feeling tired of walking the endless road of his life, of absorbing the body blows as and when they were dealt and staggering on.

He doesn’t even know his own name, doesn’t even know how he ended up in the orphanages and madrassas. A nameless child becomes a ghost, he had been told once, because no one without a name can get a firm enough foothold in the next world. It roams the world, making itself visible to the living in order to be addressed in some way — The Long-haired One, The One who has Green Eyes — but humans run away from ghosts and won’t address them.

But then he was jolted back to himself. He had heard this seductive rubbish about ghosts from one of the people in attendance at a saint’s mausoleum. He had gone there to reconnoitre: places like these were contrary to the pure form of Islam and had to be destroyed. And later that week he had helped set fire to the building, after showering it with rockets first.

And so as the evening progressed it became more and more difficult for him to bear her words. Not for nothing had Omar, the second caliph of Islam, said, ‘Adopt opinions opposite to those of women — there is great merit in such opposition,’ with Ali the fourth caliph maintaining, ‘Never ask a woman her advice because it is worthless.’

When David got up during the meal and switched on the radio, the news was that of a martyrdom bombing in Kandahar and of the latest statement issued by the estimable Osama bin Laden. And she had said, ‘These suicide bombings don’t further the cause of Islam as he claims — they save him and his followers from death, from being handed over to the USA for reward. He is being protected by people who are promised millions of dollars in exchange for him. It is in his interest to keep making and releasing these tapes, to make sure people don’t forget about him and his so-called jihad. The moment the Muslim world says, “Osama who?” is the moment that terrorises him.’ Adding, ‘Stability is the insecticide he fears.’

He had controlled himself then and also later when she said she knew any number of Afghans who loathed Pakistan for having inflicted the Taliban on their country.

And to think that she was passing on such opinions to helpless young children at the school where she taught. Preparing her pupils for an eternity in Hell. She is no doubt immensely proud of her diplomas and certificates, not seeing them for what they are, pieces of paper that say she can function well in Satan’s world.

Now he walks under the nailed-up books, a reminder of the feeble-mindedness of women, and silently climbs the stairs. As he opens the glass door onto the landing he remembers that above the door handle on a yellow taxi in Kabul and Jalalabad is always written the word –

— advice for all those who reach towards it with their hand: Gently. How far away that other life seems now. Impossible to get back to, Nabi Khan’s men on the look-out for him. The radio said earlier that yet another man has been hanged as a spy, by a band of rebels in Kunar province this time, because a USAID identity card was found on his person. Dunia thinks Casa is a labourer but she would scorn a taxi driver as well, wouldn’t she? Someone like him will never be good enough for a girl like her. He wonders if she knows what it’s like to be slapped. She must have seen Western women behave in unvirtuous manner on televisions and films and decided to emulate them. And, undone by her proximity, he had incriminated himself by uttering those words to her in the garden, by showing her his distinctively callused palms. He places his hand in his pocket now and withdraws the flashlight, having arrived at the door to Marcus’s room. He knows where David is, an exact thirteen steps behind him. The American has been trailing him closely through the house. He switches on the flashlight and climbs onto the shelving unit outside Marcus’s room, moving the circle of light onto the various volumes for a few quick seconds. He flicks it off and in the darkness raises his hand towards the book that says Bihzad on the cover. He had seen it during the day and he has been curious about it since. The boy who was sent to his death in Islam’s name by Nabi Khan in Jalalabad had had that name. Working the tips of his fingers between the book’s boards and the wood of the ceiling, he prises it off and makes his way back to that open window on the ground floor, going past David who withdraws into an alcove at his approach.