Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

‘In just the few days we were here together he taught me how to look at things differently. How to notice the world. He was so conscious of beauty,’ Sajjad said carefully, not wanting to overstep any limits or be presumptuous. ‘I’ve wanted just to say that since he died. But there has never been an opportunity to say it to the Burtons.’ He lowered his head and didn’t look at her as he said, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Quickly, he added, ‘So I could say that to you. About Mr Konrad.’

Hiroko stood up and walked to the edge of the verandah, catching hold of a flowering shrub and pulling it towards herself, inhaling the sharp scent of its unripe berries. Sajjad could not bring himself to look away from her though he knew this was not a moment for him.

‘Some nights I still wake up calculating,’ she said, so softly he thought the words might have drifted in from far away on a breeze. ‘The time he left me, the speed at which he was walking, the distance to the Cathedral. The conclusion is always the same. He would have been at the Cathedral, or very near it, when the bomb fell. Only melted rosaries remained, you know, of the people inside the Cathedral. It was less than five hundred metres from the epicentre. But I don’t think Konrad was inside. I think he was still a minute or two away. There was a rock I found, with a shadow on it. Do you know about the shadows, Sajjad?’ She didn’t look back to see him nodding, or the ink blurring from words into patterns on the page at which he was looking.

He was remembering then how Konrad Weiss had walked him around this garden and told him the names of flowers, and explained which ones attracted birds with scent and which with colour.

‘Those nearest the epicentre of the blast were eradicated completely, only the fat from their bodies sticking to the walls and rocks around them like shadows. I dreamt one night, soon after the blast, that I was with a parade of mourners walking through Urakami Valley, each of us trying to identify the shadows of our loved ones. The next morning, I went to the Valley; it was what the priest at Urakami had spoken of when he taught me from the Bible — the Valley of Death. But there was no sign of any God there, no scent of mangoes, Sajjad, just of burning. Days — no, weeks — after the bomb and everything still smelt of burning. I walked through it — those strangely angled trees above the melted stone, somehow that’s what struck me the most — and I looked for Konrad’s shadow. I found it. Or I found something that I believed was it. On a rock. Such a lanky shadow. I sent a message to Yoshi Watanabe and together we rolled that rock to the International Cemetery. ’ She pressed a hand against her spine at the memory. ‘And buried it.’

She plucked the green berry off the tree and spun it between her fingers. She could not tell anyone, not even this man with the gentle eyes and an understanding of the scent of gods, how Yoshi had left her with the stone for a few minutes while he went in search of implements to dig with and she had lain down on Konrad’s shadow, within Konrad’s shadow, her mouth pressed against the darkness of his chest. ‘Why didn’t you stay?’ she had whispered against the unyielding stone.

Why didn’t you stay? She pressed the berry against her lips. Why didn’t I ask you just one more time to stay?

Sajjad stood up quietly and walked over to her.

‘There is a phrase I have heard in English: to leave someone alone with their grief. Urdu has no equivalent phrase. It only understands the concept of gathering around and becoming “ghum-khaur” — grief-eaters — who take in the mourner’s sorrow. Would you like me to be in English or Urdu right now?’

There was a moment’s hesitation, and then she said, ‘This is an Urdu lesson, Sensei,’ and returned to sit at the bridge table, pen poised to write the word ‘ghum-khaur’.

Elizabeth looked across the dusty stretch of land towards the dizzyingly high Qutb Minar around which James and Hiroko were walking, inspecting the fluted sandstone of the tower’s edifice. Elizabeth wished she hadn’t declared the structure ‘unsubtle’ and insisted on waiting under a pillared corridor that stood among the ruins of the Qutb complex while the other two explored the tapering column. She wished even more fervently that Sajjad had not volunteered to ‘wait with Mrs Burton’. He would be so impeccably polite about the fact that it was both unwise and improper for her to stand alone while wild dogs ran amidst the ruins, and strangers passed by. Though, frankly, with all the communal violence just next door in the Punjab, with occasional leaks into Delhi, who was to say that the presence of a Muslim man might not itself give rise to dangerous situations? She tensed, and looked around for places to hide, suddenly expecting to see armed Hindus or Sikhs charging towards Sajjad. But there was no one around, not even the dogs. Only those inescapable pigeons.

She ran her palm across her neck and it came away glistening. Soon it would be time to move to Mussoorie for the summer. It was hard to imagine Mussoorie without Henry — they had decided, after all, that it would be best for him to stay in England over the holidays given how uncertain things were in India. Her sense of dissatisfaction deepend. Why on earth were they here? Some plan which she’d only come to know of when James woke her up and said, ‘We’re going on an expedition. Get dressed; Sajjad will be here soon.’ She’d been irritated at being excluded from the planning, and further irritated to come downstairs to find Hiroko sitting on a step leading to the garden, leaning against a flowerpot, which left a red mark on her dress, which was really Elizabeth’s dress; how many times had she warned Hiroko against doing exactly that?

Liquid sprayed around her ankles and she looked up to see Sajjad sweeping his arm from side to side in front of her, a bottle in his hand and a thumb over the mouth of the bottle, covering all but a fraction of it.

‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’

‘This will cool the air around you.’

‘Oh.’ The smell of the water hitting the earth was in itself a relief. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He continued to spray the ground.

‘Why are we here, Sajjad? Winter is the time for the Qutb Minar, not April. And if Hiroko had a desire to go sightseeing surely there are places of cool interiors that would have made more sense.’

Sajjad knew he couldn’t tell her the truth, particularly as it was obvious her husband hadn’t chosen to do so. The previous day, as their lesson had drawn to a close, Hiroko had said, ‘I’d like to see your Delhi, Sajjad. Would you take me there some day?’

If she had said it in Urdu, he didn’t know — he couldn’t now imagine — how he might have responded. But it was English, and James Burton had walked out on to the verandah in time to hear it, so there was nothing to be done but mumble something about it being time for chess, and hoping that was an end to the conversation.

But later James said, ‘Qutb Minar. You once insisted you have some ancient familial link to the place, didn’t you? Well, that’s your Delhi then, isn’t it? We’ll take her there.’

To Elizabeth, Sajjad only said, ‘I’m afraid it’s my fault, Mrs Burton. I thought she might be interested to see what’s left of my ancestors in Delhi.’

The Ilse Weiss who had grown up on her grandmother’s stories of ghosts asserted her presence and looked around — both in terror and excitement — for the spirits of Sajjad’s ancestors prowling through the ruins.

‘I don’t mean what is literally left of them,’ Sajjad said, without mockery. ‘My ancestors were soldiers in the armies of the Mamluks — I believe your English historians call them the Slave Kings. The Qutb Minar is the greatest remaining monument of those kings.’