Kamila Shamsie - Burnt Shadows

As Sajjad finished his tea in one large gulp and stood up, Lala Buksh said, ‘You didn’t come back with them from Qutb Minar yesterday.’ Sajjad made a non-committal gesture. ‘She was very upset about something.’ He picked up Sajjad’s cup and went into the kitchen.

Hiroko, on the verandah, heard the squeal of the kitchen’s screen door and knew it meant Sajjad was about to walk around to the back garden. She wasn’t sure she could look at him without revealing her envy.

She had tried so hard the previous night to bring Konrad’s face to mind but he felt so far away. He felt like another life. In this life there was simply desire for more — more than a memory of his fingers tracing the veins of her wrist, more than a memory of his tongue surprising hers. But though Konrad grew more distant the harder she tried to summon him that thing that had started to happen in her body when she slipped on her mother’s silk kimono had reawoken. Lying in the bath last night, she had slid her hand along her naked body (except it wasn’t her hand, it wasn’t her body — it was Sajjad’s hand and his wife’s body — even in fantasy she could not allow herself to believe her body could be the location of such caresses from any man) and as the hand moved lower her body had jerked, slamming her hip against the porcelain, and terrified her into pulling out the bath-plug and getting into bed, where she clenched her hands into fists and kept them resolutely away from the rest of her.

‘Good morning,’ Sajjad said, walking towards the verandah. ‘I hope you’re feeling better today.’

‘Yes, thank you.’ She looked at him and wondered how it must feel to watch Sajjad Ali Ashraf approach you and know that his body was yours to touch. The look she gave him was lightly accusing. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her?’

‘Who?’

‘Your fiancée.’

‘Oh.’ Sajjad scrunched up his face. ‘No, no. Nothing’s settled yet. My mother and sisters-in-law have someone in mind, but I don’t even know her name. It could all be nothing.’ He placed his hand on the table, touching the spine of the book on which her fingers were resting.

She nodded, tried to ignore the strange feeling of hopefulness mingled with despair.

‘You must be considered very eligible. Though. can I ask you something?’

‘Of course. Anything.’

‘You told me once that you’re going to be a lawyer. But you spend your days playing chess with James Burton. I know you want more from the world.’

In all this time she had been the first person ever to say this to him.

‘Without James Burton, I’d be working with my family, hating it. So as long as he wants me to play chess, I will. But he’s said, he’s promised, there will always be a place in his law firm for me. He said just the other day, when the British leave there’ll be so many vacancies. I can wait. He lets me take law books from his libraries and read them at home. I’m not wasting my time. I’m learning. I’m getting ready.’

‘I didn’t mean to imply you were wasting your time. I think you’d make a wonderful lawyer.’ She could see this was a compliment that truly mattered to him, though she couldn’t help wondering whether it was really possible to be a lawyer without some kind of professional qualification.

‘Can I ask you something now? Does it seem strange to you? That I’ll marry someone I’ve never met? I know the Burtons think it very. backward.’

‘I’m not the Burtons, Sajjad. It seems to me that I could find more in your world which resembles Japanese traditions than I can in this world of the English.’ She said it almost accusingly, before smiling in acknowledgement of how little interest she had in tradition. ‘Arranged marriages used to be quite common in Japan. I’ve always thought they must require more courage than I possess.’

Sajjad didn’t feel very courageous.

‘It’s how things happen.’ He traced the lettering on the book’s spine and avoided looking at her. ‘When you marry it’ll be the English way?’

‘I’ll never marry.’

Sajjad flinched at his own insensitivity.

‘I’m sorry. I know Mr Konrad. I’m sorry. This is none of my business.’

‘I’ll never marry,’ she repeated. ‘But it isn’t because of Konrad.’

Sajjad nodded. And then shook his head.

‘Then why?’

Hiroko did not stop to think if she wanted confirmation or denial from him of the truth she’d recognised in a Tokyo hospital when she heard the hardened doctor’s horrified gasp as he looked at her lying on her stomach. Instead, she stood up and turned her back to him.

‘Because of this.’ She started to undo the buttons at the back of her blouse, exposing her bare flesh.

With a quick cry of shock, Sajjad turned his face away.

‘Please. What are you doing?’

Hiroko tugged at the fabric that covered her back, parting the blouse as though it were stage curtains.

‘This is just one more thing the bomb took away from me. Look at me.’

‘No. Button your shirt.’

‘Sajjad.’

The flatness of her voice made him turn towards her. Whatever he had been about to say remained for ever unsaid. She had stepped out of the shadow of the roof’s overhang and into the harsh sunlight so there could be no mistaking the three charcoal-coloured bird-shaped burns on her back, the first below her shoulder blade, the second halfway down her spine, intersected by her bra, the third just above her waist.

She could not see the tears that collected in Sajjad’s eyes as he looked at her charred and puckered skin, and so it was left to her to interpret his silence.

‘You can read this diagonal script, can’t you? Any man could. It says, “Stay away. This isn’t what you want.” ’

Her pain shattered every defence he’d unknowingly constructed since that moment he’d looked at the mole beneath her eye and wanted to touch it. In a few quick steps he was next to her, his hands touching the space between the two lower burns, then pulling away as she shuddered.

‘Does it hurt?’ he whispered.

‘No.’ Her voice was even quieter than his.

He touched the grotesque darkness below her shoulder blade — tentatively, fearfully — as though it were a relic of hell, clamping his teeth together against the outrage of the lumps his fingers encountered. She couldn’t feel his hand, but the warmth of his breath on her neck was enough to set off another shudder, one that rippled all the way inside her.

He closed his eyes and moved his hand to where the skin felt as skin should. This time when her body shook in a way that he knew was devoid of fear his own body responded; there was no space in this moment of intimacy for him to feel any mortification. He ran the back of his hand along her shoulders, down the curves of her to her waist, reminding her there was this, too, these parts of her also.

Seconds passed as she allowed herself the luxury of his touch, knowing this memory would join Konrad’s kisses to form the entirety of her experience of physical intimacy.

‘You don’t have to be so kind,’ she said at length, her hands fisting in the material on to which they still held. ‘I know how ugly they are.’

‘Ugly? No.’ If his voice hadn’t been so gentle she might have believed him. ‘Birdback,’ he said, resting his palm against the middle burn, his other hand swiftly wiping away his tears. ‘Don’t you know everything about you is beautiful?’

She swung to face him, anger bringing unfamiliarity to her face, forcing him to recognise how he had etched each of her everyday expressions into his mind to keep him company in the hours he was away from her.

‘The bomb did nothing beautiful.’ Her fist thumped against his chest as she spoke. ‘Do you understand me? It did nothing beautiful.’