by Pasha Malla
He trailed the big man to the baggage claim, reluctant to admit to having no idea who either of them was. It seemed a betrayal of their camaraderie—a failure, even. He merely listened politely when spoken to, responded with as few words as possible and followed along. Even so he kept having to squirm away from looks of scrutiny: one eyebrow scrunched, the other scuttling up the big man’s broad, corrugated forehead. Who are you? these looks seem to ask. An excellent question.
Soldiers flanked the baggage carousel, rifles shifted to ready position, half-cocked. Fingers hovered over triggers. Beyond them, out the windows and past the tarmac, the horizon was serrated with mountains. These had the look of teeth.
‘Kashmir, huh?’ murmured the big man.
Kashmir, then. But why?
He sensed the big man watching him and thought for a moment to confess: fine, yes, who am I? and who are you? and what’s going on? and what’s happened to my brain? But he resisted; no need to panic when surely it all would soon return. The altitude had likely just scrambled his memory. It couldn’t have been wiped clean. All he needed was a bit of time to get back on track to finding himself again.
The conveyer belt heaved into motion; a siren wailed and a red light twirled.
‘Goal!’ said the big man, pointing at the light. ‘Like hockey. Get it?’
This seemed to require laughter. So, obediently, he laughed. But the big man shushed him. ‘Easy there,’ he whispered, indicating a nearby soldier with a sideways twitch of his eyes. ‘Don’t cause too much of a ruckus.’
Luggage tumbled down the chute, circled, was collected piece by piece; the crowd dwindled. A nearby billboard flipped through tourism ads: a laneway through autumnal trees, a meadow of vibrant flowers, a houseboat floating on a lotus-clogged lake. He’d no idea which bag was his. Though perhaps on sight he’d remember it. Or his friend might. He eyed the big man for some flare of recognition. But the guy had turned his attention to his phone, madly thumbing the screen.
‘I’m not getting a signal,’ he whispered. ‘You?’
He patted his pockets, located a phone in his jacket: on the home screen was a photo of someone in headphones behind a microphone. He worried it might be himself. What breed of raging narcissist would carry around his own picture? He touched his face, tried to match the features to those in the image. But his skin felt pouchy and battered, while the guy in the photo seemed so vibrant, so alive.
‘Bro?’
‘Sorry. No. It says, No service.’
‘Huh.’
Again the big man seemed to be eyeing him a little too penetratingly, so he turned back to the carousel. All that remained was an ominous package, unlabelled and bound with twine and tape. Surely this wasn’t his? If he made a move for it might the big man caution him away? Or encourage him—Yeah, go for it, that weird one’s yours!
But it was lifted free by a soldier and carted off.
The belt stopped with a shudder.
‘Can we go now? All we brought’s our carry-ons anyway, right?’ The big man passed him a duffel and hitched his own backpack; he’d been carrying both.
‘Oh. Thanks.’
‘No sweat. Just figured you were waiting for the snipers to disperse. Only following your lead. All you out here, Hometown Hero.’
Was this home? Kashmir? It seemed unlikely; his thoughts came only in English. And the big man had a Canadian flag stitched onto his backpack. He suspected that he too was Canadian, though he wasn’t sure how this was meant to feel; certainly the realization conjured nothing in particular. He needed a look at himself—the bathroom would have a mirror—but the big man was leading them toward the exit.
Two guards stepped into their path. The big man flung up his hands in surrender. But the intervention was harmless; they were required to sign in as foreign visitors. From behind a desk an indifferent-seeming woman provided pens and clipboards. The forms bore the heading, THE STATE OF JAMMU AND KASHMIR, and an official crest.
Kashmir. Some facts swam up from the murk: an uprising, an occupation. A dangerous place to be traveling. Why were they here?
‘Passports,’ demanded the woman behind the desk, hands out and palms up.
A passport—yes! In his bag he located a navy booklet: Canadian indeed. Inside was a name that belonged to the same face pictured on his phone; both, evidently, were his own. Still no memories tumbled free. He copied his names—first, middle and last—onto the form, five strange syllables like the lyrics to a tune he didn’t know.
Most of the required information could be gleaned from a flight itinerary folded into his passport: his address was in Toronto; he was here for, apparently, pleasure. Many of the questions were baffling and he cribbed as best he could from the big man’s answers—Matthew, read his companion’s form. When he came to, What is your distinguishing feature? he checked Matthew’s page: Bigness. So he answered: Small.
And then they were through.
A man in a leather jacket and massive orange beard held up a DHAR – GULMARG sign. ‘Bro, check it out, our ride.’
‘Luggage?’ said the driver, offering to take their carry-ons.
This felt like an imposition. The duffel bag’s contents were his; any object could be the key to unlocking the secret of himself. So he clung to it, shook his head. The driver shrugged and led them to a waiting Jeep. Matthew cried, ‘Shotgun!’ and dove into the passenger seat, leaving him to slide into the back cradling his duffel like an infant.
On the way out of the airport they laboured through multiple checkpoints, including one posted with a massive armoured vehicle, some hybrid of tank and elephant. Scrolls of razor wire lined high fences on either side. From behind sandbag stockades snipers trained rifles at the traffic. At the exit a spiked barrier had to be rolled aside so the Jeep could pass through.
‘Serious,’ said Matthew. He turned to the backseat. ‘Was it this bad last time you were here, or do you remember?’
‘I don’t remember.’
A flash of their driver’s eyes in the rearview suggested reconnaissance.
Outside the airport military police lined the road, batons clenched in their fists.
‘Is this normal?’ Matthew asked. ‘All these soldiers everywhere?’
‘BSF,’ said the driver. ‘Border Security Force.’
‘In the city? All the time?’
‘Also CPRF, and army. And police.’
Matthew shook his head. ‘Yeah, but are they always everywhere like this?’
‘Yes, sir. Always.’ From the backseat this conversation had the detached feel of a TV on in another room.
‘My buddy’s from here,’ said Matthew.
The driver looked in the mirror again. His eyes narrowed.
‘Or his dad was anyway.’
The driver twisted a little in his seat. ‘You speak Kashmiri?’
‘No.’
‘But, who? Your father is Kashmiri?
‘Yes.’
‘He is a Pandit? He will be returning?’ There was a hopeful lift in the man’s voice.
‘Returning?’
‘Home.’
No, home was Canada. A safe answer: ‘We’re just here for vacation.’
‘Skiing package,’ said Matt.
Skiing. Ah.
‘But you should come first to my house.’ The driver’s voice chimed like a bell. ‘My wife, my friends, my children—we would be pleased to have you join us. It has been twenty-thirty years since we had Hindus in our home. Please. We will have tea.’
‘Can’t do it,’ said Matthew. ‘It’s nearly noon and we’re scheduled for a run this aft…I mean, we paid for a package, better use it. Right, Ash?’
Ash, he thought. Not the name on his passport. A short-form, a nickname: Ash. ‘Right,’ he said.
The Jeep drove on. High walls on either side of the road fronted palatial homes.
Pausing at a traffic light, Ash (Ash, he repeated to himself; my name is Ash) eyed two schoolgirls waiting on the corner. One whispered into the
other’s ear; the second girl’s face lit up and her hand flew to her mouth. Everything about them was so familiar. (Was that possible? Did he know anyone here?) Perhaps they reminded him of someone—a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend? Who were the people that he, Ash, knew?
‘Anyhow, the tea party’s a nice idea,’ said Matthew. ‘But maybe another time.’
The driver seemed to deflate. ‘As you wish.’
The light turned green. Off they went. The girls were gone.
Then they were wheeling around a roundabout and the city receded behind them. The road scrawled toward a ridge of mountains looming against a dishwater sky and along it they went, with a light snow fizzing down from above and the steady whir of the wheels and the hum of the engine and the roar of the vents blasting warm air into the backseat, and Ash felt lulled and lost, fading, fading…
He jolted awake; Matthew was handing over his fleece. ‘Use my vest as a pillow.’
Ash scrunched it into a ball under his cheek. For some indeterminable amount of time he passed in and out of sleep, dreaming of being jostled around the backseat. When he finally sat up again they were heaving up a series of rutted switchbacks through a hillside forest of dim, shaggy pine. For a moment Ash wondered if his amnesia had been a dream. But he was still unable to conjure a single memory. The furthest back his life seemed to go was that flash of sudden awareness on the plane.
They reached a plateau. Everything opened up: a little roadway led out from the trees to a great swath of white land and white sky and white fog swallowing the treetops.
‘Gulmarg,’ announced the driver.
The place had the look of ski villages the world around, Ash thought—and was surprised by the clarity of the images this inspired; there were things his mind had retained, then. Hotels lined a gravel slash through a wide, snowy valley and a gondola cycled up into a bank of low-slung cloud at the far end.
‘Frigging nice,’ said Matthew, drumming the dashboard with his knuckles.
They rumbled past a corral where a dozen men in shawls and woolly caps waited with meagre looking horses, eyeing the Jeep with the look of buzzards sizing up a corpse. Halfway down the strip they pulled up to an A-frame building with a paint-flaking sign—HOTEL PARADISE—and the eaves humped with snow.
‘Hotel,’ said the driver.
‘Paradise,’ said Matthew.
Other than the horsemen there weren’t many people about, though the place seemed designed for tourists. As such Gulmarg had an abandoned, funereal air, with the gondola ascending into the mist offering something like celestial escape.
Ash’s teeth rattled as he climbed down from the Jeep. ‘Cold,’ he said.
‘Check out that curry powder,’ said Matthew, gesturing all around.
Ash nodded, watching the Jeep rattle off down the road. Along the shoulder the snow was cratered erratically with horseshit.
‘Honestly, that’s what they call it here.’
‘Curry powder,’ said Ash. ‘Okay.’
The eyebrows were mobilizing again. ‘Something wrong? You don’t seem yourself.’
Myself—who would that be? Ash was his name, he thought. But having a name and being that person were very different things. Who was Ash?
Matthew sighed. ‘Let’s go check in, you frigging weirdo.’
So Ash followed him inside.
The hotel seemed inspired by Swiss chalets: sloping walls of unvarnished wood, an open lobby, a fire roaring away in the hearth. The man at the desk, though, was very Indian, with a big brown forehead and a luxuriant coif swept from it with pomade.
Matthew gave Ash’s last name and explained that they were on a package tour for three nights. Three nights: Ash figured that after one good sleep his memory would return. A temporary short-circuit—like a computer, he just needed rebooting.
A ledger was scanned, pages were flipped. The concierge was at a loss. Matthew looked at Ash. Ash looked at the concierge. The concierge squinted at the ledger, then at Matthew, then at Ash. Nobody said anything.
A room off the lobby labelled BAR & RESTAURANT disgorged a huge, gingery character. In an Australian accent, through a baleen of beard, he yelled, ‘They’re mine, mate!’ and swept his arms around Ash and Matthew, claiming them both. ‘The Canadians!’ he announced, squeezing their shoulders. ‘How you going?’
‘Good,’ said Ash. ‘Great.’
Matthew stepped back and clapped hands with the guy in a rockers’ salute. Although the Australian was as luxuriantly furred as Matthew was shorn, they were otherwise physical replicas: same size, same shape. Like a pair of minotaurs reuniting for a ceremonial greeting.
‘Guessing you’re David?’ said Matthew.
‘Dave-o, mate. Only folks call me David round here are the locals.’ He shot a furtive, ironic glance across the desk.
Forgoing the concierge’s offer for help, Dave-o acquired keys and steered Ash and Matthew upstairs by the backs of their necks. The room was clean and simple: two beds, a single dresser, a piny smell. No TV.
‘Get settled in,’ Dave-o instructed, ‘quick bite in the pub, then some runs this avo?’
Ash sat on one of the beds with his duffel in his lap. ‘This what?’
‘Avo, mate. You want to fit in round here, better learn to speak Australian.’
‘Afternoon,’ decoded Matthew. ‘Sounds good to us.’
‘Actually—’
‘Shut it, Ash.’ Matthew slung a leg up on the windowsill to stretch his calves. ‘We didn’t come here to sit around and read books.’
‘No, it’s not that. I just don’t know…’ Ash caught Dave-o grinning at Matthew; in their exchange was something transactional and exclusionary. ‘If I can ski,’ he finished.
‘Oh give it up.’ Matthew shook his head. ‘You’re not exactly La Bomba but you get down okay. And we’re not going up in the chopper today, anyway. Eh?’
‘Nope,’ said Dave-o. ‘Just some quick runs, then we’ll rip it up for New Year’s tonight. Get the heli out tomorrow.’
‘See, Ash? Quit being such a mons.’
Ash stared at his hands, palms then backs, as unknown to him as those of a stranger. ‘No, that’s not it,’ he said, looking up. ‘I don’t think I can remember how.’
‘To ski? Are you out of your mind? I told you, it’s like riding a bike.’
‘Or a lady,’ said Dave-o.
Matthew’s laughter filled the room.
‘It’s not just skiing.’ Ash let the silence that followed swell with portent, wanting Dave-o and Matthew to experience the full burden of its emptiness.
And then, when he spoke, his confession sliced through it like a blade.
—
‘YOU NEED TO STOP calling me that. Just say Matt.’
‘Okay,’ said Ash from his bed. Matthew—Matt—was at the window. The open bag on the floor held Ash’s things. Picking through it had felt like invading someone else’s life; even its smells were foreign. ‘And me? I’m just Ash?’
‘Yeah, only your dad ever used your full name.’
‘What’s Ash like?’
‘You’re Ash!’ Matt’s face crinkled in worry. ‘You swear you’re not messing with me?’
‘Swear,’ said Ash. ‘I don’t know what happened. Everything’s…gone.’
‘You don’t remember anything?’
‘I told you, nothing personal. I know what India is, I know what Kashmir is, I even know what’s going on here politically. The world isn’t the problem. I could tell you the starting lineup of the 1992 New York Knicks, and the first lines of a bunch of books—“If I’m out of my mind, it’s all right with me” is one that keeps coming up—and sing the national anthem, but anything to do with me just isn’t there anymore.’
‘So, like, what you did last week. Nothing?’
‘Last week, yesterday, last year—all gone. But history? If I wasn’t there? I remember just fine. It’s all the stuff I was around for that’s the problem.’
‘Crud. So what do we do?’
‘No idea.’
‘Well who better to help you get it all back than your best bud? I know you better than anyone.’ Matt seemed suddenly enthused; he had a function now. ‘Your favourite food is pizza. Your favourite pop is root beer. You play hockey left-handed but golf right. In grade five you broke your leg mountain biking in Medway Creek and I fireman-carried you home but your dad blamed me anyway. As if it was my fault!’
‘Keep going.’
In a kind of informational mania Matt provided Ash’s age, employment, birthdate, birthplace, and so on. Some of it he’d already covered—that Ash hosted a show on the radio, that he’d written a book. When the facts were exhausted Matt listed some important people in Ash’s life—family, friends. But none of these names conjured faces or feelings. And when Matt finally paused for a breath Ash was still left with a vacuum where his self should have been.
‘Well what about more recent stuff?’ Matt said, collapsing on his own bed. ‘Do you remember getting here?’
‘I told you, everything starts on the plane. It was like waking up. Or like being born.’ He frowned. ‘That’s not it either. I want to say being reincarnated—like having my consciousness flash into a new body with no sense of what was there before—but that sounds cheesy. How Hindu am I?’
‘Not very. But, wait. You don’t remember flying to India?’ Matt seemed to say this carefully; when Ash shook his head he continued with gusto. ‘Not much to remember, I guess, just two old pals heading to your homeland. Or your dad’s homeland anyway.’
‘My dad’s from here?’
‘He…is.’ Matt’s voice wavered.
‘But he lives—’
‘Yeah, in Quebec.’
Before Ash could pursue this line of questioning (What was his dad like? Did they get along?) there was a knock on the door. An alp of polar fleece and beard loomed at the threshold. ‘How’s he going?’ said Dave-o, peeking into the room. ‘Anything coming back?’