“I’ll fetch them,” said Rashida, getting to her feet again.
“I am very fond of photography,” said Amanullah. “I bought myself a Leica camera on a business trip to Islamabad in the ’60s. It became quite a hobby of mine.”
“What were your subjects?”
“Oh, family, friends, the usual things. But also landscapes. I travelled a lot for my work, and I wanted to show my wife where I had been.”
Rashida came back with Akram, carrying a stack of photograph albums, which he put down on a chair. As he cleared away the tea things, Rashida passed one of the albums to Amanullah. He sat for a moment with the book on his knees, his eyes half-closed, as if remembering what was inside, then brushed off a layer of dust and opened it.
The first picture was of the house, still intact and glistening white, with two servants standing at the entrance. A sports car was parked in the driveway and in the foreground a peacock picked its way over a perfectly clipped lawn.
“The house was lovely then,” sighed Amanullah. “And the gardens. We had five gardeners, always busy.”
I looked at the other photographs, stuck into gummed corners: the fruit trees in blossom, hundreds of roses spread around a fountain, box hedges trimmed into fantastical shapes. In one of the pictures a woman, laughing, held a chubby baby up to smell the roses. She was very beautiful, and wore a tea dress printed with little flowers.
“That is my wife, Alima,” Amanullah said. “With Khadija, Rashida’s mother, our first child.”
As we were looking at the pictures of the Blue Mosque in Herat, the call to prayer came drifting over the high walls. For a moment we were silent, allowing it to fill the garden with its melancholy sound.
“We’ll leave you, Baba,” said Rashida. “I know it’s time for you to pray. But first, do you mind if Jo takes a photograph of us together?”
He sat up straight in the old wicker chair, and Rashida squatted next to him, her cheek next to his, her arm around his shoulder – two ends of a century in the garden of a house that had seen it all. Mindful of the old man’s prayers, I worked quickly, firing off a series of shots, hoping they’d be good.
“We’ll bring you a copy of the best one,” Rashida said.
He smiled. “I’d like that very much.”
Thirty-Two
ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY
27th March 1915
I had hoped that Robert and Hari might become friends, but their first meeting was a disaster.
I thought they had found something in common, when Hari told Robert he was from Calcutta. Robert loves the city, he has always said so, but now for some reason he said, in an unpleasant, scoffing sort of way, that the old capital was fading fast and that Delhi was a much better place to live.
I pretended to busy myself with some dressings, secretly pleased to hear Hari say that all the same he would be going back to Calcutta, to his family, and not to Delhi.
“I’m a Bengali,” he said, with a smile. “I can’t go anywhere else.”
“Well,” Robert said. “I’ll be interested to see what will happen to Bengal.”
“I hope there won’t be another attempt at partition. The last time was a fiasco.”
“Partition was ten years ago, and it didn’t work because of the people’s sheer stubbornness. It makes perfect sense to have separate Hindu and Muslim states: Bengal is far too big to administer on its own.”
I didn’t know what they were talking about, but they both seemed to be getting rather cross.
“Dividing us up creates trouble,” said Hari, with an edge to his voice.
“It won’t be for you to decide,” said Robert.
Giving an awkward bow, Hari excused himself and left the room.
As soon as I was sure he was out of earshot, I turned to Robert and told him he had been horribly rude. It was as if he had chosen his words on purpose to provoke.
He shrugged and lit a cigarette.
“I don’t understand why you’ve said those things about Calcutta when I know that you adore it,” I said. “You were born there, it’s home to you.”
But all he could do was shrug again and say that now that Delhi was the capital, Calcutta was unimportant.
“That isn’t the point,” I said. “You have insulted Hari.”
He inhaled, sucking on his cigarette until his cheeks became hollow, held the smoke for a moment, then exhaled for a very long time and said, “I would prefer you to call Hari by his proper name, Mr—”
“Mitra,” I said.
“Aha!” he said. “That explains it.”
“What?”
“His attitude, studying at Oxford, that Bengali pride.”
Drawing on his cigarette again, he said that the Mitras were one of Calcutta’s oldest families – in his words: “arrogant and rich”. Most of them were lawyers; he was surprised that “young Hari” had been allowed to study medicine. It was no surprise on the other hand, that Hari was “rather above himself”.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
There was a pause while Robert carried on smoking.
“What did Hari mean by ‘partition’?” I asked.
Robert made a careless gesture and said that it had been back in 1905, when Bengal was divided into East and West.
“And what did he mean when he said it didn’t work?” I persisted.
“Well,” Robert said, “people didn’t like it. They thought we were setting Hindus against Muslims, and so there was some unrest: boycotts of British goods, terrorist acts, bombs in the streets, that sort of thing. And so after a while the two halves were reunited.”
“So Hari was right: it wasn’t a good idea.”
“I don’t care to discuss it any further.”
I was left feeling a little confused. Why had Robert been so unpleasant to Hari? It is not the first time I have noticed this kind of attitude towards him. The orderlies are always courteous to our patients, but several times when Hari or another of the medical students have tried to give them instructions, they pretend not to hear or drift away.
I went to find Hari. He was sitting on a bench in the garden, taking short puffs on a cigarette.
I asked if I could sit next to him, and he nodded, not looking me in the eye. I perched on the bench, trying to think of what to say, and then on an impulse asked him for a cigarette. I wanted to do something bad for once, something of which Robert and Colonel MacLeod and all of the rest of them would disapprove.
“You won’t like it,” he said, but fumbled in his pocket and gave me a cigarette anyway, then looked on as I fumbled myself, unsure of what to do. When it was lit, I coughed and choked, my eyes streaming from the smoke.
Hari gave a thin smile. “Let me take that,” he said, removing the cigarette from my fingers.
I tried to say sorry for Robert’s behaviour, but my words were inadequate.
“I don’t know what has come over him: he isn’t always like that.”
“No need to apologize.”
“But I must. I am his fiancée and I feel responsible.”
Hari turned to me, his cheeks flushed, looking as if he were about to say something important, then gave a short shake of his head and asked how long we had been engaged.
“He asked me to marry him two years ago, but I’ve known him much longer than that. I first met him at a dance when I was just eighteen and out of school.”
He had already been an officer, eight years older and handsome in his uniform. I smiled at the thought of it, then frowned.
“I really can’t understand why he was so difficult.”
Hari sighed, and asked if he could tell me a story.
“Before I arrived at Oxford,” he said, “my cousin, who’d gone up a few years before, told me that the thing to do was to join some societies, where I could make friends. I’d often taken the lead in plays at school, and so I decided to audition for the amateur dramatics society at my college, which was putting on Oedipus Rex. I didn’t get a leading role, but was
happy with my part in the chorus. At the first rehearsal I was confident, but as we went on I realized that the others were trying to stifle their laughter. At the end of the rehearsal, the director asked me to stay behind. He told me that a chorus had to speak in unison, as one voice. I didn’t understand at first, and he looked rather awkward then said, ‘Well, it’s your accent, you know. It just won’t work.’ Until then I hadn’t known I had one.”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Yes,” he said. “And that was the end of my career as an actor.”
He said that going to Oxford had made him realize the truth: that in the eyes of the British he would always be seen as second-best.
I protested, but he gave me a weary look and said that Indians were tolerated at the university, sometimes even liked, but always kept at a distance.
“It’s true,” he said. “You’re the first friend I’ve had here. I feel as if…”
And then he stopped abruptly. The flush in his cheeks had grown darker.
Thirty-Three
There’s a grand mirror that hangs in Edith’s hallway, a huge Venetian looking glass with twirls and swirls and crests, humming birds and flowers etched around the border. Last night I took off my clothes and stood in front of it, dressed in just my underwear – an old black bra that had seen better days and an ancient pair of knickers, grey from the wash.
It was always you who wore the nice things, wisps of lace from fancy shops that you hand-washed on Sunday afternoons. You tried to buy me nice lingerie, to make me feel better about what I had to wear on top of it, my everyday uniform of trousers and sturdy shoes, padded jackets, loose shirts. Everything practical: deliberately androgynous, unflattering.
The night before I went to Iraq you gave me a tissue-wrapped package of lace and silk. I said nothing, loving you for trying, sad at how little you knew. I took it with me knowing I’d never wear it, that the hand-washing I’d be doing wasn’t the sort to keep it pretty, that it wasn’t the kind of thing to hang out to dry in front of the troops.
When I took off my underwear I saw how I’d changed: my hips are curved, a little wobble of fat on either side. My thighs are filling out. For the first time in my life I’ve got breasts, Suze, breasts! I don’t feel quite connected to my body: it’s as if it’s making this baby without me, while my mind works out if it was something I want.
I’m crossing back over that line from honorary man to woman. I wish you were here to help.
The last time I saw myself naked like that was in Kabul, after a trip to the Bagh-e Babur gardens. Inspired by Amanullah’s reminiscences, the next week Rashida and I got Bazir to take us there. I saw the gardens from a long way off, a patch of hopeful green in the Kabul brown, brightening the side of a hill. As we drew closer I was surprised to see crowds.
“Is it always so busy?” I asked.
Rashida smiled. “It’s Friday.”
Ten years before, when I was there with Faisal, it had been a wasteland, all the trees chopped down for firewood by the families who lived among the ruins. Now orchard terraces rose around a central watercourse, all the way up to an elegant white pavilion.
We climbed through rose gardens, past gurgling fountains, children splashing in pools, couples sitting in the shade of trees. Families were spreading picnics out on the grass, three generations together. There was a holiday atmosphere of a sort that I’d never seen before in Kabul, a sense that everyone was there to have a good time.
By the time we got to the top, we were out of breath and giggling, giddy from the exertion and thin air.
“Turn around,” said Rashida.
The gardens spread out before us, surrounded by enormous walls. The river curled past, then came the city, sprawling across to the foot of snow-topped mountains, a vast range, ridged and creased, as if it were made of folded cardboard. I imagined Babur standing with his advisors, looking out onto what was then countryside, deciding that this was the place for his gardens, his last resting place – and then I thought of Edith’s favourite Mughal miniatures. This is where it had all begun.
“Where’s the grave?” I asked.
Rashida led me behind the pavilion to more terraces, where a little marble mosque stood, three sides open to the elements, next to a dark-green water reservoir.
“The mosque was built by Shah Jahan,” Rashida said. “The man who built the Taj Mahal.”
Babur’s tomb stood behind the mosque, a little farther up the hill, surrounded by a delicate enclosure carved from more marble, with latticed archways allowing a glimpse inside. We stood for a while, listening to birds singing in the fruit trees. Behind the tomb was an inscription.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“If there is a paradise on earth, it is this! It is this! It is this!”
We went back to one of the terraces and sat in the shade of a tree, unpacking our own picnic – fruit and bread we’d bought from a stall at the side of the road. I kicked my sandals off and sat cross-legged, looking out at the gardens below. As the lilting sound of a flute drifted along the terrace, I thought back to that trip to Spain, after Madrid, when we went to the palace of the Alhambra, drifting through Moorish courtyards, listening to the sound of running water, standing hand in hand at the top of the Generalife gardens, looking over at more mountains capped with snow.
“This is lovely,” I said.
Under the next tree a couple sat, murmuring to each other, laughing at private jokes.
“Have you got a boyfriend?” I asked Rashida, without thinking.
She looked a little flustered.
“No,” she said, after a pause.
“Would you like one?”
A little bird flew down next to us. I watched it hop closer, hesitant at first, then bolder, pecking for crumbs in the grass.
“No,” she said. “Not yet. There’s a lot I want to do, Jo-jan. I want a career, like you.”
“Of course,” I said.
“What about you?” she asked.
You always used to challenge me on this one, ask me how the world would ever change if people like me stayed in the closet. And I’d argue that coming out would get in the way of my work. One of the best things about being a woman photographer in a war zone is the access you get that men can’t. I’m hardly going to be welcomed in the women’s quarters if they think I’m there to seduce them.
Don’t assume things, I thought. Rashida’s a friend. Give her credit for understanding.
“Well,” I began.
Just then the call to prayer floated through the gardens, carried on the wind. All around us men began to ready themselves, facing towards the top of the gardens, to Mecca. I decided not to risk it.
“I like my career too,” I said. “And it’s meant sacrifices. It’s hard to keep a relationship going when you spend most of your time away.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth either. Rashida nodded and I changed the subject. After lunch we went back to town. The gardens were beautiful, but I had work to do.
That afternoon, at the guest house, I downloaded the images from Leila’s shoot onto my computer. They were good – we’d been right to keep the curtain: the light was soft, diffused by it. The ones I liked best were of Leila’s hands, still elegant despite her scars, her crimson fingertips resting in the folds of her shalwar kameez. But it was the ones of her face that would sell, the ones that editors might put on covers.
I chose six to give to Leila, and went to a photo studio around the corner, which doubled as an internet café. As I waited for the prints, I logged on to a computer to check my email. Immediately, a picture of a woman flashed up: blond hair, pale skin, on her back, her legs spread, fake breasts pointing straight to the ceiling.
A quick check at the browser history showed that the last user wasn’t unusual. Apart from email, nearly all the sites last viewed were porn: a woman, sometimes two, on their backs or knees, lips parted, eyes half-closed, looking back at the viewer. I thought of th
e stares I got from the men on the street, despite my headscarf and careful clothes, and shuddered.
I closed down the computer and waited at the front desk. When the man came back with the prints, I paid him quickly and left.
That night, in my room, I locked the door and put a towel over the window, then stripped off my clothes and stood naked, feeling the air against my skin. The mirror in the bathroom was small and placed high up, as if to discourage vanity. Instead, I set up my tripod, focusing it on the bedroom wall, and then stood, looking into the camera. I thought of Leila, trembling as she posed for me, and of the women on the internet, posing for a living – and then Lara, naked on your sofa, looking back at me, coolly confident, challenging, young.
I pressed the remote shutter release a few times, then took my camera over to the bed and looked at the snaps. My face stared back at me – I’d tried to look neutral, but there was anger in my eyes that I hadn’t been able to hide. I’d lost weight, and with it any hint of hips. I went straight up and down, like a boy. I was pleased about that – I didn’t want to look like the women in the porn shots. I deleted the pictures from my camera and quickly fell asleep.
The next day I met Rashida and showed her the prints. She was quiet as she studied them closely, then nodded slowly, once.
When Leila opened the package, later that afternoon, she said nothing for a while, and I was worried that they were too much for her to handle. The only mirror in Faisal’s house was old and blotched: these were high-definition close-ups.
Eventually, she turned to me, her good eye clouded with tears. Rashida translated as she spoke.
“They’re what I wanted. I’m not beautiful, but you’ve made me into something that people will look at.”
Thirty-Four
ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY
15th April 1915
I am in a dull mood, preoccupied by thoughts of Robert. Something very bad happened to him in France: that is obvious from his manner, from small things, like the way he reaches for a cigarette without realizing that he already has one between his fingers.
This morning we went for a walk along the seafront, an attempt on my part to get him away from the Pavilion and all its reminders of the Front. It was a blustery day, and so we turned away from the sea, out of the wind. It was lovely to walk along the smaller streets, the tiny twittens flanked with flint-fronted cottages. Men pushed handbarrows piled high with fish, calling to housewives to buy the last herrings of the season, a shilling for twenty-four. On the corner stood an organ grinder, cranking out his tunes while a little monkey in a red coat held out a tin for coins. He was very sweet, and I asked Robert for a penny to give to him. When he didn’t reply, I looked around and saw that he was clutching at his chest.
The Repercussions Page 14