The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  She didn’t say as much – because that would have been a complaint, and she made it a firm rule always to defer to the demands of her husband’s work – but Myrtle dreaded going back south to their winter home. It was too lonely there, in the quiet rooms, without Archie. This time she was sure he would be away for a long while.

  ‘That sounds a good idea,’ Archie concurred.

  Nerys kept her head bent in order not to intercept the look that passed between them. As soon as she had finished eating she excused herself, saying she had some letters to write, and left the McMinns alone together.

  The tailor worked in a tiny shop between the first and second Jhelum bridges.

  Archie had driven out of Srinagar the day before, and Nerys was trying hard to be the best possible company for Myrtle. She wasn’t finding it particularly easy because she had just received a letter from Evan saying he was detained by mission business near Kargil and wouldn’t reach Srinagar until the very end of October. Her own spirits were lower than they had been since leaving Leh. Didn’t he want to come and join her? Why was his work always so much more important than she was? But, still, she had ignored her own inclination to spend the afternoon moping over a book on the shady veranda of the Garden of Eden, and agreed to come shopping with Myrtle.

  The tailor sprang up as soon as he saw them. He sat them in the two chairs that took up almost the entire floor space, and began to haul bolts of cloth off the shelves.

  ‘Silk, madam. Finest.’ A waterfall of pale eau-de-Nil fabric spilt over Nerys’s lap. ‘Tussore, linen, pure cotton.’ Silver pink, lavender, dove grey, snow white. Nerys couldn’t help fingering the folds. She did need clothes, even if they weren’t things as lovely as Myrtle’s or Mrs Conway-Freeborne’s. She even had a little money of her own, the few hundred pounds’ worth of capital left to her by her grandparents that she had never touched. She had believed that it might buy a home for Evan and their family some day or – with vague and nowadays seriously diminished piety – perhaps be used to do some good work. But then (the thought made her feel deliciously wanton and self-indulgent) maybe she could spend just a little of it on herself.

  ‘Tweed,’ Myrtle said crisply, pushing aside the summer-weight fabrics. ‘You will want a pheran, Nerys.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A long Kashmiri topcoat with loose sleeves like a cape. Warm, practical. Everyone wears one as soon as the cold weather arrives.’

  The tailor came back, tottering under the weight of bolts of heavier fabric. He shook out one length after another and the three began to debate the differences, comparing the thickness of one with the weave of another, considering the subtlest heather-purple check against the green with a thin pimento-red stripe. And then, once Nerys had finally chosen a fine grey-blue tweed the colour of lake mist, there were a dozen details of cut and style to be decided. After that, there was an elaborate series of measurements to be taken, all of this written down in a black notebook with pages as fine as the skin of a brown onion. A samovar was brought in on a heavy brass tray and tea was served, with fresh afternoon bread straight from the oven in the baker’s shop a dozen yards away.

  The whole process took more than two hours, and Myrtle said that that was really very quick for such an important purchase.

  ‘Seven days, then ready, Memsahib,’ promised the tailor.

  Eventually they emerged into the late sunshine. Myrtle pushed her fists deep into the pockets of her skirt and looked up and down the narrow street. Her dark hair was growing longer and she had rolled it into loose curls that framed her face. She had also applied red lipstick. Nerys thought how beautiful and bold she looked.

  ‘It’s half past four. I have to go to Bandage Club,’ Myrtle announced. ‘It’s not what you’d call fun, I’m afraid, but would you like to come with me? You may get a cup of tea and an iced bun, unless the buns have been withdrawn due to rationing.’

  The organisation for military and civilian wives, British and Indian, was actually called Wartime Hospital Supplies. The volunteers sat at long tables sorting and packing bandages and dressings for despatch to the front. Nerys could imagine the club ladies working away while all the time their gossip scorched the antiseptic air. She didn’t feel strongly tempted, and the alleys of the old town were beckoning. ‘Next time. I think I’ll go for a walk now.’

  Myrtle looked doubtful. ‘A walk? Here? Why not take a shikara to the Shalimar Garden instead?’

  ‘I’ll take a tonga home if it gets too much.’ Nerys smiled.

  Alone, she wandered past the local baker’s tiny niche in the crowded row of shops. The shop consisted of a pit dug in the ground, in which the baker crouched below street level in front of a cylindrical clay oven glowing hot with the wood fire at its base. He leant forward to fan the red embers, and even from where she was standing Nerys could feel the heat on her cheeks and forehead. The vertical walls of the oven were lined with circles of half-cooked dough, the delicious afternoon bread of Kashmir. Three veiled Muslim women brushed past her and the sweating baker half rose from his squatting position to serve them with hot fresh rolls from the highest part of the oven. Even though she had had tea at the tailor’s shop the scent of the sesame-crusted bread was too good to resist. Nerys bought a roll for herself and ate it as she strolled on down the alley towards the sliver of canal visible at the far end. On the way she passed one shop selling piles of aluminium pans and kettles, another that specialised in string and rope of every conceivable weight, coiled in pyramids or hung on spools, and others that had nothing but drums of cooking oil, a few sacks of rice, or stacked bundles of firewood to be weighed out on a primitive balance. A man led a donkey swaying under a load of wood that was taller than itself.

  When she reached the canal Nerys glanced from left to right. Srinagar was threaded with waterways, an intricate maze of them connecting the lakes and the river, itself much more heavily frequented than the dusty streets. The canal surface here was coated with a bright green scum, broken up in places by the passing boats to reveal the oily blackness beneath. One shikara was curtained to protect its passenger from the casual gaze, another boat was loaded with cut greens from the floating gardens out in the lake.

  The muddy banks on either side boiled with life. A woman with a bucket was washing plates, and others slapped the suds out of their laundry against convenient rocks. Glistening naked children screamed and splashed in the water as, a little further on, a girl tipped out a bowlful of slops. A miserable goat tethered to a post stood with its stick legs buried in mud as chickens scraped and picked in the filth coating the steps. A raft with raised sides slid across, weighed down with a flock of sheep and a child shepherd. The ferryman propelled it by dragging it along a suspended wire. As soon as the boat scraped the opposite bank the sheep crowded off and poured down an alley, following some ancient route through the depths of the city. Tall wooden buildings jutted over the narrow channel, the top storeys built outwards with their high windows propped open to catch the breeze.

  Nerys hesitated as she worked out which way to turn. To her left the route was blocked by the poles and tattered awnings of a busy waterside market, where pierced and blackened oil drums functioned as braziers over which stallholders fried pakoras or simmered goat meat; to the right were the brick pillars of a bridge. She retraced a few steps and turned at random into the first alley running parallel to the canal. She had already forgotten where the tailor’s shop and the baker’s lay in this tangle of walls and crowded niches. Picking her way past heaps of refuse, ripe with the stink of the market, she began to walk towards what she thought was a glimpse of the canal. A cart straddling the way forced her to turn aside again and step in another direction, down an alley so narrow there was room for only one person to walk. A sharp dogleg turned one way, then seemed to double back again, and now the sky was blocked out by a crisscross of overhead lines hung with dyed lengths of fabric, hoisted to dry. A file of bearded men in red skullcaps marched towards her and she flattened her
self against the wall to let them by. Nerys knew already that she was lost. She could only keep walking on until she came either to the canal where she could perhaps wave for a shikara, or to a road big enough for a tonga to ply for hire.

  The crowds thinned out as she moved away from the market, and she was sometimes almost alone between stone walls or closed wooden shutters. The few passers-by stared blankly at the lone European woman who had wandered away from the jaunty houseboats and the security of the club.

  She began to think that Myrtle’s advice to go to the Shalimar Garden instead of here had actually been excellent.

  Wondering if she could, after all, go back the way she had come, she stopped to peer behind her. A sudden violent tug at the hem of her skirt made her spin round again, almost over-balancing. The lane seemed deserted but then she looked down and saw a trio of tiny children at her feet. Their faces were dark with dirt, their eyes very bright. The oldest might have been five, and she carried a baby bound in a cloth on her back. Her brother was the one who had grabbed a fistful of her skirt. The girl said a few words and pointed, and all the time the baby stared up at Nerys, unwinking. When Nerys didn’t respond, the girl insistently repeated the same phrase, glaring at her as if she must be stupid.

  They vividly reminded her of the children at her school in Leh. She missed them all, their clapping and singing and shy laughter – even their resistance to her efforts to teach them anything except games.

  Her basic knowledge of Ladakhi was no use here, and she hadn’t yet picked up a word of Kashmiri. She tried what Hindustani she knew but the children only shrugged and pulled harder at her. Giving up, Nerys followed as they dragged her along in their wake. Down another twist of the lane, past a mangy dog guarding a doorstep and a beggar who thrust his stick at her, they came to a dark doorway. A piece of sacking was looped to one side and Nerys ducked under the lintel.

  Blinking, she looked round.

  It was a bare, drab slot of a room that smelt of sour milk and human dirt. A heap of torn covers on some sacks revealed where the family slept. In another corner there were a few pots and pans and a dish covered with a filthy rag. In the middle of the room, on a square cut from what had once been a carpet, sat a young woman. She looked exhausted. Her hair was covered with a strip of cloth for a dupatta; her shapeless and soiled cotton tunic only partly concealed her extreme thinness. Her bare feet were filthy and cracked, spread flat on the floor as she leant over a spinning wheel. When the children came in with Nerys she let a spool of spun yarn drop into her lap and dully stared at them. Her daughter launched into what was clearly an explanation of whatever the woman they had captured might be good for. The spinner wearily nodded, attempting a smile for her children’s hostage.

  More than anything else about the sad sight, that smile touched Nerys’s heart.

  The little boy started pinching and whining at his mother. Her smile died. She briefly stroked his hair, then twisted a handful of cloudy combed wool and began to work the treadle of her wheel. The gossamer yarn as it was spun was so fine that Nerys, standing not a yard away, could barely see it.

  With the baby’s head lolling against her back, the little girl rummaged under the sacks and drew out a basket. She unfastened the hemp ties, stooped down and gently lifted out the contents. It was something flat and soft, wrapped in a cloth. When the cloth was folded back, Nerys saw a flash of colours.

  With a showman’s verve, the child shook out the shawl and twirled it in the air, spinning on her heels so the featherweight wool floated. The little boy, hunched against his mother’s flank, clapped his hands and grinned. Even the passive baby chuckled. With care not to let even a corner of the treasure touch the trodden-earth floor, the child caught the folds in her arms and held them out to Nerys. The soft background of the pashmina was a pale rose and at either end there was a broad patterned band, stylised flowers intricately woven in dark red and a dozen shades of green and palest cream. She examined the work closely, intrigued by its fineness. The reverse, she saw, was so like the face as to be almost indistinguishable. How was this beautiful, elegant work done? With Myrtle, she had spent an hour browsing the shops along the Bund but she had seen nothing like this.

  ‘Kani,’ the exhausted young woman said, as if this explained something. ‘Kani,’ she insisted.

  The little girl jumped in front of Nerys, bunching the soft wool in her fists. ‘Rupees? Rupees?’

  The woman touched her fingers to her mouth, all the lines of her face drawn into a plea for money.

  In agony, Nerys took out her leather purse. The boy scrambled to his feet and bumped against her shins, trying to catch a glimpse of wealth. She knew what lay inside – just a few coins, and small-denomination notes worn soft in the Indian way. Enough for a shikara ride across the wide lake, back home to the Garden of Eden.

  Nerys shook the little sum out and held it in the palm of her hand for them all to see. With shame, she realised that there was not enough to pay for even a single cocktail at the Srinagar Club.

  The little girl turned away. She busied herself with refolding their treasure inside its cloth. The woman nodded, holding up her hand for Nerys’s money. She hid it away inside her tunic. She was embarrassed that an honourable potential sale had transformed itself into unvarnished charity, and she wouldn’t meet Nerys’s eyes. The boy knew exactly what was happening and was already pinching his mother’s thin arm again and wheedling for food.

  Abruptly Nerys turned aside, upset and disturbed by what she saw. In her eagerness to get away she was out in the lane once more, where twilight was gathering, before she recalled that she was hopelessly lost. She had to duck back under the lintel and face the family again. She performed a small mime of confusion, pointing one way and the other, shaking her head and holding up her hands. The mother sighed a brief instruction to the children and bent to her spinning wheel.

  Hand in hand with her brother, the little girl led Nerys back past the beggar, who was now sleeping, and the inert dog. The cohort was turning a corner as another, bigger, band of children scuffled out of the shadows. An older boy screeched and began snatching at the clothes of Nerys’s tiny guide. She slapped back at him, shouting at the top of her voice as the newcomers set on her and her brother. Their hands were darting all over the children’s filthy clothes, searching for the money that Nerys must have given them. Nerys waded in between the two groups, dragging them apart and hustling her friends up the alley towards a glimmer of light.

  But now the disturbance had drawn more attention from the warren of dark alleys and passages, and a gang of much older children rushed out at them. These ignored the small fry and jostled Nerys close up against a wall. She tried to slap away their hands as they grabbed at her pockets. The biggest of them, a hulking youth with the dark beginnings of a beard, tore off Myrtle’s circlet of pearl and brilliants that she wore pinned at the throat of her blouse.

  ‘Give that back to me,’ Nerys screamed.

  She was ringed by hostile faces, but she was relieved to see her own threesome retreating under cover of the confusion and melting away. She could give her full attention to her own plight. She stood taller, and pushed the youth in the chest. Instead of stepping back he came closer, thrusting his face into hers. She smelt his breath and the sweat of his body. She was afraid now, and gathered herself to run.

  But which way, in this maze of darkness?

  Nerys balled her fists and ducked under his arm. She feinted a dash in one direction, the youth followed, then she broke away in the other. But to her horror she saw that a man’s misshapen figure loomed ahead, blocking the escape route she had chosen.

  Now she was trapped.

  The man shot out a hand to catch her wrist and his grip was like a vice. To her amazement he said calmly, in accented English, ‘Stand behind me, please.’

  The next thing she knew he had interposed himself between her and the mob of children. He said something commanding in Kashmiri and they all fell back a step.

&n
bsp; Nerys realised that the man’s silhouette appeared distorted because he carried a big bundle of rope over his shoulder. He let the coils drop at his feet and drew out a length to the full width of his outstretched arms. Then, from an inner pocket, he produced a vicious knife and there was a flash of steel as he cut off the length he had measured. Slowly he raised the blade to his lips and kissed it.

  Nerys’s assailants now watched in reluctant fascination, and she edged to one side in order to gain a better view for herself.

  With the knife gripped between his teeth the man took the ends of his yard of rope in each hand and snapped it taut across his chest. Then he quickly doubled the length and snapped that too. He caught up the mid-point in his left fist and, with a flourish, he withdrew the knife from between his lips. The blade flashed once more as he cut the doubled rope in two. The children murmured to each other and pushed closer, and the man let the biggest youth inspect the four ends that were bunched in his fist.

  Now, grinning, the man joined the two severed ends in a knot and pulled it tight to test the join. He held the knot up to Nerys. ‘Please be kind enough to blow on it for me.’

  Intrigued in spite of herself, she did as he asked.

  He brandished the knotted rope in front of them. With surgical precision he placed his thumb and forefinger over the knot and slid it down the length of rope.

  The knot slipped free, and the magician held up the uncut rope for them to see.

  The gang of children gasped. As one body they moved backwards, distancing themselves from this sorcerer. He shook the intact rope at them, giving it a sharp snap in the air and with that they turned and ran, falling over themselves and each other in their anxiety to escape. A second later Nerys was alone with the magician, and the only sounds were of scurrying feet and a dog yelping.