The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  Zahra and Farida were replacing cups on the tray, clearing space among cushions to lay out photograph albums, telling each other all the time where to find what they wanted and how to make room for it. Farida laid the shawl aside.

  Mair put her photograph in its folder and quietly replaced it with the lock of hair in her handbag.

  ‘See, Bruno? This is little Sanjay – he is nearly six. He is a very clever boy. Already he is good at mathematics. His father tells us he is the best in his class.’

  A long interlude followed in which Bruno looked at all the pictures and asked the right questions while Mair peered over his shoulder and made supplementary noises.

  And then after the Dasgupta family news it was time for reciprocal questions about the senior Beckers and their neighbours, and commiserations because Bruno’s father wasn’t showing any signs of mental recovery. Farida brought in more tea and savoury snacks. Footsteps came across the courtyard and an elderly, oval-shaped man in a business suit appeared in the doorway.

  Zahra called, ‘Dilip, you are here at last. Say hello to our visitors.’

  Mr Dasgupta was bald, smiling, almost as light-skinned as his wife. He was courteous to Zahra’s connections from Switzerland but it was also clear that here was a man who was ready for his dinner. With polite formulations, invitations to stay and regretful refusals, the visit began to wind itself up.

  Mair had worked out what she wanted to do. ‘Mrs Dasgupta,’ she began, ‘I’d like to ask you a favour.’

  With only a glint over the spectacles, she said, ‘My dear, of course.’

  ‘For my grandmother Nerys’s sake, please will you keep the shawl? I’d like you to have it – you and Farida, of course – and I think that’s what Nerys would have wanted too. For months I was on a quest for its history. I went to Ladakh and Srinagar, even up to what’s left of Kanihama village to see where it was woven and embroidered.

  ‘I feel that in the end the shawl would be closer to home here with you, closer to its own history, rather than in England with me.’

  Farida’s face blazed with joy. She said imploringly to Zahra, ‘My village. My family made this thing. So much work.’ She held it against her thin chest. ‘And it comes from our mother Ness, you know, very long ago.’

  Mr Dasgupta put on horn-rimmed glasses and studied the corner of the shawl that hung free from Farida’s arms. ‘The finest work. Good enough for a museum,’ he pronounced.

  Zahra pursed her lips. ‘Dilip knows what he is talking about. His business is textiles. If this is truly what you would like,’ she said, ‘although this shawl has no real connection to me, I appreciate what you are saying. Therefore, thank you.’

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Mair said. ‘I’d like to take a photograph.’

  Quickly she brought out her digital camera and passed it to Bruno. She stood on one side of Zahra with Farida on the other, the shawl draped like a magnificent banner between the three of them.

  Bruno took the picture.

  Mr Dasgupta insisted that he must drive them back to their hotel but Mair and Bruno said they wouldn’t hear of it. They compromised by accepting a lift to a busier street where a taxi or an auto-rickshaw would be easy to find. Zahra and Farida came out and saw them into the big black car that had white linen slipcovers over the seats. Bruno was warmly embraced, Mair was kissed on the cheek, and the car moved off at last.

  Zahra waved energetically until they turned the corner. Farida stood in the wall’s shade with the shawl still in her arms.

  After Dilip had left them, with a stream of instructions about how to regain their hotel, Bruno let out a long breath. ‘I need a beer.’ He groaned.

  The nearest bar was lit with blue and pink neon. It had giant Bollywood posters lining the walls and a clientele dressed in skinny jeans and oracular Japanese T-shirts.

  Bruno said, ‘That was rather clever of you.’

  A waiter brought their drinks, the glasses deliciously beaded with condensation. They clinked them together. Mair felt as if she were already half drunk. Amazement and apprehension ran through her in unsteadying currents. ‘What was?’

  ‘You returned the shawl to its rightful owner, without the owner accepting the real reason for her right of possession. Do you feel sad to have parted with it?’

  Mair shook her head. ‘It was Zahra’s all along. I couldn’t keep it for myself. You do believe our story, don’t you, rather than Zahra’s version?’

  ‘Yep. Anyway, scientifically speaking, the simplest theory most probably being the correct one isn’t what Occam’s Razor really indicates …’

  ‘Oh, please.’ She laughed.

  ‘Zahra’s is quite a success story, isn’t it? I think, having come so far, it’s her right to believe in whatever version of her past she chooses.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you for warning me off when I was going to plunge on regardless.’

  ‘You looked furious.’

  She bit her lip, fending off embarrassment because of the revelation that had followed the anger. ‘It was only for about a second. Was I wrong to have tried to convince her in the first place?’

  ‘No. Deliberately to withhold the truth would have been wrong. Shall we look at your photograph?’

  As they bent over the little screen Mair was acutely conscious of his hand and arm, and the weight of his shoulder against hers.

  The picture was pin-sharp, and somehow Bruno had caught an echo of that other photograph of three women.

  ‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll take it to the business centre at the hotel and run off a gloss print. We can take it with us.’

  ‘Take it with us?’

  ‘To Srinagar.’

  She stared at him. ‘We’re going to Srinagar?’

  After Zahra had so decisively stonewalled the news they had brought her, Mair had assumed they would have to abandon their original plan to travel on to Kashmir. She didn’t see how they could find a way to tell Caroline that the daughter she had given up so long ago was alive and well, but had chosen not to believe in their relationship.

  ‘Of course. We have to close this circle somehow, don’t you think?’

  As if to demonstrate, Bruno reached out to clasp her hand, lightly threading his fingers through hers.

  Mair wondered giddily which circle he really meant. She loved him for taking up her quest and making it theirs. For that, and for everything else. Suddenly, Hattie and Ed floated into her mind.

  ‘Would you like another of those?’ he asked, nodding at her drink.

  ‘I would,’ she said.

  Srinagar had changed.

  On the way in from the airport, the roads were clogged with slow-moving traffic, held up at almost every junction by police or Indian Army roadblocks. Imperious young paramilitaries toting automatic weapons patrolled the streets, herding the crowds of pedestrians as they passed in a weary stream under the chinar trees. The blue air was thick with the fumes of idling engines, and crackling with tension. Around Lal Chowk there were bombed-out buildings, shabby bazaars and fine old brick houses blackened by fire or pocked with bullet holes. Everywhere they looked there were more troops, and more roadblocks. Mair knew that separatist insurgents had stepped up their activities as more of the militant young stone-throwers returned from the camps as trained gunmen and arsonists. The levels of violence against the Indian Army of occupation had lately risen almost to the point of open war, yet still she hadn’t quite anticipated the atmosphere of dejection and the evidence of economic decay that riddled Srinagar.

  The word that came to her was extinguished. That was how the place and its buoyant people seemed today, and the sadness of it struck through her.

  In the taxi Bruno silently gazed out of the window. She had wanted him to love Kashmir at first sight because that was how it had been for her, and she found herself trying to excuse the present state of the city. She pointed at ancient tiered roofs in the distance. ‘It’s not always like this. It’s really very
beautiful. Look, there’s the Jama Masjid, the Friday Mosque. Fourteenth century.’

  Their driver sat hunched in his grey tunic, patiently waiting for yet another Indian soldier to flag him down and minutely scrutinise their papers.

  At last they reached the hotel. Mair had chosen one of the Chinese-owned establishments on the Bund, not the one where she had sheltered from the grenade attack, but quite close at hand. They had passed Solomon and Sheba on the way, the old houseboat tilting even more rakishly towards the mirror surface of the lake. She didn’t even point it out to Bruno. She had decided against booking a houseboat. For all their various states of decay they were raffish, romantic destinations, chosen by lovers and honeymooners.

  As they checked in, they were told that a city-wide curfew would operate from dusk until dawn. They ate another coffee-shop dinner, this one without even the benefit of alcohol because the hotel didn’t serve it. From not very far away they heard the brief, shocking rattle of gunfire.

  ‘Difficult time.’ Their waiter sighed as he put down bowls of reddish soup. ‘Very difficult. You are tourists here?’ There was always hope for more tourists.

  ‘Not really,’ Mair had to say.

  ‘You are UN? NGO?’

  ‘No, just visiting a friend.’ Bruno probably didn’t mean to sound curt, but the man withdrew at once.

  They didn’t talk much while they were eating. Mair knew that Bruno must be thinking of that other visit he had planned, with Lotus and Karen.

  In her room, before she went to bed, she lifted layers of tobacco-reeking net curtain and peered out into the night. A police car crawled along the deserted street. Not far away, a building was on fire. She could see an ugly red glow licking the undersides of cushions of smoke.

  The next morning they took an auto-rickshaw to Caroline’s house.

  The old bazaars were thronged with people and, instead of an army jeep, a mixed herd of goats and sheep scudding through the traffic held them up. Bruno smiled at the sight. ‘I’m sorry I was so subdued last night.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘This is a troubled place.’

  ‘But a resilient one. It gets under your skin, I know that.’

  ‘It must have been the same for Caroline. She made the opposite move to most of the British Raj, coming back out from England to live here, didn’t she?’

  Their little vehicle surged forward as the last of the sheep bounded out of their path.

  Aruna answered the door of the house in its overgrown garden and frowned at Mair as if she had last visited only the day before yesterday. ‘Mrs Bowen very tired. Not at all well. I am sorry.’

  Mair stepped closer, holding the package of Nerys’s letters. ‘I promised I would return these. We won’t stay very long. This is Mr Becker, a friend of an old friend of Mrs Bowen’s.’

  Aruna received this information and the package with another frown, but she gave up the attempt to exclude them.

  The room at the back of the house was quiet, except for Chopin on the CD player. Caroline sat in her usual chair. Both feet were now propped up on the stool and a walking frame stood close at hand. Sensing their presence she turned her head as soon as they came in, but Mair could tell that her eyesight had gone completely. She peered anxiously in their direction, listening intently through the piano music.

  ‘Aruna? Is that you?’

  Mair went quickly to her side. ‘It’s Mair again. Do you remember? Nerys Watkins’s granddaughter?’

  ‘Who? Who is that? Nerys’s granddaughter, did you say? My dear friend Nerys? I can’t believe it.’

  Mair hesitated, momentarily disconcerted by the memory blank. Bruno was equal to it. He came to the other side of the chair and said gently, ‘Hello, Mrs Bowen. I’m Bruno, Mair’s friend. My grandfather was a good friend of Rainer Stamm’s.’

  ‘Rainer.’ Caroline clapped her hands. ‘How extraordinary. Where is he? I’d like to see him. Do tell him so, won’t you?’

  Bruno took her hand and held on to it. It looked like a tiny claw caught in his big fist.

  Caroline smiled, radiance lighting her blind face. ‘Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘Rainer’s dead, you know. He was climbing a mountain.’

  ‘Everyone’s dead,’ she retorted, still smiling. ‘You get used to it at my age. I’m ninety, you know. Ninety. That’s right, Aruna, isn’t it?’ She cocked her head, listening for Aruna’s voice.

  ‘Yes, ninety.’ Aruna sighed. This was obviously a question that was regularly asked. She unscrewed a small brown bottle and counted out green-and-white capsules.

  Caroline sat back, still clasping Bruno’s hand. ‘Isn’t this jolly? You must tell me all your news. We should have a drink. Aruna, dear, what have we got?’

  ‘Thank you, that would be very welcome,’ Bruno said, giving Aruna a look. He had the measure of her.

  ‘I’ll see what there is,’ she said, as she left the room.

  Mair came closer. ‘Mrs Bowen, do you remember when I came to see you last year and I brought the shawl? Zahra’s shawl, you said it was.’

  ‘Did I, dear?’ The smile hardly faded. The CD stopped playing and the music centre emitted a small electrical hum.

  Mair lowered her voice. There was no script for what she was about to say.

  ‘I left the shawl with Zahra. Was that the right thing to have done? I saw her two days ago, in Delhi. Zahra survived, you see. Rainer sent her safely to Europe, all those years ago. Bruno and I met her, and her husband.’

  There was a moment’s pause.

  ‘Did you? That’s nice, dear,’ Caroline said.

  The electrical hum was like a mosquito’s whine. Bruno began a move to switch off the player but Caroline gripped his hand. ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he soothed. ‘Do you understand what Mair is saying?’

  The old woman turned, trying in vain to see their faces. Uncertainty clouded her trusting smile. ‘Who? Who is this? Is Nerys here?’

  Mair said, more urgently, ‘Was it the right thing to do, to give Zahra her shawl?’

  Over Caroline’s white head Bruno’s eyes locked with hers.

  Caroline murmured, ‘Well, I expect so. If it was hers. Where is Aruna?’

  ‘She has just gone to fetch some drinks. She’ll be back in a minute,’ Bruno reassured her. He squeezed her hand and her face cleared again.

  ‘Oh, yes. A drink would be nice. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘It’s Bruno.’

  Aruna came back with a tray and glasses and a jug. She poured lemonade for them all, and when hers was placed in her hand Caroline gulped thirstily, like a child. Afterwards she gave a small belch. Aruna tipped two pills into her palm and she swallowed them with a refill of lemonade.

  Mair wondered how long they had actually been sitting in the room with its view of the garden that Caroline could no longer see. It felt like a long time.

  The thread that she had traced for so many months ended here. It had woven a complicated pattern, and even though she couldn’t cut the ends free and finish them off with knots, like those of the shawl itself, she was glad that she had followed it all the way.

  Caroline yawned. Her head fell back against the chair cushions and her jaw sagged. Bruno released her hand and folded her wrist into her lap. A moment later a snore escaped from her open mouth.

  Mair was looking round the room. Pointedly, Aruna drew up a blanket and tucked it round her charge’s shoulders. She picked up the glasses and replaced them on the tray as Mair and Bruno stood up.

  ‘I’d like to leave this for Mrs Bowen,’ Mair said quickly. ‘It’s … some old friends of hers who we met this week in Delhi.’

  Caroline’s chair was placed next to the brown-tiled fireplace. There was a shelf over it with a gilt-framed overmantel mirror so Mair tucked the glossy print into a corner of the frame. She and Zahra and Farida smiled out into the room. Aruna immediately came to peer at it, adjusting her spectacles to see more c
learly.

  She pointed. ‘You brought this shawl with you last time you were here.’

  ’That’s right.’

  ‘She can’t see it, you know. What does it mean?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just a Kashmir shawl. And it’s more that we – I, that is – want the photograph to see her. Is that all right?’ She ignored Aruna’s sceptical look. ‘Please, may I use the bathroom before we leave?’

  ‘I will show you.’

  Caroline was fast asleep. Mair bent over her as she passed and just brushed the top of her head with her lips.

  ‘She is asleep most of the time nowadays,’ Aruna said, with just a hint of tenderness. She pointed down the little hallway to the open door of a green-painted bathroom and carried the tray into the kitchen. Bruno stood examining a series of framed photographs of polo teams that hung beside the front door.

  Mair checked over her shoulder, rushed to the bathroom and loudly closed the door, staying on the outside of it. Caroline’s room must be the one next door. There was a bed with a white cover under the canopy of a rolled mosquito net. She slipped in and glanced round. It was more like a hospital room than a bedroom, with a similar antiseptic tang in the air. Next to the bed stood a table with a single drawer.

  She slid open the drawer, glancing at the medical contents. Then she tucked the cellophane-enclosed lock of Zahra’s hair inside at the back where it couldn’t be seen. She closed it and dashed back to peer through the crack in the door. The hallway was filled with the sound of knocking. Aruna bustled out of the kitchen, and while her back was turned, Mair popped out as if from the bathroom.

  Bruno raised one eyebrow at her.

  On the doorstep stood three women, faces framed by black hijab scarves. One of them carried a wicker basket, with the same red and green patterning as a kangri holder. Evidently Aruna knew her visitors quite well. She showed them to the old chairs under the shade of the veranda. Mair was thinking, But I know them too. How do I know them? There were two young girls with smooth olive cheeks, and an older one with a lined face.