He regretted it almost immediately.
How were the women up there, in the steppe, the Uyghur—who, it turned out, was from Kashgar—wanted to know.
“Well,” answered Ghafoor, scooping handfuls of palov with his fingers. “The women are well.” At the table next to him, he heard a European refer to the rice dish as pilaff, the Kashgari at his table refer to it as polu, and of course, were he in Pakistan, he would hear it called pilau. It was piled high with mutton seasoned with herbs rather than spices and though he was now used to the difference, he ate with two tongues, one that did all the work while the other dreamed of flavors it did not touch.
“So you are married, then?” continued the Uyghur, who preferred to sip black tea without milk or sugar rather than eat. “To a Muslim?”
“Yes,” he shifted in his seat. The Muslim of the steppe, he knew, was too animist for the Muslim of the town, and the Muslim of the town, for the Soviets and the Chinese, was just too Muslim.
“How many wives?” said the man, now lighting a pipe.
“One.” Ghafoor licked a spoon of yogurt, thinking, They like their yogurt sour here.
A silence ensued, as deliberate as the slow burn of his pipe. The other man ordered a bottle of vodka, and, when it arrived, he began to talk. He spoke of the Andijan Massacre, two months earlier. Police had shot into a crowd of men, women, and children pressed together in Babar Square to protest the arrest of several businessmen. This was the same square in which their forefathers had fought Russian forces. They were not about to acquiesce to a president who behaved like a twenty-first-century tsar. More than 10,000 people came out in support of the prisoners. The Uzbek army blocked all routes to Babar Square with armored personnel vehicles and tanks. “Then every one began to panic,” said the Uzbek. “We heard the whit whit whit of steel blades over our heads. At the exact moment when I looked up, the shooting began. It was like 1898 all over again, only now, they shot at us from the sky. We found the graves later. Fresh ones. Thousands of them. Even children.”
The Uyghur listened. When the Uzbek was finished, he began to talk. More native Kashgaris had been forced out of their city as China’s plan to develop Kashgar fortified. China had put more Uyghur organizations on the terrorist list, convincing the international community to do the same. There were even Uyghurs in Guantanamo Bay, handed over to America by Pakistan. The two men traded tales of injustice till long after the sunlight had slid off the statue of Babar’s horse.
At last the Uzbek concluded, “We thought we were free, but now our own president works against us. Jailing those who are strong, shooting those who are weak!”
At which point, the Uyghur turned to Ghafoor (causing him to wonder later if every detail of this afternoon had been rehearsed), “Your country does the same. Why does it make friends with China? Why does it let China build highways and ports through the lands of its own people? Do you think it will make men like you rich?”
Ghafoor had stopped eating some time ago; the vodka he guzzled. He did not know how to explain that it had been a while, a very long while indeed, since he felt he had a country. Perhaps the last time was even before he had a single hair on his cheek. He had tried to fight for it, once, this country that had never been his, as though by fighting for it, he might earn it, but this had only resulted in his own people telling him to leave. He now belonged to the steppe. Even if he still carried his past in his shins.
“We herders have a very different fate,” said the Uyghur, ordering a fresh pot of tea. “We may wear better clothes than those who still spend their lives looking for a field that welcomes them, but we will never stop wandering. Will we? Even when we have an obligation to stay.” The last words were spoken with the pipe clenched between his teeth.
Outside the teahouse, in the distance, Ghafoor could now barely see the statue of Babar on his horse. What he would give to call the horse to himself at that moment. Or call his wife. He could ride away with her. They could play kyz kuu.
“You say nothing, my friend? You must know that wherever men like us go, we are treated the same. Uyghur businessmen, Kazakh cattle-breeders, Gujjar buffalo herders. The same. Your in-laws do not speak of it? All the men who have passed through their land, as though they had the right? Taking anything they please. Giving nothing in return. Taking, even, their women.”
The Uzbek was laughing. “Enough! The day is closing and the stars begin to call!” He picked up the rugs and tossed too few bills on the table. Then he left.
“You will help us,” the Uyghur patted Ghafoor on the back. It was not a question.
The next day, Ghafoor was sent a message. That something he was looking for, which must be rare, very rare, that surprise that no one had ever thought to give—how had he put it? Yes, the most beautiful and the most short-lived—it would be waiting for him next week, in Gilgit, in northern Pakistan.
Before leaving Andijan, he caught sight of something twinkling just behind the ghostly statue of Babar’s horse. It was even brighter than moonlight, and so he must follow it, a silvery cape of gauze draped around the shoulders of a woman in a gaily colored skirt. She had wide hips that pulled him to that portion of Babar Theater that still lay charred from the riots two months ago. Someone had started the fire before the army began firing on the protesters, but no one knew who, or why. The theater was black and crumbling and doves did not walk, nestle, or wait here, nor did hawks draw somersaults in the endless hemisphere of the sky. Here, there was no sky. Only broken walls and tattered curtains and cigarette stubs. She was older than he had thought and missing teeth. Why had he followed her at all? Perhaps to find himself getting better at getting naked faster than the ashes beneath them could turn to dust.
He held the box in his hands. Two flowers, still fresh. As fresh as the memory of those who had brought them. “They are what you wanted. Rare, radiant, sweet. And they will last only as long as you do.” This was said by the man without toes but with all his fingers. He was the brother of the man who had been executed four years ago because Pakistan had given him away. The man without toes and without a few fingers was the brother of the girl Ghafoor had dishonored.
The box fit exactly in Ghafoor’s hand, from wrist to middle finger. It was two-tiered, divided by a wooden plank. The flowers lay on top, on a white satin cushion. From beneath the plank escaped streams of packing material, but he was told not to look further. He was only to carry it. There would be other deliveries—the two men exchanged looks—after which, he must come back here, with news for them.
Ghafoor paused. They were not alone in the café. The Pakistanis milling around were mostly Shia, but even the Sunnis made him cringe. All of them spoke the word Gujjar with disdain. There were Kashmiris here, too, some with wretched stories of Indian prisons. The Kashmiris seldom insulted him. Outside, military convoys patrolled the muddy roads. He thought briefly that if the men with the box gave him trouble, perhaps in another country, the men in uniform might help. Then he remembered the military parade in Kashgar and the Uzbek army’s massacre of civilians in Andijan, and he decided he had nowhere to run.
He could hear a Turkic tongue being spoken several tables away. He caught the word cehennem. Hell. Jahannum in Urdu. And in Gujri? What did it matter, since it was barely his language anymore? No Soviet worth his salt would do business in Ghafoor’s native tongue. But then, who would?
The men had ordered food and the food now arrived, plates of mutton korma spiced the way he had been craving just a week ago, pilau piled high with peas—smaller peas than in the steppe but so much more flavorful—and kebabs skewered not on bicycle spokes but on skewers. The newspaper wrapped around the naan was in a script that was strangely familiar. Cyrillic. His wife could read it and had tried to teach him how, but he had failed as surely as at kyz kuu. He had not expected to see Cyrillic in Pakistan. But nothing surprised him now. What was it the Uyghur in Andijan had said?
Herders have a very different fate. We may wear better clothes than those who st
ill spend their lives looking for a field that welcomes them, but we will never stop wandering.
Why was every mountain town the loneliest place in the world? Everyone here was scarred. Everyone here was in flight. Everyone was a passing flower in a dangerous box.
The men complimented the food, while insisting their kebabs tasted better. They attempted a joke. “What was the first thing Neil Armstrong saw when he landed on the moon?”
Not this again, thought Ghafoor.
“Two Uyghurs trying to sell him grilled kebabs!”
It was not even funny, this joke they repeated as often as their prayers.
In a moment of defiance he pushed the box toward them. “I must know what it is before I agree to carry it.”
The men refused.
“Then my answer is no.”
“We know you have done much worse. And that you have unfinished business.”
Was he about to trade his life for two flowers?
“And you must know we can also do worse,” they added.
What? Without hands and feet? Ghafoor was about to blurt, but then he paused.
The man without right finger or thumb was scooping food perfectly into his lips, without even trickling grease over those palms of soft brown leather. Watching those hands, Ghafoor was suddenly visited by a memory that had never visited him before. How could it have lived inside him all this time?
It was a memory of Maryam’s brother, Adil, whose true friend he had once been. The two boys were at the edge of Lake Saiful Maluk, talking about Maryam without really talking about her. Ghafoor was frightened of losing his friend by admitting he had been pursuing her with music and honey. So they talked about music without talking about honey. Her brother played his drum, Ghafoor played his flute, and while they paid attention only to each other, Maryam had arrived, cautiously, standing shyly behind a tree. A butterfly flit between all three of them, a yellow swallowtail with a shimmer of purple spots at the edge of two serrated wings. Maryam followed it with her eyes the entire time the boys played music. When it landed on her shoulder, she laughed, stroking it gently with her thumb. Her brother stopped playing and told her to leave. She did. The butterfly flew away. Ghafoor put away his flute and began to walk down the hill toward his cluster of tents. He did not want it to show, but he had not liked the way Adil had told her to leave. He was descending the hill when her brother caught up with him at a run, cupping something in his hands. The two boys faced each other. Adil opened his hands very slightly and Ghafoor leaned forward to find the butterfly pulsing inside. He reflexively extended his own hands. Then he began to feel the wings beat against his own flesh. For the longest time the two boys stood there, the hands of the brother in the hands of the friend, the hands of the friend in the hands of the brother, and there had been a silent agreement between them: her brother was passing her to him.
And what had he done instead?
The flowers in the box were the exact yellow shade of the butterfly, with the exact wingspan, and exact sheen. The man with the leather palms shut the lid of the box, and closed a half-fist around it. He extended both palms toward Ghafoor and Ghafoor cupped them in his.
FOUR
Hospitable Truths
I was feeling a little better.
As we prepared to leave, I found myself glancing frequently toward the tents. I noticed how shabby they were, each covered in a thin black sheet secured with sticks. The sheet flapped in the breeze and would surely leak in the rain.
Though I wanted another glimpse of the girl’s mother, I feared it. She was young, younger than me, probably younger than Farhana. She must have borne her first child—the curly-haired boy who brought us the honey—in her early teens. Her face. So fierce, so proud. I wanted to talk to her. What I’d say I didn’t know. But I’d developed an incapacity to do anything besides replay the angry glare she’d cast me twice, first when we headed to the lake with her daughter, then when I found the body first. It was absolutely the way I wanted to be looked at. Damn you. I wanted to hear it said in her voice.
Then I wanted her to like me.
Earlier today, after returning from the body to my tent, I looked for Irfan. I found him sleeping at the foothill where we’d lounged together while eating honey-dipped pears. He probably hadn’t been sleeping much, and it was still early, but I shook him awake. I told him he had to go to the family, tell them I was sorry. He shoved me; it was very close to a punch. “Forgiving you is the last thing on anyone’s mind, you fool.”
A fool is absolutely what I wanted to be called.
I couldn’t bear to look at Farhana. She couldn’t bear to look at me. We were settling into the more bearable rhythm of avoiding each other. We were packing our things. At last, after days of listless shock, we had something to do. We threw ourselves into folding away Irfan’s tent (“Let me do it,” she snatched, eyes averted), zipping up his two sleeping bags (“Then let me do this,” I pulled), ensuring the campsite was clean (both of us pacing, gathering imaginary peels and crumbs). Busywork, the mask of the socially impotent. Keep moving, away, except … where to?
We knew we had to head down the glacier back to our cabin to pack up from there and proceed—north or south? The question was growing fat. Many questions were growing even fatter. We waited for someone to make a decision, any decision, casting surreptitious glances at one another when we believed the other wasn’t looking.
One thing was clear: the shores of the lake had grown very small. Our delay had drawn the mountains closer. They loomed over us, warning that no matter where we went, they could follow. And the tribes were also scorning us, though less surreptitiously. Of course they wanted us to leave. But they wouldn’t say it, not to us, though I found out later that they’d said it to Irfan, and he’d had to ask them, much to his disgust, for time for me to heal. “As if you and Farhana hadn’t exploited their hospitality enough.”
Throughout our last day, as we packed—there was hardly anything to pack, but we kept the pace, the pace was key—Irfan met with Kiran’s father, and they talked in low, rapid tones. I couldn’t imagine what words Irfan could find. Green eyes, I thought. Eyes like enormous grapes. The mother’s billowing shirt, ferocious glare, meticulously braided hair. So young. The baby’s brown hand on the cold blue neck. She knew I hadn’t wanted her there, in the boat. Kola, she said, daring me to take an interest, to know that I was making her feel like the intruder.
Somehow I found the courage to join Irfan.
Kiran’s father tilted his head, now in a white turban, and folded his hands behind his back when he saw me. He had small brown eyes, a limp, and a gentle demeanor. He didn’t appear angry or fierce but entirely depleted.
They were also leaving. To bury Kiran down in the plains. They’d migrated to the upper Kaghan Valley with their cattle in April, intending to stay through the summer before returning to the lowlands, where those who’d chosen a more settled way of life cultivated maize, potatoes, and beans. This had been the way for centuries. Their cattle needed to graze in these hills before returning to the plains for the long, merciless winter. But they were cutting the season short to return Kiran to her less transient home, near Balakot, where she’d been born, perhaps like her father Suleiman, and mother Maryam, and both her siblings. It would mean the cattle would starve over winter, or, equally troubling, that they’d spend the remaining summer crossing into fenced-off fields, costing the family hefty fines and possibly even confiscation. But Kiran had to rest.
The rapid murmurs between Irfan and Suleiman involved money. Suleiman’s murmurs were lost to me, but there were more familiar sounds flowing from Irfan’s tongue than I’d bothered to hear till now. I caught Urdu mixed with the Hindko-Gujri hybrid he’d so effectively been using since our arrival, and even a little English, for instance, “crop” and “full enough.” My stomach clenched. Had Kiran understood Farhana and myself on the boat? She’d spent six summers here, around English-speaking visitors to the lake, like us. What had she heard? No, we
’d spoken in code. She couldn’t have comprehended us, even if we’d been speaking her very own tongue.
Irfan was saying that there could never be full enough. He was a Muslim, and understood very well that money could never make up for what had been lost. God was watching, and knew that he would sooner go hungry than presume to suggest otherwise. But the fact was, the family was going to suffer even worse in the coming years if their cattle died, or were confiscated. They had two remaining children to feed.
I understood enough of Suleiman’s reply to know he was insisting God would guide them. He added that if needed, neighboring tribes were there to help. To which Irfan replied that the community was a wonderful source of strength, by the grace of Allah, but there was no harm in accepting help from him, Irfan, who was no stranger to this land. As Suleiman knew, from his many years here, Irfan honored and loved the valley and its people. (Irfan’s voice cracked.) To which Suleiman replied by spitting. To which Irfan turned to me, his face red with rage, “Have you no shame? Leave us.”
I wondered briefly why no one had crept into our tent the very first night, and killed either or both Farhana and me.
Her brother played the flute. Her sister dug in the dust with a stick, swaying her head from side to side. A boy from another tent joined them, lightly keeping beat on a tabla. He had only the left-hand drum. This was the boy drum, the bass. The right-hand drum—the girl, the one that dictates the melody—was missing. The heel of his left hand dug softly into the goatskin, cajoling, and the answer was deep and hollow, a swallowing, a sinking. A return to the water’s depths. The brother blew through the bamboo bansuri as if in a prayer, or a kiss. The sister swayed. It was such a plaintive song, of such astonishing sweetness and hope and lasting farewell, that I bowed my head and wept.
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