Thinner Than Skin

by Uzma Aslam Khan

  Then I remembered the holy dates. The ones gifted to the policemen in Mansehra and Balakot. The ones that came in a box inside which lay a small handmade bomb, with the firing pin attached to the lid. The blast was enough to kill those within range. I was definitely within range; the other men were not.

  I stared at the red cloth. I did not touch it. There was no picture of a date anywhere I could see. Those other boxes, I imagined them wrapped in shiny gold paper that folded neatly around the edges. I imagined the paper crinkling at the slightest touch, though the touch of those men would not have been slight. I imagined the pictures of fat, juicy dates on a glossy cover, perhaps with nuts. But this was just a red cloth.

  Farhana was with Irfan.

  I heard a gunshot and then a shout. “Son-of-a-swine, open it NOW!”

  Naturally, it wouldn’t always come disguised as holy dates. It could be anything. Including mithai. Including fruit.

  The skinny man was walking toward me, yelling that he would shoot me first, before I could open it. This confused me. I thought he wanted me to open it? Before I could understand, the butt of his rifle hit my cheek. I heard a crack. I fell sideways. Two more men had joined him and only now did it register that none of them were in uniform. This confused me too. Thwack! This time the blow was aimed at my gut. The fist that pulled away was as large as a melon. I drooled blood on his shoe. I could not see very much.

  “We are telling you one last time. When we are at that tree,” he lifted my chin and yanked it sideways, and I screamed, because under his fingers the side of my face rippled like oil, “when we are there, you will open it. Do you understand, you bastard? You son of a whore?”

  They began to back away again.

  “Now: OPEN IT.”

  I could hear my voice come out of my throat in a gargle. “No! Please! Please no!”

  There was no answer.

  Let me walk away. Like you. See how it is, in that innocent wrapping? Let it lie there. Let it rest. Bury it. No one will know. I will never tell. I promise. On my life.

  I straightened myself as best I could to a kneeling position again. I kneeled before these men, who were now safely beside some tree I could not see. My mind was raging but my body was capitulating. I kept kneeling, even as I wanted to tear them apart with my teeth. I wanted to thank them too, for letting me live, if that is what they chose to do, out of the goodness of their hearts. I wanted to kick them to pulp. I kept kneeling. I wanted to silence the part of me that asked why we live subject to those we can’t respect. Why? Why do we agree to live like this? How can we respect ourselves? How would I ever get up again?

  I began to gargle again. “Listen, please listen! Let me live!”

  Gargle gargle gargle.

  It occurred to me that it might be better to die.

  I could simply open the box. No more humiliation. I could end this right now. I reminded myself that I’d wanted to end this even earlier, on the glacier, before the escort reminded me that I wanted to live.

  I picked up the box. It was light. Very light. Weren’t bombs heavy? What else could be inside? Cherries? Small slippers?

  Very slowly, I twisted loose the knot that tied the four ends of the cloth together. It was a style that would have perfectly suited the wrapping of a stack of hot chapaatis.

  The box was uncovered now. The box was small and white. I smelled no chapaatis and that was okay because I wasn’t hungry.

  I touched the lid of the box.

  I tried praying but it didn’t really work. I was angry with God, at that particular moment.

  Again I pleaded for life. “I beg you, I’ll do anything!” Again I hated myself.

  After what seemed like a very long time, I received an answer in the shape of a kick to my teeth. I lay curled on my side in the dirt and continued to receive the blows.

  I did not know how much time passed before I noticed that the sun was drying the blood in my mouth and this was uncomfortable. It is curious how, even when every inch of the body is in pain, it is possible to isolate a hurt, make it a separate thing, cushion it with exclusive attention and care. I tried to wet the dried blood with my spit but moving my lips made me tear the scabs at their corners. I kept trying. I had to wet my lips without moving them. I could do this.

  Ahead of me, a field was aflame. If this was delirium, it was not unpleasant. The fire in the distance had a warm orange glow. At its center sizzled a cluster of seeds with a purple sheen. The chaos was elsewhere, far from that orange glow, and no one would disturb me as I focused all my desire on tending this small corner of a troubled earth: the corner of my mouth.

  A small white box lay inches from my nose.

  I still concentrated on my lips. I made a very tiny bubble but the sun took it away. I made another. I was having trouble opening my eyes. I could, however, make a slit, a very narrow one, and from between this slit I could still look out at the world, I could face the box.

  I pulled the box toward me. I was facing its side. Again I touched the lid. It was not secured with a latch or even a tongue of tape. It would be very easy to tear off. I squeezed my eyes shut. This hurt, so I loosened the muscles of my eyes and counted to ten. Goodbye. I counted to twenty. I counted to a hundred. Goodbye. Two hundred. I pulled off the lid.

  My eyes were still shut. I counted to three hundred. I was not dead. My lips tore as I shouted, “Hurry up! Hurry up!”

  Again time passed. Again, against my will, I began to think.

  Why had the bomb not detonated? Was it a different kind of device? Which? Why did I know so little? Why was I at the mercy of those who tormented me for knowing so little, when there were those who knew even less?

  “Hurry up! Hurry up! You fucking cowards, hurry up!”

  I was not pleading for life but for a more predictable death. This seemed reasonable. A quick death had been the promise. I would open the lid and be torn to pieces and not feel a thing. It was reasonable. Instead, the kind of death waiting for me two inches from my nose was unknown. This was not reasonable at all. This was betrayal. “You promised! You sick bastards, keep your fucking promise!” Who would do a thing like this? Who would lie to a man resigned to death? Who would do a thing like this?

  What if the explosion came while I was kicking and ranting? Is that how I wanted to go? Imagine the expression on my face! My eyes squeezed shut and my mouth wide open, bleeding. What a monstrosity! No, I preferred to go in dignity. I preferred to close my mouth, around a spoon of poise. I preferred to go with hands folded, eyes shut but not squeezed, lips loose. This could not be denied me. This was in my control. I could take my life by holding my breath. It would take longer than a bomb but it might work. I pulled my ribs up to my chin and they screamed but I did not. I held them in my mouth.

  “Look inside!” I heard a shout. “Get up and look inside!”

  Had I grown deaf or had they grown tired? The shout was wimpy. I lifted my head off the ground, still holding my breath, but I could not see into the box. I lifted it more.

  Bangles. A necklace. And what might have been two milk teeth, their ends brown.

  The air surged from my mouth and I choked. Then I passed out.

  I do not recall clearly what happened after that. The men must have seen for themselves the mystery I’d unraveled. When I regained consciousness, the jewelry lay smashed everywhere around me. I was aware, despite my weakness, that water was to be found somewhere. I was thinking I might scoop snowmelt onto my lips. I was thinking I might follow the migration of buffaloes and goat herders who treated me with tolerance, even kindness, inviting me near their fire for tea. On a grassy hilltop, I know I caught a glimpse of a silhouette with horns longer than my legs. A yak? A demon? I glimpsed, too, a red blur, and, squinting, saw the ends of a dark braid scatter sunlight before my eyes. She jumped before you. I saw her braid hit water. And I began to see more, the way she frowned when she untangled her hair at night. It was a very different frown from the one she wore in the boat, as Kiran fell into the w
ater, close to me, and I simply watched. Farhana was screaming. “Grab her!” Before she fell backward into the side of the teetering boat, her left foot had brushed my arm. I heard it—the anarchy of bangles, the crack of bone—while I only watched. I heard the splash as Farhana jumped, on her side of the boat, so she would have had to swim very fast to rescue Kiran sinking on my side. And I heard the rattle, as Farhana was pulled deeper into the dungeon of silt Kiran was pulling her to. Only now, on that grassy hilltop, long after the men had smashed the contents of the box and left me with a parting kick, only now did I attempt a run toward the vision—I jumped off the boat, finally, I could see myself make that jump—but I did not know what came of it.

  Eventually, I must have fallen near someone’s hut. It might not have been far from the mountain, or perhaps it was very far; I did not know where I was. I slept there for a long time, waking to bandages and a watered-down version of apricot soup. This time, I accepted the gift. I would have to consider myself worthy of the generosity of strangers again, somehow. But the gift did not sit well with me. I remembered vomiting, many times. Till one day, I did not.

  I also remembered the voice of a radio. I had not been dreaming when I heard it. I had stumbled far from the fort by then, and I had been noticed, and offered water, and help, but I had not accepted the latter—not till I fell in front of that hut—in a part of the valley that was less like a village and more like dotted outcroppings of a shack or two. I remembered stopping in a corner of one such shack, surrounded by soap, flour, a cat, and a shopkeeper who turned the dial of a radio till the static stilled. I wondered if I’d just arrived in Karachi, and none of what happened had happened, because it was the same story, at least at first.

  A bomb exploded in a hotel this morning, killing one foreigner and seven Pakistanis …

  I left the shack, then hurried back inside when I heard this:

  … Reports say the explosive was carried in a box, similar to other devices used this summer. Among the deceased was the bomber. Witnesses say he had arrived in Gilgit several days earlier, with a broken leg.

  No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

  Several children were staying in the hotel at the time of the blast. Six persons were killed, including the American national. Three policemen, three women and two children were among the injured. One child succumbed to her wounds on her way to hospital. The family of the deceased American have been notified.

  The woman who tendered the soup had green eyes and wound a braid around her oval face. She wanted to feed me qurut and lamb, almonds and cherries. She kept goats in the cattle pen, and spun a wool so fine it could pass through an earhole. Her children had clear skies in their eyes. Her husband healed without words. I had to ask what he was treating me for, and his daughter, giggling, said bleeding and broken bones. And worms. I must drink the flowers of arusha to expel the worms by stunning them, she added. And to stop the bleeding. And swelling. It was the bitterest remedy, with an aroma that made me see only flat things with too many legs.

  Several times, a boy helped me to the hole by the cattle pen. I could not keep anything down, not even water. I told myself: Irfan had made it back down the mountain, with only a broken leg. He’d been alive. He might still be alive, if I hadn’t tossed him my pack.

  But then I might have opened the box instead.

  The cattle pen had a wretched stench.

  Who was the American national? If a woman, the gender would have been specified.

  Surely, Farhana was already on her way home to her father. But this would mean it was Wes who was the—how could I say the word—deceased. How could I hope for that?

  The blast was in Gilgit, which meant they were on their way back south—without looking for me first—I abandoned him; he abandoned me—but I’d never stolen his love, his Zulekha. If he had looked for me, would I have wanted to see him?

  When he opened the box, had Farhana been with him? Had they looked in my pack and noticed the box and, laughing, sat down together to share whatever they hoped to find inside?

  The gender would have been specified.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Wouldn’t it? I asked the boy. He stood by and waited till I had finished before carrying me back inside the hut to the woman with green eyes and the man who healed without words.

  It might have been days, even weeks—I did not ask to be shown the time—before I could feel the contours of my face again. I could take a shallow breath. I could sip a little soup.

  I asked the girl who told me about the flowers of arusha for the way to the nearest bus stop, or even if she knew of a driver who might carry me south to the highway in his jeep, or if she knew anyone at all, a kind soul to take me home. She smiled with warmth, perhaps even pity. Then she called her brother, who had carried me to the cattle pen, possibly for weeks. The brother’s expression was the same as hers, except, perhaps, he exuded a little dismay. He called his father. The father had long slender hands that were cool but my forehead was cooler. He shook his head; I supposed it meant I needed no more cures, at least none his fingers could provide. He called his wife. She entered the room smelling of woodsmoke and sweet oils. She offered me cheese. Good for the spirit, she said. I accepted a small piece, and reiterated the question I’d put to her children and to her husband, but which the whole family was clearly avoiding. At my insistence, and with a little more cheese, she answered me at last. Home? You want to be taken home? There is only one time to come home, and that is after death.

  I turned my back to her then. I could still smell her scent of woodsmoke and oil, perhaps it was almond oil. She said I should stay till I felt strong enough to—she hesitated. To come home? I thought. No, she could not say that now, because then I would be dead.

  She kept standing there, basked in a quiet like infinity. Instead of completing her sentence, she gave me another, sweeter proverb, one I will never forget, though I may never have use for it now. Beware the guest one does not feed. I’d heard Irfan say it once, on the shores of a lake, after we’d eaten a pear, after the honey. After Farhana had left with the girl. I hadn’t thought to ask him what it meant. I asked my hostess now. She explained that it referred to people who did not do things from the heart, or, even worse, who ignored the heart entirely. The heart is a guest, she stated in a smooth, liquid voice. It must be nourished, made welcome.

  So is that what Irfan had decided to do? Feed his guest?

  I lay there hunched on the cot—vaguely aware that this was likely the only cot they owned—my back to the woman who smelled of almond oil. I faced a window through which I could see an apricot tree. Hopping between each fur-eared fruit was a warbler, its delicate yellow throat vibrating when the woman spoke, pausing when she paused. The heart is a guest, she kept on in a voice that was as still and rich as the surface of a lake. It deserves the best room in the house.

  Postscript

  It was time to lay the needles down. Fresh pine needles for a clean floor and a bed softer than most things, except feathers, or flesh. Her flesh was ruddy as a peach and the child would rest her head of thick brown curls against it when she tired of gathering the needles and the branches. The sheet had to be propped securely if the house was to stay dry, Maryam explained, though she need not have. The girl, at age four, gathered all the materials swiftly without being asked, and brought them to her mother.

  Her son had candles. He would be leaving this year. The candles were not too sensible—it was windy here, at the edge of the lake, and it rained—but he said they were better than the little oil lamps and so they lit the long wax sticks with threads that sizzled at the slightest change in weather, while she laughed in private, for her son would cut the wicks and blow the flames back to life with some tenderness and a lot of pride.

  Maryam watched them, her two remaining children, Younis and Jumanah. They carried the candles out into the night after the tents were secured.

  They had taken longer to reach the mountains this year. After the e
arthquake, they all moved more slowly, and besides, they had been forced to change their route. Last year, they had camped at the foot of a glacier, in potato fields that ripened swiftly under the blanket of steaming dung the cattle bestowed. But during the monsoons, the fields had been washed away. It had happened plenty of times before, though never like this, and in her mind, she could hear it, the way the glacier groaned. Done with keeping all that pressure locked inside, it let the world feel its pulse, taking the fields, the homes, the cattle, and the grain. When the earthquake buckled the land, it left behind a small artificial lake. They had been forced to trek around this.

  They had also taken longer to leave the plains. A part of her had feared they would never leave at all, and she still could not entirely believe that they were here, nor that her children were slipping out into the night, in secret, excluding her, two candles, two whispers, and one destination, which she believed she could guess. She watched them go. She had to let them go eventually.

  Down in the lowlands, the convoys had also left. They left soon after Fareebi, the shapeshifter, was found. They left as silently as they came: every man in uniform and spy in plainclothes, or so the people said. They had been replaced by different convoys, carrying food and blankets for the shocked survivors who stared past the cameras and far into the heavy dust of their past lives. Balakot is completely lost, they said. Maryam had never heard so much terror, or breathed so much death. The goddess had finally unleashed upon their valley the full weight of her wrath, and more men, women, and children than Maryam had ever seen now lay buried beneath it.

  Even now, months later, she could do no more than isolate a few details of their combined devastation, like the way she had been watching the buffalo Noor in the forest just before it happened. Noor’s eyes had begun to roll high into her head. And her tail! It did not swat her back so much as stand upright, like a snake, jerking and twitching, as though about to drop! Maryam had been staring at the monstrous movements of her most placid beast when Makheri, the goat with the too-high teats, rammed her from behind, saving her life. In the space where Maryam had been standing crashed a pistachio tree. How could it be? She had been harvesting the nuts of that tree not two weeks earlier. Noor now lay beneath it. Her tail still twitching. A man from Laila’s dera pulled her away from the sight. And as they ran, so did the world.