They pulled her like a rug, dragged her across the floor of the forest. Moni clutched one arm under her elbow, Iman slung the other around her shoulder. There were no blue trails any more in the forest, no red trails or orange. They were on their own. Salma stared up at the bits of sky that showed through the treetops. She saw the sun and she said, ‘We need to head east, we need to move back this way instead of straight ahead.’
They moved as a group. Salma had Moni to her right, Iman to her left. Their pace was slow but matched, their progress even. Salma’s back began to ache. Dragged over roots and uneven paths, her skin became raw and bruised. They stopped for frequent breaks, to tend each other’s wounds, to catch their breath. For it was not only Salma who was struggling, Moni too had her fair share of bruises and Iman, although more suited to the outdoors, was often distracted and fretful, her protruding tongue a source of irritation, her whines more frequent.
‘Iman wants to sing for us,’ said Moni. And Iman did sing. Or at least tried to sing. She had forgotten all the words to her Euphrates laments. The tunes were still there, embedded in her altered mind. And though she was yowling, it made her feel better, achieving a certain kind of release. Tears came to Salma’s eyes when she remembered Iman’s beautiful voice. When she remembered Iman’s hair and her smoky eyes. We must return, she said to herself.
The trees became shorter and thinner, their leaves turning brown and falling. The three made their way out of the forest. There were soft white flakes on the ground, the air at first cool and then much colder. On they went until the ground was covered in snow. Salma slid faster, Moni rolled more easily, and Iman enjoyed digging her weight into the softness, leaving prints behind her. The sun shone bright. They were cold, but the quicker movement soothed them. They were making progress and soon found themselves up against a cluster of figures standing still; all of them statues made of ice. Famous people and their belongings. Tennis stars with their rackets, actors with their Oscars and smiles. There were ice sculptures of Mother Teresa and Gandhi, of Princess Diana and Martin Luther King. Moni was the one most entertained by these sculptures, identifying each one quicker than Salma could. Iman was oblivious. She could not remember these iconic figures, their household names beyond her reach.
The snow stretched out for miles and they were part of its whiteness; they were cold and numb, but being out of the forest lifted their spirits, made them feel that they had advanced. Sliding, rolling, falling off snow ridges, they clung to each other. It was Moni who was the first to laugh, followed by Salma, then Iman. Was there room for happiness? Only the kind that rose from a shared purpose, a unified effort. ‘We are together,’ said Moni. ‘We are together,’ said Salma. ‘Speak, Iman, say the word “we”. The word “we”.’ But Iman shrugged off Salma’s arm and this caused Moni to stop. Iman moved in a circle. With her prints she drew a large round circumference and then she joined the other two inside it. That was her understanding of ‘we’, the three of them together.
‘I missed you both,’ said Moni, and she told them about what happened to her at the cottage. ‘I missed you both,’ said Salma and told them what happened to her with Amir. I missed you both, Iman wanted to say but could not put into words her transformation, her free romping in the forest where it was eat or be eaten, where no one knew her name.
Moni was not sure where they were. The snow did not make sense. It was meant to be late summer, wasn’t it? When they stopped and Iman made the circle around them, Moni was surprised at her own stillness. It was as if she had been rolling for hours, it was as if rolling was now her natural state and stillness an aberration. She was not as cold as she expected to be, as she usually was in the thick of winter, struggling to keep warm. Snow was not as hostile as she had always thought it to be. She was not in fear of it. Nor was she out of breath any more; she had kept pace with the others. Granted, Salma and Iman were not in peak form but, then, neither was she. She gazed at the glitter around her, it was not different from a desert, but with snow instead of sand, with white instead of yellowish brown. Ripples and curves, ridges and uneven surfaces that the wind had shaped and furrowed. How unlike Moni to take such note of her surroundings, to see and experience!
Iman was learning language all over again. Opposites intrigued her. Black fur, white ice. Warm breath, freezing snow. She swallowed huge gulps of it, felt it turn to water in her mouth and body. She must listen in order to learn. She must listen to Salma’s voice, trying to reach her, to filter through what she had become. Iman. Iman. Salma was saying her name, repeating it, so that Iman could never forget it. Never forget its meaning and how it was a simple word that was as light as a spark, as pretty as a glow, as necessary as air, always special.
Salma felt warm and safe between her two friends. They would not harm her, they were here for her. Out of the three of them, she was the one who had full faith in friendship. The one to whom sisterhood was the most valuable and worthy of investments. Moni and Iman might see her as their leader, but she was the one who needed them. She could not now move an inch without them. When would her strength come back, would it ever? When we return. That was the answer. They must keep on moving. They had stopped long enough. It was now time to soldier on. Moni on her right, Iman on her left, dragging her through the snow.
They plunged, the three of them, holding on to each other, cascading through snow as the ground fractured and gave way beneath them. An avalanche. They screamed and fell through a cloud of white, a flurry that gathered momentum, lifted them high and swiped them down the mountain slope. Down they tumbled until they could not hold on to each other any longer, could not see at all, each one in her own white darkness, each electrified by her own shock. Eventually there was a stop, a deposit, a pile-up and they were beneath it, buried.
It was Iman who was able to scramble out first. Iman, who pulled out Salma and then, with Salma directing her, was able to find Moni and pull her out too.
‘I thought I’d died,’ said Moni. ‘I really did.’ She was like a snowball herself, almost invisible in this landscape. It had taken Salma and Iman a long time to find her.
At the bottom of the mountain, they found a gathering of people. But these people could offer neither hospitality nor directions. These were eating themselves, chewing on a hand or pulling up their knees and gnawing on a foot. Each of them was alone, absorbed in themselves, they would not eat each other. Nor were they interested in the three women who were passing through. They could barely look up at them, so intense was their concentration on their own pieces of flesh.
Salma insisted on drawing them in conversation. ‘Why are you doing this to yourselves? There are plants that could be eaten, fish and other good things. You are harming yourselves.’
Her pleas were unanswered. What she said fell on deaf ears. Iman and Moni, sensing danger, dragged their friend away. She protested, saying that they had a duty to help others, to save them from themselves, to guide them to what was right and safe.
‘Are we in a position to preach?’ Moni scolded her. ‘Look at us.’
‘Better than them,’ said Salma.
‘I don’t know any more,’ said Moni, ‘who is better than whom.’ And when she said that, her body relaxed. Her neck, perpetually bent forward, became less stiff. She could move it a little from side to side, even though she could not look straight up.
They kept on moving.
‘I must eat,’ said Salma. ‘If I am to grow my strength again, I must have protein.’
A chill ran through Iman. She remembered a story the Hoopoe had told her. A story about a young camel, a jaguar, a hyena, a crow and their king, the lion. Iman began to cry. She began to whimper and scratch the ground.
‘Oh dear, Iman. I would never eat you,’ said Salma. ‘How can you even think it? Don’t you know me? Don’t you know who I am? If I had the use of my arms, I would be hugging you now. Please don’t cry.’
‘Hunt for her,’ said
Moni. ‘Catch her something to eat.’
So Iman was sent to hunt and she came back with a mouse and a toad. To Salma, the taste and texture did not matter. All she wanted was to build her muscles again. But it would take more than food. They had to keep going, keep moving; they must return.
The land turned rocky, its colours lighter than before, the vegetation thinner. They passed a group of people whose mouths were sealed across with stiches and whose eyes blazed with shame. ‘What have you done to deserve this?’ Salma asked. They must have spread lies, she thought, or bore false witness; they must have killed with their tongues. They must have said yes when it should have been no. They must have ruined lives with a word or more than one word. ‘What have you done?’ But no one could answer her, they could not move their lips. At the end, one of them pointed to an inscription on the rocks. ‘They kept silent when they should have spoken out.’
Iman, Salma and Moni kept on moving. To protect Salma from the path that was now rocky, Iman carried her on her back while Moni rolled along. This slowed them down, so they went back to dragging Salma on the ground, bumping her along, while she kept her eyes shut and tried not to cry out from the pain.
The landscape turned mountainous around them. There were no longer any trees or any shade, just the sun pressing down on them, scorching their heads and stabbing their eyes. A path led them up to a hill and the cool interior of a cave. As soon as they stepped in, they heard the drip-drop sound of water, touched the wet walls and their eyes were soothed by the shadows that flickered around the cave. Further in was a hot spring, its water releasing vapours that were irresistible. Thirsty and dirty, they did not even confer but plunged in: Moni with a splash, Iman diving head first, pulling Salma with her. The water was everything they needed. It was comfort and welcome.
Iman felt the water penetrate the fur of her coat, reach deep to her skin. Her human skin was buried under the fur, a distant mark of her identity. She dived down and found that she could hold her breath for longer. She was like a seal, gliding away from her friends and back again. She felt the strength of her body and when she opened her eyes under the water, her tongue was safe in her mouth, her legs were her legs, her lower body that of a woman, her feet human. She struck through the surface of the water, pulled herself up but found that she was exactly how she had been when she first dived in.
In the warm water, Moni relaxed. Bobbing on the surface, she gazed at the walls of the cave, paintings in blues and reds. They were children’s paintings, flowers as big as faces, bodies as thin as sticks, mops of hair and everyone smiling. Moni smiled too. She did not know how to swim but she was not afraid of this water, not worried that she would sink. The water was washing her, and she had always appreciated cleanliness, enjoyed the smells of soap and detergent, the scent of lemons and pine. In the water, the stiffness of her body eased. She could spread her legs out, she could raise up her arms and stretch. How good that felt, to be tall and straight again! But it was only in the water. As soon as she stepped out of the pool, she sprang back into a ball, her knees up to her chest, her arms tight around her knees, neck craned forward.
Salma too, in the water, became her former self. The strength flowed back into her arms and legs. She could stand up, her feet touching the slippery bottom of the pool, her weight held up by the warm water. It was just like normal, how it had always been. She was not doomed to life flat on her back. The three of them were heading in the right direction; they were surely returning. This optimism lingered even when she pulled herself out of the water and found that, again, she had no strength. Again, she was unable to stand up tall or even to crawl. The water had not altered any of them. The water only showed them what they could be. But ‘only’ was not the right word, for the water gave them what was just as important as change. The water gave them hope. The water made them stronger in faith.
So, on they went. Through the valley of fear, where shadows played with their minds and sudden noises made their skin crawl. They saw visions of their own future deaths, the ultimate agony and ugliness, the loneliness of the grave. And that was not all. In the valley were spectres of known fears so that Salma submitted again to Amir’s scalpel and Moni was made smaller and smaller by the boy’s growing body. Iman was in a war zone again, dodging gunfire, stumbling over a corpse, touching softness that was mangled flesh, limbs torn off and flung. In the valley of fear, the three of them clung to each other as the shadows pounded them with nightmares and squeezed their hearts with fright.
Daybreak saved them. The first rays of the sun drove out the malevolent shadows. ‘We used to pray,’ said Salma when she saw the faint layer of light over the night. ‘What happened to that?’ None of them could remember when they had last prayed. When they had last prayed properly and it was not like brushing their teeth, going through the motions with their minds elsewhere. Noon jumbled into night, sunset mixed with dawn. They had come to the loch with their prayer mats and copies of the Qur’an, but they had not looked after them, they had not kept them safe. They had come to a country where people had stopped praying and not realised that they were the ones brought here to pray. They did not consciously take up the worship which others had left. They did not realise that they were a continuation, needed to fill a vacuum, awaited by the ancient forests and masses of rocks. They misunderstood their role. They underestimated their own importance and exaggerated their shortcomings. They inflated their problems and followed their egos, counselled each other but rejected what was right. Their quarrels taking up space, their connections weakening. And now they were far away, deep in the realm of consequence. Iman could not remember the words, neither Moni nor Salma could stand up straight. But they could pray with their hearts, couldn’t they? With their eyelids, with the breath they pulled in and out. They could, weakened as they were. Imperfect prayers, like those of the unclean and those who had not yet fully repented. Feeble prayers, but sincere because they were in genuine need.
The sun shrugged off the clouds and they saw ahead of them green and water, woodlands and glens. Beautiful and familiar, but suddenly Salma could no longer lead. ‘I don’t know the way,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure any more.’
They lingered and counted seven directions that they could take. North, south-east, over that hill, back towards the river. They could go straight, or they could go west, or they could head down to the beach.
Iman looked at Salma for guidance. Moni said, ‘Salma, you decide.’
But Salma could not guide them any more. She had brought them this far and now she was stumped. There was nothing she could add, no insight, no ideas. After saying, ‘We used to pray,’ she had run out of knowledge, she had reached the end of her usefulness. They were stuck. Time passed. A whole day passed. Perhaps Iman would sniff out a new trail. Perhaps it was Moni’s turn to take the lead. They waited for guidance, their urgency gone, the impetus disrupted.
Iman was the first to see the Hoopoe. He hovered over them and he was not the cute bird who had perched on her windowsill telling stories. Not any more. His wings were powerful, his crown iridescent, his plumage lustrous. He was now the mightiest of the birds, and if they accepted, he would be their guide. If they said yes, he would show them the way.
Chapter Sixteen
‘In every journey,’ said the Hoopoe, ‘there comes a point, around three quarters of the way through, when the traveller, without a guide, can go no further. But not everyone finds a guide. Not everyone accepts a guide. Not everyone is convinced. Many would rather keep fumbling on their own, trying and trying again. They would rather risk not completing the journey, they would rather risk getting lost or content themselves with the advance already made, than follow in trust.’
So, it was up to Iman, Moni and Salma to decide. Would they follow the Hoopoe, or would they continue on their own? Would they make this spot their new home and go no further or would they try to return?
The Hoopoe circled them, and they watch
ed the black and white stripes of his wings, the way the sun touched his crown. Then he flew a little bit further away and perched on the branch of an aspen. The three friends were left to confer. Iman did not hesitate. She had known him the longest and now it made sense that he was the one who could lead the way to salvation. Moni weighed the pros and cons and decided she had less to lose and more to gain. Salma was the one who struggled. She had left her country and followed David, she had run after Amir’s red T-shirt, she was tired and bitter. But she would not remain alone without her sisters. If they were going with the Hoopoe, she would go with them too. After all, she could not go far on her own.
Iman moved closer to the Hoopoe.
‘I accept you as my guide,’ Moni said.
‘I will go with you,’ Salma said. ‘Show us the way.’
He flew, and they followed. They moved as before, with Moni and Iman on either side of Salma, dragging her on the ground. A few feet. They had barely made progress when there was a change. Unexpected, because it came early, because it happened unannounced, without ritual or preparation. But it was the transformation they had all longed for, their burdens slipping away. Iman became human again. Moni unfurled and straightened. Strength coursed through Salma’s body.
They laughed and hugged each other. It seemed like an eternity since they had last heard Iman speak, seen Moni standing up, felt Salma’s firm embrace. For a long time they celebrated, touching their own faces and bodies in wonder. Moni raised both arms up in the air, Salma lifted Iman – she could do that – and Iman started to sing the loudest she had ever sung. Salma did jumping jacks, Moni clapped her hands, Iman combed her fingers through her beautiful hair. All three knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground, in gratitude.
They forgot about the Hoopoe and they forgot how urgently they had wanted to return.
When Iman noticed he had gone, she reassured the other two that he would come back. ‘We must wait,’ she said.
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