The Pathless Sky

by Chaitali Sen

  Back in the van, Arifah asked Malick if the students knew about Mariam’s miscarriage.

  “They know, but I’ve asked them to be discreet. I hope you didn’t find them rude. When they get hungry they turn into wild animals.”

  Arifah laughed. “Yes, I noticed.”

  A part of her envied Malick. He had been a witness to Mariam’s marriage in a way that Arifah could hardly imagine. She was ashamed to admit that even now, after five years, she did not know her daughter’s husband well. She’d seen him a smattering of times. He was always distantly polite, and Mariam did not seem willing to ask more of him. Arifah had never gone to Alexandria to visit them—that was her fault—but later she couldn’t help but feel his efforts had ceased after the Copenhagen disaster. The day Mariam told her she couldn’t get a passport was the worst day of Arifah’s life, worse than the day she discovered Omar mute and paralyzed in their bed, worse than years earlier when she saw his hand intimately brush the small of Elizabeth’s back, and worse even than the day she realized her father had taken his own life, that she and her mother could not offer him enough solace to keep him alive. She spoke to Omar about it, trying to get the truth about what he knew, staring intently into his eyes for signs of comprehension. His eyebrows went up and down as they always did when he was struggling, like a dog whose ears twitch merely because he is being spoken to. Either he was still a masterful liar even as an invalid, or he truly knew nothing and they were all victims of their government’s arbitrary punishment. To this day, Arifah wasn’t certain about Omar’s innocence.

  She fell asleep. When she woke up the road had straightened, and she wondered if she had not fainted, her last memory being one of white-knuckled, stiff-backed tension. Malick assured her it wouldn’t be much longer now. The landscape was gentler here, overlapping dome-shaped hills, startling in their uniformity, covered with green and purple shrubbery. Just when Arifah was getting impatient the road widened into a clearing, and John was standing there signaling the van to a halt. Arifah hardly recognized him. He was wearing a khaki jacket and cap like some kind of jungle guerilla. Malick stopped a short distance behind the students, but did not make a move to get out. They watched the students emerge from their vehicles, wobbly and stooped. John shook their hands and made a gesture to Malick, ushering him on toward the house.

  Malick drove past the student cars and made a sharp turn up another rocky drive. She could see it at the crest of the hill, a small white bungalow much like their house in English Canal. The sight of it made Arifah smile. Mariam was there on the porch, a vision in a yellow dress, and before Malick had come to a full stop Arifah let herself out and hurried toward Mariam with her arms out. In a moment Arifah was holding her daughter, who was already crying onto her shoulder. “I’m here now,” Arifah said.

  When they heard the students approaching Mariam pulled away and wiped her eyes. “They’re coming.”

  “Don’t mind them,” Arifah said. “They’ll understand.”

  Mariam took her into the house and gave her a quick tour. The layout was as simple as a house could get. Two small bedrooms and a bathroom were in the back, behind the living room. The little guest room was bright, with a large window facing south, and it was impeccably clean, her bed dressed with a white embroidered bedcover she had given Mariam for a wedding present. A moment later John came in with Arifah’s suitcase.

  “I’ll let you get comfortable,” he said. “We’ll be gone a few hours.”

  “Did they want something to eat?” Mariam asked.

  “They said they had a big breakfast.”

  “They certainly did,” Arifah said. This made Mariam laugh and even John could not help smiling, though it appeared as more of a grimace. Arifah could not believe how sun-worn his face looked. He came forward and gave her an awkward hug, which she ended with a hearty pat on his back. He looked at Mariam and tilted his head toward the door, and Mariam got up to follow him out. “I’ll be back in a minute, Mama.”

  “Of course, take your time.”

  Arifah opened her suitcase and began to put her things into a small chest of drawers next to the window. She knew all of the furniture belonged to the owners of the house who were living abroad. It seemed a fine way to live, using someone else’s possessions and owning next to nothing.

  Arifah set aside the gifts she’d brought, a hat she knitted for Mariam and a scarf for John. She had done the scarf in a hurry. What she’d been working on, for two months whenever she had a spare moment, was a blanket for the baby, still looped to a knitting needle at home.

  Mariam returned a few minutes later. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “I could have some coffee,” she said. Her hunger had passed hours ago.

  Mariam sat on the bed and watched Arifah unpack her suitcase. “I know it was hard for you to leave Daddy. Is he all right?”

  “He is improving more and more every day,” Arifah said.

  Arifah put her suitcase next to the bureau and went to Mariam. She stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. “I’m so glad to see you, Mama,” Mariam said.

  “I am glad to see you, darling.”

  Mariam looked down and put her hand over her womb. “I felt the baby move,” she whispered. “I felt her move for a few days before I felt the pain.”

  Mariam could not have been far enough along to feel the baby move, but Arifah knew women imagined all kinds of things to make the pregnancy feel real. “Do you know it was a girl?”

  Mariam blushed. “No, I was hoping.”

  Arifah had also hoped for a girl, and her dream had come true, as she was sure it would for Mariam one day.

  “You wanted some coffee!” Mariam remembered.

  They moved to the kitchen, where Mariam had left many tasks unfinished. Every surface was covered with various preparations, flour, potatoes, onions, and even cuts of chicken, but nothing seemed close to completion. Mariam looked around, forlorn at the mess she’d made.

  “What can I do?” Arifah asked. “Put me to work.”

  “No, sit here,” Mariam said, pulling a chair out from the end of a long wooden table and moving bowls out of the way. In a few minutes Arifah had coffee and cream and toast with butter and marmalade, and she gobbled it all down while Mariam removed a tea towel from the top of a ceramic bowl and poured an expanded ball of dough onto a floured board. She pressed her fist into it and watched it deflate before kneading it gently. “When did you learn to do that?” Arifah asked her.

  “I practiced in Alexandria. We’ll have a simple meal, bread and stew. I know that’s a strange summer dish but it cools down here quite a bit at night.”

  “Is this homemade bread I’m eating?” Arifah asked.

  “Yes, from yesterday.”

  “It’s exquisite.”

  Mariam smiled and continued kneading. Her movements were rhythmic and hypnotic, and neither of them spoke until she was finished. After Mariam shaped the loaf and put it aside, she asked Arifah why she never had more children. Arifah was flustered, though she might have known the question would come up. She’d been thinking lately about how to discuss her own fertility with Mariam, but at the moment she couldn’t think of a way to answer. While Mariam waited she poured more coffee into Arifah’s cup.

  “After I had you, I was satisfied,” she said. The truth was that Mariam came along easily. The troubles began after Arifah wanted to try again, when Mariam was three years old. There were two miscarriages that she could remember and then Omar’s infidelity. She didn’t see any point in telling Mariam about this now. When Arifah suffered her miscarriages she already had a child, her daughter who seemed to come from another world. Her heartbreak couldn’t compare to Mariam’s, who was thirty-two and childless.

  “I always thought I would be fertile,” Mariam said. “I thought I would get pregnant easily.”

  “You are fertile. Of course you are.”r />
  Mariam frowned as she formed the dough into an oval loaf on a baker’s stone. “I’ll finish dinner,” she said. “Do you want a warm bath? A nap?”

  “Can’t I help you?”

  Mariam looked around at the chaos. “Do you want to do the chickpeas?”

  Arifah was delighted. There was something so adorable about chickpeas, their round little wrinkled bodies.

  They got everything baking and simmering. Before sundown John and Malick and the students pulled into the drive. They rattled to a halt and took their time getting into the house. “They’re back already,” Arifah said.

  The house filled with voices, quiet at first, becoming more boisterous as the sunlight dimmed. Mariam and Arifah set the table right away, a large steaming pot of stew placed in the middle of the table with a warm loaf of bread resting on a wooden cutting board. Everyone piled into the kitchen and took seats around the table. Mariam put Arifah at one end and Malick at the other. John opened some bottles of wine and poured everyone a glass, and gave a quick toast.

  “We’re happy to have you all here. Especially you, Arifah,” he said, and they raised their glasses to her.

  The table was lively with conversation. Of the three students, the one named Adam talked the most. He was one of those overconfident young men who claimed to be an authority on everything just to provoke conflict. John seemed to find Adam tiresome. Every now and then he and Mariam exchanged looks of subtle annoyance.

  She finished her first glass of wine and began to feel light-headed. Somewhere in the fog of dining and drinking, the conversation had turned to the war. She only began to pay attention when she heard Mariam’s voice, polite and sweetly demurring.

  “It was not a holy war,” she said.

  Everyone was staring at her. Adam put his hand in the air, pointing his fingers toward the ceiling. “How can you say that? It began with the slaughter of Catholics.”

  “In one parish. There were no other Catholics killed anywhere in Sulat before the war started.”

  “Because they all fled.”

  Arifah wanted to suggest a change of subject. She’d seen Mariam become overly excited about this topic before. Her eyes were bright with confidence and she went on. “The churches used their ties to the central government to wield their own power. They could have anyone arrested for the slightest provocation. There was hatred for the Church but it wasn’t about religion.”

  “Women and children were killed. Are you saying they deserved it?” Adam asked. Suddenly he caught John’s silent admonishment and shoveled a spoonful of stew into his mouth.

  “The bombs from Alexandria killed more Catholics than the rebels did, and that is well-documented,” Mariam said.

  Arifah took another sip of wine, allowing the warmth of it to wash over her. She was amazed by Mariam’s confidence. In the midst of all these people she had not been afraid to state her opinion.

  “I agree with Mariam,” Malick interjected, certainly trying to diffuse the argument. “Sulat has always been a secular province. The religious element was a fringe.”

  “Ah, I can’t believe it,” Adam said cheerfully. “I’m surrounded by separatists.”

  Malick gently corrected him. “Sulat wouldn’t have survived as an independent state,” he said. “I think we would have splintered even further.”

  “You’re saying the rebellion was a mistake?” the boy named Tarek asked. Arifah liked him best. He had a sweet face and was extremely polite.

  Malick shrugged. “Not a mistake. It was no more a mistake than an earthquake. The tension builds up and has to find a release. But I think the outcome, in spite of how ruthlessly it was achieved, was the more practical one.”

  Arifah wondered how Mariam would react to Malick’s statement. Mariam was listening to him as politely as the others. As much as she liked to criticize Alexandria’s handling of the war, she didn’t seem to disagree with Malick.

  “What was it like for you during the war?” Tarek asked, still focused on Malick.

  Malick chuckled. “We moved around a lot trying to avoid it, but it kept following us.” He would not say any more and his students, looking uncomfortable, offered some deferential laughter.

  “I remember the terror,” Arifah said. Her voice surprised her as much as it did everyone else. “Even before the war started we were afraid of our own neighbors, people we had known for years. When we heard about the Catholics we knew there was going to be some terrible retribution. But we were very sorry for the children.”

  She did not even sound like herself. She was back in the schoolyard, having a hushed conversation with her girlfriends. Years before the war started, when Arifah was nine or ten years old, she regarded the Catholic children with a mixture of curiosity and envy. Their parents seemed to pamper them in a way that Arifah, in her simple undeveloped mind, must have thought to be a superior kind of love.

  Suddenly Malick raised his glass. “To peace. May it come, and may it last,” he said. Everyone echoed Malick. John turned to Mariam and kissed her cheek. She seemed to curl up a moment in its aftermath, like a little kitten.

  The men wanted to go outside and smoke. Mariam cleared the table and washed the dishes while Arifah made coffee to serve with a brandied fruitcake she’d brought from a tea shop on College Street. After they had their dessert in the living room, Arifah said goodnight. It had been a long day, with a great distance traveled. The group said good night, but Arifah only looked at her daughter. Mariam said goodnight with the same inquisitive gaze she’d had as a child, always seeming to wonder if the people she loved were going to bed happily.

  In the morning a clatter of activity woke her. The guests were still in the house, but obviously making moves to clear out. When the house was quiet again, Arifah got up, bathed, and dressed. She found Mariam outside in the garden. There were cabbages to be harvested and squash vines climbing up a trellis. Arifah never could have imagined her daughter living off food she’d grown herself. “Do you enjoy this?” she asked her.

  “It isn’t my favorite activity but it helps us get by.”

  After breakfast they went for a long walk in the hills, stopping in a small village where a woman showed them how to make wreaths with dried blueberry vines. They visited a chicken farmer to get some eggs, and they watched a rooster get slaughtered and cleaned. This would be another stew to last them all week.

  John stayed with Malick and the students at the campsite for a few days. At night the house was a speaker amplifying the sounds of the wild, animals scampering in the brush, the nasal chorus of crickets, the short branches of bushes with their stiff tiny leaves pattering in the wind.

  “Don’t you get frightened here?” Arifah asked.

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know. Animals. Bandits.” She laughed at her own paranoia.

  “I don’t stay alone at night. When Malick and the students come, either I go to the camp or John comes back. Right now you’re here, so I feel safe.” This made Arifah laugh, as if she could be of any help in an emergency. “But really, Mama, nothing happens here. It’s the most peaceful place on earth.”

  That was a relief to Arifah. She wondered about the campsite and asked if they could go to it. She would have liked some idea of what they were all doing up there. Mariam discouraged her. She said it was a lot of walking and climbing over rough terrain, and what they did was look for things that were hidden under the surface of the rock, and their looking was quite tedious. And if Mariam and Arifah couldn’t keep up with the climbing, they would be stuck hunched over the little stove cooking unappetizing food. In all of Mariam’s explanation, she had left out what Arifah had forgotten, that Mariam had just gone through a terrible physical and emotional ordeal. It was why Arifah was here, to help her recover. She pulled Mariam closer and listened to the nocturnal music coming through the walls of the cabin. “It really is very peaceful,” she
said.

  Every day was busy in a different way. In the evenings they listened to a shortwave radio that broadcast from around the world, sometimes tuning into the BBC or a German news channel that Arifah was able to translate roughly. Though Arifah loved spending this time with Mariam, she began to grow restless. She missed the tall trees behind the canal. Here, as far as the eye could see, there were squat shrubs with tiny purple leaves. After the novelty wore off she found the landscape monotonous. The sky was always blue, with a thick dusty heat that hung in the air. She missed her routine and she missed Omar, his steady, predictable companionship.

  One day Mariam said she wanted to straighten up John’s office. Mariam had much to say while she cleaned. John had two papers coming out in the next month, and one recently published, and there was a week’s worth of international correspondence, from Cambridge and Cape Town among others. Mariam tried to explain the research John and Malick were doing, that somehow that swath of earth, their ever-important ancient rock, could help them unravel the evolution of continents.

  “Things are going well for him, then,” Arifah declared.

  Mariam bit her lip, deliberating over something. “There’s something I’ve been dying to show you, Mama.”

  Mariam knelt down on the floor and put her hand lovingly on a cardboard box. “He’s writing a book. It’s what we spend most of our time on.”

  “We?”