Maps for Lost Lovers (50 page)

Which to hold dearer: my love for you, or the sorrows of others in the
world?

They say the intoxication is greater when two kinds of wine are mixed.

Good artists know that society is worth representing too.

“Did you see Charag’s picture in last Sunday’s papers?” Stella asks Shamas and, against a mild protest from Charag, gets up to bring the magazine section of the paper from her shoulder bag, and there he is on the front cover, photographed with two other young painters. The child looks at the photograph and shouts, “That’s Uncle Philip and that’s Uncle Toby.”

Although complimentary on the whole, the article does contain criticism of Charag’s work: he himself can deal with that criticism but he had wanted that article kept from his father because he didn’t want to appear a failure in
his
eyes.

Ujala scans the article, reading aloud. “It reads:
In certain art circles you
are regarded as contrary if you are still putting paint on canvas. But for me
painting is still an intelligent option, says the 32-year-old Charag Aks. The
painter is sitting in his flat with a chocolate biscuit in one hand, amid paint-spatteredmonographs and volumes of critical theory . . .
The paragraph goes on to describe one of his paintings and ends like this:
There is nothing
showy here; it is a rhapsody in restrained form and colour. He is following
a very tough discipline. It was the combination of these qualities that so
inspired the art collector Marshall Gaffney that he commissioned a year’s
worth of work from him. The resulting paintings, eight in all (including a
4-foot nude entitled The Uncut Self-Portrait), are part of the Gaffney
Gallery’s second Young British Artists exhibition, which opens in London in
January.
”

Kaukab, smiling proudly, takes the magazine and looks at Charag’s photograph.
The Uncut Self-Portrait
is pictured inside too and she closes the magazine when she sees it. Charag has painted himself without any clothes standing in a pale grove of small immaculate butterflies, fruit- and flower-heavy boughs, birds, hoopoes and parakeets and other insects and animals, the mist rising from a lake in the background—and he has an uncircumcised penis.

He sees the distress on her face and says, “What I am trying to say is that it was the first act of violence done to me in the name of a religious or social system. And I wonder if anyone has the right to do it. We should all question such acts.”

“That such wickedness can be!” Kaukab says quietly. “Why must you mock my sentiments and our religion like this?” Outside the window a large moon has appeared, its mountains and valleys a greyish black-and-white, very faint, as though it were a bad photocopy. She wishes she could fly away out of the window.

“It’s a
metaphor,
Mother, and, Mother, I didn’t mean to offend you. Forgive me, but why does everything always has to do with you? Jugnu taught me that we should try to break away from all the bonds and ties that manipulative groups have thought up for their own advantage. Surely, Mother, you see the merit of that.”

“Jugnu died because of the way he lived,” Kaukab says.

“He didn’t die, Mother,” Mah-Jabin says quietly. “He was killed.”

“It is healthy to have a boy circumcised,” Shamas says, merely to come to Kaukab’s aid. “The Western doctors say it.”

“So if the doctors find out tomorrow that circumcision is unhealthy, would the Muslims stop it?” Ujala asks without looking up, face remaining tilted over his food.

“Of course not,” Kaukab says.

“I didn’t think so. And, incidentally, would these Western doctors be the
same
Western doctors whose advice that first cousins shouldn’t marry each other, you lot ignore?”

“I fail to see what I could have possibly done to be humiliated in this manner again and again,” Kaukab says.

“I know circumcision is probably healthier,” Charag says quietly, “and we have had our own son circumcised, but we didn’t do it because of a religion. I am sorry if you are offended but I can’t paint with handcuffs on.”

“I think your conduct is most regrettable. What point are you trying to make with that picture? That a religion that has given dignity to millions around the world is barbaric?”

Ujala sits back in his chair and considers Kaukab. “Dignity? Mother, are you aware that Muslim women cannot marry a non-Muslim? Their testimony in a court of law is worth half that of a man. Non-Muslims living in Muslim countries have inferior status under Islamic law: they may not testify against a Muslim. Non-believers are to be killed: of the seventeen great sins in Islam, unbelief is the greatest, worse than murder, theft, adultery. In Saudi Arabia, following a saying of Muhammad that ‘Two religions cannot exist in Arabia,’ non-Muslims are forbidden to practise their religion, build churches, possess Bibles.” His voice has risen a little and the eight-year-old looks furiously at him, and, chest out, says, “Stop shouting, you!” Ujala reaches across the table and ruffles his hair, “Sorry,” his fingertips briefly tickled by the penny-size area at the top of his head which always resists flattening, sticking up like the crest of a thistle.

“How do you know all this all of a sudden?” Kaukab, who was on her way out, turns around and asks Ujala.

“I’ve read the Koran, in English, unlike you who just chant it in Arabic without knowing what the words mean, hour after hour, day in day out, like chewing gum for the brain.”

Kaukab says, “What I don’t understand is why when you all spend your time talking about women’s rights, don’t you ever think about
me.
What about
my
rights,
my
feelings? Am
I
not a woman, am I a eunuch?”

Ujala continues, “A religion that has given dignity to millions around the world? Amputations, stoning to death, flogging—not barbaric?”

“These punishments are of divine origin and cannot be judged by human criteria.”

He looks at her. “If I changed my religion in a country like Pakistan what would happen to me, Mother?”

“Please let’s continue with our meal,” Shamas says, not wishing to be reminded too much of his father’s death.

To give the impression of normality restored—because all this must be making the white girl uncomfortable—Kaukab moves forward to gently touch one of Stella’s earrings: “Very pretty.”

Stella turns her head at an angle to bring the jewelled glyph into light. “My mother passed it on to me because it is too heavy for her now that her earlobes aren’t as firm. It stretches her skin and there are three wrinkles above the hook like the eyelashes painted on a doll’s face.”

“Very pretty. Look, Mah-Jabin.”

Mah-Jabin obligingly pretends to admire the jewel—making sounds to drown out the beating drums of battle, the roar and smoke of the clash.

But despite all this, Kaukab is unable to convince herself to abandon her argument with Ujala; she is too wounded to be diverted, even if it’s she herself who has been trying to create the diversion. She turns to Ujala: “Why would you want to change your religion? Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world.”

Shamas has heard this several times from various sources but has never been able to find definite proof—but he won’t say anything now to add to Kaukab’s distress. She’s continuing:

“No one has ever heard of a Muslim converting to another religion.”

That Shamas knows to be false—but he concentrates on his food.

“I might want to change it because Islam further deranges an ignorant and uneducated woman so that she feeds poison to her sons,” says Ujala.

Everyone looks at him—everyone except Kaukab.

“What are you talking about?” Charag says.

“I love my children.” Kaukab looks at Ujala and holds his gaze.

“I am sure you think you do,” he replies.

“Be quiet, Ujala, please,” Mah-Jabin says. “If Mother is uneducated there are reasons. She has little English and she feels nervous stepping out of the house because she is not sure whether she can count on a friendly response—”

“Let’s drop the pretence,” Ujala interrupts. “She would have been exactly like this if she weren’t here in England. What were her achievements back in Pakistan, a country where she
can
speak the language and count on a friendly response . . .”

Mah-Jabin’s shakes her head: “If she is the way she is, it’s because she has been through what she has been through. You wouldn’t say this if you knew fully about the place of women in Pakistan. You—”

Now it’s Kaukab’s turn to interrupt: “There is nothing wrong with the status of women in Pakistan.”

Ujala smiles triumphantly: “See, Mah-Jabin? Tell us, Mother, were Chanda and Jugnu sinners?”

“If you think I condone their murder, you are wrong.”

“But were they dirty unclean sinners?”

Kaukab looks around like a trapped animal. “Yes.”

“So: you are sorry they were murdered but they
were
sinners. It’s like a judge saying, ‘Let’s give the criminal a fair trial, and then hang him.’ Have they gone to hell, now that they are dead? Yes or no.” He has been holding a spoon and looking at it whilst speaking. His face reflected in the curved steel of the spoon like a distorted portrait reminds him of the time he saw Jugnu with his reflection on the polished silver back of a scarab beetle.

“What do you want from me, from us?” Kaukab says, wishing to end this conversation, this battle without visible bloodshed. “Do you want your parents to say that everything they have ever done is wrong? You’d like to know what mistakes they think they’ve made in their life? Well, the biggest mistake of my life was coming to this country, a country where children are allowed to talk to their parents this way, a country where sin is commonplace. But I had to come to this country because your father was a daydreamer and got himself into trouble with the government. Once, when I said we have a child now so please think of the future— think about saving money for the child’s education, about building a house—he replied that by the time this child grows up the whole world would have become Communist, and things like education, healthcare and housing would be free.”

Shamas is avoiding everyone’s eyes, simply because he wants this episode to be over quickly and not because he is ashamed of what he had once believed—still believes—namely: that a fairer, more just way of organizing the world has to be found.

Ujala says: “There couldn’t have been a more dangerous union than you two:
you
were too busy longing for the world and the time your grandparents came from, they and their sayings and principles; and
he
was too busy daydreaming about the world and the time his grandchildren were to inherit. What about your responsibilities to the people who were around you here in the present? Those around her were less important to her than those that lay buried below her feet, and for him the important ones were the ones that hovered above his head—those yet to be born.”

Mah-Jabin shakes her head at him: “I think it’s inaccurate to say that Father was daydreaming. It is a noble idea: to make sure that no one has too much until everyone has enough.”

“Of course it is,” Ujala says, “but what did he do to achieve that end? He didn’t contribute much, if anything.”

Shamas has accused himself of this always—he didn’t do enough, if anything.

“Father did contribute. When he came here he got workers at his factory to join the unions; he also battled with the unions because they weren’t accepting foreigners into their ranks,” Charag says. “He’s been involved in such works all his life.”

Kaukab is distraught: “How they all come to the rescue of their father, refusing to hear a bad word against him, and yet they abuse
me
openly.”

Ujala sighs and gets up to stand at the window. There are still many things to say. He feels like a wind-up toy stuck against a tuft of carpet: standing still but full of energy. Everything is suddenly quiet. All evening a winter wind has been blowing around in the streets outside, carrying and making sounds, shaking the Hawaiian grass-skirt of the willow tree in the garden four-doors-down, hurling the frost-stiffened sycamore leaves onto the back lane where they smash like crockery, and rustling the long grasses on the hill beyond, but now all the airborne songs have died down and the twenty maples lining the side-streets are stiffly shaking the last of the wind out of themselves.

Shamas and Stella begin to clear the table and Kaukab sits down sideways on a chair (to keep her legs free in case she is needed and has to get up): she begins her meal, the food served onto the grandson’s leftovers. Mah-Jabin sits with the nephew at the coffee table: the boy is fascinated by the rotary dial of the 25-year-old telephone, which these days is found mostly on children’s toys. This phone rings instead of chirruping, its receiver heavy the way only the receivers in public phone-boxes are these days, most modern phones being light as a grasshopper husk. Mah-Jabin realizes now that she never telephones home if she knows there would be idle or free time after the call to dwell on the conversation: she always makes sure there is an activity lined up for immediately afterwards. With the dining table clear, Charag goes into the kitchen with Mah-Jabin to bring out the gold-leaved vermicelli. There he asks Mah-Jabin what Ujala had meant by his remark about Kaukab poisoning her sons. She resists but finally tells him the truth.

Kaukab had watched Charag follow Mah-Jabin into the kitchen and known he had wanted to be alone with his sister to ask him what Ujala had meant by poison. When they don’t return immediately—how long does it take to pick up a dish and a stack of bowls and spoons, after all?— she strains her ears to see if they are whispering in there.

When Charag enters the room, carrying the dish of vermicelli, the look on his face tells Kaukab that Mah-Jabin has told him everything. And as if to confirm, Mah-Jabin—following Charag with the spoons and bowls— avoids her eyes guiltily. The girl has applied the gold leaf to the surface of the vermicelli very clumsily, tearing the delicate sheet here and there so that it looks like a blistered mirror.