She likes it now that she is sometimes left alone and the things
can happen in her head, the favourite things she keeps in there,
locked up; when people are present she never dares to take the
things out and play with them in case they get taken away or
broken by mistake. Big clumsy people all around, they don't mean
to break things but they do. Inside her head the precious fragile
In the Fifteenth Century ? 225
toys. One of the best inside-things is when her father picks her up.
Hugs, smiles at, cries over her. Says things she doesn't really
understand but the sounds are nice. She takes him out of her head
and makes him do it over and over, all of it, like having a bedtime
story told six times running. You can't do that with the things
outside your head. Sometimes they only happen once and you
have to be quick and grab them and stuff them away in your secret
place. Sometimes they never happen at all. There is a thing she has
inside that has never happened anywhere else: her mother skips
with her. Bilquis holds the skipping rope and the two of them
jump together, fasterfaster, until they are going so fast you can't
see who is who any more, they could be one person held within
the circle of the rope. It tires her out to play with this toy, not
because of the skipping but because of the difficulty of doing
things inside that you haven't brought there from the outside.
Why are these inside-only things so much harder to do? And
almost impossible to repeat overandover.
A special teacher comes most days and she likes that. She, the
teacher, brings new things and Sufiya Zinobia puts some of these
inside her head as well. There is a thing called the world that
makes a hollow noise when you knock your knuckles on it or
sometimes it's flat and divided up in books. She knows it is really a
picture of a much bigger place called everywhere but it isn't a
good picture because she can't see herself in it, even with a mag-
nifying glass. She puts a much better world into her head, she can
see everyone she wants to there. Omar Shahbanou Bilquis Raza
tiny on the tin. She waves down, the little ant family waves back
up. Also writing, she can do that, too. In her secret place her
favourite letters, the bumpy sin, hockeystick lam, mim with its
chest puffed out like a turkey, write themselves over and over.
She packs her head full of good things so that there won't be
room for the other things, the things she hates.
A picture of herself with dead birds. Who put that in there?
And another one: she is biting somebody, hard. Sometimes these
badnesses start repeating themselves like stuck records and it isn't
easy to push them away and pick up her father's smile or the
Shame ? 226
skipping rope instead. She knows she used to be ill and maybe
these bad toys got left over from them.
And there are other things that don't seem to be from any-
where. They come most often during the sleepless nights, shapes
that make her feel like crying, or places with people hanging
upside-down from the roof. She feels the things that get inside her
must be her own fault. If she were good the bad things would go
elsewhere, so that means she is not good. Why is she so bad?
What makes her rotten, evil? She tosses in her bed. And pouring
out from inside the fearsome alien shapes.
Often she thinks about husband. She knows what a husband is.
Her father is a husband, also Talvar Ulhaq, and now she has one,
too. What does that mean, to have a husband} What are they
for? She can do most things for herself and Shahbanou helps with
the rest. But she has a husband. It is another mystery.
Before the marriage she asked Shahbanou about this and put
Shahbanou-answering into her head. She takes the ayah out and
hears her say, overandover. 'They are for money and babies. But
don't worry, bibi, money is no problem and babies aren't for you.'
She can't understand this, no matter how often the picture plays.
If money is no problem you shouldn't need husbands for it. And
babies aren't foryou. Why? 'Just, I say so.' But why? 'O shoo. Why
why why away you fly.' It always ends like that, without
explaining anything. But this husband business is important. She
has one. Everyone else must know but she doesn't. Again her own
stupid fault.
The best thing that has happened recently is the babies, her
sister's babies. She, Sufiya, plays with them as often as she can. She
likes watching them crawl, fall over, make funny noises, likes
knowing more than them. She skips for them: O the wonder in
their eyes. She puts them in her head and brings them out when
the sleep won't come. Good News never plays with the babies.
Why? No point asking. 'Why why pudding and pie.' In her head
the babies laugh.
Then the bad shapes again, because if she has a husband, and a
husband is for babies, but babies-aren't-for-you, then something
In the Fifteenth Century � 227
must be wrong. This gives her a feeling. Just like a blush, all over,
hot hot. But although her skin tingles and her cheeks burn it is
only happening on the inside; nobody notices these new internal
blushes. That is strange also. It makes the feeling worse. Some-
times she thinks, 'I am changing into something,' but when those
words come into her head she doesn't know what they mean.
How do you change into a something? The bad, wrong words
and the feeling sharper and more painful. Go away go away go
away. Go away.
There is a thing that women do at night with husbands. She
does not do it, Shahbanou does it for her. / hate fish. Her hus-
band does not come to her at night. Here are two things she does
not like: that he does not come, that's one, and the thing itself
makes two, it sounds horrible, it must be, the shrieks the moans
the wet and smelly sheets. Chhi chhi. Disgusting. But she is a wife.
She has a husband. She can't work this out. The horrible thing and
the horrible not-doing-the-thing. She squeezes her eyelids shut
with her fingers and makes the babies play. There is no ocean but
there is a feeling of sinking. It makes her sick.
There is an ocean. She feels its tide. And, somewhere in its
depths, a Beast, stirring.
The business of the disappearing children had been going on in
the country's shanty-towns and slums for many years. There were
various theories about these disappearances. It was suggested that
the children were being abducted to the Gulf to provide cheap
labour or to be exploited by Arab princelings in worse, unnamable
ways. Some people maintained that the parents were the culprits,
that they were doing away with the unwanted members of their
outsize families. The mystery had never been solved. No arrests
made, no slave-trade conspiracies unearthed. It became a fact
of life: children simply vanished, in broad daylight, into thin
air. Poof!
Then they found the headless bodies.
It was the year of the general election. After six years in power,
Iskander Harappa and the Popular Front were campaigning hard.
Shame ? 228
Opposition was fierce, however: Isky's rivals had united to give
him a tough fight. Economic criticisms were made; but also sug-
gestions-of-Godlessness, vilification-of-arrogance, insinuations-of-
corruption. It was widely supposed that the Front would lose every
frontier constituency, both in the northwest and around Q. Also
many seats in the towns. In short, people had plenty on their minds
without worrying about a few dead paupers.
The four bodies were all adolescent, male, pungent. The heads
had been wrenched off their necks by some colossal force: literally
torn from their shoulders. Traces of semen were detected on their
tattered pants. They were found in a rubbish dump near a slum. It
seemed that the four of them had died more or less simultane-
ously. The heads were never found.
The election campaign was at fever-pitch. The murders barely
made the newspapers; they were not reported on the radio. There
were rumours, some gossip, but people were quickly bored. All
kinds of God knows what-all could happen in those slums.
This is what happened.
The woman in the veil: a horror story.
Talvar Ulhaq was flying back to the capital from Q. when he
had the vision. In those days the chief of the Federal Security
Force was a busy man, hardly sleeping, racing around the country.
It was election time, and Talvar was a member of Iskander
Harappa's trusted inner circle, his act of betrayal was still in the
future. So he was fully occupied, because Isky relied on the FSF to
keep him one jump ahead of his opponents, to discover their
plans, to infiltrate fifth-columnists into their headquarters and sub-
vert their arrangements, to find grounds for arresting their leaders.
He was busy with such matters in that aeroplane, so that when the
damaged ligaments in his neck began to play up like the very
devil, he gritted his teeth and ignored them, because he was run-
ning his eyes carefully over certain photographs of separatist Fron-
tier politicos in bed with attractive young men who were, in fact,
loyal employees of the FSF, working courageously and selflessly
for their country. But then the vision came, and Talvar had to
In the Fifteenth Century ? 229
look up from his work, because it seemed to him that the cabin
shimmered and dissolved, and then he was standing like a shadow
on the wall of the Hyder residence, at night, watching the figure
of Bilquis Hyder, veiled as usual in a head-to-toe black burqa,
moving towards him down a darkened corridor. As she passed
him without glancing in his direction he was appalled to see that
her burqa was sodden and dripping with something too thick to
be water. The blood, black in the unlit corridor, left a trail down
the passage behind her.
The vision faded. When Talvar got home he checked things
out and discovered that nothing seemed amiss at the Hyder house,
Bilquis had not left the premises and everyone was fine, so he put
the matter out of his mind and got on with his job. Later he con-
fessed to General Raza Hyder, 'It's my mistake. I should have seen
at once what was going on; but my thoughts were on other
things.'
The day after his return from Q. Talvar Ulhaq heard about the
four headless bodies, by the purest chance: two of his men were
joking about the murders in the FSF canteen, wondering if they
could pin the killings on well-known homosexual opposition
bosses. Talvar went cold and cursed himself. 'You idiot,' he
thought, 'no wonder your neck was hurting.'
He drove immediately to the Army GHQ, and asked Raza to
accompany him into the gardens, to make sure they were not
overheard. Hyder, in some confusion, did as his son-in-law
requested.
Once they were outside in the heat of the afternoon Talvar
recounted his vision, and admitted shamefacedly that he should
have known that the figure he had seen had been too physically
small to have been Bilquis Hyder. It seemed to him, to, that on
reflection there had been something a little loose and uncoordi-
nated about its walk . . . 'Forgive me,' he said, 'but I think that
Sufiya Zinobia has been sleepwalking again.' Such was the respect
for his clairvoyant powers that Raza Hyder listened giddily, but
without interruption, as Talvar continued, expressing the opinion
that were Sufiya Zinobia to be subjected to a medical examination
Shame ? 230
she would be found not to be virgo intacta, which would be
highly indicative, because they all knew that her husband did not
share her bed. 'Pardon my bluntness, sir, but I believe she
had intercourse with the four young goondas before tearing off
their heads.'
The image of his deranged daughter surrendering to that mul-
tiple deflowering, and then rising in her vengeance to rip her
lovers to shreds, made Raza Hyder feel physically ill ... 'Please
understand, sir,' Talvar was saying respectfully, 'that I do not wish
to proceed in this matter, except in accordance with your precise
instructions. This is a family business.'
'How was I to know?' Raza Hyder, his voice arriving almost
inaudibly from a great distance. 'Some birds, a bad temper at a
wedding, then nothing for years. Kept thinking, what problem?
Would go away, had gone. Fooled ourselves. Fools,' and then he
was silent for several minutes. 'Could be the finish for me,' he
added eventually, 'funtoosh, kaput, good night.'
'Can't be allowed, sir,' Talvar objected. 'The Army needs
you, sir.'
'Good fellow, Talvar,' Raza mumbled, and then drifted off
again until his son-in-law coughed and asked, 'So, how to pro-
ceed, sir?'
General Hyder snapped out of it. 'What do you mean?' he
inquired. 'What is this proceed? What evidence is here? Only
theory and mysticism. I will have none of it. How dare you make
allegations on such a basis? To hell with this tomfoolery, mister.
Don't waste my time.'
'No, sir.' Talvar Ulhaq came to attention. Tears were in the
General's eyes as he put his arm around the younger man's braced
shoulders.
'Got the message, hey, Talvar, boy? Chup: mum's the word.'
In the depths of the ocean the sea-Beast stirs. Swelling slowly,
feeding on inadequacy, guilt, shame, bloating towards the surface.
The Beast has eyes like beacons, it can seize insomniacs and turn
them into sleepwalkers. Sleeplessness into somnambulism, girl into
In the Fifteenth Century ? 231
fiend. Time moves differently for the Beast. The years fly past like
birds. And as the girl grows, as her understanding increases, the
Beast has more to eat ... Sufiya Zinobia at twenty-eight had
advanced to a mental age of approximately nine and a half, so that
when Shahbanou the ayah became pregnant that year and was dis-
missed from service on the grounds of her immorality, Sufiya
knew what had happened, she had heard the night-time noises, his
grunts, her birdlike cries. In spite of her precautions the ayah had
conceived a child, because it's easy to miscalculate dates, and she
left without a word, without attempting to apportion blame.
Omar Khayyam kept in touch with her, he paid for the abortion
and made sure she did not starve afterwards, but that solved
nothing; the damage had been done.