17
Naheed is in the glasshouse with Rohan.
‘I have been thinking,’ Rohan says. ‘The best method of recalling the colour red is to touch a warm surface. That sensation to the hand is what the colour red is to the eye.’
‘Your eyes will heal, Father.’ She makes sure to say it with a certain lightness, hoping the words will contain audible hints of her smile.
There are bandages over his eyes.
‘And the stars,’ he says, ‘the twinkling of them. I will remember them by holding the palm of my hand in the rain.’
She imagines him trying to find equivalent sensations for everything that is lost to him. The sky. His own hand. The transparent case of a dragonfly’s head.
There is still a certain amount of vision in the eyes but the doctors they have consulted have said that it is the very last, that it too will disappear within a few months.
‘You’ll be fine,’ she repeats. ‘The specialist we will see this morning is said to be the very best in the province.’
They are tending to his Himalayan orchids. He feels along the stem and tells her where to make the cut. She holds the scalpel inside a brazier of glowing coals to sterilise the blade every few minutes, dusting the cuts with powdered cinnamon as a guard against infection. His hands rest on the table as if to steady the world, or to make it stay there. Whenever she removes the bandages it is like taking the hood off a falcon’s head. He is alert as he hunts colours and shapes. He doesn’t know when he will be given a sighted day, and on most days he sees nothing at all.
He moves closer to the brazier.
‘Are you cold? I will take you in.’
‘They are saying the snow is very thick in the north this year. May God help the poor up there.’
She guides him into the house and then along the corridor into his room. Mecca House. He settles in the armchair of faded blue brocade. On the table are some of the books she had been reading to him, having taken them out of the boxes. There is a volume of letters that an American poet wrote to the families of American soldiers, during a war within America a long time ago.
Washington, August 10, 1863. To Mr and Mrs Haskell
.
Dear Friends: I thought it would be soothing to you to have a few lines about the last days of your son Erastus Haskell, of Company K 141st New York Volunteers
…
She looks down at the finger she has accidentally cut in the glasshouse. Incising her flesh it’s Jeo’s blood she sees. And that of Mikal. Rohan came back from Peshawar without his vision and with the news of Mikal’s grave. Basie has visited it since. They considered reburial in Heer but it has been turned into a shrine and they will leave it there, a profusion of myths and legends around it.
‘How is the bird pardoner’s boy?’ Rohan asks. ‘I must visit the family.’
‘Basie and Yasmin went to see them yesterday,’ she tells him. ‘The boy won’t let any man come near him.’
He nods. ‘For now, Tara, Yasmin and you can visit him. We have to help the family any way we can.’
‘Yes, Father.’
She closes the book of letters and under it the
Dictionary of Colour
lies open.
Dragon – A bright greenish yellow.
Dragon’s Blood – The bright red resin of the Indian Palm tree,
Calamus draco
(or perhaps of the shrub
Pterocarpus draco).
Drop Black – An intense black pigment made from calcinated animal bones.
He had wished to have colours described to him one by one, all shades and subtleties.
Jeweller’s Rouge – A powdered red oxide used to polish gold and silver plate.
Womb Red – Illustrated as scarlet but with no clues as to the origin of the term.
She walks out and crosses the garden towards the kitchen, entering through the banana grove.
‘Have you given any thought to what I said?’ Tara asks, as she bandages the cut finger.
She leans against the wall beside her mother.
‘Naheed, have you given any thought to what I said?’
‘I am not getting married again.’
‘You said you were waiting for Mikal. We now have confirmation that he too is dead.’
She doesn’t say anything. A minute later she takes the bowlful of flour from the shelf and trails her hands through it, holding the injured finger aloft as she parts and combs small ridges and peaks, working away the lumps. She pours vanilla essence and ground almonds into her half-folded hand and adds them to the cake mixture. Then she reaches into a pan and scoops out the white butter. Deftly she squeezes it through the flour. Water-thinned milk streaming down the three undamaged fingers, she forms the dough with the other hand.
‘The dead don’t return, Naheed.’
She looks at her mother and says after a while, ‘I don’t want to think about it.’
‘I don’t want to think about it either, but I have to.’ Tara reaches forward with the salt jar and adds a pinch to the bowl, something Naheed always forgets. ‘How will I face your father on Judgement Day? What will I say when he accuses me in Allah’s presence of not having given you the best life possible?’
The girl shakes her head slowly.
‘I am going to start looking for a suitable match,’ Tara says.
Naheed turns away from her. Wetting a muslin cloth to cover the bowl of dough. ‘I have to take Father to the doctor. Would you go out to the crossroads and get us a rickshaw? Tell the driver we are going to the corner where Lumber Bazaar meets Savings Bazaar.’
Tara had wanted Yasmin and Basie to accompany Rohan to the doctor. To keep both of them away from the Christian school where they teach, for however short a period. There was another explosion at a church the day before yesterday. Their safety is a constant anxiety throughout the day. She gets up and begins to put on her burka, doing up the long row of buttons at the front. ‘I hope this new doctor will say something different from the others.’
Through the window Naheed watches her go past the pink mulberry that has a honey-like taste but only if eaten under its tree, so tender is it that it cannot even withstand being transported. But Tara is back only a few moments later, followed by Sharif Sharif. Dressed in white he has a flat brown crocodile-skin bag under one arm, its zip golden. Upon noticing Naheed he takes a comb from his pocket and passes it once along each side of his head.
She moves to the kitchen table and holds the empty cup her mother left behind. There is warmth in it still and it is transferred onto her skin. The colour red.
*
Tara leads the man along the corridor. She’d met him just outside the gate and he said he’d come to see Rohan.
She announces him and withdraws without a glance in his direction. Hate is a male domain. When she has to think of this man she feels anger instead.
‘I am here on a delicate matter,’ Sharif Sharif says. Sitting on the chair beside him he is still holding Rohan’s hand from when he shook it. ‘It concerns your daughter-in-law.’
‘Naheed?’ Rohan hears the rustle of his starched clothes, the metal clank of his wristwatch.
‘Yes. I care deeply for her.’
‘You have been good to her and her mother. The entire neighbourhood is aware that you have been taking only the minimum rent from that poor lady for some time.’
‘I do what Allah allows me to do. I seek no reward in this world. But I see that bad times have fallen on the two women again. And on you, as the only male decision maker in Naheed’s life.’ Sharif Sharif sighs. ‘But these days, with this war, it appears that Allah has decided to test
all
us Muslims. Anyway, I am here to tell you that I would be willing to ease your burden.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I am willing to marry Naheed to put an end to your worries and her widowhood.’
Rohan sits up in the chair.
‘I have two wives already, but our religion allows us to marry again if we can prove that we can look after the new wife financially and emotionally …’
‘Sharif Sharif-sahib, I must say I am a little surprised. She is nineteen years old.’
‘That makes her a grown woman.’
‘Indeed. But I was attempting to point out the age difference.’
He is silent. On the table are various magnifying glasses brought out of Sofia’s study and Rohan hears him touching them. With them she would study twigs, petals, beaks, feathers and pollen grains before beginning to paint, and in his sighted days Rohan has been examining the world with them, storing up information.
Sharif Sharif says at last, ‘Be kind enough to think about it. You are a wise man and must know that it’s not good for young girls to be without a man once they have
been
with a man. It can cause them to seek out what they once had any which way.’
Rohan stands up. ‘Thank you for your interest and your kindness.’
‘A woman’s heart is soft and trusting, she can be corrupted all too easily.’
‘Thank you for your interest and your kindness.’
‘Do think about it and let me know. But that is not the only reason why I am here. Please be seated. Please. I wished to ask about your eyes. You must need funds for treatments and operations, and I was wondering if I could help in any way.’
What exactly could this person be implying? Does he think Rohan would contemplate giving him Naheed in exchange for money? ‘I thank you for coming,’ he says curtly.
There is a silence and then he hears Sharif Sharif begin to walk out of the room. Tersely he says in the man’s direction:
‘The girl will be looked after very well as long as I am alive. And after I am gone she has Basie, who thinks of her as his sister.’
‘It appears I have offended you,’ Sharif Sharif says from the door.
‘I have raised one daughter who makes an honest and honourable living, and I will make sure Naheed too takes that path if she wishes.’
He sits down and realises he is shaking with fear and rage.
*
He listens to the streets as he travels with the girl, the rickshaw crossing the major roads and entering the density of the bazaars. She holds his right hand, her own two hands placed gently above and below it. Beneath the bandages and the closed lids there are specks of light like coloured sand in his eyes, a vast visual song of the cells expressing their internal life, and out there is another song called Heer, called Pakistan, the people buying, selling, asking, shouting, the minarets insisting on Paradise at every street corner, and in his mind he sees the shop signs painted with heartbreaking precision and beauty by barely literate men and he listens to the slap of wrestlers against each other, gleaming with oil, the arcades under which pieces of meat sizzle, cubbyhole shops selling Japanese sewing machines, English tweed and Chinese crockery, the fruit sellers standing behind walls of stacked oranges, and women’s clothes hanging in shop windows in sheaths of pure lines and colours, teaching one the meaning of grace in one’s life, and he wishes Sofia were here so he could ask her to describe these things for him, she who had made an entire life out of seeing, possessing an enraptured view of the everyday, who knew which section of the house received the most moonlight on any given night of the lunar calendar, and he wonders if this is how the dead mourn the world they have left behind, if this is how she mourns it below ground.
*
The doctor is studying Rohan’s files when they enter the office. He is a young man and has recently returned from studying in the West. He looks up, and in utter silence stares at Rohan’s face.
Removing Rohan’s bandages he lifts the cotton pads from the eyelids, parting them gently with his fingers.
‘Can you see me?’ he asks.
‘No.’
The doctor guides Rohan into the examination room adjoining the office, Naheed catching a glimpse of the heavy-seeming machinery in dull grey steel and shining chrome as the green curtain is released behind them.
She sits alone in the office, looking into the book she has brought. This specialist is the final hope. One of the others said they should stitch shut the eyelids permanently. Last week Tara had visited the cleric at the mosque, to see if any specific verses of the Koran could be read for the restoration of vision. ‘Why could you not have come to me sooner?’ the cleric had said, unable to conceal his wounded feelings. But he was not saddened or aggrieved on his own behalf. ‘You thought you were modern people, wanted to visit as many doctors as you could before turning to Allah. It seems to me to be a case of “We might as well give Him a try too.”’
Twenty minutes go by and the green curtain is lifted and the doctor leads Rohan out.
Rohan gropes for Naheed’s hand as he settles in his chair.
‘So. As I have just explained to your father-in-law,’ the doctor says to her, ‘we need to carry out a number of procedures over the next six to eight months to restore the vision.’
‘He will be able to see again?’
Before the doctor can respond, Rohan says, ‘We can’t afford the operations, Naheed.’
Naheed tries to swallow but can’t.
The doctor looks at the files. ‘I am sure we can correct his original condition too. With the new medical advances in the West there is no reason why he should
ever
be blind.’ Naheed cannot help but express an elated astonishment at this but again Rohan says,
‘We can’t afford the operations, Naheed.’
‘Could you not sell something?’ the doctor asks. ‘Do you still live in that building with the garden that used to be the school?’
Rohan looks towards him. ‘I wasn’t aware that we knew each other.’
‘I was a pupil of yours. You expelled me because my mother was a sinner.’
Rohan is still.
Naheed knows the story of the prostitute’s son. The boy who tried to steal a spade from the school garden. He wanted to go to the cemetery and dig up what his mother had always said was his father’s grave.
The doctor, his face utterly serious, has his eyes locked on Rohan.
‘I recognised the name the moment I saw the report, and I recognised you as you walked in.’
‘I have had occasion to think of you not a few times over the years.’