Maps for Lost Lovers

the last.

SUMMER

THE SUNBIRD AND THE VINE
    “Jugnu?” was Kaukab’s first thought when the telephone rang in the middle of the night, two nights ago, making her sit up in bed and feel for her slippers so she could go down into the pink room and pick up the receiver. She was already halfway down the stairs before Shamas could emerge groggily from the room he sleeps in. But there was nothing on the line except static, as though the call was from somewhere far away. She recognized it from the telephone calls to Pakistan. She insisted on staying by the phone—and kept Shamas with her too—in case it rang again, but it didn’t.
    But there it was again yesterday, in the afternoon this time, with Shamas at work and she on her own in the house. The first time there was that dry sand-like static for several seconds before the line went dead but the second time someone spoke, a man, saying incoherently—shouting almost—that, “I want you to stay away from my wife!” and “We may be divorced but she’s still mine, you behan chod !” The man sounded drunk and so Kaukab had hung up. She was reluctant to enter the pink room when the telephone rang again about an hour later, but she had been unable to help herself eventually— what if it’s Jugnu? Ujala? “Listen,” the man sounded a little calmer now, “just marry her and divorce her as per her plan, but don’t touch her, don’t you dare lay a hand on her body. I know according to Islam she must properly perform her duties and obligations to her new husband before he divorces her, but you won’t ask her to do that, will you?” Soon he worked himself into a rage again: “Don’t even think about asking her to do her wifely duty before divorcing her. Leave her honour intact. Make no mistake: I lived in England and have friends there and so I can easily have your bones broken, you dalla. ”
    It was obviously a wrong number and she presented it to Shamas as that when he came home in the evening—he had made vague noises as he always does when she tells him about her day. She didn’t tell him what the man said or that he was definitely drunk because she’d rather not admit to him that alcohol can be bought in a land as pure as Pakistan, that people there drink it too. He might see it as encouragement.
    But it was he who answered the phone in the middle of the night last night and when she came down she found his face pale. He seemed as though he was about to pass out. He said, “It was nothing. Go back to sleep,” when she asked him who it was, and so she had assumed it was white racists who sometimes ring up at odd hours to threaten Shamas because he works for the Community Relations Council and the Commission for Racial Equality.
    Now Kaukab is walking towards Chanda’s parents’ shop. Could the call she received have been made by one of Chanda’s former husbands, who—unaware that the couple has disappeared—is angry that Jugnu has become her lover? He made the call to Shamas and Kaukab’s house because he thinks Jugnu still lives with his brother?
    She’ll have to ask Chanda’s mother if one of her daughter’s former husbands is still in love with her.
    But what was all that about marrying and divorcing? And how did he get their telephone number?
    She cannot remember the last time she had the courage to walk into Chanda Food & Convenience Store, and now too her determination dissolves, her steps growing slower as she nears the front door, and then she continues on along the road. She has heard about how one of the family’s sons has been battered beyond recognition in jail—all thanks to her own brother-in-law—and she fears abuse if she goes into the shop now. But she also knows that earlier in the year Chanda’s mother had approached Shamas to tell him of a possible sighting of Jugnu in Lahore: that encounter was perfectly civil, she reminds herself, so she needn’t fear rudeness if she enters the shop. And of course Chanda’s mother had greeted her politely five weeks ago when they found themselves standing next to each other at Nusrat’s performance: they had remained there for a few moments—a little awkward, yes, but still—and Chanda’s mother had told Kaukab that she and her husband had seen Shamas in the outlying hills not long ago, holding what looked like a rose-ringed parakeet feather. “Parakeets, here?” a woman within earshot had said, “Allah, how I miss those birds!” and Kaukab had seized on the opportunity to