Maps for Lost Lovers

guest. He has changed. I trust him and I trust Allah.”
    The man on the telephone last night was drunk, but Shamas lets the matter drop for now. “Why didn’t you tell me everything days ago?” The blood in his body had felt brighter over the past few weeks but now he feels each wincing vein losing light moment by moment.
    “I didn’t think you cared for me enough yet. I thought I had to . . . be with you a few more times.” She’s looking up at the ceiling. “In a way I am glad you found out everything on your own. It’s stopped me from sinning further. I would have gone on sleeping with you for a while longer, not sure how you felt about me yet. And also, you were hope. If I didn’t tell you anything, then I could keep thinking that when I eventually did tell you, your answer would be yes.”
    He turns his face to look at her, towards that body that smelt differently in different places, cloaked in a complex veil the way a single flower can produce as many as a hundred chemical compounds, with scents mixing and combining in patterns that change over time, with parts of a blossom smelling differently from other parts, the smells sending out a variety of signals to the visiting insects, one telling them that This is food, another that Eggs may be laid here, another that This groove leads to nectar.
    He says: “Forgive me for accusing you of manipulating me, because I myself contemplated deception. While lying with you here earlier, making love, I thought for a moment that I wouldn’t tell you this afternoon about your husband’s call, that I’ll wait until you yourself decided to reveal your plan to me at some future date. I knew I’d lose you this very afternoon if I told you I knew what you wanted from me, and that my answer is no. I didn’t want to lose you, your company . . . and, yes, your body.”
    She waves her hand in the air: “That’s all over and done with.” And sitting up, she says, “I have to go. What’s your answer?”
    “I can’t do what you want. But I will help you begin custody proceedings for your son.”
    “That’s out of the question.” A look of fear crosses her face. “The case could go on for years, and if I lose they’d never let me see my boy out of vindictiveness. I know of women who have never been allowed near their children. You’ve forgotten what Pakistan is like. I sometimes wonder why my mother sent me to that country.” She’s silent for the next few moments and asks: “Why did you marry your daughter Mah-Jabin to someone in Pakistan?”
    “It’s complicated . . . She wanted to go . . .”
    He wants to touch her—wishing to siphon some of her pain into himself—but knows he’s not allowed; he mustn’t. (For many years now, similarly, every time he touches Kaukab he feels he is committing a sin.) He cannot bear the thought of not being able to see her anymore. In the future how would he know what has become of her (just as he doesn’t exactly know what’s befallen Chanda and Jugnu, where in India his aunt Aarti is)? He tells himself once again to stop being selfish, to stop thinking about the consequences of her departure on his own spirit and inner life. What matters is Suraya and her predicament.
    “Please don’t make me look for someone else,” she says. “Please don’t make me humiliate myself with another. Please.”
    As though a storm has carried her away, she’ll leave in a while and he’ll never see her again, will be alone with the Cinnabar moth dressed like a woman from the Subcontinent. She’ll vanish from his life, a small figure dressed in blue hurrying through the rain, in the grey, blue-black and white downpour, leaving him behind surrounded by the wallpaper deer in their flame-of-the-forest bowers, out past Scandal Point and then under the high cable that brings electricity to the Safeena and is twined this month by the pure-white-flowering bindweed, the arrow-shaped leaves dripping with rain.
    “No.”
    “Would you like some time to think about it? Ten days, a fortnight?”
    “My answer would still be no.”
    “Say no then, not now. I have ordered the Koh-i-Noors for you: they’ll arrive just in time and I’ll bring them. Meet me here one last time, by our Safeena, our Scandal Point. Let’s decide on a day.”
    She kisses him on the forehead before leaving. She is a believer, and sex outside marriage is one of the greatest sins in Islam. He has an image of her going home after their meetings and frantically