Maps for Lost Lovers

back garden, thinking about Suraya waiting for him at Scandal Point, beside the Safeena, holding the Koh-i- Noor pencils in her hand. Years ago at the Safeena, while he was sitting in convivial geniality with the shop’s owner, both locked in a habit of concentrated silence, a recently read paragraph or poem always in their heads like tealeaves releasing flavour in two cups of hot water, Jugnu had come in with a butterfly net to ask if there was an Urdu-language Ulysses: “A moth circles the light in the brothel sequence. I wonder which Urdu word for moth they would use— parvana or the more prosaic patanga ?” Shamas said he remembered a path by Browning where lichens mock the marks on a moth, and small ferns fit their teeth to the polished block, but he didn’t recall a moth in the Circe chapter of Ulysses. “Are you sure you are not thinking of the kisses that flutter about Bloom in Nighttown? He stands before a lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing. ” Jugnu joined in with a laugh of pleasure: “ They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins. Yes, but there is an actual moth in that chapter also. Bloom wears the Koh-i-Noor diamond on the fingers of his right hand at one point in that chapter.”
    “I cannot think of anyone more appropriate than him to have that jewel,” Shamas had said.
    And now he goes into the kitchen through the back door, and moves towards the pink room in order to consult the Urdu Ulysses. “ Parvana or the more prosaic patanga ?” he mutters and looks up to discover that Suraya is sitting in there with Kaukab.
    They are looking at a photograph of Ujala, and Kaukab has obviously just told Suraya something about the boy, because Suraya says, “I wish I could say something to make you feel better.”
    “Don’t blame yourself,” Kaukab says. “My wounds aren’t the kind that heal easily.”
    They hear him come in and both stand up, Suraya looking him squarely in the eyes.
    “And this must be your husband.”
    Kaukab smiles at Shamas. “This is Perveen. I saw her admiring my roses from the footpath and we ended up talking. We have been sitting here for about an hour and a half, finishing off the strawberries I bought yesterday.” She indicates the two bowls on the coffee table, swirled pink and white with the cream and berry juice. “We even said our prayers together.”
    Perveen. Shamas had told Suraya that her name was the Persian word for the constellation of Pleiades, the Seven Sisters: “As is the other common girl’s name—Perveen.”
    “She just moved into the area two days ago,” Kaukab tells him.
    “Now,” Kaukab turns once again to Suraya, waving Shamas away, overexcited by the company she has found unexpectedly this afternoon, “I must tell you about Mah-Jabin. She’s sitting over there in America as we speak, wearing immodest Western clothes, no doubt.”
    But Shamas remains where he is, trying to understand what she is doing here. His heart beats so loudly he fears his eardrums will split.
    “You said earlier that you had sent Mah-Rukh, sorry, Mah- Jabin, to Pakistan to marry. Why?”
    “Well, I feel I can tell you these things, Perveen, but you must promise not to tell anyone. What happened was that Mah-Jabin fell in love with a boy when she was young, and when he married someone else, well, she insisted on being sent to Pakistan.”
    Suraya lifts her eyes towards Shamas for the briefest of moments, and then looks back to Kaukab: “You are right: it is complicated.”
    “Such a nice boy she married, but she abandoned him.” Kaukab’s eyes fill up with tears. “He wrote to her earlier this year, but when she came home for a visit, way way back at the beginning of spring, she threw the letter away—unopened. Imagine, Perveen! I must show you a photograph of his. I used to keep it here in this room but then I put it away upstairs because it pained me too much to think how my daughter had pained him.” And now suddenly she turns to Shamas: “My Allah, Shamas, we forgot to tell you that Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has just died. Perveen just told me.”
    “Yes,” Suraya says to Shamas. “A woman went by, weeping out in the street, and I asked what the matter was.”
    Is she lying? Is “Nusrat’s death” a coded way for her to refer to their first night together and how nothing came of it eventually? Is she here to torment him?
    “And