Maps for Lost Lovers

to go on holiday he should go to Pakistan and stay with his uncles. But he said he wanted to go to a different place, telling me that the point of travel was to ‘discover new things’—whatever that means. In the end I was happy that he was going to Turkey, a Muslim country.” The woman stares at the pink roses. “He disappeared almost on arrival in Istanbul a week ago. The police found a body in the Bosphorous yesterday and tests are being carried out to discover the identity. It is possible he was killed for his passport.”
    Kaukab nods. She has heard that a British passport can fetch £5000 in poorer countries.
    “I know I must have faith in Him, Kaukab, but my heart sinks at the thought of what might have happened. Abdul Haq, from Gulmohar Street, was lucky but will my son be? Haq recovered last year from his fractured skull which he got after visiting Istanbul’s historic mosques. They had drugged him and then bludgeoned him, taking his passport. Accepting the hospitality of a kind local who offered him tea was the last thing he remembered.” The woman lowers her voice to an almost inaudible whisper. “Who knows what has happened? Only yesterday The Afternoon said that a rotting corpse has been discovered under the debris of a tower that was blown up back in the summer.”
    “We mustn’t allow ourselves to despair of His mercy, sister-ji. Tower, what tower?”
    “It was in the paper, but no one knows much about it yet. It was a dark-skinned boy, they say, a Pakistani or Indian or Bengali. It’s possible that he was an illegal immigrant but who can tell?”
    “May Allah treat the poor boy’s soul gently,” Kaukab whispers. “He must be known to a few other illegal immigrants in the town, but they can’t come forward to say they knew him because they fear they’ll be detained and sent back.”
    The woman sighs and places a hand on Kaukab’s. “You are so good, Kaukab. You have had tragedy in your own family and yet here you are, thinking of others, consoling me. You haven’t forgotten His goodness. And of course the same is true of Chanda’s mother—she’s been so forthcoming with reassuring words too.” She places a rose into the vase. “Incidentally, Kaukab, last night I couldn’t sleep and so, at about three, I decided to get up to read a few pages of the Koran and pray for the safety of my boy. I was in the bathroom, doing my ablutions, and through the window I saw Chanda’s mother standing outside Jugnu’s house.”
    “Next door?”
    “Yes. The poor woman obviously wanted to see the last home her daughter had had, to stand in front of it and grieve. She couldn’t do it in the daylight hours because people would have found it strange, thinking she was being disloyal to her sons. The things we poor mothers have to do, Kaukab!”
    “I don’t think it’s wise for her to be out at three.”
    “She wasn’t alone. She had with her that young man who they have employed as help at the shop. She was pointing out various things to him—no doubt telling him little things like which was the room filled with butterflies.”
    “I have heard that they have employed someone. I personally don’t go there anymore as you know, but Sadiqa from number 121 said she had seen him a few times but wasn’t sure who he was. She was beginning to think it might be a nephew brought over from Pakistan.”
    “Maybe that’s who he is. I don’t know.”
    The telephone rings and as Kaukab gets up to answer it the woman gets to her feet too, saying she’d better get back and finish cleaning up the garden.
    Someone from Shamas’s office is calling to say that the photographic negatives which Shamas had wanted the town council to purchase from a photographer in the town centre have been destroyed. He had asked Kaukab to telephone his office yesterday about the purchase, saying that the idea had come to him some time ago but that he had forgotten about it due to his injuries. It was a matter of utmost urgency that the photographer be contacted. He hoped it wasn’t too late, that the man hadn’t consigned the whole irreplaceable lot into a rubbish tip. But apparently it is too late. A new shop has sprung up where the photographer’s studio was, and he himself is said to be holidaying in Australia after selling the light-fittings and chairs and gilt-frames to a junk shop and throwing away everything else—the backdrops, the pictures, the negatives, the soft toys that distracted little children, the