Maps for Lost Lovers

feather boas.
    Kaukab carries the vase of roses to the bottom of the stairs and looks up, hesitating, summoning the courage to take it up. Because of her pain, it had taken her a full five minutes to carry the lunch tray up to Shamas earlier, and a full five down. She enters the stairwell which is dark because the bulb died out last week with a small metallic sound and it is situated too high on the ceiling for her to replace—if only her children were living at home. She arrives on the topmost step and, under her breath, tells Allah she loves Him as He’s always taken care of her.
    Shamas’s eyes are closed when she comes in. His forehead is bruised an unlikely green and there is a bump the size of a plum above the left ear. His skin is bleached in several places, the colour of Imperial Leather soap. She looks away from him, as she has frequently done over the past month, sparing herself the sight; it is too distressing to contemplate and yet she is crushed by guilt every time she does avoid it.
    “That was Saleemuzzamaan from your office,” she says quietly, to see if he is awake, looking around to find a place for the roses, “on the telephone just now.”
    He opens his eyes.
    “He said to tell you that they have made enquiries and that the negatives have been thrown away.”
    She places the roses on the shelf and stands there, not wishing to move any closer to him, fearing he would become affectionate again, the condemnation and abuse of the seventy-two houris ringing in her ears. Some vulgar people ask that if a pious man will get seventy-two wives in Paradise, how many men will a pious woman receive? That of course is the height of ignorance and indecency: a pious woman cannot bear the thought of letting a man other than her husband touch her—so in Paradise, where there is nothing but ease and satisfaction, why would she be put through the torment of being groped and fondled by strange men? In Paradise everyone will have at least one companion, for there is no celibacy in Paradise, and so the pious woman would be happy just to be given an eternal place by her earth-husband’s side after Judgement Day. Kaukab sighs. Allah is all-wise. The couple will become young again and eternally beautiful and purified. There will be no urine, no faeces, no semen, no menstruation; erections and orgasms will last for decades, and men will often hear their earthly wives say, “By the power of Allah, I could find nothing in Paradise as beautiful as you.”
    Shamas tries to move his lips to convey a smile to her.
    She smiles back, hoping he has not noticed that she is wearing her outdoor clothes: England is a dirty country, an unsacred country full of people filthy with disgusting habits and practices, where, for all one knew, unclean dogs and cats, or unwashed people, or people who have not bathed after sexual congress, or drunks and people with invisible dried drops of alcohol on their shirts and trousers, or menstruating women, could very possibly have come into contact with the bus seat a good Muslim has just chosen to sit on, or touched an item in the shop that he or she has just picked up—and so most Muslim men and women of the neighbourhood have a few sets of clothing reserved solely for outdoors, taking them off the moment they get home to put on the ones they know to be clean. Kaukab has been wearing one of her outdoor shalwar-kameez s for five days now because she has to clean Shamas after he has emptied his bowels. One day he had diarrhoea—like an hourglass—and her hands were covered with the filth, but things are better now. She would like to use water to wash the sphincter as prescribed by the Prophet, peace be upon him, but that is impractical, the water hurting the bruised areas, and so she has been reduced to using toilet paper. So each time she touches him afterwards she can’t go past the fact that he is unwashed and unclean.
    Shamas calls her to himself and she sits on the bed for a while before leaving—it’s time for the third of the day’s five prayers.
    “I wish you could remember who did this to you,” she says from the door. “They say it was probably the work of Chanda’s family. And I don’t mean to cause you pain by saying this, but I blame Jugnu for doing this to us. If he had stayed on the decent pathways of life then none of this would have happened.”
    “It wasn’t anything to do with Chanda’s family.”
    “How do you know who it was? You say you were grabbed from