Maps for Lost Lovers

poor Shamas-brother-ji was beaten up by, who else but, white racist thugs.”
    “By the whites? One of the rumours I have heard is that the people from the mosque had him beaten up, to stop him from testifying against the man who he is said to have seen abusing a child.”
    The new customer has come to pick up the mince meat which she had ordered over the phone and which Chanda’s father had prepared last night and placed in the freezer. “This is cold. I feel for poor brother-ji’s frozen hands. Why don’t you hire a full-time assistant?”
    “Sister-ji, don’t be inconsiderate,” the woman with the honey says. “Why should they hire an assistant? Next month there will be a trial and then, Allah willing, both the boys will be back here and take over the reins of the business from their aged mother and father.”
    The other woman looks ashamed and says to Chanda’s mother, “Forgive me, sister-ji, I didn’t mean to imply that your sons would never return. They are going to be acquitted, of course they are. And from December onwards, brother-ji would never have to touch these hatefully chilly pieces of meat. Allah will deliver both your boys to you safely. Just you wait. But when I referred to a full-time assistant, I was thinking of that boy I saw here three days ago. I thought it was someone you had hired part-time, to relieve the load a little.”
    Chanda’s mother takes an invisible blow to the stomach and holds her breath. “I don’t know who you are talking about,” she manages to say in a tiny voice.
    The other customer joins in with a frown. “I saw a boy here last week too, sister-ji, at the back. No?”
    Chanda’s mother has become a reed that’s sounding the plaintive note. “It must have been a customer who had wandered back there. We haven’t hired anyone.”
    On their way out, the two women laugh. “That’s who it must have been—a customer. Anyway, sister-ji, I heard poor Kaukab is having problems with her foetus-container, that it’s slipping out of her. Is it true? They had to pin back mine last year but then I made the mistake of lifting a heavy plant pot in the garden and the whole thing came undone again. I’d better pay Kaukab a visit soon to warn her not to exert herself too much after the operation.”
    After the two customers have left, Chanda’s mother bolts the door and has to steady herself against it, feeling as alone as the young Joseph at the bottom of the well.
    So: people have seen that boy—the fake Jugnu—here? No one must know that they have had anything to do with him—or have a hand in his version of what happened to Chanda and Jugnu. He will say that he and his lover had been on the run in Pakistan, moving from city to city, town to town, because they had wanted to get married against the wishes of the girl’s family who were hunting them in order to kill them—one of the many hundreds of “honour killings” that take place over there every year.
    They haven’t managed to find a counterfeit Chanda. And until they have found a girl, the boy must not be spotted here. They have rented him a room in a faraway street and he has come to the shop on three occasions so that the family can go over the finer details with him.
    Under cover of darkness, Chanda’s mother had taken him to Jugnu’s house and pointed out which window belongs to which room, what piece of luggage was found where, which door was normally used by the couple to enter and leave the house.
    But from now on, the boy must not come here. The family will pretend to be as shocked and surprised as anyone else by his tale when it is made public. He wants a down payment but they’ll give that to him the day before he (or he and a female) presents himself to the station—while she and Chanda’s father and their daughter-in-law are sitting by the telephone, waiting for a call from the police to tell them of what has transpired.
    Falling asleep last night she had had a few monents of panic, thinking about the dead body found under the rubble of the building that was blown up earlier in the year: an illegal immigrant, in all likelihood—what if this fake Jugnu of theirs takes it into his head that the mangled boy is his lost brother and goes to the police to make inquiries, not caring that his true story would contradict the tale Chanda’s family has concocted? She imagines him asking the police to check if the dead boy has a single gold hair amid the black ones on his head. So far he has