Maps for Lost Lovers

hours ago. The outcome was what most people expected. There were no last-minute witnesses bursting into the courtroom. There were no new pieces of evidence. Though of course there were some people who thought the verdict would go the other way. Someone even floated a rumour that Chanda’s parents had paid a young man to say that he and his girlfriend had bought Chanda and Jugnu’s passports from them in Pakistan and had entered Britain with them. It is said that Chanda’s parents had paid a substantial amount of money—the amount varies from person to person—to the young man for telling that lie to the police. But he had taken the money and disappeared, never arriving at the police station—Chanda’s parents had not received the telephone call from the police they were expecting, telling them that the trial was being postponed, cancelled, because they had received some new information.
    Shamas stands outside the courts, waiting for the bus that will take him home. The sun has vanished completely and, here and there, there is a rain of cold thin droplets that gusts of wind push closer together so that briefly they look like pale-blue veils and banners floating away in the air, swaying. The trees toss as though rubbed with itching powder.
    He stands holding the black flower of his umbrella, beside the shop called The Enchanted Forest that sells sawdust-filled hummingbirds in glass jars like sweets by the dozen, flamingos so life-like they can be mistaken for artificial, trout with carnation gills, and hornbills posing on sea-kneaded driftwood, and where the tawny lioness in the window becomes a striped tigress when the sun is in the right place and the bars of the shutters throw their shadows onto it.
    Only this week has he been able to get out of bed following the assault. And the first thing he did was to go to Suraya’s house—the house she had grown up in, her mother’s house, the house where Shamas and she had made love on two occasions back in the summer. But it turns out that she has sold the house. He doesn’t know where she is. He rang the infirmary because he remembered wondering in his weeks’-long delirium whether she had killed herself, whether she had had a miscarriage. He even went to the cemetery to see if he could find her mother’s grave—in the hope that she would visit—but to no avail.
    It’s December and this morning there was a layer of ice on the puddles as thin as the glass light-bulbs are made of. Kaukab has been unable to attend the trial because her condition is worsening. She needs surgery for her womb but the doctors have been unable to find a place for her at the hospital; the operation will be in January. She is in severe pain, he knows, and having to nurse him back to health has not been easy.
    He raises a hand in greeting on seeing Kiran walking towards him, the misty rain accumulating on her umbrella, too insubstantial to collect into beads and slip down the outer slope like children sliding down a hill.
    His heart kicking, he listened as the jury convicted Chanda’s brothers today. Feeling weightless and heavy at the same time, he heard the judge say that the killers had found a cure to their problem through an immoral, indefensible act; a cure, a remedy—and their religion and background took care of the bitter aftertaste. Their religion and background assured them that, yes, they were murderers but that they had murdered only sinners. The judge said that Chanda and Jugnu had done nothing illegal in deciding to live together but, Shamas knows, that the two brothers feel that the fact that an act is legal does not mean it’s right.
    Kiran was at the courts too today. Charag, his former wife Stella, Mah-Jabin and Ujala have been attending the trial too; they are staying with some friends while in Dasht-e-Tanhaii. He was surprised to see Kiran there this afternoon but appreciated her gesture in coming.
    “This cold weather,” she says quietly upon arriving to stand beside him, shaking that head full of greying hair, the hair that she used to weave into a plait strong as a leather belt when younger, coiling the locks and fastening them with a series of diamond-like rhinestone pins.
    “This morning I discovered a single icicle, thin as a thermometer, outside my window.”
    “Do you remember the year when winter unexpectedly arrived in September and everywhere the rain being held in the bowls of garden flowers froze into ice? About twenty years ago.”
    “Was it