Maps for Lost Lovers

representing too.
    “Did you see Charag’s picture in last Sunday’s papers?” Stella asks Shamas and, against a mild protest from Charag, gets up to bring the magazine section of the paper from her shoulder bag, and there he is on the front cover, photographed with two other young painters. The child looks at the photograph and shouts, “That’s Uncle Philip and that’s Uncle Toby.”
    Although complimentary on the whole, the article does contain criticism of Charag’s work: he himself can deal with that criticism but he had wanted that article kept from his father because he didn’t want to appear a failure in his eyes.
    Ujala scans the article, reading aloud. “It reads: In certain art circles you are regarded as contrary if you are still putting paint on canvas. But for me painting is still an intelligent option, says the 32-year-old Charag Aks. The painter is sitting in his flat with a chocolate biscuit in one hand, amid paint-spatteredmonographs and volumes of critical theory . . . The paragraph goes on to describe one of his paintings and ends like this: There is nothing showy here; it is a rhapsody in restrained form and colour. He is following a very tough discipline. It was the combination of these qualities that so inspired the art collector Marshall Gaffney that he commissioned a year’s worth of work from him. The resulting paintings, eight in all (including a 4-foot nude entitled The Uncut Self-Portrait), are part of the Gaffney Gallery’s second Young British Artists exhibition, which opens in London in January. ”
    Kaukab, smiling proudly, takes the magazine and looks at Charag’s photograph. The Uncut Self-Portrait is pictured inside too and she closes the magazine when she sees it. Charag has painted himself without any clothes standing in a pale grove of small immaculate butterflies, fruit- and flower-heavy boughs, birds, hoopoes and parakeets and other insects and animals, the mist rising from a lake in the background—and he has an uncircumcised penis.
    He sees the distress on her face and says, “What I am trying to say is that it was the first act of violence done to me in the name of a religious or social system. And I wonder if anyone has the right to do it. We should all question such acts.”
    “That such wickedness can be!” Kaukab says quietly. “Why must you mock my sentiments and our religion like this?” Outside the window a large moon has appeared, its mountains and valleys a greyish black-and-white, very faint, as though it were a bad photocopy. She wishes she could fly away out of the window.
    “It’s a metaphor, Mother, and, Mother, I didn’t mean to offend you. Forgive me, but why does everything always has to do with you? Jugnu taught me that we should try to break away from all the bonds and ties that manipulative groups have thought up for their own advantage. Surely, Mother, you see the merit of that.”
    “Jugnu died because of the way he lived,” Kaukab says.
    “He didn’t die, Mother,” Mah-Jabin says quietly. “He was killed.”
    “It is healthy to have a boy circumcised,” Shamas says, merely to come to Kaukab’s aid. “The Western doctors say it.”
    “So if the doctors find out tomorrow that circumcision is unhealthy, would the Muslims stop it?” Ujala asks without looking up, face remaining tilted over his food.
    “Of course not,” Kaukab says.
    “I didn’t think so. And, incidentally, would these Western doctors be the same Western doctors whose advice that first cousins shouldn’t marry each other, you lot ignore?”
    “I fail to see what I could have possibly done to be humiliated in this manner again and again,” Kaukab says.
    “I know circumcision is probably healthier,” Charag says quietly, “and we have had our own son circumcised, but we didn’t do it because of a religion. I am sorry if you are offended but I can’t paint with handcuffs on.”
    “I think your conduct is most regrettable. What point are you trying to make with that picture? That a religion that has given dignity to millions around the world is barbaric?”
    Ujala sits back in his chair and considers Kaukab. “Dignity? Mother, are you aware that Muslim women cannot marry a non-Muslim? Their testimony in a court of law is worth half that of a man. Non-Muslims living in Muslim countries have inferior status under Islamic law: they may not testify against a Muslim. Non-believers are to be killed: of the seventeen great sins in Islam, unbelief is the