Maps for Lost Lovers

finally tells him the truth.
    Kaukab had watched Charag follow Mah-Jabin into the kitchen and known he had wanted to be alone with his sister to ask him what Ujala had meant by poison. When they don’t return immediately—how long does it take to pick up a dish and a stack of bowls and spoons, after all?— she strains her ears to see if they are whispering in there.
    When Charag enters the room, carrying the dish of vermicelli, the look on his face tells Kaukab that Mah-Jabin has told him everything. And as if to confirm, Mah-Jabin—following Charag with the spoons and bowls— avoids her eyes guiltily. The girl has applied the gold leaf to the surface of the vermicelli very clumsily, tearing the delicate sheet here and there so that it looks like a blistered mirror.
    “I know you all think me the worst woman in the world,” Kaukab hears herself speak, “but I . . .” And speaking evenly she tells everyone, turning now to Charag, now to Shamas, breaking into English occasionally to include Stella, that she hadn’t known the salt given to her by the cleric-ji was a bromide—whatever a bromide is—and, she sees herself reaching into her cardigan pocket many seconds before her hand actually makes that movement: she takes out the letter and says: “And, Mah-Jabin, I know you think I’ve kept at you unreasonably to return to your husband, but that’s because I didn’t know any of these details. I know I can’t seem to move without bruising anyone, but I don’t mean to cause pain.”
    Mah-Jabin has recognized the letter and moves forward to take it from Kaukab’s hands.
    Kaukab leaves the room and hurries upstairs, wishing to be alone. She closes the door to her bedroom and locks it, getting into bed with the intention of staying there for only a while but opening the door more than an hour and a half later. She must get downstairs quickly, she tells herself as she steps onto the landing, because otherwise Mah-Jabin would start doing the washing up: there are too many dishes and pots today for her to ask the girl to wash them.
    She comes downstairs to find Shamas bringing the chairs back into the kitchen. The dining table is already in its usual place. “Have Stella and Charag gone?” she asks. He gives a nod, and when she asks him where Mah-Jabin and Ujala are he tells her that they have gone too: “They all drove away together. Mah-Jabin knocked on your door before leaving but you didn’t answer.”
    “Where have they gone? When are they coming back?” Kaukab finds herself asking in panic. “I have things to say to Mah-Jabin—tell her that the next husband I find for her would be decent—and I have things to say to Ujala. I hadn’t expected a happy farewell but at least a tender and affectionate one.” She rushes to the front door and opens it, looking around desperately. A sandalwood-coloured cat that has been standing in the garden flashes out of sight at the appearance of the human, very fast, as though it had been at the end of a length of elastic stretched to the limit. “How long ago did they leave?” It was all over so quickly: this morning she had thought she would have many hours with her children, whole days with Ujala: she feels the crushing disappointment she felt as a child whenever she accidentally swallowed whole the sweet she had hoped to enjoy sucking the flavour out of slowly.
    The bitterly cold air spills into the house like a sea. Shamas asks her to calm herself and makes her sit on the chair for a few minutes. Stony-faced, she does what he says but then gets up to begin the washing up, waving away his offers to do it all for her. She rubs the pans mechanically until she can see her face in them and then stops as though that was what she’d been looking for. There are fifty-five items to be washed altogether and the leftovers are to be put into dishes of manageable sizes and fitted into the fridge. She says her night prayers at ten, and although she is silent, her faith is not mute: he can hear her screaming as she sits on the prayer mat. Without a word exchanged they both work until eleven at night when the kitchen and the sitting room are back to their normal shapes, the drawers shut, the cupboards stacked with pots and pans, the floors clean, and the Madonna lilies glowing on the central coffee table.
    As Shamas drifts towards sleep he hears Kaukab’s movements in the next bedroom.
    And in the middle of the night he opens his eyes because he has suddenly become