Maps for Lost Lovers

vibrates to the movements of a tiger. Although living in fear of him, Kaukab often pretended not to notice his rage in an effort to deceive him into thinking he was not having any effect on her. One day as she came to ask him whether he wanted her to make anything for breakfast, the covers had slid off him a little where he lay in bed and exposed a section of his bare thighs. He was in bed naked, one arm tucked behind the head to reveal the long armpit hair. She demanded he get up and put on his pyjamas: she could not bear the thought of him being alone with his nakedness! He glanced at her in contempt but did not stir as she raised her voice the way she used to when he was a child throwing a tantrum in Woolworth’s over a costly toy, rolling around on the floor, indifferent to the threat that he would be handed over to a white person if he didn’t behave, a threat that had reduced his siblings into submission when they were his age. It was the weekend and Shamas was home so she shouted for him to come upstairs, keeping her eyes fixed on Ujala the while. His own eyes were on the ceiling, unmoving. Shamas came up and stood behind her and she explained the situation to him.
    “Get up, right now,” said Shamas, “and do what your mother says.”
    Immediately after what happened next, Kaukab’s first thought was of death, that whenever Allah decided to take her, He should take her while Shamas was still alive, because were he to go ahead of her she would be totally alone in the world. But it was equally unbearable to think of him stumbling around the no-man’s-land of old age without her hand to steady him, a widower whose children were past caring, his corpse awaiting discovery at the bottom of the stairs for hours, days, perhaps even weeks.
    What happened next was this: Ujala brought out his hand from under the covers and jerked his fingers at them where they stood in the door so that the swipe of semen flew across the room in an arc to spatter their faces, smelling of bleach, runny like the whites of a quarter-boiled egg.

THE MOST-FAMOUS TAMARIND TREE IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
    Shamas picks up the package that had arrived yesterday from India, containing foliage from the most-famous tamarind tree in the Indian Subcontinent, the tree that spreads over the tomb of the legendary singer Tansen, who had brought on the rains just by singing about them, and whose golden voice had led the Emperor Akbar to proclaim him one of the nine gems of his court. Even today, Tansen’s renown is such that singers travel to his tomb in the city of Gwalior to pluck foliage from the branches of the tamarind tree to make into throat concoctions, in the hope that their voices will become as pure as that of their illustrious predecessor, he who had caused the palace lamps to light up by singing the Deepak Raag, four centuries ago.
    This one bent into the arc of cursive script, this one leaping back on itself to form a bangle—the long feathery leaves have come from India, and although their final destination is Pakistan, they have been sent to England. The hostility between the two neighbours makes it necessary for a letter to Pakistan from India, or one to India from Pakistan, to be posted to a third country—to a friend or a relative in Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia or the countries of the Persian Gulf—from where it is forwarded to the intended recipient in a new envelope, the entire procedure reminiscent of a rubber ball being made to bounce off a wall by the left hand to be caught on the return journey by the right one. Direct correspondence is often destroyed out of pettiness disguised as patriotic duty, or violated by the authorities who are quick to see a regular communicator with the other side as a traitor. Countless thousands of families wait for the news of their loved ones from the other side of the border—a wall that also effectively cuts the whole of Asia in half—but what they feel is less important than nationalistic ideals.
    A friend of Kaukab’s a few doors down is originally from Gwalior: the foliage has been sent by her and will be passed on to Kaukab’s father—so he can maintain the suppleness of his vocal cords with which he calls the faithful to prayer.
    If Shamas’s aunt Aarti had been located over there in India he would have arranged the supply of foliage through her. The thirteen-year-old girl who had become separated from her brother during the bombing of Gujranwala in April