Maps for Lost Lovers

from the altitude of 200 feet and that he did not see anybody at all who was innocent . . .
    Deepak confessed everything to Mahtaab eventually, the truth that Chakor had kept from his family. The first very-brief and confusing flash of recall had occurred as early as 1922, just three years after the bombing, when he saw a white woman and inexplicably found himself staring at her feet. But in the years to come—the years during which he married Mahtaab and had children—the details of his past life would return more fully, making themselves visible in the gentle and gradual manner of objects taking shape with the slow arrival of dawn. When the British began selling the contents of their homes in preparation for their official departure from the Subcontinent in 1947, Mahtaab had returned home one day with a crinoline to make into a quilt (along with six suede hats to take to the shoemaker to have slippers made out of them), but he had not needed that prompt to remember that his name was Deepak, that he was a Hindu, or that he and his sister had been on their way to see whether it was really true that white women hid tails under their crinolines.
    Mahtaab gave no indication that she minded his not having shared it all with her much earlier. He said he hadn’t known what to do so he had ended up doing nothing.
    Not for a single moment, Mahtaab wrote in answer to the letter in which Kaukab had asked whether she felt betrayed by her husband. Imagine how much he must’ve suffered with that secret gnawing at his innards.
    Shamas is standing on the bridge, looking down into the water. And a woman’s voice calls to him, softly, from behind:
    “Brother-ji.”
    He is startled, and, turning in a near swoon, sees Chanda’s mother standing there, hesitating about approaching him.
    “I wanted to tell you something, brother-ji.”
    Shamas doesn’t know how to react, his head a perfect vacuum.
    “It is something important. I thought of going to the Urdu bookshop by the lake yesterday afternoon, but I couldn’t make time. Instead, because I know you always go to collect the newspapers from the town centre very very early, I left the house this morning to talk to you . . . I was walking behind you but couldn’t catch up. Then you stopped here to look at the river . . . Brother-ji, a woman from near our house returned from a visit to Lahore yesterday. She says she thinks she saw Jugnu in the crowd at the Data Darbar mausoleum last Thursday.”
    He looks at her without making eye contact. In her earlobe there is an emerald that would fill the cupped paws of a mouse—a berry of solid green light. He clears his throat, confused by what he is being told, but then the power of reason and the ability to conceive coherent thought fly back into his skull. “Both their passports were found in the house,” he says quietly. “Have you forgotten that, sister-ji? No one saw them upon their return from Pakistan but they did return.”
    “She thinks she saw him, brother-ji.” Roses suddenly bloom on her cheeks.
    He feels himself soaked in profoundest grief: when she speaks it is as though all the sorrow in the world has been given voice. The words float out of a deep loneliness he recognizes. “The passports are here in England, sister-ji.” He must state the facts but feels himself cruel for doing so, vindictive, as though he is swinging at her hopes with a club.
    The sun lights up the course of tears on the fraught melancholy mask of her face. “Everyone in that country wants to come to the West, brother-ji, so the two of them probably sold the passports to another couple and decided to live in Pakistan themselves . . . Everyone made their life difficult here . . . No one at the airports checks to see if the passport photographs match exactly . . .” She is searching his face to see if some little thing can be salvaged from the wreck of her ideas.
    He shakes his head. “That other couple entered Britain, came to this town, let themselves into Jugnu and Chanda’s home, and deposited the passports and luggage before disappearing. Forgive me, sister-ji, but is that what you are suggesting?” She resembles her daughter; it is as though the father had made no genetic contribution towards the absent perished girl.
    “Yes . . . No . . . Yes . . . I know it sounds foolish but . . .”
    “Forgive me, but that is as absurd as that talk about them turning into a pair of peacocks. Don’t you agree?”
    Standing immovably, she tries