Maps for Lost Lovers

birth because his health began to deteriorate after about a week: he became increasingly irresponsive to noise and other sensations, and seemed deficient in strength, so much so that eventually even the act of crying seemed to defeat him. As the days passed he lost weight despite regular breast-feeds and the minor infections he had developed began to give the doctors cause for concern despite the medicines prescribed. One afternoon, after he had been fed, Kaukab brought him to lie next to Shamas and he had leaned over the small soft heap and stroked the head, the nap of short hair on the pate like some kind of moss under the touch. Shamas’s little finger hovered closed to the baby’s lips and when the tiny mouth moved to take in the tip of the digit and began sucking at it forcefully, everything suddenly became clear. His legs shook as he went into the next room, the kitchen. She was cooking the children’s lunch, pale steam rising from the pan like morning mist from a pond.
    “He is still hungry, Kaukab.”
    “That’s very strange. I’ve just fed him.”
    “Perhaps you should feed him again. He suckled my finger: you should’ve seen how he reacted when the finger got near his mouth. He was electrified.”
    “I am empty and raw. I’ve just fed him.”
    “Have you remembered to give him his medicine?” For a moment he thought he was going to black out.
    “Of course I have.”
    He was clenching and unclenching his fists, the palms feeling cold. “I just thought you might have forgotten: you are after all fasting, and people become forgetful when they fast. Or are you making the baby fast too? Not giving him anything—milk or water or his medicine—from dusk till dawn?”
    “I don’t know what you mean. And don’t raise your voice, please.”
    “What I mean is that I think you have been making the baby—your holy baby!—observe Ramadan. You have been starving him during the daylight hours.”
    “If it’s true—which it isn’t—then it’s because he himself insists on it. He refuses to let anything pass his lips during the daylight hours. And don’t make light of my beliefs: he is an exalted infant. Must you talk like a heretic in this house? I blame father-ji for marrying me to a Communist.”
    “Get your head out of the clouds and come give him milk right now.” He was trying to speak quietly because he could sense the other two children—the nine-year-old Charag and the four-year-old Mah-Jabin— on the staircase next to the kitchen. A few moments ago a yellow-and-green striped sweet the size of a sparrow’s egg—slipped from the hands of one of the children—had fallen and landed at the bottom of the staircase, alerting him to their presence. They must’ve been up there, listening, and now he could hear the small movements they were making.
    “No I won’t come. It’s my milk. He and I will break our fast at sunset. It’s just a matter of changing the routine: I give him everything he needs during the night.”
    “Has someone stolen your ears? I said come now.” The world had become stark, the colours harsh in his eyes.
    “No. I have just fed him and have nothing left.”
    “Show me.” They stared at each other until neither of them knew who the other one was. By grabbing hold of the neckline he tore open her kameez with both hands to reveal a soaked brassiere which he pulled at here and there until one of the cups ripped and spilled its load like weights in a sling. She had resisted and he had dragged her across the floor, her exposed breast bloody from his fingernail. In the next room he lifted the baby in its sail-white blanket and placed it in her lap where she sat on the floor, milk beading bluishly at the tip of the chocolate-coloured nipple. Inert and apparently insensible, she hadn’t moved to connect the baby to the breast and he had slapped her face:
    “Feed him, you haramzadi !”
    The pale steam that had been rising from the pan in the kitchen had become black smoke as the unstirred food had begun to burn, the dark tendrils choking the house. He went and turned off the gas. The acrid smell had replaced the lime-and-rosehip perfume that the geraniums in the kitchen had released when the two of them had stumbled against them in their struggle. As he turned off the gas he was aghast to see her step into the kitchen, her wide open eyes the size of rose leaves, the baby screaming in the other room. His disbelief and desperation grew fuller, becoming its own