Maps for Lost Lovers

“Oh, you have this.”
    “Yes. Originally published in 19 . . . 28. There is Naqsh-e-Chughtai beside it—same text but different paintings, from 19 . . . 34.” He remains in his chair, telling himself not to draw close to her: between them lies a fragile bridge of glass. “Can you see it? The dust-jacket is grey and shows a deer sitting beside a small cypress tree growing out of a jewel.” He must try to remain quiet and not point out any more books to her. She moves along the shelves of Urdu and Persian poetry, opening and closing the volumes, and after a while says to him,
    “A lot of Persian poems are about flowers and spring.”
    “Yes. My younger brother visited Iran some years ago, and he said that the abundantly flowered arrival of spring in that country cannot fail to inspire even a casual observer. I personally think that it would be difficult to find more rapturous descriptions of spring than those in the poetry of Qani.”
    “Is that the brother who . . . was . . . murdered?” She looks down at the floor.
    “Yes, and I am sorry once again for revealing that to you so clumsily earlier.”
    “Please think nothing of it. May I ask how it happened?”
    He doesn’t want to distress her. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
    “I understand.” She turns to the shelf and gives herself over to the books.
    He looks at the afternoon. “I think I saw the butterfly I have been chasing fly in here,” Jugnu said—once, when both he and the bookshop’s owner were still here. Out of breath, he’d come into the Safeena holding his green long-handled butterfly net like a flag. Shamas had pointed to the Urdu translation of Madame Bovary on the shelf and said: “The only butterflies in here are the ones in there.” Jugnu went out to continue his search, but he returned to the Safeena later and picked up Madame Bovary: “Now. I do remember that there are butterflies in here. Three, I think—the first black, the second yellow and the third white.” And five minutes of turning the pages later he announced: “Yes, they are still here.”
    Shamas turns his attention to Suraya again. He feels she may have taken his last comment as a rebuke, but he cannot think of how to make amends: she’s perusing the books, head bowed, her back turned to him determinedly. Shamas shifts his gaze and fixes it on her so that their eyes would have to meet even if she slightly alters the position of her head. He smiles at her when that happens—as though making up with a lover after a fight—and nonchalantly points to her Kashmiri jacket:
    “Do you know why paisley is so linked with Kashmir? No? Imagine two lovers quarrelling in that region. Her footsteps formed paisleys when she hurried away from him in distress. He searched for her forlornly in the forest glades where luminous orchids arose from the”—it is too late for him to stop—“spilled semen of mating animals and birds, where the urge for existence forced creepers and vines towards faraway chinks of sunlight, where the branches quivered with living songs and at sunset the sky turned red as though the departing sun had heaped rubies on the day’s shroud. And it was the paisleys imprinted amid the low flowers that eventually led him to her. He was the god Shiva, she the goddess Parvati, and when he found her he commemorated their union by carving the Jehlum river as it flowed—and still flows—through the valley of Kashmir in the shape of a paisley.”
    “Thank you,” her eyes dance as she smiles. “That is beautiful.”
    And, buoyed by her smile, he indicates the Chughtai books in her hand and says: “Chughtai drew the jacket design for my book of poems, back in the 1950s.”
    “You published a book?” She’s electrified and almost gasps. “And Chughtai ?”
    “He was a great friend to the Lahore publishing world.” He looks at her. “And as for my book: it was ready for publication but nothing came of it.”
    “Why? Do you have the poems in a notebook, perhaps? I’d like to read them.”
    “No, there is no copy of the manuscript. My wife had the only copy but that was . . . destroyed. And I am not sure whether I remember them accurately myself anymore.” He pictures himself laying out Kaukab’s wedding dress and writing out the verses in a notebook—in a safeena !—for Suraya to read; but, of course the wedding dress was reduced to ashes all those years ago.
    “You must try to remember them,” she says, and adds with a smile: “Some