Maps for Lost Lovers

to accomplish?”
    “I have admitted that I acted madly, and I have asked you not to be angry—so don’t give me that look. I wanted my sons out of jail—and with good reason too: look what has happened to one of them! The day before I approached Shamas I’d heard that there were 1500 suicides in prison last year, and I had panicked, my mind in turmoil. I thought Chanda and Jugnu had sold their passports to another couple and decided to stay behind in Pakistan. It was all staged: that other couple came to England and left the luggage and passports in the house and then disappeared. I lie awake at night and the night makes you think up strange things. I set out of the house at dawn one day to look for Shamas, knowing he goes to town to get the newspapers.”
    “He must think our whole family is unhinged.” He throws up his hands, too amazed by where the story leads.
    “I said I didn’t know what I was thinking.” Her voice carries the hint of a sob.
    He looks at her with a kind smile after a few moments. “I’m sorry. It’s hard to know what to think. Earlier, I thought I heard a parakeet’s cry!”
    “You did,” she replies after a while. “I heard it too. They say there’s a flock of them out here. And it’s thriving. There is a fear that they’ll soon be everywhere. Such a harsh voice.” She joins him at the edge of the road for a while and then they both return to the cherry tree, to its dead litter of pink-brown petals.
    “If only she had a grave, I’d plant tulips all around her,” she says quietly. “Tulips are blessed. Their Urdu and Persian name— lalah —has exactly the same letters as His name—Allah.”
    She looks at him and sees the tears in his eyes.
    “Why are you . . . ? No, don’t . . . ,” she manages to say.
    He covers his eyes with his wrist.
    “Don’t cry.” They have both deteriorated over the past years, as though the leavers had taken something of their life with them when they left.
    “You think I have a heart of stone, that I wasn’t terrified when I saw the extent of his injuries. And I couldn’t believe what you said to them, that they must tell you the truth about what happened to Chanda and Jugnu. ‘Your father won’t tell me the truth so you must.’ ” He shakes his head. “I know you think I’ve hidden something from you, that I know what happened to Chanda.”
    “I don’t think that,” she says quietly, from the other side of a dark forest of suspicion that lies between them.
    “What has happened to you has happened to me too. I swear to you on my salvation and the verity of Islam . . . I want my daughter back, and I want my sons back.”
    “I don’t know what to think, but I don’t doubt you. I won’t doubt you if that’s what you’re asking me to do.”
    “You mean, if I didn’t ask you to, you would think me capable of deceiving you? So up until a moment ago I was . . . in your eyes . . . involved in whatever it was that happened? The only thing I have kept from you is my grief so as not to upset you.” He looks up at her with eyes that are round as sea pebbles. He presses the handkerchief to them and gives a little laugh: “Scoundrel tears! We’d heard the English were courageous Empire-builders, but even some of them burst into tears when they lost the World Cup five years ago. Smith did, and I think Stewart also. And the Pakistani players cried because they had won.”
    “No, I don’t know what to think anymore,” she says quietly. “May Allah forgive me, but I’ve even caught myself thinking it was unimportant that they were living in sin, so what if it goes against His law, that if I could do it all again I wouldn’t break all ties with her over this matter. As I was passing by the marriage registry office one day last year I looked at the list of upcoming weddings on the notice-board and saw that one Pakistani girl was going to marry a white boy, and just for a moment I said to myself our girls are doing all sorts of things these days, so what if my Chanda was living in sin.” Her face pale, she is shaking rigidly, a dead light in her grey-and-caramel eyes. “How do I know they will be safe in prison from now on?” A Pakistani teenager, twelve hours away from having completed a three-month sentence, was found dead in his cell last week: a white inmate has been charged with his murder. His parents were given the news of the death as they planned a welcome-home party. “Twenty black people died in police custody