Maps for Lost Lovers

been brought into the country but the boys had participated only on the first occasion—their job was to go to a motorway car-park, meet the man who had collected the boxes from the airport, and bring the boxes to Dasht-e-Tanhaii in their own van.
    He says, “Just the other day a young man came to the mosque, saying he was an illegal immigrant from Pakistan and that he was looking for his brother who had come to England some years ago and hasn’t been heard from since.”
    “Did he leave an address where he could be contacted?”
    “No. He said the missing brother has a single hair of real gold amid the normal black ones on his head. But, no, he didn’t leave an address. In any case, there are many others like him. We’ll have to keep our eyes and ears open for similar people.”
    The vanilla-yellow and apple-green bus lurches and winds its way through the town centre towards its destination, stopping every now and again at the piano keys of a zebra crossing, its reflection passing across the glass of shop windows the size of cinema screens, and they sit wordlessly side by side, their faint reflections out there making them feel they lack the quality of presence.
    She places her sun-sheathed hand on top of his, very tenderly, and rests it there for a while. Whatever has happened to her has happened to him too.
    When the passengers begin to disembark at the station, they both remain seated as though dazed. “Her soul will never forgive us,” she says quietly. And then they watch as Shamas comes down, on his own, followed by three other passengers. “We were obviously mistaken,” Chanda’s mother says. “He and the woman were not together.” The woman is the last passenger to come down from the upper deck.
    “Did you see how beautiful she was,” Chanda’s mother whispers as she gets up to leave. “Allah, she was like a houri.”
    Lost in their own thoughts, neither of them had noticed that at the end of the journey it was Suraya who was holding the bright-green parakeet feather.

THE DANCE OF THE WOUNDED
    It’s the task of insects to pollinate flowers. But Shamas remembers being told about a rare plant that is found only on a remote hilly island, and how soft paintbrushes are employed to collect and transfer its pollen from flower to flower: the insect that had performed that function until quite recently has become extinct—an insect unknown to man. It is agreed that the plant couldn’t have survived through the ages without the now-missing insect. No one knows what it was. The flowers are the only indicator that it must have existed until quite recently.
    They are like flowers placed on a grave, mourning an absence.
    As the late-May evening darkens towards night, he, walking towards the lake, takes in the rich fragrance hanging about the roaming inflorescences of a buddleia, the whir of a moth reaching him from somewhere inside the grey-green foliage like a burst from a sewing machine.
    The hazy perfume decides to accompany him for a few steps while, above, the moon drifts companionless. Since meeting her at the Safeena that afternoon in early May he has seen and talked to Suraya a further five times, never arranging the next occasion too definitely or firmly, and never knowing if she would come but always expecting that she would.
    They have remained formal, almost shy, and there hasn’t been even an instant’s physical contact, because between them lies a glass bridge. So far there have been no consequences and therefore, at times, he finds it difficult to believe in the reality of the entire matter. He has read somewhere that, although the constant stimuli of daytime experience keep us from noticing it, we are dreaming at low levels all the time.
    Each time he has met Suraya his sense of betrayal towards Kaukab has been stronger than before. It is not as though I am leaving her: he had tried to reason with himself early on; but he is too old to be deceived by an argument as feeble as that: he is leaving her—he’s just not moving out of the house. Each journey towards Suraya has required a lion’s heart, and he has tried not to think about Kaukab’s reaction if she ever finds out.
    The moon is still quite low and the junk shop is stuffed to capacity with its dusty reflections, one hanging in each peeling mildewed mirror. Stars and a number of constellations are visible in the darker parts of the sky, and looking up he remembers that the powdery galaxies are supposed to be the dust raised