Maps for Lost Lovers

by Muhammad’s winged mount as it carried him to the heavens for an audience with Allah on his Night Journey. He steps over the crooked transparent vein of a small stream. He is walking towards the cluster of large and costly lakeside houses where flowers bloom by the hundred and the unopened frond tips of the giant ferns look like fists of red-haired gorillas.
    The family in one of the houses is descended from a holy man in the Faisalabad region of Pakistan. Among the followers of the revered ancestor of the lakeside family had been the forefathers of the devotional singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan—the man referred to by one London critic as the best and most-powerful singer in the world today, and by another as one of the three or four truly sublime voices of the twentieth century — up there with Maria Callas and Umm-e Kulsum.
    Whenever he can, Nusrat attends the annual urs celebrations at the shrine near Faisalabad to humble himself before the ancient saint. The saint must have shown some kindness towards his ancestor, all those centuries ago, but no one can tell exactly what it was; nor is this specific detail relevant to Nusrat—you don’t recall the taste of your mother’s milk but that doesn’t mean you didn’t need or drink it at one time. It is also his way of honouring his own ancestors: if they thought the saint was worth venerating then their descendent is willing to trust them.
    Nusrat’s growing fame in the world has meant that he is in England this month, performing a number of concerts before flying to Los Angeles to record the soundtrack of a Hollywood movie. Immediately before that he was in Japan, filming a television special; this had coincided with the annual Faisalabad urs and, regretting that he could not attend the shrine this year, he has instead decided to visit the descendants of the saint during his stay in England.
    Tonight—while the aspidistras in the dark gardens open their flowers so that they can be pollinated by snails and slugs—the awe-inspiring voice will perform its ecstatic songs in a white moonlit marquee behind the lakeside house, to an audience of all-comers. Suraya will be attending. And Kaukab.
    He told Suraya about the concert during a brief encounter earlier today: the girl whom Shamas saw on the riverbank with her secret Hindu lover a few weeks ago—the young couple looking for the place where the disembodied human heart was found—has been beaten to death by the holy man brought in to rid her of djinns. While Shamas was at the house of the dead girl’s parents earlier today, a house filled with mourners and people come to pay condolences, he had found himself alone in a room with Suraya for a few moments. Like everyone else she was dressed in the palest possible colours so as not to offend the dead and the bereaved with reminders of the joys of life, the joys the dead girl and those whom she has left behind will never now experience themselves. Suraya was looking for the roses and the jasmine blossoms. “They are to be added to the water to wash the body,” she explained, and he had handed her the canvas bag full of crimson and white blossoms lying in a corner of the room, blossoms as bright as bee-eating birds. Here and there a small frail-winged insect clung to a petal with its gold-coloured legs. “I saw children picking them earlier from our front garden, blowing away the aphids, carefully picking up any petal or blossom they dropped on the ground,” he said to her, “and I couldn’t understand at first who had sent them or why.” And then he had found himself telling her about Nusrat’s recital tonight—his way of asking her whether she would come. She hurried out of the room, leaving him wondering whether the subject of songs and singing wasn’t deemed inappropriate by her in the house where a funeral was being arranged. But he was anxious to see her again and hadn’t meant any disrespect to the helpless girl who had died so brutally. She was killed during the exorcism arranged by the parents with her husband’s approval. The holy man reassured the family that if reasonable force was used the girl would not be affected, only the djinn, and that there was no other way to drive out the malevolent spirit than by beating the body it had entered. The girl was taken into the cellar and the beatings lasted several days with the mother and father in the room directly above reading the Koran out loud. She was not fed or given water for the duration