Maps for Lost Lovers

second child has no diaphragm in his torso, and, in the sixth month of her third pregnancy, she has recently learnt that the foetus has failed to develop ears; she has to have a scan every day. As she weeps now she is, no doubt, asking the soul of the pious and ancient poet-saint—whose verses are being sung by Nusrat—to tell Allah to lessen her burden. I speak to you, my brother in far generations . . . The women hold her, striving to console, their faces on the whole more still and troubled than the men’s.
    Shamas can see Chanda’s parents in the group of listeners, near the white globe of a lantern that is being circled by a yellow-bodied Large Emerald moth. He must avoid eye contact with them. The Large Emerald alights and begins to skim scuff flutter along the upper slope of the white sphere, and, coming to the round opening at the top, it drops down into the lantern like someone throwing himself into the mouth of a volcano. Shamas has heard that one of Chanda and Jugnu’s murderers has been attacked in the prison; and for some days now he has been expecting Chanda’s parents to approach him, needing help to have their son moved to another prison. They cannot speak English themselves and are among the many people who require Shamas’s help and advice every day in negotiating a path through their life in England. At his office he and his staff have to explain various procedures to men and women who are unemployable in two languages, loathed in several, who know no English or are too intimidated to walk up to someone white-skinned for help.
    But they haven’t approached him yet. Perhaps their daughter-in-law is an English speaker and has taken charge of matters? Nevertheless, he must let it be known, through Kaukab, that Chanda’s family are welcome at the office any time they need assistance. A curl of smoke is issuing from within the lantern where the yellow-bodied moth has obviously been incinerated by the burning bulb. He needs to sit down—the idea that he has to help the two murderers! But he must: he must let Chanda’s parents know that they shouldn’t hesitate before asking for help. Nor is there any need to approach him directly if they don’t want to. He doesn’t own the office, he just works there.
    There are flames in his breast. Like a jet of air from a bellows, each breath he takes fans the fire inside him. He needs comfort and looks around. He doesn’t want to have to think about Chanda’s brothers— terror in his heart as he imagines the two lovers’ last moments on earth. Earlier today, at the burial of the girl, he was told by someone that human remains were found outside the church in the town centre by road-digging labourers yesterday. The news was to Shamas’s skull as axe to wood. But he has since learned that it was probably a very old grave. If the bones are less than seventy years old the police are required by law to investigate how the person died.
    He stands listening to the music. People are jubilantly throwing double handfuls of banknotes at Nusrat as he sings. A young woman gets up and, dancing there and back, goes to place a rose in Nusrat’s lap; her open movements of pleasure are seen by some as a lack of womanly restraint and they win her disapproving looks from a number of people in the audience, male and female.
    Shamas’s gaze—running past three teenaged boys whirling slowly in one corner, their arms entangled in the soft antlers of smoke rising from incense sticks, their mirrored caps glittering in the pale light—finds Suraya in the seated crowd of women. He notices with consternation that a number of other men are looking at her every few moments, taken by her beauty.
    Suddenly the amount of light in the place increases, as when lightning flashes during the day: she turns around to meet his eye briefly.
    Nusrat’s voice has now become the fabled Heer. Given in marriage to a man she doesn’t love, she is inexplicably feeling drawn to the wandering ash-smeared mendicant who has appeared at the door asking for alms. She doesn’t yet know that it’s her beloved Ranjha, the flute-playing cowherd. Don’t anybody call me Heer, says Nusrat-Heer in a pining tone, call me Ranjha, for I have spoken his name so many times during this separationthat I am become him . . . Her brothers—in collusion with the rest of the family, and the corrupt holy man of the mosque—are going to poison her eventually for abandoning her husband for Ranjha. She would