Fire in the Unnameable Country (29 page)

My father emerged out of the pharmacy: Salauddin, he exclaimed, why Mohammed Wallia, even you, Badsha Abd.

The first of the three looked to their leader for confirmation and the third replied, Sorry, you have us mistaken for look-alikes. In La Maga, which had reproduced every image in the world, it was unsurprising that these men could be actors, so with a single glance further, my father mumbled apologies and made his way through the mirror-strewn streets.

Not too long after, a tall, thin young man with downcast eyes knocked on their door, and bestowing a wickerwork basket of live
snails and crabs as a gift, he claimed to be the son of Mamun M and a woman named Qismis.

I live in Berlin, he said over dinner, and explained he was on vacation from university and had always wanted to visit the unnameable country, the birthplace of his parents, La Maga especially given its recent changes; then someone here had asked his identity and pointed him out to where the family resided.

Mamun M, who was by then taking so many different medicines that he interpreted the stranger's polyglottal abilities as glossolalia, tested him further by asking where on his mother's neck lay the squareshaped mole, as well as the year of his birth.

The stranger told him these things and added that in fact he had resided in his mother's womb for three and a half years before being born, and this evidence of Mamun M's slow, ponderous seed confirmed his son's identity.

I am Nur al-Din, he introduced.

You may stay here, Shukriah offered before Mamun M had a chance, for as long as you'd like, though as you can see, she pointed around her, the quarters are cramped.

I couldn't, he refused with many thanks, but his father and stepmother were so insistent, as were his stepsisters, who took a liking to their foreign stepbrother at once, that he had no choice but to take up a hammock in the space that served as the living-dining-kitchen area.

In the afternoons he would remove a melodica from his enormous army knapsack and play renditions of popular songs on the radio: Now guess this one, and this, the majority of which, between the two sisters, were known, but the game was inexhaustible and never failed to excite all three of them as they sat cross-legged shelling peanuts into a large blue bowl, salting them and eating and laughing until Shukriah came to bid them goodnight, not too late, and please for your father's sake, she would press a finger to her lips.

At dinner, he informed Shukriah and Mamun that the girls surprised him with their worldliness. He had imagined the unnameable country as barely existing, politically isolated from global film and pop culture, that it could be reached by only a handful of international flights, but that they had informed him the world still managed to seep in even if they put up mirror-walls so people were meant to see only themselves. When Shukriah asked if the girls had exaggerated, blown up their unnameable country into endless combustion, he laughed, took each of the sisters, seated on each side of him, by the hand. He laughed jovially, said that just today they had directed him to their favourite record shop in the city, and there, a gangly chainsmoker named Samir had explained how he ordered vinyl each month from a London distributor, though now it's every other month due to the troubles, Samir had said, and half of them don't arrive, he had lamented between puffs; nevertheless, the tween had pointed to the posters of American heroes and British idols, to the walls of records he had managed to retain: We have to make a home in the world.

But I've really come for another reason, Nur al-Din confessed to the family as he took a Super 8 camera out from his knapsack under the table. Oh, Reshma raised eyebrows. Oh, Chaya shadowed her sister. Of course, said Nur al-Din, flaring a hand to indicate the countless tourists that came yearly for the same purpose: I wanted to film your endless film.

It seemed like such a fraternal and chaste communion that at first it only contented Shukriah, and she encouraged the siblings to grow closer, hoping that Nur al-Din's slow speech and measured movements would cast in her daughters a similar worldly temperament, and she would pack the three of them lunches to take in tote bags before they set out in La Maga's mirror-maze streets. They would laugh and play in their reflections until halted at a shatter mirror intersection by guards interested in identification and nameless rebels. He spoke of Reshma,
with her song and click-up heels, her flock of violins that seemed to follow her wherever she went, who never seemed to be bothered by such intrusions, taking them as the daily trespasses of an unnameable country. Have you ever noticed, he asked Shukriah, your sister's ability to always find makeup artists ready to offer their services before situating her in the next take, matched by Chaya's nonchalance punctuated by her face pressed with white powder makeup and black eyeshadow, the second twin's abhorrence for flair and her precise knowledge of all the square miles
The Mirror
had occupied and how many homes schools hospitals factories had been burnt to crisp or become movie sets. You wonder why all the fire and revolt, Chaya had snickered. I thought it was for spidersilk, Nur al-Din retorted. Yes, it's for spidersilk, but spidersilk is also a metaphor, said Chaya; once upon a time, they used to use it to stop arrows, but they're making it so nothing can stop
The Mirror
.

During the thirty minutes of their absence, all the love Chaya ever held for her sister curdled into milk too sour for words. Remember: it was Reshma who staked claim to the heart of their stepbrother, though she did it in silence and with an overabundance of goodwill, which burned her sister and even irked Shukriah, who understood the nuances of the rift more than she let on. Both wrote furiously to Nur al-Din and counted the weeks before his replies. At first these arrived together, separated at most by one anxious day, and Chaya's heart was contented with the thought that despite the content of his words, which only spoke of the everyday passage of time and at most a short description of travel to a nearby city for some prosaic purpose, her sister seemed no better off in the struggle. Then, for no apparent reason, Reshma's letters began to arrive more frequently, and though she had never read any of their exchanges, Chaya assumed their romance was flourishing and increased her efforts. How to exit this mirror prison, she wrote, could you give a clue. In our unnameable country there are only walls
and in Berlin, at least as I imagine, lies everything beyond. Nur al-Din wrote back, don't be so sure, here the cabbage is boiled until one tastes only the water, all the apples taste better in the unnameable country, and besides, we have our own explosions these days: read: Red Army Faction.

Desperate to understand her sister's communiqués with Nur al-Din, she began from the beginning and started by imagining all the possibilities of the thirty minutes during which he and Reshma had been alone. What had they exchanged. Could it even have been a kiss. Why had she not interfered. She imagined having taken his hand before she had had a chance, pretending to have been her sister if need be, despite the fact that Reshma's hair was cropped short and fashioned to rise pointed from the skull like individuated stalactites and hers fell like rain down to her hips. Perhaps, then, it would be easier to assume Reshma's identity in a letter in order to sound the depths and differences of his language and to find the truth, though the response would be addressed to her other, and so that.

Finally, incapable of bearing it any longer, she asked him directly where his heart lay, with her sister or with her. In a cruel, lengthy, comical reply only several days afterward, he declared, in fact he was bound to take up residence after his studies with a woman he had fallen deeply in love with several months after his return from the unnameable country, and, besides, he had never imagined either of them romantically since we're siblings, remember.

A day afterward, Reshma declared at dinner she had applied to an art academy in Berlin and if accepted she would move there in the following September.

Go, Chaya spat across the table, knowing in her heart the truth: he doesn't love either of us, he has someone closer at hand. Besides, she did not say, it is not easy to escape the city of mirrors let alone passport out of the country altogether.

Fool, her sister's eyes grew sharp, her jaw jutted prognathous forward, matted red fur sprouted around her chin, her teeth grew out of her gums animal sharp, and her face became that of a fox's, lean and hungry, reflecting the long months of Chaya's antipathy with a single glare. Then the light shifted, her face softened, returned to its human shape, and Reshma laughed out of pity: he's our brother, and hardly the reason I am moving.

Astonished, Chaya asked: Why, then.

Because I am tired of La Maga and because I want to learn how to paint.

Chaya swallowed deeply, she drank the curdled sour milk of her conscience and suffered from such debilitating stomach cramps that she joined her father in bed and sought his commiseration, and finding it neither here nor in the stern gaze of Shukriah, who knew the content of both of their exchanges with Nur al-Din since she had kept up communication with him separately, nor at school with her friends, who could not plumb the depths of the tragedy, she wept alone for weeks until her eyes were raw. Never again did she write to her half-brother, who was not even that in truth since they shared neither the same mother nor father, not even after he apologized for his previous curt reply and extended a letter of invitation to her as well, you were looking for a way out of La Maga, Berlin has several fine art academies, your sister has shown interest in painting, you might be able to make a home here if you want to try your hand at some other craft, but Chaya would remain in the unnameable country for the rest of her life.

As for Reshma: migration is rupture, deracination, the cruelty of incalculable loss before all else. When the migrant finds herself contented with her decision to relocate, she is usually years removed from her initial mourning. Reshma's story is beyond the scope of the unnameable country and her suffering, her total failure in the world of
art, her hungry years and later exalted joys and hagiographic annunciation may be documented elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Hedayatesque is patiently awaiting the outcome of the Director's war and the rebels' war, corded to mother and bubbling into wombwater what she believes are words, pulling himself into bones and new tissue skin day by day. She speaks to him in full adult sentences, as one would do to a grown-up child of nearly ten years. Today on the radio, she tells him while ironing, they were saying that if the President doesn't remove Ivanovich, the Russian spy, from his council, the Americans will resume their bombing, and the President will then be arrested before being deported and imprisoned without trial in Seychelles, can you imagine. She sighed, either suffocate by gazing at your own face ten thousand times a day or die by fire. What else can I say, she is kneading dough and talking aloud as I am listening intently: I have no choice, after all. How can one have sympathy for a butcher, and yet: I think our President has become too indulgent to horses and cows and to foreigners, she declares, and he should stand up for the people of our unnameable country.

Soon, the first wooden bomb fell onto the minaret of a La Maga mosque and broke apart spilling one ton of paper ribbons on which were printed more than one million obscenities. Nasiruddin Khan, who was no observant Muslim and a shrewd capitalist at the end of the day, detected opportunity and seized upon it. He himself performed the call to prayer from the minaret of the assaulted mosque, and neither in the morning nor at midday, not in the afternoon or at dusk or evening, with his hoarse, unpractised voice at such an odd point in the sun's progress across the sky that curious La Maga residents threaded their way through the mirror-walls in the streets and coursed into the edifice
just to hear what was what. Then obscenity for obscenity, the cola merchant matched the heat of the dummy explosive and its one million swears until they were forced to bring out five oscillating fans, and still it was not enough, they turned up the overhead fans but these only circulated the hot air of his breath and fanned the frustration and anger of the people.

The people began to echo, we cannot allow, must defend others said, swear for a swear; and they asked is it possible, jostled shoulder to shoulder, They are resorting to bombs because the cameras are all jammed with dirt, and we have broken so many mirrors the dead have nowhere to go, are finally realizing the truth and have retreated quietly into their graves. Down with the Director, they whispered aloud as they poured into the streets, to hell with that horse's ass in the Presidential Palace, not yet confident to yell the words and mimicking the rebels who, it was known, wore ballet slippers and blended into the mirror background of La Maga and emphasized hush-hush above all else.

News of the dirty bomb exploded through the city and, fakery for fakery, Nasiruddin Khan's crew supplied the necessary ingredients and people got to work: dummy horses were built, dummy cars, dummy tanks, marionettes so lifelike that when string-pulled from secondstory tenement flats they responded with the motions of actual limbs; ventriloquists found work, out-of-work magicians became useful in the war effort, classrooms took on the atmosphere of the factory, everything changed.