The Blind Man's Garden (14 page)

But now she is glad she saw the boy at the shops again. If Naheed’s fever does not abate, the visit to the doctor will cost twenty-five rupees. In all probability, Naheed will not manage the walk to the clinic, and the doctor will have to come here, and that will cost more.

‘What does it look like?’ she had asked the boy.

She brought him into the room and he drew a picture of the flag on a piece of paper. ‘This bit is blue. These stripes are red, and these white.’

‘Oh.’ She held the picture at arm’s length. ‘It’s not as plain and simple as our flag, is it? Would I have to stitch on the stars too?’

‘Yes. I think there are supposed to be a hundred. Or is it eighty? I can’t remember. Just fill the whole blue area in the corner with rows of them.’

‘When do you need it by?’

‘It’s for after the Friday prayers next week. It has to be large, about the size of four bed sheets. And can you please make sure that it is of a material that doesn’t burn too fast or too slowly? The flames have to look inspiring and fearsome in the photographs.’

Just before leaving he had asked her respectfully if there was anything he could do, and she had told him to replace the dead light bulb at the top of the stairs, the socket being too high for her to reach even when standing on a chair and she did not want to ask Sharif Sharif.

She spends the rest of the day setting fire to small strips of cloth to measure the texture, intensity and evenness of the various flames – linen, cotton, the textiles named after women’s films and novels,
Teray Meray Sapnay
and
Dil ki Pyas
and
Aankhon Aankhon Mein
. She settles eventually on a mixture, interspersing the fast burners with the more languidly flammable. She cuts up strips from a bolt of white KT – as pure as the pilgrimage to Mecca – and she makes red strips from a length of red linen. For the dark blue rectangle in the flag’s corner there is a large leftover piece from the indigo tunics she sewed for the uniforms of a nearby girls’ school. Blue as the colour a candle flame is said to become when a ghost is near. As she measures it she says a small prayer for the school’s caretaker who cannot afford the expensive operation he needs for his heart.

For the stars she makes a template with a piece of cardboard and begins to cut them out of white satin, pleased with the fact that the material is shiny, dropping them on the floor one by one where they lie around her full of gloss. She must do this well, in case the boy is dissatisfied and pays less than the agreed amount, and so again and again she consults the picture he drew for her, rubbing her knees occasionally because there is a touch of November in her joints. But pain at her age is no longer a surprise and she continues with the work, wondering what the various elements of the flag signify.

Are the white and red stripes rivers of milk and wine, flowing under a sky bursting with the splendour of stars?

Or are they paths soaked with blood, alternating with paths strewn with bleached white bones, leading out of a sea full of explosions?

Perhaps the blue in the flag means that the Americans own all the blue in the world – water, sky, blood seen through veins, the Blue Mosque in Tabriz, dusk, the feather with which she marks her place in her Koran, her seamstress’s chalk, the spot on the lower back of newborn babies, postmarks, the glass eyes of foreign dolls. Muhammad swore by the redness of the evening sky, and Adam means both ‘alive’ and ‘red’. Do the Americans own these and all other reds? Roses, meats, certain old leaves, certain new leaves, love, the feathers under the bulbul’s tail, dresses and veils of brides, dates marking festivals on calendars, garnets and rubies, happiness, blushes, daring, war, the Red Fort in Delhi, the spate of violent robberies after which people from the neighbourhood had gone to the police and were told to stop being a nuisance and hire private security guards instead, soda pop, the binding of her Koran – these and all the other shades of red, crimson, vermilion, scarlet, maroon, raspberry, obsidian, russet, plum, magenta, geranium, the tearful eyes of the woman from three doors down, who had told Tara she did not want her to sew her daughter’s dowry clothes after discovering that Tara was possessed by the djinn, fearing Tara would stitch her bad luck into the garments, the red flags of the revolution dreamt by Mikal and Basie’s parents, the Alhambra in Spain, the paths in Rohan’s garden, carpets woven in Shiraz, shiny cars that the rich import into Pakistan only to find that there are no good roads to drive them on. The setting sun. The rising sun.

She works without pause, the large flag materialising slowly in the interior as the hours go by, half the size of the room. She looks at Naheed but the girl remains asleep, hair sweat-pasted to the edges of the face. Winter will arrive soon like a blade opening and the room is cold. She lights a brazier of coals and places it next to Naheed whose body is now chilled. She turns up the volume of the radio a little when it is time for the news and the bulletin informs her that Kabul has fallen earlier today, that the Taliban have fled, after looting everything in sight including six million dollars from the national bank. Afghanistan is liberated and American troops are being handed sweets and plastic flowers by the free citizens of Kabul, music shops are being reopened, but while men are shaving off their beards, the women are choosing to remain hidden in their burkas for the time being. And Tara knows they are wise. During her adult life there has not been a single day when she has not heard of a woman killed with bullet or razor or rope, drowned or strangled with her own veil, buried alive or burned alive, poisoned or suffocated, having her nose cut off or entire face disfigured with acid or the whole body cut to pieces, run over by a car or battered with firewood. Every day there is news that a woman has had these things done to her in the name of honour-and-shame or Allah-and-Muhammad, by her father, her brother, her uncle, her nephew, her cousin, her husband, her husband’s father, her husband’s brother, her husband’s uncle, her husband’s nephew, her husband’s cousin, her son, her son-in-law, her lover, her father’s enemy, her husband’s enemy, her son’s enemy, her son-in-law’s enemy, her lover’s enemy. So now Tara commends the women of Kabul for being wise enough to stay in their burkas, because more often than not there are no second chances or forgiveness if you are a woman and have made a mistake or have been misunderstood.

She works until midnight and then 1 a.m. and it seems no one is awake but her. She alone is Islam.

*

Naheed opens her eyes and sits up.

‘You do believe me when I say I didn’t do anything, don’t you?’ Tara asks. ‘I threw the substance away. I didn’t put it in your food after the first few times, I swear on the Koran.’

‘I know,’ Naheed says weakly.

‘Sometimes Allah Himself does what He knows is the best thing for us.’

‘I went to a nurse and asked her to give me some injections,’ the girl says. She looks at Tara. ‘It wasn’t Allah. I did it myself.’

14

The leaves of the Sorrowless Tree are abrasive and therefore ideal for polishing. Workers from the furniture shop at the crossroads often come to ask for them. As he answers the doorbell this morning, that is who Rohan thinks is outside the house.

‘You don’t recognise me?’ the man says.

‘Forgive me, but I don’t.’ Perhaps he is a seller of bees.

‘I came to your house back in October to put up bird snares. I am Abdul, the bird pardoner.’

In his mind’s eye Rohan sees the bicycle with the giant cage attached to the back.

‘I have come to get back my wires.’ The man looks up into the canopies above the boundary wall of the house. ‘I can’t see them. They must have been taken down.’

Rohan finds himself staring speechlessly at the small soft-featured man, the light brown skin stubbled white at the jaws, a side tooth missing in the mouth.

‘You don’t seem to remember me at all,’ Abdul says.

‘I do. Come in, we have your wires.’ Rohan had spent an entire morning untangling them and then neatly winding them around foot-long sections of a rosewood branch.

The bird pardoner is a few paces behind him as they walk towards the garden shed. The north corner is full of smoke because he has been pruning, burning the twigs and branches that would otherwise carry disease. A golden-backed wood-pecker crosses their path with its undulating flight, dropping out of the whistling pine to escape the smoke and then rising to disappear into the tamarind tree, several of whose branches, bare in winter, are like a net of nerves overhead.

Rohan stops and turns to face the man. ‘I fail to see why you cannot make a living by another means.’

The bird pardoner lets the words hang in the air between them for a moment. Then he says, ‘I am sorry I didn’t come the day I was supposed to.’

‘You should be.’ Rohan is surprised to discover anger in his voice, and equally surprising is the speed with which the man’s eyes fill up with tears. But Rohan’s anger persists. ‘What excuse can there be for your conduct?’

Abdul wipes his eyes by lifting the loose front of his shirt to his face. ‘I can’t apologise enough for having inconvenienced you.’

‘I was speaking on behalf of the birds, who remained trapped up there for five days. Hungry, thirsty, terrified.’

The bird pardoner takes a sheet of folded paper from his pocket and holds it towards Rohan. ‘This will explain what has happened to me.’

Rohan takes the paper – with hesitation, nor does he unfold it.

‘After I put up the snares that afternoon, I got home and learned that my fourteen-year-old boy had run away to fight in Afghanistan. I couldn’t come to your house the next day to collect the birds because I had to go and find him. I took the train to Peshawar that very night.’

Rohan gazes at him and then at the piece of folded paper in his hand.

‘I couldn’t find him in Peshawar, and I have spent these months looking for him. Every time I enter the house his mother asks, “Do you have any news of him?” She has gone half mad and cries as if he’s already dead.’ The man points to the paper. ‘And then suddenly yesterday we got this letter. It was pushed under the door. He is being held in a warlord’s prison in Afghanistan. They captured him fighting for the Taliban, and the warlord’s people want to meet me in Peshawar to discuss how I can free him.’

Rohan slowly unfolds the sheet and reads the few lines.

Be present at electricity pole number 29 in the Coppersmiths’ Bazaar in Peshawar. Eight in the morning on Saturday 22 December. We will bring your son so you’ll know we have him
.

‘The date is two days from now,’ Rohan says.

‘Yes. I thought I would come and see if you would let me put up the snares again, to catch some birds. I have no more money for the train fare to Peshawar. My wife has already sold her earrings and I my bicycle. They were the only bits of wealth we had.’

‘You must forgive me but I cannot allow you to put up the snares.’

‘Then I’ll have to find another place full of trees. The bicycle is gone so I’ll carry the cage filled with them on my back.’

Rohan looks at the letter.
Don’t go to the police. We will kill him or hand him over to Americans to be tortured.

‘You probably don’t know,’ Abdul says, ‘but thousands of our boys have gone to Afghanistan.’

‘I do know.’

‘All I can say is if September’s terrorist attacks had to happen, I am sorry that they happened in my lifetime. They have destroyed me. And I live so far from where they took place. What does Heer know about New York, or New York about Heer? They are two different worlds.’

‘Is that your son’s name?’ Rohan asks, looking at the place in the letter where it is mentioned. ‘Jeo.’

The man nods and Rohan hands the paper back and turns and they continue towards the shed. Rohan takes the rosewood spools of wire – knotted branches like bones of trees – and puts them in a cloth bag and then watches the bird pardoner leave down the path and out of the gate, the ground littered with the last flowers of the rusty shield bearer. The exhaustion in the man’s eyes resembles the exhaustion in Basie’s eyes, who has been following rumours of Mikal ever since they came back from Peshawar, his spirit almost defeated, for now. His energy will revive with time no doubt. Whenever a boy from the neighbourhood ran away to help liberate Kashmiri Muslims from Indian rule, people continued to speculate, bringing true or false leads to his house for months and years. The missing boy was seen in a forest in Anantnag and was suffering from amnesia. He had started his life over again in China. He was abducted by dacoits and was being held for ransom right here in Pakistan, in a lime kiln near Quetta. The ghosts of the missing boys were said to haunt mansions in Delhi, they were said to have been strangled by gamblers in Mansehra, and burnt in houses in Srinagar. Once a young man appeared at a house claiming to be the missing son but he was an escaped mental patient.

Rohan walks to the gate. The bird pardoner has almost reached the end of the street, but Rohan has never raised his voice in public. He looks around for a child who can be asked to shout out and draw the man’s attention. Just then the bird pardoner happens to look over his shoulder and Rohan lifts his hand and beckons him.

‘I will go to Peshawar with you,’ he tells the man. ‘We will meet the warlord’s people together and see what can be done to bring back Jeo.’

*

He fears being unable to convince Naheed, Yasmin and Basie about the journey. He is prepared to remind them that in his youth he had visited Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Spain, Egypt, India and Turkey with little money or guidance. He is sure they would argue that that was a long time ago, so he does not tell them about the bird pardoner’s son. He tells them he is going to Peshawar to see his former pupil’s family, to thank them for the boxes of books, something that had had to be postponed during the last trip.

*

At the Coppersmiths’ Bazaar in Peshawar, they locate electricity pole number 29 and wait to be contacted. They are just outside a rickshaw repair shop, across from a stall collecting money and blood for the Taliban. Sounds of grief were heard from a number of houses in Rohan’s neighbourhood in Heer when Kabul fell. The cleric at the mosque near Rohan’s house had wept for most of his two-hour Friday sermon, the tears broadcast over the loudspeaker. The person in the Ardent Spirit van said that he had been reading the Koran when the news came of the West having conquered Afghanistan – and the Holy Book, overcome with shame, had disappeared from his hands.