The Language of Secrets (11 page)

“I'm not spying on you, Ruksh. But if you're thinking of getting married, that's obviously of interest to me.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You're not acting like my brother, you're using your detective voice. And I don't need Inspector Esa Khattak in this room.”

She pushed a bolt of lavender silk away from her. It slid from the bed to the floor. When Khattak moved to recapture it, she blocked his attempt to help. He reached for his sister's hand and held it, turning it palm up.

“What is it, Ruksh? Why are you so angry? Shouldn't this be a time of happiness for you?”

She jerked her hand away.

“As if you don't know. As if you don't remember what you did.”

Khattak stood up. He rubbed a hand across his brow in a gesture that Ruksh imitated without realizing she was doing so.

“Would you have preferred to remain in ignorance? Wouldn't you have blamed me more if I had let you marry a man in love with someone else?”

Ruksh had been twenty-two the first time she had decided, on impulse, to marry a man she had met at school.

He'd shared the same background, faith, and culture. He'd also been dating an Irish-American student in an ongoing cross-border affair.

At twenty-two, Ruksh hadn't wanted to know.

Khattak had hoped that time would mature his sister, lessening the pain of that early betrayal. He hadn't expected that she would still blame him so many years later.

She rushed in to defend herself.

“It's not what he did, or the fact that I was young and stupid. It's what you did, investigating him. I never asked you to do that.”

To this day, Ruksh didn't believe that Esa had simply stumbled upon her fiancé with his other girlfriend. Esa had accepted the anger and the blame, knowing that Ruksh needed an outlet that wouldn't hurt quite as much.

Her brother was a safe target because Esa would always love her.

Though sometimes, he found it hard.

“Samina would have hated your chauvinist attitude.”

Khattak blanched at the mention of his wife.

“Staying at the house when Mum leaves the country, checking up on us. Samina never let you treat her that way—the all-knowing Inspector Khattak. She led you around by the nose.”

“You don't know anything about Samina,” Esa said quietly. “What she thought of me, how she saw me. She would have expected me to be involved in your life. That's what family does. If you're planning to be married, I would like to know. I would like to meet him.”

Ruksh had the grace to look ashamed. She sank down on the bed, sending the magazines to the floor in a slithery heap. A book of poetry appeared at the top of the pile.

Rooms Are Never Finished.

A collection of poems by the great son of Kashmir, the poet Agha Shahid Ali.

Khattak studied his sister.

“He wants to meet you, too,” she said at last. “We haven't decided anything. We're still—just talking.” She shuffled one of the silks with her foot. “I'm probably getting ahead of myself.”

“How did you meet?”

“At a halaqa.” Her eyes lit with excitement. “Esa, his poetry is beautiful, transformative. You won't believe it.”

She rummaged through the pile of books until she found a loose sheet of paper. She passed it to Khattak, who read it through. The last few lines of the poem made him pause.

Reclaim me in promise

Of victory sweet.

O homeland,

O heartache,

When shall we meet?

Did Ruksh see what he saw? The poem followed a well-established tradition of Arabic poetry, conflating the personal with the political.

In this case, the markedly political.

Did the poet mean Jerusalem, the eternal homeland, the longest exile of contemporary history?

Where shall we fly when all else is lost?

Or did he mean Iraq?

A land that promised us wheat and stars.

And if it were the latter, he could no longer deny to himself that his sister was speaking of Hassan Ashkouri.

He gathered his thoughts, returned the poem to her.

“The halaqa was on poetry?”

Ruksh frowned at him. “Not exactly. I mean, it was a proper halaqa—on theology, and historicity. It wasn't lacking in any way, if that's what you're getting at.”

It wasn't. He was intrigued by his sister's use of the word “historicity.” In Khattak's experience, most amateur scholars of the Qur'an chose to treat it as an ahistorical text, or as a fixed articulation of principle, disconnected to seventh-century social conditions. Any attempt to make use of context to modify meaning or to extract an ethical reading of scripture from the prevailing conditions of the day was generally met with condemnation. Innovation in matters of religion was considered unlawful and destined to lead to misguidance, regardless of the poison that spilled forth in the name of purity, disguised as fidelity to the past.

Khattak had never heard of a halaqa where anything other than primary or secondary religious texts were studied—poetry was far afield. In most mosques, any mention of literature or poetry in this context would have been roundly condemned, reading beauty out of the Qur'an—an extraordinary irony for a civilization whose crossroads met at poetry, and where the Book itself was the greatest poetical expression of the language.

As much as Khattak despised the idée fixe of men like Ashkouri, he was also intrigued. How had Ashkouri found recruits to his cause, if he was ready to stray from the most adamantine orthodoxy? What path would he have chosen as a scholar of Islam?

“Is he Pathan?” Esa asked his sister.

She was angry at once.

“Does it matter? Are you really hung up on tribal affiliations just because you married a girl from Swat Valley?”

A girl from Swat Valley.

Samina. Gone these seven years, the loss still fresh in moments like this. Her photograph faced him on his mother's dresser. He turned his head away, trying not to think of what the last decade had brought to the people of Swat, and to himself. The Taliban ascendancy, the Pakistan army's counteroffensive, and the innocent whose bodies were littered between them. Samina's parents had refused to allow their daughter to return to visit Swat, though they had taken heart from Malala Yousafzai's courageous stand against the Taliban.

Malala's defiance had consisted of her insistence on going to school.

“Not at all. I'm just curious.”

“He's Iraqi, Esa. And someone who's more at peace with himself, I've yet to meet.”

If that were truly the case, which Khattak knew it couldn't be, he would have hoped that some of that tranquillity would have rubbed off on Rukshanda. Her words were aimed at shattering his composure. At engaging him in long-forgotten battles.

She was a strong, self-reliant woman. Yet she still felt the need to prove herself to her brother, the brother who had struck out on his own path at every opportunity. And had suffered the consequences of doing so.

Khattak quickly refocused.

“What is your poet's name?”

Ruksh looked defiant. “Hassan Ashkouri. You don't know him.”

Would to God that he didn't. If Ruksh hadn't forgiven him over a short-lived infatuation, what would she do when he was done with Ashkouri?

He didn't know what to say to his sister. Everything he did from this point onward, she could only view as betrayal.

He couldn't tell her about the operation. And even if he disobeyed orders and told her what he knew, Ruksh was too stubborn to believe him. And much too sure of her own judgment to be swayed in the slightest by his.

He looked at the wedding clothes that had slipped from the bed to the floor, a liquid ripple of jewel tones.

“It looks as though you know what you want. How long have you known each other?”

“Quite as long as you knew Samina.”

Less than six months. Long enough for Khattak to know that he had been granted God's most generous gift. And he had been younger than Ruksh was now.

He remembered a line of Nizar Qabbani's ravishing poetry.

God gave me the rose, and them the thorn.

He felt powerless. Trapped in a web woven by Ciprian Coale. The only bit of light in it, the words Ruksh had tossed out at the beginning of the conversation.

He wants to meet you, too.

“I'd like to meet him whenever you think best.” He paused. “Does he know about me? What I do?” Khattak's profession had kept many of his sisters' suitors at bay, but he knew that Ashkouri would have chosen Ruksh because of it.

For a moment, Ruksh's expression softened.

“Yes. Don't worry. He hasn't run screaming in the opposite direction. You're quite famous, you know.”

Khattak's smile was wry. “I think they call that ‘notorious.'”

Both inside the Muslim community and without.

A gifted, promising student who'd chosen the police as a career, instead of taking over his father's medical practice—followed by the promotion to head of CPS, which most members of Esa's community viewed as another surveillance tool, and a kind of betrayal.

These were no longer debates Khattak had with himself.

If he'd been in doubt, his role in the investigation of Miraj Siddiqui's death had convinced him of the value of his work. Miraj had spent her young life in pursuit of the truth, the years ahead of her rich in potential and promise. Her death had been ascribed to an honor killing—a cursory characterization that had set a small community ablaze. He had spoken for Miraj, spoken for her community—and with the help of Rachel's perseverance and insight, spoken for justice as well.

He would do no less for Mohsin Dar.

*   *   *

Ruksh began to scoop the clothes from the floor. She still hadn't asked Esa which of the colors he liked best. Nor would he venture an opinion.

Not for Hassan Ashkouri.

As if reading his mind, she asked him, “Did you hear about Mohsin?”

This was the opening he'd been waiting for. He nodded.

“I've been asked to consult on the case. I'll be making an announcement at the mosque where he spent most of his time. In case anyone has information that could lead to an arrest.”

Ruksh bit her lip.

“There's something you should know, then. The halaqa where I met Hassan? It's at the same mosque. I've been spending a lot of time there. In fact, I was supposed to go to Algonquin that weekend.”

Khattak kept his face impassive. He bent to help his sister collect the fabrics.

“Were you?” he said. “He was killed at the camp. We're trying to narrow down the pool of suspects.”

“You don't think it was a stranger? Some hunter who made a mistake and fled?”

“Not with that caliber of weapon.” His voice was bleak. “I wouldn't have expected Mohsin to meet his end this way—to die at the hands of someone he knew.”

Ruksh dropped the fabrics back on the bed with enough force to send them to the floor again, alongside the book of poetry.

Rooms Are Never Finished.

Love is never finished,
Khattak thought, glancing at the picture of Samina.

“It wasn't someone he knew,” Ruksh said with some urgency. “And it won't be a good start to whatever relationship you're hoping to have with my fiancé if you start off by interrogating him. Hassan had nothing to do with Mo's death. No one at the camp did.”

Khattak reached for the book of poetry, avoiding his sister's gaze.

“I'll have to determine that for myself, Ruksh.”

She snatched the book from his hand, flinging it onto the bed.

“Hassan gave that to me. Mohsin is dead, Esa. What can you do about that? Why can't you leave things alone?”

“You knew him, Ruksh. He has a wife, a father. People who deserve justice. And the crime itself that must be answered for.”

“He's gone. There's nothing you can do for him. If you start digging around the mosque, making people uncomfortable, you're going to ruin everything. Not least our family name.”

And Esa found it sad that even in the midst of discussing Mohsin Dar's tragedy, Ruksh was only able to worry about herself.

*   *   *

He found Misbah in the kitchen, her books spread before her at the breakfast bar. Before he could say anything to her, she asked him, “Are you upset about the engagement?”

Unlike Ruksh, she didn't focus on her own role in events, or her personal feelings. It was possible that Esa was angry at her over the secret she'd kept. Her first thought was still for him.

He slid onto the stool beside Misbah, helping himself to a handful of grapes from the crystal bowl on the counter.

“Is it an engagement? I've seen the clothes, but Ruksh said she wasn't there yet.”

Misbah quirked an eyebrow at him.

“It's not official, and you haven't answered my question.”

If he answered it, he would be lying to both of his sisters.

“I don't know that I have any right to be upset. It's not how I would have preferred to do things. If something is right, it doesn't need to be hidden. And what of our traditions? What about our mother? Does this seem like the right thing to you?”

He studied the giant portrait that hung to one side of the breakfast bar.

Each morning at his mother's house, he was greeted by the sight of his beautiful bride, gorgeously arrayed in a red-and-gold
lahenga
, while he stood at her side in a lustrous
sherwani
, a
sehra
of jasmine and roses descending from his forehead to shelter his face.

Had his face been uncovered, it would have disclosed his undiluted joy.

“You'll get the blame either way. For interfering. Or for not interfering enough.”

“Have you been attending these halaqas too? Have you met this Hassan Ashkouri?”