The Blind Man's Garden Read online

  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.

  It’s 8 a.m., the time specified in the letter, but a six-year-old boy is the only person who approaches them, asking if they want their shoes polished.

  They continue with their wait and at ten o’clock a man wearing a Kalashnikov over his shoulder appears and asks them curtly to identify themselves.

  He says it’ll take twenty thousand rupees to free the bird pardoner’s son.

  ‘I don’t have that kind of money,’ Abdul says, and the man sighs with irritation. The mountain peaks cut white fangs into the sky around the city, the December cold intense. The rivers and streams must be flowing with shards of ice.

  ‘The note said you would bring the boy,’ Rohan says.

  The man points to a red van at the other end of the bazaar.

  They walk towards it and he opens the back door and tells Rohan and Abdul to climb in, the door closing behind them immediately. The interior is windowless, a pitch-black metal box, and Abdul snaps his cigarette lighter. The light it produces is sparse and he adjusts the lever on the side to lengthen the flame. They look around, holding their heads at an angle because of the low ceiling, and realise that the huddled shape at the other end of the space is a boy and not a pile of rags. He flinches and lets out a squeal when the bird pardoner moves towards him.

  Abdul stops and looks at him and then moves to the door. ‘That’s not my son,’ he says, sounding a knock.

  Rohan sees that the boy is weeping. ‘Please take me away,’ the little voice says finally, looking down. ‘They keep us in a prison. They do things to you that make you want to kill yourself. Please take me away,’ he whispers.

  ‘Suicide is a sin,’ Rohan says. ‘You mustn’t talk like that.’

  Abdul is knocking on the door but there is no response from the other side.

  ‘They have this game, they call it “Nail”. They start with the youngest prisoners and ask their ages. If the boy says twelve, they send twelve men to him. If he says fourteen, he gets fourteen. They take him to a room and take off his trousers and hold him down and then the whole place fills with screams. The men yell louder than the boy – like they have gone mad or have turned into wild animals. They are shouting, “Nail! Nail! Nail!” as they do it to him.’

  It would terrify even the stars. And Abdul’s fists are hitting the door louder now, the lighter flame jerking and then going out. ‘Please help me,’ says the boy’s voice. ‘Allah will reward you and your wife.’ And then suddenly the door is opened and the light floods their eyes.

  Rohan and Abdul are let out and the door is closed on the boy who screams desperately for the last time, ‘I will kill myself,’ just as the van jerks forward and drives off.

  ‘That’s not my son,’ Abdul says, and the ransom seeker takes out a set of photographs twice the thickness of a deck of cards, and asks Abdul to look through it. Towards the end of the sheaf, Abdul recognises his Jeo.

  ‘We will bring him next week. Same time.’

  ‘I have no money for the ransom, or the journey,’ Abdul says. ‘Either I or my wife will have to sell a kidney. It’ll take some time. Can we meet again in a month?’

  ‘A month?’ the man considers.

  ‘Have you no shame?’ Rohan finds himself saying into the man’s face, having pushed Abdul aside, unable to control his distress and fury. People stare at him as they walk past and he feels at the centre of a swarm of eyes. ‘How can you hold children to ransom and force the parents to do such a terrible thing to themselves?’ He cannot even bring himself to raise the other subject, so traumatised is he by it.

  The man is outraged and looks as though he will lunge at Rohan.

  ‘I will cut the boy’s throat and I will kill you!’ he says while Rohan glares at him. ‘Your boy was caught fighting against us. He probably killed some of o
ur men. We need money to make sure the widows and the children of those dead men don’t become beggars.’

  Abdul tries to placate him. ‘I will come back in a month and I will bring the money. Please treat my boy well in the meantime.’

  ‘No,’ Rohan says, suddenly determined. ‘No. We want Jeo and we will go and get him today.’

  ‘He’s in Afghanistan.’

  ‘Then we go to Afghanistan.’

  ‘It’s four, five hours away,’ the man points to the east of the city.

  ‘Afghanistan is not four or five hours away,’ Rohan says.

  ‘Six, seven, then.’

  ‘It’s more even than that but I don’t care. I want Jeo back.’

  ‘Yes, come with me if you want. The official ways into Afghanistan are still difficult, but I can get you there and back without any problems via old smuggling routes.’

  He is aware of the dangers. Defeated and banished, Taliban and al-Qaeda gangs are roaming Afghanistan, and of course the place is full of Western soldiers.

  ‘The journey will cost you,’ the man says. ‘And I’ll have to make a phone call to arrange everything, to make sure it’s acceptable to my superiors.’

  ‘What about the twenty thousand rupees?’ Abdul asks Rohan.

  Rohan reaches into his pocket and takes out the ruby on its black cord. Both Abdul and the ransom seeker are taken aback by the size and beauty of the jewel, the unimprovable red light collected inside it. They cannot take their eyes off the stone, and they stare at the pocket where it is when Rohan puts it back into his coat.

  Rohan looks around. ‘The Street of Storytellers is that way. Which way is the Jewellers’ Bazaar?’

  *

  The ransom seeker has a car and, after the ruby has been appraised at the Jewellers’ Bazaar, they drive towards the eastern outskirts of Peshawar. The legitimate path into Afghanistan is the Khyber Pass, but they are taking narrower roads, slipping through hillocks overgrown densely with mesquite bushes. In the limestone Maneri hills there are veins of marble mottled black, green and yellow, or pure green and pure yellow, and the rosary in Rohan’s hands is made from these, the two-coloured beads alternating. On the boulders on the riverbanks the words Jihad is your duty are daubed, white against the grey and black. They were not there in October when Rohan was roaming these areas with Yasmin and Basie. Victory or martyrdom. Telephone now for jihad training. There is a phone number.