The Blind Man's Garden Page 15

  ‘I am not getting married again.’

  ‘You said you were waiting for Mikal. We now have confirmation that he too is dead.’

  She doesn’t say anything. A minute later she takes the bowlful of flour from the shelf and trails her hands through it, holding the injured finger aloft as she parts and combs small ridges and peaks, working away the lumps. She pours vanilla essence and ground almonds into her half-folded hand and adds them to the cake mixture. Then she reaches into a pan and scoops out the white butter. Deftly she squeezes it through the flour. Water-thinned milk streaming down the three undamaged fingers, she forms the dough with the other hand.

  ‘The dead don’t return, Naheed.’

  She looks at her mother and says after a while, ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it either, but I have to.’ Tara reaches forward with the salt jar and adds a pinch to the bowl, something Naheed always forgets. ‘How will I face your father on Judgement Day? What will I say when he accuses me in Allah’s presence of not having given you the best life possible?’

  The girl shakes her head slowly.

  ‘I am going to start looking for a suitable match,’ Tara says.

  Naheed turns away from her. Wetting a muslin cloth to cover the bowl of dough. ‘I have to take Father to the doctor. Would you go out to the crossroads and get us a rickshaw? Tell the driver we are going to the corner where Lumber Bazaar meets Savings Bazaar.’

  Tara had wanted Yasmin and Basie to accompany Rohan to the doctor. To keep both of them away from the Christian school where they teach, for however short a period. There was another explosion at a church the day before yesterday. Their safety is a constant anxiety throughout the day. She gets up and begins to put on her burka, doing up the long row of buttons at the front. ‘I hope this new doctor will say something different from the others.’

  Through the window Naheed watches her go past the pink mulberry that has a honey-like taste but only if eaten under its tree, so tender is it that it cannot even withstand being transported. But Tara is back only a few moments later, followed by Sharif Sharif. Dressed in white he has a flat brown crocodile-skin bag under one arm, its zip golden. Upon noticing Naheed he takes a comb from his pocket and passes it once along each side of his head.

  She moves to the kitchen table and holds the empty cup her mother left behind. There is warmth in it still and it is transferred onto her skin. The colour red.

  *

  Tara leads the man along the corridor. She’d met him just outside the gate and he said he’d come to see Rohan.

  She announces him and withdraws without a glance in his direction. Hate is a male domain. When she has to think of this man she feels anger instead.

  ‘I am here on a delicate matter,’ Sharif Sharif says. Sitting on the chair beside him he is still holding Rohan’s hand from when he shook it. ‘It concerns your daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Naheed?’ Rohan hears the rustle of his starched clothes, the metal clank of his wristwatch.

  ‘Yes. I care deeply for her.’

  ‘You have been good to her and her mother. The entire neighbourhood is aware that you have been taking only the minimum rent from that poor lady for some time.’

  ‘I do what Allah allows me to do. I seek no reward in this world. But I see that bad times have fallen on the two women again. And on you, as the only male decision maker in Naheed’s life.’ Sharif Sharif sighs. ‘But these days, with this war, it appears that Allah has decided to test all us Muslims. Anyway, I am here to tell you that I would be willing to ease your burden.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I am willing to marry Naheed to put an end to your worries and her widowhood.’

  Rohan sits up in the chair.

  ‘I have two wives already, but our religion allows us to marry again if we can prove that we can look after the new wife financially and emotionally …’

  ‘Sharif Sharif-sahib, I must say I am a little surprised. She is nineteen years old.’

  ‘That makes her a grown woman.’

  ‘Indeed. But I was attempting to point out the age difference.’

  He is silent. On the table are various magnifying glasses brought out of Sofia’s study and Rohan hears him touching them. With them she would study twigs, petals, beaks, feathers and pollen grains before beginning to paint, and in his sighted days Rohan has been examining the world with them, storing up information.

  Sharif Sharif says at last, ‘Be kind enough to think about it. You are a wise man and must know that it’s not good for young girls to be without a man once they have been with a man. It can cause them to seek out what they once had any which way.’

  Rohan stands up. ‘Thank you for your interest and your kindness.’

  ‘A woman’s heart is soft and trusting, she can be corrupted all too easily.’

  ‘Thank you for your interest and your kindness.’

  ‘Do think about it and let me know. But that is not the only reason why I am here. Please be seated. Please. I wished to ask about your eyes. You must need funds for treatments and operations, and I was wondering if I could help in any way.’

  What exactly could this person be implying? Does he think Rohan would contemplate giving him Naheed in exchange for money? ‘I thank you for coming,’ he says curtly.

  There is a silence and then he hears Sharif Sharif begin to walk out of the room. Tersely he says in the man’s direction:

  ‘The girl will be looked after very well as long as I am alive. And after I am gone she has Basie, who thinks of her as his sister.’

  ‘It appears I have offended you,’ Sharif Sharif says from the door.

  ‘I have raised one daughter who makes an honest and honourable living, and I will make sure Naheed too takes that path if she wishes.’

  He sits down and realises he is shaking with fear and rage.

  *

  He listens to the streets as he travels with the girl, the rickshaw crossing the major roads and entering the density of the bazaars. She holds his right hand, her own two hands placed gently above and below it. Beneath the bandages and the closed lids there are specks of light like coloured sand in his eyes, a vast visual song of the cells expressing their internal life, and out there is another song called Heer, called Pakistan, the people buying, selling, asking, shouting, the minarets insisting on Paradise at every street corner, and in his mind he sees the shop signs painted with heartbreaking precision and beauty by barely literate men and he listens to the slap of wrestlers against each other, gleaming with oil, the arcades under which pieces of meat sizzle, cubbyhole shops selling Japanese sewing machines, English tweed and Chinese crockery, the fruit sellers standing behind walls of stacked oranges, and women’s clothes hanging in shop windows in sheaths of pure lines and colours, teaching one the meaning of grace in one’s life, and he wishes Sofia were here so he could ask her to describe these things for him, she who had made an entire life out of seeing, possessing an enraptured view of the everyday, who knew which section of the house received the most moonlight on any given night of the lunar calendar, and he wonders if this is how the dead mourn the world they have left behind, if this is how she mourns it below ground.

  *

  The doctor is studying Rohan’s files when they enter the office. He is a young man and has recently returned from studying in the West. He looks up, and in utter silence stares at Rohan’s face.

  Removing Rohan’s bandages he lifts the cotton pads from the eyelids, parting them gently with his fingers.

  ‘Can you see me?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’

  The doctor guides Rohan into the examination room adjoining the office, Naheed catching a glimpse of the heavy-seeming machinery in dull grey steel and shining chrome as the green curtain is released behind them.

  She sits alone in the office, looking into the book she has brought. This specialist is the final hope. One of the others said they should stitch shut the eyelids p
ermanently. Last week Tara had visited the cleric at the mosque, to see if any specific verses of the Koran could be read for the restoration of vision. ‘Why could you not have come to me sooner?’ the cleric had said, unable to conceal his wounded feelings. But he was not saddened or aggrieved on his own behalf. ‘You thought you were modern people, wanted to visit as many doctors as you could before turning to Allah. It seems to me to be a case of “We might as well give Him a try too.”’

  Twenty minutes go by and the green curtain is lifted and the doctor leads Rohan out.

  Rohan gropes for Naheed’s hand as he settles in his chair.

  ‘So. As I have just explained to your father-in-law,’ the doctor says to her, ‘we need to carry out a number of procedures over the next six to eight months to restore the vision.’

  ‘He will be able to see again?’

  Before the doctor can respond, Rohan says, ‘We can’t afford the operations, Naheed.’

  Naheed tries to swallow but can’t.

  The doctor looks at the files. ‘I am sure we can correct his original condition too. With the new medical advances in the West there is no reason why he should ever be blind.’ Naheed cannot help but express an elated astonishment at this but again Rohan says,

  ‘We can’t afford the operations, Naheed.’

  ‘Could you not sell something?’ the doctor asks. ‘Do you still live in that building with the garden that used to be the school?’

  Rohan looks towards him. ‘I wasn’t aware that we knew each other.’

  ‘I was a pupil of yours. You expelled me because my mother was a sinner.’

  Rohan is still.

  Naheed knows the story of the prostitute’s son. The boy who tried to steal a spade from the school garden. He wanted to go to the cemetery and dig up what his mother had always said was his father’s grave.

  The doctor, his face utterly serious, has his eyes locked on Rohan.

  ‘I recognised the name the moment I saw the report, and I recognised you as you walked in.’

  ‘I have had occasion to think of you not a few times over the years.’

  ‘And I about you.’

  ‘You are a doctor now.’

  ‘The clinic is named after my late mother.’

  Naheed sees how this has shaken Rohan. ‘So these operations you have suggested …’

  The man swings his black chair towards her. ‘We will have to act fast. You will need to get the funds together soon. Unfortunately in a case like this almost every day counts.’

  ‘And the original cause is reversible too?’

  ‘Yes. You seem to have been given outdated advice. There has been much scientific progress.’

  Is he trying to destroy Rohan? Are these operations beneficial or necessary? Will he just waste the money on unneeded procedures and then claim he did his best? But, no. It is said that something in people’s souls will not let them take advantage of the blind or deceive them. The Koran admonishes a personage – some believe it to be Muhammad himself – for ignoring a blind man in a gathering of influential tribal chiefs.

  ‘My reasons to expel you from Ardent Spirit seemed persuasive at the time,’ Rohan says suddenly.

  The doctor ignores the comment. ‘When should I schedule the next appointment?’ He holds out the reports. Rohan extends his arm towards the sound and takes them, the hand groping in the air before grabbing, like a bird trying to alight on a branch in a strong wind.

  ‘When did your mother die, may I ask?’

  ‘The year I graduated from medical school.’

  ‘The name didn’t bring her to mind,’ Rohan says. ‘I am sorry to hear of her death. May Allah have compassion on her soul.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I just meant … Allah is all-forgiving …’

  ‘She was the most decent human being I knew.’

  Naheed watches him concentrating on the man’s words. She knows from Mikal the power the voice has to reveal someone. Sometimes when he sang she would close her eyes and realise that every emotion that had been present in his facial expressions was also present in his voice.

  ‘I am sorry to hear of her death,’ Rohan says again. ‘There are many ways to live a good life, and Allah is all-forgiving.’

  The doctor looks at him and then in a calm controlled gesture rings the bell for the next patient to be shown in.

  ‘Thank you,’ Naheed says, getting up. ‘We’ll contact you about the next appointment.’

  ‘I look forward to hearing from you,’ the doctor says without looking up.

  *

  Night, and he walks in his garden, hands outstretched, touching the skin of the world in the darkness. He moves beside the night scent of flowers, feels on the bark the names Jeo and Mikal had scratched when they were children.

  That afternoon thirty years ago, when the boy was brought into his office, Rohan had no intimation that one of the darkest years of his marriage was about to begin. The child was amiable and conscientious but was brought in because he had attempted to steal from the school’s garden – this garden, here. Some of the more daring boys often did that, picking fruit from the trees or taking bird eggs. But he was attempting to steal an implement from the shed. At first he would not explain his motives. Eventually he said, ‘I want to dig up my father’s grave to see if it matches the picture that my mother keeps on the shelf.’ His fellow students had been taunting him. Some of them were summoned to the office and the complete details of the entire affair came to light. There was no father, the mother was a fallen woman.

  Rohan went to see her that very afternoon, knocking on the door of the house and waiting while a youth, no older than the senior boys at Ardent Spirit, came out. Suddenly he had a vision of the woman corrupting his student body. There was no prejudice at Ardent Spirit. There were all sects of Islam at the school. Shias, Deobandis, Wahabis. When Rohan heard that a teacher had given a Shia student fewer marks than he deserved, he had investigated the matter immediately. But this was different.

  To his utter shock the woman was unrepentant. He offered to waive her son’s fees if she would put an end to her commerce. He visited her every day for a week to try and persuade her. Almost every student knew about it by then and a number of alarmed parents had visited Rohan, threatening to withdraw their children. He went to the classroom mid-lesson and asked him to collect his things.

  ‘Sir, I am sorry for stealing the spade.’

  ‘That is not the reason for your expulsion,’ he remembers saying, looking directly ahead. ‘Your mother is a sinful woman.’

  They got into the rickshaw and putting his hand into his satchel the boy brought out an eraser. ‘Sir, I borrowed this from Fareed Chaudhuri. Can you give this back to him please?’

  Rohan put the item in his pocket. ‘I will do that later.’

  The woman came to the door of her house and took the child in wordlessly.

  Sofia raged at him. She wanted to go to the woman’s house and bring back the boy – a thought that stunned him. There would be no eye contact with her for over a year after that day. He felt persecuted, believing he had done the only correct thing possible under the circumstances, and he had begged Allah for strength and begged Him to forgive Sofia for some of the words she had uttered in fury.

  In the garden one dawn, the house lit red by the sunrise, she said she was leaving him.

  They had both attended Punjab University in Lahore, though at different times, he being five years older. Born and raised in Heer, and possessing an intense shyness of character, he had not fitted in at the university, or into the large city. His efforts to understand himself and his times were lonely ones, and he lived in fear of – and perhaps even a mild revulsion at – the behaviour of the other students. He stood out to the extent that he could not even bring himself to wear Western clothes – those trousers that had pockets in appallingly inappropriate places, front and back, from where items of food could then be pulled out and eaten, hands removed to be shaken
, documents produced and handed over. She – who was also from Heer – had thrived at the university however. A laughing confident beauty. He was already teaching at a government school when he met her. She was the new English teacher, and a month after they were introduced she caught him opening a notebook in which she had been writing earlier: full of longing for her, he had wished to see her handwriting. Some glimpse of a thing that was intrinsically her. Intimate. And he knew she might be his only chance at happiness. At the year’s end she entered the room and, lowering herself into a sitting position before him, told him he must ask her to marry him. Covering his lying mouth with her hands when he tried to protest.

  Her emotions were always closer to the surface than his.

  Now she placed the large suitcase on the dresser in their bedroom and emptied her wardrobe into it, and it remained there for a year. She herself moved into her study. Some nights he would hear her come into their bedroom and he would pretend to be asleep. 2 a.m. or 3 or 4. And she would sit in the chair for a while and watch him. Then she would rise and take a few items out of the open suitcase and leave. Then one day her clothes were back in the wardrobe. Her parents were dead and her brother had his own family. She had nowhere to go, the brother reminding her that she had chosen to marry Rohan without seeking his counsel. ‘Now go and be a modern woman,’ he said. ‘Live somewhere divorced and alone.’ He had waited all these years to avenge the slight to his honour.

  *

  He turns his face upwards, where the visible planets must be burning in the eastern sky. He reaches the overgrown thor bush and slowly raises his hands towards the spike-filled branches, wondering how he will know which of these limbs must be amputated next year to restore symmetry.

  18

  The air of the February evening is dabbed with fog and the saluki appears and disappears within it. Major Kyra walks into Ardent Spirit’s Baghdad House. The boy who had opened the school’s gate for him is a few paces ahead, calling to the hound. He is in his late teens and is known for his passionate nature, his limbs full of disciplined movements, and eyes capable of a sudden flaring as when straw is thrown onto a fire. He owns a deadly dagger as beautiful as a toy, and his name is Ahmed. Five months ago his father was at work in the ice factory when a rectangular block of ice slid down a ramp and shattered. A foot-long splinter flew up and pierced his diaphragm from below. It continued through the left lung and entered his heart. He fell backwards onto the floor and that was where he was discovered half an hour later. By then the ice fragment inside him had melted away. The neighbourhood women insisted he had been killed with a ghost dagger by Ahmed’s mother, who had died the previous year and who had known nothing but contempt and ruthlessness from her husband while she was alive.