Thinner Than Skin (20 page)

When Maryam eventually crawled outside her shrine, she found a second yellow flower waiting for her in the dirt, near the hole that served as entrance. The flower reminded her of a butterfly that had landed on her shoulder once, when she was a child. She had never seen the exact shade of yellow again, not till now. She did not know how to read this sign either. She twirled the stem till the heart of fire grew to the ends of the petals and the ends of her world. The day was too bright. She wanted to retreat into a mountain cave, into darkness lit by ancient markings. She wanted to carry this spiraling flame into the cool cover of her highland shrine, deep in the Karakoram’s womb.

Mixed in with the weight of grief was the weight of caution. In the months between their departure to the lake and their return to the lowlands, the world had tipped unsteadily. It was not a reliable unsteadiness, the kind that leads from pasture to plain, according to the season’s change. This motion had no rhythm. What it had was men in tanks and spies in plainclothes, all showing up at your door and demanding to be placated with the sugar you were saving for your children, or your guests, or a man who would leave you a sign in a cave.

And these men were different. They were not the kind who would shoot the guard dogs that warned the herders when a goat or lamb was being stolen. They were not the kind who would leave the dogs poisoned meat. They were not from the forest department either, those men who leashed the forest and then leased it. Men with a list of fines the length of a horse’s mane, and a list of felled trees the length of three times three. Nor were they the policemen who lived in the forest department’s pockets, nestling deeper into its silk linings each time the felled logs were tucked in the water wells of the Kunhar River’s banks. Nor even from the revenue department, demanding taxes for every new buffalo that came bleating into the world. No. These men were, at least at first, as alien to her as Australian sheep, and, from the looks of them, as stupid. They said a man was hiding in their valley. He was a killer, and he
needed to be caught. If they sheltered him, they would be caught instead. They accused anyone of sheltering him.

But, she wanted to know, if these men knew who sheltered the killer, how come they did not know who he was?

They ripped through their homes, kicking pots and dishes and goats and children. Then they demanded food. Over the course of the past few days, while watching them eat, she came to question whether they were that different, these men. Perhaps they were all in each other’s pockets. The ones who tore down the old, old trees and poisoned the Gujjar dogs and fenced off the land and charged the moon for two stems of ginger and claimed a killer was hiding in their midst. Perhaps they were all exactly the same.
Everything alive is in movement and everything that moves is alive
. These men were unchanging. They were not alive.

While they ate, they kept on with their questions. Where was her son? He wasn’t with the cattle—where was he? It was no use telling them he was running an errand at the market or studying at the mosque because they would look for him there. And find him. And take him away. No. She kept her son far from these men and offered them more sugar, more yogurt, and more bread.

In the days since her return from the lake, it seemed she did not even have enough time to retreat into darkness to grieve. Her sorrow was swiftly turning to fear for her remaining children, her remaining land, and also, for that palpitation in her chest, warning her of her remaining love for Ghafoor.

The flower in her hand had no smell. The jade around her neck had heat.

Soon after securing that stone, Ghafoor had gotten into trouble. His tumultuous relationship with the forest officials was the stuff of legend, though it was not the kind of legend she only heard about. In fact, she never heard of it at all. It was a legend she had watched take shape for most of her youth, with her own eyes, yet it did not
bear repeating, neither in a shop nor at the mouth of a cave nor on horseback on the way to a pasture. Nor was it the kind of legend you could pray to, in a secret shrine, nor the kind to name a child after. This legend was never celebrated or exchanged or put to music with a flute. It was never invited to a wedding or a birth or a funeral. It was left entirely alone, to grow as bitter as truth.

Though Maryam had watched it take shape, this legend, she sometimes lost its exact thread, whether it began with the time they were charged two hundred rupees for two stems of ginger, or the time the thirtieth water well was destroyed by a stash of felled logs, or the time the rain tore another secret stash from out of a nullah and into a bridge, smashing the bridge into pieces that were also lost in the swell. Or it might have been the time the stallion was skewered by a barbed wire fence so slyly concealed in the forest even an owl could not have seen it. Or the time a friend of his was murdered after filing a case against the timber mafia. (Those who killed him were never called killers, thought Maryam, still fingering the stone around her neck.) There were many other possible beginnings to the making of Ghafoor the Legend, though the nub of it was not open to debate: he had been told to leave the valley. His presence was a threat to the entire community. Worse than a threat; it had already resulted in several deaths.

So he left.

Before fleeing, he left her a crow feather, and then a red cloth. These signs she had learned to read.

How did he do it? She asked him once, on one of his rare returns, taken at high risk to himself, and to all of them. How did he find a way to leave his mark with her, no matter where he went? Often, when she needed him most. Often, before she even knew she needed him.

He had answered with stories. The Silk Road had for centuries transported not only goods, but also, voices. Had she heard the name of Genghis Khan, King of the Universe? Founder of the greatest nomadic empire ever known? She shook her head. He had
said
Silk Road
in English, her first words in a tongue she would hear more of in later years with indifference, but at the time, indifference was not known to her. The words had conjured images of a road made of silvery mist, left behind by the trail of a fairy. The silver of her trail fell all the way to the snow-capped mountains and down to the forested plains, and, like a dream, it was never something you could—or should—actually touch.

But Ghafoor described the road differently. While she saw a shimmering in the clouds, he saw the march of Genghis Khan in the dirt. And he tried to make her see it his way. Genghis Khan marched into Bukhara in what is today Tajikistan, he said—
names, Maryam, they always change, if you listen carefully
, though she did not care about the names, she cared about their color, and whether they tasted as sweet as honey. Again he snapped his fingers. “Are you listening?” She would try to look as though she was. So he continued. After the Great Khan marched into Bukhara and burned 10,000 villages and slaughtered 30,000 villagers, he set about building like a mad man. He constructed thousands of caravanserais and tidied up the
Silk Road
—she saw fat hands plumping up a glistening haze—and made it into a safe highway, without bandits like him, and also, he built something else. She was asked to guess but she could not guess.

The world’s first postal service, Ghafoor answered with swank. No matter where Rahman or Rakhmanov, Yousuf or Yusupov, Karim or Karimov, Umar or Umarov would go, if she needed him, a message would be sent. When he told her this she smiled, despite his boastful manner (or because of it), remembering her mother’s names for each mountain that enclosed them.
Look for windows. Don’t walk into walls
. Apparently, Genghis Khan had thought the same. He had torn through them all, the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs, the Himalayas and the Karakorams, as if through mist, leaving behind a chain of whisperers and runners.

A red cloth meant he was going far away, and this was the last sign she received from him before Kiran’s birth. The second last was
a crow feather, and this meant he was in trouble. She had not needed to ask what kind of trouble; by then he was a legend of the unsung kind. The shimmering blue feather he left before Kiran’s death had been the first sign in more years than she cared to count. And now there was no sugar to greet him with, thanks to the men who wanted to know if any enemies of the state were being sheltered in her home.

Maryam had kept the red cloth. The box with Kiran’s belongings was tied in it, because Kiran had gone far away. Before burying the box and the cloth in the shrine, she had prayed.
May your skies be filled with skins that do not tear, stallions that do not bleed. May you live forever without hurt
. Now she walked the distance between her shrine and the hut, shielding her eyes from the brightness of the day. She frowned. Was it a premonition of Kiran’s death that had brought him back, or something else?

What if the killer were really here? What if he did exist? What had he done that was worse than what the men tearing down their homes and forests still did?

In the valley, they were calling him Fareebi, the shapeshifter, and she did not consider this wise, for once you give a shape a name, you give it life. They said he came down the slopes of the Pamirs as softly as a cat and snuck into their huts while they slept. By the time his footsteps were tracked to a hut, he had become something else. A wisp of smoke, a jinn of the lowlands. Only after he left could the plains return to normalcy, even if this meant more dog killings and stupid sheep and sedentary wives.

He was inside her hut, she could feel him there. Her husband was in the forest, with the cattle. Her son would also not be home. It was the second time since Ghafoor’s return that they would be alone, and she feared that this time, she could not turn her back to him. She had no sugar to offer, but she could still offer him tea. She almost smiled, imagining how his mouth would grimace at the taste. This man who drank mare’s milk and wore a different name each day.

She pulled away from the hut, toward her husband in the forest. Sometimes, it was desirable to put a mountain between yourself and someone else.

It was our last morning in the valley. I can’t say I was as relieved as I should have been. Perhaps it was the beady eyes on the graves last night, or the knowledge that I’d become someone who could be unsettled by stone engravings, or the feeling that, even as I prepared to leave, I was still walking back from the graves.

My pessimism wasn’t entirely without reason. While checking out of our hotel, we heard the news. The army had launched a missile strike in Waziristan yesterday, and, not even an hour ago, at a police station in Mansehra, a policeman had been handed a box of holy dates from a date tree near the Kaaba in Mecca. The firing pin was attached to the cover of the box and when he pulled the lid off, he tore himself and three others to pieces. It was a crude, Sovietera device, and, within minutes, a second one had detonated at a police station in Balakot, south of the graves. No one asked if it was to protest the missile strike. The gloom thickening around us was born of more sinister knowledge: the bombers had succeeded even as the valley crawled with military convoys. Intelligence would have more reason to increase its presence here, the militants would have more power, and the people of this valley, even less. There never
had been a killer hiding here before but now there would be. He need not even hide. Fareebi, the shapeshifter, had been set loose.

As we piled our bags into the jeep, Irfan and I discussed the other rumor adding to the despair. The missile had not been launched by Pakistan but by an American drone armed with missiles that were MALE, with Pakistan’s consent, from one of its airfields, where, not too long ago, wealthy Arabs had been invited to launch their falcons on endangered Houbara Bustards. The thirty civilians dead included three children.

Despite this, astonishingly, some people didn’t delight in seeing us go, or at least, seeing
them
go. They blessed Farhana and embraced “Mr. Whistly,” who, genuinely caught up in the moment, executed the three-swing hug with such adeptness everyone lined up for more. Eventually, he settled in the front seat, Farhana angled herself next to Irfan at the back, and, reluctantly, Irfan shifted closer to me.

We took the road up to Babusar Pass, at the border between the North-West Frontier Province and the Northern Areas. No one spoke. I wished we could have flown over this part of the journey, avoided it entirely. Of course, avoiding the past week would also have been optimum. Seven years ago, Irfan and I had trekked up from here, to see the mating of glaciers. Zulekha had been with us. Her brother, who’d die with her, had been back at the hotel, playing escort poorly. Their absence filled the canyon.

Next to me, Irfan hunkered, pulling himself close, eyes wet. Though he still hadn’t admitted it, I knew it was for a glimpse of the glacier that he’d suggested this route in Karachi. We were not going to avoid it now, no matter how tense the air grew inside the jeep, no matter how hard life was going to be for those we were leaving.

I could see Farhana lean back in the seat, on Irfan’s other side. We seemed acutely aware of each other, or perhaps that was only me. I was sure she’d know which glacier we’d soon be stopping at. My most beautiful moment, the one I’d shared with her in the bay
window of her purple house. How changed she was from the woman beside whom I’d reclined, as we played opposites! How different the world had become! For instance, back then, I’d never been called a murderer.

I turned my head slightly in her direction, trying to catch more of her profile. Did she remember details of the ceremony, the way I’d describe it for her as we lay together at her window?

When we reached a place from which to look across the valley, Irfan asked the driver to stop. We walked to the edge of the road.

Beyond the chasm, I could see the glacier, the one that had crept down the cliff for the past seven years. I remembered the mat of husks and walnut shells so vividly I could smell it, and I saw the backs of those porters as they trudged, in a ritual of silent awe, all the way to the marital bed. With equal proximity, I could hear Zulekha kiss Irfan’s cheek. And I could hear his sorrow, as he stood beside me now, alone, more alone than even I could feel, a sorrow that was louder than our combined memories. Two friends, one with a wife cold in the ground, the other with a lover cold on the road.

On the slopes beneath the glacier were scattered a few sheep and goats, and, closer, juniper trees, whose leaves were still burned by shamans on special occasions. The late afternoon sun fell just at the lip of the glacier.

“That’s the one, isn’t it?” It was Farhana, standing beside me. Her first words directly to me since leaving our cabin back in Kaghan, to move in with Wes.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Tell me again.”

I was surprised. Did she want evidence of just how terribly we’d changed? I did not question the request. I told her again, knowing, after uttering each word, that the story had lost its shine, that each word itself helped to erase the shine by exposing our loss.

First, I repeated, the village elders decided which glaciers to
mate. The female ice was picked from a village where women were especially beautiful, the male, from one where men were especially strong. We were only allowed to watch after swearing an oath of silence, because words disturb the balance between lovers in transit. We were told it was bad luck for other eyes to watch …

“You never told me that part.”

No, I had not.

A long pause.

Then, Wes was there. “What are you looking at?”

I said nothing. Neither did she.

“Is it one they seeded?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Farhana.

“It looks young,” he said. “It has to be at least sixty feet thick to be called a glacier.”

“It’s seven years old,” I said.

“Seven?” he repeated. “You sure?”

“They’ve always made do without science,” said Irfan, at my side again.

I took out my camera. As I photographed the glacier, I thought of one of the first things I’d learned about seeing through the lens: normalize the view. Which meant the right exposure on the area the human eye is most inclined to drift toward, which, at this moment, was that sliver of bright light at the edge of the white smudge.

Farhana began explaining to Wes what I’d once explained to her. The old tradition of marrying glaciers was coming back, as a way to offset a dwindling supply of meltwater. “Winter temperatures on the rise, summer temperatures dropping. More snowfall, but less melt. So,” she concluded, pointing across the abyss, “after seven years, that could be sixty feet.”

“Thanks for the lesson.” He ruffled her hair. “How many glaciers have I studied?”

“Sorry.”

“How far are we from Gilgit?” He asked Irfan.

“Not far,” said Irfan, pulling him away.

Farhana and I were left alone. I lowered my camera.

Behind us, a row of military trucks raced up the highway, slowing to examine our group. I heard them call out to Irfan and watched as they waved their guns in the air as casually as cigarettes. I let Irfan tackle them.

Across the valley, a farmer was nurturing his field with water he’d probably helped create. The sun was creeping off the glacier’s lip and onto the dark gravel. He stopped to enjoy the light, just as we did. A goat grazed at his feet, bells chiming. I pushed thoughts of Kiran’s goat and bells far into the chasm ahead. In its place surfaced an image of us from last year. We were standing on guard, gazing out at the Pacific Ocean, where gunships once pointed to the minefields outside Golden Gate.
Take me back
, she’d said.
Take me back to the places you love
.

Gradually, the black earth immediately before us ignited, as if the sun had chosen that precise point upon which to rest its fiery fingers, swallowing the man and the goat. We kept at our lookouts, squinting into the glare, waiting for the sun to release the captives. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a rolling, as of a raincloud. As the glacier slid into shadow, we could still hear the bells of Kiran’s goats.