It was no doubt something Gulrez had heard a worried parent or neighbor say about him, and had filed away to use as a complaint against Sultan, whoever Sultan was.
Musa laughed out loud, grabbed Gulrez and kissed him on his head. Gul smiled. A happy imp.
“Who’s Sultan?” Tilo asked Musa.
“I’ll tell you later.”
—
After dinner they went out on to the porch to smoke and listen to the news on the transistor.
Three militants had been killed. Despite the curfew in Baramulla there had been major protests.
It was a no-moon night, pitch-dark, the water black as an oil slick.
The hotels on the boulevard that ran along the lakeshore had been turned into barracks, wrapped in razor wire, sandbagged and boarded up. The dining rooms were soldiers’ dormitories, the receptions daytime lock-ups, the guest rooms interrogation centers. Thick, painstakingly embroidered crewelwork drapes and exquisite carpets muffled the screams of young men having their genitals prodded with electrodes and petrol poured into their anuses.
“D’you know who’s here these days?” Musa said. “Garson Hobart. Have you been in touch with him at all?”
“Not for some years.”
“He’s Deputy Station Head, IB. It’s a pretty important post.”
“Good for him.”
There was no breeze. The lake was calm, the boat steady, the silence unsteady.
“Did you love her?”
“I did. I wanted to tell you that.”
“Why?”
Musa finished his cigarette and lit another.
“I don’t know. Something to do with honor. Yours, mine and hers.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it an arranged marriage?”
“No.”
Sitting next to Tilo, breathing next to her, he felt like an empty house whose locked windows and doors were creaking open a little, to air the ghosts trapped inside it. When he spoke again he spoke into the night, addressing the mountains, entirely invisible now, except for the winking lights of army camps that were strung across the range, like meager decorations for some dreadful festival.
“I met her in the most horrible way…horrible yet beautiful…it could have only happened here. It was the spring of ’91, our year of chaos. We—everybody except Godzilla, I think—thought Azadi was around the corner, just a heartbeat away. Every day there were gun battles, explosions, encounter killings. Militants walked openly in the streets, flaunting their weapons…”
Musa trailed off, unsettled by the sound of his own voice. He wasn’t used to it. Tilo did nothing to help him out. A part of her shied away from the story that Musa had begun to tell her, and was grateful for the diversion into generalities.
“Anyway. That year—the year I met her—I had just got a job. It should have been a big deal, but it wasn’t, because in those days everything had shut down. Nothing worked…not courts, not colleges, not schools…there was a complete breakdown of normal life…how can I tell you how it was…how crazy…it was a free-for-all…there was looting, kidnapping, murder…mass cheating in school exams. That was the funniest thing. Suddenly, in the middle of war, everyone wanted to be a Matric Pass because it would help them to get cheap loans from the government…I actually know a family in which three generations, the grandfather, father and son, all sat for the school final exam together. Imagine that. Farmers, laborers, fruit-sellers, all of them Class Two and Three pass, barely literate, sat for the exam, copied from the guidebook and passed with flying colors. They even copied that ‘Please Turn Over’ sign at the bottom of the page—the pointing finger—remember? It used to be at the bottom of our school textbooks? Even today, when we want to insult someone who’s being stupid, we say, ‘Are you a namtuk pass?’?”
Tilo understood he was deliberately digressing, circling around a story that was as hard—harder—for him to tell as it was for her to hear.
“Are you the batch of ’91?” Musa’s soft laugh was full of affection for the foibles of his people.
She had always loved that about him, the way he belonged so completely to a people whom he loved and laughed at, complained about and swore at, but never separated himself from. Maybe she loved it because she herself didn’t—couldn’t—think of anybody as “her people.” Except perhaps the two dogs that arrived at 6 a.m. sharp in the little park outside her house where she fed them, and the hobos she drank tea with at the tea stall near the Nizamuddin dargah. But not even them, not really.
Long ago she had thought of Musa as “her people.” They had been a strange country together for a while, an island republic that had seceded from the rest of the world. Since the day they decided to go their own ways, she had had no “people.”
“We were fighting and dying in our thousands for Azadi, and at the same time we were trying to secure cheap loans from the very government we were fighting. We’re a valley of idiots and schizophrenics, and we are fighting for the freedom to be idiotic and—”
Musa stopped mid-chuckle, cocking his head. A patrol boat chugged past some distance away, the soldiers in it sweeping the surface of the water with beams of light from powerful torches. Once they had gone, he stood up. “Let’s go in, Babajaana. It’s getting cold.”
It slipped out so naturally, that old term of endearment. Babajaana. My love. She noticed. He didn’t. It wasn’t cold. But still, they went in.
Gulrez was asleep on the carpet in the dining room. Agha and Khanum were wide awake, playing on him as though his body were an amusement park constructed entirely for their pleasure. Agha hid in the crook of his knee, Khanum staged an ambush from the strategic heights of his hip.
—
Musa stood at the door of the carved, embroidered, patterned, filigreed bedroom and said, “May I come in?” and that hurt her.
“Slaves don’t necessarily have to be stupid, do they?” She sat on the edge of the bed and flipped backwards, her palms under her head, her feet remaining on the floor. Musa sat next to her and put his hand on her stomach. The tension slipped out of the room like an unwanted stranger. It was dark except for the light from the corridor.
“Can I play you a Kashmiri song?”
“No, thanks, man. I’m not a Kashmiri Nationalist.”
“You soon will be. In three or maybe four days’ time.”
“Why’s that?”
“You will be, because I know you. When you see what you see and hear what you hear, you won’t have a choice. Because you are you.”
“Is there going to be a convocation? I’ll get a degree?”
“Yes. And you’ll pass with flying colors. I know you.”
“You don’t really know me. I’m a patriot. I get goosebumps when I see the national flag. I get so emotional I can’t think straight. I love flags and soldiers and all that marching around stuff. What’s the song?”
“You’ll like it. I carried it through the curfew for you. It was written for us, for you and me. By a fellow called Las Kone, from my village. You’ll love it.”
“I’m pretty sure I won’t.”
“Come on. Give me a chance.”
Musa took out a CD from the pocket of his pheran and put it into the player. Within seconds of the opening chords of the guitar, Tilo’s eyes snapped open.
Trav’ling lady, stay awhile
until the night is over.
I’m just a station on your way,
I know I’m not your lover.
“Leonard Cohen.”
“Yes. Even he doesn’t know that he’s really a Kashmiri. Or that his real name is Las Kone…”
Well I lived with a child of snow
when I was a soldier,
and I fought every man for her
until the nights grew colder.
She used to wear her hair like you
except when she was sleeping,
and then she’d weave it on a loom
of smoke and gold and breathing.
And why are you so quiet now
standing there in the doorway?
You chose your journey long before
you came upon this highway.
“How did he know?”
“Las Kone knows everything.”
“Did she wear her hair like mine?”
“She was a civilized person, Babajaana. Not a mout.”
Tilo kissed Musa, and while she held him to her and would not let him go she said, “Get away from me, you filthy mountain man.”
“Overwashed river woman.”