“How long since you bathed?”
“Nine months.”
“No, seriously.”
“A week maybe? I don’t know.”
“Filthy bastard.”
—
Musa’s shower lasted an inordinately long time. She could hear him humming along with Las Kone. He came out bare-bodied, with a towel around his hips, smelling of her soap and shampoo. It made her chortle.
“You’re smelling like a summer rose.”
“I’m feeling really guilty,” Musa said, smiling.
“Right. You really look it.”
“After weeks of generous hospitality to lices and leeches I’ve turned them out of the house.”
“Lices” made her love him a little more.
—
They had always fitted together like pieces of an unsolved (and perhaps unsolvable) puzzle—the smoke of her into the solidness of him, the solitariness of her into the gathering of him, the strangeness of her into the straightforwardness of him, the insouciance of her into the restraint of him. The quietness of her into the quietness of him.
And then of course there were the other parts—the ones that wouldn’t fit.
What happened that night on the HB Shaheen was less lovemaking than lament. Their wounds were too old and too new, too different, and perhaps too deep, for healing. But for a fleeting moment, they were able to pool them like accumulated gambling debts and share the pain equally, without naming the injuries or asking which was whose. For a fleeting moment they were able to repudiate the world they lived in and call forth another one, just as real. A world in which maet gave the orders and soldiers needed eardrops so they could hear them clearly and carry them out correctly.
Tilo knew there was a gun underneath the bed. She made no comment about it. Not even afterwards, when Musa’s calluses had been counted. And kissed. She lay stretched out on top of him, as though he were a mattress, her chin resting on her intertwined fingers, her distinctly un-Kashmiri bottom vulnerable to the Srinagar night. In a way Musa’s journey to where he was now did not entirely surprise her. She clearly remembered a day years ago, in 1984 (who could forget 1984), when the newspapers reported that a Kashmiri called Maqbool Butt, jailed for murder and treason, had been hanged in Tihar Jail in Delhi, his remains interred in the prison yard, for fear his grave would become a monument, a rallying point in Kashmir, where trouble had already begun to simmer. The news had not mattered to even one other person in their college, neither student nor professor. But that night Musa had said to her, quietly, matter-of-factly, “Some day you’ll understand why, for me, history began today.” Though she had not fully comprehended the import of his words at the time, the intensity with which they had been uttered had remained with her.
“How’s the Queen Mother in Kerala keeping?” Musa inquired into the bird’s nest that passed off as his lover’s hair.
“Don’t know. Haven’t visited.”
“You should.”
“I know.”
“She’s your mother. She’s you. You are her.”
“That’s only the Kashmiri view. It’s different in India.”
“Seriously. It’s not a joke. This is not a good thing on your part, Babajaana. You should go.”
“I know.”
Musa ran his fingers down the ridges of muscle on either side of her spine. What began as a caress turned into a physical examination. For a moment he became his suspicious father. He checked out her shoulders, her lean, muscled arms.
“Where’s all this from?”
“Practice.”
There was a second of silence. She decided against telling him about the men who stalked her, who knocked on her door at odd hours of the day and night, including Mr. S. P. P. Rajendran, a retired police officer who held an administrative post in the architectural firm she worked for. He had been hired more for his contacts in the government than for his skills as an administrator. He was openly lecherous towards her in the office, making lewd suggestions, often leaving gifts on her desk, which she ignored. But late at night, bolstered perhaps by alcohol, he would drive to Nizamuddin and hammer on her door, shouting to be let in. His brazenness came from knowing that if matters came to a head, in the public eye, as well as in a court of law, his word would prevail against hers. He had a record of exemplary public service, a medal for bravery, and she was a lone woman who was immodestly attired and smoked cigarettes, and there was nothing to suggest that she came from a “decent” family who would rise to her defense. Tilo was aware of this and had taken precautionary measures. If Mr. Rajendran pushed his luck she could have him pinned to the floor before he knew what had happened.
She said nothing of all this because it seemed sordid and trivial compared to what Musa was living through. She rolled off him.
“Tell me about Sultan…the bewakoof person that Gulrez was so upset with. Who’s he?”
Musa smiled.
“Sultan? Sultan wasn’t a person. And he wasn’t bewakoof. He was a very clever fellow. He was a rooster, an orphan rooster that Gul had raised since he was a little chick. Sultan was devoted to him, he would follow him around wherever he went, they would have long conversations with each other that no one else understood, they were a team…inseparable. Sultan was famous in the region. People from nearby villages would come to see him. He had beautiful plumage, purple, orange, red, he would strut around the place like a real sultan. I knew him well…we all knew him. He was so…lofty, he always acted as though you owed him something…you know? One day an army captain came to the village with some soldiers…Captain Jaanbaaz he called himself, I don’t know what his real name was…they always give themselves these filmy names these guys…they weren’t there for a cordon-and-search or anything…just to speak to the villagers, threaten them a little, mistreat them a bit…the usual stuff. The men of the village were all made to assemble in the chowk. The well-known firm of Gul-kak and Sultan were there too, Sultan listening attentively as though he were a human being, a village elder. The captain had a dog with him. A huge German shepherd, on a leash. After he finished delivering his threats and his lecture, he let the dog off the leash, saying, ‘Jimmy! Fetch!’ Jimmy pounced on Sultan, killed him, and the soldiers took him for their dinner. Gul-kak was devastated. He cried for days, like people cry for their relatives who have been killed. For him Sultan was a relative…nothing less. And he was upset with Sultan for letting him down, for not fighting back, or escaping—almost as though he was a militant who should have known these tactics. So Gul would curse Sultan and wail, ‘If you didn’t know how to live with the military, why did you come into this world?’?”
“So why were you reminding him about it? That was mean…”
“Gul is my little brother, yaar. We wear each other’s clothes, we trust each other with our lives. I can do anything with him.”
“This is not a good thing on your part, Musakuttan. In India we don’t do these things…”
“We even share the same name…”
“Meaning?”
“That’s what I’m known as. Commander Gulrez. No one knows me as Musa Yeswi.”
“It’s all a fucking mindfuck.”
“Shhh…in Kashmir we don’t use such language.”
“In India we do.”
“We should sleep, Babajaana.”
“We should.”
“But before that we should get dressed.”
“Why?”
“Protocol. This is Kashmir.”
—
After that casual intervention, sleep was no longer a realistic option. Tilo, fully dressed, a little apprehensive about what the “protocol” implied, but fortified by love and sated by lovemaking, propped herself up on an elbow.
“Talk to me…”
“And what do we call what we’ve been doing all this time?”
“We call it ‘pre-talk.’?”
She rubbed her cheek against his stubble and then lay back, her head on the pillow beside Musa’s.
“What shall I tell you?”
“Every single thing. No omissions.”
She lit two cigarettes.