“Not a mistake you’d make more than once,” Marc said to him.
Azhar smiled. He took the gun off his shoulder and placed the tip of it in the area of the dirt floor in front of his chair. He moved it slowly across the floor with careful deliberation, and after a couple of minutes, Marc could see that he was drawing a remarkably accurate outline of a cow. Azhar even added a tail and legs with hooves, and lastly a pair of wide eyes and a mouth turned up into a grin. He tapped the tip of the gun on the cow’s smile and then gestured with his free hand as if to say, “Why not?” He then drew lines through various parts of the cow, cordoning it off into sections. He tapped a section of the cow about two-thirds toward the tail, and then looked up into Marc’s eyes and with a smile on his face began chewing slowly, savoring something imaginary, and then with his fingertips starting at the corners of his mouth, ran them down into his beard as if the juices of the meat were overflowing. “Good,” Azhar said, and Marc realized he was teaching him which parts of the cow were most tender and flavorful.
Marc stood up from his chair, and Azhar didn’t raise the gun as he had during the first days. Marc knelt next to the drawing and pointed to the section at the rear end of the cow.
“What about here?”
Azhar nodded, and then cupped his hands in the shape of a bowl and hollowed it out with his fingertips. He then used his finger as a knife as if he were cutting pieces, and then stirred it with an imaginary spoon.
“Ah, soup,” he said. “Good in a soup or stew.”
Azhar grinned. He said the word in Urdu.
“You’re a good man, Azhar, even if you are a terrorist.”
But this was a word Azhar recognized, and he frowned and touched the shoulder strap that held the gun.
“I’m sorry,” Marc said, and then knelt back on the ground and drew a crude image that was supposed to look like Azhar, and then images of small children—stick figures, really—behind him.
“How many children do you have?” he asked.
Azhar smiled again, and held up three fingers, and with his free hand held up two, and said, “Boy.”
“Two boys and a girl,” Marc said, nodding.
Someone knocked on the door then, and Azhar stood up and pulled the blindfold and rope from his salwar kameez. He tied Marc’s hands first, lacing them carefully, and then wrapped the blindfold around his head, passing his fingers on the surface over Marc’s eyes in order to smooth out a wrinkle. Marc heard him open the door, exchange a word with the woman, and then close it behind him.
She stood for a while in front of him as if she were surveying the situation, and then Marc realized she must have been looking at Azhar’s sketch of the cow.
“He was teaching me about his trade,” he said. “Showing me the best cuts of beef.”
“So I see,” she said.
“You can’t blame him. My god, he sits here for hours on end with nothing to do. He must be bored out of his mind.”
“It looks like a petroglyph.”
“A what?”
“A petroglyph. Like a cave drawing. I’ve seen them in different places here. This reminds me of an elephant I saw in the north that was etched onto this blue stone. There were the same kinds of lines dividing it into parts.”
He had taken a trip to Arizona once where he saw similar drawings, though they weren’t in caves. Images of animals, some quite beautiful, and human handprints.
“It’s funny,” he said. “You don’t think of the ancient history of a place like Pakistan when you’re thinking about coming here.”
“No,” she said. “Most people don’t. It’s a beautiful landscape conquered by many. The Aryans, the Greeks, the Mughals. The British. Now Americans think of it as foaming at the mouth.”
“Which it is, sometimes.”
“Like everywhere else, and never only that. Because the truth is, here we have this butcher who drew a perfect image of a smiling cow. And someone taught him this. You can think of the country that way, too.”
She sat down in the chair where Azhar had been sitting without moving it closer because she didn’t want to destroy the drawing.
“We’ll have to sweep this away before Saabir comes in.”
“Not an art lover?”
“Ha. No, it’s not that.” She was silent for a few seconds. “Do you know, if you were to be killed, it would probably be Azhar, and not Saabir, who would do it?”
The thought had occurred to him, especially given Azhar’s profession.
“Does that mean you have some news for me?” he asked.
“No. As I told you before, things can change quickly here.”
For the first time, he recognized her vulnerability in her work. If he were to be discovered, she was unlikely to live much longer herself.
“And if someone decided you should be killed?” he asked.
“There would be many who would volunteer.” She sat quietly for a while. “So have you been thinking about Claire?” she asked.
He shifted his feet, and somewhat absently strained at the rope around his wrist, which loosened slightly.
“I don’t want to think about her.”