Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam

Author:Nadeem Aslam
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004-10-15T05:00:00+00:00

THE DANCE OF THE WOUNDED

It’s the task of insects to pollinate flowers. But Shamas remembers being told about a rare plant that is found only on a remote hilly island, and how soft paintbrushes are employed to collect and transfer its pollen from flower to flower: the insect that had performed that function until quite recently has become extinct—an insect unknown to man. It is agreed that the plant couldn’t have survived through the ages without the now-missing insect. No one knows what it was. The flowers are the only indicator that it must have existed until quite recently.

They are like flowers placed on a grave, mourning an absence.

As the late-May evening darkens towards night, he, walking towards the lake, takes in the rich fragrance hanging about the roaming inflorescences of a buddleia, the whir of a moth reaching him from somewhere inside the grey-green foliage like a burst from a sewing machine.

The hazy perfume decides to accompany him for a few steps while, above, the moon drifts companionless. Since meeting her at the Safeena that afternoon in early May he has seen and talked to Suraya a further five times, never arranging the next occasion too definitely or firmly, and never knowing if she would come but always expecting that she would.

They have remained formal, almost shy, and there hasn’t been even an instant’s physical contact, because between them lies a glass bridge. So far there have been no consequences and therefore, at times, he finds it difficult to believe in the reality of the entire matter. He has read somewhere that, although the constant stimuli of daytime experience keep us from noticing it, we are dreaming at low levels all the time.

Each time he has met Suraya his sense of betrayal towards Kaukab has been stronger than before. It is not as though I am leaving her: he had tried to reason with himself early on; but he is too old to be deceived by an argument as feeble as that: he is leaving her—he’s just not moving out of the house. Each journey towards Suraya has required a lion’s heart, and he has tried not to think about Kaukab’s reaction if she ever finds out.

The moon is still quite low and the junk shop is stuffed to capacity with its dusty reflections, one hanging in each peeling mildewed mirror. Stars and a number of constellations are visible in the darker parts of the sky, and looking up he remembers that the powdery galaxies are supposed to be the dust raised by Muhammad’s winged mount as it carried him to the heavens for an audience with Allah on his Night Journey. He steps over the crooked transparent vein of a small stream. He is walking towards the cluster of large and costly lakeside houses where flowers bloom by the hundred and the unopened frond tips of the giant ferns look like fists of red-haired gorillas.

The family in one of the houses is descended from a holy man in the Faisalabad region of Pakistan.

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