Season of the Rainbirds by Nadeem Aslam

Author:Nadeem Aslam
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780345802835
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1993-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Monday

Maulana Hafeez’s wife picked up the large green envelope from the shelf. Earlier in the morning, while Maulana Hafeez was still in the mosque, she had found the envelope lying inside the front door. It was addressed to her and had been dropped through the door sometime during the night. On the back, beneath the circular shellac seal was the name and address of the sender: the letter was written by Maulana Hafeez nineteen years ago, from Raiwind – the site of an annual conference of missionaries from all over the Islamic world.

Maulana Hafeez leaned his head against the back of his armchair and looked up. High up, a female spider was knitting her hammock. Maulana Hafeez removed his glasses. He smoothed the soft hairs of his beard and turned his head sideways to stare through the open door of the bedroom on to the courtyard. Bright light filled the house and Maulana Hafeez could sense the impending heat of the rising sun. The monsoon was continuing – now smooth and appeasable, now dramatic and capricious. There were colours on the washing line and a series of parallel bars of sunlight – filtered grainily through the screens – fringed the edge of the veranda.

He straightened when he saw his wife come out of her bedroom, her feet entangled in the bars of sunlight as she crossed the veranda.

‘This came earlier, Maulana-ji.’ She placed the letter in Maulana Hafeez’s lap.

She went to the other side of the room to bring a chair over to her husband’s side. Maulana Hafeez examined the letter with a furrowed brow. There was a blank moment as he realised what he held in his hands. ‘But today’s only Monday. These weren’t due till Wednesday.’

The woman was settled before him. ‘They have been delivered,’ she said. ‘They say Mujeeb Ali and his men beat up the postmaster last night. But he insisted that he didn’t have them yet.’

‘That’s what he told me.’

‘The postmaster and his wife are not in town, Maulana-ji. They must’ve delivered them during the night and fled.’

Maulana Hafeez lifted his strained features towards her. ‘But where could they have run to? That woman was … with child.’

His wife did not respond. She watched the envelope keenly. Maulana Hafeez applied vertical thumbnails to the caked shellac and snapped the seal into two half-moons. Inside the official green envelope was the original letter and four photostated sheets explaining the unusual nature of the correspondence. The train crash was described at length; there was a poorly reproduced photograph of the derailed carriages. The text seemed to Maulana Hafeez to be written by an investigative journalist for the Friday supplement. He read all eight sides. His wife sat by him, placid and calm.

At last, Maulana Hafeez picked up the envelope which, he now knew, he must himself have sealed and addressed nineteen years before. Scrawled on the paper in blue water-based ink – it had faded to a grey – were his wife’s name and the postal directions:

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