Thinner Than Skin by Uzma Aslam Khan

Author:Uzma Aslam Khan [Khan, Uzma Aslam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction, cookie429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9781443413374
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

In our cabin, Farhana’s and mine, Irfan was sullen while unbuttoning his shirt. He said, “You and Farhana could fight your battle back in America.”

“You don’t have to come with us.” It sounded like I was trying to get rid of him, when in fact I knew we needed him.

He knew too. He didn’t bother answering me. Though no one said so, some of us at least seemed to hold to the belief that we all went forward or all went back. We had long ago ceased being mere friends. We were accomplices.

I watched him arrange his shirt on a hanger, then drape his jeans over a chair. Next, a fresh pair of socks, fresh underpants, and a pair of leather shoes. Joggers were only for trekking. He was always the most dapper man I’d known, second only to my father, who polished his shoes every night in slow, deliberate movements that were almost relaxed. The last time I was here, with Irfan’s wife, there was no electricity in any hotel in Naran. To impress Zulekha, he’d taken all our clothes to the one laundry place in town, where the Khan had a coal iron. While the Khan put burning coals in the iron and waited for it to heat before painstakingly smoothening every wrinkle from our shirts and Zulekha’s shalwars, kameezes, and especially her dupattas, Irfan and I stood by patiently, till one of us offered to get the other a boiled egg sprinkled with salt and pepper.

He had his own travel iron now. He was the only one of the three men in the group who shaved daily, keeping his beard clipped just so. There must have been shoe polish somewhere in his bag. Yet, apparently, even his fastidiousness had its limits. Irfan climbed into bed in his underpants without brushing his teeth.

But I smelled soap on him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d showered.

He checked his cell phone then switched off the lamp on his side of the bed. “We should avoid Kohistan and head northeast, with an armed escort. Everyone is being checked, and I’m not even sure who they’re checking for. You’ve been so busy with your private battle I don’t know if you’ve even noticed the nervousness of people here.”

He was repeating himself. I let him.

“They don’t know who’s who, spies or militants,” he jabbered on. “And who’s working for who—America, Pakistan, or India. Or someone else we don’t even suspect.”

“You seem more nervous than anyone else,” I said. Spies or militants, murderers or lovers, what difference did it make?

“You know Wes called his boss to say his work was delayed because there’d been a bomb blast? He was right. You and Farhana were generating that much smoke.”

I had to laugh at that.

After a while, I said, “I need to ask you something.”

“I’m listening.”

“When you and the girl’s brother came to get us, was Farhana in our boat?”

“Of course.”

“Was she—wet. You know, as if she’d been in the lake?”

I could hear him turn in the dark.

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