Trespassing by Khan Uzma Aslam

Author:Khan, Uzma Aslam [Khan, Uzma Aslam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007402427
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2011-10-09T18:30:00+00:00

Part Two

SALAAMAT

1

Here

JULY 1992

Salaamat stood with them outside the cave.

Daanish rolled his jeans up to his knees, saying, ‘At low tide, we’d eat in there when I was a kid.’ The jeans were drenched and kept sliding down to his ankles.

Dia peered inside. ‘It’s claustrophobic.’

The water raced down the cave’s length, crashing into the far wall, submerging the smooth rock where, Daanish told Dia, Anu would spread their tea. ‘Years ago, I found a silvery shell here. An argonaut’s nest. Then my parents fought over a pearl necklace. Anu was always irritable whenever he got her anything expensive. Later, she’d cry to me: “The roof still leaks and the twelve-year-old car keeps breaking down, but he keeps throwing away any money we have left. Don’t count on an inheritance.” She meant: I’m counting on you.’ He sighed and took Dia’s hand.

They strolled along the shore, leaving Salaamat alone by the cave. He lit a cigarette, remembering the ad for it. Two men scaled a mountain, just like he and Fatah had done their last day together. He liked to imagine it was him in the red jacket and Fatah in the blue.

Salaamat started walking too, soon catching up with them. The wind ruffled her hair and dealt with their words similarly: tangling and tossing them up and back, at him. Teasing, stinging. He was the subject of their conversation.

‘There was no other way, Dia,’ Daanish was saying. ‘I had to ask Khurram for his car and driver or Anu would have asked too many questions.’

‘You could have only asked for the car. We could have driven here.’

‘Yes, but Khurram had to take his own car. This is his father’s. He’s terrified of getting it scratched. I don’t blame him for not trusting me that much.’

‘But it’s embarrassing that he’s in on us. I’ve known the family so long. What do you suppose he’s thinking?’

Hadn’t they realized how close he was? Perhaps not – he always moved with great stealth. It was how he’d escaped the camp. It was why he was still alive.

‘Don’t worry,’ Daanish touched her cheek tenderly, ‘maybe I can find a way to take our own car. Except it keeps breaking down.’

They fell silent. Salaamat had to re-light his cigarette. Of course in the ad, even on top of the Himalayas, the wind couldn’t touch it.

Dia’s apricot shalwar was soaked through and when the tide pulled in, Salaamat could see the backs of her legs. And her buttocks. She’d been only twelve when he’d first seen her, a gleeful bowler in her father’s arms. And now here she was, giving herself to another man, her clothes transparent, her honor more reckless than the breeze. But then chastity did not run in their blood.

Daanish took something out of his pocket that Salaamat couldn’t see.

‘I’ve been keeping this to show you,’ Daanish said. ‘It’s what I got when I boiled the cocoon. Your hair’s a thousand times more jumbled than this, and I love that about you.’ He proceeded to tell her how he’d twisted it while puzzling over the length.

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