Turquoise by Hussein Aamer;

Author:Hussein, Aamer;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Saqi

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Sameer’s first book came out the following year. Iman had flown over from Kampala to be with him. Not exactly: she’d been in London a while, had radical surgery just before, but she staggered bravely out of bed, put on makeup and some traditional Kashmiri embroidery, and drove him to his party.

For the rest of the decade, after taking her degree, she flew restlessly between Kampala, London and Karachi, freelancing, always between homes. But she didn’t see Kashif again, though they spoke on the telephone from time to time. Yasir had settled down in Pindi and had two children. Strange, Iman said to Sameer one day, how some men learn to settle and love only after battering one woman almost to death. I hope he’s happy wherever he is as long as he’s out of my life.

Sameer wrote another book. He was finishing it while Iman fell in love again. She said she’d never yet known what passion was until she met the younger divorced man she called Dr K. Then she found out he was still married, and he later told her that his wife was pregnant. Their affair went on for nearly three years, till the end of the decade, even after she’d found him out. Sameer didn’t approve. It’s your business, he said; it’s your life, he still says.

As the nineties breathed their last, Sameer flew off to see his sister in Bangladesh, having missed the topography of his stories for two years. Iman, who’d got her younger brother married the year before to a suitable woman, a blend of brilliance with beauty, wanted to spend the dawn of the millenium with them in Africa.

Sameer wasn’t able to see Iman till after his birthday in April. She was upset. She thought he’d changed. He hasn’t. Iman means more to him than ever.

Now they meet often. Their contentious conversations are in English; for affection they move to Urdu. But then, again, their mother tongue does well for blessings and moral advice. (A week ago, at one of their old coffee hangouts in Little Venice, Iman told Sameer she’d seen her phantom love again. Sameer shook his head, tut-tutting. Your life, he said, not my place to disapprove. No, Iman replied, don’t worry about us. We met and talked. It’s gentler now, like finding a pressed flower you left once between the pages of a book. The fragrance has gone, and you’ve forgotten its perfume. But you remember the touch of it.)

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