The Far Field

by Madhuri Vijay

  He glanced at me. I saw that he was terrified of what she might say, embarrassed by my presence there, and I would have turned away to spare him, except at that moment my mother exploded into motion. She spun and kicked the rolled-up carpet with all the strength she had. It made a dull, muffled thud that seemed to please her, because she kicked it again. Finally she turned back and pointed at his chest with a thin finger.

  “Because you’re a coward,” she said coldly. “A coward. Your home is full of fighting, and you’re here, carrying around your stupid clothes, telling your stupid stories, whining, ‘Yes, janaab, no janaab,’ as if nothing is happening. Are you a child? My god, what’s wrong with you?”

  She glanced around, and her eyes fell once again on the much-abused carpet. “You want money?” she asked with unconcealed contempt. “Is that all you want? Here. Take that. It’s yours. I’m giving it to you. You know how much I paid for it and you’re ten times better as a salesman than the idiot in the shop. You’ll get ten times as much.”

  She fell into an abrupt silence. Nobody moved for a long time. I wondered if the people in the apartment below were listening.

  Then Bashir Ahmed said quietly, “You’re right.”

  What?” She seemed confused all of a sudden. “What? What did you say?”

  “You’re right,” he said again. He was still speaking quietly, but there was more force in his voice than there had been all afternoon. “What am I doing here? What did I think I was going to achieve by coming back, leaving my family? There must have been something wrong with me.”

  Then he raised his finger and pointed to the front door.

  “Get out,” he said.

  My mother stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  He didn’t flinch this time. “Get out,” he repeated.

  It seemed for a moment that she might pounce on him, attack him physically; but she only spun around and strode to the door.

  Opening it, she half turned and said over her shoulder, archly, “Go home, Bashir. There’s nothing for you here.”

  He did not respond. She picked her sandals up in one hand and began walking, chin lifted, down the filthy staircase. Not daring to meet Bashir Ahmed’s eyes, I followed, stopping only at the very bottom of the stairs to wriggle into my shoes.

  My mother, meanwhile, was standing barefoot in the street. I rushed up to her.

  “Amma,” I cried. “What’s going to happen? Is he going to leave?”

  She looked down at me. There were tears in her corners of her eyes, and this terrified me even more than the ugly scene upstairs. But at the same time, I saw that the madwoman was gone, that, tears or not, she was my mother again.

  “Shalini,” she said hoarsely, “I’ve made a mistake.”

  I waited, certain that she was going to say she had been too harsh, that she had not meant to lose her temper, had not meant to wound him. I waited eagerly for the words, ready to race upstairs and apologize to Bashir Ahmed on her behalf, ready to beg him to forgive her.

  “I shouldn’t have let that auto go off,” she said impatiently. “Now it’ll take forever to find another one.”

  That evening, when my father came home from the factory, he almost tripped over a thick cylindrical bundle left on our doorstep, which, upon unrolling, was found to contain a small, exquisite Kashmiri carpet, the color of a late-season apple. He looked inquiringly at my mother.

  “Delivery people,” she sighed. “You know how careless they can be.”

  III

  11

  I DID NOT GO back to the office with Zoya. Instead I stayed at home, as I had done in the beginning, waiting for Bashir Ahmed. Zoya began leaving my breakfast on a tray again, and however early I rose, she was gone by the time I came out of my room, as if avoiding me. She said nothing to make me believe this was so, but I knew she felt betrayed. The tenuous affection that had begun to grow between us was arrested, and, though she must have known, as I had, that this day would come, her hurt was palpable, and I was helpless to change it.

  Once again, I passed my days in Kishtwar doing nothing. I did not sleep or watch TV or go for a walk, afraid I would miss Bashir Ahmed, afraid that he might knock once, twice, then give up and go away. It was not pure anticipation I felt, waiting for him, but a murky mixture of fear and impatience, eagerness and reluctance. What was he like now? Would he recognize me? What if he never came at all? I asked this of Saleem, who occasionally visited in the evening for tea and a game of cards with Abdul Latief. He laughed, “He will come, child. These mountain people, they follow their own time, unlike those of you from the city. You must be patient.”

  Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, shortly before lunch, there was a knock at the door. I opened it, and for a second I could not speak. The bearded man who stood outside wore a brown kurta, muddy and stained at the hem. He had obviously spent most of his life outdoors; the skin around his nose was like treebark. His mouth was small and sensuous, with a faint overbite. His hair was thick and dark, except for a smudge of gray at his right temple, and it fell over his forehead in a way that was so familiar it was like a slap. It was all I could do to remind myself to say, “Yes?”

  “My name is Riyaz,” he said in Urdu. And when I did not respond, he added, “Bashir Ahmed is my father.”

  It took another moment for me to say, “Salaam alaikum.”

  It was the first time I’d greeted anyone that way, and I was relieved when he responded, though without enthusiasm, “Walaikum salaam.” I glanced behind him, but there was nobody else on the stairs. As if he’d read my thoughts, he said, “I came alone.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then I realized I was blocking the doorway. “Please come in,” I said.

  He seemed to hesitate, then stepped past me. While he was looking around the hall, I seized the chance to observe him again. There were hints of Bashir Ahmed in his neck and jaw, but whereas Bashir Ahmed had been tall and hefty, a pillar of a man, his son was smaller and neater, more compact. There was a lethargy to his body, which suggested, not laziness, but its opposite, a barely coiled energy. He swept the house with a single glance then turned back to me. “You are the one who was asking about my father?” he asked. All this time he hadn’t smiled.

  “Yes,” I said. “My name is Shalini. I knew him years ago, when I was a child. In Bangalore.”

  He nodded, but it was evident he was not listening. He glanced once more around the room then drew himself up, as if he’d come to a decision. He fixed me with a gaze that was stern and oddly aloof, and, just before he spoke, I had a flash of something. Call it an omen, foreshadowing, what you will—but if I could have leapt forward and clamped my hand down on his mouth, if I could have thrown myself on him to prevent him from speaking, I would have.

  He said, “My father is dead.”

  I don’t know how long we stood there. Riyaz’s face had closed like a door after his announcement. And I? Absurdly, my first thought was that at least I would now be able to stay here with Zoya, return to my work at the office, but it did not take me long to realize that this would be an impossibility. The green room, which had once been Ishfaaq’s, and for a short while had been mine, would be required by others, who were far more desperate than I was. Once I’d understood this, it was all I could do not to turn away from him and weep.

  Bashir Ahmed was dead. Dead, like my mother, both of them gone forever from my grasp. I knew I should express my condolences to the man standing before me, but I could not bring myself to speak. Riyaz, in the meantime, was starting to look uncomfortable. His fingers twitched, as if in search of some familiar object, and he glanced over my shoulder at the doorway.

  “Where are the people whose house this is?” he asked abruptly.

  “They’re at work. They’ll be back in the evening.”

  “Then I will come back in the evening,” he declared, and before I could reply, he stepped past me and ran lightly down the stairs. Left alone, I closed the door and looked around the empty hall, which suddenly seemed strange and u
nfamiliar to me.

  Abdul Latief came back first, and I told him what had happened. He looked sad and patted me on the shoulder. “I am sorry,” he said. I could not bear telling Zoya, so I excused myself and went into my room. I heard her come in, heard their voices as a low murmur, and I waited, half hoping she would knock on my door, half hoping she wouldn’t.

  She did not knock.

  And then, in the evening, as he said he would, Riyaz returned. Saleem was there, too, shuffling the deck of cards. I was sitting with them in the hall, not drinking my tea, letting a rippled brown skin congeal on the surface. Zoya opened the door, and there he was again, looking startled and not entirely pleased to find so many people on the other side of it.

  “Salaam alaikum,” he said gruffly to Zoya.

  “Walaikum salaam,” she replied. “Please come in.”

  While he greeted Saleem and Abdul Latief, Zoya brought a cup and poured him some tea, which he drank in one long, uninterrupted swig, setting the cup down and staring at it angrily. He was, I thought, either extremely surly or extremely shy.

  “So,” Abdul Latief said in Urdu, trying to put him at ease, “how was your journey?”

  He did not look up. “Fine.”

  “You did not have any trouble finding our house, I hope?”

  “No.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Abdul Latief said, throwing a glance at his brother-in-law.

  Saleem interjected, in his low, musical voice, “I was sorry to hear about your father.”

  Riyaz ducked his head in acknowledgment but did not reply.

  “I am also sorry because this young lady”—Saleem nodded at me—“has been wanting very much to see him. She came all the way from Bangalore. Did she tell you that?”

  I waited for Riyaz to look at me, but he didn’t.

  “I don’t know if you know this, but Bangalore is at the other end of India,” Saleem said casually. “It is a long way for anybody to travel.”

  Abdul Latief, apparently grasping something I did not, echoed, “Yes. A very long way.”

  Zoya finally looked up from her knitting. Only I was still puzzled.

  “Since she has come such a long way,” Saleem went on, “I was thinking it might be nice for her to at least visit your village for a few days. What do you think?”

  Now Riyaz looked at me, sharply and with accusation. I wanted to shake my head to show I was as surprised as he was, but he looked away almost immediately. Then Saleem switched to Kashmiri and spoke for a long while. His tone never meandered away from utmost politeness, but it was evident, even though I could not understand what was being said, where the authority lay. Saleem was polished, educated, and at least thirty years older than Riyaz, who, as I could see, was only a few years older than me. As Saleem spoke, a sullen, resigned look came over Riyaz’s handsome face. I glanced at Abdul Latief, who was suppressing a smile, then at Zoya, who had returned to her knitting. When Saleem finished speaking, Riyaz sat motionless, staring at the patterned yellow cloth that covered the floor, then stood up all at once and walked out.

  I thought he meant to leave, but he went only as far as the landing, where he pulled out a small cell phone and made a brief, muttered call. When he hung up, he pocketed the cell phone and came back in. Ignoring Saleem and looking only at me, he said, “Do you want to see our village?”

  What was I to say? The truth was that at the moment I could not think of anything I wanted less than to see his village. All I wanted was to go back to my green room, crawl under the sheets, and fall asleep. And, when I woke, I wanted to eat breakfast with Zoya and walk with her through the streets of Kishtwar to the office. I wanted to sit by her side on our wooden bench in the sun and listen to her talk. I wanted to pass the evening in this very same hall, while Zoya knitted and Abdul Latief watched TV, until it was time to sleep again. So, no, I did not want to see Riyaz’s village, but even less did I want to admit my hesitation and risk being sent away altogether, back to Bangalore, to my grieving father, to the job I no longer had, to the parties on the weekends, to all those deadly barren hours in between. So I said, “Yes. If it isn’t too much trouble. Thank you.”

  Riyaz nodded. “I’ll go find a taxi,” he said. “Be ready in ten minutes.”

  “Wait.” My stomach dropped. “Now? You want to leave now?”

  He scowled. “Is there something wrong with now?”

  To that, I could find no satisfactory reply. Riyaz nodded at Saleem and Abdul Latief, who seemed as taken aback as I was at this sudden acceleration of events, and strode out. After a moment of stunned silence, Abdul Latief laughed shakily.

  “Well,” he said, “at least you know he won’t make you tired with talking.”

  I stood and went to my room. I dragged my rucksack, which was dusty, from under the little bed and placed it on the pink sheets. My clothes—jeans and T-shirts, underwear and bras, a sweatshirt—lay in two piles in the low cabinet. I carried them over and placed them in the rucksack. Then my comb, my sandals, a scarf hanging on the hook with the Arabic inscription, my toiletries. In less than five minutes, I had packed everything I’d brought here, and the green room looked undisturbed, its surfaces closing, like water, as soon as I was gone.

  Walking amid the fleet of white taxis was exactly as I remembered it, all of them covered in the dust of a hundred roads, giving off heat like circus behemoths. I followed Riyaz, hunching under my rucksack, bumping it into shoulders and cars. After a terse exchange in Kashmiri with a yawning, uninterested teenager, Riyaz indicated a particularly run-down vehicle, whose seats spit jaundiced foam from long rips. Again, my rucksack was strapped to the roof. Again, I climbed in and found a seat in the back corner, next to the window.

  Riyaz had come back to the house in ten minutes as he promised he would. He wouldn’t come inside but stayed downstairs, waiting. I walked to the door with Abdul Latief and Zoya. Saleem had just wished me goodbye and left.

  Abdul Latief smiled and shook my hand.

  “All the best,” he said. “I am only sorry that you will not get to meet your mother’s friend.”

  “Thank you for everything,” I said.

  “No thanks are needed. Come back and see us whenever you want.”

  Zoya stood next to him, her face expressionless. This evening she wore a light green headscarf, patterned with leaves veined in thin gold thread.

  “Do you have our phone numbers?” Abdul Latief asked suddenly. I shook my head. “Wait here for a minute,” he said and went inside.

  I looked at Zoya.

  “Will you tell Zarina?” I asked. “That I’ve left?”

  She inclined her head slightly, and I was conscious of my disappointment. But what right, I scolded myself, did I have to be disappointed? How many times had she stood right here, at this same door, with someone about to depart, someone she had fed and sheltered and protected, as she had fed and sheltered and protected me? Fifty times? A hundred? Wasn’t that what Zarina had been trying to tell me from the beginning? And so wasn’t it an absurdity, arrogance, to imagine it would somehow be different with me, simply because I had stayed a little longer, because I had walked with her for a few days in the sun?

  The azan began, sung by an old man. We listened in silence as he made his precarious way through the long minor notes. Then I heard her say, “When Ishfaaq comes back, I will tell you.”

  I looked up. She still wasn’t smiling, but there was a liquid quality to her face, as though something had softened for a moment and flowed toward me. I had the urge to sit down right there, on their doorstep, and burst into tears.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Please. Tell me. I would like that very much.”

  Abdul Latief came back, brandishing a pen and a sheet of paper. In a large, elegant hand, he had written their two cell phone numbers.

  “In case you need anything,” he said.

  “Take mine, too,” I said on impulse, before I remembered I no longer had one to give them. “I mean, my number in Bangalore. If you e
ver come, you must stay with us.”

  He laughed. “I think your family would not want two old people to trouble them.” Nevertheless, he handed me the pen. I tore off a corner of the sheet and wrote our landline number on it, making sure every digit was legible.

  “It’s just my father,” I said, handing the paper to him, “and he will enjoy meeting you.”

  “Maybe one day,” Abdul Latief said.

  “Inshallah,” I added, and he laughed again.

  Halfway down the green stairs, I stopped. I was trembling. I rested my hand on the wall, then, aware that Zoya was still watching me from the doorway above, made myself continue. When I reached the bottom, I resisted the temptation to turn, instead pushing out into the dusk, to where Riyaz was waiting.

  A door slammed, startling me. The driver was in his place. Riyaz had taken the seat in front of me, and I kept my eyes on the point where his hairline ended, the vertical furrow that hid the top of his spine. Beside me was a Hindu woman in a bloodred kurta with girlishly puffed sleeves, typing something rapidly on her cell phone. Her lipstick and bindi were the same shade of lurid red, and her black hair had been ironed straight and hung over her shoulders like straw. Her two sons, twins, sat on the other side of her, already asleep, wearing identical striped T-shirts tucked into jeans. Her husband, a burly man with close-cropped hair, sat in front beside the driver. Now and again, he turned and called out something to her, and without looking up from the little screen, she responded in a voice that could have sawed bone.

  A tout came around collecting fares, and I paid without hesitation, a fact that caused me quiet pride. Then the taxi pulled out of the marketplace, leaving behind the tea stalls and the vendors and the grand, charred mosque. Shops were beginning to close for the evening, people were going home. I had a last glimpse of the Chowgan, immense with shadows, and then it was the highway and the mountains again. Lights on the valley floor, lights on the distant slopes, lights from the vehicles we passed, a glow that fell around my shoulders and died away. Lights from an army checkpoint, where a bored soldier waved us through. Lights from the dozens of highway food stalls, exposed bulbs dangling and waving in a warm breeze. And all of a sudden I was exhausted, by the thought of having to do it all again, the arrival, the introductions, the discomfort, the explanations. I longed for my warm, familiar home in Kishtwar, where Abdul Latief would be right now stretching out against his favorite bolster and Zoya would be in the kitchen, boiling water, though tonight there would be only one kind of tea, only one blue thermos.