The Far Field

by Madhuri Vijay

  He was sitting up in bed, hands folded primly over the thick pink blanket.

  His head turned slowly as I entered, and his eyes, which were already sunken, seemed to recede even farther into their sockets. This time, there was no silent howl of terror, but a flicker of fear crossed his face nonetheless.

  “I brought your lunch,” I said.

  He said nothing, watching as I came forward into the room. When I hesitated, he nodded toward the table beside his bed. I moved his skullcap aside and set the plate and tumbler down, then stepped back, not knowing how to begin.

  Bashir Ahmed broke the silence first.

  “You’ve grown,” he said, and I felt the same thrill at hearing that voice, unchanged.

  “That’s what happens after eleven years.”

  “Eleven years,” he said slowly. “Has it been eleven years?”

  I nodded.

  “And after eleven years,” he said, “you’re here. How did you find us?”

  “It was because of your story. The one about Shah Baghdadi. I looked on the internet and found that it had happened in Kishtwar.”

  “You remember that story?” he said, a note of surprise in his voice, and, I thought, of pride.

  “I remember all your stories,” I said.

  The kerosene lantern in the corner flickered, going dull then bright. I looked around at the room. A tiny plastic-framed mirror hung on the wall above a mud shelf, and few bright bolsters lined the walls. There was a closed wooden chest in the corner, presumably for Bashir Ahmed’s clothes. It was a lonely room, but not unwelcoming, and something struck me suddenly.

  “Is this the place?” I asked.

  He looked up. “What place?”

  “Where the militants stayed. When they came.”

  Bashir Ahmed had stiffened at the word militants, but then he nodded. I looked around again, and he did the same, as if he hadn’t lived with these things every day for years.

  “It’s a nice room,” I said finally. “I like it.”

  “Thank you,” he said, bending his head. “I hope you are comfortable in your own room.”

  “I am, thank you.”

  It was all just an elaborate prelude, of course, these polite inquiries. We were playing for time, circling the real reason I was here, circling the subject of my mother, neither of us wanting to be the first to mention her. Again I had the feeling he was waiting, fearful, for what I would say.

  “There’s trouble in Kishtwar, you know,” I told him. “It started yesterday.”

  He nodded, though without much interest. “Yes. Amina beti told me.”

  Hearing her name appended to the endearment beti, which had always been mine, was more painful than I could have imagined. “Amina left,” I said quietly. “She went back to her own village this morning. She took Aaqib with her.”

  He remained unsurprised. Of course, I thought, she wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye to him. She would have sat by his bedside, teasing him, coaxing a laugh from him, consoling him over her impending absence. Begging him, as a last favor, to let me see him again.

  “It was because of me,” I blurted out. “She left because of me. It was my fault.”

  For the first time since I’d entered, I saw a glimmer of his old self in his sunken eyes. The self that had looked at me when my mother was rude or negligent or even cruel, the funny downward tug of his mouth that warned me not to be angry with her. “You shouldn’t think that way,” he murmured absently.

  “Then why did she leave?” I cried, more desperately than I’d intended.

  And all of a sudden, we had exchanged roles and I was the one waiting, terrified of what he would tell me, while he sat in silence, lost in his own thoughts. But in the end, he only said, with a touch of tiredness, “For many reasons. A person can leave for many reasons.”

  As soon as he said it, I saw him at our gate in the dark, my parents asleep in their bedroom above. Tell her, beti, that I am sorry. For everything.

  But he was speaking again. “We all made it difficult for her,” he said. “From the second she came into our house, we made it difficult. She tried hard for many years, but it was too much for her in the end. Don’t blame yourself. It is not your fault.”

  I nodded, but my throat was still tight. Bashir Ahmed leaned back, a grimace crossing his face as his legs shifted under the blanket.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked, glancing down at his legs.

  He looked at the covered bottom half of his body as if it were someone else’s. “Sometimes. When it’s cold. But most of the time, I don’t think about it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “It all happened so long ago,” he murmured. “I’ve almost forgotten …”

  “How can you forget something like that?” I objected.

  He didn’t answer right away, and when he did, it was to say, wryly, “I see that you haven’t changed. You still like to ask questions.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He gave me a smile that reminded me of Amina. “I’m just teasing you, beti.”

  He’d called me beti. My entire body filled with warmth, and I felt lighter. The strangest part, I realized, of standing there, speaking to him, was how comforting it was. I’d always found his physical presence reassuring, even during the brief spell when I decided that I hated him.

  “Isn’t there something that can be done?” I asked. “Surgery or—”

  He smiled. “Do you know how much surgeries cost?”

  “I’ll pay,” I said impulsively. “Whatever you need, let me help. My father—”

  But he shook his head. “Beti, I was not lying to you when I said I was fine. I really don’t think of it anymore. And tell me this: even if my legs were all right, where would I go? Back out there?” He pointed to the wall of his room, beyond which lay the yard, the cornfields, the village. “You know what they say about me there. Why would I go back?”

  Somewhere at the back of my mind, a doubt had crept in, a sly, insidious doubt, wearing a young soldier’s vain little mustache and speaking in a whining voice. Ask anybody.

  “After you left Bangalore,” I said, when a few seconds had passed, “what happened? I mean, what happened with the militants? Did they stop coming?”

  He looked away. The stubble on the folds of his slack throat was pure white. “They kept coming,” he said at last, speaking very quietly.

  “You couldn’t stop them?”

  “I didn’t try to. After I came back from Bangalore, beti, I was angry.” He didn’t need to say why, and I didn’t have to ask. “Most Kashmiris I knew were angry, but I had never fully felt it myself. But when I came back from Bangalore for the last time, I felt it finally. I wanted to help any militant I could find. I wanted freedom, for Muslims, for Kashmir, and I was ready to do anything. It was as though I could suddenly see the world clearly. It was a world in which Kashmiris would keep dying, and everybody else would keep having dinner parties.” He paused. He wasn’t looking at me, but I blushed all the same. “So,” he said, “the militants came and I did not stop them. It went on like that for five more years.”

  I waited, but there was no more forthcoming. He had gone silent.

  “And then?” I asked.

  He looked up. “You sounded like your mother when you said that.” I held his gaze steadily, and he shrugged. “And then,” he said, “it all ended.”

  He attempted to sit up. I hurried to help him, arranging his pillow so that it supported his back. He settled back and again folded his hands on the pink blanket. It was as ordinary as if he were sitting in our living room. Any minute I would turn and see my mother.

  “It was all going bad anyway, beti. In the beginning, there were just two or three militant groups in this area and they all knew and respected each other, but slowly more and more groups started to form. One group would split into two, under different leaders, and they would spend months fighting each other instead of the army. Some groups were willing to talk with the government, others we
re not. It became so bad that if you heard gunfire at night, you didn’t even know who was doing the shooting. And for us ordinary people, nothing changed. The fighting had been going on for more than ten years, but the freedom they promised us never came.”

  I didn’t turn, but I felt, as clearly as anything, my mother sitting on the chest in the corner, leaning back against the mud wall. Now, I thought, we were all here.

  “And so it went on like that, with the army coming one day and beating up people for not telling them about the militants, and the militants coming the next day and beating up people for talking to the army.” A new, dry note entered Bashir Ahmed’s voice. “Sometimes it seemed like they were playing a game with each other, which they were both enjoying a lot, and the rest of us were just a way to keep the score.”

  My mother’s face was very calm.

  “Luckily, by then, they had almost stopped coming to our house. Maybe there would be one every few months. The last militant who ever stayed with us was a young fellow. He came in the winter. He liked me, because he said I reminded of him of his uncle. His uncle had died of cancer, I think. Anyway, this boy, he was the one who told me about the plan. He said there was a Hindu village a couple of hours away, which had always supported the army. He and his group were going to kill a few men there. Just to keep them quiet, he said. To make everyone remember who was in charge.”

  My mother opened her eyes, and for an instant I believe Bashir Ahmed saw her too. He was staring in the direction of the chest, his eyes blank. “He was such a young boy. I felt I had to say something. I tried talking to him, but he didn’t listen, so I threatened to go to the army camp and tell them what he had told me. We had a big fight, and in the end he called me a fool and a coward. Then he left and I never saw him again.”

  I had opened my mouth to ask a question, but Bashir Ahmed held up his hand, and I shut it.

  “Let me first say this,” he said. “I did not kill those men, but their deaths are still my fault. I made myself believe that nothing would happen, that the boy was just talking. So when I heard those men had been killed one thing became clear to me. That boy was right, beti, and so was your mother. I am a coward.”

  He had mentioned her. I felt the air in the room shimmer.

  “But you still didn’t kill anyone. So why do people say you did?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I have asked myself the same question a thousand times. Maybe the boy said something to somebody, maybe the message got confused. But once the story started, there was nothing I could do. In the end, the word must have reached the soldiers. Maybe someone from this village even gave them my name.” He sounded meditative now. “The only thing that still surprises me, after all these years, is that the soldiers hardly touched me. Yes, they broke my legs, but that was quick. Usually, the things they do to the people they catch …” His voice was hushed, and I thought briefly of Ishfaaq, Zoya’s vanished boy. “It was as if I was being protected. Allah was keeping me alive, beti. Allah wanted me alive, so that I would never forget what I was.”

  We were silent for a long time. My mother was no longer in the room, no longer anywhere.

  I said in a whisper, “Please come to the kitchen. Please. I can help you walk.”

  “No,” he said.

  I was about to protest, when he held up his hand. “Beti, please. This has nothing to do with you. I have done enough to hurt my family already, and I do not wish to hurt them again, even by chance. Please. I understand why you are asking, but I cannot do it.”

  I looked at his face, and for once in my life, I did not argue. I shut my mouth and nodded. He nodded, too, then his expression changed.

  “When I first saw you,” he said softly. “That day, when you came in by accident, I thought, just for one second—”

  I looked at the ground.

  “But now when I look at you, I see your father,” he said in a firmer voice.

  On some impulse, I said, “I didn’t tell my father I was coming here. I lied to him. He doesn’t know where I am. He doesn’t know I came to find you.”

  A disapproving frown crossed Bashir Ahmed’s face. “You shouldn’t have done that, beti. He is still your father.”

  I dropped my head in shame.

  Bashir Ahmed was still watching me, though his eyes were distant. I suddenly wondered what he and my father would think of each other now, if they could meet again as older men.

  I had the strange suspicion they would become friends.

  But I had no time to dwell on my father, because now the air shimmered again, acquired a tense edge. Bashir Ahmed’s hands were creeping toward each other once more, entwining for comfort. I saw a bead of sweat form on his waxy brow.

  “Beti, your mother …”

  I didn’t help him. I was seeing her as she had been on the night of the party. Her eyes so dark, hair brushing her shoulders, bangles glinting. Full of excitement, full of schemes.

  “Where did she want to go?” I asked.

  Confusion flickered in his face. “What do you mean?”

  “The night of the party. She wanted to leave with you, right? Where did she want to go?”

  The smallest, saddest smile crossed his face. “She wanted to come here, beti,” he said, and made a gesture with his fingers, which took in the entire landscape around us.

  I could not believe it. My mother, in this place? It was impossible to imagine. My mother walking these narrow stony paths, sitting crouched beside the fire, sleeping on a thin mattress? My mother sweeping the porch, feeding the chickens, milking the cow?

  As if he had read my thoughts, Bashir Ahmed said, “I tried to tell her it wasn’t possible, but she wouldn’t listen. It was like that joke I used to make with her, about the spectacles. It was as if she couldn’t see anything clearly. She said all kinds of things, beti, scary things. She said she would go mad if I didn’t bring her; she said she would jump off the roof, but how could I do what she was asking? Your father had been kind to me and you were just a child. So I—”

  “So you left,” I finished for him. “You left us behind.”

  The fear was back in his face. “Beti,” he said, and his voice cracked. It was a desperate sound, and it jolted me out of the trance I hadn’t known I was in.

  I looked down on him, one of the few people in the world who had really known my mother, who’d made her laugh, who had been charmed and stupefied and enraged and wounded by her, and I could find no anger in myself, nothing but a desire to give him peace.

  “She died,” I told him gently. “Three years ago.”

  His eyes were screwed shut, and he was nodding, though I didn’t know whether it was to say that he already knew, for Amina must have told him at some point, or to encourage me, without words, to say the final thing.

  I took a deep breath. “It was suicide,” I said. I didn’t know the word for suicide in Urdu or Hindi, so I said it in English, surprised at how easily it slipped out, how meager a word it really was.

  I’d seen him cry before, but this was different. There were no muffled sobs, no shaking shoulders. He cried with a quiet, bereaved dignity, tears rolling into his stubble. I felt a stirring of sympathy. How much guilt he carried, this old man. “Is that why you didn’t want to see me for all these days?” I asked. “You thought I was angry?”

  He nodded, shamefaced as a child.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Please, listen very carefully. What my mother did wasn’t because of you. Or me. Or anybody. That’s not why I came here. I came here”—I paused—“because I wanted to see you. That’s all. I missed you when she died, and I wanted to see you again.” I paused, then added, “I loved you. We all did.”

  His hands unclasped, grasping for mine. I sat down with him on his bed, in that hot room with the paper streamers waving slowly above my head. I felt no urge to cry, but I was aware of a great silence suffusing my body, as if my heart were slowing down to a normal human pace, as if a huge racket that had played constantly in the ba
ck of my mind had suddenly ceased.

  I held Bashir Ahmed’s hands for a long time. Then I released them and stood. He looked up, seeming suddenly bereft, his face betraying alarm. “You’re going?” he cried.

  “Only for a while,” I said. “There is something I have to do. But I’ll come back, I promise.”

  I touched him on the shoulder and left.

  34

  I ARRIVED ON THE porch at the same time as Riyaz, returning from the mosque. He saw me and stiffened, but I didn’t give him time to react any further. My mind was working fast, making rapid calculations. Approaching him, I said, in a low voice, “Riyaz, is your cell phone with you?”

  He nodded dully.

  “All right. I want you to call Saleem and tell him to send the car.”

  His eyes went wide. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  A frown of suspicion knitted his brow. “Why? Why did you change your mind?”

  “I’ve thought about it, and you’re right,” I said lightly, trying to calm my heart. “I can help you find a job in Bangalore. You’d be able to earn a lot more money than you do here. You’d be able to send it back for your parents. For your mother’s medical treatment, for Aaqib’s school, for everything else. After everything you’ve done for me, that’s the least I can do for you.”

  The frown had relaxed somewhat but hadn’t entirely left his face. “And what about you?”

  “Me?” I pretended not to know what he meant.

  “What about staying here? Becoming a teacher?”

  “Oh, that,” I said, trying to sound airy, convincing. “That was just a silly idea I had for a while. To tell you the truth, I don’t think it would have even been possible. Can you imagine me, a teacher?” I attempted a laugh, but it came out strained, unconvincing.

  Riyaz eyed me. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.