Broken Verses

by Kamila Shamsie

  ‘Why should they listen if the creatures of tyranny are the ones with power?’ the journalist said.

  Mama exchanged smiles with Omi, as though somehow the conversation had stumbled into some private area of discourse that they’d long ago traversed. ‘It’s true, that in concrete battles the tyrants may have the upper hand in terms of tactics, weapons, ruthlessness. What our means of protest attempt to do is to move the battles towards abstract space. Force tyranny to defend itself in language. Weaken it with public opinion, with supreme court judgements, with debates and subversive curriculum. Take hold of the media, take hold of the printing presses and the newspapers, broadcast your views from pirate radio channels, spread the word. Don’t do anything less than all you are capable of, and remember that history outlives you. It may not be until your grandchildren’s days that they’ll point back and say, there were sown the seeds of what we’ve now achieved.’ She looked at Omi again.

  ‘What will Aasmaani say about us when we’ve gone?’ he said, smiling at her, ignoring everyone else. ‘That’s the real test.’

  I called Shehnaz to thank her for that reminder of their lives, trying to find the words to express how moved I was by just those few moments in which they were both alive again and so utterly delighted to simply be in each other’s company. But before I could explain why I had called she started weeping for her son.

  ‘Find a way to forgive him,’ I said to her. ‘For your own sake.’

  ‘Can you do that?’ she asked.

  ‘No. But you’re his mother. That changes everything.’

  Rabia is watching me from a distance. She’s been watching me closely since I got back from Islamabad last week after Beema’s mother’s funeral. She doesn’t know whether to trust that I’m well.

  I’m not well, but I’m getting there. I still wake up some nights screaming from dreams of Omi. I still miss Ed. I find myself weeping uncontrollably in moments when I least expect it, and I know it’s for Mama. But already I can feel this begin to pass into a quieter grief, one that will become part of my character without destroying me.

  I make that sound so easy. Nothing about this has been easy. But somehow I find I really am strong enough to bear it. And I recognize how remarkable, and how unearned, a gift that is.

  Rabia calls out my name. I hold up a hand to say I’ll be there in a minute. There is one thing that remains to be done, one ritual to fulfil.

  I walk away from the water, but not too far away. The sand here is wet and packed solid. I write my mother’s name in the sand. Did she and Omi really make love in a cave with someone watching? Was that someone Ed? In all those sentences Ed wrote about her what was truth, what falsehood, what his own interpretations? They had dissolved into my memory of her—all those words had—and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to separate them out.

  With the little plastic spade I’ve been carrying I cut out the patch of sand which has my mother’s name inscribed on it.

  Some days she’d leave the house and walk down to the beach nearest us. It was no more than a twenty-minute walk but we’d always tell her she shouldn’t be out on the streets alone. She replied that no one ever bothered her. The last time anyone saw her she was walking down the street towards the sea. It was the monsoons, not a time to go to the beach, not a time to put even a toe into the water. The undertow could carry you out so far you’d never return.

  She never returned.

  Her absence was proof of her death. She loved me too much to allow me to believe she was dead when she wasn’t. Despite all the lies, somehow that memory, that certainty, had come to me, urgent and unshakable. And for that, I’d always be indebted to Ed.

  Did she throw herself into the sea, or simply let it carry her away? Or did she struggle in the end, trying to find her way back to shore? I’ll never know. I don’t even know for which of those options to hope.

  I take the block of sand in my palms and walk forward until I am knee-deep in the cold, clear water. The bright winter sun throws a net of silver between the horizon and me. I bend my back and lower my cupped hands just below the surface of the sea. Her name and the sand stream out between my fingers, dissolve into the waves, and are carried away.

  About the Author

  KAMILA SHAMSIE’s first novel, In the City by the Sea, was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. After her second novel, Salt and Saffron, she was named one of the Orange Futures “21 Writers for the 21st century”. A recipient of the Award for Literary Achievement in Pakistan, she lives in Karachi and London, where she writes frequently for The Guardian. She often teaches in the U.S.