Thinner Than Skin

by Uzma Aslam Khan

  The prince with the turban on backwards

  Dropped his sword when the fairy leaned forwards

  And when he jumped off his horse

  Oh the arc of his legs!

  Oh the slope of her breasts!

  Oh the jinn with his fire and his flame!

  Sometimes he brought his flute, or, if she were lucky, his algoja, the twin flute of the Rajasthan desert that was equally beloved by mountain gypsies. She loved how he made the first flute hum with his nose while trilling a melody on the second with his tongue. (Sometimes, while drawing honey from his fingers, she would imagine the flute; it was her tongue and her nose creating the notes.) She loved also the jangling ornaments that were strung around the length of the wood, the way they bobbed with the beat as he moved his head and shut his eyes so as not to see her dance. If he opened his eyes, she kept swaying, keeping her gaze intent on the beads and the golden thread.

  When he got to the part about the prince and princess fleeing the jinn and sheltering in a cave, she could not help but meet his eyes, for they were in the same cave, and it was theirs. The jade around her neck was smooth and hot against her naked flesh, when it ought to have been cold.

  Years later, she still wore the jade. She could feel it against her skin, under her black shirt, as she entered the cave and stared at the sign. It had been years since the last one. Why now? Why was he about to return, and from where? There was a churning in her gut. That misgiving again. And yet, there was excitement too. She was never unhappy to see him.

  Maryam offered her prayers and scattered rice in the crack in the wall. She asked the goddess to protect her. She asked her mother to protect her. She asked her father too. But even the white jade around her neck did nothing to help her focus. While praying, she could not stop staring at the sign. A single blue feather, from a kingfisher’s wing. Might it be a coincidence? Perhaps a kingfisher had nestled here through the winter and left behind this gift.

  Maryam hastily ended her prayers—she did everything in a hurry this year!—and walked around the pillars, the ones left behind from an age of rubies. They held up the cave the way sticks are meant to hold up a tent—again her thoughts drifted to the plastic sheeting, sagging and leaky, and to Kiran, whose movements could not be contained—though in truth, the cave did not need them. Like a womb, it was complete in itself. The deeper inside the womb she moved, the narrower it grew, and cooler. The drop in temperature soothed her. She pressed her palms to the walls, hunched her shoulders, let the tightening enclose her. Her fingers traced scratches from a time before. Hunters with turbans, hunters with bare heads. Antelope and buffalo. Owls and horses. Her favorite glyph was that of three horses, one bowing, one dancing, and the third looking back. Hospitality, liberty, and memory. On either side of the trinity hovered an owl, each vaguely ovoid, with eyes wide as wheels. Each time she stood here, fingering the dreams of the dead, she could hear her mother say, Horses are the wings to this world, owls to the next.

  She could hear wings. Not the rapid wingbeats of birth or the slow wingbeats of death. These were oily, sly. Bats: wings to the in-between. She dropped to her knees on the ground, which was littered with sharp stones—the legend Maryam could have willed these away—and crawled deeper into the cave that embraced her till there was nowhere left for her to press. Long ago, Ghafoor would swear, the cave led all the way through the mountains to places she would never see. Kashgar, Bishkek, Tashkent. And she would think, only if you were a bat. Now she ran her hands along the walls. Drawings, yes, but no windows, no doors. No trace of a second feather either. Or a nest. Or an eggshell. Or a ruby, for that matter. The blue feather had not been left by a nesting kingfisher; this was a bird that kept to open skies. The blue feather had been left as a sign. He was coming.

  She thought of the other sign she had been given just last night. An owl had swooped across the lake. She was leaving her drooping tent to bathe at the water’s edge—her husband enjoyed that she performed the ritual each time they had sex no matter where they had it—when she saw the white wings. Circling and circling. Followed by a call. She had not gone back to sleep.

  The churning in her stomach quickened. She prayed to her mother again—this time refusing to stare at the blue feather, or the drawings, or the bats—before leaving the cave. Then she hurried back toward the lake and the tents. Naked Mountain was at her back. Queen of the Mountains lay ahead, still preening. And Kiran was still with the woman who walked like a goat.

  She thought she could see the white man rowing back to shore. Irfan and his friend were too far away to see, but it seemed to her that the woman was pulling Kiran toward them. She would have to teach Kiran to mingle less with guests. She rehearsed the warning in her head. Stay near the pastures where your goats graze, or at least within sight of our tent. After which she would add, the one I told you to fix.

  Maryam walked faster. It was Ghafoor’s wish that she always keep her youth, even once married, and she had. Her pace never slowed. Each spring, on their long trek up to these slopes, she was the one who kept moving when all the others stopped to rest. Ghafoor would also have kept his youth, she was certain. And when her children were grown, so would they. She always prayed for this at the shrine.

  Maryam contemplated heading straight for the guests to pull Kiran away and scold her, but she knew it would not do to approach them herself. So she made for her tent, pulled back the flap—black and tattered like bat wings—and hastened inside to tell her husband that tea would have to wait. First, he needed to bring Kiran back.

  Cold Feet

  I hadn’t forgotten Irfan’s question.

  The clouds continued circling the mountain summit, a scarlet whirlpool in the sky. They caressed him like a memory, so pretty, so mean. And the honey on my fingers so sweet. Beside me, Irfan lay peaceful and still, arms folded behind his neck, perhaps asleep. I, on the other hand, lay fully awake. Too awake.

  Wes and Farhana. My fingers probed the scar. There they went, under my jacket, under my shirt. It was a long scar, though the cut had not been deep. But there had been a lot of blood.

  They say that after a car accident, it’s best not to delay getting behind the wheel again. In the same way, after my encounter with the man who almost desired my jacket, I resolved not to forfeit my nightly walks. Or so I told myself that same night, once back in my apartment. I slept in discomfort, listening to him hiss, Jack-eet. Jack-eet. Gee-ve-me-your-jack-eet. I could hear the squelch of footsteps I could not see. But I saw the shoes, soiled and thick-soled. I saw my hand carrying the jacket out to him, a hand removed from my body. And I saw myself getting up from the bed, again, and again, reaching for the jacket, telling myself I had to go back out into the night, because to lose those walks would mean losing normalcy. In truth, I was only walking to the freezer, repeatedly. In my half-wakeful state each walk to the freezer for an ice pack became a step back out the door. I told myself I was on my way to recovery. And when I woke up in the morning, Wes was sitting beside me.

  I was back in my apartment in the Richmond, waking up to a look of horror on Farhana’s face.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said.

  “Huh?” I tried to sit up.

  “Nadir, you’re bleeding.”

  Granted, there was a sharp pain in my gut. The sheets were aflare with blood. Against them, the exposed parts of my flesh—an arm, a leg—seemed very pale. I remembered falling asleep cheerful in the knowledge that the cut had been a shallow one. Now I heard Farhana through a wave of mist, saying something about needing stitches and medical care and a car. I rolled over and vomited on the floor. I passed out.

  She had no car. Neither did I. My housemates were with their lovers.

  She called Wes.

  Later, it would occur to me to wonder why she didn’t call an ambulance. It was 4:00 a.m. and I’d only been sleeping periodically for two hours and woken her up with all my waking and, apparently, whimpering. Why did she bother Wes?

  On the way to the hospi
tal, he comforted her. “I doubt the peritoneal cavity is busted.” After a moment, he graciously added, “That would literally suck.”

  I passed out again.

  In the operating room, under the lights, I looked closely at the wound. Surprisingly long, the length of a forefinger and a half, but better long than deep. It needed exploring to see if, as Wes supposed, the lining of my abdomen remained unpierced. He was wrong. It had been punctured, but not so far as to penetrate any organs, the doctor announced, rummaging around. Or were those the fingers of anesthesia? I compared the sensation to having a wisdom tooth extracted. It wasn’t that different, except nothing was being taken out, while a whole lot was, hopefully, being kept in. I lay there wishing my liver all the best. I also said a prayer for my small bowel.

  Next I was wrapped up and sent home.

  In the afternoon, Farhana introduced him as Wesley.

  He said, “Call me Wes.”

  “You’re not a Wes.” She smiled at him, spooning something brothy into my mouth.

  He wrapped his arm around her neck, nudging her chin with his fist. The broth dribbled down my chin. “How you feeling, Nader?”

  Nadir, I thought, between leaky spoonfuls.

  “Wesley was in med school,” Farhana explained. “Gave it up for the environment.” What exactly she was explaining I couldn’t say. Nor could I understand why he was doing something very peculiar. He was calling her Farrah.

  “Farrah, you go rest. I’ll take care of him.”

  She thanked him, kissed me on the nose, and left the room, I presumed, to curl up on the living room couch with Nature magazine.

  He picked up the bowl of soup.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  Chuckling, he put it back down.

  I wiped my chin with the back of my hand. I tilted my head. “Why Farrah?”

  He shrugged.

  “Farrah Fawcett?”

  “My mother knew her at UT Austin. Same sorority. Delta Delta Delta.”

  “So that’s why?”

  He shrugged.

  Did he know, I asked, that Ms. Fawcett’s father was Lebanese, that he’d named his angel Farah, which she later changed to Farrah? Or that Farhana meant the same—joy?

  He didn’t seem to care, or maybe he didn’t hear. “They look alike.”

  “You mean, the same dark hair, dark eyes, tall frame?”

  He chuckled.

  “The noses are different.”

  “Despite their different noses, yeah, sure.”

  I closed my eyes and eventually, he loped away.

  I had reason to forget about him the next day.

  Farhana woke me with a finger in my navel, just shy of the bandages, thus announcing the beginning of a long spell of bedridden bliss, full with feasting and being doted upon. She tried several of my mother’s recipes—the chicken karhai turned out fabulous—and whipped up salads with flowers. It was a time of cardamom, artichokes, and art. She gifted me with photography books I couldn’t afford, including a collector’s edition of Elizabeth Carmel’s Brilliant Waters. That was the day my bandages came off. Carmel’s waters were the texture of skin, her stones so organic my fingers hovered at my gut, lightly memorizing the cut, reassured in the knowledge that my insides were safe.

  “Thanks for cooking,” I told her from the bed. “I know it’s not your favorite thing to do.”

  “I’m just very picky who I cook for.”

  I could have lain there for weeks.

  As I recovered, we discussed details of our trip. Karachi, Islamabad, Gilgit, Hunza. She had maps, one of which showed the way to Ultar Glacier, and beyond, to Batura Glacier. With a gaiety that made her glow, she spoke of the work she’d do, called it reading the ice. My eye drifted to a different point on a map. So you read the ice? I mused, not thinking to ask if she’d keep reading it, when it formed between us. We were on a pre-honeymoon, and, unlike the first time she described what she’d do in Pakistan, now I was interested. I learned something about myself in those bedridden days, something I hoped I’d never need to admit. I adored her adoration. I wanted her to feed me, tuck me into bed, swaddle me like a child. I did want to return to my solitary nocturnal habit, it was true, but this hiatus, during which I was entirely in her keep, was delicious. I wanted to be absolutely spoiled by her. So I leafed through her maps, and grew intrigued. “Glaciers might have been growing in north Pakistan for three decades,” she said, sensing what a brilliant audience her patient made, “in some of the most isolated places on earth. I want to start an archive of geochemical and isotopic data.” I grew to love the language of glaciers. They galloped and groaned, cracked and crept. They were foul-mouthed. They were serene. Twice more my eye fell on the point on a map we were never meant to see as anything other than a point: the shape of a buffalo in profile, with Kaghan Valley his ear, cocked, listening to voices at his back, while facing west. Though I remembered climbing up the buffalo ear with Irfan and his soon-to-be wife (and soon-to-be dead wife), I said none of this to Farhana as we pored over the maps. Ours was to be a different route. Never once during this time did she mention that Wes would be coming with us. Who and where. The elementals of a shared voyage. I thought I knew who; she thought she knew where.

  On the day of a final check at the hospital, we took Matthew’s car. The doctor declared the cut had healed “beautifully” and, to celebrate (a little wistfully on my part), we stayed out late, browsing in bookshops, enjoying a dinner of mussels and wine at the Cliff House. Then we got on the Great Highway, the stretch of coastal road that always transported me to Karachi, the one I thought I’d been heading for when I’d met my attacker. About a kilometer from Balboa Street, we saw something white in the middle of the road. A barn owl, the heart-shaped face luminous. She said an owl was a symbol of so many wonders, evil and wise, and ours was wise. I reconsidered her father’s hint—at least she isn’t married—and found it did not scare me as much, at least not till she began to cry, saying she wanted me to look so peaceful when I died.

  Back in my apartment, she presented me with a gift. A collection of prints by Robert Frank. The pages had been marked—at first I mistook it for secondhand—with phrases underlined, such as, he mapped the void between public and private memory and he chronicled the racism infusing the collective consciousness of his generation. I flipped to a series of shots of his wife and child inside a car, taken from outside. There was an expression on his wife’s face so complex I couldn’t pull myself away. Sometimes I saw resignation, other times, I saw judgment. Sometimes the car was her cage, other times, a comfort, as much as she was cage and comfort to the child. But I barely noticed the child. It was the layers of entrapment in her gaze that arrested me. The quiet confrontation between woman, child, and voyeur.

  Farhana skipped a few pages ahead, and began reading aloud. “He needed to rid himself of the burden of the past to live more immediately in the present.”

  There is nothing wrong with that, I wanted to say.

  She was watching me. “What are you most burdened by?”

  I had made the mistake once before of answering her when she was in this mood. I said, “I only know what isn’t a burden. You, Farhana. You are my joy.”

  “My needs can be a burden, though,” she laughed. “If you deny it your nose will grow.”

  “I understand your needs.”

  She pinched my nose, laughing. “I love you. And a long nose suits you.”

  “Can I photograph you—now? Your legs?”

  “So much for stealing the soul!”

  “Just your legs.”

  When she looked up she wore the same look as on that night she undressed for me, only this time, I was ready.

  I shot a series of black and white prints as she lay on her side, legs in dark sheets, muscles bright as planets. Hers were steep legs built by steepness. Mountain legs. Calves tapering tidily to the ankles. Stocky yet slanting. Her sartorius cut a ribbony dialogue on her flesh; it was the slope of the calla lily again—I sa
w it once more in that moment—only now the braid was a muscle snaking along her taut thigh. They were legs that defined themselves as much from the front as the side. We created our own version of another book she’d found this week, as a joke, a square, slender book that made me think of children’s hands. The Male and Female Figure in Motion. It featured a naked man and woman engaged in various “everyday” activities to show off their anatomies, including walking upstairs with a bucket in each hand, throwing hankies over shoulders, and rolling wheels uphill, activities that were hardly everyday. The shots were wide-angle, the figures so remote they were less in motion than in deep freeze. It could have been a children’s book; the gingerbread man doing laundry, Goldilocks plumping pillows.

  For our version, over our shoulders, instead of hankies, we threw dirty underwear, and walked “uphill” to bed. Unlike the wholesome originals, our shots filled the frame. When Farhana bent, I shot her ass; when I torqued in surprise, she shot my penis. We opened three bottles of wine, drinking two and wasting one. By evening, after making love once and trying again without success, we collapsed, naked and in love.

  Two months of bliss. Months that felt like the sunny side of the cut on my skin. Months that did not feel like a hiatus, or a dressing. We had nothing to seek cover from, or to cover up. We were simply returning to the way we’d been. But can we know the interval from the song? And does it matter which it is, if both must end? And when exactly did it end, for us? With her announcement that she was bringing Wes? Or earlier that same day in December, with her father’s visit? Or an email from Irfan? On the banks of a lake in Kaghan the coming year, Irfan would say of the Karachi bomber and his accomplice that it was hard to know one fight from another. Equally sticky was knowing when it even became a fight.