But up here in the mountains, even this year, time kept defiantly still. Lake Saiful Maluk lay slick and dark, like a cold, sleepy eye. It had kept the eye shut through the wretchedness of the winter, and now, in spring, it was coming awake, lapping the shores beneath the two lovers, the Queen and the Nude. Tonight, Maryam could feel the lovers at rest. They would be watching her children, and watching the tents, but they would have no reason to complain. Except, perhaps, when they noticed that three tents were missing. The first for the family of the boy found in the waterhole last year, the second for the boy who was never found, the third for the family that was crushed by a boulder when the earth moved. The first two families had left for the city, the husbands and remaining sons to work as thekedars, loading and unloading the gunny bags of grain from state farms, the wives and daughters to pull all their silences closer to their now-sedentary hearts. The space for all three tents lay bare.
There had been other deaths, even before the earthquake, and who knows if the goddess had played a hand in these too. A shopkeeper beaten to death by policemen for withholding information. The information he withheld was his identity. There were no papers to prove it, the police claimed. Who was he? To which state did he pledge allegiance? He had no papers to answer for him. And there was a round-up, all the people of the valley—the sedentary, the nomadic, and everything in-between—had to show their identity papers. Maryam had pulled out every scrap they ever owned. Deeds showing permission to graze; taxes paid; materials leased each autumn and one summer, for a temporary home. But there was no proof of her birth. Her husband’s, yes, and he could not remember how and from where the proof had come, it was a gift from God, that little rectangle with his thumbprint and his name. But Maryam had none. The men had reached for the closest thing they could find. Younis. They pulled his ears and slapped his head, again and again, till his neck hung limp and she screamed and beat her wrists against the hard floor (including the wrist that never again healed). When he fell, and they began to beat his back with their boots and their rifles, she saw the boy in the waterhole, and said anything, take anything you want but the children. They took the filly. Loi Tara, with the coat the color of sunset in a yolk. Taken in her third year, still tethered to her shell, still only a mare in name. She had been nuzzling the buffaloes, the rain-kissed leaves, and those who let her go.
Maryam did not dare approach Namasha any more. Only her husband had that privilege now. Only he fed and watered her. Only he administered to her pain. Maryam did not inquire how. But even her husband did not ask the mare to carry a single item—not a lamb or even a copper bowl—on her back on their migration to the highlands. She would have thrown it off anyway, sent it spinning all the way past Naked Mountain to the callused hand of God, Who would have dropped it.
There was a limit to the extent of baggage any creature should hold.
It was soon after they took Loi Tara that she agreed to let Younis go. This time, it was she who left Ghafoor a sign. A red cloth, just as he had done. And he came, with a new look and a new name, still glowing from his success with the foreigners. About that, he had casually declared, “You will never see him again.” She never asked to know more. There was a slight, very slight, unease lurking inside her, born of an image too fleeting to hold, one which she admitted only to herself. It was never clear to her which man she envisioned trapped in the serrated mountains, his back to her, because once, just once, he looked up, and she did not think it was the one she had thought. The man she saw had pointy features and a brooding brow, like the good man, the friend of her people, Irfan. Trapped. It had confused her. A mistake? Hers or his? And she thought of the night the forest inspector’s house had burned, the way the man got away while his wife did not. It made her uneasy—how could there be any likeness? That had been a fire, this a fall, this was easy—and, shaking the image away, she thanked the gods that this particular mutation of it had never returned. So when Ghafoor had assured her, “You will never see him again, no matter how much juniper you smoke,” she did not ask to know more. All she said was that she never smoked; she could see very well without it. He laughed and so did she. He added, “Even your mother, bless her spirit, will never see him again,” and then too she could not help but smile, though it was not altogether respectful, the way he spoke of spirits.
When she asked him to take Younis with him he scratched his thick new beard—black; he had even dyed his hair—wiped her cheek—which had suddenly grown damp—and licked his finger free of her tears the way she had once licked the honey.
Hold on to nothing except your children and your herds, her mother would say. Sometimes, even these possessions were too many.
Maryam quietly crept to the far side of the shore, where the two candles had disappeared. The night was cool and still and she wrapped her shawl close to her chest, and felt the sand give beneath her feet. This was her first night back in the place that had taken Kiran. It was her first touch of the icy water that had pulled the child to itself. She had warned Younis and Jumanah to stay away from the lake, and though she trusted them, she followed nonetheless.
They were heading for her shrine, the one in the cave. The one that could still exist. The one in the lowlands she would have buried before leaving, had the goddess not done this first. She would have had little choice, even after the rumor began to spread that the killer had been found, and the uniforms and the plainclothesmen began to leave, and the relief workers began to arrive. Over them all one voice could still be heard, as Maryam prepared to leave for the mountains. It was the voice of the mullah, claiming victory was coming to every valley in every district, and every city, village, and town. So Maryam had abandoned the cleansing rituals entirely this spring, pleading in her heart that her family not be punished, it was not her fault the rituals could not be kept alive. She had one further evidence of the degree to which her own way was in danger. Just before the earthquake, she had dug a small patch of dirt in her shrine, for the box with Kiran’s belongings. The box was gone. The shrine had been tainted, and apparently the goddess agreed.
The mullah had still been claiming victory when they began their ascent.
They had seen their mother do it and so they did it too, when they thought she was not looking. They climbed the hill farthest from the boats and the tents and kept on going, toward the mountain that could only be seen when imagined. The candles blew out twice and Younis patted his trousers, the way he saw men do. He pulled out the box of matches, lit two together, cupping the double flare in a tent made of his fist, and re-lit the sticks.
Finally, the two children arrived at the cave.
While Jumanah looked inside, Younis talked. He was telling her all he would do, when he left. He would become a trader and because all good traders had beards—”Ghafoor bai says you trade best when scratching your beard”—he scratched his naked chin, and she scratched hers. As a businessman, he would bring her things, he said, things that would make her blush the way their mother did, when Ghafoor bai brought her flowers. And Jumanah lowered her eyes, practicing how to look pleased. It was easy, because she was already on her knees, arranging on the uneven floor a bed of pine needles. She carried a big bundle in her hands—she had been careful not to let the candle burn them—and now she took her time softening the floor while Younis talked.
When the carpet was made, they sat together, holding the candles out toward the drawings on the cave wall. There was the horse, Loi Tara, in different poses. Sometimes alone, her mouth busy, her head turned to return their gaze. Sometimes prancing toward a peach. There were buffaloes too, and at times, Loi Tara went to meet them. She was a little yellow and the buffaloes a little blue, but mostly, their world was black and white. There was also a girl. Kiran. She only appeared once, and you had to come very close to see her, so close that the candle left a mark on the wall. Jumanah was standing now, her bare feet absently sweeping the pine needles to and fro, her toes digging into them while she concentrated, holding the candle just so, abo
ve the girl and to the left, for this way, the light fell on her face and the face was neither blue nor yellow but the color of the wall. Pinkish, like the real Kiran, though she was no longer sure.
Jumanah steps back—perhaps she will see better from a different angle—and notices a pine needle has caught in her toe ring. Bothered by this, she tries to pull it away. A thought comes to her, a thought-image, blurry yet insistent as an earache. It is of toe rings on a row of bloated toes. She remembers that it worried her. How would her mother get the rings off when the toes swelled like teats? Overcome with a terrible fear that her own toes will be squashed inside these circles of bells, she begins to pull them off.
Delighted, her brother pulls her toes, pulling so hard it hurts, and she wishes she could explain to him why she is afraid, but she cannot. He kisses her only when the tears fall, calling each drop a jumanah, a silver pearl. When she has shed several dozen pearls, she grows mesmerized by how quickly each disappears. Soon, she forgets the reason she cried in the first place and the tears stop falling. There is nothing to hold her attention. They go back to talking.
They decide to mimic their mother and dead grandmother. They make their own offerings, chant their own prayers, drink their own brandy, smoke their own leaves. Younis smacks his pockets, finds the matchbox again, and lights a pretend branch because this is better than going outside to get a real one. And they play pretend vision.
“Say, ‘I see evil’,” says Younis.
“I see evil,” says Jumanah.
“Do not despair, my child!” cries Younis.
Jumanah laughs.
“Do this and say ‘I want more sugar!’“ cries Younis.
Jumanah snaps her fingers. “I want more sugar!”
And with this signal the game has changed. They are mimicking the men who have bothered them all year.
Younis dons a belt that is in fact a drawstring, sticks bullet-stones inside, carries a pine cone beard at his chin, swishes as he walks. “Who am I?”
When Jumanah smiles at him with pearly teeth, he leaves the stage to whisper quickly in her ear.
He returns to his place, repeats, “Who am I?”
“Jihadi!”
And now he wears a mustache made of fat leaves, spits, scratches his balls. Narrows his eyes, convincingly lecherous. Before asking who-am-I, he whispers in Jumanah’s ear.
“Who am I?”
“Inspector!”
He fingers his hair to bring it down to his shoulders—though it does not reach, the effect is clear—and wears a silver sheet—perhaps a biscuit wrapper, one of many items left behind from some traveler, who could not know this is a sacred shrine—as a clasp around his drawstring-belt. He holds two pine needles to his chin for a wisp of a beard. He even carries a bottle. “Who am I?”
This time, Jumanah does not need help. “Ghafoor bai!”
And next he is extremely serious. He walks with a limp, carries his chin low, and his brow is furrowed. “Who am I?”
“Baba!”
And now they are back to their first game, mimicking their mother and grandmother again, except, this time, they are very solemn indeed. Younis carries the pretend smoking branch—cleverly pretend re-lit—around the cave, crying, “Leave our house!”
Jumanah follows him, chanting the same. “Leave! Leave!”
“Not like that,” says Younis. There is much concentration and commentary, as the rituals are tidied up, rehearsed, and re-performed.
“Carry it like this,” insists Younis, and Jumanah sticks her arms up straight.
He then proceeds to tickle her.
While Jumanah squeals, Maryam sucks in her breath, reminding herself and the spirits that they are only children. It is not sacrilege if it is innocent, she says under her breath, where she stifles a laugh, and everything else building up inside. What she really wants, more than anything, is to join them. She would gladly give up fear and sorrow if it meant that for these months in the mountains, she could play. Instead, she watches from the crack in the side of the wall, a tiny space she has peered through many times over the years before entering her cave, for it would be unwise to enter with a traveler inside. She watches the two children, who are solemn once again, and pulls another breath, and holds it, waiting for the breakneck craving in her breast to pass. Of course, it does not pass. But she will not disturb them to satisfy the fierceness of her love. She will leave them enrapt in their game, one in which they do not await the end of the world so much as enjoy it.
Soon after she leaves, their work complete, the children fall asleep. Younis on his back, Jumanah pressed against his chest. In the middle of the night, a feather falls on them, white as the wings that flew through the night to secure it.
Acknowledgments
During my work on this novel, the following sources on north Pakistan and northwest China proved especially enlightening: History of Northern Areas of Pakistan: up to 2000 A.D. by Ahmad Hasan Dani (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publcations, 2001), “The Martyrs of Balakot” from Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia by Ayesha Jalal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), and Eurasian Crossroads: a History of Xinjiang by James A. Millward (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). I would like to extend my appreciation to their authors, and would recommend their work to all those whose love of these areas cannot be sated.
About the Author
UZMA ASLAM KHAN is the author of three previous novels, including The Geometry of God, named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2009. Her fiction and non-fiction have been published around the world. An excerpt from Thinner than Skin was featured in Granta magazine’s widely celebrated issue on Pakistan.
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Praise for Uzma Aslam Khan’s
The Geometry of God
“[F]uses the romantic, the spiritual and the political … the characters, the poetry and the philosophical questions she raises are rendered with a power and beauty that make this novel linger in the mind and heart.”
—Kirkus, starred review
“Elegant, sensuous and fiercely intelligent, The Geometry of God takes an argument that is in danger of becoming stale—that of fundamentalism vs. free thinking among Muslims—and animates it in a wonderfully inventive story that pits science against politics and the freedom of women against the insecurities of men.”
—Kamila Shamsie
“Uzma Aslam Khan, a fearless young Pakistani novelist, writes about what lies beneath the surface—ancient fossils embedded in desert hillsides, truths hidden inside the language of everyday life … Khan’s urgent defense of free thought and action—often galvanized by strong-minded, sensuous women—courses through every page of this gorgeously complex book; but what really draws the reader in is the way Mehwish taste-tests the words she hears, as if they were pieces of fruit, and probes the meaning of human connection in a culture of intolerance, but also of stubborn hope.”
—Cathleen Medwick, O magazine
“The Geometry of God is a novel that you don’t just read; you listen to it. It can be irreverent, perverse. It can speak with a whole, fluid beauty. It can be curious, wondrous, noncompliant, like the English in Mehwish’s head … Mehwish is the zauq of the book, the sensory pulse of the novel, who pulls you into a world of her own making. Expect a simultaneous rush that has funniness, absurdity, shock, tenderness … [and] great sex.”
—First City, India
“Such wonderful and persuasive writing. No one writes like her about the body, about the senses, about the physical world. Uzma Aslam Khan is the writer whose new novel I look forward to the most.”
—Nadeem Aslam
“Uzma Aslam Khan has boldly tapped uncharted themes in her latest book, The Geometry of God. She carves a sublime story of new and old with contemporary panache, in which people are real and their fears are prevalent and believable. Khan weaves a complex story whose narrative has a casual energy to it: each voice telling
his or her story. Khan is not afraid to say anything.”
—Dawn, Pakistan
“Throughout this complex narrative, Khan writes with unfailing intelligence and linguistic magic. For Westerners, she unlocks doors and windows onto Pakistan and its Islamic culture.”
—Claire Hopley, The Washington Times
“[V]ivid and rich. The reader is rewarded with new viewpoints, a welcome change from the sensationalized and often macabre portrayals of Pakistani people and the country they fight so hard to preserve.”
—Story Circle Book Reviews
“Uzma Aslam Khan’s novel is an eloquent rebuttal to its own character’s claim about modern Islam’s single-mindedness. Skipping across eras and registers of culture—and showing devotion to pleasures as diverse as Elvis Presley and the Mu’tazilites, Aflatoon (the Arabic name for Plato) and evolutionary biology—it is both an example of and an argument for the essential hybridity of every society.”
—Ploughshares
“Uzma Aslam Khan comes from a younger generation of Pakistani authors born and raised in the disrupted decades of the 1980s and 90s whose fiction looks back to those earlier times … As in her previous work, Aslam Khan deploys several narrators, both male and female … but it is the abstract perspectives offered by Mehwish, a character who sees the world with her inner eye, tastes its truths and tells them ‘slant’, that are the most original and captivating … we become attuned to her quietly anarchic voice … complex … inventive …”
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