Burnt Shadows

by Kamila Shamsie

  ‘So, Sajjad,’ she said casually. ‘How are your marital plans shaping up? James told me you said you’ll need to take a few days off for your wedding before the end of the year.’

  There was the briefest moment in which there was only anticipation of what might follow, and then Hiroko turned sharply on her heels and started to walk back towards the car.

  ‘What . . .?’ James said, surprised by the resoluteness with which she was striding away.

  ‘The heat. It’s not good for her.’ Elizabeth’s childhood self felt the ghosts of those attached to the world by remorse press their hot mouths against her skin in initiation. ‘We should leave.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ James looked regretfully towards the covered hallway. ‘Sajjad, come along.’

  ‘I’ll find my own way home, thank you, Mr Burton.’

  ‘Come on, James!’

  James looked uncertainly at Sajjad, who waved him towards the car.

  ‘I will walk among the ruins and compose great poems about my ancestors, Mr Burton. Please don’t worry about me.’

  Sajjad watched as the Bentley drove off, unsettling both pigeons and dust, and only when it was out of view did he lean back against the great minaret and look up to the whitening sky for some explanation of why his heart was racing so madly.

  7

  Civil Lines was aflame with gulmohar trees in bloom as Sajjad pedalled to work the next morning, each fiery flower-cluster reminding him of Hiroko stalking away across a barren tract of land with collapsing monuments strewn around, a smear of red on the back of her dress as though her heart had bled all the way through.

  For an instant he had thought there could be only one explanation for her response to news of his wedding – but he quickly saw the vanity, the absurdity, of that thought. Of course she was angry with him; why wouldn’t she be? She had spoken to him of the death of Konrad Weiss, and what had he told her of his own life in return? Nothing but superficialities. And so it fell to Elizabeth Burton casually to announce news that one friend had no reason to keep from another.

  A woman friend. Sajjad shook his head in amazement to think such a thing had entered his life. A Japanese woman friend. The bicycle wheels whirred and the seat creaked as he pedalled faster, then slower, much slower, then faster again. Could he invite her to his wedding? What would his wife – whoever she might turn out to be – say to know there was a woman outside the family who he counted among his friends; a woman who wore trousers and low-cut necklines, and smoked cigarettes, and would never dream of allowing anyone else to choose her husband, and who was beautiful. No, perhaps it was better after all not to consider inviting her to his wedding.

  And yet he could see her there. Could see her standing just a little apart from the women of his family, her eyes teasingly on him in that moment before he looked down into the mirror which would show him, for the first time, the face of the woman sitting beside him who he had just married.

  No, no, she could not, must not, come to his wedding.

  When he dismounted in the Burton driveway Lala Buksh was waiting for him. Sajjad nodded to him as he leaned his cycle against the wall. In all the years he’d been coming here he and Lala Buksh had barely spoken to each other beyond Sajjad conveying some request of James’s to his bearer or wishing him a perfunctory Eid Mubarak. But in the last few weeks, as riots continued and the creation of a new state seemed increasingly likely, the two men had started to drink a cup of tea together in the morning while discussing what news the previous day had brought with it of death and politics and freedom.

  Lala Buksh handed Sajjad a steaming cup, and they walked towards the kitchen entrance, where Sajjad sat on the step leading inside while Lala Buksh squatted on the ground as he would never do in the presence of the English.

  ‘I am going,’ Lala Buksh said bluntly. Sajjad looked at him quizzically, distracted by the thought that he would see Hiroko in a few minutes and had no idea of what he would say to her. ‘To this country for Muslims. I will go.’

  Sajjad leaned his head back against the screen door.

  ‘The English are here for another year. Why don’t you wait to see what the situation is in ’48? Already things are much calmer than last month.’

  Lala Buksh looked at his hands as they curled into fists, watching them as a scientist might watch some awful and brilliant weapon of his own creation begin to take form.

  ‘By ’48, I don’t know what I’ll have become.’

  Unlike Sajjad, Lala Buksh lived in a neighbourhood that wasn’t predominantly Muslim. He was there only on Fridays, when he had a day off from working for the Burtons, but he confessed to Sajjad that on those Fridays – when his family poured out a week’s worth of stories from the Punjab, of Muslim men slaughtered, Muslim shops set on fire, Muslim women abducted – he had to force himself to stay at home because if he went out and saw a single Hindu his eyes would reveal what was in his heart, and it would get him killed. Or else, a Hindu’s eyes would reveal what was in his heart, and then . . .

  Sajjad sipped his tea, not knowing how to respond to that. For years he’d watched Lala Buksh joke with the Burtons’ cook, Vijay, and flirt with Henry’s ayah, Rani, and sometimes he’d walk into the kitchen to find the three of them grumbling amiably about the Burtons. Now the only break Lala Buksh took from his duties was this one, with Sajjad. In talking to Lala Buksh, Sajjad realised that atrocities committed on Muslims touched him far more deeply than atrocities committed by Muslims – he knew this to be as wrong as it was true.

  As Sajjad finished his tea in one large gulp and stood up, Lala Buksh said, ‘You didn’t come back with them from Qutb Minar yesterday.’ Sajjad made a non-committal gesture. ‘She was very upset about something.’ He picked up Sajjad’s cup and went into the kitchen.

  Hiroko, on the verandah, heard the squeal of the kitchen’s screen door and knew it meant Sajjad was about to walk around to the back garden. She wasn’t sure she could look at him without revealing her envy.

  She had tried so hard the previous night to bring Konrad’s face to mind but he felt so far away. He felt like another life. In this life there was simply desire for more – more than a memory of his fingers tracing the veins of her wrist, more than a memory of his tongue surprising hers. But though Konrad grew more distant the harder she tried to summon him that thing that had started to happen in her body when she slipped on her mother’s silk kimono had reawoken. Lying in the bath last night, she had slid her hand along her naked body (except it wasn’t her hand, it wasn’t her body – it was Sajjad’s hand and his wife’s body – even in fantasy she could not allow herself to believe her body could be the location of such caresses from any man) and as the hand moved lower her body had jerked, slamming her hip against the porcelain, and terrified her into pulling out the bath-plug and getting into bed, where she clenched her hands into fists and kept them resolutely away from the rest of her.

  ‘Good morning,’ Sajjad said, walking towards the verandah. ‘I hope you’re feeling better today.’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ She looked at him and wondered how it must feel to watch Sajjad Ali Ashraf approach you and know that his body was yours to touch. The look she gave him was lightly accusing. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your fiancée.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sajjad scrunched up his face. ‘No, no. Nothing’s settled yet. My mother and sisters-in-law have someone in mind, but I don’t even know her name. It could all be nothing.’ He placed his hand on the table, touching the spine of the book on which her fingers were resting.

  She nodded, tried to ignore the strange feeling of hopefulness mingled with despair.

  ‘You must be considered very eligible. Though . . . can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course. Anything.’

  ‘You told me once that you’re going to be a lawyer. But you spend your days playing chess with James Burton. I know you want more from the world.’

  In all this time she
had been the first person ever to say this to him.

  ‘Without James Burton, I’d be working with my family, hating it. So as long as he wants me to play chess, I will. But he’s said, he’s promised, there will always be a place in his law firm for me. He said just the other day, when the British leave there’ll be so many vacancies. I can wait. He lets me take law books from his libraries and read them at home. I’m not wasting my time. I’m learning. I’m getting ready.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to imply you were wasting your time. I think you’d make a wonderful lawyer.’ She could see this was a compliment that truly mattered to him, though she couldn’t help wondering whether it was really possible to be a lawyer without some kind of professional qualification.

  ‘Can I ask you something now? Does it seem strange to you? That I’ll marry someone I’ve never met? I know the Burtons think it very . . . backward.’

  ‘I’m not the Burtons, Sajjad. It seems to me that I could find more in your world which resembles Japanese traditions than I can in this world of the English.’ She said it almost accusingly, before smiling in acknowledgement of how little interest she had in tradition. ‘Arranged marriages used to be quite common in Japan. I’ve always thought they must require more courage than I possess.’

  Sajjad didn’t feel very courageous.

  ‘It’s how things happen.’ He traced the lettering on the book’s spine and avoided looking at her. ‘When you marry it’ll be the English way?’

  ‘I’ll never marry.’

  Sajjad flinched at his own insensitivity.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know Mr Konrad . . . I’m sorry. This is none of my business.’

  ‘I’ll never marry,’ she repeated. ‘But it isn’t because of Konrad.’

  Sajjad nodded. And then shook his head.

  ‘Then why?’

  Hiroko did not stop to think if she wanted confirmation or denial from him of the truth she’d recognised in a Tokyo hospital when she heard the hardened doctor’s horrified gasp as he looked at her lying on her stomach. Instead, she stood up and turned her back to him.

  ‘Because of this.’ She started to undo the buttons at the back of her blouse, exposing her bare flesh.

  With a quick cry of shock, Sajjad turned his face away.

  ‘Please. What are you doing?’

  Hiroko tugged at the fabric that covered her back, parting the blouse as though it were stage curtains.

  ‘This is just one more thing the bomb took away from me. Look at me.’

  ‘No. Button your shirt.’

  ‘Sajjad.’

  The flatness of her voice made him turn towards her. Whatever he had been about to say remained for ever unsaid. She had stepped out of the shadow of the roof’s overhang and into the harsh sunlight so there could be no mistaking the three charcoal-coloured bird-shaped burns on her back, the first below her shoulder blade, the second halfway down her spine, intersected by her bra, the third just above her waist.

  She could not see the tears that collected in Sajjad’s eyes as he looked at her charred and puckered skin, and so it was left to her to interpret his silence.

  ‘You can read this diagonal script, can’t you? Any man could. It says, “Stay away. This isn’t what you want.” ’

  Her pain shattered every defence he’d unknowingly constructed since that moment he’d looked at the mole beneath her eye and wanted to touch it. In a few quick steps he was next to her, his hands touching the space between the two lower burns, then pulling away as she shuddered.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ he whispered.

  ‘No.’ Her voice was even quieter than his.

  He touched the grotesque darkness below her shoulder blade – tentatively, fearfully – as though it were a relic of hell, clamping his teeth together against the outrage of the lumps his fingers encountered. She couldn’t feel his hand, but the warmth of his breath on her neck was enough to set off another shudder, one that rippled all the way inside her.

  He closed his eyes and moved his hand to where the skin felt as skin should. This time when her body shook in a way that he knew was devoid of fear his own body responded; there was no space in this moment of intimacy for him to feel any mortification. He ran the back of his hand along her shoulders, down the curves of her to her waist, reminding her there was this, too, these parts of her also.

  Seconds passed as she allowed herself the luxury of his touch, knowing this memory would join Konrad’s kisses to form the entirety of her experience of physical intimacy.

  ‘You don’t have to be so kind,’ she said at length, her hands fisting in the material on to which they still held. ‘I know how ugly they are.’

  ‘Ugly? No.’ If his voice hadn’t been so gentle she might have believed him. ‘Birdback,’ he said, resting his palm against the middle burn, his other hand swiftly wiping away his tears. ‘Don’t you know everything about you is beautiful?’

  She swung to face him, anger bringing unfamiliarity to her face, forcing him to recognise how he had etched each of her everyday expressions into his mind to keep him company in the hours he was away from her.

  ‘The bomb did nothing beautiful.’ Her fist thumped against his chest as she spoke. ‘Do you understand me? It did nothing beautiful.’

  Elizabeth Burton, who had been woken at dawn by self-loathing, heard the shouts as she was about to sit down at her writing desk. Racing forward, she threw open the shutters to the verandah just in time to see Hiroko in a state of partial undress, yelling and pummelling Sajjad, whose trousers did nothing to hide his erection.

  8

  There was nowhere in the world more beautiful than Mus­ soorie, Elizabeth Burton thought, standing at the top of her garden slope, watching either mist or cloud cling to the white peaks of the Himalayas in the distance while the scent of pine forests drifted down from the top of the hill on which the Burton cottage nestled. What a pity beauty could be so meaningless.

  Although, she conceded, walking towards the old oak tree, however bad things were here they would have been worse in Delhi with the stifling June heat – even worse than usual this year, she’d read in the paper this morning. And other than that heat, well, yes, other than that heat there was that matter of Sajjad. As much as she shared James’s dismay about the just-announced British decision to pull out of India by mid-August instead of the following year – a decision which effectively put an end to any chance of a semblance of order to Partition – there was a part of her which hoped that by some miracle Sajjad would choose Pakistan and be gone from all their lives by the time they returned to Delhi in October. Even though they’d only be there long enough to pack up and leave India there was still so much that could happen – oh, why hide from the truth: the thought of seeing Sajjad again embarrassed her.

  It still made her queasy to recall that morning in April when she’d stumbled on to that awful scene between Hiroko and Sajjad. She’d leapt to the worst possible conclusion – she would be the first to acknowledge it – and yelled such horrible things at Sajjad as she ordered him out of her house. She still had no memory of how Hiroko had reacted, had only been slightly aware at the time that the girl was fumbling to button her blouse as Sajjad almost tripped over his feet in leaving.

  Once he was gone, Elizabeth had tried to speak gently to Hiroko, but the younger woman had burst into tears and locked herself in her bathroom, from where she refused to respond to Elizabeth’s requests – which soon became demands – that she open the door.

  Elizabeth had finally gone upstairs to wake James, who had miraculously slept through all the shouting.

  ‘If he’s tried to do what I think you’re not going to stop me from sending the police after him,’ she’d said, shaking James awake. Her husband looked at her with a confusion that would have been comical under most circumstances. ‘Sajjad. Your blue-eyed boy. I just found him downstairs with Hiroko.’

  ‘The verandah’s getting too hot for their lessons,’ James said sleepily, pulling himself into a seated position. �
�I should tell them to use my study.’

  ‘She was practically naked, fighting to keep him off her. Stop blinking at me, James. He was quite visibly aroused. Do you want me to draw you a diagram?’

  With a curse she’d never heard from him before, James was on his feet, reaching for his dressing gown and bellowing, ‘Sajjad!’

  ‘He’s gone. I threw him out.’

  ‘I’ll chase him down in the car.’ He slammed the flat of his hand against the door to push it open, the sound of flesh smacking wood violent and painful. Elizabeth’s hands lifted in self-defence to shield her face.

  Sajjad. He had practically lived in this house. And it had never once crossed her mind that he could be any kind of threat, not in that way. Before the thought was done she knew she’d made some terrible mistake.

  ‘James!’ she called out.

  At the same moment James re-entered the room.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Elizabeth, how is it possible?’

  She went over and took his hand, reminded of the moment when they’d been told that Henry had thrown a rock at a native girl and blinded her in one eye. It turned out later to have been another Henry – Henry Williams, a thuggish child even at five – and James and Elizabeth both believed they had passed some parenting test when they’d refused to accept their son was responsible.

  Hand in hand they walked downstairs, where Hiroko was exiting her room to find them.