A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar

by Suzanne Joinson

  ‘Oh my God,’ Frieda said, ‘we might get forced into a singing workshop. Or worse, a drumming circle.’

  He laughed and then looked at her. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Of course, why?’

  ‘Well, your mother, you said . . . you have not seen her for a long time.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll recognise her?’

  Without hesitation he said, ‘Of course. No question.’ He was sensitive, this stranger from Yemen.

  Helping and Teaching: If anything breaks, it is not necessarily your fault; if anything is insecure, blame no one for not attending to something you should yourself have attended to.

  27. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes

  August 9th

  A telegram arrived this morning, delivered by a Hindustani man on horseback:

  FROM Mr Steyning – Received your message. Cannot reach you due to riots flaring up. You & E must leave immediately without Millicent. Get to Kucha where I will meet you and bring you to Urumtsi. Millicent expunged from the Mission.

  I gave the Hindustani postal man some tea and bread and it wasn’t until he left in a dust-whirl that I sat down on the floor with shaking hands. Millicent has been expunged, and I have no idea where she is. Despite my fury at her behaviour I feel her absence terribly and am now torn as to what to do. I had been thinking about going into the city to find her, but now – I don’t know. And Kucha? I do not even know where Kucha is.

  I am not sure if Father Don Carlo will help us, but there is no one else. I must visit him.

  I have been gathering supplies from the garden but we no longer have milk, cream, butter, or meat and this afternoon I tried to talk to Elizabeth. The light sliced through numerous tears in one of the papered windows.

  ‘Lizzie,’ I said, ‘I believe we are in danger.’

  ‘Job 11:19. Also thou shalt lie down, and none shall make thee afraid; yea, many shall make suit unto thee.’ She looked away once she had spoken. I thought about this for a moment.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There is nothing to fear, Eva.’ Her thin neck stretched.

  ‘But, Lizzie –’

  She was holding one of Father Don Carlo’s calligraphy sheets.

  ‘I shall translate for you: “Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh” –’

  ‘Lizzie, darling,’ I interrupted, ‘do you think you could travel?’ She turned, slowly, in the kang, her eyes hollowed and pitiful. Her hand shook as it moved towards her lip. She smiled and said, ‘Of course.’

  ‘Lizzie, darling.’ I tried not to cry.

  ‘As the crow flies.’ She pointed at the map on the wall. ‘I could reach the other side of the map if I followed the crows.’

  ‘Yes, Lizzie.’

  Holding Ai-Lien against me, I climbed up on to Lizzie’s kang and lay down at her side. She smelled of something, a sharp, bitter smell and I must have fallen asleep because I woke with a tingling in my arm where Ai-Lien’s full weight was resting on it, and my head was full of a dream of my mother who was reprimanding me: it is your duty, Eva, to look after your sister. She is frail, unlike you; she is the one we all love. Unlike you.

  August 10th

  One’s instinct is to pack for a longer journey. Sorting the books, I paused to read Sir Burton’s section about the courtyard garden of the mosques being second rate, tawdrily decorated with bright-green tiles and flowered carpets and the only admirable features being the stained glass. Wait, I shall write it out: The scene must be viewed with Moslem bias, and until a man is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the East, the last place the Rauzah will remind him of, is that which the architect primarily intended it to resemble – a garden.

  It seems pertinent, as I think about this courtyard. Each day it feels less of a garden, more like a prison. Packing, but what on earth sort of luggage must I organise? Then there is my bicycle, old lady, such as she is, dust and mud-covered all the way up to the saddle. All of this is a diversion of course, because I do not know what to do about Lizzie. She acts like a spinster shut up and allowed out only once a year; she is paler and stiller. She says she cannot stand up yet she barely eats. Do I leave her and go to the bazaar to find a carter, return, and then take her to the priest’s with me? I cannot send a message any more as the boys have all gone. Oh – why did Lolo leave? I wonder often, was it Lolo who showed Millicent where I keep this journal?

  After an examination of the maps I see that Kucha is a long stretch into the Tarim Basin – I do not know if it is the right thing to do to leave Millicent with the natives. I am all upturned, now; the thing to keep in mind is that I am a perfectly able person. I will not be extinguished in this desert dust. Still, oh dear, how to carry Lizzie?

  August 11th

  At any rate – then, none of that matters.

  I brought her a cup of chrysanthemum tea, but when I walked up to her kang there was something wrong. Her hand was unreal in the way it rested and I knew instantly that she was dead. I moved the angel threads of white hair from her face and saw that it looked strange. The bottom half of her face, her chin, mouth and jaw, twisted crookedly as if disconnected from the top, from her nose and eyes. I put my hand on the edge of her chin, pushing slightly, trying to restore her symmetry, but as soon as I released my hand, her chin fell back.

  I sat for a moment next to her bed with Ai-Lien asleep against my shoulder, feeling the thud-thud of her heart. Not thinking, letting white spaces fill my mind; keeping still, invisible, as if nothing had happened, nor ever could. This worked for a moment, possibly less than a moment, whatever length of time that might be – then I remembered Mr Mah’s warning that Pavilion House has a curse and all who live there have a crooked face and I thought of Lizzie as a crow at school, standing on the wall, arms out to make wings.

  Not for the first time, I wished Millicent were here.

  In the garden the heat was a noxious bully, fully intending to brutalise. I went to Lizzie’s outbuilding, the dusty hovel where she spent much of her time. The entrance was covered by a large blanket. Inside, several of her photographic prints were hanging from a pole that she had fixed from one side of the room to the other. I touched the prints. There was Lizzie lying in grass, a blurred light distorting her so that she was blended into the leaves. A hand with a large ruby ring on an orchid stem. A poplar branch, bleached cleverly into a skeletal arm. Each photograph was a love-letter. On the floor in the corner was a nest of scraps of paper, notes she had written to herself, mostly illegible. I picked them up, straightened them in my palm and tried to read them. Only one was decipherable, written in black ink, her own sweet calligraphy:

  – oh to free the soul . . . ######### pigeon-free. – that face that is only for me to read and know, beloved: the other side of your carefully constructed life, the other side of the map: an opposite – yes, I love you that far. That long.

  My sister in love, and I think this: Millicent, you are not worth this love, a love that far.

  There are more lizards than ever before, slitting through the crevices like a disease. Do not move and it is as if nothing has changed: the baby breathing, her eyes bright-wet, her perfect foot in my hand like a toy and my sister might not be gone. This trickery held up through the night and this ink kept it at bay, but now morning light comes, the spells shudder to an end. With the desert light grief comes up, wrecking me like a wolf.

  I shall not think of Mother with her red hair coiled and face full of shame, the shame reflected in the flames burning near her in the grate. I didn’t protect her, either of them. I was remiss, busy giving my love to a changeling. I left Lizzie in the storms with the whims and winds all around her head.

  28. Sussex, Present Day

  The Prima Foundation

  There was a timetable, or schedule, on the wall of the prefab room, outlining a series of activities in pastel-coloured squares: Shakti Chalana Mudra, Mula Bandha, Yoga Mudra. Tayeb accepted water in a green mug from a star
tlingly attractive young woman with the bright blue eyes of a doll. He stretched his leg and there was an audible crack, a shock inside his calf muscle and the blonde woman looked down at his leg, as did he. He stood up and stamped his foot on the floor, hopping up and down.

  ‘Cramp,’ he said. The doll-eyed angel said nothing as he continued stamping. The muscles grew taut inside his calf and correspondingly the dry skin on his back sang out in an itch as if calling ‘remember me’. After a minute the pain let up, leaving a ghost of itself underneath his skin and he sat down on the plastic chair again, rubbing his leg and not looking at the woman, embarrassed.

  Frieda came back from the toilet and as she walked towards Tayeb she wiped wet hands on her jeans. A very English-woman thing to do, he thought, wiping wet hands outside the toilet. She sat next to Tayeb on an identical red plastic chair. He did not know her very well, this serious, glasses-wearing dark-haired girl, but he could tell she was nervous. From what she had told him, she had not seen her mother since she was small. She was picking at the skin around her nails. The angel offered water to Frieda and Tayeb had an alarming rush of desire for her, this doll-white, tiny woman who said nothing, just smiled. She reminded him of posters of Western women his brothers had on their walls.

  ‘We had prefabs like this at my school,’ Frieda said, looking around the room, then up at the ceiling. Tayeb turned to look at Frieda, surprised at his guilt for looking at the other woman. He would like to – he looked out of the small, square window at an awkward, leaning tree – soothe Frieda, if it were possible. He wanted to take a finger and tell her to stop ripping the skin off it. Unlike his scales and cracks, her skin was simple, stretched and sweet and she should leave it alone. Tayeb had a belief about Western women that he had never fully admitted. He was convinced that they required, and, more importantly, wanted someone to tell them what to do; someone (a man) to tell them to stop talking and worrying. It was the one thought he had that his father would approve of.

  The pretty woman returned, still saying nothing, not smiling, but this time she pulled out a plastic chair for herself and sat down, looking at them expectantly. Frieda began to talk: I am here to see my mother. She isn’t expecting me. There was silence and then the girl opened her bag, pulled out a notebook and a pen and wrote something in bubble-neat schoolgirl handwriting. When she had finished writing she pushed the notebook over towards Frieda.

  Welcome to the Prima Foundation Mission. What can we do for you?

  ‘Oh, OK,’ Frieda said. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.’ There was a protracted discussion – verbally by Frieda, written by the girl – to determine who, exactly, her mother was. There were different names it seemed; she was once called Ananda, or Grace and after some discussion they worked out that she was now simply called Amrita.

  If you will just excuse me for a moment I will go and find someone to alert them that you are here to see your mother. I won’t be long.

  She smiled and left the room. Frieda swung around and looked at Tayeb.

  ‘Did you realise she was deaf?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She must have been lip-reading.’

  Tayeb sipped the slightly warm water. On the opposite wall was a poster of a large skull, with the detail of the brain and the interior of the head fully illustrated. A bright yellow line penetrated the top of the brain, coursed the back of the mouth and continued down the throat. Tayeb read the script below it:

  This gold line is the symbol for the nadi as it travels through the centre of the tongue. Kechari Mudra is only achieved by the practice of talavya kriya.

  ‘Is it some kind of school do you think?’ Frieda said.

  ‘Don’t know.’ He wanted a cigarette but it didn’t look like a room you could smoke in and he was impatient with himself: what am I doing here? He thought of Nidal and his room with the aeroplanes on the wall. Tayeb’s right eye began to twitch in its socket. He would never see Nidal again. The door opened and a tall, thin, bald man walked in, followed by the blonde woman. The man had a skeletal head, and the veins in his temples were visible. He walked towards Frieda, and shook her hand.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, smiling. ‘So, you are Amrita’s daughter?’

  ‘That’s right.’ The handshaking continued for a time.

  ‘My name is Robert Barker. Welcome.’ A particularly large vein on his temple stood out now, red–blue, like a tattoo.

  ‘So, Frieda?’ He pulled out a plastic chair opposite them, and sat down, nodding at Tayeb, although he did not offer him his hand. ‘You have decided to visit your mother?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right –’

  ‘And am I correct in thinking that you have had no contact with her for a long time?’

  Frieda nodded, then let out a strange, small noise. A half-cough. Brave, this time, Tayeb took hold of her hand and squeezed it. He was relieved that she did not move it from his grip.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ Tayeb said, ‘are you the . . .’ he paused, ‘the leader here?’

  Robert Barker looked at Tayeb with an expression of monumental boredom.

  ‘Leader – huh – no, no, there is no leader here. We are run as a more . . . egalitarian and democratic enterprise.’ He turned and faced Frieda again and Tayeb recognised a dismissal. Robert Barker spoke:

  ‘We would love to show you around our Mission and show you the original Victorian kitchen garden. We are trying to find your mother now. She’ll need some time to prepare herself before seeing you. Normally, we ask for advance warning, but . . .’

  Robert Barker spoke quickly and obviously saw no need for polite small talk. He stood up and turned to the doll-like girl, who was near the door, standing like a guardian angel.

  ‘Can you give them a tour of the residential area, the garden and the farm, and I will go and talk to Amrita?’

  The girl nodded and Robert Barker held the door open for them to leave the prefab.

  Thin pavements made of slate tiles wound through a complex of identical prefab trailer-style rooms. They were painted bright colours and signs with names hung on the doors, Bharathi, Gayathri, Hamsini and Kadambari. Another young and beautiful woman stepped out of a doorway just in front of Tayeb. This one had long light brown hair, and an alarming nose piercing – a sharp, aggressive metal point that stuck out from her nostril like a blade.

  ‘Hello,’ Tayeb said. She nodded, said nothing, but stared at him directly, then abruptly turned away as if she had assessed enough. Behind the residential area was a wooded section where scrambled clumps of long-established blackberry and raspberry bushes were embedded into clusters of nettles and dock leaves. In a clearing a range of benches made from chopped trees and logs were arranged in rows creating a sort of theatre space. The girl pulled out her notebook and wrote:

  This is where we have readings, discussions, music sometimes.

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  Working mostly. We have a lot of projects on the go. Some agricultural, some educational. The friend-children are all in the school quarters. A lot of our friends are involved in scholarly work, meditation, mystical questioning. It’s hard work. We have many highly intelligent and knowledgeable friends here.

  The owl was in the car and suddenly Tayeb worried for it. He thought about going to get it, but did not want to leave Frieda, and anyway, what would he do with it? He trudged behind them for another half an hour of pointing and being shown rows of cabbages and beans climbing up bamboo poles. It was obviously a stalling technique, but on they trudged. Finally, they were taken back to the original prefab room where Robert Barker was waiting for them, sitting on a plastic chair with an array of unappetising biscuits on a yellow plate in front of him.

  ‘Would you wait here please for your mother? She has agreed to see you.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  Tayeb and Frieda were alone in the room. Tayeb had a very strong compulsion to draw. It happened to him sometimes. Draw. Or spray, or paint, or disfigure – basically, to leave his m
ark – and this place made him irreverent. He took his fountain pen and his small notebook out of his bag and began to draw what he saw immediately in front of him. A line of tins on the windowsill all containing pencils. Beyond them, trees. The motion of making soft marks and lines calmed him. He wanted to scratch his wrists and his back, but he didn’t. He would not.

  Difficulties to Overcome: No matter what happens, keep it going, the faster the better, until a taste is acquired for the pastime; until the going-forward-forever idea seems to have taken possession of you.

  29. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes

  August 12th

  Where to start?

  With the pink splinters of dawn in the sky as I pushed my bicycle through the Pavilion House gates for the final time? No. Before that, even: I was exhausted after a night of considering what to do with Lizzie. My first thought was to bring her into the sun and let the desert eat her, the insects and the heat. I thought it would be quickest, preferable to festering inside that room. But as I began to move her I remembered the monastery we had visited on the journey here, on the outskirts of Osh’s city walls, where the robed monks fed vultures because dealing with human carrion was part of their duties. The thought of beaks ripping Lizzie was –

  Well. In the end I covered her with scarves, and sprinkled jasmine and rose petals from the garden on to her hair. For want of any suitable ritual, I dabbed water on her forehead and kissed her. Lost gosling.

  Then, movement became my whole intention. I made sure my precious, stolen baby was well fed with Allenbury mix and packed her into a cot, fashioned for her in the basket. I have tied sticks on to the basket and a scarf, devising a method of keeping her shaded from the sun. Precariously balanced and tied behind the seat of the bicycle was the crib-trunk stuffed with the following: the remains of the dried Allenbury food, the Missionary Maps and the Survey Maps; Lizzie’s Leica and several of her films with the prints folded into Millicent’s Bible; this journal and my books, they have travelled such a distance with me; Mrs Ward’s bicycling guide, Burton, Shaw and the pamphlet of Mr Greeves’ translated folk stories. There was just room for some clothes and blankets for Ai-Lien. Once these items were strapped into the trunk, I attached, using the rope that used to tether Rebekah, the mimeograph machine. It was heavy, but compacted well into its portable box and could be useful to sell, or use as a bribe.