“My thoughts exactly.”
I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a plastic bag bulging with chicken sandwiches. They were soggy with butter and I’d lost my appetite for white bread since living in America, but otherwise, I was so hungry that nothing ever tasted better. Despite the company. What did Farhana see in him?
He was on his third sandwich and I on my second when Irfan joined us. In silence, Irfan poured himself a thermos cup of water.
“What did you talk about?” asked Wes.
Irfan pointed to the sky. “The clouds. They say it’s going to rain. They think we should walk back now, or stay the night.”
“Stay where?”
“I brought a tent.”
“Clever,” I murmured, and Wes whistled, impressed.
“You should have too,” Irfan said in our general direction.
“You should have said so,” Wes retorted.
“The weather is changeable.” This time he addressed me. “You know that.”
I’ll admit it, by this time Irfan’s glumness was beginning to irk. First the owl was a bad omen, then the school bus had fallen off the glacier while the poor schoolchildren were learning of princesses and jinns, then that comment about needing Farhana’s permission before we could look for the cave. Did I mention his repeated need to check his cell phone? He’d been pleasant enough in Karachi— not the way he used to be, before Zulekha’s death, but pleasant—so what had happened since? Down in the cabin, he was cordial with the staff; he knew the local khan well, and was friendly with him too. Moments earlier, he’d greeted the nomads with downright warmth. He could have expended some cheer on us. Or at least on me.
“I’m going boating,” said Wes, walking away, daring Irfan to tell him otherwise.
“Will we all fit in one tent?” I asked.
“You and Farhana can take it. Wes and I will sleep outside.”
“In the rain?”
“I can ask them,” he pointed to the nomads.
“Is it easier just to head back?”
“The rain isn’t all we were talking about. The rain isn’t important.”
I waited. Instead of telling me what was important, Irfan again checked his phone for a signal. It was about the twentieth time since the morning.
“Nothing,” he snapped it shut.
“What’s wrong with you?” I couldn’t help myself. “You can’t enjoy yourself so nobody should?”
I regretted it at once. His shoulders stooped even lower; his eyes, already mournful (his wife had called them soulful), closed shut, as if my words had torn a nerve and his only comfort was in darkness. I thought of that night in San Francisco, near the park, when I’d been stabbed. My attacker had spared me. Perhaps he’d never intended otherwise. Irfan’s wife had not been so lucky. It could easily have been the other way.
He opened his eyes. “You do know about the arrest in Peshawar yesterday?”
I shook my head. “How would I? Haven’t read a newspaper for days.”
Now he cast me a look of disdain, as if to say, Who has license to shut himself away from the world anymore? The old Irfan would have understood the desire for that privilege, even if the privilege itself eluded us. The old Irfan would have let this day be filled with princesses and mountain love. But the new Irfan was agitated, and he was my friend. If I couldn’t lighten the grief of losing Zulekha, I had to lighten whatever grief I could. Hadn’t he been there for me? All that time in San Francisco, when I couldn’t pay my rent? Irfan had shared my burden without ever acting burdened.
“Tell me.”
“Didn’t you hear the waiter this morning? The man is being blamed for the hotel bombing in Karachi. There have been protests. One protester was shot dead.”
I paused. “Who was he?” It struck me that I was already referring to the man in past tense.
Irfan did the same. “His accusers say he was disguised as a shepherd, and that he had an accomplice who was last seen—around here.”
“Here?” This was a surprise. So far no one handed over to the CIA had come from these valleys. South of here, yes, in Baitullah Mehsud’s Waziristan on the Afghan border, but not all the way here, in this high corner of the North-West Frontier Province, at the foot of the Himalayas. These valleys belonged to the farmers down in the plains, and the herders around us. “That’s impossible.”
“Of course it is. And people here are nervous. They believe the man was innocent—they call both the prisoner and the accomplice ‘the man,’ they’ve become one and the same—but they’re sure he wasn’t from here.” He paused. “They also say that down in the plains, there are more military convoys moving in, and plainclothes spies.” And now he threw me yet another look of disapproval. “You did notice the convoys?”
I briefly regretted my oblivion to all that had been happening outside our cabin, Farhana’s and mine. Yes, I’d noticed the convoys, though barely. Apparently, while I’d been running along the River Kunhar, chased by a crazed owl, another world existed. Amazingly, in this parallel world, another chase was in progress.
“Why?” I asked. “When the police could say he was last seen anywhere, why say here?”
He shrugged. “An accident of geography. To people who don’t care, all geographies are the same, and anyway, accidents can happen anywhere.”
The young girl in the magenta kameez was walking up the hill, and I could see Farhana beside her, holding her hand. They seemed to be having a kind of conversation; Farhana’s broken Urdu would be no less broken than the girl’s.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea for them to be here,” Irfan nudged his chin at Farhana, and then at Wes, who was getting into a boat. “The tribes are divided about who the man really was. Some say he came down from Kashmir. They say that all the way to Gilgit, people are talking about him, fearing he’s hiding somewhere in their midst. Others say he came from Central Asia, and is connected to the fighting in Waziristan. It’s hard to know one fight from another.”
Both of us were still looking at the lake, at Wes pulling away from the shore.
“Hard times make hard people,” Irfan continued. “These herders would normally never turn away a guest, but they won’t host someone who’ll bring in the ISI, though they fear it may already be too late. Anyone could be a spy. Including a tourist. They want the tourists to leave. It isn’t like them.”
“We’re not tourists.”
“No.” Irfan smiled, and the smile was kind.
“I’m sorry about what I said—earlier.”
He looked away. “If you haven’t brought a tent, at least give me a sandwich.”
Half
