Nowadays I spend my time mainly in housework of one kind or another. Apa is in a bad mood these days, I think because her new sarangi player has been playing indifferently. So I am afraid to ask her to let me do something of interest. You advised me not to read novels, but I have so much time on my hands that I find myself turning to them. But I do read the Quran Sharif every day, and copy out a few excerpts. I will now copy out one or two quotations from the surah I am reading, complete with all the special vowel-marks to show you how my Arabic calligraphy is progressing. But I fear it is not progressing at all. In your absence, it is at best standing still.
Have they not regarded the birds above them
spreading their wings, and closing them?
Naught holds them but the All-Merciful. Surely
He sees everything.
Say: ‘What think you? If in the morning
your water should have vanished into
the earth, then who would bring you
running water?’
The parakeet, who was looking feeble the day before you left, has lately begun to say a few words. Saeeda Apa has taken a fancy to him, I am happy to say.
I hope you will return soon, as I miss seeing you and hearing your criticisms and corrections, and I hope that you are well and in good spirits. I am sending this letter through Bibbo. She will post it; she says this address should be sufficient. I pray that it reaches you.
With many good wishes and renewed respects,
Your student,
Tasneem
Rasheed read this letter slowly, twice, sitting by the side of the lake near the school. He had returned to Debaria to find that Maan had come back a little earlier than expected, and, after enquiries, he had followed him to the lake to make sure he was all right. He appeared to be fine, from the vigorous way he was swimming back from the far end.
Rasheed had been surprised to receive the letter. It had been waiting for him at his father’s house. He was interested to see the excerpts, which he recognized instantly from the chapter of the Quran called The Kingdom. How like Tasneem, he thought, to select the most gentle excerpts from a surah that contained terrible descriptions of hell-fire and perdition.
Her calligraphy had not deteriorated. If anything it had slightly improved. Her own appraisal of it was both modest and just. There was something in the letter – quite apart from the fact that it had been sent to him behind Saeeda Bai’s back – that troubled him, and despite himself he found his thoughts turning to Meher’s mother, who was sitting inside his father’s house, probably fanning the baby. Poor woman, good-hearted and beautiful though she was, she could barely write her own name. And he once again thought: If had had any choice, would it ever have been a woman like her whom I would have chosen as my partner and companion through this life?
10.13
MAAN laughed a little, then coughed. Rasheed looked at him. He sneezed.
‘You should dry your hair,’ said Rasheed. ‘Don’t blame me if you catch a cold. Swimming and then not drying your hair is an absolutely certain way of catching a cold. Summer colds are the worst. Your voice sounds bad too. And you look much darker, more burnt by the sun than when I saw you just a few days ago.’
Maan reflected that his voice must have been affected by the dust of the journey. He hadn’t actually shouted at anyone, not even at the marksman or the munshi. On his return from Baitar, perhaps to relieve his feelings, he had made straight for the lake near the school, and had swum across and back a few times. When he got out, he saw Rasheed sitting on the bank, reading a letter. Next to him was a small box – of sweets, it appeared.
‘It must be all this Urdu you’ve been teaching me,’ Maan said. ‘All those guttural letters, ghaaf and khay and so on – my throat can’t survive them.’
‘You are making excuses,’ said Rasheed. ‘This is an excuse not to study. In fact you haven’t studied more than four hours since you’ve been here.’
‘What are you saying?’ said Maan. ‘All I do from morning to night is repeat the alphabet forwards and backwards and practise writing Urdu letters in the air. Why, even when I was swimming just now I kept imagining letters: when I swam breaststroke, I was writing qaaf, when I swam backstroke I was writing noon –’
‘Do you want to go up there?’ asked Rasheed, with some impatience.
‘What do you mean?’ said Maan.
‘I mean, is there even the slightest truth in what you have been saying?’
‘Not the slightest!’ laughed Maan.
‘So when you go up there, what will you say to God?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Maan. ‘I have topsy-turvy views about all that. Up is down to me, and down is up. In fact, I believe that if there is paradise anywhere, it is here, here on earth. What do you think?’