A God in Every Stone (25 page)
Read A God in Every Stone Online
Authors: Kamila Shamsie
While I’m gone will you go to the orchards a few times to make sure Rahim is looking after everything? I trust him, but he can be lazy if he thinks no one is watching. You don’t have to pretend to understand much of farm life. It will be enough for you to go there and ask him how everything is.
Now to my final and most important point. Once this civil disobedience is launched there is no telling how the English will respond. It could become unpleasant – you have not seen the ways in which they attack those they see as an enemy, but I have and there is nothing in the world more cold and pitiless. So let me order, beg, plead one more time. Tell your Miss Spencer not to come.
I am following your instructions and not trying to convince you of the intentions and motives of the English when it comes to matters of archaeology. My point now is a separate one. This is not a time for an Englishwoman with no sense of today’s world to arrive in India. I know you think you understand the world better than your zealous brother, but I am speaking from my heart. Keep the Englishwoman away.
Your brother
Qayyum
15 JANUARY 1930
To: N GUL
PASSAGE BOOKED PLEASE HIRE TEAM TO START DIG APRIL 5TH
VRS
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16 JANUARY 1930
To: VR SPENCER
CONFIRMED AWAIT YOUR ARRIVAL
NG
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1 APRIL 1930
To: N GUL
SLIPPED AND FELL AT KARACHI DOCKS NOTHING SERIOUS BUT DOCTOR ADVISES AGAINST TRAVEL FOR A FEW WEEKS STOP CAN DIG BE DELAYED
VRS
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1 APRIL 1930
To: VR SPENCER
VERY SORRY TO HEAR UNWELL BUT DELAY IMPOSSIBLE
NG
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2 APRIL 1930
To: N GUL
OH BOTHER START WITHOUT ME WILL JOIN WHEN POSSIBLE
VRS
The soil was dense, the work slow. From sunrise until mid-morning Najeeb and his team of men dug through history. A few feet down there was a face of bone, which made the men touch their cheekbones and noses, as if considering for the first time their own skulls. A coin from the early days of the Raj had either been placed in its eye-socket or had tumbled into it from another era. There were other small discoveries – a coin, a copper seal, a fragment of stone with a lion’s flanks carved into it – mixed in with the endless quantities of white powder and white-stone fragments.
Then came the morning when he heard the ringing sound of a spade hitting something solid. The Buddha’s shin, thick as a man’s torso. Najeeb and the foreman used trowels and hands to work around it, revealing the Holy One’s ankle, his bare feet, the slightly flexed toes. By now it was well past mid-morning and the other men departed, but Najeeb continued on, impervious to aches and thirst and the sun searing the back of his neck. He was beyond imagining results, or asking how long he would continue; there was only this motion of his shoulder and arm and the trowel which had become an extension of himself; only soil displaced all around the base of the statue. The metal of the trowel head encountered tiny pieces of rock, a sound felt in his spine. The earth cooled as he dug into it; its composition changed; a worm wound its body sluggishly through the loam. The worm stood on its tail, fleshily pink, swayed in the changed universe of light and heat in which it found itself, and he thought of the adjoining graveyard, shuddered, plucked it out and flung it as far as his arm could throw. Wiped sweating palms on his trousers, continued. The edge of his trowel-head scraped metal. On his knees now; his heart an animal throwing itself repeatedly against the cage of his ribs.
Viv Spencer stood on the roof of the pink palace and watched the rooftop cupolas slide their shadows across the garden towards the statue of Queen-Empress Victoria flanked by lions. A pith-helmeted British soldier, also carved in stone, stood guard at one corner of the property. At least some of the Indian men in the garden must look at the statues and see an enemy; impossible to know which Indians were for Gandhi and which for the King, Viv had been told by Mary’s cousins with whom she was staying in Karachi. Even your Oxbridge man might go either way. There were Indian women on the lawn as well, elegant in their saris; they mainly clustered together but a few threaded their way into the knots of men where they were greeted with great flourishes of delight, which Viv didn’t know whether to regard as appreciative or as a politely coded reprimand.
The palace wasn’t really a palace at all, just the extravagantly named summer home of a prosperous Indian merchant who had built this mansion near the seafront. Mughal architecture, English statuary, and an underground corridor which led to a Hindu temple (and allowed the pious lady of the house to maintain purdah). Perhaps centuries from now students of history would look at this property and see syncretism, but it merely made Viv wish for the statues and stupas of Gandhara. This period of recovering from her back injury, now blessedly almost at its end, had been interminable, and strange. Such stark political opinions; so difficult to know what to make of any of it.
Viv looked over the mansion walls, across the expanse of sand dunes to the pier. A flamingo picked its way fastidiously through the waters of the Arabian Sea; another tucked a leg beneath its wings and twitched its long neck. In the stories of Karachi surely those pink birds had flown out of the stone of Mohatta Palace, leaving the peacocks in the nine domes of the roof to curse their own feathers whose purpose was beauty, not flight. She brought the back of her hand to her mouth, tasted the sea on her skin. How much narrower life would be without all of India poised at the heart of the word ‘Ours’. But if anyone asked her what she thought of India, of Empire, of Gandhi she remained silent. She had learned, long ago, that the easiest way to avoid causing damage was to watch and say nothing, do nothing. ‘Guarded’ was the word people used to describe her, though she preferred to think of it as careful. It was only amidst histories that were centuries old that she allowed her curiosity to become intervention.
– When the Muslims asked the Prophet, How should we respond to these attacks? he answered, With righteousness and patience. Righteousness and patience. These are Muslim virtues, these are Pashtun virtues.
Qayyum Gul faced the red-shirted volunteers, two dozen or more. On some faces he saw disbelief, contempt. Training, fight, army – these would have been the words that snaked through the farmland adjoining Peshawar, tugging men towards Qayyum’s orchards to join the training camp for the Khudai Khidmatgar. It was unclear if the men hadn’t been told the true nature of the army or if they disbelieved what they heard, but whatever the case almost half of them had arrived with guns and knives. Now they were empty-handed, and blades and barrels encircled the base of an apple tree, gleaming like the anklet of a demon goddess.
– I am not going to tell you that non-violence is compatible with Pashtunwali. I am going to tell you that in the circumstances in which we live non-violence is essential to Pashtunwali. Are you honourable enough to endure . . .
A high-pitched whistle carried through the orchards, severing Qayyum’s sentence. He made a sharp gesture and the men scattered, scrambling up the nearest tree trunks and into crowns thick with leaves. Qayyum walked rapidly towards the other end of the orchard, and was inspecting a leaf, pretending to ensure that the white markings had been deposited by small birds and weren’t the start of a fungal infection, when the rent-collector entered from the adjoining plum orchards, which were also Qayyum’s. He thought of the apple and plum orchards as his even though every month the arrival of the rent-collector reminded him that he was merely a tenant-farmer.
Now that reminder strode towards him, beating a walking stick against his own leg, his mouth glistening with apple juice. The rent wasn’t due for weeks but Qayyum didn’t say anything while the rent-collector continued working on the core of the apple, nibbling at the flesh around the seeds.
– Strange rumours around, Qayyum Gul.
– There always are. Which ones have you heard?
– People say you’re using these orchards to train an army for Ghaffar Khan. Of course I reply, Oh no, he knows the landowner plays polo with the Deputy Commissioner and has a portrait of the King-Emperor in his Peshawar house. He wouldn’t do anything that would force me to come here and tell him these orchards aren’t his to work any longer.
The rent-collector waved his hand expansively around the orchard as he spoke. It was a season of abundance, branches dipping with the weight of their fruit; insects weaved drunkenly between trees, smashing themselves against branches. Qayyum rocked back on his heels, his arms crossed, and nodded to let the rent-collector know he understood.
The rent-collector stayed a few minutes more, talking of weather forecasts and the price of sugar. When he left there was a thud-thud-thud of men-fruit dropping from the trees, and Qayyum knelt on the ground, broke off a piece of turf, and crumbled it between his fingers. If this were taken away from him what would his life be – thinned, bounded in. A cloth canopy above his head instead of the branches of an apple tree. The juice of a pen, pale blue, where there should be liquid gold, inviting to the tongue. The scratch of a nib and the clamour of salesmen; not the calls of birds, the whisper of leaves. Nothing to compare to that moment when the first fruit of the season, pulled gently, detaches itself from a branch, and rests in your palm. He stood up, faced the men.
– That man came to tell me they will take my land away if I continue to stand here and speak to you. They think they can defeat us with threats. But I will endure what losses I must endure for the sake of freedom. And you? Are you honourable enough to endure, my brothers? For the sake of freedom are you men enough to put down your guns and endure?
– Yes, came the answer, sweeter than apple, more eloquent than ink. Yes!
Najeeb rested a hand on the silver band, its embossed surface. The figures were alternate – one fruit, one leaf, one fruit, one leaf, just as on the Hecatomnid coins. Even uncleaned the delicacy was unexpected, thrilling. In places where the tarnishing wasn’t so extreme he saw veins in the leaves, striations along the fruit. There would have been colour when Darius placed it on Scylax’ head – fig-purple and leaf-green. He spun it. The figs danced, the leaves twirled, Scylax kneeled before Darius and felt its weight settle on him, he dipped it in the Indus with an eye out for crocodiles, placed it on the brow of Heraclides, bloodied from his ambush of the Persians. Najeeb walked his fingertips along the raised surface; a message in Braille, a greeting across the centuries:
Hello, Najeeb!
Hello, Scylax!
Qayyum had never known such clarity of purpose as here, on the front line, facing the soldiers with bayonets at the ready.
He had anticipated none of this when he’d woken to a hammering on his door just after dawn, and one of his neighbours from the Congress Party told him there had been arrests during the night ahead of the proposed anti-English protest strikes scheduled for the day, and people were gathering at the Congress headquarters to decide what to do next. He dressed quickly, woke up Najeeb to say he was leaving, cautioning him to look out for trouble during the day. Najeeb, barely awake, flicked his fingers in the direction of his brother’s glass eye as if it were a marble.
– Goodbye, pacifist girl.
– Goodbye, Englishman’s dog.
– Better an Englishman’s dog than an Englishman’s Indian.
But Qayyum’s thoughts were already elsewhere, and the familiar joke of his own devising echoed strangely. He wondered if there was any point warning Najeeb, once more, about the Englishwoman who was due to arrive by train that day, but the younger man had already returned to sleep, and anyway what could Qayyum say at this point.
He was en route to the Congress offices when he became caught up in the procession. Two leaders of the Congress Party, garlanded with roses, were striding towards the Street of Storytellers, with their party members and allies following behind, calling out the slogan of freedom:
Inqilaab Zindabad
. What’s going on, Qayyum asked a man in the khaddar uniform of the Congress Party, falling into step beside him. The man looked at Qayyum’s red shirt and belt, nodded as you would to a soldier of another battalion, and said the English had come to the Congress headquarters to arrest the men a little while earlier, but someone – and here the man raised his hands in exaggerated fashion as if to say he had no idea who would do such a thing – punctured the wheels of the lorry brought to transport their leaders to prison. Shocking, Qayyum laughed, shocking vandalism! And the Congressman, trying to look grave, nodded, and said so then the leaders told the police they would present themselves for arrest at the police-thana at Kabuli Gate – and here they all were, on their way, showing the English that you can arrest two men or ten but hundreds more will follow behind and demand liberty.