Night of the Golden Butterfly (31 page)

They’d had no idea of where he came from or they would have written us. They looked in his case and found only a Chinese passport with the name he uses today. No address book, no other identifying papers of any type. Nothing. It was like that during the Cultural Revolution. Getting rid of identity cards was regarded as an act of liberation. We now have as complete a picture as we are likely to get till his memory returns.

At home he looked at the photo in the kitchen, the one of my wedding, and didn’t recognize himself. Neither Yu-chih nor I said anything, but I’ve noticed him staring hard at the other picture, of our parents and grannies.

When I’m alone I often speak Punjabi to him and he replies, usually with a smile in his face. Once he said, ‘This is a very funny language. I remember a joke we used to repeat.’ He had used the words ‘I remember’, and this made me shiver with joy, but I kept calm and asked him to tell me the joke. ‘It’s quite stupid, but funny. Someone says to the bichu booti (the stinging nettle-like plant that you must remember from our Nathiagali outings), “How is it I only see you in the summer? Why do you disappear in winter?” The bichu booti replies, “Given how you treat me in the summer, why are you surprised I prefer to stay away in the winter?”’ I didn’t find this amusing, but Hanif laughed so much that I joined him. He alternates between this mood and one where he seems very tense, as if dragons were fighting in his head.

My boy, Suleiman, has arrived from Yunnan. He is living in Dali but travels all over the province. My child, whom I thought we had lost forever to the financial world of futures and derivatives, has returned home. Hanif was touched by his presence and heard the stories of his adventures in Yunnan with some delight.

But it was Suleiman’s earlier life as a stockbroker in Hong Kong that really interested his uncle. Where he had worked, how much money he’d made and what had made him leave that world. Both Hanif and Yu-chih nodded a great deal as Suleiman described how hard he had worked, how he had no time to think of anything else except rushing to a club after work each day, drinking with his friends, watching television and going to bed early so he could wake up at five and be at work an hour later.

Alone with me, Suleiman confessed that he was in love and showed me his girlfriend’s photograph. She was a postgraduate student at the university, a few years younger and, like him, studying history. Which mother is ever satisfied with her son’s choice? My first reaction was that she was far too pretty and I could not make a judgement till I met her. There was a photograph of both of them on a boat in the lake in which she was laughing. I liked that more than her pin-up pose. And I had always thought that Suleiman would marry a nice Punjabi girl. When I said that, he responded, ‘Yes, just like the nice Punjabi general who made Neelam so happy’ I asked him so many questions about her that he lost his patience. She was in Beijing with her family for the next week and I could meet her. So, I thought, all this has been well planned by the young couple. But before I met You-shi, there was a tiny earthquake in our lives. The tremors had been there for weeks.

One morning when Suleiman and Hanif were in the kitchen together, my son saw the old wedding photograph and burst out laughing. ‘Uncle, you look good in Punjabi clothes. Just look at you.’ Hanif paled. He looked at the photograph carefully. He left the kitchen and knocked at my door.

‘Jindié, are both our parents dead?’

I nodded, and we both sat on my bed and wept. We talked that whole day. He wouldn’t let me tell him his life story, but instead asked questions. I would answer them and he would ask more. He was piecing it all together for himself.

‘We are a Hui family?’

‘Yes,’ I said firmly.

‘From Yunnan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Our great forebear was Dù Wénxiù?’ He began to smile. ‘I think it was Plato who named me Confucius, or was it Dara?’

‘Plato died a few months ago, Hanif. And Dara you met in Paris a few weeks ago. It was he who rang us.’

‘I will ring him later. Now I have to choose between three names. Hanif would be best, I think, but all my official documents say Chiao-fu. And Confucius reminds me of our young days in Lahore.’

The silt in his head was being dislodged. Too many memories were coming back at the same time. Suddenly he began to weep again and said we had to go to the home of his adoptive parents. He drove fast, cursing the Beijing traffic even though his car was too big and part of the problem. The old couple were pleasantly surprised. Hanif burst in and hugged them.

‘I remember everything: My friend Hsuan, your son, died saving my life.’

And the story poured out. They had been attacked by a rival faction of Red Guards, who had denounced them as lickspittles and running dogs of Soviet revisionism, supporters of the traitor Lin Biao and US imperialism. Then they had taunted Hanif. You are no Red Guard. You are a Hui pig. Pigs can’t be Red Guards. Repeat after us: I am a Hui pig, not a Red Guard. Hanif had refused to repeat this, and they had charged at him with staves and knives. He had been hit several times on the head, but as they charged him once again, young Hsuan put himself in the way and died from a single hammer blow to his head. Seeing what they had done, the rival faction disappeared. All Hanif could remember was lifting Hsuan on his back and walking and walking and walking. The old couple wept. So many tears during these days. Then Hanif said to them: ‘Why are you living here? I have a large apartment. Come and live with us. Or I will find another apartment near us for you.’

They refused to leave. They were proud of having been workers at a time when it was a good thing to be, and besides, they said, it was here that Hsuan had been born and died. They did not wish to move away from him. We had bought food along from a restaurant on Oxen Street. Hanif described the area. ‘Our people lived here for centuries.’ Had his revulsion for them been caused by the taunts heard just before Hsuan died? Who knows? Now we all sat down and ate together. I couldn’t help asking the old people what they thought of Mao. The old man spoke first: ‘He forgot where he came from and headed off for a different past.’ His wife was less objective: ‘I think back now. Hsuan was always saying that Chairman Mao was fighting the capitalist-roaders. He was right about them if nothing else.’ I looked at Hanif. He was smiling. ‘Both of you are right, my parents. He was also right about fighting the Japanese bandits as well as the KMT. Our present leadership prefers Chiang Kai-shek to Mao, without realizing that they wouldn’t be where they are without the Revolution. But I can see why they’re nostalgic about Chiang.’

As he drove back, he talked about Hsuan a great deal and was full of self-reproach for not having done more for his parents. I told him that they certainly didn’t believe he had been inattentive. The next few months were truly joyous. I had not felt so happy for a long time, in fact, not since the start of the evening in the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore forty-six years ago. Yu-chih is the most adorable sister-in-law one could ever hope to have. She adjusted to Hanif’s identity without any problems and even shamed Hanif by reminding him, to his mortification, of the Hui-phobia that his amnesia had brought to the surface.

I discussed Suleiman’s life with them, and we invited You-shi to dinner. They came together. She still seemed too pretty and a bit too aware of it for my liking, but as her shyness wore off and she began to speak I melted. I was happy for them, and Suleiman, noticing the softness that had suddenly come over his mother, smiled the whole evening. Hanif asked whether she had told her parents. Both the young people started laughing. Before I arrived, Suleiman had often spent the night at her place and clearly in her bed. You-shi’s parents were both university professors and were happy to go along with whatever the two of them decided.

‘We’ll get married when we want, Mom,’ said Suleiman. There’s no pressure on us here. This isn’t Lahore or London.’

There was nothing more to say. Soon Neelam arrived with the children and stayed a week. She, too, it would appear, loved You-shi at first sight, and they became inseparable. You-shi took charge of the children and went with them to horrible, ugly theme parks but also to the Forbidden City, which will, I’m sure, soon be sold off to some billionaire as private property once the crisis subsides a little. Perhaps Zhang Yimou can buy it and make it the centre of a pulp film industry. There are things that still make me angry, which surprises Hanif, who always regarded me as apolitical.

I decided to leave my brother and sister-in-law alone for a while. Their house had become a hotel. Suleiman and You-shi took me to Dali and then Kunming. On the way to Dali they told me that they lived together in an old apartment overlooking the lake. The ‘old apartment’ is tastefully furnished and very comfortable. They live and behave as if they were already married, but I never discuss these matters with them.

I walked by the lake often, thinking about the past. One day, even though it was sunny and warm, I found myself shivering. I was overwhelmed by emotion, remembering Elder Granny’s stories about this place. I walked a great deal that day, trying to imagine what Dali must have been like when Sultan Suleiman was alive. I looked at the people and wondered whether their forebears had been among those who had stood in the streets and wept on the day of the surrender. My thoughts were constantly interrupted by the noise of traffic and car horns. Many tourists visit this city without being aware of what took place here only recently.

After a week, we went to Kunming and visited the museum. Here another surprise awaited me—something that I had never even thought of since I wrote a brief account of the historical events in this region for you. Naturally the story of the rebellion is all here, but presented in neutral terms. Very factual, even though I couldn’t help but feel that the massacres in Dali that took place after our defeat were underplayed. Perhaps time and all the deaths China has suffered since then have blunted their sensitivities about the earlier past. It seems different when you view history far away from the country where it is taking place. Often you can see some things much more clearly, but also lose sight of others, from a distance. When I view the lake in Dali from the window of the ‘old apartment’, I see it glimmering in the sun or its colour changing when it’s cloudy, but till you go on the lake you can’t see that it has become polluted, or spot the occasional dead fish that floats to the surface.

As we were leaving the museum I happened to mention to the curator that we were direct descendants of Dù Wénxiù. The old man’s face lit up. He dragged all three of us to his office. He was literally trembling with excitement. I couldn’t fully understand the reason for this till he opened the visitors’ book. This was normally the preserve of visiting dignitaries, and Arab names littered the pages. What he wanted me to read was the following message:

‘We are the descendants of Dù Wénxiù. Our great-great-grandmother was sent by Sultan Suleiman to Cochin China. She settled there as a trader, with her child by him, and was pregnant with another. They all survived. If any other descendants ever visit this museum and read these lines, please get in touch with us in Ho Chi Minh City where we have always lived. There is another branch of the family that moved to California after April 1975, but we do not maintain any contact with them. These are all our phone numbers and my name is a Vietnamese one: Thu Van.’

Now I was trembling. The curator ordered some tea. I explained our roots to him and he asked for all the family photographs to be copied and sent to him as well as the letter the sultan’s sister in Burma had written to Elder Granny. They wanted to display them in the museum. The news of this unexpected discovery caused a big stir in Beijing and in Isloo. Everyone’s first impulse was to hop on a plane to Ho Chi Minh City, but before any of that could happen I had to make the phone call. Would Thu Van speak English or French? They must have stopped speaking Chinese a long time ago. I wanted Hanif next to me when I made the call. I don’t know why, but I wanted him to help us decide what to do. Suleiman was a bit upset and suggested wisely that I wait a while and let the news sink in properly. After all, there was no reason to hurry. We knew where they were. I think he was also concerned that too many shocks were not good for his mother.

Zahid, when I rang him, understood my needs better. I should discuss it with Confucius. Strange how Zahid won’t call him Hanif at all, and, secretly, Chiao-fu would rather be called Confucius. I had already noticed that whenever there was a call from Zahid and once from you, Yu-chih would shout, ‘Confucius! Phone.’ And he would come running with the big grin that I remembered so well.

So I flew back to Beijing, and Yu-chih collected me from the airport. She had never known Chiao-fu/Hanif/Confucius so relaxed and happy. They wanted to adopt a child and had begun to make inquiries. The old couple were fine and they saw them every weekend. More than that she didn’t say. She let Hanif tell me that he was fed up with his job. He didn’t like being an economist and was going to suggest to Henri that instead of writing a sharp academic-style critique of the pitfalls inherent in the Chinese economy or a sociological study of festivals, he now wanted to, reconstruct the path from 1949 to 2009. He would call it ‘Capitalist Roaders and the Road’. When I looked at him critically he grinned. ‘Don’t ring your husband and the one you wanted as your husband just yet. I’m not reverting to any crazy Maoism. I know what all that cost this country, and unnecessarily. They destroyed our hopes. I know that better than most. So it will be very critical of the Great Helmsman, but also of those who came after him. Those who ordered our soldiers to fire on the students in 1989, those who crush peasant uprisings today just like the campaign to rid China of fleas during the Communist period. And those who buy radical intellectuals like we do noodles in Oxen Street.’ I was relieved to hear all this, and I think he will write a good book. He certainly knows both sides. Perhaps Henri should be alerted to the change of plan.

I did ask whether if Hanif gave up his job they would be able to afford the life they were used to now, just on Yu-chih’s salary, a question that provoked only mirth. Like Suleiman, his uncle had played the financial market and accumulated if not vast at least sufficient wealth to live comfortably for the rest of his life. I asked whether he would have gone in this direction had there been no memory lapse. He did not know. Perhaps he would have come back to Lahore and returned to physics. How could he say?