Thinner Than Skin (33 page)

He offered the bottle again.

I nearly vomited again.

“I would not have to do anything except make sure you were never found.” Still with that smile around his lips. The bottle lay with his gun, the cap back on.

I returned the smile. I could taste the acid still rising in me.

“You know the choice?”

I shook my head.

“Go outside the mountains and never return. Or, die.” He pointed again to his gun.

“No!” I squeezed my ears.

He shrugged, feigning surprise, as though I’d just declined a sweet.

I shut my eyes and thought quickly. It would be just fine with me if I left. Distance is a great protector! A quick stop at my mother’s in Karachi, then back to San Francisco, or perhaps the desert. I’d forget all of it. I’d live unencumbered by shame or yearning, history or memory. The farther into the future I’d go, the less my past would shadow me.

“Should we leave?” I hazarded again.

“I said no. No choice.” He fired the gun again.

This time I bowed my head like a coward. My eyes, however, stayed open. I was listening and watching, even if that meant the crack through the canyon made my ears hum and every sound fade as though I were plunging to the bottom of a lake. My ears were filling with water but I would have to keep listening.

I waited. He seemed almost to be in a trance. He’d look at me, then gaze dreamily at the abyss beyond. Look at the bottle, then look at his flute. Look at my camera, then look again at the chasm. Speaking in circles, as though delivering a chant.

“Not south and not across the seas, from wherever it is you came. No no no. I mean north.”

“North?” My voice already sounded very far away. “This
is
north.”

“China north.” He was laughing again.

And then he began to outline, in the most labyrinthine detail, and still in that trance-like voice, the destiny he had mapped out for me.

Disguised as a trader, I would arrive at the frontier town of Tashkurgan, where I would pass into Kashgar. After that would come a checkpoint, the keeping of which was the bitterest of jobs, when the thermometer dropped to below zero. It made the men cranky, the ones who would tell me to take off all my clothes, there in the cold. And I would be given a new name. And different clothes, clothes worn by the last man to make the passage, and the one before him, crossing in the other direction, perhaps, with no fingers or toes. And the clothes would not have been washed and they would
be live with creatures that had survived the cold, and I ought to learn from them. Only after that would I be ready for the Silk Route proper, which I would take from Kashgar to Yarkand, tracing the footsteps of those who had done the same for thousands of years. And this route was more often called the Ghost Route, for it was haunted, so I would need to prepare. I would track ghosts by listening, learning which to avoid and which to sit beside, at a fire, sipping tea mixed with millet seed, telling tales of flying horses whose names changed like the colors of the nimbus through which they soared. Pegasus, Tulpar, Jonon Khar. I would hear them go. And the fire would blow out. And the spirits would vanish. And if my skin were thick enough, I would eventually find my way to Karakol Lake, the blackest of lakes, surrounded by the Pamir Mountains. And the Pamirs would be reflected on the surface of the lake, her peaks and valleys swooping into Karakol’s depths, blue wings in a dark deep, and I would again be visited by fairies and jinns, owls and full moons, and I would kneel by the banks of that lake and wash my tired feet and drink the glacial melt and see the two of us, myself and my love, though he did not say this, he said the two of us, the Queen and the Nude, reflected as on another lake, one in which an unspeakable crime had been committed, for which someone had to pay.

He was blinking like a lizard in the sun.

My lips were cracking. I could taste the warm comfort of salt and blood.

“No.” He shook his head. “That is not how it will be.”

I did not know if I preferred it when he looked at me or past me.

“You are already paying. You know?” The smile returned to his face. “But tell me, you would not choose this life, if I let you choose?”

A life of banishment in place of death? Without love, with only the company of barren rocks? At one time I believed myself desirous of anonymity and solitude, but I was trembling now. He
was right. I was sick.

“The dying have no choice,” I answered.

He laughed. “You hear me well.”

“You speak well.”

He grinned.

Again a long pause.

Then, “Can you hear it?”

Behind me, I thought I could still hear the glacier crawl. I said as much.

“No no no. Not the glacier. Your friend. He is moving.”

I decided to stand up, very, very slowly.

“One last thing.” His eyes flew open.

I slid back down.

“If I let you go, you must give me something in return.”

In return for what—my new lease on a lonesome life?

“I want this.”

He took my camera.

“One more last thing.”

I waited. He was looking beside me, at the box wrapped in red cloth.

“Where is your bag?”

“I gave it to him,” I pointed to the general area where Irfan lay trapped.

He seemed alarmed by this. “Did you take anything out?”

“Just that.” I pointed to the camera in his hands. “And that.” I pointed to the box.

He looked away, still troubled. I thought it atypical for him.

“Why?” I asked.

“I was never going to kill you with a gun.” He began to laugh.

As I climbed down the mountain, he played the flute.
Goodbye!
The melody was at my back, and then
on
my back. It swung around, knotting a pair of tassles around my waist. It pranced before me in
the dust as I walked.
Goodbye, goodbye!
It was leaping and kicking, skipping and taunting, this jealous jinn, this giddy guide.
Not even a fairy princess is worth falling for!
It was what Irfan had said, at the edge of a different glacier, on our way to the lake. We’d nearly slipped, both of us. I’d pulled his jacket for support. He’d let me.

Did he only have a broken leg? Was he even alive? A yearning began to rub me raw.

The descent did nothing to relieve me of it, not even when the melody finally faded and my thoughts grew heavy and dull through sheer bodily fatigue. Now my most steady companion was time, time in which to re-live my tale as I scraped my shins against Ultar’s jagged fangs, forging a distance between me and all that I loved, a distance that was no protector at all. I made my way by listening to rocks fall, and to memories surround me: I ought to turn back. I ought to help Irfan. He was in danger. I’d swum away from Kiran and Farhana. Now I was running from Irfan. Farhana and Wes would also leave him. Where was the help? He was abandoned. He was in danger. I, on the other hand, was now out of danger.

I did not turn back.

Before I could reach the first village, I saw a convoy of trucks heading for the foot of the mountain. They stopped when they saw me.

“That’s him!”

“No. That is not him.”

“Then what is
that
?”

Two men got out of a truck and told me to put down the box. While one kept watching it, the other searched me roughly. He sneered at my ID card and pocketed the forty dollars I still had in my wallet. They asked what was inside the box and I said food and they asked where I’d been. I tried to explain that I was with a group of friends, but my tongue was stuck somewhere at the back of my throat. Irfan would have been better at this. Besides, they weren’t my friends.

“We are wasting time,” said another man from inside a second
truck.

“This man is lying.”

“Where are you going?”

“Hurry up!” They called from inside.

“I—I don’t know.”

“What did you say?”

“He isn’t the one we want.”

While they argued, a black Honda and white Hyundai drove up. “Check it,” called a man from inside the Honda, before it had even screeched to a stop.

“Be careful, he might be carrying explosives,” said a man from inside the Hyundai.

Did I hear them correctly? I began to laugh.

Immediately I was surrounded. There were six men around me now, each pointing a gun to my head, and one of them began to shout. “
What’s this
?” He pushed my head so I was leaning forward, gaping at the box wrapped in red cloth. They would not touch it.

“That’s mithai,” I said, my voice shaking.

“It’s him,” a skinny man with a face like a screw said to the large man whose hand was still pushing my head. The large man kicked the backs of my knees so I fell to the ground. “Get up!” said the skinny man, and when I tried to get up, he slapped the back of my head and told me to kneel. And now the most extraordinary thing began to happen.

While the trucks and cars started driving away, the six men took long steps backward, still with their guns pointed at my head. They walked steadily and heavily away from me, as though in me they had stumbled upon an unexploded mine. I was entranced by their mistake. They were afraid of me. The weak one, the one to always bring up the rear, the one who ran away. The man moving the slowest was the skinny one, who had two diagonal lines extending from his cheekbone to his nose, and two more diagonal lines on the other side of his face extending from his nose to his
jaw. I was looking at those lines as he began to bark his orders.

“When we are there, at that tree with the cloth tied to its branches,” he pointed behind him and I raised my head to see the end of the road and what might have been a tree, “you will open the box. Understand?” I nodded. In truth, behind him I saw only shimmering brown earth. The day was scorching, and the dust on the horizon was growing thick. Where was everybody? I’d never been entirely alone even once on this trip, even when I’d wanted to be. Eyes had followed me everywhere. Where were they—my accusers? Didn’t they want to see me now?

“
Do
you understand?
” he kept repeating as he withdrew into the searing sky. I kept nodding, even when I knew he couldn’t see me. “
Understand?
” Yes. Yes, I understand. My neck agreed. My spine too; all of me was bowing in consent. All of me was jerking up, and flopping down. Yes! I understand! It took me a while to see that I was not merely nodding, but sobbing.

“
Open it now
.” Perhaps they had a megaphone, for the voice appeared to reach me from very far away, yet it was clear.

I stared at the sky. I stared at the red cloth.

“
Open it NOW!
”

There was a bomb and they were making me open it. It was not mithai or fruit. Irfan had not put it there. How did it get there? I remembered dropping my pack, when I got lost on the mountain the first time. The escort had found me, and the pack, and returned it. And before we’d parted, he’d asked me where the second box was. It was with Irfan.

Then I remembered the holy dates. The ones gifted to the policemen in Mansehra and Balakot. The ones that came in a box inside which lay a small handmade bomb, with the firing pin attached to the lid. The blast was enough to kill those within range. I was definitely within range; the other men were not.

I stared at the red cloth. I did not touch it. There was no picture of a date anywhere I could see. Those other boxes, I imagined them wrapped in shiny gold paper that folded neatly around the edges. I
imagined the paper crinkling at the slightest touch, though the touch of those men would not have been slight. I imagined the pictures of fat, juicy dates on a glossy cover, perhaps with nuts. But this was just a red cloth.

Farhana was with Irfan.

I heard a gunshot and then a shout. “
Son-of-a-swine, open it NOW!
”

Naturally, it wouldn’t always come disguised as holy dates. It could be anything. Including mithai. Including fruit.

The skinny man was walking toward me, yelling that he would shoot me first, before I could open it. This confused me. I thought he wanted me to open it? Before I could understand, the butt of his rifle hit my cheek. I heard a crack. I fell sideways. Two more men had joined him and only now did it register that none of them were in uniform. This confused me too.
Thwack!
This time the blow was aimed at my gut. The fist that pulled away was as large as a melon. I drooled blood on his shoe. I could not see very much.

“We are telling you one last time. When we are at that tree,” he lifted my chin and yanked it sideways, and I screamed, because under his fingers the side of my face rippled like oil, “when we are there, you will open it. Do you understand, you bastard? You son of a whore?”

They began to back away again.

“Now: OPEN IT.”

I could hear my voice come out of my throat in a gargle. “No! Please! Please no!”

There was no answer.

Let me walk away. Like you. See how it is, in that innocent wrapping? Let it lie there. Let it rest. Bury it. No one will know. I will never tell. I promise. On my life
.

I straightened myself as best I could to a kneeling position again. I kneeled before these men, who were now safely beside some tree I could not see. My mind was raging but my body was capitulating. I kept kneeling, even as I wanted to tear them apart with my teeth. I wanted to thank them too, for letting me live, if that is
what they chose to do, out of the goodness of their hearts. I wanted to kick them to pulp. I kept kneeling. I wanted to silence the part of me that asked why we live subject to those we can’t respect. Why? Why do we agree to live like this? How can we respect ourselves? How would I ever get up again?

I began to gargle again. “Listen, please listen! Let me live!”

Gargle gargle gargle.

It occurred to me that it might be better to die.

I could simply open the box. No more humiliation. I could end this right now. I reminded myself that I’d wanted to end this even earlier, on the glacier, before the escort reminded me that I wanted to live.

I picked up the box. It was light. Very light. Weren’t bombs heavy? What else could be inside? Cherries? Small slippers?