Page 166 of The End of the World As We Know It
“You ask dangerous questions.” Khizar picked up a twig and stirred the coals in the hookah’s cup. “Yes.”
It turned out that, about a month into the wabaa, all three of them (and others who’d passed by) began having similar dreams. They described to each other the strange-looking house in a cornfield in the middle of a strange country, the dusky woman who lived there, and her odd, soothing songs played on a guitar, sung with her face in shadow, always turned away from them. They couldn’t understand her words, but all three had the feeling that they weren’t meant to. Her songs were for—someplace else.
“Amreeka, I think.” Nasir poured fresh water into the bucket of partridges and added salt into it until it wouldn’t dissolve anymore. He pushed a ziplocked bag of ice into the water and let it settle ontop of the meat. “Before the wabaa we would have Amreekan guests stay at the hotel sometimes. They spoke like that woman, although her accent seems thicker. She isold, that one.”
“She is,” Palwasha said, watching the darkness of the fields. “Really old. She makes me feel safe, though. I like dreaming of her and her songs. But Nasir-lala, I don’t think she’s callingus. I don’t thinkweare meant to answer her call.”
Khizar nodded. “I believe our dear Palwasha has it right. I think we’re eavesdropping on an invite extended to others.” He hesitated, his brow furrowed more than usual. “When I was a child, I used to like watching wrestling matches in my father’s akhara. And now I feel as if we’re watching the beginning of a wrestling match and the akhara is being set up, only this particular akhara and its players belong only to that faraway land. It is not our land. And neither she nor thatotherare interested in us.”
At this, Palwasha started and sat up, the jade of her eyes darkening. Her grip on Hero tightened, till the dog whimpered and twisted his neck to give her a watery look.
“I think you know whom I’m speaking of,” Khizar continued. “I won’t talk about him much, that son of darkness. He’s worse than any jinn or devil I’ve ever felt. He’s been invading my dreams for as long as that old woman. Nightmares that make me clench my jaw so hard some mornings I wake up with a bloody mouth. He terrifies me, but again I don’t think his evil is meant to haunt us here. Which is a damned relief, I must tell you.”
“I’ve dreamed of him only once or twice. Mostly it’s been the old lady.” Nasir tossed some cut lemons into the brine bucket and watched them float. “And, a good thing, isn’t it, that we don’t have to go look for either of them.” He grinned. “Who the fuck would giveusvisas to visit Amreeka?”
They laughed at that, and Nasir was glad to see Palwasha settle into a serene silence. Six weeks into their sojourn here the girl had turned fifteen, but her fears and nightmares were older and deeperthan his and the mullah’s put together. He’d seen her glance at shadows and mutter when she thought he wasn’t looking. Was it a response to loss and terror? She had been utterly alone for nearly four weeks before he found her.
He reached over and pressed the girl’s hand. They smiled at each other, and again there was that feeling. That depth, that veil—as if she said less than she knew. As if the world itself was a mirage only her green gaze could pierce.
Soon the rains petered away, breaking the humidity’s back. October manifested quicker than a beggar’s curse, and suddenly GT Road was filled with people.
They came from every direction, traveling in groups of all sizes. Solo travelers, ragtag bands, a few groups composed only of children, de novo families banded together for survival. Lured by the muezzin’s call, they gravitated toward the trio hoping for abode and civilization and instead found a tiny town mosque run by a blind imam. They offered a few collective prayers, slept a night or two in the sanctum, shared their meals and stories, and moved on.
Some stayed. An apprentice carpenter, two farmer cousins, a car mechanic, a former policeman with a sweetmeat belly and his new road wife, a group of teens and children led by a young schoolteacher named Ujala, who had a strong Punjabi accent and protected her wards fiercely with a long knife in her belt and a shotgun on her shoulder.
“They need lessons not just in survival, but also science, history, art, and empathy,” Ujala told them, smiling at old Khizar. “And who better to team up with me than a Quran teacher? Yes, we will stay with you, Maulvi sahib, if you will have us.”
A community of sorts blossomed around the mosque on GT Road, much like others must have along this grand road in the time of the great emperor Sher Shah and long before him, when the road was anancient trade route sprouting from the mouth of the Ganges up to the northwestern edges of India and into Afghanistan.
“All roads are special. Magical,” said Ujala to her pupils in the mosque courtyard one morning, “but this road is sacred. It is older than our collective memory. And it is along this road that a new world will be born. No more borders will break its spine. Instead, it will pulse again with life, like an artery through the hearts of all the regions that once comprised India—the land of the Indus.”
At first Nasir was shocked at the teacher’s speculations, her reckless confidence. This was Pakistan! A Muslim homeland procured with the blood of a million dead, for God’s sake. But the more he listened to her—the more he watched the slow drift of humanity along the highway and thought what others across the border in Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan must be suffering, how they must slowly be developing their own communities—the more he began to be convinced that she was right. Old borders wouldn’t work anymore. They would all return to little towns along roads and rivers. They’d have a chance to fix things again, and maybe this time they wouldn’t fuck everything up. One could dream.
One morning he and Khizar came upon Palwasha mending a hole in her dupatta. The weather was perfect, a soft cool breeze blowing from the north, the sky a deep blue striped with egg white. Under the mosque’s canopy, Palwasha sat on the edge of her charpai stitching, chewing her lips, a faraway look in her eyes. She stopped and looked up when they approached her.
“Sanga haal de?” Nasir said.
“Good, lala. Salam, Maulvi sahib.” She resumed her sewing. “Sleep well?”
“What with helping Fawad and Murtaza on the farmland”—Nasir put a hand on his back and grimaced—“I sleep like a baby these days. You?”
She made a seesaw gesture with her needle hand.
“Still having bad dreams?”
She shook her head, licked her lips.
Khizar said softly, “Is it wise to hold so much in, child?”
“Holding? I’ve shared my dreams with you two.” She glanced up and Nasir noticed the deep, bruise-like hollows under her eyes. She sighed. “But not all of them. Maulvi sahib, I dream of more. So much more.”
“What is it, Palwashay-bache?” Nasir asked.
And now that she’d spoken, it was as if a river poured out torrentially, her words tumbling and falling over each other: “I dream of the ruins of a shrine. A six-sided blue-striped building with towers in each corner. It’s damaged on one side and huddles close to two other buildings in a city where many such buildings are scattered, joined by winding streets and roads. And all this near five roaring rivers that used to rage past the shrine but have now meandered away and conjoined into one monster of a river. I see the water of that river in my dream. It’s blue and so beautiful and there are sand islands in it.” Dropping her sewing needle, she reached out and clutched Nasir’s shirt. “Lala, the town is dead, but I see it filling with life. I see caravans of cars and bikes and rickshaws, and people on horse and donkey carts making their way to this tiny city, where they will build again. And there is no evil there except that of the whisperer. No evil greater thanhiswho, having whispered once, slithers away, then turns back with glee and whispers again in the hearts of men.”
She stopped as suddenly as she’d begun and let go of Nasir’s shirt. Her face was pale. She let her arm drop limp by her side, and Hero, who’d been exploring goh holes in the fields, came around sniffing and began to nuzzle her hand.
“I don’t know where this place is and I don’t know when we’re supposed to go there.” Palwasha stroked the dog’s ears. “All I know is our time here is brief and that makes me afraid. Sad and afraid.”
