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Authors: Kamila Shamsie
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wonât recover like a knife-cut on your arm. We must remove it.
The Indian doctor stepped back and switched off a torch which Qayyum hadnât realised heâd been holding. When the doctor patted his shoulder and moved to the next bed, the white-skinned woman, grey-haired, and with lines all around her mouth, stayed to replace his bandages, her touch impersonal in a way heâd never known a womanâs touch could be. Where was it they had brought him? Brighton, they said, but all he knew of it was the pebbled beach, the damp smell of the ambulance, and then this place, this page out of a book of djinn stories into which theyâd carried him. Everything ever seen or imagined painted upon its walls, its ceilings â dragons and trees and birds and men from Tashkent or Farghana like those in the Street of Storytellers. Such colour, such richness. More than a single eye could hold. He was floating above it all, beside the gilded dragons on the leather canopy of the ceiling. England had made the pain stop. But the woman was speaking to him, he must return to the bed to hear what she was saying.
â Weâll fit you up with a glass eye, and youâll be breaking hearts again in no time.
â I donât want to break hearts.
â Oh, love.
He didnât know why she looked at him in that way, or what a woman was doing among all these men but when she said âloveâ in that sad tone of voice he understood, even through the glow of painlessness, that he was maimed now, a partial man, and from here on he would never be admired, only pitied.
Â
He used to be a man who climbed trees just to see the view from the top, one who entered a new city and sought out its densest alleys, a man who strode towards clamour. Now he couldnât think of a branch without imagining the tip of it entering his remaining eye. Everything everywhere was a threat. Every branch, every ball arcing through the air, every gust of wind, every sharp sound, every darkened room, every night, every day. The elbows of a woman; her sudden movements towards him in desire; her hands searching his face for those expressions that only revealed themselves in the dark. He traced the skin around his bandaged eye. Who was he now, this man who saw proximity as danger?
Â
A warning, brother, if you see me walking through the streets, stay far from me. What I want I will have â women or men, wine or gold. A blade through the heart of anyone who tries to stop me. This is how it is when a man walks into hell and survives it. When you return to Peshawar, tell my father he was right. I should have stayed in the orchards.
Â
Qayyum looked up from the letter. Through the mist, the arched gateway and green dome of the Pavilion entrance seemed insubstantial, a fantasy thrown up against the English sky by the force of the soldiersâ homesickness. He wound his blanket tighter around his shoulders, his eye aching from the strain of reading only a few sentences. Was there a taunt in the letter beneath the rage directed at the world, or did this unease all come from within himself? One day at Vipers, and his war ended. Now here he was in the grounds of a palace in Brighton while Sepoy Kalam Khan wrote to him from the trenches at Aubers Ridge.
He raised his hand to his eyelid, permanently closed, and pressed down gently, feeling no resistance. There were men here who envied him this, his ticket home. âWhen you return to Peshawarâ. But he wanted neither Peshawar nor Aubers Ridge â wanted only this domed pavilion by the sea, this place which did all that human hands could do to repair broken men and asked nothing about a soldierâs caste or religion to make him feel inferior but understood enough about these things to have nine different kitchens where food could be prepared separately for each group, and where the meat for Muslims was plentiful and halal. The King-Emperor himself had sent strict instructions
The Indian doctor stepped back and switched off a torch which Qayyum hadnât realised heâd been holding. When the doctor patted his shoulder and moved to the next bed, the white-skinned woman, grey-haired, and with lines all around her mouth, stayed to replace his bandages, her touch impersonal in a way heâd never known a womanâs touch could be. Where was it they had brought him? Brighton, they said, but all he knew of it was the pebbled beach, the damp smell of the ambulance, and then this place, this page out of a book of djinn stories into which theyâd carried him. Everything ever seen or imagined painted upon its walls, its ceilings â dragons and trees and birds and men from Tashkent or Farghana like those in the Street of Storytellers. Such colour, such richness. More than a single eye could hold. He was floating above it all, beside the gilded dragons on the leather canopy of the ceiling. England had made the pain stop. But the woman was speaking to him, he must return to the bed to hear what she was saying.
â Weâll fit you up with a glass eye, and youâll be breaking hearts again in no time.
â I donât want to break hearts.
â Oh, love.
He didnât know why she looked at him in that way, or what a woman was doing among all these men but when she said âloveâ in that sad tone of voice he understood, even through the glow of painlessness, that he was maimed now, a partial man, and from here on he would never be admired, only pitied.
Â
He used to be a man who climbed trees just to see the view from the top, one who entered a new city and sought out its densest alleys, a man who strode towards clamour. Now he couldnât think of a branch without imagining the tip of it entering his remaining eye. Everything everywhere was a threat. Every branch, every ball arcing through the air, every gust of wind, every sharp sound, every darkened room, every night, every day. The elbows of a woman; her sudden movements towards him in desire; her hands searching his face for those expressions that only revealed themselves in the dark. He traced the skin around his bandaged eye. Who was he now, this man who saw proximity as danger?
Â
A warning, brother, if you see me walking through the streets, stay far from me. What I want I will have â women or men, wine or gold. A blade through the heart of anyone who tries to stop me. This is how it is when a man walks into hell and survives it. When you return to Peshawar, tell my father he was right. I should have stayed in the orchards.
Â
Qayyum looked up from the letter. Through the mist, the arched gateway and green dome of the Pavilion entrance seemed insubstantial, a fantasy thrown up against the English sky by the force of the soldiersâ homesickness. He wound his blanket tighter around his shoulders, his eye aching from the strain of reading only a few sentences. Was there a taunt in the letter beneath the rage directed at the world, or did this unease all come from within himself? One day at Vipers, and his war ended. Now here he was in the grounds of a palace in Brighton while Sepoy Kalam Khan wrote to him from the trenches at Aubers Ridge.
He raised his hand to his eyelid, permanently closed, and pressed down gently, feeling no resistance. There were men here who envied him this, his ticket home. âWhen you return to Peshawarâ. But he wanted neither Peshawar nor Aubers Ridge â wanted only this domed pavilion by the sea, this place which did all that human hands could do to repair broken men and asked nothing about a soldierâs caste or religion to make him feel inferior but understood enough about these things to have nine different kitchens where food could be prepared separately for each group, and where the meat for Muslims was plentiful and halal. The King-Emperor himself had sent strict instructions
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