Read Online Closure by Jacob Ross - Free Book Online Page A

would no doubt want to see Panja Sahib in Hasan Abdal.
    I had only gone a short distance when she asked, “Why did you touch that key?”
    â€œJust one of those things we drivers do, madam.”
    â€œJust one of those things we drivers do,” she mimicked, and then said, “I was born in Gujarkhan and have dreamt of one day visiting the house of my birth.”
    I detected great pain in her voice.
    A traffic policeman, who was standing in the middle of the road directing traffic, flagged me to stop. I tried to sneak past him but he blew his whistle a few times. I stopped and snatched a look at the woman. She didn’t look like the madams of Islamabad anymore but almost like a mother who was searching for a lost child.
    â€œMajee,” I said thinking of my own dead mother, “you can go to Gujarkhan right now. It’s not far; I can take you.”
    She smiled a sad smile and said, “I’m Indian; not allowed. And besides everyone in India warned me not to go to Pakistan; it’s not safe, especially for Sikhs.”
    â€œThis is Pakistan. No one is safe and Allah decides,” I said, hoping she would want to go to Gujarkhan.
    I prayed inside my head, Ya rabbah, oh God, make this my lucky day. I’ve never had one of these returning Sikhs. Especially someone as rich as this one. Oh Lord let this day be my eid.
    She went silent for a while and then her eyes lit up. “I have dreamt a thousand dreams, to see where I was born.”
    As I turned onto the Islamabad Highway, going south towards Gujarkhan, she asked, “Are you married? Do you have children?”
    I glanced at her in the mirror, trying to work out what she would most likely want to hear. She looked the motherly type. She could have grandchildren, and then she might feel sorry for me if she thought I should be married but had not managed to save enough money.
    â€œWell, is it that difficult a question to answer?”
    â€œNo, madam…”
    She turned towards me. “Either call me Majee or auntiejee, but not madam.” Before I could answer, she added, “Majee.”
    â€œJee, Majee.” I stroked the dashboard next to the steering wheel, pointed to the black ribbons I had tied to the side mirrors and said, “This is my wife and my mother.”
    She laughed and then sat silently with her hand up to her mouth. Every now and again, when she saw a child or an animal, she would let out a deep sigh.
    When we crossed Mandra, just as we went past a village, she asked me to stop. She pointed her thin finger at a house where a woman was rolling dung in her hands and then putting it on the side of the wall of a house.
    â€œPeople here still dry dung and use it for fuel to cook with,” I said.
    â€œThe little girl near the tandoor, the oven. When I was young, I used to light our tandoor just like her. See those twigs sticking out from the top of the tandoor, just above the flames? I can hear them crackling, even from here and I can smell the wood burning just like that little girl. I would stand close to my tandoor, especially at night and watch the flames going up and the twigs falling down and the sparks flying about. Maybe they are still the same last sparks I saw, when they told us to leave.”
    How could those be the same sparks? I thought and said, “Maybe, Majee, maybe.” Then I asked her, “Why did you come to Pakistan?”
    â€œI am a poet. I came to recite.”
    A poet, I thought. At least she is not like all the ones I know. Broke.
    She started humming to the tune of Saif-al-Maluk. She stopped, let out a strange little laugh and said, without taking her eyes off the little girl by the tandoor, “It was the middle of the day in that year; 1947. I had lit our tandoor and then went to hang the washing on the walls. Mother had made the flour into dough and I went and sat next to her and helped her make paeras from the dough. Mine were always either too small or