The early morning hours stain the sky in dark blues. The freezing air scrapes against my cropped hair and jaw like a dull blade. I swaddle myself in a new shawl Red gave me. It’s her parting gift. I won’t see her again. On any other day, I’d be sad. I’d beg her to stay. But not today. Today, I can’t think of anything else. I’m closer to finding Doua than I’ve been in three years. Closer to telling her what happened that day.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
New Market merchants arrange their paltry food stalls for the day. Their wooden carts jammed together, they shout their wares at me, herding me toward the cups of haleem and trays of samosas. Fishermen wave their rank catch of the day in my face; water boys with large pots mob me. A little girl brushes past me, and I twist her arm to snatch a roll of my rupees out of her hand. Etched on a forgotten wall to my right, a telltale message and handprint catch my attention.
Death to Avaan Maya. Death to all traitors.
I feel the .45’s cold steel against my back. Two magazines. Thirteen bullets.
Finding a relatively emptier spot in this sea of poor bastards, I breathe in deeply. I’ve been walking for hours. A tree of pain spreads its roots through my left side and down my leg. Every few steps, a maddening, numbing tremor shoots down my left arm. The world still wobbles, trembling at the edges of my vision.
“Oy, chai waala,” I call out to a young boy pouring tea in a dhaba. It’s a small, tented courtyard with three charpaai lined by the walls where women and men drink tea in silence. “How many tea shops are here?”
“Many, sahib. But this is the best one in Old Pakistan. Promise.”
“I’m looking for a particular one,” I say, pulling the brown shawl over my face. “It’s owned by Ash. Do you know where it is?”
Some of the patrons get up and walk past me quickly.
The boy holds up his hands before him, palms touching. “I’m just a tea boy, sahib. I don’t want any trouble.”
Right.
The same thing happens at the next few shops I try. After being told to fuck off in a myriad of ways, I’m told to follow a wide street that leads to the river. Apparently, Ash’s tea shop can’t be missed from there.
Half an hour later, I’m at the pearly shores.
The river sparkles silver under the ink-stained sky, almost motionless as it glides along the white sand. A steamy cloud rises in the distance where the river spills into the Misty Wasteland, where no one goes and no one returns.
Two Hindu sisters sell bottles of filtered river water. I buy one and rest on the sand to soothe my cramped legs. The joints in my back and knees, in my ankles and hips, pop in sequence. The bombs, bullets, blades, and blows from the past few days are catching up to me.
The water cools my throat, soothes me.
A Christian girl fills a large earthen pot by the shore, coils a red dupatta over her head, and balances the container on it before walking away. A Sunni woman says bismillah before drinking a handful from her water pot. Farther down, close by the waterfall, a paleet family scatters ashes in colourful paper boats. The way we scattered Eksha’s ashes. The way I scattered Baadal’s ashes. The way I couldn’t with Kanz’s ashes.
“You’re looking to buy tea, yes?” A young girl in an orange kurta and jeans stands to my right. Circular red sunglasses shield her eyes. The kurta stretches over her knobby shoulders and elbows. She sits next to me, closer than I care for. A smile wrinkles out of her surgical mask and twists around her nose and cheeks. “Who are you?”
“Martin Frost. Who are you, kid?”
“My name is Ash.” She adjusts the many bracelets around her wrists. The scrapes and scratches over her sinewy forearms tell me, categorically, that she’s not to be taken lightly. “What’s your name?”
“Salaba.”
“Where are you from?”
“Old Pakistan.”
“I mean which sector.”
“Old Pakistan.”
“What do you want, Salaba from Old Pakistan?”
“I’m looking to buy tea.”
“But what do you want? Is it love, yes? Redemption?”
I deserve neither. “I’m looking for someone from my past.”
“Follow me.”
Standing up, I spot several kids eyeballing us from the street corners or between groups of people. I pat the .45. Two magazines. Thirteen bullets.
I follow her into the busier part of New Market. Mostly young kids wherever I look, all of them glowering at me as they follow.
“Where are you taking me, Ash?” I ask, hand on the .45.
Her walk has no discernable movement in her shoulders and arms. “To the woman you’re looking for.”
“I didn’t say it was a woman.”
“You didn’t have to.”
We stop before a cozy-looking dhaba. Large green-eyed flies buzz around as we enter. Kafir girls and boys pour tea for a menagerie of women and men from all sectors. Snug in a wooden chair, a white cat curls around itself in a ball, sleeping the world away.
“Why are we here, Ash?”
“Fortune telling.” She removes her mask with the most minimal of movement. Without the mask, she’s still impervious. “You may have cheated death more than once, Salaba from Old Pakistan, but even you cannot defy what’s written.”
I smirk. “Written?”
She shakes her head. “What is your name?”
Oh, for the love of … “Salaba. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“In all the years I’ve known her, Doua has never mentioned anyone called Salaba.”
“You know Doua? Who are you?”
“I am someone who is having trouble believing you.”
“Look, it’s complicated.”
“I’m sure it is. I understand that you have come from far, but how can I possibly —?”
“Three teaspoons of sugar,” I blurt out.
Ash tilts her head ever so slightly.
I continue. “Doua takes three teaspoons of sugar with her tea. And she holds the cup with both hands. Because her hands are always cold. Even if she wears gloves, even if you rub them in your hands. Her little hands are always cold.”
A meditative hum hangs in the air as the kafir girls and boys talk among themselves. A sad smile spreads on Ash’s lips. Seeing it, I know without a shadow of a doubt that she knows Doua.
Ash adjusts her shades. “Yaqzan will be here soon. But I need to read your fortune first.”
“What does Yaqzan want with me?”
She ignores my question. “Do you know what you have in common with these people, yes?”
“That you’re wasting their time too?”
“They’re blind women and men trying to outrun the past by crawling into the future. All Pakistanis are like you. Always remembering the past. Except they’ll end up where they started. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because one of their eyes sees the past, and the other sees the future.”
“I need to see Doua.”
“Tell me, which one of your eyes seeks Doua?”
“What?”
“The right one, yes? You look to the future only because you’re terrified of the past. Isn’t that right? And more importantly, why?”
“Because I’m not a monster!”
Ash pours rich golden-brown tea into a plain ceramic cup. She’s no longer smiling.
“Drink this with your left hand,” she instructs, holding the cup close to her chest. The beads and bracelets circling her left wrist barely conceal two vertical, reddish scars.
“What’s in the tea, Ash?”
“You’ll find out.”
I’m nailed to the ground. Invisible hands hold me in place for the sacrificial blade I can’t see but can hear being sharpened. “How can I trust you?”
“If that’s your concern, you wouldn’t have come this far, yes?”
Thirteen bullets. “I could force you to talk. I don’t want to. But I could.”
She nods slowly. “But you won’t. Despite your penchant for hurting innocent women and children.”
“I never hurt anyone by choice.”
“But you did hurt them.”
“Most men I killed were innocent too.”
She has no response.
“I didn’t have a choice, kid,” I point out.
“How much choice can there be if I can tell your future with a cup of tea, yes?” She holds the steaming cup before me. “You followed me here when you knew you shouldn’t have. You also know you shouldn’t drink this tea. So, what will you do?”
Choices.
I think of Baadal’s 1911 tucked at the back of my jeans. The Big Heat. Every time I chose to fire it, every time I blew away some poor bastard dumb enough to cross my path, I was making another circle around the drain. The more I pulled the trigger to stay alive, the faster I spun around this drain I’ve been circling for three years.
I take the cup.
“The saucer as well, Salaba from Old Pakistan.”
I take the cup and the saucer.
“Sip slowly,” she cautions. “After you finish, cover the cup with the saucer. Using your left hand. And don’t peek inside your cup. It’s a bad omen.”
“Your name isn’t Ash, is it?”
“Your name isn’t Salaba, yes?”
“Where’s the real Ash? Where’s the woman with the scars?”
Given the lack of her body language and the red sunglasses, I’ve been observing her lips. The moment I mention the woman with the scars, the corner of Ash’s lips twitch.
“Drink the tea. To the last drop.”
I take a sip. And then another. The tea is silky and sweet, with a slightly bitter aftertaste. It’s like no tea I’ve drunk before. I nearly ask for seconds.
Ash holds a chair forward for me. I sit.
“Good.” Placing her hands over mine tightly, she helps me cover the cup using the saucer and flips it over. “Take three deep breaths. Focus on what you’re searching for, Martin Frost.”
Black eyes bubbling with something sneaky, something innocent. Small, cool hands brushing her collarbone, her ear, her neck. A sad smile. A ghost watching me from behind a mirror. A lady in white standing alone amidst the wreckage of my making. The one person who needs to hear my story, my side of things, so I can make sense of why I’ve become who — what — I am.
“This fortune will foretell only the next forty days.” She’s stalling, but I have no idea what for. She seems to have more answers than I have questions. She frowns at my cup instantly. “There are several drops of tea still left in the cup.” After another few seconds of humming, she leans back and takes off her shades. Her grey-eyed stare is direct and emotionless, a bolt-action rifle. “I see a cat.”
“That’s good.”
“No. Cats are treacherous little devils.”
“I like cats.”
The pain — the constant pain I’ve been in since I woke up in Red’s room — is gone. I don’t register it anymore. Numbness slithers from the pit of my stomach into my legs, an intravenous stream of ice that chills me.
“Cats are deceivers. You can’t trust something that cheats death eight times.” She frowns. Her voice sounds faint. “There are mostly incomprehensible shapes in your cup. Whatever shapes I do recognize — closed bags, clocks — are all bad omens. You have lived a difficult life, Salaba from Old Pakistan. You seek to escape your past, but in the end, there’s nothing but death for you.”
Murky darkness frames the whole world as I sink into the chair. “I already died once, Miss Whatever-the-fuck-your-name-is.”
“I know.” That half grin again. “When you wake up, you’ll find only what you deserve.”
Her voice echoes inside my head. I wince, pressing my fingers to my temples. As my head spins, I realize there’s no one else in the shop.
“Where’s Doua?” I ask.
Ash shushes me. Fragments of her face swim before me in doubles as I enter a world of shadows — shadows that bleed into me and I into them.
Doua.
There’s a rich sweetness in the air, with just a strain of bitterness. It’s what I’d smell every morning as I watched you drink tea by the bed, Doua. Always with a cup of tea in both hands, no matter how hot it was. You’d be so cranky if you didn’t get your tea first thing in the morning.
Bright yellow light pierces my skull. First as a dot, then a line, and finally, painfully, it widens into a glorious golden morning. What a morning should look like.
I blink several times, trying to acclimatize myself to the richness of colour around me. Despite the pain, I feel a smile on my lips when I see her standing next to me, teacup in hand.
“Finally,” Doua says, one arm crossed over her belly. Dressed in a black saree, she shields me from the intense sun. The light casts a halo around her. She’s even more beautiful to me. I hate us both for who we’ve become. “I thought you were going to sleep forever.”
“I can’t —”
“You cannot move, right?”
I try to budge, try to peel myself off the tough mattress.
“Relax.” She holds my hand, squeezing it lightly. “The drugs are still in your system. Give it time.”
I inhale as much of the sweet tea scent as I can. There are so many questions bouncing around in my head, so many things I want to say.
“Where are we?” I ask. About the most unimportant question at this moment.
Doua takes a sip of her tea, chuckling, the faint acne scars scrunching her right cheek. She walks over to the luminous window and opens it fully. Kids laugh outside, their voices mingling with the gentle susurrus of the water.
“The river?” I ask.
“Yes. You always wanted that, remember? A home by the river.”
“I want to see it.”
“You will. Just as soon as you can move again.”
I’m blind in this moment of joy. “Describe it to me.”
“It is —” she starts, but something makes her pause. “There are these colourful boats on the water. Just like we did for Eksha. How we went to the river and released the paper boats onto the water. All those bright colours. Do you remember?”
“The boats were full of her ashes.”
“I choose to remember the paper boats. Not her ashes in them. Not what those monsters did to my little Eksha. To us all.”
“Do you think she’s at peace, Doua?”
She doesn’t say anything as she looks outside, leaning over the windowsill. The dimples on her lower back are prominent, her skin a smooth, soft brown. Past her, the light is too bright for me to see much. My eyes return to her lower back, and I remember how her skin used to feel under my fingers. How I’d kiss those dimples.
I try to get off the mattress, but nothing happens. “Why are you with Yaqzan, Doua? Who is he? What does he want from me?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Where were you?” I demand. “Where have you been? Three years, Doua. It’s been three fucking years. I’ve looked everywhere for you.” My voice breaks. I fight the tears.
“I know. I am so sorry. But I must do something.”
“What? Tell me.”
“Do you want tea?”
“What? No. Fuck tea.”
“Here. I think the tea will make you feel better.” She tilts the cup against my lips, and even though I want to spit it all out, even though I want to scream at the top of my lungs about why she isn’t answering my questions, I don’t. Because it does make me feel better.
I exhale slowly, calming myself.
“Better?” she inquires, wiping the drops away from my lips. Her touch — I hate how unfamiliar it feels. “You are pouting like a child.” She squishes my mouth upward. “Stop being so impatient. I told you the drugs will take a while.”
“What did she drug me for?”
“Ash was being cautious.” She stands by the window again. The aureate light is still too much for my eyes, but I can make out patches of a crystal-blue sky. “She had no idea who you are. You were armed.”
Who I am. Looking up at Doua, seeing her smile at me, who I am is a blemish over this entire moment. A rot at the heart of everything that’s become my life.
She slips into bed with me, resting her cheek against my chest. I try to move my arms to embrace her, but nothing happens.
“Look.” Doua uses her thumb to point behind her. “Not a single puff of snow. It is finally a clear, sunlit day in Old Pakistan, and here you are still miserable.”
The song-like whispers of the river wash into the room. I hear no gunshots, no military jeeps, no screams, no adhan, no sirens, no bells. The sun is shining, and the sky is so blue it makes me want to cry.
There’s no snow.
She runs a finger across my chest, across the horizontal scar. “Are you thinking about our first morning together?”
“Yeah.”
She plants gentle kisses on the scar. “Do you think you deserve forgiveness for what you did to us? For what you did to Baadal?”
Something clutches my heart and squeezes. “Doua, please listen to —”
“When did you become a monster, my love?”
There’s another voice in the room. Vaguely familiar. “Avaan?”
The light from outside grows brighter and brighter. Doua begins to fade away, no longer soft, no longer smiling. I try to stare at her face, to re-brand my eyes with every inch of her, but the blinding light snatches her away from me.
“Wake up, Avaan.”
Something burns against my wrists and ankles.
“Doua?” She’s gone. “Doua!”
Waking up feels like I’ve opened the door to another dream. After several blinks, the only thing I’m certain of is that I’m in a room with a barred window. The sky is a dull silver haze, the snow falling everywhere, heavier than before.
After a minute or two, I realize that I’m still in the dhaba. And that my arms and legs are tied to a chair. A dark shape draws the yellow-brown curtains together, leaving a square of whitish haze in the wall. Everything else is dark.
Someone flips the light on. An orange bulb whirs and groans a few inches above me. A few shadowy shapes stand at the circular edge of the light. It’s a bunch of children. One of them steps forward, older than the rest.
Ash.
She takes off her red shades and presses down on my bound forearms, her face close to mine. Though drowsy, I notice the white rag tied around her right arm.
“You met Doua in your dreams, yes?”
“Where is she?”
Ash reaches into her pocket and places something inside my hand. An eye patch. I toss it to the floor.
“You’re working for Evergreen, yes?” she inquires.
“Where’s Doua?”
“Answer my question, Martin Frost.”
“Answer mine.”
She clocks me in the jaw. One of her many bracelets snaps on impact, the brown beads clattering across the floor. The little shit is stronger than I thought.
Jaw clenched, Ash gets in my face. “I saw you working with Evergreen. When you attacked Rosa and Inayah.”
“Then you must’ve seen me let Inayah go. And the part where I pointed a gun to Evergreen’s head.”
She stands upright, arms crossed. “I saw you not shoot him when you had the chance.”
“What about the part where he beat the shit out of me?” Something tells me to keep my mouth shut. I ignore it. “You got any other questions, kid? Because I’ve got many of my own.”
“Okay.” Ash pulls out a switchblade, the three-inch blade shining out of its ivory handle. She taps her finger against the tip of the blade. “Ask.”
“If you’re Ash, who’s the woman with the scars?”
“That is also Ash. We’re both Ash.”
Straining against the bonds, I’m helpless. “Who the fuck are you?”
The bulb flickers. Her gun-metal eyes train on me like a firing squad. “Here I thought you could never forget me, bhaiyya.”
I’m not looking at her anymore. It’s the dark shapes in the dim light that have taken my attention. A black stain on everything, some inkblot test revealing the full spectrum of my madness. I see a teary-eyed Jahan getting into the pink rickshaw without looking back. I see Kanz dead at my feet. I see Inayah holding up the bomb. I see the female soldier as I choke the life out of her. I see Maseeh and the smoking gun in my hand. I see myself with the .45 jammed under my chin, praying for that dark courage. I see Baadal dead on the ground as the soldiers pin me against the floor and tape my hands behind my back. I see Doua, her back turned to me, sleeping on the mattress that last day at the library-shelter. Ground Zero. I see myself standing beside her, taking in the sight of her, memorizing every inch of her because I knew — some part of me knew — that this would be the last time I saw her. More than anything else, I see Eksha’s gnarled hand, held over me like some divine indictment.
When I look at Ash, when I stare into those grey eyes, I know exactly where I’ve seen her before. “Asha.”
“My name is Ash.”
“I thought you — how? We looked everywhere for you.”
“We? Really?”
“For weeks and months. We didn’t rest until …” I try to stand. The ropes dig deeper into my wrists and ankles.
“I don’t believe you. Not after what you did to Baadal-bhaiyya. To Doua-didi. To Eksha.” Asha steps back. Back into the darkness that seems to hold her shoulders for support. “They killed her, bhaiyya.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She stares into my face. “You are, yes?”
“That pain you’re feeling? That aimless rage? I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.”
“Are you telling me that you love anyone besides yourself? Who is it? Is it Jahan, yes?”
“Leave her out of this,” I snap. “She’s innocent.”
“Eksha was innocent!” she screams, her voice a spear. “Do you think her innocence mattered when they cut her open, yes? When they dumped her in a garbage ditch?”
“Asha —”
“Ash.” Her knife glimmers in the darkness. A thin, acidic cut opens across my cheek. The kids behind her whistle and hoot in unison. “My name is Ash.”
“I tried so hard —”
She cuts me off. “Doua-didi told me that you barely left the library-shelter after Eksha’s death.”
“It wasn’t like that. Losing Eksha was like —”
“Don’t pretend that you cared about her!” she shouts. “Or me. Or anyone. You — the man who fed his own brother to the army.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Then why were you the only one who walked out that day, yes?”
“I would never —”
“Doua-didi saw it. She told me everything.” Still holding the switchblade, she stands over me. “She saw what happened that day between you and Baadal-bhaiyya. The fight you two had, yes? She saw it all.”
“No.” I need to find Doua. I need to explain my side. “Where’s Doua? Please tell me.”
“Why? You want to apologize for what you did to her, yes?”
“What are you talking about?”
She kicks me, knocking me over. My back against the cold floor, my arms and legs still tied, I stare up at the swaying orange bulb. My heart flutters inside my chest.
“You want to hand her over to Evergreen, yes?” Ash towers over me.
“No!”
“Lies. More lies.” She kicks me in the side. In the gunshot wound. “Why are you looking for Doua-didi? To hand her over to Evergreen? To finish what you started? To mutilate her some more, yes?”
“Mutilate her?” I can’t think straight. “What are you —?”
She glares at me. It’s not just her. It’s all the children behind her. They loathe me.
“What?” I twist around on the floor, straining against the ropes. “What?”
“You still don’t get it, yes?” Ash reaches down and squeezes my face. Like she’s trying to crush my head. “Doua is the other Ash, you fucking monster.”
Time is a spiral.
Whether it’s Mother or Asha-Eksha, whether it’s Kanz or Baadal, whether it’s Red or Doua, everyone in my life is ensnared in the same story, bound in the stanzas of the same poem. From the moment I first touched them, I’d already begun to lose them, second by second, like sandcastles in a tide. All I can do is watch as they slip through my fingers.
“No.” It’s all I can say. I remember the woman sleeping on the mattress with her back to me. The last time I saw her. Ground Zero. I remember the blind, scarred woman who couldn’t walk down the steps without help. “That’s not Doua.”
“It is.” She kneels next to me, her face shining with sweat. Her voice is low as she speaks into my ear. “That’s what she looks like now. Because you tipped off the army.”
“No.”
“Admit it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You let them desecrate our home. You let them desecrate Doua-didi.”
“I have no idea what —”
She stuffs my mouth with a ball of cloth. “Let me give you an idea then.”
There’s a glint of silver in the orange-tinged darkness. Everything happens in a single moment. A white-hot moment of piercing, bone-scraping anguish as Ash sinks her switchblade into my right eye.
Everything becomes black. Then silver and white.
I scream, but manage only a muffled gasp.
Everything is too loud, too staticky. I squeeze my eyes shut. Nothing happens. Nothing but the brightening light that bleeds off and scatters in odd lines and oblong patches.
In the electric darkness, Ash’s voice echoes from all directions. “That’s what you did to her, Avaan. Just half of it.”