The Geometry of God, page 31
The movement stops abruptly and something is wrong. This has happened before. When?
Everything that happens next is over before I can look away from the chaos of men standing behind Nana, Mehwish, and Noman. In that great and terrible space, amidst so many pushes and shoves, it is when Noman leans back that I see him: infrared. A blast of heat outside my focal length. A riot of blinding colors. A fleeting explosion that could recall a beginning if it weren't intended to bring about an ending.
The kite string? No, a silent bullet. No, two. I hear the second. I run. Omar holds me. Screams. I've never heard so many in my life. Zara stained with blood, the drops glittering strangely on her rust-gold silk dress. Zara rushes towards me and pushes me against Omar.
"Don't let her look," he says.
A third shot.
"Mehwish!" -not even the air is safe. Mehwish!
Nana falls to the ground, where Junayd lies open in a canal, like a huge fruit, a huge pomegranate with a wet hole in the middle. They both lament.
Mehwish screams. I shout. Aba screams.
-An ambulance! Our fingers are drenched in blood. An ambulance!
Noman and Munir Mamu are the only two who don't scream.
The Fifth Gate: Life After Death
When we were children we went to hear the Master for a while.
For a time we were captivated by our own mastery.
Hear how this matter ended, what happened to us:
We came like water and we left like wind.
ORMAR JAYYAM
Rubaiyyat
Amal
I'm in the hospital. I do not want to be here. I'm in the hospital. I can not escape.
Mehwish is still unconscious. A doctor infected his wound. A second doctor cleaned her again and does not think she will die. Maybe Noman does. He wakes up, he is lucid, he tries to speak. But still, you can die. Nana may also die. Junayd, without a doubt. Munir Mamu is already dead. I have Omar's gray shawl around my shoulders, the one that smells like us. Omar is alive, without a doubt. I can't stop shaking. My head keeps thinking about the real bullets and the fake ones.
On my wedding night I learn that there are real bullets and fake bullets. A real bullet has a clean trajectory, it does not deflect, it releases all its energy into the target. A dummy bullet passes through the target. It does not mushroom or explode. It's faulty, it's malfunctioning, like the bullet that hit the Mehwish target. In fact, she was not the target. It was Nana. It was a fake bullet. The second doctor doesn't think he's going to die.
After my wedding night I learn how crucial is the type of bullet used, as well as the type of weapon (the police say it was a pistol), but most crucial of all is the distance from which the gun is fired. weapon. Nobody had a tape measure. Wherever the bullet that struck Mehwish originated, it ricocheted from surface to surface, like the desperate flight of a bird during an eclipse. It hit the ceiling and at least one wall. By the time it hit Mehwish, it had already lost a lot of speed, causing only soft tissue injuries. And the angle of entry was also false.
Mehwish had leaned forward to touch Noman. If she hadn't, she wouldn't even have been hurt. But if she had bent her head toward him and not her arm, the bullet would have ripped through her esophagus. Or the jugular. However, he stretched out his right arm, the one that is his alone, and the bullet went through it cleanly. It worked badly, it worked like a miracle.
It went through the arm cleanly. The first doctor closed the ragged edges of the exit hole for him like a child learning to sew and used a dirty needle and hair. The soft tissue swelled with pus, "like a caterpillar trying to get out," she complained. The second doctor, Dr. Bashar (Human doctor, good to know), gorged her on antibiotics and reopened the wound in the same way that I once opened a shrew. My blue-green jora (because it was Mehwish's favorite color, the seaweed shampoo) was stained with everyone's blood and is in the cleaners.
Today Mehwish wakes up and groans.
"The caterpillar is gone," he says.
"He no longer has a fever." Dr. Bashar puts the thermometer away. If the bullet had hit a little higher, the bone in the upper arm, the humerus, would have been broken into pieces that would have been dispersed with enormous force inside the body. You have to be enormously grateful that something like this didn't happen.
"Where is Noman?" Mehwish wails.
-In another room. They are also selling it — not true. Noman may die.
"And Nana?"
"She's with him." An even bigger lie. The bullet that hit Nana worked well. The one that hit Junayd, even better. I start to cry.
"Then why are you crying?"
"For the same as you."
Dr Bashar says I'm in shock and I should go home. He changes Mehwish's bandage as he nods in approval.
"It's going to be fine," Mehwish listens to him with a frown, trying to look like an outraged owl, though what he actually looks like is a scared kitten. The doctor bandages her and goes on with his talk. I've never heard of something like this happening at a wedding, only yours.
He is young and must be forgiven.
Before falling asleep again, Mehwish asks:
-What happened?
"It's a miracle he didn't hit the bone," I tell him again. That is not a lie. (The doctor smiles at him. He can't see you) -. The bullet went through the only fleshy area of your arm, that part of my arm that you always say hangs from me — I'm not telling you that the same bullet then hit Noman. And it was in him that he unleashed his potential.
If Noman hadn't turned around at that moment, it would have pierced his heart. But instead it entered his upper back and that absorbed some of the impact. The bones were fragmented and the splinters pierced a lung, which has become flooded.
When Mehwish falls asleep, I stop by to see Ama, who is sitting in front of Nana's room door (I sit with her just like when we waited together in front of the courtroom door). I also want to stop by to see Noman. I also want to stop by to see Omar, who is sitting in front of Junayd's room. Munir Mamu is dead. Tomorrow is the funeral.
They've disconnected Noman from the respirator for a while. Open your eyes.
-That…? He says almost out of breath.
"You need oxygen and plasma," I reply, not really understanding what he's asking.
-That…?
-Plasma.
"Sehr ...?"
"He's coming from Canada today."
"Like cheese," he says, and smiles.
His sister Shaista asks me to leave. I know you would like to tell me a thing or two about my wedding.
I get up to leave, but Noman whispers:
"Mehwish."
I tell him they only hit him in the arm. Then I realize that no one has probably explained to Noman what happened to him. That is why I tell him:
"The same bullet that went through her arm was the one that hit you in the upper back and never came out again." I try to smile. It is now housed near ...
Shaista bursts into tears. His brother takes a step towards me and asks me to leave.
"You are a cold and insensitive woman," she tells me.
The mother is praying with her hands open and her palms turned upwards.
I'm starting to feel cold, like I'm the one who's lost blood. Like an accountant, I list what has happened to Noman. (How they say a scientist should do.) It serves to order what happened during my wedding in the same way that in the past I ordered the letters by repeating them aloud to Mehwish so that she could choose between perceiving them for herself or listening to me. But it is of no help to others.
In the hallway I pass Noman's father. I've seen too much blood already, but I wouldn't mind seeing his as well.
For what it's worth knowing: the dummy bullet is lodged in a muscle near Noman's spine, near the aorta. To remove it, they would have to cut too close to the artery, which carries a huge risk. The doctors decide to leave the bullet there as a permanent host. They hope you never move from where you are. They hope that with the passage of time he will petrify in his new accommodation.
To prevent worry from adding to the dreaded poison that lead can bring, producing an even worse poison, no one tells Noman at the moment. Neither do I tell Mehwish.
Noman is discharged in January. Nana and Junayd remain hospitalized.
How do you begin to describe your injuries? List their ailments one by one. I tell myself that I am good at that. But I can not do it. This is the only thing I manage to note: both were hit by a fragmentation bullet, both were hit by the same rifle, a national rifle fired by the same security guard. This became known because another guard, who was next to him, was carrying an American assault rifle that he had never cleaned. It came with an instruction manual, but how was I going to understand it? When the guy pulled the trigger, the bullet jammed, exploded, and blew half his face off. With the remaining half he told us that the five shots (the one that missed; the two that hit Nana and Junayd; the one that hit Mehwish first and then Noman, and the one who killed Munir Mamu) were made by three guards hired to assassinate Nana. We asked him what Nana had done. I did not know, I did not know it. We asked him who had hired him. I did not know, I did not know it. The other two guards managed to escape. He also confirmed to us that whoever shot Mehwish and Noman was carrying a gun, but what kind of gun? I did not know, I did not know it.
When they opened the rifle that blew half the guard's face, they found that the barrel was jammed by a real limestone deposit. I remember perfectly those kinds of details.
On a windy April morning, five months after my wedding and a week after Junayd's death. The most important events in my life have always taken place in the months of November or April. April: Mehwish goes blind; Nana is arrested; Junayd dies. November: Noman knocks on Nana's door for the first time; Mehwish betrays me; I get married.
April: my first dig. Now that I belong to Omar and not to my parents, they cannot stop me. And now that Omar belongs to me, he doesn't try to stop me.
I am on a steep outcrop overlooking the Dhun Valley, one of the highest points in the Pakistani Salt Range. I watch the Jhelum River sparkle in the distance like a fish gliding across the horizon. In front of me is the green carpet of the meadow. Behind me, Abdul and other companions are kneeling at the edge of the hole collecting stones.
If I fell off the rock I was standing on (or jumped on) the river would catch me with a swift flick of its silver tail. If there were no trace of me left, I would exist as God originally envisioned me. Like an abstraction. If He exists, I pre-exist. But I am a creature and I cannot renounce Him. I need to dig for fingerprints and leave my own. Sometimes I collect some samples from the past because I am not afraid of my own mortality. Sometimes I do it because I am afraid.
Before coming to these hills for the first time, when she was only eight years old, Nana and Junayd talked. Now that I am in this valley, what they were saying then resonates more strongly within me than at Nana's house in more recent times.
Why create?To unite with God? To compete with Him or to reject Him? Junayd worshiped an orthodox God whom, supposedly, no one knew. When Nana jokingly asked him, "How do you manage to fulfill the obligations of this world without departing from the wishes of your Beloved?" Junayd did not answer her frankly at the time. He responded at my wedding. Along with his answer must have come the surprise to see that his deity so powerful and formal rewarded his humility with the most gruesome of endings.
Junayd threw himself in front of Nana to stop the second bullet.
It is not theological debate, scientific inquiry, or artistic devotion that ultimately proves your worth, but a sudden act of bravery. It's something Junayd couldn't foresee. He did not do it to be remembered later or to be immortalized. It just jumped. That impulse of his, that disinterest, is the closest thing to the divine that I have come to see in my life.
The bullet exploded inside him like an atomic bomb. The water in his body churned like a tsunami. It crushed. It flooded it. It dragged it into its jaws, like that pebble I throw into the river at my feet. I think this description of what happened is enough.
I don't want to know how many bones were broken, how many veins exploded, how many organs were crushed, how many centimeters of skin the bullet wound on its way out. I don't want to know who had the idea to saw off the head of the bullet so that it shattered on impact. I don't care if it was a real bullet or a fake, like the one that hit Mehwish and Noman. I don't want to know if Mehwish leaned in front of Noman for the same reason Junayd threw himself in front of Nana. I don't want to know why he didn't die right away instead of having to suffer for so long. I don't want to know anything about that miracle. I do not want to know. I just want Junayd to be alive again.
I could never thank him. Junayd defended, cared for and saved Nana. He sat me on his knees during my first hike up these hills and asked me if I had a doll.
I have waited so long to come to the excavations with my colleagues as one more, that now I cannot let them see me like this! I'd rather jump off this cliff than give them the satisfaction of seeing me cry… like a child!
I keep my back to them.
What I have to do is build a dam against discouragement. It is the weight that a witness carries and I will carry it with pride.
I look away from the silvery light of the flowing fish-shaped river and head toward the excavation. Inside we find a femur segment about thirteen centimeters long by five in diameter. We put it on a little mound of earth. Abdul and I started to prepare the mold. We dip burlap bands into a container with plaster, wrapping the bands first around the pedestal and then around the femur itself, slowly, as if we were protecting a sprain. I can feel the bruises while I bandage it.
I know that now that Nana has lost Junayd, I will soon lose him.
The bullet exploded inside him. It took a year for me to be able to say it. So you can talk about it. They have operated on Nana a couple of times to remove two pieces of bullet. The second operation gave him an infection. A shard from the projectile is still embedded, but the doctor says that Nana is too weak to undergo a third intervention. A younger target would have had better defenses.
I should have been the youngest target.
Aba sells Nana's house in Islamabad and Nana moves in with her only remaining daughter, my mother. Mehwish recites poetry to help him sleep.
Every time I think that I am married, my marriage seems like a liberation. The building where our apartment is located is covered in ivy and has a large bamboo tree with some delicate shoots that reach up to the balcony where Omar and I have breakfast every morning. She likes to start the day on a warm stomach: toast, melted butter, and a strong, steaming cup of tea. I like to start it on a cold stomach: fresh lemonade, dried almonds and dates. Then the pill. We never did the honeymoon, but Omar warns me not to lose any more pounds because my bathing suit will hang indecently everywhere when we can finally go to a beach. Zara promises "again and again" to give us the honeymoon.
When we hug in our bedroom, a room that overlooks the neighbor's garage, I say to him:
"I needed Nana to be at our wedding." But I have ruined everyone's life. Including you.
At first he listens to me and, if I give him the opportunity, he expresses his complete disagreement. One night he falls asleep and snores. Another says, "Please stop it now." The next night he slides a hand under my nightgown and gently strokes my breasts, running his thumb around my nipples. Your patience relaxes me. Over time it has returned to being a panther instead of a nervous bat. He sits on the bed and places my back against his chest, lifts the fine satin that covers me a little more, but does not remove it. Slide a finger inside me, I feel his excitement grow behind me. He undresses me drooling with desire on my neck. So much pleasure while others suffer!
I lie.
"I want us to be like this for a long time," I tell him.
He towers over me, charging harder and harder.
-Not yet. I want us to be like this for a long time.
Try to slow it down.
In the middle of the night, I dream of the sinuosities of Omar and I climb on top of him again.
The taste of her body accompanies me during the long journey to the bare mountains of salt. His family and mine complain that I go to the excavations "alone, with so many men."
Omar neither defends me nor tries to keep me at home. He is still looking for another job to leave his father's factory and that is the only thing that worries him at the moment. When, after having dinner one night with his parents, I comment to him that his mother has not stopped giving hints mentioning so-and-so's daughter-in-law to such an extent that, fulfilling her duties as a wife, she has become pregnant, he looks at me puzzled. Not that I think I'm making it up. It is that, in moments like this, he does not think. He can disconnect completely, just like Mehwish, and I know he does it to protect himself from criticism from his father. It is an "emotional condom," as Zara calls it, which has its advantages. If he paid attention to his parents, maybe he would listen to them and that would end up affecting me. Furthermore, he is also immune to greed and rudeness.
Even so, I am unhappy to see that Omar is unable to react to the criticism and I mention it to Zara.
—His mother looks at me and tells me in front of Omar's very nose that it is a shame that young women behave with such freedom in front of men. Omar says nothing. If it were my mother, I would tell her something, in fact I do.
Zara's advice:
—The mother is the Maker and, being by her side, the Man returns to childhood. It becomes ... primary. But not in the horny sense, huh? He lies down on the carpet and laughs.
