There had been other deaths, even before the earthquake, and who knows if the goddess had played a hand in these too. A shopkeeper beaten to death by policemen for withholding information. The information he withheld was his identity. There were no papers to prove it, the police claimed. Who was he? To which state did he pledge allegiance? He had no papers to answer for him. And there was a round-up, all the people of the valley — the sedentary, the nomadic, and everything in-between — had to show their identity papers. Maryam had pulled out every scrap they ever owned. Deeds showing permission to graze; taxes paid; materials leased each autumn and one summer, for a temporary home. But there was no proof of her birth. Her husband’s, yes, and he could not remember how and from where the proof had come, it was a gift from God, that little rectangle with his thumbprint and his name. But Maryam had none. The men had reached for the closest thing they could find. Younis. They pulled his ears and slapped his head, again and again, till his neck hung limp and she screamed and beat her wrists against the hard floor (including the wrist that never again healed). When he fell, and they began to beat his back with their boots and their rifles, she saw the boy in the waterhole, and said anything, take anything you want but the children. They took the filly. Loi Tara, with the coat the color of sunset in a yolk. Taken in her third year, still tethered to her shell, still only a mare in name. She had been nuzzling the buffaloes, the rain-kissed leaves, and those who let her go.

Maryam did not dare approach Namasha any more. Only her husband had that privilege now. Only he fed and watered her. Only he administered to her pain. Maryam did not inquire how. But even her husband did not ask the mare to carry a single item — not a lamb or even a copper bowl — on her back on their migration to the highlands. She would have thrown it off anyway, sent it spinning all the way past Naked Mountain to the callused hand of God, Who would have dropped it.

There was a limit to the extent of baggage any creature should hold.

It was soon after they took Loi Tara that she agreed to let Younis go. This time, it was she who left Ghafoor a sign. A red cloth, just as he had done. And he came, with a new look and a new name, still glowing from his success with the foreigners. About that, he had casually declared, “You will never see him again.” She never asked to know more. There was a slight, very slight, unease lurking inside her, born of an image too fleeting to hold, one which she admitted only to herself. It was never clear to her which man she envisioned trapped in the serrated mountains, his back to her, because once, just once, he looked up, and she did not think it was the one she had thought. The man she saw had pointy features and a brooding brow, like the good man, the friend of her people, Irfan. Trapped. It had confused her. A mistake? Hers or his? And she thought of the night the forest inspector’s house had burned, the way the man got away while his wife did not. It made her uneasy — how could there be any likeness? That had been a fire, this a fall, this was easy — and, shaking the image away, she thanked the gods that this particular mutation of it had never returned. So when Ghafoor had assured her, “You will never see him again, no matter how much juniper you smoke,” she did not ask to know more. All she said was that she never smoked; she could see very well without it. He laughed and so did she. He added, “Even your mother, bless her spirit, will never see him again,” and then too she could not help but smile, though it was not altogether respectful, the way he spoke of spirits.

When she asked him to take Younis with him he scratched his thick new beard — black; he had even dyed his hair — wiped her cheek — which had suddenly grown damp — and licked his finger free of her tears the way she had once licked the honey.

Hold on to nothing except your children and your herds, her mother would say. Sometimes, even these possessions were too many.

Maryam quietly crept to the far side of the shore, where the two candles had disappeared. The night was cool and still and she wrapped her shawl close to her chest, and felt the sand give beneath her feet. This was her first night back in the place that had taken Kiran. It was her first touch of the icy water that had pulled the child to itself. She had warned Younis and Jumanah to stay away from the lake, and though she trusted them, she followed nonetheless.

They were heading for her shrine, the one in the cave. The one that could still exist. The one in the lowlands she would have buried before leaving, had the goddess not done this first. She would have had little choice, even after the rumor began to spread that the killer had been found, and the uniforms and the plainclothesmen began to leave, and the relief workers began to arrive. Over them all one voice could still be heard, as Maryam prepared to leave for the mountains. It was the voice of the mullah, claiming victory was coming to every valley in every district, and every city, village, and town. So Maryam had abandoned the cleansing rituals entirely this spring, pleading in her heart that her family not be punished, it was not her fault the rituals could not be kept alive. She had one further evidence of the degree to which her own way was in danger. Just before the earthquake, she had dug a small patch of dirt in her shrine, for the box with Kiran’s belongings. The box was gone. The shrine had been tainted, and apparently the goddess agreed.

The mullah had still been claiming victory when they began their ascent.


They had seen their mother do it and so they did it too, when they thought she was not looking. They climbed the hill farthest from the boats and the tents and kept on going, toward the mountain that could only be seen when imagined. The candles blew out twice and Younis patted his trousers, the way he saw men do. He pulled out the box of matches, lit two together, cupping the double flare in a tent made of his fist, and re-lit the sticks.

Finally, the two children arrived at the cave.

While Jumanah looked inside, Younis talked. He was telling her all he would do, when he left. He would become a trader and because all good traders had beards—”Ghafoor bai says you trade best when scratching your beard”—he scratched his naked chin, and she scratched hers. As a businessman, he would bring her things, he said, things that would make her blush the way their mother did, when Ghafoor bai brought her flowers. And Jumanah lowered her eyes, practicing how to look pleased. It was easy, because she was already on her knees, arranging on the uneven floor a bed of pine needles. She carried a big bundle in her hands — she had been careful not to let the candle burn them — and now she took her time softening the floor while Younis talked.

When the carpet was made, they sat together, holding the candles out toward the drawings on the cave wall. There was the horse, Loi Tara, in different poses. Sometimes alone, her mouth busy, her head turned to return their gaze. Sometimes prancing toward a peach. There were buffaloes too, and at times, Loi Tara went to meet them. She was a little yellow and the buffaloes a little blue, but mostly, their world was black and white. There was also a girl. Kiran. She only appeared once, and you had to come very close to see her, so close that the candle left a mark on the wall. Jumanah was standing now, her bare feet absently sweeping the pine needles to and fro, her toes digging into them while she concentrated, holding the candle just so, above the girl and to the left, for this way, the light fell on her face and the face was neither blue nor yellow but the color of the wall. Pinkish, like the real Kiran, though she was no longer sure.

Jumanah steps back — perhaps she will see better from a different angle — and notices a pine needle has caught in her toe ring. Bothered by this, she tries to pull it away. A thought comes to her, a thought-image, blurry yet insistent as an earache. It is of toe rings on a row of bloated toes. She remembers that it worried her. How would her mother get the rings off when the toes swelled like teats? Overcome with a terrible fear that her own toes will be squashed inside these circles of bells, she begins to pull them off.

Delighted, her brother pulls her toes, pulling so hard it hurts, and she wishes she could explain to him why she is afraid, but she cannot. He kisses her only when the tears fall, calling each drop a jumanah, a silver pearl. When she has shed several dozen pearls, she grows mesmerized by how quickly each disappears. Soon, she forgets the reason she cried in the first place and the tears stop falling. There is nothing to hold her attention. They go back to talking.

They decide to mimic their mother and dead grandmother. They make their own offerings, chant their own prayers, drink their own brandy, smoke their own leaves. Younis smacks his pockets, finds the matchbox again, and lights a pretend branch because this is better than going outside to get a real one. And they play pretend vision.

“Say, ‘I see evil’,” says Younis.

“I see evil,” says Jumanah.

“Do not despair, my child!” cries Younis.

Jumanah laughs.

“Do this and say ‘I want more sugar!’“ cries Younis.

Jumanah snaps her fingers. “I want more sugar!”

And with this signal the game has changed. They are mimicking the men who have bothered them all year.

Younis dons a belt that is in fact a drawstring, sticks bullet-stones inside, carries a pine cone beard at his chin, swishes as he walks. “Who am I?”