Tariq has headaches now.
Some nights, Laila awakens¹ and finds him on the edge oftheir bed, rocking, his undershirt pulled over his head Theheadaches began in Nasir Bagh, he says, then worsened inprison. Sometimes they make him vomit², blind him in one eye.
He says it feels like a butcher's knife burrowing³ in one temple,twisting slowly through his brain, then poking⁴ out the otherside.
"I can taste the metal, even, when they begin."Sometimes Laila wets a cloth and lays it on his forehead andthat helps a little. The little round white pills Sayeed's doctorgave Tariq help too. But some nights, all Tariq can do is holdhis head and moan, his eyes bloodshot, his nose dripping. Lailasits with him when he's in the grip of it like that, rubs theback of his neck, takes his hand in hers, the metal of hiswedding band cold against her palm.
They married the day that they arrived in Murree. Sayeedlooked relieved when Tariq told him they would. He would nothave to broach⁵ with Tariq the delicate matter of an unmarriedcouple living in his hotel. Sayeed is not at all as Laila hadpictured him, ruddy-faced and pea-eyed. He has asalt-and-pepper mustache whose ends he rolls to a sharp tip,and a shock of long gray hair combed back from the brow.
He is a soft-spoken, mannerly man, with measured speech andgraceful movements.
It was Sayeecl who summoned a friend and a mullah forthenikka that day, Sayeed who pulled Tariq aside and gave himmoney. Tariq wouldn't take it, but Sayeed insisted. Tariq wentto the Mall then and came back with two simple, thin weddingbands. They married later that night, after the children hadgone to bed.
In the mirror, beneath the green veil that the mullah drapedover their heads, Laila's eyes met Tariq's. There were no tears,no wedding-day smiles, no whispered oaths of long-lasting love.
In silence, Laila looked at their reflection, at faces that hadaged beyond their years, at the pouches⁶ and lines and sagsthat now marked their once-scrubbed, youthful faces. Tariqopened his mouth and began to say something, but, just as hedid, someone pulled the veil, and Laila missed what it was thathe was going to say.

分享到：