Free The Blind Man's Garden by Nadeem Aslam

adder-like trace that a holy man had left in the streets – a fakir, a traveller. Mikal was about eight years old and he had overheard someone say that the holy man had a certain resemblance to his father, with his head of a sad and wise lion. As penitence for a grave transgression in the past, the mendicant wandered around Pakistan with massive lengths of chain wound about his body, dripping in loops from his neck and wrists, and trailing behind him from his ankles, and Mikal had set out to look for him, following the trail of him for miles, but unable to find him. It was the first time he had strayed from home, Basie and his mother frantic in the painted rooms.
    ‘Half these boys are not soldiers,’ Mikal says to a Taliban leader. ‘They’d be better off lying low.’
    ‘They will be better off but not our cause,’ the man says. ‘Everyone has to fight.’ And he adds with finality, ‘Allah has plans that includes this.’
    *
     
    His mind fails to locate intimations of a higher order behind any aspect of this place, a site all the more crude for its distance from the real world, a cold and barren frontierland of life.
    From the weapons under the mulberry tree – the sun has broken the chill of the various metals and a butterfly has appeared to collect warmth from a trigger guard – he picks up two Chinese Type 56 SMGs and begins to look for Jeo. The mulberry leaves – with their outlines composed of many sudden curves – have always made him want to draw them. No wonder Jeo’s mother couldn’t resist making paintings of them.
    In the sleeping quarters he places one of the guns on the floor and examines the other, looking up when Jeo appears in the doorway.
    ‘Pick it up,’ he points at the SMG at his feet. ‘I’ll make sure you don’t have to use it. I’ll do whatever I can. But if there is no alternative I want you to know what to do.’
    He can hear boys shouting ‘Allah is great!’ out there.
    Jeo remains where he is, staring at him from the door. There is a paper in his left hand, half crumpled up in the fist.
    Mikal walks towards him with the SMG held out. ‘You must try to shoot a gunman under the nose. The bullet will go through and sever the brainstem so the hand will be paralysed and won’t pull the trigger, not even in reflex.’ Working together they had built a computer when they were twelve years old. He closes Jeo’s fingers around the gun. ‘Keep your right hand here …’
    A drop of water falls onto his wrist and he looks up, puzzled, seeing Jeo’s eyes full of strange light.
    ‘My father …’ Jeo says.
    ‘What?’
    Jeo raises the hand with the paper and Mikal sees that it is one of Naheed’s letters.
    ‘My father …’ Jeo says again, pulling out the others from his pocket.
    ‘The letters are old, Jeo. From before you two were married. You can check the dates.’
    But Jeo’s mind is on something else. ‘My father …’ He is trembling, breathing fast as he looks at Mikal with terror in his face. ‘My father caused my mother’s death?’ Rapidly he goes through the letters. ‘It says here …’ He can’t find the one he is looking for and then releases his hold on all of them, letting them fall as he looks at him and asks pleadingly, ‘My father killed my mother?’
    Mikal shakes his head. ‘That’s not what happened.’
    On his knees among the scattered papers, Jeo pushes some aside to uncover others, reading disjointed phrases from them, searching both sides of the sheets.
    ‘She was dying and he didn’t want her to be damned eternally. He withheld her medicines till she let go of her doubts, forcing her to embrace Allah once again before it was too late. Some people say she had a heart attack during those moments … The sudden lack of drugs …’ He raises his hands to his forehead. ‘Oh God. Why did you read them?’
    He moves towards him but Jeo lets out a strangled bark. ‘Get away from me.’
    Mikal stops.
    ‘Naheed.’ Jeo drops the letters, one