Free The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam Page A

sky above us lit up with a fraction of moon and a dense scatter of stars.

    We started at dawn, driving west in a pair of jeeps with a tiny pink sun at our backs. I noticed our guard was wearing something of a uniform this morning, a half-sleeved shirt and a pair of light khaki trousers. The gun tucked into hisbelt was visible when he turned his back and adjusted his turban against the wind. The hills were jagged, softened occasionally by plumes of wild shrubs. Against the horizon we could see a thin scattering of acacia trees. The Suleiman range appeared to retreat into the distance, though we were actually approaching it – a trick of the savannah – and finally we stopped at a site about two hundred yards across, marked off by Jimmy and Bart as they had prepared the location.
    Jimmy was a sedimentologist – he would examine the bed of the Tethys for the environmental context of Ambulocetus and try to re-create the landscape from which the shale had been formed. The hired men would use sledgehammers to bring down large chunks of red rock and then Zamzam, Bart, and I would sift through each one, examining the broken stone with bits of bone and teeth scattered within it like flecks of white confetti. From the first moment the physical exertion was soothing in its simplicity. We baked in the heat, fierce even at this early hour, and, though it seemed there was no movement in the air, soon our skins were dusted red with the powder of the dried sea. That first morning went by very quickly, and we returned to camp for a late lunch, remaining inside as the afternoon blazed, cleaning, sorting, and setting up a rudimentary system of cataloguing what we had found.
    I lasted a week. On the second Monday, Bart found me leaning against a rock with my head between my knees and ordered me off site. I was dehydrated, and the sunburn behind my neck had blistered. One of the guards offered to drive me, and I sat next to him in the front as he raced the jeep back to camp, speaking to me only once, to ask if I needed a ride to the hospital in Multan. I said no and spent the afternoon on top of my sleeping bag, angry at myself for succumbing to the environment. I had a lot toprove – not just to the others, because I was the only woman there, but also to myself, to my sheltered childhood, to my parents and even to you, Elijah.
    I had decided that my week with you was the start of a new me. I would use it to turn myself into the sort of person who knew exactly what to expect from the world. I would no longer be the pampered only child of two doting parents. When I died the invitation to my funeral would say ‘Palaeontologist. Adventurer. Rock-Slayer. Amphibian. Ninja’. I would be difficult to surprise, intractable. Even funny. Yes: I would develop a sense of humour, a dry, intimidating one. I kept repeating the word ‘Ninja’ to myself, smiling until my lips cracked.
    I turned on my phone and of course there was no signal. The battery was almost dead, but I scrolled through my song list and chose the Nina Simone version of ‘Here Comes the Sun’. I felt a strong desire to hear your voice, to tell you about this place, the searing pain at the base of my neck where the desert had pierced my skin, the aniseed scent that followed Zamzam around everywhere as he chewed on stalks of wild fennel, and the packed crimson rock that held its secrets so close. You realise, don’t you, Elijah, that this is the way you worked your way into my heart? Not just in those days together in Cambridge, but in the aftermath, when I couldn’t stop talking to you, when every turn of my story included a footnote of conversation as I pictured how you might respond, the way the desert light would catch your hair, the effect of the parched, history-heavy air on your voice. What would you have made of all of this, the green flags of our tents on the lunar surface of this ancient place, our little argument with time? That is, I