Free Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie

the Poet’s death and her own disappearance? Those were the two years when conversation between us slowed to a trickle. I spent so much—the idiocy!—of those years slamming doors and saying things like ‘It’s none of your business where I’m going.’ That particular sentence came out when something of her old self was awake in her, and she replied, ‘Fine, then I won’t tell you where I go when I go out.’ It was in my hands, she made it clear, to choose to end the foolishness of that reciprocal silence, but I was too proud to do so. And where had that pride got me? Right here, in the doorway of Shehnaz Saeed’s house, knowing nothing.
    I looked around. The house was airy in the way that no modern housing ever is, and the ceilings were high. Along the whitewashed walls were portraits of Shehnaz Saeed by both acclaimed and little-known artists. It should have seemed an act of monumental egoism to fill the entrance to your home in such fashion, but as I walked closer to the row of paintings it seemed clear that the display mocked the adulation of beauty. They were so varied, the paintings, in their portrayal of her that what came through ultimately was the absence of any singular truth about her visage and how it is perceived. Next to the painting nearest the door was a mounted card with a single word on it: APPEARANCE .
    As I stood by the mounted word, recalibrating my expectation of Shehnaz Saeed to encompass a subtle intelligence, the woman who had opened the door continued to walk down the alternating black-and-white stone tiles of the hallway. With her black chapals and black shalwar-kameez she seemed to appear and disappear as she stepped from light tile to dark, her existence a strobe-light illusion.
    She stepped on to a white tile and looked over her shoulder at me. ‘What, do you want a palanquin to carry you?’
    I followed her through the hallway, past an open door through which I could hear the ‘hmm ... hanh ... hanh’ of someone talking on the telephone. The door was artfully ajar to allow passers-by a glimpse of a Gandhara Buddha, a Bukhara rug, and a bare arm draped over a sofa back. ‘It’s my house. I’ll invite who I want!’ the voice said, and it was Shehnaz Saeed’s voice. I wondered if she were talking about me and, if so, whether it was Ed on the other end of the line, but my guide was looking back impatiently as I slowed my steps so I had to speed up and follow her. Then I was climbing up stairs and more stairs, feet echoing on the uncarpeted ground. It was surprisingly cool indoors; the slatted window shutters facing the sun were all closed, casting half the house into shadow.
    At the top of the stairs, the old woman pushed open a set of wooden doors and gestured for me to step outside. I did so, and found I was on the roof, diagonally across from a cupola of yellow stone which gave shade to a table, laid for two, beneath it. The old woman disappeared back indoors. For want of something better to do I walked round the roof, looking down on the beautifully tended garden below and enjoying the view this height afforded of grand neighbourhood houses, more than one of which served as diplomatic housing for consul generals from countries which, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, had made it known to the Poet that he need not bother applying to them for asylum. Freedom of speech was all very well, but there was no need to exercise it against a government that was helping in the fight against Communism—that had been the implicit message back in those days when our schoolteachers told us that the Russians thought of Afghanistan as a mere steppingstone to the warm-water port of Karachi, so it was our national duty to ... oh, why think of any of that? Any of that or any of what followed or what was still to come.
    â€˜You’ve sowed, now reap,’ I announced to any representative of the nation who might be