Night of the Golden Butterfly

FOUR

IN THE EARLY DAYS, my father would drive us there, spend a week, and then return to Lahore. The mountain routine in our household was well established. The servants would wake us up at three in the morning, when it was still pitch dark outside. My twin sisters, three years younger, and I would be placed half-asleep in the back of a ramshackle Chevrolet station wagon and by four at the latest my father would be driving northwards on the Grand Trunk Road, which had barely any other traffic at that hour. This was the reason for the pre-dawn departures, which felt like torture at the time. My sisters and I would wake again when the sun rose and wait for the inevitable stop at Wazirabad Junction Railway Station, where they served excellent scrambled eggs on toast, brewed a fine pot of tea and had relatively clean toilets. That was a very long time ago. Soon afterwards we would cross the mighty Jhelum and once again hear the story of how Alexander the Great had found the river too difficult to ford and almost lost his life. We came to know this tale so well that in the years ahead we would repeat it in unison as we approached the bridge, to pre-empt the parental version. The next stop was Rawalpindi, a brief halt to pick up chicken sandwiches and chilled coffee at the Silver Grill before the final stretch, which began on the tarmac road to Murree, the official hill station which my mother loathed because it was not Simla and was overcrowded with the ‘wrong sort’ of people — not counting Zahid and his family, of course, and the many other friends who spent the summers there. In my mother’s imagination Murree was Babylon, to be avoided even as a stopover on the way to our Arcadia.

Beyond Murree lay the rough road to the galis, the valleys between the Himalayan foothills, clothed in pines; soon after leaving the hill station the fragrance of these trees became overpowering. More than a hundred years ago, the British had come to the galis and built hill-cottages with quaint names like Kirkstone, Moonrising, Retreat, etc., to remind them of home. First we passed Khairagali, then Changlagali, then Doongagali, and on a ridge two miles above that lay Nathia, the queen of them all, with its own club and tennis courts and, most importantly, a library filled with books, mainly by authors one had never heard of before or never would again: the literary equivalent of B-movies and sometimes startlingly good.

Heaven in those days was arriving here, inhaling the scent of wild strawberries, sighting the snow-covered peak of Nanga Parbat in the Himalayan distance and wondering which of our summer friends had arrived.

This year, all I could think about was Jindié. When was she arriving? What day? What hour? I have scant memories of that time now, a time of unrequited passions that seemed to be the fate of our generation. To write the life of Plato I have to work hard to collect myself and remember what else happened that summer. It’s easier now, since my memories of Jindié have faded.

When we reached our summer house, the caretaker delivered a number of messages and handed me a scrap of paper. None of the messages were of any significance. Summer friends from Peshawar had already arrived, including two demon tennis players, Pashtun brothers, witty and easy mannered, who usually pulverized their opponents. Zahid and I had beaten them once and that was only because we could see better in the mist that enveloped the court. The note was from Younis, the jolly sub-postmaster who presided over the tiny post office in summer and stayed in the rest house below the bazaar. He wondered when we could meet for a cup of tea. The next day friends from Lahore and Karachi arrived as well. We met and exchanged pleasantries, but my thoughts were elsewhere.

My friends noticed how distracted I had become and assumed that as I was due to leave the country later that year, my mind had already departed and I found their company tiresome. How could I tell them all that I was suffering from love fever? There were also two young women present who were great fun because they never relapsed into coquetry and loathed bourgeois pettinesses and whose company, for those reasons, I enjoyed a great deal. I could only imagine their scathing comments if I admitted to anything that remotely resembled serious passion.

I walked alone to the Pines Hotel and exchanged greetings with the proprietor and staff. Soon after Partition, in 1947, when I was three and my sisters had not yet been born, we began staying at the Pines, and the proprietor, Zaman Khan, a tall, pot-bellied Pashtun with permanently bloodshot grey eyes — the result of an overfondness for the beer produced at the Murree Brewery by one of Jamshed’s more prosperous relatives — had become a familiar and friendly figure over the years. There was little that escaped him. He gave me a hug and immediately offered some information.

‘That green-eyed girl from Peshawar whom you liked so much last year is arriving next week with her mother.’

I feigned delight and then said in a casual tone, ‘A friend of mine, Hanif Ma, told me he was coming this year. They’re a Chinese family from Lahore.’

Zaman grabbed me by the arm and took me to his office. Together we looked at the reservations register. The Mas were due in two days.

‘I didn’t know you were friends. I’ll put them in the cottage where you stayed ten years ago. So I’ll be seeing more of you this year. Good. You know you can always eat here.’

‘Yes, but not in your dining room where you still serve those disgusting stews the English used to like.’

He pinched me and laughed. Thrilled by the news and on a high I walked down to the bazaar and met old friends, bought an off-white Chitrali hat and warmed my hands on a cup of delicious, if oversweet, mountain tea, a concoction made by boiling tea leaves in milk and sugar till the colour is exactly right. One of the most warming drinks in the world. When I walked into the post office, situated above a sloping ravine leading to the deep-valley villages below, where the local people lived throughout the year, I got a shock. Seated next to Younis the sub-postmaster was Plato. I’d completely forgotten that he was coming here this summer.

‘You didn’t know that we were old friends, did you?’ asked Younis. Younis and his mother had been in the same bus that took the refugees from Ludhiana and it was she who had looked after Plato till they reached the camp. Younis’s father, a night watchman working for a Hindu-owned factory in Ludhiana, had never been seen again. They had family in Peshawar, and Younis had matriculated and become a Grade 6 civil servant.

‘Grade 6’, said Plato, ‘is recognition that you will never rise in the service. Sub-postmaster for life.’

Younis roared with laughter. ‘Better than a peon. I just hope I can spend all my summers here till I die.’

It was barely noon. Younis offered me some locally fermented apricot liquor in my tea. I declined the pleasure, but both of them poured generous helpings into their own bowls. Some friends arrived to post letters and joined us for a while, till their sisters and mothers waiting outside shouted at them. Once they had left, Younis whispered, ‘I hear from Bostaan Khan that the girl from Peshawar will be here next week.’

Bostaan was an old waiter at the Pines, and a cardsharp. Why had they been gossiping about her?

‘Because of you.’

The previous summer I had made a fool of myself with Greeneyes and she had enjoyed snubbing me in public. One day I noticed her in a corner of the club avidly devouring a letter, obviously a billet-doux. Her white face turned deep red when she saw me.

‘Who is the lucky boy?’

‘None of your business.’

But it was. I’d approached Younis, who, as usual, was slightly tipsy. He had become a friend and regaled Zahid and me with stories of ever-so-respectable families being torn asunder by news of constant intrigues and infidelities. How did he know? He read their letters, of course, steaming them open at will and resealing them carefully before delivery. He swore that he only targeted the most snobbish families, the ones who looked down on him and treated him as a serf. I did think of asking him to open the exchange between my parents just to read what they were writing about me, but decided against it on the grounds that there might some embarrassing declarations of love and loyalty. In general it would be accurate to say that what Younis knew, we knew. Today he would be called a hacker and secretly admired, but at the time it was considered quite scandalous and had we spread the word he would have lost his job. Even Zahid, usually immune to ethics, was slightly shocked. We never did betray him. How could we? We were heavily implicated. So Younis was now told what was needed.

There were no photocopiers then. Every time Lailuma, the golden-haired, green-eyed Pashtun beauty — her name meant Moonlit Night — received or posted a letter, a messenger from Younis, usually the local postman, would rush over to wherever I was and drag me to the post office saying there was an urgent phone call from Zahid in Murree. There were few phones in those days and Zahid often rang. Though the telephone engineer at the exchange often let me use his phone in emergencies and took messages, the only public phone was located in the veranda of the post office.

In a small back room, I read Lailuma’s letters to her lover regularly and dispassionately. They touched me and were, in any case, far more endearing than her lover’s ultra-emotional, overbearing and permanently embittered tone. She was the constant butt of his irony, but for no reason. He was the type who makes me feel that some of us have more in common with apes than with other men. I gave up all hope. She was obviously in love with this stupid beast. The letters revealed how strongly her parents disapproved of the match. I agreed with their instincts if not their reasoning. The young man came from the wrong social class: his father was a shawl-trader with a stall in the Kissakhani bazaar. Despite my strong interest in her, I would have been on the man’s side in this whole affair had his character been even marginally more attractive. Either he couldn’t express himself properly or he really was obnoxious. After a rambling discussion fuelled by many cups of apricot liquor-laced tea, Younis, Zahid and I agreed that the match should be discouraged.

A few days before Lailuma left Nathiagali, I found her on her own, seated underneath a chestnut tree not far from Pines Hotel. I hinted that a friend of mine in Peshawar had informed me of her dilemma. She was stunned.

‘I don’t believe you.’

I then revealed her would-be-lover’s name and his father’s occupation. She nearly fainted.

‘Allah help me.’

‘He won’t, but I will.’

‘You!’

I calmed her down first and promised that her secret was safely buried in my heart. However, according to my friend who knew her beloved well, it was obvious that he was prone to fits of uncontrollable ill temper and was boorish in other ways too. Was it true, I asked, that his tenderness alternated with fury? If so, his jealous temperament would create insurmountable problems and for no reason at all. If he even saw her talking to a girlfriend he didn’t know, he would lose control. I carried on in this way, describing the worst characteristics of many of my acquaintances. To my astonishment, her startled eyes fixed their gaze on mine and she nodded strongly in agreement.

‘Your friend must know him really well. I’m beginning to think exactly the same. I was thinking of breaking off all contact with him, but I delayed writing the letter. I really don’t want him to think my parents have anything to do with it. They’re just stupid. Just because his father sells shawls and furs.’

‘That alone would be reason to wed the boy’, I said, ‘especially if the father has a treasure trove of old pashminas and shahtoosh.’

For the first time ever, she laughed. My heart missed a few beats. There is an awful Punjabi saying that attaches great importance to laughter as an adjunct of sexual conquest, ‘hasi te phasi’ (if she laughs, you’ve trapped her). It was not true, but for once I did believe I had improved my chances. Younis, too, was convinced that this was the case.

‘I know these Pashtun girls. They’re much more advanced than your Punjabi beauties. Make your move, my friend. Cement the Punjabi — Pashtun alliance. Give Fatherland something to be proud of.’

But it was too late to make any further moves that summer. She left a few days later, after we’d exchanged English novels. I had suggested she send the break-off letter from here so that she could start a new chapter in her life when she reached Peshawar and not be bothered by him. She thought this was a good idea. Younis and I both agreed that the letter was beautifully written, extremely dignified and far too generous. She went up even more in my estimation.

It would have been disloyal if I had kept Plato and Younis in the dark about Jindié, and in Zahid’s absence I needed to talk about her with someone. I told them. Plato was philosophical.

‘These things happen. You just need a tiny bit of hope for love to be born. Has she given you cause for hope?’

‘Not sure.’

‘Then you think she has. Well, we’re all here to help.’

Younis was disappointed. ‘I was imagining you with the moonlit Lailuma, but Allah decides. There is no reason to seal off that option. Am I to open all the letters addressed to the Chinese lady?’

‘No,’ I said, mortified by what Jindié might think if she ever found out. ‘Let’s wait.’

I had sprained my ankle while playing tennis and was incapacitated the day they arrived, but ordered a horse and rode over to the Pines the next day to pay my respects and drag Confucius to the old club. When Jindié saw me being helped down from the horse she burst out laughing, stopping only when she noticed that I was limping with the help of a stick.

‘I’m sorry, but I just never imagined you on horseback. You’re hurt?’ I explained. Confucius had gone in search of me. How we missed each other I don’t know, but Mrs Ma ordered some tea and Bostaan duly arrived with a tray and some truly terrible cucumber sandwiches made with stale bread, lightly soaked in water to make it appear fresh. He gave me a knowing smile, which could only mean that Younis had alerted him to my state of mind.

I warned Jindié and her mother against eating too often in the hotel and told Bostaan to offer the sandwiches to my horse, which he promptly did, only to have them rejected by the animal. This caused general merriment and a cheerful Mrs Ma went indoors to unpack.

‘It’s really beautiful here. You’ve been here every summer since you were two?’

I nodded, trying not to look at her too openly. She was wearing a blouse over a pair of black trousers and her hair was in a bun held together by ivory clips.

‘My foot is on the mend and in a few days I’ll be walking again. We’re all going up that mountain. Mukshpuri. A path leads to it from the other side of this hotel. The grown-ups usually stop halfway up, at Lalazar, where everyone eats lunch after we kids have returned from the summit.’

‘And after lunch?’

‘We pick daisies, sing, listen to Zahid play the accordion, tell stories and then come down and light a fire.’

‘Where will you light the fire?’

Before I could control myself the words slipped out. ‘In your heart.’ She became agitated and stood up as if to leave. I was spared the agony of her departure by the appearance of an out-of-breath Confucius.

‘One more thing, Jindié,’ I said, wanting to make up for my mistake. ‘You must walk a lot over the next few days to acclimatize. Otherwise your legs will be stiff after we climb the mountain.’

‘I suppose your legs are never stiff.’

‘Only because I walk several miles a day.’

‘On horseback?’ She laughed again and disappeared. I sighed with relief. I took Confucius to the bazaar and introduced him to Younis. Later that day Zahid arrived to stay with me for a few days and prepare for the Mukshpuri climb. In the evening I hobbled with him to the club. While everyone was playing tennis and ping-pong, I retired to the library and relieved the volunteer librarian for a few hours. Jindié came in to look at the books and said, ‘Colonial rubbish.’

I had no idea she was that way inclined and was quite delighted, but felt the library had to be defended.

‘The best books have been stolen. Only the rubbish is left, but there are a few others. Pearl S. Buck is quite readable.’

‘What? Are you mad or just stupid? Every literate Chinese laughs at her.’

‘Could that be because she describes the lowest depths of Chinese society and some literate Chinese find that embarrassing? I have to admit I learned a great deal from her books.’

‘That’s only because you’re ignorant and know nothing about China.’

‘True. One has to start somewhere. She got the Nobel Prize for no reason?’

‘Those idiots in Stockholm were ignorant, just like you. They were taken in by missionary sensitivities. Have you read The Dream of the Red Chamber?’

‘I tried, but the official translation is unreadable. Is it available in English?’

‘How do I know? My father is the expert on all this and will also know the best translation.’

‘In Punjabi, I hope. Confucius is a true Punjabi. He has assimilated every Lahori prejudice, including that profound malice against the cultured refugees who crossed the Jumna and found themselves in an illiterate hell.’

She laughed and lit the room, just as a whole gang of kids arrived to borrow books, disturbing our very first conversation. The day we climbed the mountain, Jindié, forgetful of her customary reserve, suddenly took my arm — a coup de foudre if ever there was one — and as come of the party looked askance, she pretended she had slipped. The gesture, however, had been noticed, and knowing looks were exchanged. Strange how the exchangers of knowing looks never realize that one can see them.

Lailuma arrived the following day, together with her extended family, and instantly became part of our crowd. She was in remarkably good spirits, understood perfectly that Jindié and I had become close and played the part of chaperone to perfection. She was now engaged to a lawyer she liked and thanked me again in Jindié’s presence for all my help last year. Strange, I thought to myself, how my desire for her had disappeared so completely. Love of the sort I felt for the Butterfly had a side effect, in the shape of what can only be the drollest of virtues: chastity.

Once we were alone, Jindié wanted to know the whole truth. Instinctively she had guessed that my motives in helping the Peshawari princess had not been totally pure. I told her the truth, concealing nothing, but made her pledge she would never reveal the sub-postmaster’s role. She agreed, but let me know that she thought what we did was despicable.

‘The end justifies the means.’

‘Have you instructed him to open my mail as well?’

‘Not yet.’

‘If you do I’ll never speak to you again.’

‘If I did, you’d never know.’

‘I would. I know your type better than you think. Spoilt Punjabi boys who think there are no rules in society. Anyway, most of the letters I get are from friends or my father, and they all write in Mandarin, so neither you nor that creepy postmaster would ever be able to read them.’

‘Creepy sub-postmaster, you mean.’ Jindié hit me on the arm with a clenched fist. ‘Would you like to know what some of our acquaintances are writing home about you and me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I said.’

‘Have you read anything?

‘A detailed letter from that buck-toothed girl you really like because she constantly flatters you. She wrote about us to her best friend in Multan. It’s ugly. Guess what. A new romance is brewing in the hills, like mountain chai. You’ll never believe it. Dara and Jindié, that Chinese girl who’s at college with me. They’re so shameless. They can barely keep their hands off each other. They watch each other all the time.’

Jindié laughed. ‘You are evil, but I’m warning you…’

‘Why should I want to read your letters?’

‘Curiosity. Jealousy. Possessiveness. Imbecility. All the Punjabi virtues. Your choice as to which applies best to you.’

‘I won’t read your letters, but get a sense of proportion. What you call Punjabi virtues are really universal. We’re just more open. Less subtle, but also less hypocritical.’

She smiled and I wanted to kiss her lips, but was too scared to do so because of the proximity of Mrs Ma, who now called for her daughter to come indoors. Had the old lady been eavesdropping as she watched the sun set from the cottage window?

When I reported this conversation to Plato and Zahid, they both agreed that there was little doubt that she loved me, and we discussed how to move forward. Zahid argued in favour of proposing marriage, but this was foolish since I had promised my parents I’d go study law in Britain. It was too early for any talk of marriage, and I dreaded the thought of saying anything to my mother, in many ways a deeply conservative person with fixed ideas on these matters. Plato advised a long engagement that would signify commitment and, no doubt, Jindié could also go abroad. The final decision could be left till later. A long engagement wasn’t appealing, but it made sense. The three of us agreed that this was what should be done once the summer was over. Before proceeding, I had to make sure that Jindié was in favour of this solution.

That last summer in Nathiagali was dominated by a process that I have already referred to earlier in connection with someone else, the process a lovelorn Stendhal described as crystallization in his compendium Love:

At the salt mines of Salzburg, they throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the abandoned workings. Two or three months later they haul it out covered with a shining deposit of crystals. The smallest twig, no bigger than a tomtit’s claw, is studded with a galaxy of scintillating diamonds. The original branch is no longer recognizable.

What I have called crystallization is a mental process which draws from everything that happens new proofs of the perfection of the loved one… one of your friends goes hunting, and breaks his arm: wouldn’t it be wonderful to be looked after by the woman you love! To be with her all the time and to see her loving you… a broken arm would be heaven…

Admittedly my sprained ankle and ride to her front door had produced different results, but the thought behind it, on my part, had been the same. All of my thoughts that summer were a maturation of the crystallization process. One evening, all of us young people were invited to dinner in Kalabagh, an Air Force recreation centre a few miles away from Nathia. Our hosts were two Pashtun friends, Lailuma’s cousins, whose father was a senior Air Force officer. It was an idyllic evening. The sky was beautiful, but it was getting chilly and we draped ourselves in shawls. Lailuma greeted us on arrival and I told her we were wearing the shawls to mark her escape from the shawl merchant’s son. She ignored me for the rest of the evening.

We carried torches for the return journey. I have no memory of anything else that happened that evening except the fact that Jindié and I abandoned all pretence. We walked next to each other. We talked only to one another and on the way back we took advantage of the dark and held hands. Lailuma came close to us and whispered, ‘Be careful’, but we were beyond caution and asked her to walk with us. The full moon was waning, but when we reached the old church in Nathia we could still see its light illuminating Nanga Parbat, the third-highest peak in the Himalayas. There were two or three special places where that peak could be observed, and so our party split up: Jindié, Lailuma and I went to the observation spot behind the lightning-scarred church. The others disappeared elsewhere.

‘Jindié.’

‘I know.’

We embraced each other, and I stroked her cheeks, but nothing more. We declared our love and I suggested we immediately get engaged to prevent our respective parents from thinking about other alternatives. She held me tight, kissed my eyes. We were surprised by our audacity and laughed about it at the time. Before we could continue the discussion, we heard Lailuma shouting our names as a warning. We walked away and joined her and the rest. Neither of us spoke till we reached the Pines Hotel. Then Zahid and I walked back another mile to my house and I told him. There was another member of our party that evening: Jamshed had arrived to stay with a cousin in Doongagali, but given his weak, cowardly and contemptible character, I’m trying to avoid mention of him as much as I can in this account. Plato despised him and I never told him about Jindié, though he probably found out, since it was hardly a secret anymore.

Three days before Jindié was due to leave she agreed to a tryst in the church. I knew where the key was kept, and in the past we had often used it as place to rendezvous. The days when a priest would come from Peshawar for Sunday prayers had ended in the Fifties. The building was in a state of disrepair and often leaked when the rain was heavy. Then Jindié decided that she did not want to meet there. When I asked why, she said it made her feel like a character in a Pearl S. Buck novel. I never let her forget that remark, but her rejection of the church meant a long trek with Lailuma, who was perfectly willing to walk behind us or in front at a suitable distance. She collected Jindié. I met them at the empty Government House. I had gone hunting once with the caretaker and now he let us in with a huge welcome. We walked out the back through its lush gardens and entered a path that led to Miran Jani, the highest mountain in Nathia. We found a beautiful meadow and sat on the grass while Lailuma opened a book and tried to ignore us for the next two hours. Jindié spoke first, and her voice was tremulous with emotion.

‘I’ve decided. I don’t want to get engaged to you.’

I seized her hand and kissed it. ‘Why? Why?’

‘It’s wrong for us to behave in such a traditional way. My mother says if we love each other we can do what we want. I could go to Leeds University and enrol in the Chinese department and we could see each other every weekend. And if we wanted to, we could get married. Or not? It’s for us to decide. Nobody else.’

I was in heaven. I put my head on her lap and after a while she began to stroke my hair. ‘It’s done,’ I said. ‘That’s what we’ll do. I’m glad you’ve told your mother. I’ll tell mine.’

‘No need to if you don’t want to,’ she replied. ‘Confucius said your mother was very beautiful and open-minded in some ways but also very traditional and conservative in others. She may not like her son marrying a Chinese cobbler’s daughter.’

I hugged her and kissed her head and hands and cheeks. ‘Jindié, my mother is traditional, but she married my father against her own father’s wishes. They were from the same family, but my father had become a Communist and…’

‘The whole of Lahore knows the story, Dara, but that doesn’t stop people behaving differently when their own children are involved in something of which they disapprove.’

We carried on talking all the way back. Lailuma told me she agreed with Jindié. No confessions in Lahore whatsoever. In Britain we could do as we wished. Later Plato and Zahid strongly agreed as well.

‘You know how headstrong your mother is,’ said Zahid. ‘Don’t say a word. I hope you haven’t kept a diary.’

‘I have, but it’s permanently locked and only I know where it’s kept.’

‘Don’t be foolish. She’ll have it opened and resealed or relocked. Don’t underestimate Punjabi mothers. They’re just as bad as Jewish ones.’

Zahid was also preparing to study abroad, but not till the following year.

Jindié and I would have six more weeks together in Lahore before my departure. When I returned to Lahore, everyone was talking about Tipu’s arrest and disappearance, and within a fortnight Zahid had been accused of betraying him. Now that I think back on those days, I can recall that it was Jamshed who conveyed the news to our household. He boasts of his infamies now, flaunts them shamelessly, but on that day his conscience was on parade. He referred to Zahid’s base character and how he must be punished. Jamshed was always a lowlife, and his brand of amorality became my supreme aversion.

At first I was devastated and then depressed, but after a few days I was in a rage with Zahid. Who could have guessed that such malignancy was lurking in that heart? Jindié and I would endlessly discuss this event. She was always more careful and warned me not to believe every statement that came from the police. Zahid, meanwhile, had disappeared to Karachi to stay with an uncle, which, as far as I was concerned, was extremely suspicious behaviour. Plato agreed with me, but then he trusted nobody.

‘Each of us has the capacity to dissimulate with such profundity that we can often surprise ourselves. Perhaps Zahid thought he was doing you a favour in getting Tipu out of the way. Didn’t you tell me that Tipu was stuck on Jindié?’

‘There was nothing in that, Plato, just my diseased brain.’

While all this was going on, my mother, as Zahid had predicted, had found my diary with the help of her maids, read it, and discussed it at length with my father, who, to his enormous credit, refused to even glance at it. She worked herself into a terrible state. I knew something was wrong the minute I got home that day. My mother was in a sulk, barely replied to my greeting and pretended she was reading a book. A few minutes later she burst into my room in an elemental rage and announced that she hated weak men who fell in love with women and grovelled at their feet.

I was astonished. ‘Then you must hate my father for falling in love with you. In fact now that you mention it, I wish he…’

Before I could complete my sentence she rushed forward and slapped my face. Then so much rubbish began to pour out that I decided there and then that if she ever mentioned the word Chinese or cobbler again I would walk out and seek refuge with Plato at Scotch Corner or flee to the house of a sympathetic aunt. It was almost as if she knew that or, what is more likely, had been warned by my father not to travel down that road, and so she suddenly changed her tack. All her life her feelings about childish trifles had been so violent that in more sane moments she admitted her weakness and reproached herself. Not that day. Now, trembling with rage, she shouted, ‘She’s the same age as you. She should be at least five or six years younger.’

I was so taken aback that I burst out of laughing, and then pointed out that some of the happiest couples in the family were roughly the same age, including two of her brothers and their wives, whereas Jindié was two years younger than me, not that it mattered in the least. In fact, I told my mother, one of our cousins had married his stepmother’s sister, who was ten years older than he was, and they, too, were blissfully happy.

In fact, I said, it was a matter of some regret to me that Jindié wasn’t a few years older since I preferred mature women. Unable to respond, she moved forward to assault me once again, but I stepped aside at the last minute and she fell on my bed instead. The next morning she radiated a surface calm, but was still seething. She was sometimes capable of manufacturing the most fantastic untruths, but also specialized in trivial fibs, and was usually caught out because of her inconsistencies. She could never remember what she had said to the same person some weeks previously. As I tucked into my scrambled eggs, I smiled at her to show there was no ill will on my part. She took this as a cue for hypocrisy and a malapropism, another feature of her dialect.

‘I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m opposed to her because her father has been measuring our feet for donkey’s ears.’

I began to laugh. ‘No, mother. He has been measuring donkey’s feet for my father’s and grandfather’s ears.’

She hurled a boiled egg at me, which missed. At this point I decided it was best to go out for a long walk. As fate would have it, I found myself walking unconsciously in the direction of Nairn College, and just before I reached the gate a car honked at me. It was a cousin. We exchanged greetings. The chauffeur got out and held open the back door. I got in. We drove into the college car park.

‘Dara, have you come to see Jindié?’

‘Well, I wasn’t planning to, but… yes!’

‘She may have left. I’ll go and see, but if you’re caught, Miss Willoughby-Ashleymore will ring all our parents.’

‘Nothing she can do to me.’

‘Dara, at least cover your head with a shawl so they’ll think you’re a woman.’

‘What about my moustache? Oh, I forgot. Miss Willoughby-Ashleymore sports one as well. I’m happy to put on a disguise. Bring back a bra and some socks.’

She giggled and walked hurriedly to the girl’s hostel, a veritable harem where we were denied entry, but where mischief of every sort flourished. Within ten minutes she was back with the required items. I was wearing a salwar/kurta and hurriedly assembled a pair of breasts, much to the chauffeur’s amusement, covered my head and half my face with a shawl, put on a slight limp and accompanied my ever-so-sporting cousin to a friend’s room, where Jindié was waiting. She giggled.

‘A bit of eye makeup and you’d be a perfect hermaphrodite!’

The friends scarpered. The minute we were alone I ditched the bra and socks. We fell chastely into each other’s arms. I managed to imprint a tiny kiss on her lips. Believe me, dear reader, it was purely token. Our lips barely touched, but it startled her. She sat bolt upright and rapped me on the knuckles with a fly swat.

‘Why do you always make me angry? I’ll never see you alone unless you promise to behave.’

‘Have you read the Thousand and One Nights, Jindié?’

She pushed me away. Wanting desperately to amuse her, I described the conversation with my mother. She instantly became melancholic.

‘I warned you not to tell her.’

‘She ransacked my desk and bookshelves, then forced open the secret drawer in my cupboard and found my diary.’

‘Why did you keep a diary? So immature.’

‘Fantasies have to be recorded somewhere.’

She wanted to know what I had written. I provided a brief summary. She covered her face with her hands.

‘You wrote that we spent all night talking?’

‘On the phone! I did. It’s true.’

‘I know, but it creates a bad impression.’

‘Who cares?’

She became silent. Then she said, ‘Go. Let me think about all this now. And don’t ring me from home. Go to the German café.’

Our guards were outside, waiting patiently and eavesdropping. They entered the room promptly. Slightly depressed, I resumed my disguise and walked out, moving my buttocks suggestively. As we walked past the tree to which was attached the Nairn College bell — that evil tocsin which summoned the women to class and assemblies and signalled that visitors should leave — I took out my penknife and detached the bell from the rope. My escorts, three of them cousins of mine, were horror-struck.

‘Hai Allah, Allah. We’ll all be expelled. You monster. You’re never coming here again. Rude boy. Evil one. Viper!’ And so on. I rushed to the car, clutching the bell to my stomach, and was driven away. Miss Willoughby-Ashleymore, I was later told, instituted a full-scale investigation and even summoned a senior police officer whose daughter was at the college, to frighten the students, but the mystery was never solved. The memento, rusty and worn like the college to which it once belonged, still hangs from the mango tree in my mother’s old garden, where it was often used by the gardener to frighten away the parrots. The following week Jindié and I met at the German café, and she confessed that the theft of the bell had cheered her a great deal, restoring me to her favour.

But worse was about to happen. As the time neared for my departure, friends organized farewell get-togethers. Those who shared our reserved table at the college café had a special event where fruit juices and samosas were provided free of charge. Respected hugged me with emotion.

‘You won’t forget us, will you?’

How could I forget any of them? With few exceptions they’re all dead now, all the friends who were permitted to sit at our table, whose purity and integrity we guarded so fiercely from fakes, frauds and fools. Professor Junaid drank himself to death. Haroon had a heart attack in his late fifties. Respected disappeared with the old canteen, his later whereabouts unknown. And so it went. Plato, Zahid, Confucius and I are probably the sole survivors of our Atlantis. I saw their ghosts when I visited the college after a forty-year absence. I could almost hear their voices. I realized my eyes were moist. My sentimentality surprised me; sentimentality was something that was brutally condemned by us when we were young. How we hated all those at neighbouring tables who talked about nothing else but the glorious Mughal past of the city, Mughal rule in India and Mughal this and Mughal that; Plato would shout, ‘Mughal wine, Mughal lechery and opium, Mughal fondness for boys…’ Another of us would interrupt loudly and sing the praises of Lahore under the Sikhs, deliberately exaggerating the virtues of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the one-eyed warrior who had held the British at bay and maintained an independent Punjab. His old palace was not so far away from where we sat, close to the Badshahi Mosque and the Diamond Market — cold during the day, a furnace at night — in the old red-light district where some of the gaudiest courtesans’ houses had been built by a great-uncle of mine. The old Royal district: mosque, palace and brothel all within easy reach of each other and close to the river that no longer flows.

There were other tables where perfumed young men practised a wit that had been carefully rehearsed, to impress each other and the women students who had their tea and samosas separately in an adjoining garden and whose laughter and tinkling voices enhanced the charm of the place.

Rehearsed wit was not permitted at our table. Plato detested the practice as a curse of the age and glared suspiciously at any of us if he thought a bon mot lacked spontaneity. This extempore wit could only be a hit-and-miss affair, but it was preferable to the other sort. Plato’s came with an eccentricity that — unlike his wit — appeared to be carefully cultivated. According to some of his own pupils, he had taken to cycling round the school and was often seen precariously balanced as he stood on the seat of a moving bike, arms outstretched, repeatedly shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar’. When we asked if this was true, he nodded. Why? ‘Never heard of satire?’

Was it old friends I was mourning or an old city, an old world that had since changed so much and for the worse, a world in which expectations for a better future were always high and in which the ultra-Wahhabi beard, gangster politics and cancerous corruption had yet to appear and drown all hope. The Jamaat-i-Islami boys were present in miniscule numbers then, and would sometimes argue with us, replying parrot-like to all our criticisms with a single phrase, ‘Islam is a complete code of life,’ and that was how we used to address them. ‘Tell me something, Islam-is-a-complete-code-of-life, could it be true that we are descended from apes? Have you ever considered the possibility or studied the evidence?’

As I looked at the faded photographs in the old hall, the scene of so many tumultuous events, I saw a long-forgotten Pashtun face that made me smile. A decent human being but a terrible pedant, he had, to our great surprise, joined the army and risen to become a general. The last I heard of him was a description of his rage at being strip-searched at Dulles Airport while on his way to attend a Pentagon briefing in December 2001. We were all there on that wall, except for Plato, who of course never studied at the college. How strange it seems now, but none of us who congregated at our table each morning were believers. Not a single one. And that was normal. We were not alone.

A few elderly professors wandered over and greeted me warmly, insisting that they had shared the table. Some remembered defying the injunctions against political demonstrations and marching to the US Consulate to protest the murder of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. Others recounted episodes that had never taken place, an imagined past. I smiled. To each his illusions.

Before I left Lahore for England, I said farewell to all my old haunts except Zahid’s house, which his treachery had declared out of bounds. I loved and esteemed this city: its courage, which rivalled its cuisine; its wit and self-deprecatory humour; its energy, male and female; its cafés which, even after 1947, preserved a constancy and a depth of ideas; its softness or hard coarseness, depending on the occasion. The new suburbs that were being built when I left housed an altogether different class of citizens. These were young men born of provincial fathers or nouveau riche traders, who had moved to the city to increase their fortunes.

Plato loathed them as only he could, seeing comedy in what they regarded as virtue. He would insult them to their faces, saying they were the most obtuse and barbaric ruffians he had ever set his eyes on, even though he knew this was a slight exaggeration. He would mock their exaggerated mannerisms and body language, their snobbery and dress codes, their etiolated appearance and abominable egotism, but above all the callousness they displayed towards those they saw as their social inferiors. I knew some of them. In their favour it can be said that they did not yet carry weapons. Their children do.

At home, my mother was convinced that she had won me over, that there was no further cause for anxiety on the ‘China front’. She boasted to an older sister that everything had been handled with exquisite grace, the sort of remark a torturer might make after a prisoner he’s been working on is found dead. The core of her real world was made up of her sisters, a few younger women who doted on her every word, and her family, which meant my father and, alas, myself. As for my sisters, they were made to look pretty so that they didn’t disgrace her at public occasions, but their future was circumscribed by a single deadly institution: marriage.

She possessed many virtues, was amiable and generous most of the time, but prone, as I have said, to fits of uncontrollable rage. Plato accidentally witnessed one of these while visiting me and was impressed by it. She had assumed he was a tradesman.

Her own marriage to my father had not been strictly conventional, to put it mildly. An elopement and secret wedding; a scandal in the family; my grandfather threatening to kill her and himself if the marriage were not annulled; the anger of my paternal grandmother, from a more blue-blooded faction of the family and enraged that her son was not considered suitable simply because of his Communist views. It had all worked out in the end, and an official wedding, attended by the city’s notables, had duly taken place. All this should have made my mother more relaxed in her own views, but it was as if, having set an audacious fashion when she was young, she was now surprised by her own boldness, and she often displayed a pseudo-morality that was distressing to all of us. Were there other skeletons in her past of which we had no idea? Her semi-hysterical defence of monogamy, and this in a culture where monogamy is actively discouraged, has left me suspicious to this day. At the time, however, she appeared triumphant. She had wrecked my happiness and was boasting about her success to my father and her circle of intimates.

How wrong she was and how right as well, but not because of my apparent capitulation. It was Jindié who took my mother’s stupid strictures to heart. Suddenly we were no longer meant for each other. She was too old anyway. Why didn’t I marry one of my delectable cousins, as was the tradition in our family. They were ever so pretty. Surely I could inspect a few fifteen-year-old ones now so that they could be ready in a few years’ time. We belonged to different worlds. It was pointless annoying the family. She would not be seeking entry at Leeds University. We must not see or speak to each other again.

I was in a panic. How could this be? Why? She wouldn’t tell me. In desperation I went to see her mother, a woman of admirable impulses and rare good sense. Mrs Ma soothed my ego, but offered no advice. Her daughter was the only person who could decide, she told me with quiet pride. Confucius, too, understood my pain, but he was half-scared of Jindié’s sharp tongue and would never dream of defying her will. I needed Zahid and cursed him for having destroyed our friendship. Plato was useless in these matters, but said he would do anything to help, and he stressed the anything. It was then that a crazy idea began to form in my head, one with which Plato became centrally involved.