Partitions: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

trouble taken over me.
    I understand it now, of course. I can see inside Shankar’s chest, past the three intensely painful broken ribs. I see the narrowed corridor through which his blood must pass on the way to his lungs, and the tiny new vessels his heart has desperately let down, like banyan shoots, to get the blood where it has to go. I lay open the book of his chest.
    Back then, in spite of my own medical training, I understood only that something deep and unreachable in my son was flawed. I am not sure if Masud had finished speaking when I asked, “Is he going to live?”
    Masud did what he did whenever the answer was no. He showed the backs of his hands, as if in namaaz, and looked at the sky. In that moment, when he referred me to heaven because there was no hope on earth, the bargain was made. In my heart, without the formality of prayer or the striking of a temple bell, I offered all I had. What was surrendered would be collected, and what was granted would be distributed, very slowly, over the next year. But at that moment, imperceptibly, my son began to thrive, and I let in my sickness unto death.
    *   *   *
    Masud’s hands are now crossed over his mouth. Broken glassware, forceps, two steel basins, and several boiled-sterile scalpels clutter the stone walk. They have been thrown from the room upstairs where he lances abscesses and extracts splinters. He limps inside, his left shoe soggy with blood from the razor cut. It doesn’t occur to him to check if the people who did this have left or not. On his way upstairs, he passes a sink and mirror and sees shreds of shaving cream still bearding one cheek. An intense flush goes over his face and neck. The world has gone to havoc, but his person must not surrender to it. The faucets still work. Carefully, in the ruins of his clinic, he tries to finish his interrupted shave. A scalpel off the floor serves as razor, not a kind edge to use. Two fat drops of blood spot the sink. He stops and splashes off the shaving cream. So his face remains divided, one side clean-shaven, shadow on the other.
    Upstairs, a tall steel cabinet’s linens and towels have been scooped onto the floor and kicked about—no other quick way to vandalize towels. A crowbar threads the handles, paint scraped bright from the rough force-through. Inside that cabinet, a muffled voice.
    “33 Firoza Bagh,” it sobs. “33 Firoza Bagh, just past the Ganesh temple … please let me out.”
    The address is Masud’s own. He recognizes, after a moment, the voice of Gul Singh, his errand runner and gatekeeper. He draws out the crowbar. Gul Singh has been stuffed into the bottom shelf, half his size; his body, once it writhes onto the floor, seems to expand. “I’ll tell you, my brothers, I’ll tell you where…” His face turns up to see Masud through eyes nearly swollen shut. He stops speaking and hangs his head.
    Masud kneels. Gul Singh raises his head.
    “I didn’t tell them, Doctor sahib. I swear.”
    He is telling the truth. The proof colors his cheek and eyes black-purple. Locked in the cabinet, he grew scared they would set fire to the clinic—so he gave up the address, but after they left. He is ashamed nonetheless, and Masud cannot bring him to his feet.
    “You have to go,” moans Gul Singh. “This city isn’t safe for you.”
    Masud gestures at the room. “This? This?”
    Gul Singh explains how it is the same all over the city, every Muslim storefront a blown-in cavity of ash, flanked by intact Hindu or Sikh shops. Small photographs of Sikh women mutilated in Rawalpindi pass from hand to hand. Their naked backs or foreheads have been scrawled upon like the walls of a demolished gurdwara: Aslam Khan ki biwi. “Wife” of Aslam Khan. The group that came through looking for the rich Mussulmaan doctor spared Gul Singh because of his kes and kara, but loyal silence earned him fists to the face. He knew two of the boys—Sukhdev Kang’s sons, though they didn’t admit to knowing