—48—
Talwarpur Palace
[In Urdu]
Rafīq-e-Jān,
I have just received your letter. Do not think you must cheer me. You must pour out your heart in whatever ways it most serves you, and know that I am here, listening, every day. Thank you for the constant flow of letters and drawings. Know that I hold you in my heart every day.
The war has made its presence felt here, and it underlines the ongoing struggles.
Arrests have been made of protestors, and Gandhiji has called for a return to satyagraha.
The villagers, used to having men in the fields, struggle to do the farm work they rely upon.
I have asked a committee of village elders, Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu, to counsel the women on best farm practices, and I am pleased to report that it seems to be reaping rewards. (A little joke.)
One small beauty today. I can smell rotis on the fire. Soon we will eat them for our midday meal, which I suspect will have carrots. It has been a very good year for carrots.
Here is a little fable. Once there was a sparrow who built her nest upon the ground, and a careless elephant stepped on it.
Vowing revenge, the sparrow enlisted the help of her friends, a woodpecker, a frog, and a fly.
The woodpecker pecked his eye, the fly buzzed to confuse him, and the frog croaked to lure him into a hole, where he fell and died.
England has survived everything thus far. She will survive this onslaught, too.
You are managing a great deal of trouble with grace.
Never doubt it. Take care of your own precious self even as you care for others.
Paint as much as you are able. Read for escape.
Tend your garden. Let a cat purr you into hope.
That body of yours contains the soul I love more deeply than any in the world.
Tanveer
I found myself painting for very long hours, whenever I felt it safe to be so close to the sky, whenever Mother rested. The paintings I’d removed from their frames waited in a pile on the table, while others sat in the closet, and I painted new work.
The images of women were stacked, set aside, not quite jelling, the original drive lost somewhere in the bombing.
They leaned against the wall, forgotten, while I mixed a palette of soft pastel shades, a dusty golden yellow, the soft dull green of grasses late in the summer, flashes of orange and bright cerulean blue.
I painted my memories of India. Tanveer and Gurdaya and I sitting on the banks of our pond, our clothes drying in the sun, our feet bare.
The three of us on the rooftop the night we saw the tiger.
I painted a memory of my ayah, smoking in a hidden place with a servant whose name I couldn’t remember, the pair of them laughing. Childhood, hazy and beautiful.
And I painted tigers, weaving in and out of trees, like Cheshire cats, peering at the viewer as if at that little girl I’d been, longing for connection with a wild, free creature.
Mother was increasingly unwell. Her belly swelled and her breath took on a sweetish smell.
But the worst were the days she did not seem to recognize me, or when she thought we were in another time.
One afternoon when she awakened after a long sleep, she appeared to be quite lucid, but she kept telling me about her daughter.
“I am your daughter, Elsie,” I said.
“No, Elsie has gone to Cairo. She’s having an adventure.”
I picked up the cat and settled her on Mother’s legs. “Is she now? What sort of adventure?”
“She’s exploring the Nile! Can you imagine? Her husband is quite the amateur archaeologist.”
“I see.” I offered the thin oatmeal I’d made. “Will you have a bite or two?”
“Oh, no. I’ve already eaten today. We had pork tamales. I do not always love them, but Elena makes them beautifully. Such exquisite masa.”
It made no difference what I said when she entered these delusions, and it seemed kinder to let her live in them. I kept my sketchbook on my lap and drew Bastet and a kitten who laboriously climbed the coverlet to find her. “I have never had a tamale. I would like to someday.”
“Elsie is not happy,” she said, plucking at the sheet.
I stilled. This was a new turn. “Oh?”
“She does not love Peter. He is a good man, and he is supporting her well, but she’s never learned that we must make compromises.”
“Is he a good man?” I asked, adding depth to Bastet’s fur with a hard mark.
“Oh, yes. Good family. He adores her, but she pines for that prince. Always the prince. She thinks I don’t know.”
“You did know,” I said, unable to resist. “She wrote you letters during the Great War. She told you she wanted to marry him.”
“And I told her it was as impossible then as it ever was.”
“You were living a life of great freedom in New Mexico, with a great love. Why were you so sure your daughter could not have the same thing?”
She shook her head. “She romanticized that connection. He would never have married her.”
How had I never recognized how she really felt about my connection to Tanveer? It seemed she’d always spoken one thing and believed another. “He loved her.”
“Perhaps. But how ever would I have explained her marriage to anyone?”
A flush of anger crept up my neck to my cheeks. I could no longer sit with her. “Good night, Mother.”