All That's Left to Tell(11)

After she stopped speaking, he was aware that he was clenching his eyes, not in pain, but out of the effort of trying to imagine Claire in this place. He was holding his mouth open, as if he could breathe in the possibility.

“I’ll be back later tonight,” the woman said. “Azhar will be here this afternoon.”

After she left, Saabir untied his hands and removed the blindfold, and for the remaining hours of the morning the walls felt so familiar that they were like a second skin.





4

Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, Marc sat with Azhar in the rising heat; at times, Azhar dozed in his chair, his gun slipping down his shoulder to the floor, and it occurred to Marc that, in the right circumstance, it would have been relatively easy to slip out the door if he had any chance of knowing where he was once he got outside. He wasn’t sure what that circumstance would look like, but he imagined himself running down one of the narrow roads, taking hold of someone’s sleeve, and pleading into an impassive, uncomprehending face.

Azhar left the room frequently to bring in cups of water for both of them, along with plates of food in the early evening. Azhar ate quickly and then watched Marc carefully portion out on the plate each spoonful of grain. Toward nightfall, Azhar lit a lantern, and the light fell across his hands as he held his cup, and Marc saw a heavy scar between two of his knuckles and other places where there had been nicks or cuts that had healed. When Azhar saw him staring at them, he put his cup down and held his hands up for Marc to see, turning them at the wrist. The lines on his palms were long and dark.

“So you work as a butcher, Josephine says, and then you spend hours on end watching over me so you can catch up on your sleep.”

He wasn’t sure how much Azhar had understood, but Azhar nodded and smiled at him, and then pointed at the deepest scar. Then with his other hand he made chopping motions in the air, as if he were handling a meat cleaver, and brought the invisible cleaver down between his knuckles so that Marc would understand how the scar got there.

“Boy,” Azhar said. He pointed toward himself, and then laid his hand flat in the air several feet above the ground. “Boy,” he said again. Marc gathered that Azhar must have cut himself when he was a child and learning the trade.

“Not a mistake you’d make more than once,” Marc said to him.

Azhar smiled. He took the gun off his shoulder and placed the tip of it in the area of the dirt floor in front of his chair. He moved it slowly across the floor with careful deliberation, and after a couple of minutes, Marc could see that he was drawing a remarkably accurate outline of a cow. Azhar even added a tail and legs with hooves, and lastly a pair of wide eyes and a mouth turned up into a grin. He tapped the tip of the gun on the cow’s smile and then gestured with his free hand as if to say, “Why not?” He then drew lines through various parts of the cow, cordoning it off into sections. He tapped a section of the cow about two-thirds toward the tail, and then looked up into Marc’s eyes and with a smile on his face began chewing slowly, savoring something imaginary, and then with his fingertips starting at the corners of his mouth, ran them down into his beard as if the juices of the meat were overflowing. “Good,” Azhar said, and Marc realized he was teaching him which parts of the cow were most tender and flavorful.

Marc stood up from his chair, and Azhar didn’t raise the gun as he had during the first days. Marc knelt next to the drawing and pointed to the section at the rear end of the cow.

“What about here?”

Azhar nodded, and then cupped his hands in the shape of a bowl and hollowed it out with his fingertips. He then used his finger as a knife as if he were cutting pieces, and then stirred it with an imaginary spoon.

“Ah, soup,” he said. “Good in a soup or stew.”

Azhar grinned. He said the word in Urdu.

“You’re a good man, Azhar, even if you are a terrorist.”

But this was a word Azhar recognized, and he frowned and touched the shoulder strap that held the gun.

“I’m sorry,” Marc said, and then knelt back on the ground and drew a crude image that was supposed to look like Azhar, and then images of small children—stick figures, really—behind him.

“How many children do you have?” he asked.

Azhar smiled again, and held up three fingers, and with his free hand held up two, and said, “Boy.”

“Two boys and a girl,” Marc said, nodding.

Someone knocked on the door then, and Azhar stood up and pulled the blindfold and rope from his salwar kameez. He tied Marc’s hands first, lacing them carefully, and then wrapped the blindfold around his head, passing his fingers on the surface over Marc’s eyes in order to smooth out a wrinkle. Marc heard him open the door, exchange a word with the woman, and then close it behind him.

She stood for a while in front of him as if she were surveying the situation, and then Marc realized she must have been looking at Azhar’s sketch of the cow.

“He was teaching me about his trade,” he said. “Showing me the best cuts of beef.”

“So I see,” she said.

“You can’t blame him. My god, he sits here for hours on end with nothing to do. He must be bored out of his mind.”

“It looks like a petroglyph.”

“A what?”

“A petroglyph. Like a cave drawing. I’ve seen them in different places here. This reminds me of an elephant I saw in the north that was etched onto this blue stone. There were the same kinds of lines dividing it into parts.”