Of course, there was never a rally that she didn’t attend herself. I remember going to her house one day and finding her with vicious bruises on her back and arms and stomach; and sometimes she was taken into police custody for anywhere between a few hours and three weeks, during which time Beema was almost constantly on the phone to her influential relatives. But despite how harrowing those days were there was an exultation about my mother; she had finally found an incarnation that suited her entirely. And there were significant victories too — Safia Bibi was acquitted by the Federal Sharia Court and the Islamic Law of Evidence was amended so that it was only in cases pertaining to financial matters that the testimony of two women was equal to that of one man (not enough of a victory, my mother said, but still significant), and the Ansari Commission’s recommendation never became law.

And the Poet, during this time

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW IF HE REALLY WAS WORKING ON A COLLECTION AFTER HIS RETURN TO PAKISTAN, AS HIS ADMIRERS SAY, OR IF FEAR OF FURTHER IMPRISONMENT MADE HIM STOP WRITING, AS SOME WONDER.

Oh, he was still writing. Writing feverishly, though not publishing anything — he said if he was going to prison again it would be for a complete collection, not just an individual poem.

I think both he and my mother were happier with their own reflections in the mirror at this time than at any earlier point of their lives. And I, too, remember the next three years as happy times, despite — and in some way, as a result of — all the mayhem wreaked upon the nation. There was such a headiness at the centre of all the anti-government activity.

But then

IN 1986, HE WAS FOUND MURDERED IN AN EMPTY PLOT OF LAND. NO POSTHUMOUS WORK APPEARED.

And Mama became so incapacitated with grief that Beema moved her into the room next to mine, in my father’s house, and she was there but not there for two years before she’d had enough, and left.

The paper in my hand started to blur. I dropped it in the waste-paper basket and sent an e-mail to the CEO saying: The bio’s fine.

Then I returned to the darkness and stayed there for the rest of the day.

VIII

Who was the most civilized Crusader?

a) Richard the Lionheart

b) Frederick Barbarossa

c) Bahemond of Taranto

d) Frederick II

Answer: d

The quiz show host raised his dyed eyebrows across the desk at me. ‘They’re very good questions except, as you know, for that last one.’ He put down the list of questions and slashed a cross over my Crusader question without any sign of irony. ‘But, as a matter of interest, why Frederick II?’

‘He was excommunicated three times by two different Popes. That seems eminently civilized to me. But he never got his due during his lifetime, poor man. Instead of waging war on the Muslims, as any good crusader should do, he decided to enter into diplomatic negotiations and won Jerusalem in that shameful manner, while also settling a ten-year peace treaty with the Sultan of Egypt. He was ridiculed throughout Europe for this unmanly conduct.’

The quiz show host stretched his mouth into the smile with which he once recommended a brand of tea in a popular ad from my childhood. ‘Well, we can’t possibly have that question, then. No Christian who wins Jerusalem from the Muslims, in any manner, can be deemed civilized by us without causing all kinds of problems.’ He licked his fingertip and used it to smooth down his eyebrows. ‘You know, the opening still exists for the host of the political chat show. I know the Big Man offered it to you. You might want to give it some thought.’

By now I had been at STD long enough to recognize that the CEO’s offer hadn’t been a sign of any incipient potential he saw in me, but just an indicator of his desperation to find presenters for the STD shows. All that would change soon — already it seemed that everyone I met between the age of sixteen and twenty-two had the word ‘media’ on their lips when asked about their future — but for the moment those of us who were ‘reasonable enough’ (i.e. reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent, reasonably articulate) had a world of on-air opportunities to pick from. ‘If it’s a groundbreaking chat show, involving a’séance, which allows me to interview Frederick II, then sure. Otherwise, I’ll stick to being the brains behind your beauty.’

The quiz show host smiled — he was well aware of both his intelligence and his good looks — and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Suits me fine.’

When he left my office, I checked my watch. It was approximately twenty-two hours since I had left Shehnaz Saeed’s house. Twenty-two hours since she had given me the letter which had accompanied the encrypted page. In those twenty-two hours I had managed to restrain myself from reading the covering letter even once. Now there was a clear sign I was so much better than before — it wasn’t that many years ago that every time I answered the phone and there was silence on the other end it was enough to make me call the telephone exchange and demand they trace the call. It was tempting now to phone Beema and tell her, you see, you see, all those attempts on your part to get me to ‘talk to someone’ weren’t necessary. I’m doing this on my own, I’m getting there.

Fourteen years later, and as far as I’d got was being able to avoid reading a letter for twenty-two hours.

I knew exactly what that ‘someone’ to whom Beema wanted me to talk would say. She’d say, it’s been fourteen years, Aasmaani. That’s twice the length of time a person has to be gone before they’re legally declared dead. You need to let go.

Let go. As though I were holding on to something outside myself; as though conclusions were ropes that could hang you. And whatever I tried to say, however much I tried to explain that my mother really was capable of vanishing, that she’d been practising it for two years before she actually left, that she had been practising shedding the skin that was her character and assuming another identity, right there, under our noses without any of us understanding what was happening — however much I tried to explain all this, and tried to explain, also, that there had been simply no reason for her to stay within her old identity, they would tell me I had created a story to avoid facing the painful truth. That they, too, were creating a story would not occur to them — if enough people believe a thing, belief becomes indistinguishable from truth, and they cannot see how anyone with the same facts as they possess could ever reach a different conclusion except through stubbornness, denial or a wilful misreading of the situation.

I opened the desk drawer which contained the cover letter and encrypted page, and then closed it again. I would give myself another two hours before looking at it. Self-imposed restrictions are absurd but not without effect; if you can’t rid yourself of obsessions you can at least wean yourself off the number of hours you waste on them to the exclusion of everything else.

I forced my hands off the drawer-handle and on to my keyboard. But there really wasn’t any work demanding my immediate attention. It was a particularly slow day at STD — the only event of note had been the firing of a pregnant TV presenter, whose energetic and efficient hosting of a current affairs programme had been brought to an end at the insistence of the show’s primary advertisers who claimed that their product could not be associated with a pregnant woman without ‘adverse effects’. The primary advertiser was a bank — and already the STD kitchenette was rife with ribaldry about ‘direct deposits’ and ‘early withdrawals’.