What more can I say?

But having got his opening line, he didn’t know how to continue. Of course, of course.

Can it be you, out there, reading these words?

That could only have been addressed to my mother. Why? Just to be playful, perhaps. Just to say, I know you can’t resist picking up things I’ve been working on, and reading them. Except, she never did as far as I knew — she always respected the privacy of his work, never read anything until he asked her to.

Something else was troubling me. I looked at the paper again. Why do it? Simply that. Why write in code for any reason except to write letters to my mother that he wanted no one else to read? Yes, I used to write in the code all the time — I wrote stories, wrote letters to my mother, wrote in the steam of the bathroom mirror. But that was only because it gave me the thrill that children get from partaking in adult behaviour that is forbidden to them. It was the most illicit of pleasures to write in code, and then tear it up or rub it out instantly before anyone — anyone — could see. I was a child then, and the flexibility of my child’s mind was able to grasp and learn the code with an ease that defied grown-ups. But for my mother and the Poet writing in code was hard, laborious work; it carried with it the scent of jail cells and dread. My mother told me so after the Poet had died — and I had surprised her then by saying, yes, I know it. I still know the code.

It was supposed to be their secret, just the two of them. But I was eight years old when they devised the code — curious and small; an excellent combination when your mother locks up her study which has grilles outside its window to prevent any grown person slipping through.

In a drawer, in her study, I found a paper on which she had written:

My ex calls the ochre winter ‘autumn’ as we queue to hear dock boys play jazz fugues in velvet dark.

And below that, two columns. One which listed all the letters of that odd sentence, and another beside it listing letters of the alphabet:

M=A

Y=B

E=C

X=D

C=E

A=F

L=G

L= (Repeated)

S=H

and so on.

It wasn’t hard to figure out after that.

I copied the sentence and the two columns of letters into the mini-notepad with the spy-sized mini-pen which I carried around in the back-pocket of my jeans, and that afternoon I asked, ‘What’s fugue, Mama?’

‘What? Why are you asking me that, Aasmaani?’

‘I saw the word somewhere. In a book at the school library,’ I lied.

‘Oh. Well, to start with it’s not fug-you. That could sound rude.’ She pulled me down into her lap and put her arms around me, her chin resting on the top of my head. ‘The more conventional meaning has to do with music. A sort of call and response. Two or more musicians responding to one another’s music. The second meaning is much more interesting. It means deliberate amnesia. You know what amnesia is, sweetheart?’

‘Mama! Of course. But that’s so silly. Why would you deliberately forget something?’

The following day, I handed my mother a card which said:

AFAF, N GKZC BKP.

When I first handed it to her, she thought it was nonsense words. I dug my hands in my pocket and rocked on the balls of my feet as the Poet did when he was offended by someone’s misreading of his work. ‘It says “Mama, I love you”.’ That’s when she shook me, made me promise to forget about it, made me swear never to mention it to anyone. Then she tore out the pages of my notebook which contained evidence of the code — and though I wept to save the jellyfish which I had laboured over drawing on the reverse side of the page which contained the jazz fugues sentence, she shook her head firmly, told me there were consequences for taking people’s secrets, and burnt the pages.

But she couldn’t burn my memory. When the Poet was released from prison, and she followed him to Colombia, I wrote the sentence down again. Each time I started to think about her I would turn my mind to translating sentences into code instead, until I was so adept at it I sometimes had to concentrate hard in school in order to avoid filling exam papers with clumps of words unintelligible to everyone except me. I never broke my promise to her. I never told anyone else about it.

No one except her, years later, after the Poet’s death. She had only a dim memory of the card I had written for her, and thought I was joking when I told her that there was still a muscle in my brain which knew how to read and write in code.

Can it be you, out there, reading these words?

I pushed my chair back and stood up. Maybe, just maybe.

Why would anyone send that encrypted page to Shehnaz Saeed? Because my mother wrote it. Whoever wrote that covering letter knew of the strength of my mother’s friendship with Shehnaz Saeed in those two years before she left. It is the only thangs I have to give you that you might want… I know you know the person who rote them.

Oh, surely it was the only explanation that made sense?

A hoax. It could — think, Aaasmaani! — be a hoax. Someone else could have written it, pretending to be my mother. But then why write it in code, when Shehnaz might not understand it or know where it came from? Why not sign it, at least? Why send someone a forgery while making it as difficult as possible for them to guess whose words were being forged?

My mother had written those pages to me. That was it.

After she disappeared. She had written those words since her disappearance, knowing I was the only person who would understand it. But somehow, it never reached me. It fell into the hands of someone else who sent it to Shehnaz Saeed and, by some miracle — no, by chance, nothing more — the page had come to me weeks, months, maybe years after it was first written.

But why write something so mystifying? Why? And why, again, in code?

Because she was in danger. That had to be it. They only used the code when there was danger of the words being intercepted. But what was there in those words that she didn’t want intercepted?

There are more. I will send you more if you act again.

I sat down, trying to breathe slowly, trying to control the rush of blood to my head.

What situation could make it necessary for her to send encrypted messages? The Minions came again today. If that wasn’t a line of fiction, what could it mean?

‘Mama!’ I called out, without understanding why.

The door was pushed open. There was Ed, with the curious faces of three of our first-floor colleagues behind him. He took one look at me and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.

‘Get out,’ I said.

He made no move either to come closer or leave. Instead, he looked around the room, searching out clues. His eyes came to rest on the letter and encrypted page on my desk.

‘Get out,’ I said again, more softly, through clenched teeth. And then I saw the envelope in his hand addressed in childish block letters.

Not daring to speak, I pointed to it.

Ed glanced down and looked surprised, as though he’d forgotten he was holding it.

I lifted myself out of the chair, walked over to him, and caught hold of the envelope. Though it was mid-afternoon, a hint of aftershave still clung to Ed. It had the scent of a citrus tree growing by the sea. I leaned forward, very slightly, and then pulled away, only to find Ed was still holding on to the envelope. For an instant I thought he was gripping it so tightly in order to keep me near him, and then I realized that he had no intention of relinquishing the envelope to me.