‘I’m going to linger on the compliment and ignore the backhand there.’

‘This is going to sound odd, and maybe it has something to do with the phone reception, which is fairly suspect in these hills — most days I have to climb the tallest tree and lean at a precise angle to get a signal — but you sound lighter. Like someone’s just pulled the sadness right out of you. Is it just the reception?’

I shook my head, though I knew he couldn’t see it. ‘It’s him, Ed, it’s really him.’

‘Who?’

‘Omi. He’s alive.’ It was the first time I had said it to anyone else and that joy welled up inside me again and made my voice crack.

‘Omi?’

‘The Poet, Ed. Don’t be thick. The Poet is alive. I know it.’

‘How…?’

‘Ed, don’t ask. Just take my word. He’s alive. It’s not a hoax. Now listen, we have to make sure your mother keeps sending me those pages. Have you told her I can read them? Should we tell her? Ed?’

There was silence.

I moved the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen, expecting to see we’d been disconnected.

‘Ed?’ I pressed the phone against my ear again.

‘So that’s why you called.’ His voice was utterly without expression. ‘Because of the letters.’

‘It’s part of the reason,’ I admitted. ‘But — you’re the other part.’

‘Really? Can you break that down into numbers?’ Fissures were appearing in his even tone, anger leaking out. ‘What percentage of your reason for calling is about the letters, what percentage about me?’

‘Ed. This is absurd.’

There was another pause. ‘She doesn’t know,’ he said at last. ‘My mother. She doesn’t know. And though there’s no reason for me to dispense good advice to you right now, I’d advise you not to tell her. It’ll all become “They’re my letters, this is about me.”’

‘She doesn’t seem…’ I stopped. ‘Sorry. I appreciate the advice. Really, Ed.’

‘If more letters appear I’ll make sure you get them,’ he said, his tone relenting. ‘Now I really have to go.’

‘Ed. Wait. Fifty.’

‘What?’

‘Fifty per cent because of you.’

‘That’s a lie, Aasmaani.’

‘I want it to be the truth.’ But this time he really had hung up.

What was there about this man that touched me so unexpectedly?

A girl I knew at university once spoke of ‘secret societies of pain’. Her fiancé had died at the age of twenty-two, and she said sometimes a look in a stranger’s eyes, a particular quality of desolation, would tell her the stranger had suffered a similar grief.

I tried calling Ed back to tell him about that girl but he didn’t answer, so I sent him a text message saying, ‘Ed. Call me.’

He wrote back, ‘Signal buggered. No tall trees.’

It was impossible to discern the tone of that message — curt or humorous? — but I took it as a good sign when, three days later, Shehnaz Saeed’s driver rang my door-bell. He handed me a note from Shehnaz inviting me over on Eid night to watch Boond with her and Ed. I read the note, standing in the doorway, while the driver waited for a response, and when I looked up to him to say, ‘Tell her yes,’ he was holding out an envelope, addressed to Shehnaz in childish handwriting.

. .

We confuse conflict and suffering with tragedy. Hamlet is not the most tragic of Shakespeare’s figures, nor is Lear. Hamlet is the most conflicted, Lear is the one whose suffering is most brilliantly rendered. But the most tragic figure is Macbeth, who has no illusions. Unlike Brutus, he does not attempt to justify murdering his friend and benefactor; unlike Othello, he is not drawn into murder by the perfidiousness of an Iago. Macbeth’s tragedy is absolute self-knowledge allied to an unflinching awareness of the dire consequences of his action and a profound understanding of the immorality of his deeds.

I know whose voice that is: Darius Mehta, Impassioned Professor of English, Adjectivus Emeritus.

Myself, I have always gravitated to the tragedy of lovers. Laila Mujnu, of course. But also Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth and his Lady (their passion for each other the real story of the play), Sassi Punoo, Samson and Delilah (of whom I owe my knowledge to Cecil B. de Mille rather than the Bible), Saleem and Anarkali, Oedipus and Jocasta (why pretend his tragedy is greater than hers; she who discovers she has married her patricidal son? She hangs herself — not because of incest committed in ignorance, but because of her continued desire for her son against all laws of morality and custom). But the saddest of love stories is Arthurian — not the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, or even of Tristan and Iseult. Merlin and Nimue, that is the saddest of sad stories.

Not in all versions, of course. In some she is the cruel enchantress who seduces him, learns everything he knows and then imprisons him, leaving him to die a lingering death. But the story of Nimue and Merlin which I choose to believe is this: for love of the goddess whom she serves she must learn Merlin’s lore, and so she seeks him out to seduce him. But Merlin will not fall for just any pretty face, particularly not when he knows he is destined to be betrayed in love. He is a man on his guard for falsehood in a beautiful guise. The only way for Nimue to convince Merlin is to fall truly in love with him. And so she falls, and he falls after her, and even at the moment of their falling she knows she doesn’t love him quite enough to turn away from her goddess, and he knows that he truly loves, for the first time in his life, and if it is his destiny to be betrayed by the woman he loves then Nimue will be the one to betray him.

Why is this so great a tragedy? Because, like Macbeth, they always know the truth. Not for a heartbeat does she believe the goddess will release her from her obligation; not for an indrawn breath does he believe he can cheat destiny. I think this makes them gentle with each other; I think it makes them nostalgic for each moment before it’s even past. I think it strengthens love to be thus caught in the fierce embrace of inevitability.

How did I get to that sentimental moment?

Oh, yes. Darius Mehta. He who, in the twilight of his life, was fired from his teaching job for discussing Richard II as a political rather than a literary text. You admired him for his courage in taking that stand. And I thought, what could he tell his students about politics that they didn’t already know? What a waste — all those young minds that will now be deprived of the chance to hear Darius Mehta speak of Shakespeare and what it means to be human. What made him think he should be anything other than that of which he was so gloriously capable? Who made him believe that what he was wasn’t good enough?

If someone came in here and started to talk to me of politics when I was reading Richard II I would shoo them away.

Stop it. Stop disapproving.

Woman who abandons her child for her lover and flaunts the affair in public while the child is growing up should know better than to disapprove of others.

Woman whose life achieved so little should know better than to demand political commitment in others.

How did this become about you? I promised myself I wouldn’t let that happen again.

I’m beginning to resent pen and paper.

It was far better when I had only my books and my daily routine. My life was strictly regimented. But since I’ve started writing, you’ve come along, barging in at all moments, disrupting the tides that govern my day. Everything is infected by you, and I can’t distinguish now between fiction, memory and my own imagination. Even now, as I write, I have to ask myself: is this gift or punishment? What game is being played with my life? All I know is, I want the Minions to remove from here all temptations to fill these blank pages. Only then can I begin again to forget all that I’ve lost. Only then can I attempt to forget all that someone else must have gained. Then, I don’t need to ask myself questions such as: whose bed do you slip into at night? On whose body do you make your voracious demands?