Love Across Borders by Naheed Hassan, Sabahat Muhammad

her earrings
glinting, that Shambu had to look away. Though he had witnessed her
serene, easy dignity in the face of tragedy, he felt protective
towards her. Like her detached wisdom would enable her to negotiate
with the world but somehow she needed him to save her from
herself.
    Of course, they were all daydreams.
He had a girl waiting for him, then maybe a couple of children.
They might even move into the quarters that were being constructed
at the back of the house. All the pieces of the equation were
arranged in perfect harmony, yet Shambu, restless Shambu,
starry-eyed Shambu, prying, inflamed Shambu, enchanted, impatient
Shambu was determined to shake them.
    “You don’t want children?”
    She looked away. “No”
    “You know, you could marry
again.”
    The stench of the birdcages wafted
up to them. She shook her head.
    “Then I wouldn’t be able to come
again.”
    “Here? India? Of course you
could.”
    “Not India. To the house, that
kitchen, that veranda.”
    Shambu looked up and saw her
staring intently at his face. She looked away. Maybe she had just
been looking through him. She seemed to do that often.
    “They are nice people,” he said,
not willing to offer any specifics.
    “I should have come here with him.
Let the exams be.”
    “We all do what we can.” Shambu did
not really want to discuss Salim.
    “Yes, and now I’m doing the only
thing that I can do,” she said, too casually to be casual.
    Sambhu was suddenly impatient to
leave. “So you have enough photographs now?” He indicated her
camera bag.
    “Only of monkeys! I don’t need a
zoo to find those!”
    He did not return her smile. “There
are other places I could take you too.”
    A few feet away, a baby lifted her
frock and squatted while her mother watched. A trail of urine
snaked slowly towards them.
    “ How about my village? I
could show you the pond beside which I would sit like that.” He
pointed towards the little girl and immediately regretted it. It
sounded coarse even to his own ears; certainly not a topic that a
professor would want to discuss.
    But Munira was smirking and then
giggling and then opened her mouth in full-throated laughter.
    “Eeesh! Shambu! Eeesh!” Her body
shook as she brought one hand up to cover her mouth.
    Shambu’s eyes sparkled in delighted
surprise. He reached out to take her cup, worried that she would
scald her thigh with the hot tea. She held out it towards him. But
when the tips of his fingers reached for her knuckles, she stopped
laughing.
    Slowly, they walked back towards
the car. The schoolgirls were now at the tiger’s cage, their
fingers pointing, voices squealing and plaits shaking animatedly as
the tiger obliged with languid strolls.
    They strolled along and the girls’
yelps were replaced by a hush. The tingling of their fingers was
still fresh. A silence descended upon them and in the quietness
Shambu offered, “We are all in our own cage also, aren’t we?”
    She nodded. “Sometimes you can
break out of a cage and you think you are free. But you are just in
a larger cage. There’s one more door to open. And one more and one
more.”
    He wasn’t sure he understood but
said cheerily. “At least I can open this door for you” as he held
open the passenger door.
    The next day, after she was
given salwar kameez material and Hyderabadi spices to take back,
after she had hugged the family and vehemently denied the need for
anyone to accompany her, after Shambu had unloaded her luggage at
the airport, he offered her an apology wrapped in newspaper. A
diary.
    “This is Salim babu’s. When he was
so small.” Shambu put his hand beside his waist to denote the child
Salim’s height. “I once found it while cleaning the loft.”
    Munira passed her fingers
over the childish scrawls, over the caricature of a woman with an
exceptionally large bindi , over a poem about a robot.
For a minute she did not speak.
    “ Thank you,” her voice came
out hoarse and she cleared her