Chapter Fifteen
‘We must return,’ she said. That was all she could offer. The others understood her in their own way. A physical return. Their bodies back to how they had been before, able to stand tall, to bend when they wanted to bend, to move with ease. This was the most pressing kind of return. A return to dignity, to humanity and strength. How else to imagine a future, a way of picking up where they had left off. A literal return to the grounds of the monastery and from it to their cottage? The cottage was only theirs until Monday morning. If they did not get there in time, what would happen to their things? Mullin would gather them all together, haphazardly no doubt, but with enough finality to prepare the cottage for the next set of holiday tenants. A spiritual return? Not yet. Their insides were too dark to contemplate a revival, their burdens too crushing.
We have to move, said Salma. The three of us together, we must find a way to make progress. She was the least mobile of them, the most helpless.
Moni said, ‘You must be in the middle, Salma. Iman and I
will be at either side of you. You will tell us where to go, but we will be the ones pulling you.’
They pulled her like a rug, dragged her across the floor of the forest. Moni clutched one arm under her elbow, Iman slung the other around her shoulder. There were no blue trails any more in the forest, no red trails or orange. They were on their own. Salma stared up at the bits of sky that showed through the treetops. She saw the sun and she said, ‘We need to head east, we need to move back this way instead of straight ahead.’
They moved as a group. Salma had Moni to her right, Iman to her left. Their pace was slow but matched, their progress even. Salma’s back began to ache. Dragged over roots and uneven paths, her skin became raw and bruised. They stopped for frequent breaks, to tend each other’s wounds, to catch their breath. For it was not only Salma who was struggling, Moni too had her fair share of bruises and Iman, although more suited to the outdoors, was often distracted and fretful, her protruding tongue a source of irritation, her whines more frequent.
‘Iman wants to sing for us,’ said Moni. And Iman did sing. Or at least tried to sing. She had forgotten all the words to her Euphrates laments. The tunes were still there, embedded in her altered mind. And though she was yowling, it made her feel better, achieving a certain kind of release. Tears came to Salma’s eyes when she remembered Iman’s beautiful voice. When she remembered Iman’s hair and her smoky eyes. We must return, she said to herself.
The trees became shorter and thinner, their leaves turning brown and falling. The three made their way out of the forest. There were soft white flakes on the ground, the air at first cool and then much colder. On they went until the ground was covered in snow. Salma slid faster, Moni rolled more easily, and Iman enjoyed digging her weight into the softness, leaving prints behind her. The sun shone bright. They were cold, but the quicker movement soothed them. They were making progress and soon found themselves up against a cluster of figures standing still; all of them statues made of ice. Famous people and their belongings. Tennis stars with their rackets, actors with their Oscars and smiles. There were ice sculptures of Mother Teresa and Gandhi, of Princess Diana and Martin Luther King. Moni was the one most entertained by these sculptures, identifying each one quicker than Salma could. Iman was oblivious. She could not remember these iconic figures, their household names beyond her reach.
The snow stretched out for miles and they were part of its whiteness; they were cold and numb, but being out of the forest lifted their spirits, made them feel that they had advanced. Sliding, rolling, falling off snow ridges, they clung to each other. It was Moni who was the first to laugh, followed by Salma, then Iman. Was there room for happiness? Only the kind that rose from a shared purpose, a unified effort. ‘We are together,’ said Moni. ‘We are together,’ said Salma. ‘Speak, Iman, say the word “we”. The word “we”.’ But Iman shrugged off Salma’s arm and this caused Moni to stop. Iman moved in a circle. With her prints she drew a large round circumference and then she joined the other two inside it. That was her understanding of ‘we’, the three of them together.
‘I missed you both,’ said Moni, and she told them about what happened to her at the cottage. ‘I missed you both,’ said Salma and told them what happened to her with Amir. I missed you both, Iman wanted to say but could not put into words her transformation, her free romping in the forest where it was eat or be eaten, where no one knew her name.
Moni was not sure where they were. The snow did not make sense. It was meant to be late summer, wasn’t it? When they stopped and Iman made the circle around them, Moni was surprised at her own stillness. It was as if she had been rolling for hours, it was as if rolling was now her natural state and stillness an aberration. She was not as cold as she expected to be, as she usually was in the thick of winter, struggling to
