Chef (15 page)

‘Who?’ she asked.

‘Kishen.’

‘But he is not here,’ she said.

‘Not here?’

‘Gone.’

‘He left?’

‘He put in a request with the colonel for a return to the Rose Glacier.’

‘Why did they let him go?’

‘Because no one else wanted to go.’

‘So who is on the bed?’ I raised my voice.

I rarely raise my voice. Perhaps that is why the power returned in the hospital.

There was a commotion in the corridor.
Officers are coming. Officers
. There I saw the colonel and his platoon marching in. The doctor was walking parallel to the colonel in his trussed jacket. The colonel was carrying an inspection stick, and the doctor was smoking a Marlboro.

‘Power is very unreliable, sir,’ said the doctor to the colonel. The others followed them to the ward. The officers took a long time inside and ordered tea and pakoras.

Half an hour later the hospital orderly stepped out of the ward with an empty tray.

‘Major, what tamasha is happening inside?’ I asked him.

‘We really live in a foreign land, Major. They are dealing with an enemy.’

‘An enemy?’ I asked.

‘Yes, Major. They need an interpreter inside, and no one knows Kashmiri here.’

‘I do.’

I knocked on the door.

‘Permission to enter, sir?’

‘Kip . . . Kirpal?’

‘If you do not mind, sir, I know the language. I took lessons, sir.’

‘Shahbash,’ said the colonel.

He beckoned me inside.

The officers, in proper uniforms and black boots, looked at me in relief as if I had just saved them. The captive lay on the bed. He was a she. The first enemy I ever saw was a she, and already I had apologized to her moments ago on two counts. The first thing I noticed was the unconscious movement of her head. Rapid breathing. Terror in eyes. Peasant feet. The toe ring gleamed in flourescent light. There was a cut on the left foot.

The colonel asked me to occupy the chair next to the enemy’s bed. I took a deep breath, then the interrogation began. It was my first time as an interpreter. I asked the questions slowly, she stammered her responses. I do not recall the many unintelligible things she brought to her lips. But the essence has stayed with me.

Name?

Nav?

Irem.

Father’s name?

Moul sund nav?

Maqbool Butt.

Citizenship?

Shehriyat?

Kashmiri.

Colonel: Ask again.

Citizenship?

Shehriyat?

Kashmiri.

Married?

Khander karith?

Awaa.

Yes.

Husband’s name?

Khandaraas nav?

Raza Nomani.

Any issues?

Kahn mushkil?

Khandras manz ché mushkilat aasani . . .

She says, sir, all marriages have problems.

No, what we mean is, does she have children?

Bacchi chhoi kanh?

Na.

No issues, sir.

There was a pause.

Mrs Irem, why are you in India?

Irem, tsé kyazi koruth border cross?

Khooda yi chhum guanha sazaa.

She says, God is punishing her for sins.

The enemy woman started breathing more heavily. The colonel muttered something. She was gasping for breath. The nurse offered her a glass of water. But.

The woman fainted.

The doctor held her wrist for a few seconds, then let it go.

In that entire ward (especially on her bed) my eyes could not locate Chef’s red journal. Small insects were climbing up the wall by her bed. I anticipated a trial, a long court martial, at least an inquiry. Empty-handed I returned to the General’s kitchen, and my spine shivered with panic when the ADC phoned me:

‘General Sahib would like to see you, Kirpal. Report right before golf. Fifteen-thirty hours.’

With great anxiety I walked to the golf course. I had committed a serious crime. But the General looked in a beautiful mood. He was dressed in civilian clothes. He asked other officers to leave us alone. He was holding an expensive golf stick, and he picked up a white ball.

‘You see this, Kirpal.’

‘Golf ball, sir?’

‘Good.’

‘Sir.’

‘You see the dimples, Kirpal?’

‘See them, sir.’

‘Why is the ball dimpled?’

‘No idea, sir.’

‘Guess?’

‘To make it go slower, sir?’

‘Faster.’

‘Sir is joking.’

‘I do not joke, Kip.’

‘Sir.’

‘Colonel Sahib phoned me. He reported this morning’s proceedings at the hospital.’

‘Sir.’

‘Good job.’

‘Thankyousir.’

‘Now is your chance to pick up your second rank, and maybe a medal.’

‘Sir.’

‘Understand me?’

‘Not exactly, sir.’

‘Find out everything about that enemy woman.’

‘How, sir?’

‘You are a smart chap.’

‘It is an unusual assignment, sir.’

‘Delicate assignment, Kirpal.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘Certainly.’

‘Sir, if I may, when will I go to the glacier?’

‘Things are shaping up. I’ll look into this personally. And, Kip –’

‘Sir?’

‘Everything must remain confidential.’

‘Sir.’

‘What did we talk about?’

‘Balls, sir.’

‘Dismiss.’

He narrowed his eyes and hit the ball with his club and I clicked my heels. On the way to my room I thought about all the balls that get lost from the golf course. How many lost golf balls belonged to the army? I wondered. If dimples allowed the balls to go faster, was there a way to make them go slower? Suddenly I started thinking about
fast
and
slow
. Fast and slow in cooking. Fast and slow in the kitchen. This is exactly what we were trying to do in the kitchen.

17

Men in the barracks already knew more about her than I did. She had crossed the river from the enemy side to our camp. One version said she was a suicide bomber, and that her target was schoolchildren. Another version was that she worked for ISI, the enemy spy agency. A third version claimed that she had come to incite the youth of Kashmir to become militants.

I returned the next day. She was wearing a loose pheran, and a third of her body was thickly bandaged. Her head was covered by a scarf. She looked beautiful even in sickness.

‘There is a cut on your foot,’ I said. ‘Why is it not bandaged?’

She stirred her feet as if to say, I know. She withdrew her feet into the blanket as if they were little rats.

‘Who did it?’

She did not say anything, so I turned and walked towards the window.

Outside, the troops were marching in the parade ground and the air was dusty.

‘In Pakistan you people eat dogs,’ I said.

Dust was rising on the road outside. The troops:
one-two, one-two, one-two
.

‘You people eat dogs,’ I said loudly.

‘No,’ she said.

I turned.

Her gaze was fixed on the floor.

‘You eat chicken feet . . . snakes . . . lizards . . . you crave . . .’

Chef Kishen had written that the enemy ate cows and buffaloes, and the most repulsive dish on their tables was made by slow cooking a young bull’s testicles.

‘I know why you are here,’ she broke her silence.

Her Kashmiri had a strong Muslim inflection. (The Kashmiri I had learned sounded more like the Kashmiri of pundits.)

‘Why?’ I asked.

Her eyes were red. She pulled Chef’s journal from her blanket. I walked to the head of the bed, and grabbed it from her.

‘Did you read?’ I was angry at her.

‘The person who wrote this,’ she said, ‘is sometimes very angry and sometimes extremely happy.’

‘The journal is written in Hindi.’ I raised my voice. ‘You lied yesterday. You know Hindi.’

She looked afraid as I uttered those words, raising my voice.

‘No, Saheb,’ she said.

‘You Pakistanis cannot be trusted,’ I said.

‘I never attended school, Saheb,’ she said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘I cannot read and write, Saheb.’

‘Do not call me sahib,’ I said. ‘Just answer me. If you did not read it, then how can you say that he was sometimes angry and happy?’

‘The pen moves fast, then sometimes slow. One can tell,’ she said.

Her speech was almost inaudible, and she spoke very slowly. Her words, like a damaged cassette in the tape recorder. This angered me, but I continued to let her speak.

‘You do not need to know the language, Saheb, to figure out if the writer of words is angry, sad, or happy.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘You are illiterate.’

She could not read and write and this made me happy. Her face was intelligent, but she could not read from left to right or right to left and this made me happy. She had no access to Kishen’s intimate thoughts. But as I was walking back to the General’s kitchen I felt sad that so many people in our land and in the land of our enemy cannot even read and write. I felt pity for her. She was a smart woman but really she was leading the life of a donkey.

She had not touched the tray of food next to her bed. On the wall behind her there were more crawling insects than last time.

‘The food, Saheb,’ she said, ‘is not fit for humans.’

Then. I do not know what made me say: ‘I will make sure that you eat well. I will make sure you find out the meaning of real Indian hospitality.’

The opportunity to prepare her a proper meal arrived very soon. General Sahib flew to Delhi to meet the COAS, the Chief of Army Staff; and the doctor was away on Internal Security duty. I persuaded the nurse to unlock the doctor’s room in the hospital. The room had a beautiful view of distant mountains. They looked completely blue, the Pir Panjals, casting no shadow. Things that are far away always look blue for some unknown reason. Blue is the color of our past. Blue is the color of our wretched past, I say to myself.

It was not my finest accomplishment, but I did my best to feed the ‘enemy woman’. I cooked in the General’s kitchen, and served her in the doctor’s room in the hospital with the nurse present. I do not understand why she still is the ‘enemy woman’. To this day, sometimes the phrase slips out of my mouth.

Her name was Irem.

She removed her shoes before stepping on the thick carpet in the doctor’s room. Like most Kashmiris she gave the carpet the respect it deserved. The nurse on the other hand kept her dirty shoes on, and I remember the condescending look she gave her patient. There was an open-air cinema not far from the hospital, and most of the staff and guards and non-critical patients were watching a Bombay film there. So the hospital was half empty. The nurse had a shot of rum, and for Irem I made lemonade, and watched from the window.

Music from the open-air cinema wafted into the room. The song playing was about the fickle anger of beautiful women. Irem hesitated to sit on the sofa. So she sat on the carpet, her gaze fixed on the patterns of spiders, lizards, and scorpions embroidered on the beautiful carpet. The colors of the carpet came from vegetable dyes made of roots and berries. The green and indigo and red, although a bit faded, drew me towards them.

The nurse started talking to me in English. I am sleep starved, she said. As if she was the only one who didn’t get to sleep. Irem felt increasingly uncomfortable in the room, I could tell. She held her glass as if it was the only thing that could comfort her. Terror was loose in her eyes still. It seemed to me that her lips were moving slightly. There was a cut on her upper lip. She wiped away the condensation with her hand and rolled the lemonade glass the way Buddhists roll prayer wheels in Ladakh.

The nurse stared at her, and the patient started staring at the wall.

There is a photo on the wall.

Irem rises to her feet, and without paying attention to us walks slowly towards the wall and stands before the big black and white photo.

There are five or six women in Islamic garments standing on a sheer cliff. Only their backs are visible. Two or three are praying; one is looking at the immense sky, another is surveying the valley below – the poplars, the willows, the plane trees, the fruit orchards, the lake, and the timber-framed houses. Another stands barefoot, her arms uplifted, palms open in prayer. A ribbon of a cloud is passing by, and it is unclear if the cloud is touching her palm or the folds of the mountain.