The Matchmaker
Cobalt is the colour of kings of old. Mined from deep within stony hillsides it was produced by a chemical process so dangerous that lives were lost, which just increased its value. Only the richest could afford to paint it on their roofs which is how the church domes Farrukh hurried past came to be resplendent with a colour so deep even the daily scorch of the Pakistani sun could not penetrate it.
Today was going to be a good day, Farrukh could feel it in his bones which didn’t ache as much since the warmer wind had blown in from the south. He’d smelled that wind before he’d felt it, waking in the night, the white walls of his stone house pale as what he supposed snow would look like under moonlight.
The wind had the smell of sweet new grass instead of the metallic bite of the mountains to the north and his whole body thrilled to its arrival. The swallows would glide in on it in a couple of days and set up their nests in all the awkward spaces; the gap between the mosque wall and its roof and in the corner of Mrs Penemenos’s crimson shop canopy.
She is standing on her front step, giant in her pink housecoat surrounded by brightly coloured fruit and vegetables, rising like the stamen of an exotic plant.
‘Farrukh? Coffee?’
‘Not this morning, Mrs P, thank you.’ Though it smelled delicious. Later he would regret his choice. Oh, my, how he’d regret it.
‘Rahim is looking for you.’ She sucks the last dregs from her little white cup. ‘Tell him I said not to come here so early again, waking decent people up as if the dead were on his tail. And on a Monday morning…’
Farrukh hurried on, tummy tight with hunger and excitement. Today he would meet with the matchmaker of the village and Imani’s family. Then if all went well, a date for their marriage would be set. He’d oiled his beard and his robes gleamed and his toes waved clean and pink in their faded brown sandals as if the cleaner he was the less likely the matchmaker Mrs Ali would be to see how scared he was of her sudden unpredictable movements and walleye. Scared too, of her power of veto over desperate couples who dared not go against her advice. Those that did? Well, he’d seen it with his own eyes, officiating at funerals of honour killings and hearing whispers of couples fleeing in the night only to meet inauspicious ends, as if the reach of her prediction had followed them as sure as a dog on the scent of a bitch. No. He wouldn’t be brave enough to do that, but he understood those that did. He loved Imani enough to.
‘Farrukh!’ Rahim’s voice was sharp and his robes flew behind him like wings as he ran down the steps of their tiny mosque, which was plain as a peahen next to the glittering orthodox domes which surrounded it.
‘Rahim? What is it?’ He’d never seen the boy look so scared.
‘There are people to see you.’ Rahim tugged him up the steps, his sandal slapping on stone as he tripped.
‘Wait, Rahim. It’s not the matchmaker already?’
Rahim turned on him, incredulous. ‘No, my brother. Not the matchmaker.’
The average U.S. marine is six feet with thirty pounds of equipment strapped to their anatomy. To the five foot five inch Farrukh they resemble giant scarab beetles. Seeing six of them crowded into his tiny office, he thought that at any moment they might fall on their backs, antennae waving, unable to get back up.
One spoke in flawless Pashto.
‘You are the Imam here?’
This giant redhead looked exhausted and Farrukh felt for him.
‘I am, my son. How can I help?’
Farrukh hoped his voice sounded authoritative, though he feared it may have come out in a squeak. He’d read about these soldiers, knew they patrolled the waters of the North Arabian Sea, but he’d never seen any in the flesh. Not in his little village right on the border between India and Pakistan. In fact, if you asked him, Farrukh would be hard-pushed to say which country he lived in with its churches of all different faiths and its nebulous border which no one heeded so that some family homes had chickens on the front porch in India and the goats on the back in Pakistan. And no one cared. So peacefully they’d lived like this for hundreds of years that Farrukh couldn’t understand how these young men, odd with their clean-shaven faces like newborn babies had come to find his village. It was as if they’d arrived from outer space.
Farrukh knew Rahim was watching him. He swallowed hard. The soldier’s heavy eyelids looked at him as if deciding something.
‘What is your name sir?’
‘I’m Farrukh Rahman.’
‘You are of the Muslim faith?’ Odd question, given where they were standing, but no matter. ‘I am.’
‘Then could you come with me please?’
‘Of course, but can I know why?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ Another soldier was older and darker, his voice accented. ‘But we can have you back in the village this evening. We just need your help in a religious matter.’
‘But my friends I have to meet with the matchmaker today. If I do not get her blessing my marriage cannot go ahead.’
‘What time must you meet?’
‘Sunset.’
The soldier looked relieved.
‘We will have you back by then.’ The stubble was breaking through on this man’s face and his gaze was steady, the grey at his temples suggesting he led this lethal-looking group.
Rahim spoke.
‘Farrukh you trust these men?’
‘I don’t know that I have a choice.’ He smiled at Rahim’s pale face. ‘Honestly Rahim, so long as I am back for Mrs Ali, I don’t mind. Don’t worry. It’s probably a point of Muslim law or something.’ His voice was still reedy in the gloom of the office, the one square window blocked by giant American shoulders. But Rahim, knowing him well, stopped what he’d been about to say and handed him his shoulder bag and a flask of water.
The soldiers pulled down their visors and escorted him outside where a crowd had gathered.
‘You’ll get him back in time?’ Mrs Penemenos was showing off, addressing the soldiers in English though still wearing her dressing gown. ‘He has a very important meeting tonight.’
‘Sahiba, we will.’ The older soldier inclined his head. The crowd fell back as the soldiers led Farrukh down the cobbled main street and onto the dust road which after many sun-baked miles would lead to Karachi. There, crouched in the grass a slim helicopter — all hard angles and sleek blackness with rotors which turned in silence. It was like watching a film at Suleiman’s cinema when the sound broke down.
The waters of the North Arabian sea might have been crafted from lapis lazuli in some places and coated with azure in other deeper places where tiger sharks cooled themselves after hunting shoals of tuna close to the surface which leapt and twisted free as if made from liquid silver and therefore impossible to contain. Farrukh’s stomach gave a giant rumble and the thought of Mrs Penemenos’s coffee flitted through his mind and he closed his eyes as the helicopter landed on a ship larger than anything man-made Farrukh had ever seen. It was the size of a small country.
‘Sir, would you come this way?’ He followed the giant soldier past fighter jets and mechanics eyeing him through thick reflective visors, twirling their yellow and red flags as if children at a carnival.
By now he had an idea of why he was there and sure enough, he was led into a small chilled mortuary. On the trolley was a shrouded body.
‘Has one of my brothers passed?’
‘Yes, sir he has.’ Answered the redhead.
The older soldier spoke.
‘Would you be able to perform your burial rights for him?’
‘Of course.’
‘He is to be buried at sea. Or burial will not be within twenty-four hours.’
Farrukh looked at them closely, but their faces were closed.
‘Very well.’ He undid his bag and went to roll up his sleeves.
‘Do you need assistance, sir?’
Farrukh shook his head.
‘If you give me an hour, that should be enough time. Just one more thing. Could you tell me how he died?’
‘We’re not at liberty to say that sir.’
‘I understand, but it’s just if he died a martyr or what we would call a shahid or witness, I do not perform the ritual washing of the body before enshrouding. I must leave it as is.’
Farrukh’s gaze flicked between them even as he dipped his hands into the hot fragrant water in a corner sink.
‘No sir. He did not die a martyr’s death.’ The older soldier’s tongue stumbles over the words. ‘He was not a hero. You may perform ghusl.’
Farrukh bowed his head in agreement, glad to hear the soldier use the correct words for the washing of the body. It showed respect.
‘Just let us know when you’re finished. There will be a guard outside.’
Farrukh turned to the cadaver. It had been wrapped badly, as if in a hurry, though here and there someone had attempted to fasten the sheet with a brown cord as if it were one of those parcels from the city which took weeks to arrive and then sat in the back of Mr Shah’s general store gathering dust until Mr Shah remembered to tell you it was there. There were stains on the sheet too, but they could have been anything from petrol to paint. Farrukh undid the cords.
The man beneath was tall and dressed in light grey kurta pyjamas, his filthy feet bare and splayed inwards like a child’s, as if he were pigeon-toed. Farrukh checked the clock. Twelve o’clock. He must get on. Preparing a body for burial only took an hour, but it needed to be done properly. This body, with its bullet holes in the chest and temple, might take longer.
Farrukh sighed. ‘What have you been doing, my brother, to end thus?’ But the body’s hands were soft and well-cared for, not the meaty hands of a soldier, or the worn hands of a farmer and Farrukh worried he’d become a moving part of a story about whose origins he knew nothing. Once again as he found happened more these days, the connectedness of life overwhelmed him and he sent up a silent prayer for protection and forgiveness of the man’s soul.
He undressed the body and placed three clean pieces of white cotton cloth over the man’s genitals. Everything he needed had been laid on the counter; the shroud, the cotton coverings, squares of camphor for the final washing and he marvelled that this giant warship which could fly planes from its deck, hadn’t forgotten any tiny part of what a Muslim would need to be buried. But then Muslims have been serving in the U.S. Army and Navy for hundreds of years. Or so he had heard from Rahim, who was obsessed with planes and tanks and could tell you the exact identity of any stray jet which flew high over their village on distant blue wings to Islamabad and back again. To who knows where? Maybe here?
Farrukh wished he could ask for a ride for Rahim in the helicopter as the boy’s face had been filled with wonder as much as if Muhammad himself had been piloting it. Still. This was a good thing. Farrukh didn’t mind that Rahim’s mind was more often on engines and music than religious instruction. God knew there’d be time enough later for that when age sunk its teeth into brain and muscle and a patch of sun and a good book was all the excitement one could stand.
Farrukh took a clean white cloth and began at the top of the body. He washed the man’s face, the brown caked blood around the bullet coming away more easily than he’d anticipated from the man’s eyebrows and beard. He’d been shot cleanly in the temple and the heart and the expression in his half-open eyes was one of surprise, his mouth forming the shape of an ‘o’ which suggested rigour mortis had not yet set in. Yes, thought Farrukh. This was a fresh body. Fresh as milk just squeezed. And to be buried at sea? Not ideal, but allowed if there was no other choice. Which the American beetles signalled there wasn’t.
As he picked up the discarded pyjamas, there was a clinking. He shook them again and felt along the nubby line of a hem of the tunic which he unpicked with some scissors.
Inside lay a phone, small and light, one of those expensive ones which took pictures and also a wedge of money he didn’t recognise, being pink and covered with writing he couldn’t read. Not dollars though. No, he knew what they looked like. Didn’t everyone? He took the phone and placed it and the money on the counter with regret. He’d have loved to have given the phone to Rahim, not that he had anyone to call, but Farrukh doubted that would matter.
Then Farrukh completed the shrouding with three more sheets ensuring the man’s hands formed a cross on his chest. The final shrouds went around his head and one around his feet and all were fastened with thick white ties. Farrukh stepped back. The room and the cadaver were clean and sweet-smelling, all the bloodied cloths disposed of and he felt the satisfaction of a job well done.
He pushed the call bell and the young redhead came back after a few minutes, now also showered and in a clean uniform, bits of tissue on his shaving cuts moved as his head turned. Farrukh gestured to the money and the phone.
‘I found those in his clothes and I left the rest of his garments over there.’
The soldier went still for a moment.
‘So you handled these items?’
‘I did. I had gloves on if that helps?’
The soldier smiled and scooped the phone and money into a sterile bag as four other soldiers entered and transferred the body to a stretcher.
The impromptu funeral march ended in a room where the throb of engines was so loud, the young soldier had to shout. At first, Farrukh didn’t understand, but then as the soldiers undid a wheel on a metal hatch in the wall, he realised. This was the place of the man’s burial, a metal tube through which his body would fall to join the millions of others lost over time to the sea bed. Food for fishes and coral, the way it has always been.
Farrukh tried to get his face in some kind of order as he murmured the well-loved words of the burial prayers, but he was distracted by the older soldier taking photos on his phone: photos of the cadaver and the chute, but when he went to undo the top of the shroud as if to photograph the broken face beneath, Farrukh held his hand up and stepped forward.
For this was forbidden.
The rights he had performed had rendered the man’s spirit into the no man’s land of the soul and until he had been blessed and delivered to the ground or sea he could not ascend to heaven. So, as the soldier reached his giant hand forward, Farrukh’s small white-robed hand came between it and the body. A body, now Farrukh thought may belong to some kind of nobleman that they needed this evidence. The older man blinked and looked at him. Then drew back and nodded in apology. Farrukh’s stomach gave a mighty rumble and as he said his final words a wave of exhaustion overcame him. The red-haired soldier stepped forward and positioned the body with its heels against the chute and pressed a button. There was a deep roar, and the body was gone. ‘Travel well, my brother.’ That was all Farrukh could think.
They led him away from the roar of the engines back up through the living quarters to a small comfortable room with a shower and towels and most importantly to Farrukh, a large flagon of American coffee and a plate of Arabic pastries even Mrs Penemenos would have approved of. But first, he must shower.
On the flight, back, sated and relaxed, Farrukh watched as shoals of sardines swam away from the movement of the helicopter’s rotors and he thought that a last resting place in the cool translucent waters might not be such a bad thing after all. He would seek guidance on it from his elders when he next travelled for Eid in Karachi. His stomach gave a flip of excitement. Eid was in August and maybe they would be married by then and Imani could make the pilgrimage with him. He hugged himself at the thought that he could be so blessed and he patted the cardboard box the senior soldier had put into his hands before he got into the helicopter. It had originally been a wedge of Pakistani rupees ‘to help with expenses.’
‘But, my son this is my job.’
The soldier had nodded, eyes glassy with tiredness.
‘I know but we are grateful for your help and I have my orders. There must be something you can use it for.’
Farrukh had looked at the clean crisp pile of notes enclosed in a streamer of red paper. He took a deep breath and pushed the money back across the table.
‘I don’t think I can take it. What I did for you I am bound to do for any member of my faith, so much as I would like to accept, I cannot.’
‘Is there anything at all I can offer in exchange for your services?’
Farrukh couldn’t help himself.
‘You wouldn’t have a spare mobile phone, would you?’ Surely he would be lightly judged if it was for someone else?
The soldier smiled for the first time showing beautiful white teeth.
‘That, my friend, I can do.’ He replied. And Farrukh hugged the cardboard box covered with cellophane to his chest as if he were carrying relics back to be interred beneath the Black Stone of Mecca as the helicopter drifted down towards his village on silent wings; like a leaf falls from a tree. The sun slanted at an angle through the low scrubby hills, yellow and orange in the evening light. He shook the hand of the pilot and headed up the dusty lane to the village.
A fig tree’s fruit is just an inverted flower so there is never any blossom, just the spread of giant sea-green leaves broader and glossier as the tree matures; bending over itself and edging through cracks in stone walls as if to listen to the day’s news as it blared from Mr Latif’s cafe window. Goats slept under its shade, mothers left their babies beneath it, and lovers met there, moving in its shadows at night murmuring words of love, the fig’s gnarled trunk making it easy to hide from parental eyes. This afternoon, it was Rahim who waited underneath it, rising as he heard Farrukh’s footfall and ran towards him arms spread, like a stork.
‘Where have you been?’ Poor Rahim looked a bit white. ‘At first, I was okay, I was busy. But as time passed I worried you really might not return; that they were bad men and how would I have known where to find you?’
‘No they weren’t bad,’ replied Farrukh. ‘They just needed me for a burial.’
Rahim’s eyes were wide.
‘Really, an American Muslim?’
Farrukh frowned.
‘No, I do not think American. Afghan or Pakistani maybe. Anyway,’ he looked at Rahim with a smile. ‘I am not to talk of it, so don’t ask me anything else. But they did let me have this.’ Farrukh took the iPhone box out of his robes and handed it to Rahim.
Rahim’s breath left his chest in a ‘waaaahh’ of ecstasy.
‘Farrukh, oh my, by Allah. I can’t believe it.’ He undid the cellophane and opened the box with shaking hands. ‘Oh, I don’t know what to say… Thank you. Thank you so much.’
Farrukh smiled. Such pleasure from such a small thing.
Rahim had already plugged the phone into the mosque’s only electrical outlet when Farrukh took evening prayers. Then feeling guilty for rushing everyone, Farrukh washed once more in the tiny bathroom. He brushed the dust from his robes and polished his sandals with the hem of his robe. He cleaned his teeth to get rid of his coffee breath and smoothed his hair back under his kufi.
Rahim was waiting for him in the growing shadow of the mosque’s porch. He was breathing onto the screen of the phone and polished it with a little square of grey fabric.
‘Have you got it to work yet?’
Rahim shook his head.
‘Not yet. I have to go and sign on to Mr Latif’s Wi-Fi if his router is working.’
‘And if he lets you.’ Added Farrukh. For Mr Latif was very proud of his position as the only internet provider for miles and every night boys like clouds of moths would gather in the trees behind his cafe trying to pick up a bar or two of the signal. Then Mr Latif would rush out and beat them all away so that they would scatter, only to return a few minutes later and settle back in their places. Great fun for the boys but less so for Mr Latif.
‘I’m sure he won’t mind, especially if I let him have a go with it.’ Rahim would be the only one with an iPhone, all the others had something unpronounceable and Chinese and Farrukh could see him wrestle with how proud he was of it and the humility he knew he should show. The two emotions battled their way across his young face, stubbled still with no beard as if they were two cats fighting in a sack.
Rahim tucked his hands into his robe, and together they walked up the winding road to Mrs Ali’s house which sat at the brow of the hill with an unrivalled view of the sea. The sun was just dipping on the horizon in a shimmer of orange and purple. It was exactly six o’clock. Farrukh felt a bead of sweat drip down his side. They’d made it.
Mrs Ali kept a very clean house with a swept wooden porch and an orange cat asleep on the fabric chair which sat positioned next door to Mr Latif’s café so she could see all the comings and goings of the village. Imani and her family were there already, seated in the tiny parlour. Imani was wearing her lucky red headscarf. She gave him a smile of such confidence and sweetness, he felt his fear shift a bit, like the earth beneath his feet when he’d felt a tremor from an earthquake far away.
He bowed to her and her family and finally lifted his eyes to Mrs Ali. She too was wearing a shawl of red cotton with silver coins sewn on its edge so when she moved the bells rang. As if she needed any announcement, Farrukh thought with her corpulent frame and shuffling feet whose echo he could hear from the far end of the village on market days.
‘Ah Farrukh, so good of you to join us.’ Mrs Ali looked at him. Or one eye did. Farrukh bit back a retort and bowed low again and then sat on the leather footstool by the wall next to the door. ‘Rahim, you can wait on the porch.’
Her hair, an unlikely shade of black, was tightly bound beneath the red scarf and her good eye as she moved it over the people in front of her suggested she didn’t think much of what she saw. Farrukh could not find in Mrs Ali any redeeming features, though as a man of God he tried.
So, he kept his face smooth as a lily pond and tried not to look at Imani. If Mrs Ali was aware of the extent of his longing, she would use it against him. Mrs Ali settled herself in a comfortable chair that dominated the room. They were obviously not going to be offered anything to drink.
‘Where are your parents, Farrukh?’
‘Dead, ma’am.’ She nodded as if she hadn’t known this already. ‘So Rahim is standing up for me in their place.’
‘He’s a little young and frankly, you are a little old for this desert flower.’
Imani dropped her head, cheeks pink.
‘I know Mrs Ali. At forty-five I have thought of the age difference between us often. But I believe we would be allowed some happy days together before I was called to the next life.’
Mrs Ali turned her gaze on Imani.
‘And you child. When you’re forty and he is sixty, you will not mind?’ Imani shook her head. Her face was resolute and she looked Mrs Ali right in the eye. ‘Very well.’
Mrs Ali fussed with a pink and black carpet bag, finding a table to put it on and then dragging it towards her with squealing feet. Then she laid out two pieces of paper covered with squiggles of blue and red and yellow. Imani’s father rifled in his pocket and brought out a small, but crucially heavy, pouch of money. What on earth was he doing paying so much for this? Pictures Mrs Bashir’s five-year-old twins could have drawn?
Mrs Ali was now sitting up like a pouter pigeon, all chest and no neck and Farrukh knew she couldn’t wait to impart bad news. He glanced at Imani. Her face too was drained of colour, making him think of the woman she might become as she got older; a woman he was now sure Mrs Ali wasn’t going to let him marry. And the thought that he might not be able to watch Imani age brought a lump to his throat and tears burned in his eyes. Never to see her hair touched with grey or her laughter lines deepen? He couldn’t bear it.
‘There is very little here that…’ began Mrs Ali. But a great flapping rush interrupted her and the door banged open. Rahim stood on the threshold holding his new phone aloft like a firebrand.
‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Ali. Mr and Mrs Shah, but Farrukh must see this.’
Farrukh, thinking this interruption by Rahim was now the nail in his coffin, took the phone from him whilst Mrs Ali’s mouth moved as she built up to a monstrous squawk of anger.
Later, Farrukh would marvel at how some moments are so much the work of the divine that every other moment henceforth would be scrutinized for its ability to bring so much pleasure. Of course, the following moments will never live up to these transcendent ones, but wasn’t it man’s job to go on searching for them anyhow?
To go on living?
For on the phone screen, Farrukh could read the headlines. ‘Osama Bin Laden assassinated… buried at sea… confirmed by United States President Obama. Confirmed by Pakistani intelligence…’
At first, the word swam little before Farrukh’s tired eyes and he was still overwhelmed with sadness, confused by Rahim’s rudeness, so out of character. But as he blinked and read the words again, Allah granted him the gift of understanding.
He looked up at Rahim and Rahim looked to Mrs Ali whose squawk never materialized as she saw Farrukh and Rahim gaze towards her mantelpiece. More than a mantelpiece, really.
More an altar.
An altar with an eight by four photo in a frame, surrounded by flowers replaced fresh every day. A handsome young man, smiling widely at what life might hold in store for him. Mrs Ali’s son, killed when he’d been taking cash out of the machine at the foot of the World Trade Centre. Or when he’d been having coffee at the Amish Deli in its basement. Or when he’d been studying in the medical section of Borders Books with its comfortable chairs on the second floor. Or maybe when he’d been kissing a girl in a stairwell on the fortieth floor? The doctors that waited for the injured on the island of Manhattan could never tell Mrs Ali where he was or where he had been. They couldn’t tell anyone anything, for the bodies never came. They were annihilated where they stood. Their flames snuffed out. Unexpected and irrevocable.
Farrukh handed Mrs Ali the phone and a carpet of red crept from her chest up to her neck to her face. Her eyes locked onto his.
‘Is this where you went on that big black bird?’
‘I think so.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘He is.’
‘Buried?’
‘At the bottom of the sea.’
A flinty look crept over her face and she took a deep breath and let it go with a sigh of deep satisfaction. She handed the phone back to Farrukh. Then she looked down at the charts before her and swept them into her bag.
From every drawer in her desk, she took more charts, piling them into Rahim’s open arms. Farrukh and Imani’s family watched as she shuffled down her steps to the smouldering fire pit in Mr Latif’s garden. The charts she threw lay inert then caught, flared and burned with a multi-coloured flame; fanned by the fragrant south wind, black smoke against an indigo sky.
And they watched as the ash fell like confetti all around them.
****
