1

The hole had been shielded by wheat husks and walnut shells. In winter, the covering would be removed so the snow could collect over the two ice blocks – a male, a female. After five winters, the couple would begin to creep downhill, growing into a natural glacier, free of the cultivating hands of men. Freshwater children would spring from her womb providing the village with water to drink and to irrigate their fields.

We’d come as witnesses, Farhana and I. She wanted to know how they were chosen. I told her. The female ice was picked from a village where women were especially beautiful and, because that wasn’t enough, talented. Talent meant knowledge of yak milk, butter, fertilizer and, of course, wool. From caps to sweaters and all the way down to socks, the questions were always the same. How delicately was the sheep’s wool spun? And what about the kubri embroidery on the caps – was it colourful and fine? Most importantly, did all
the women cooperate?

‘And the male? I suppose beauty and cooperation aren’t high on
that list?’

He was picked from another village. One where men were strong and, because that wasn’t enough, successful. Success meant knowledge of firewood, agriculture, trekking and herding. There was a fifth, bonus area, and this was yak hair. From this some men could spin sharma, a type of coarse rug. A glacier in a village with such men had to be male.

She laughed. ‘So who does the picking?’

‘Men like him.’ I pointed to an old man stooped inside a grey woollen jacket. Perhaps the ice-bride had spun it, I thought, envisioning fingers of ice melting into a warp and weft. In a
whisper both soft and commanding, the old man directed two younger men on how to lower the ice-bride and ice-groom from off their backs without hurting them.

We’d followed, at a distance. The marital bed – the hole covered in shells and husk – had been dug into the side of a cliff as carefully selected as the bride and groom. Only this side of the mountain attracted the right length of shadow for the snow to hold for ten months, 14,000 feet above sea level. The porters
had heaved the ice on their backs the entire way. We were brought in a jeep.

To participate in the marriage procession, we’d sworn an oath
of silence. There was a belief in these mountains that words
corrupted the balance between lovers-in-transit. But now we’d reached the marital bed, Farhana and I could speak again.

They tossed the male in first. Whooshoo! Whooshoo! A loop of air seemed to dance right back up the hole and circle around again, inside my chest. The female was released on top, falling without a sound.

‘So this is copulation,’ said Farhana, her gloved fingers far
from mine.

They say it’s bad luck for other eyes to watch, I thought. Eyes from somewhere else. Karachi eyes. California eyes. I took out my camera and aimed.

Farhana was skipping down the hill, away from me.

She was not in our cabin that night.

I walked along the River Kunhar, thinking of Farhana. My way was lit by the moon and the rush of the current and the silhouettes of the trees and the hut down the way where we’d eaten trout before she left and I knew the others were asleep so I unlaced my boots and peeled off my jacket and stood buck-naked. I kneeled at the Kunhar’s edge and took a sip of her noxious water.

An owl soared across the river. Flapping twice before circling
back toward me, she came to rest on a giant walnut tree. There, looking directly down at me, she spoke. ‘Shreet!’ The sour glacier water inside me froze and my fingers grew so stiff that when I reached for my clothes I simply poked at them, as though with sticks, under the gaze of those gleaming black eyes.

Before the owl swooped across the moon’s reflection, I’d been thinking about that word, Kunhar, how kun sounded like kus which sounded like a cross between cunt and kiss. I held the bitter taste of glacier melt in my mouth as the moon eased deep into the river’s skin and she scattered him in pieces. I gazed down the Kunhar’s length. She cut through the valley for 160 kilometres. I’d been thinking of a long labia.

‘Shreet!’

The thought scattered like moonseed.

How long before the bird shot up into the sky and flew in the direction of my cabin? I couldn’t say. Eventually, I returned, still naked, and slid into bed. No Farhana. I would have been grateful for the heat she’d radiate under our sheets. I would have curled into her back and stroked her hair into a fan, a blanket to shelter in.