6

From the pelicans I moved my camera to the austere silhouette of a cormorant. He seemed to be watching the assault of the pelicans with as little interest as God.

‘Nadir, talk to me for a minute, without that.’

I didn’t have to see through the lens to see her point to it. ‘In
a minute.’

The pelicans gone, the seagulls multiplied. I watched a pair land softly on the boulders along the shore. And the hummingbirds – how did they survive in this wind, and at this height? And the purple flowers with the bright white hearts! Here it was again: the tenacity of the small. What I’d seen in the Sonoran Desert and the valleys of the Himalayas.

‘It’s over a minute.’ Her voice trembled. I put the camera in its case. She cleared her throat. ‘Nadir, are you as happy with me as you are alone on your nightly walks?’

‘I’m much happier.’

She looked away. I took my camera out again. She sometimes let me photograph her now, though still not often enough, and only when dressed. I got a beautiful profile of her gazing at the ruins as the mist rolled across the steps in the background.

‘Happier than in the mountains of Pakistan?’

Perhaps I hesitated. ‘Well, yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m happy anywhere with you.’

‘Why?’

I was still photographing her. From behind the lens, I replied, ‘Because you don’t remind me of my past.’ And as I stepped on to a lower wall to get more of the ruins behind her, I realized that this was exactly so. She wasn’t like any of the women I knew in Karachi. Her energy was – different. It wasn’t sultry, wasn’t Eastern. She was walking away from me now, walking away from my lens, and I noticed that her walk was determined and – how can I put it? – unstudied. As if no aunt had ever told her that women walk with one foot before the other. It wasn’t graceful but it was vigorous. There are men on the Pakistan Afghanistan border who can spot a foreign journalist hiding in a burqa by the way she moves. Farhana would never pass. She could, however, keep up with them on the mountains. Not many women from Karachi could. And yet – of course I didn’t tell her this – they had more patience in bed. Farhana didn’t like to linger, not over food, shopping or sex. The only thing I’d ever seen her linger over was her hair, and that was not with pleasure. All the languor was in her spine, the part she never let me put behind my lens. Everything else about her had the slightly lunatic energy of Nor Cal, uncomplicated and nervy. I mean, for heaven’s sake, she was passionate about glaciers. How many Pakistani women know two things about them? It was Farhana who told me that Pakistan has more glaciers than anywhere outside the poles. And I’ve seen them! I’ve even seen them fuck!

She was sobbing. I saw it first through the lens. I saw it too late, after I’d taken the photograph of her wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She said it was the worst thing I could have said.

The seagulls hovered, teetering in the breeze. Before they touched the rock it was beginning to sink in, yet each time I approached a landing, the wind pulled me away again. We loved each other, Farhana and I, for precisely opposite reasons. If I loved her because she did not remind me of my past, Farhana loved me because she believed I was her past. That day I came close to understanding; by the time I fully understood, we were already in transit, immersed in separate rituals of silence.

I expected to keep to the coast to Point Lobos, but, taking a detour, she began following the signs for Fort Miley. I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. How could I apologize for all that drew me to her?

There were picnickers in the grass between the gun emplacements dating to before the First World War. A plaque read: Although they never fired on an enemy, coastal batteries here and throughout the Bay Area stood ready – a strong deterrent to attack.

‘You had enemies back then, too?’ I muttered, before catching myself. ‘I didn’t mean you you.’