Night of the Golden Butterfly Read Online Free PDF Page B

was the discovery of this unknown side of her that made him lose control and kill her.’
    ‘Did they hang him?’
    ‘What world do you live in? He was released three months later. His lawyer argued it was an “honour killing”, and the judge was paid in advance. Ahmed now lives peacefully with his new wife. The two boys have been sent off to a cadet college and will soon become young army officers. I don’t speak to the dog, but occasionally I indulge in obscene language to express my solidarity with his late wife. Do you believe me?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘It’s true. Your old friend Zahid loves being abused anyway. Makes him feel he’s back home. How was the butterfly?’
    ‘Reserved and dignified as always. More than I can say for you. What do you want of me?’
    ‘Could you write a long essay about me?’
    ‘Your paintings?’
    ‘Yes, but more about my life. She wants it and I can’t deny her anything.’
    ‘How old is she?’
    ‘Fifty-two.’
    ‘Not bad. Only twenty-seven years younger than you. I was hoping she might be one of your younger models. When did her husband die?’
    ‘Who told you it was dead? It will never die. It’s still alive and present. In fact she keeps it close to her bed.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Prepare yourself for a surprise, Mr Dara. My Zaynab is married to the Koran.’
    ‘Allah help us.’
    ‘He never does, as we know.’
    ‘So she’s the daughter of some Sindhi feudal engaged in sordid calculations about his property.’
    Plato was overcome by a fit of bitter laughter. ‘Yes, but in her case it was the brother, not the father, who forced her to marry the Holy Book. He must have made a lot of money selling her share of the land. It’s not that old age has made him generous. He dropped dead a few years ago. The younger brother adores Zaynab. He bought her an apartment in Clifton overlooking the sea. She wanted to buy one of my paintings. I showed her a selection. She bought them all. Then I did an imagined portrait of her on her wedding night. That made her laugh so much that I fell in love. Can you imagine?’
    I could, but Plato still wanted to go through it in great detail and I didn’t stop him. I preferred Plato in love to Plato melancholic, filled with whisky-soaked despair and suicidal. He preferred living on the edge and in a way his love for Zaynab fell into that category. For the ignorant she was the equivalent of a Catholic nun, except that she was wed to the Koran, not Jesus. The tradition refused to die out. To become her lover was to defy heaven and become a passionate sinner. I was sure that her marital status was the turn-on. Plato paid no heed to official morality, took great pleasure in defying public opinion and enjoyed startling his conformist contemporaries. His life and his paintings reflected these feelings.
    He recounted in some detail how the first meeting had been brief, but profitable. He described her clothes, the colour of her hair underneath the diaphanous dupatta . The way her eyes changed colour and so on. She summoned him a week later to explain the allegorical side of his work. Then he asked her to pose for him. She did so fully clothed, but he painted her lying naked in her bed waiting for her Holy Book—husband. He said the picture was inspired by Magritte, but if it were ever shown in public he would be DD’d (disembowelled and decapitated) by some fanatic. I challenged this assertion. Given that the grotesque practice of Koran-marriage was regularly denounced as un-Islamic by every clerical faction in Fatherland and had even united Shia and Wahhabi, surely it was the men in these families who should be DD’d for misusing the Holy Book to safeguard their property.
    I thought my logic was impeccable, but Plato ignored me and continued with his story. Zaynab, he said, was not a virgin. I sighed with relief. The advantage of this type of marriage, she had told him, was that there was no need to dissemble. Every pretty woman Zaynab knew in