He sat back down.


After leaving the girl in Kashgar, his world had kept opening. He traded in the cities of Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Almaty, traveling up the Oxus River and deep into the steppe, developing a special kinship with those who built the goods he sold in the markets. It was here the land spoke to him most, in a region that lay high in the north of what was now Kazakhstan, though to the nomads with whom he was to spend the next three summers, all of Central Asia was one land, divided not into states but into mountain and steppe, desert and oasis. The steppe nomads made him feel he was looking back in time—his time. It was the strangest sensation, the first day he was invited to break bread with them. It was as though a mountain inside him were melting, leaving him naked and cleansed, entirely in his own skin, the skin he used to inhabit in the valley of his youth, before he had to leave (he had not entirely chosen to leave; he had been sent away, banished, almost, even if he did prefer to think otherwise), before he had to don a thousand different skins. In the steppe he was undisguised, unwary, unwanting.

He found that the Turkic nomads shared an uncanny likeness to his own community: love of horses, hospitality to guests, and, most of all, a worshipful knowledge of the primacy of movement. The men had lush beards and liked their trees to look the same; they did not fell that which gave them life. Even some of their festivals were the same. They observed Nauroz, the first day of spring, by cleansing their homes with burning juniper branches, smoking out the vices of the previous year, a ritual now done in secret down in Kaghan, by a woman who, when she was a child, had licked honey from his fingers and danced to his flute. (The memory always made him smile.) The steppe nomads loved music too, bowed string things that made them kick. He was glad he had his flute. They sang as much as they prayed, and talked twice as much. They had their own shamans, those who could escort a soul back to a body, and those who could escort due justice back to a crime. They were born with a long ear and a memory as old as the Oxus. So was he. There was nothing said in his presence that he did not carry deep in his chest to the next yurt, the next town, the next valley. But he held it there. He did not talk. He merely listened, loyal to everyone who showed him only kindness. Their stories were his stories. Their enemies were his enemies. And their women, well.

Only a few weeks after leaving the girl with the feather-white thighs, Ghafoor found himself drinking milk from the arms of another. They had a peculiar diet, up here. It was the hardest thing for him to grow accustomed to. The worst thing he ever ate was a bowl of thick string made of something vaguely the consistency of rice, though the duck, also new to him, did make it easier to swallow, and the mare’s milk made it easier still. He had never milked even a buffalo before — a sign that he was never a very good herder, even when he was one — but one day he saw her doing it, stroking the udder of a visibly pregnant mare, a girl who was not slight and not oval-faced, but who had the most perfect round arms, and who showed him how. Press like this.

Over the course of the summer he followed her through highland pastures the way he had, not too long ago, followed another through cobblestone labyrinths. An audience of eagles and hawks dipped and twirled in a sky free of fighter jets. Looking up from beneath him in the grass, she spoke a name of God that was older than Allah. Tengri. Tengri, he repeated, drinking her smell. He was getting better at getting naked faster than the milk still warm on her flesh could ferment. Tengri, she whispered again and again in his ear. It means the endless hemisphere of the sky.

There was some movement that even a free woman did not consider free. This time, before he could leave for the market towns, he was told to bid for her hand, which he did. He won the hand but before he could marry her, he had to win at two additional tasks. The first was assembling their home. A yurt was more luxurious than any Gujjar tent, and entirely sacred. It was a replica of the endless hemisphere of the sky and putting it together was an act of creation. His bride-to-be needed to know that he could create. After many tries, he eventually succeeded. Their yurt was a bright, plush home, with each aspect, she told him, representing a part of the human body. The walls were thighs, the smoke hole the eye, and the interior lattice frame with the ribbed plates that he gazed upon each night from beneath her, the womb. The second task was not divine, though, much to her amusement, he did not realize this till much later, when it ceased being a prerequisite to their marriage. It was a game in which he waited on a sandy outcrop on a horse till she rode up to him, at which point, he could chase after her. If he caught up with her, he could kiss her. If he failed, she could whip him. The game even had a name, kyz kuu, the kissing game. He never did win, even before she took pity and married him.

To their yurt and their games he returned, wherever he went, and for however long. She could weave the finest rugs ever seen, a skill that flowed in her blood for more generations than he could name, for which he fetched a handsome price, keeping her family well fed. He did not need to return to Pakistan very often for leather or other goods. He no longer found much use for jade.

Yet, lately, something was pulling him back, something that had not pulled him for a while. The comforts of the yurt had begun to ache. The duck no longer tasted sweet. Mare milk was rather sour when compared with buffalo milk. And the truth was, though it delighted her, kyz kuu exhausted him. Perhaps it was time for a visit. So he had sent the blue feather to the girl of the valley of his youth, smiling to himself as he recalled her amazement the first time he left her a sign in the cave. Their cave. And he sent word to all those he had met in his many years as a suitcase trader, a long, long network of associates who were Uzbek and Tajik, Afghan and Uyghur, men with a long, long ear and a memory as wide as the Lli River that flowed from Kazakhstan all the way into Xinjiang. He told them he needed something rare, very rare. Something he could give to someone from his past, something no one had ever thought to give before, the best surprise they could think of, and the most beautiful, and the most short-lived. For he was not staying long in Pakistan. It should last only as long as his trip. But it must be exceptionally radiant, silken, and sweet. In short, it must be rare.

And then he left.

From the open grassland of the steppe he eventually descended into the town of Almaty, and from there to Bishkek, swinging west into Tashkent — he had once told her their cave led all the way to Tashkent, he recalled, his step buoyant — repeating what he had already asked, and the answer was always the same. No, they had not found anything that rare but they would keep searching. It was July, the time of year when nomads all over Asia have moved from their winter homes into summer pastures, and he knew it would be the same for Maryam and her family. Maryam. He had not spoken her name for some time. She had always loved this time of year, away from the plains, high in the grazing grounds around Lake Saiful Maluk. Perhaps she was thinking of him, at just this moment.

Perhaps she was missing his version of the song about the prince, the princess, and the jealous jinn.

From Tashkent he descended into the Fergana Valley, and now he was getting close. He was approaching the passes through the Pamir and Karakoram ranges he knew so well he could have made the trek in his sleep, and he might have, but for one event that required him to remain fully awake.

It was this event that had tipped off these men.

It happened in Andijan, where he had stopped for just the day. The city Genghis Khan had burned seven hundred years ago, and that his grandson later rebuilt. The city where the Khan’s most famous descendent, Emperor Babar, founder of the Mughal Dynasty, was born. The city where his most profitable clients now lived.

Ghafoor had arranged to meet his client in Babar Square. As he approached the square, he recognized the man, but the man was not alone. Beside him was a Uyghur from Xinjiang. Ever since leaving Kashgar, four summers ago, in haste, Ghafoor had been avoiding the Uyghur community as much as he could, which, given his business, was not always possible. His strategy was to always approach a Kashgari, in particular, from the side. He did not want to be recognized as the foreign merchant who broke his promise to a local girl. Repercussions could be — well, how would they be down in Kaghan? But this day, perhaps it was his excitement at nearing the mountain passes so familiar to him, or perhaps it was the way the sunlight fell on the statue of Babar’s horse, whatever the reason, when both men greeted Ghafoor, they seemed amiable enough, and he relaxed. The Uzbek examined the rugs Ghafoor had brought, nodding appreciatively while promising, “God willing, we will find the just rate.” When both men invited him to lunch at a crowded teahouse, he agreed.

He regretted it almost immediately.

How were the women up there, in the steppe, the Uyghur — who, it turned out, was from Kashgar — wanted to know.

“Well,” answered Ghafoor, scooping handfuls of palov with his fingers. “The women are well.” At the table next to him, he heard a European refer to the rice dish as pilaff, the Kashgari at his table refer to it as polu, and of course, were he in Pakistan, he would hear it called pilau. It was piled high with mutton seasoned with herbs rather than spices and though he was now used to the difference, he ate with two tongues, one that did all the work while the other dreamed of flavors it did not touch.