The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

and almost every roof towered with bundles of wood and stored animal fodder. There were fewer people about in the bazaar and she passed only one or two Westerners. In another week or two the last of the cafés and guesthouses would be closed, the summer migrant workers would head down to the beaches and hotels of Goa for the winter season, and Leh would sink into its winter isolation as the snow piled up on the passes. She thought of the Beckers, and wondered how they were coping in their tent in this cold weather.
    At the showroom there was, of course, no sign of the uncle with the elusive key. Tsering the shopkeeper waved his hand at her impatience. He wanted to show her a new consignment of shawls, just arrived from the finisher. They drank masala chai and nibbled almonds and dried apricots as Mair admired the wares. She was learning that the ritualised exchanges of buyer and seller must take place even though they both knew that money and shawl were not going to change hands today.
    After a pleasant half-hour, the door that led to the weavers’ studio clicked open. A tiny, ancient man in a fur cap and felt boots bound with strips of leather tottered on the threshold.
    ‘My uncle Sonam.’ Tsering beamed, putting a heavy arm over his shoulder. ‘My grandmother brother.’
    Mair shook hands with the venerable figure, thinking that it was hardly surprising he didn’t spend much time caretaking. He looked too old to do anything except sit and doze in an armchair.
    ‘Good afternoon, Sonam- le ,’ she said, giving him what she had learnt was the polite honorific. The old man darted a bright-eyed appraising look at her. He spoke in an undertone to Tsering and jerked his thumb towards the shop door.
    With alacrity Tsering pulled on his Adidas jacket. ‘We’ll go,’ he said.

    ‘You’re going to leave the shop?’
    ‘My uncle does not speak English. Anyway,’ he shrugged and spread his hands, his face creasing, ‘I do not see any customer.’
    He locked the door behind them and the three of them set off, Sonam’s long, belted tunic swishing around his ankles and his fur cap bobbing as they crossed the bazaar. He could move surprisingly fast. Within minutes they had reached the familiar locked gates of the European cemetery. Sonam reached inside his layers of clothing, rummaged for a moment, and withdrew a huge key. The gates at last swung open and Mair passed through, under the gaunt trees and between the crosses and headstones. The ground was covered with fallen leaves, their buttery gold already brown and lifeless. The cold stung her cheeks.
    ‘What are you looking for?’ Tsering asked.
    Mair tried to interpret the German inscription on the nearest stone. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed.
    To her relief, the two men retreated to a small green lean-to placed against a sheltered wall. She wandered along the haphazard rows. There were several tiny graves, one with a stone that read simply ‘Josephine, aged 7 months’. She tried to imagine how European women so far from home had struggled to look after their children in this remote place, and how they must often have prayed in vain.
    She came to one small group of headstones bearing Welsh names, the Williamses and Thomases and Joneses of her own home valley, who could only have belonged to the Presbyterian mission. She took out her notebook and copied down the names and dates to look up in Hope and the Glory of God next time she had access to the Internet. She recognised one line of Welsh that was utterly familiar because she had seen it most recently in the graveyard at home, engraved on a stone just a few feet from her mother and father’s. Hedd perffaith hedd . Peace, perfect peace.
    Homesickness closed on her, unexpected but as tight as aclenched fist. She experienced a moment’s confused longing to be back in the valley. She could see her father at the kitchen table, his head bent over his newspaper and the inevitable cup of tea at his elbow.
    She