Thinner Than Skin by Uzma Aslam Khan Read Free Book Online Page A

within fourteen months, she and I would be posted at our own separate lookouts, not on a headland overlooking the Pacific, but near a glacier overlooking Kashmir.
    “What’s the most beautiful thing you ever witnessed?” she’d ask, as we lay together by her five-sided bay window, playing opposites. “I mean, a moment.”
    I always said it was the mating of glaciers. I’d seen the ritual once, with Irfan and his wife Zulekha, on that previous trip to Pakistan’s north. I tried to communicate the wonder of it to Farhana, while she stretched on her stomach, swinging her legs.
    First, I’d say, the village elders discussed at length which glaciers to mate. The female ice was picked from a village where women were especially beautiful and, because this wasn’t enough, talented. Talent meant knowledge of yak milk, butter, fertilizer, and, of course, wool. From caps to sweaters 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 colorful and fine? Most importantly, did all the women cooperate?
    “And the male?” Farhana laughed. “I suppose beauty and cooperation aren’t high on that list?”
    He was picked from another village, I said. One where men were strong, and, because this 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 swung her feet, happy in woolen socks. “And where do they consummate their love?”
    “In a hole dug into the side of a cliff.” I told her it was a ceremony I’d only been allowed to watch after swearing an oath ofsilence. There was a belief that words disturbed the balance between lovers-in-transit. Perhaps I was breaking the oath by describing it to her in detail there in her purple house, miles away from the sacred soil to which the ceremony belonged.
    “The location of the hole had been as carefully selected as the bride and groom,” I continued, “by gauging which side of the mountain attracted the right length of shadow for the snow to hold for ten months, 14,000 feet above sea level. Two porters had heaved the ice on their backs the entire way. We were brought in a jeep, after taking that oath.”
    I remembered Zulekha kissing Irfan’s cheek, hurriedly, making sure no one was looking. She had curls down to her shoulders and features as impish as his. They’d been neighbors in Peshawar and had gone to the same college in Karachi. They’d been in love since the age of six.
    I remembered the girl I was with at the time, Rida, which means inner peace. The chapstick on her lips had the scent of mint crackling in firewood. Later, I’d feed her purple roses that left blood marks on our lips. (Of course, I left this detail out for Farhana.)
    At the marital hole, we all stood, waiting. The porters lowered the ice-bride and ice-groom from off their backs without hurting them. 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. She fell without a sound.
    I thought it a beautiful thing. The most beautiful thing I’d seen. A pilgrimage to love.
    We were told it was bad luck for other eyes to watch. Eyes from somewhere else. Karachi eyes. Peshawar eyes. But even then I’d not been able to resist. I’d taken out my camera and aimed. Had it brought us bad luck?
    I left this detail out as well.
    “What happened next?” She rolled onto her back, said the ice imagery was making her thirsty. I put wet glasses in the freezer fordark beer later. Then I told her the rest. The elders waited politely for the male and female glaciers to finish in their marital bed, after which the porters shielded the hole with a mat of grass, wheat husks,