Jawad marvelled at the intricate patterns hennaed on his wife's – his bride's, more precisely: they had just been married two days – hands. Elaborate curlicues, ornate lines twining around her slender fingers, frenetic petal bursts on her palms. Just looking at her hands stirred desire in him. Her delicate wrists, the stretch of dainty, satiny skin left bare by dangling sleeves (the latest fashion, she had told him); he wanted to grab her in his embrace. But this wasn't the time or place for that. They had just boarded a crowded van that would cart them uphill to the alpine retreat of Murree, to coniferous trees and rolling hills and mists: perfect for their honeymoon.
They were coming all the way from Multan: hot, dusty, parched Multan, its temperatures soaring even in this first week of May. The bus from Multan dropped them at Rawalpindi, the town that led you to Kashmir, to the foothills of the mighty Himalaya. They waited half an hour at the clogged, smelly, cacophonous bus-and-van station, trying to catch a ride to Murree. No buses were forthcoming anytime soon, so they decided on a van instead. It was derelict – seats ripped, inner rubber linings peeling and dangling serpentine over passengers' heads – and cramped, but also much cheaper. He took it nevertheless: he was eager to reach Murree as soon as possible. He had only been there once, as a child; he remembered that jaunt dimly: how he frolicked with cousins up and down pine-clad slopes, chomping spice-laced chips and roasted chickpeas, and shuddering in the unexpectedly nippy whiffs of alpine air. The trip had been all fun and excitement.
When the date of his wedding was decided, some cousins suggested Murree as a possible honeymoon destination. In early May the place would be cold enough to warrant pullovers and blankets; it was the perfect antidote to sweltering Multan. From his recollections, Jawad conjured up the alpine town in his mind: cool, eddying mists that kissed your skin, embraced you like a lover; sprawling, exuberant green vistas; narrow streets snaking around hills sporting strips of shops and cheap hotels that catered specifically to honeymooners. He had enthusiastically agreed to the suggestion. He couldn't wait, now, to slip into a room in one such hotel, its windows overlooking the fogged-over ripples of hills, and devour his young bride, his lovely Nazlee, in the cosy comfort of the quilted double bed. The thought prompted a wide grin and a pleasurable stirring in his loins. He now gleefully slipped his hand in Nazlee's as they settled in their rexine seats. A passenger or two frowned at this public display of intimacy. Hell with them, he thought. She's my wife after all. The van juddered into motion.
Nazlee, too, was excited. She had never been to Murree in all her twenty years, had only seen it on TV. The idea of being there with Jawad, the two of them all by themselves, felt like an impossibly beautiful dream. She felt a giddy rush of excitement as he took her hand. It made her giggle. The last couple of days had been one thrill after another. Jawad – brash, cheery, frivolous, the quintessential romantic hero – was all she had secretly hoped and craved for; she had been reared on a staple diet of Indian movie romances and Mills & Boon paperbacks, and Jawad seemed straight out of one: a dashing, doting youth with thick curly hair and indulgent eyes and a stocky, sinewy figure that he brandished with a nonchalant conceit. She was glad their parents had decided to marry them off despite their youth (he was twenty) and the fact that he was still looking for a decent livelihood. Youth was the only time to enjoy yourself, Nazlee believed, before life encumbered you with responsibilities and wore you out. She intended to enjoy hers fully, or at least as much as she could. She had happily acquiesced when her parents suggested Jawad and marriage. And before long she had fallen in love with him; she was sure of that. He seemed irresistible. So what if he was jobless? Few people were employed at his age. There were some reservations in her family regarding his future prospects – he had been a wayward student, had scrabbled to obtain a dubious bachelor's degree in commerce, an outmoded discipline – but his parents had insisted that the responsibility of married life would straighten him out. Nazlee, Jawad's mother had quipped, would fix him. Nazlee had blushed at that. She went for him, headlong. And so far the marriage had been a pure joyride.