athroom window while he was in the shower, and shaking like an earthquake Nadia and her lemon tree as she sat on her terrace smoking a joint. Fighter-bombers grated hoarsely through the sky. But on the third weekend there was a lull and Saeed went to Nadia’s and she met him in a nearby café since it was too risky for her to drop a robe into the street by day, or for him to change outdoors, and so he pulled it on in the café’s bathroom while she paid the bill and then with his head covered and eyes on the ground, followed her into her building, and once upstairs and inside they soon slipped into her bed and were nearly naked together and after much pleasure but also what she considered a bit excessive a delay on his part she asked if he had brought a condom and he held her face in his hands and said, “I don’t think we should have sex until we’re married.” And she laughed and pressed close. And he shook his head. And she stopped and stared at him and said, “Are you fucking joking?” • • • FOR A SECOND Nadia was seized by a wild fury but then as she looked at Saeed he appeared almost lethally mortified and a coil loosened in her and she smiled a little and she held him tight, to torture him and to test him, and she said, surprising herself, “It’s okay. We can see.” • • • LATER AS THEY LAY in bed listening to an old and slightly scratched bossa nova LP, Saeed showed her on his phone images by a French photographer of famous cities at night, lit only by the glow of the stars. “But how did he get everyone to turn their lights off?” Nadia asked. “He didn’t,” Saeed said. “He just removed the lighting. By computer, I think.” “And he left the stars bright.” “No, above these cities you can barely see the stars. Just like here. He had to go to deserted places. Places with no human lights. For each city’s sky he went to a deserted place that was just as far north, or south, at the same latitude basically, the same place that the city would be in a few hours, with the Earth’s spin, and once he got there he pointed his camera in the same direction.” “So he got the same sky the city would have had if it was completely dark?” “The same sky, but at a different time.” Nadia thought about this. They were achingly beautiful, these ghostly cities—New York, Rio, Shanghai, Paris—under their stains of stars, images as though from an epoch before electricity, but with the buildings of today. Whether they looked like the past, or the present, or the future, she couldn’t decide. • • • THE FOLLOWING WEEK it appeared that the government’s massive show of force was succeeding. There were no major new attacks in the city. There were even rumors that the curfew might be relaxed. But one day the signal to every mobile phone in the city simply vanished, turned off as if by flipping a switch. An announcement of the government’s decision was made over television and
adio, a temporary antiterrorism measure, it was said, but with no end date given. Internet connectivity was suspended as well. Nadia did not have a landline at home. Saeed’s landline had not worked in months. Deprived of the portals to each other and to the world provided by their mobile phones, and confined to their apartments by the nighttime curfew, Nadia and Saeed, and countless others, felt marooned and alone and much more afraid.
- Page 2: ALSO BY MOHSIN HAMID NOVELS Moth Sm
- Page 5 and 6: FOR NAVED AND NASIM
- Page 7 and 8: ONE
- Page 9 and 10: • • • THE NEXT DAY, at work,
- Page 11 and 12: sunlight. It was the sort of view t
- Page 13 and 14: more detailed as well, though it wa
- Page 15 and 16: WHEN NADIA WAS A CHILD, her favorit
- Page 17 and 18: “No. Of course.” Saeed’s expr
- Page 19 and 20: young had never cared much for play
- Page 21 and 22: THREE
- Page 23 and 24: the night they first became physica
- Page 25 and 26: so beautiful, and surely conflicts
- Page 27: Saeed’s mother prayed at home, ne
- Page 31 and 32: T HE EVENING CLASS Saeed and Nadia
- Page 33 and 34: And both of them grinned. But when
- Page 35 and 36: Many windows were broken already, a
- Page 37 and 38: FIVE
- Page 39 and 40: emotions from her own childhood, an
- Page 41 and 42: which she featured prominently, and
- Page 43 and 44: women she passed and then immediate
- Page 45 and 46: killing him, but that is the way of
- Page 47 and 48: T HEY SLEPT LITTLE that night, the
- Page 49 and 50: ut the doors in, the doors from poo
- Page 51 and 52: traded one of their smallish backpa
- Page 53 and 54: holding Nadia’s arm as though it
- Page 55 and 56: THEY EMERGED in a bedroom with a vi
- Page 57 and 58: the bathtub, was disappointingly ut
- Page 59 and 60: perhaps, a degree of order could be
- Page 61 and 62: Nadia and Saeed, who had run from w
- Page 63 and 64: EIGHT
- Page 65 and 66: Nadia’s, and whom Nadia had helpe
- Page 67 and 68: “I don’t need to.” She releas
- Page 69 and 70: The fury of those nativists advocat
- Page 71 and 72: tub, which the council had designat
- Page 73 and 74: T HAT SUMMER it seemed to Saeed and
- Page 75 and 76: light a cigarette, when he saw emer
- Page 77 and 78: asped as they were cinched and tied
- Page 79 and 80:
THE NORTHERN SUMMER EVENINGS were e
- Page 81 and 82:
TEN
- Page 83 and 84:
Saeed was more melancholic than he
- Page 85 and 86:
illness, in which case she prayed m
- Page 87 and 88:
Saeed hesitated, then took Nadia’
- Page 89 and 90:
ELEVEN
- Page 91 and 92:
Nadia knew people stayed at the coo
- Page 93 and 94:
vast numbers, at a cost so small as
- Page 95 and 96:
TW ELVE
- Page 97 and 98:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mohsin Hamid is th
Change language