Page 371 - Leadership in the Indian Army

delivered again.

At some point, Laila knows, the questions will dry up. Slowly, Zalmai

will cease wondering why his father has abandoned him. He will not spot
his father any longer at traffic lights, in stooping old men shuffling down

the street or sipping tea in open-fronted samovar houses. And one day it

will hit him, walking along some meandering river, or gazing out at an

untracked snowfield, that his father's disappearance is no longer an open,
raw wound. That it has become something else altogether, something

more soft-edged and indolent. Like a lore. Something to be revered,

mystified by.

Laila is happy here in Murree. But it is not an easy happiness. It is not a

happiness without cost.

* * *

On his days off, Tariq takes Laila and the children to the Mall, along
which are shops that sell trinkets and next to which is an Anglican church

built in the mid-nineteenth century. Tariq buys them spicy chapli kebabs

from street vendors. They stroll amid the crowds of locals, the Europeans

and their cellular phones and digital cameras, the Punjabis who come
here to escape the heat of the plains.

Occasionally, they board a bus to Kashmir Point. From there, Tariq

shows them the valley of the Jhelum River, the pine-carpeted slopes, and
the lush, densely wooded hills, where he says monkeys can still be

spotted hopping from branch to branch. They go to the mapleclad Nathia

Gali too, some thirty kilometers from Murree, where Tariq holds Laila's