The Shop in Old Town

Many, many years ago, I chanced upon a strange, little bookshop in Old Town. It was a ramshackle operation, stacks of books lined the pavement, moulting pages in the noonday sun, arranged haphazardly - The Communist Manifesto keeping company with The Wind in the WIllows, and Polidori's Vampyre lying precariously close to Austen's Mansfield Park, pages touching. I chuckled to myself, imagining what havoc was to unfold if Polidori's bloodsucking protagonist were to leap out of the covers and jump across pages, to sink his teeth into Lady Betram's beloved Pug. Catastrophe would result, with a vampiric pug chasing down the corridors of Mansfield Park - turning all our beloved (and not so beloved) characters - Fanny, Edward, Henry Crawford, Ms Norris - into creatures of the night.

But as I examined the contents of another pile, I stumbled across a tiny black book, with an ancient, threadbare black cover, leaves spilling out. I opened the book, and glanced across the first page. There was nothing - just a blank page. Puzzled, I flipped past pages until I came, in the middle of the book, to a white page, marred by a single black dot.

The dot grew, before my very eyes, it spread across the page and resolved itself into a black and white etching.

It was a portrait of a young woman, who looked strangely familiar. As I looked at the picture, her features withered, her eyes grew rheumy, and lines etched themselves in the corner of her mouth. Even as I watched, the edges of the page began to burn and charr, fire creeping slowly towards the center of the image. The woman looked at either side, at the burning edges that framed her, and fear began to twist her features, furrow her brow. Her face began to burn, features melting into a pool of black ink. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream.

I shut the book.

The smell of burning still hung in the air, and my heart rocked in my chest. I shut my eyes, hoping to erase the image of her burning face, but it was still there, etched in darkness against my eyelids.

I opened my eyes, shocked now, for I had realized why her features had been so familiar.

"Are you alright?" A voice sounded by my ear. I turned, it was a fellow customer, a sandy haired tourist, persuing the stacks of books on the pavement. I nodded and moved away, into the shop.

It was dark inside; it smelt of mothballs, dusty old pages and pann. I went to the cashier's desk, but there was no body there. Surprised, I peered over the counter, to find a little boy, sleeping under the desk, his head resting on a thick volume of Shakespeare.

"Is someone older here? Who owns this shop?" I asked. The boy shook his head, rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

"No, my grandfather is away, but you can pay here."

I sighed, I didn't imagine that this little boy would be much help in learning anything about the black book in my hands. "When will your grandfather be back?"

The little boy shrugged, and then turning to a dark doorway behind him, shouted - "Ammi!"

A woman answered back, faintly - something I couldn't catch. As I waited, she emerged from the doorway - a pretty girl. She had a pair of almond shaped grey eyes, heavily lined with kohl, and fair, smooth skin. As she pulled her pink scarf over her hair, her bangles jingled, a soft, sweet sound. She seemed too young to have birthed the boy beside her. I was caught by her beauty, the incandescent beauty of an houri or a princess, a strange thing to find in the darkness of a bookshop.

The boy showed her the book. She frowned at the book, but didn't touch it, or glance at the pages. She smiled at me - and I felt my heart squeeze, for her smile was like a rainbow breaking across a land battered by rain. She spoke in beautiful, classical urdu - "I'm sorry, I can't help you. But my father will be back, next week, he's gone to his village."

I bought the book, in any case, and left the shop. I opened it many times in the following days - but it only showed me one picture, the picture I had already seen.

Months passed, and the book was lying, forgotten, in a drawer, when my nephew, a lovely six year old, was staying with me. His parents, jet-setting executives, had little time to spend with their boy, and so he often came to me. He was a quiet, frail thing and we would work in comfortable silence together, he - industriously colouring little pictures of houses and families, and me, scribbling the stories that were my livelihood.

One day, though, the silence was broken by a little cry. I turned around, and found the black book in his hands. He had torn out a leaf, and before our eyes, black was unfurling across the page. Black flowers blossomed, and then wilted, petals dissolving into rivers and lake of ink. I snatched the page from his little hands, and watched the image shape.

What I saw broke my heart.

"I just wanted a piece of paper for a picture," he lisped at me, thinking his quest for paper had occasioned my anger. I couldn't speak then, tears were choking my throat. I clutched him, buried my face in his nest of curly hair.

"Why are you crying?" He asked. I couldn't tell him.

That night I couldn't sleep, but watched the rise and fall of his chest, as he dreamt. What did he dream? What did six-year old boys dream of?

My sister came, a couple of days latter, to pick up her little son. "You should spend more time with him," I told her, gathering his toys together.

My sister wrenched his things of my hands. "It's all very well for you to say," she sneered at me, her voice rising, "You don't have a job." As I started in surprise, she went on, "Well...not a regular job, not like the rest of us. And you don't have a kid either. Children are expensive - schools, tutions, nannies, field trips, summer camp - we have to save for college as well." She stormed off, pushing things quickly into his suitcase.

She didn't speak to me for a week.

Perhaps it wouldn't happen, I told myself. Perhaps the book was wrong.

Some time later, I had a couple of friends over for dinner. It was a pleasant evening, and as darkness descended, we uncorked a bottle of wine. It was a night full of stars, and as we sat outside, a friend began to tell a story - about a haunted house he had lived in. It was a lovely tale, and after that, emboldened by the magic of the evening and the wine, I started to talk of the black book.

One of my closest friends, an actor, dismissed my story with a sweep of his beautiful, elegant hand, an expression of derision spreading across his face. "No! No!" he cried, "that's not a story at all. You're a writer - you've got to come up with something better! With characters, plot, mystery and ambition! This is nothing...too much like Dorian Gray..." I was hurt by his flamboyant disapproval, I was a little in love with him then - many of us were - but I knew then that that it was only my friendship that he wanted.

Perhaps it was that which made me a little angry.

Incensed, I replied that it wasn't a story, that it was true. My audience guffawed, and to prove them wrong, I rushed into my bedroom and pulled out the book.

My actor friend pried the book loose from my hands. I watched his perfect, handsome profile, outlined against the moon, as he flipped through the pages, and watched his smile droop, the light fade from his eyes.

"What is it?" I asked. A strange silence fell over the gathering, as he shut the book, and handed it back to me.

"Nothing, nothing," he tried to smile, but failed. I felt a brief flutter of disappointment mingled with guilt - had it been anger, or the wine, that had egged me on? I watched him as he moved away and pulled out a cigarette. As the match flared, the fire lit his face briefly - and I saw something in his expression that I hadn't seen before - weariness, sadness, disgust? I couldn't tell.

Months later, he lay, sick and wasted, on a hospital bed, diagnosed with fullblown AIDS. "Too much loving," he told me, a smile twisting his withered lips. I wanted to ask him then, what he had seen in the book, but he turned towards the wall and coughed, blood spewing from his lungs, sores puckering his face. I never got the chance to ask him again.

Ten years passed by.

My sister had moved to the States, years ago, when my nephew had been a scant seven years old. I wanted to tell her then, what I had seen, but as the words hovered on my tongue, she spoke first. "I know what you're going to say," she told me, "keep it for yourself. You're not a mother, you don't what it's like." She turned, and marched towards her plane. In America, her family grew and prospered - they acquired a house in the country, a fleet of cars, American citizenship. She made it sound like a perfect life.

But one day, she called me, just as darkness fled from the morning sky. "He's gone," she wept, static punctuating her sobs. "He died, a few hours ago." Returning from work the previous evening, they had found him, wrists slit, floating in rose-tinted bathwater. It had been too late. The story came out, they - she and her husband - hadn't approved of his clothes, of his friends, of his dreams. "We didn't understand him," she cried. I couldn't think of anything to say. They hadn't understood him as a six year old.

I sat in silence, as day gathered into dusk, and wondered what I could have said to change things. As the call to evening prayer sounded, I pulled on my shoes, and headed for Old Town. I had come here many times searching for the same bookshop - but Old Town was a warren of tiny, dark streets, and it was impossible for me to find the same thing twice.

But today I was determined. Perhaps I had to convince myself that I had no guilt. In any case, I chased laughing children as they tripped across the roofs and alleys of Old Town, watched pigeons swirl high against an orange sky, and listened to the wrenching beauty of an imam's prayer, hurtling through a loudspeaker perched on a minaret.

And then I stumbled upon the bookshop, almost by mistake. The same piles of books lay jumbled on the pavement, just as they had been all those years ago. There was the same darkness inside the shop, the same grimy, yellowing volume of Shakespeare peeking out from under the counter. Only now the counter was manned by a young man, smoking a foul smelling cheroot, film music blaring from a mobile phone clipped to his jeans pocket. Stubble clung to his face. Behind him, on the wall, I could discern a few posters - Salman, Dino, Shah Rukh - the familiar catalog of film stars.

"Please," I asked timidly, "is the shop owner here?"

He glared at me, chewing on his cheroot. I pulled out the black book and showed it to him. "I bought this ten, eleven years ago, from this shop. I wanted to know...where it was from." I shot my most desperate, fervent look, and thought of my nephew, lying palms spread out, in a tub of tepid water.

Something in my expression must have persuaded him, for he turned towards the doorway behind him, and again, like before, shouted "Ammi!"

She appeared now, much older. Her prettiness had faded, her once smooth skin was now mottled and wrinkled. White streaked her hair, but her eyes were just the same - beautiful, grey, almond-shaped eyes - the eyes of a princess, of an houri. And again, there was the smile - the heart-breaking, beautiful smile.

I placed the book before her. "I bought this book from this shop many years ago. I was wondering whether anyone could tell me something about it."

She shook her head. "If only you had come a few weeks ago," she said, "my father died last week. This was his shop, he knew everything about the books here."

I smiled, regretfully, turning to go, but a thought occurred. "If you don't mind me asking - how did he die?" I asked.

"Cancer," she had said. "Of the lungs. He always said that smoking was going to kill him." She smiled again, "It's strange how he knew that."

That was some time ago. Now, I watch my face age, watch lines incise themselves onto my skin, my cheeks droop, my lips wither. I am growing old, everyone one grows old, but I wait for the day when my face will match the face I saw, I still see, in the black book. I keep the book beside me, waiting.

I wait for the fire to come and melt my face, and charr the pages of the book.