3.

      The two young women strolling through a large, busy shopping mall in Islamabad were attractive, but unlike their Western counterparts, who were clad in smocked shirts and bleached and tattered designer jeans, these two wore traditional outfits: knee-length shalwar kameez, dupatta scarves draped over their heads.

      The one with eyes as green as emeralds paused in front of a store. She grabbed her friend’s arm and pointed at the mehndi designs.

      “Let’s take a look inside,” Sajida said.

      She pushed open the door and Nida had no choice but to follow her. At the counter Sajida began to page through a ring folder of designs for decorating hands, arms, feet and legs with turmeric or henna, the patterns complicated and delicate.

      “Is there something I don’t know?” asked Nida. “Wedding plans? Is Nasir back?”

      “No, he’s not back.” Nasir had been gone for a year. Fighting in Afghanistan, Sajida had been told.

      She studied the designs. With Nasir away, there was little chance of her getting mehndi any time soon. She thought briefly about the mehndi ceremony, the rasm-e-henna, two days before a wedding, when the bride’s friends massaged aromatic henna oil into her hands and feet as a prelude to a long and happy married life. If the bride wished, she would also decorate her hands, arms, feet and legs with mehndi for the wedding.

      Sajida wondered what it would feel like to get mehndi on her stomach, where only she could see it. And not for a wedding, Eid or any other special occasion either. It was what hip young girls and women did, she thought, and Bollywood actresses like Priyanka Chopra, the sexy seductress in Aitraaz. It challenged the traditions, shifted the boundaries. In Lahore the Lollywood actresses were not quite as decadent and permissive, though they did use make-up and dress stylishly. Women like Aaminah Haq and Veena Malik. But the devil and all his djinns were on the loose about Veena, because of those naked photographs published in an Indian magazine. With a real tattoo on her upper arm, not mehndi.

      Nida peered over her shoulder. “What will your father say?”

      “My father won’t know.” He was at home in Kanigoram – she saw him maybe twice, three times a year.

      “And your brothers?”

      Her brothers were also in Kanigoram. They didn’t watch TV or movies – they were more interested in politics. They wanted to go to Afghanistan, like Nasir.

      “I like this design.” Sajida pointed at a flying bird. “Free as a bird. How does that sound?”

      Nida sat down next to her and began to page. “Perhaps I should also do this. How about this floral design? More importantly, I wonder what your groom would think: would he kiss it, or would he force you to wash it off?”

      “Depends where my mehndi is,” said Sajida, and the two girls giggled behind their hands.

      “I’d let my bridegroom kiss mine,” said Nida. “I’m not afraid of the angels.”

      Sajida knew what her friend meant. They’d learnt about it at the madrasa, in the exposition of the Hadith. Nida was referring to a Bukhari Hadith: “When a man calls his wife to bed and she will not come, and he spends the night angry with her, the angels curse her until morning.”

      From behind her hand, Nida recited: “Whoever guarantees me the chastity of what is between his legs and what is between his jaws, I guarantee him Paradise.”

      They burst into giggles again at this reference in the Hadith to sex and food.

      Sajida nudged her friend with her elbow and whispered in her ear: “That one about the virgin, I think the narrator is Jabir . . .”

      “In which the Prophet asks Jabir why he didn’t marry a young virgin he could play with and who could play with him?”

      “That’s the one. He told Jabir not to hurry home on his camel, but to give his wife a chance to comb her hair . . .”

      “. . . and shave her pubic hair!”

      Bent over the mehndi designs, they snorted behind their hands. Then they paged on in silence. Sajida imagined that Nida was thinking what she was thinking: who could explain Hadith number 16 in Book 62? What exactly did it mean? Were Muslim women expected to shave down below?

      * * *

      Sajida went first. In a cubicle the mehndi artist began to draw the bird on the soft skin of her stomach. The woman’s hands, even her palms, were covered with beautiful floral designs.

      She told Sajida how popular henna tattoos had become, even in the West, among women who didn’t want permanent markings. What was more, there were no needles, only the red henna of Lawsonia inermis. Never the dangerous black henna of Indigofera tinctoria, which left permanent scars and could infect the skin. For more colour, one could use yellow pigment from the rhizome of the turmeric plant, Curcuma longa, known as Indian saffron.

      The artist mixed the henna paste with essential oils. “It’s an excellent natural remedy against ageing,” she said, applying the design with delicate brushstrokes, and using the tip of the jacquard bottle for the fine outlining.

      When she had finished, she said: “Keep it covered with tissue paper, plastic or a medical bandage for five hours. You want to retain the body heat so that the henna can interact with the keratin in the epidermis. After that, keep it moist with a mixture of lemon juice and sugar so that the paste doesn’t dry out before the dye has fixed on your skin. After three weeks, daily use of soap and water will have caused it to fade. Then you can come back for a new one. Are you trying it out for your wedding?”

      “No,” said Sajida, “I have no wedding plans.”

      Her father, as far as she knew, had no such plans for her either. There had been a possibility a few years ago, when her father had mentioned Nasir Raza’s name. He’d told Sajida she was eligible for marriage, and a second cousin would be a good choice. The Razas had camels and goats, and a herd of sheep, shorn every year by Nasir and his brothers, the wool sold to textile merchants in Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar. But she had soon discovered that Nasir didn’t see his future as a shepherd of goats and sheep in the valleys and on the slopes of the Pre Ghal mountains of South Waziristan. His fundamentalist streak had been fuelled in Mullah Wada’s madrasa in Kanigoram. The mullah had suggested that Nasir further his studies at a famous madrasa in Karachi.

      Chatting in the kitchen around pots on the stove, Sajida’s mother had told her about Nasir’s grandfather, who years ago had left with a big group of men from the tribal areas, crossing the Toba Kakar mountain range to Kandahar, for jihad against the Soviets, who had wanted to lay claim to their Pashtun land. Like other, greater Mongol empires over the centuries, the Russians had also been unsuccessful. Sajida’s mother was proud of the history of the Pashtuns, and had taught Sajida the myths and legends of their warrior nation. It was all just speculation though, because such matters were discussed among the men, in the privacy of the hujra.

      But the young man who’d returned from Karachi after his studies at the madrasa Dar ul-Ifta ul-Irshad was no longer the Nasir she knew. He was a mujahid, speaking in battle cries: “Inqilab inqilab, Islami