Excerpt from “Riven: A Novel”

One.
Foreground.

Everyone has someone. A child, a wife. Someone they must cup from the sun and carry to kinder soil. I have Papu. When he is awake, I hold him on my back. It’s the same configuration he used to give me rides in, back when I was weak and he was strong. He rests on me lightly as my shirt. The only difference is the tickle of his beard. I can hear his breathing. Low, regular. Untroubled. I want to think it is because he feels safe with me. But really it’s just because he doesn’t know what is happening. He can’t see the broken glass I sidestep, not through the frosted blue glass of his cataracts. He can’t see the border that has made us strangers here. But then again neither can I, nor anyone else. Only the detached, the elite, the nation-makers and nation-breakers can. Those to whom the ground under my feet is paper, and a border, ink. This train track is a dashed line. This cluster of murders is a telegram. 61 SLAIN IN RAWALPINDI STOP. A paragraph in a newspaper, glimpsed just before the pages kiss and open to another section. An example to be deplored, publicly, in a speech: All India Radio microphone before the mouth, crisp white Freedom Fighter topi on the head. Or else immaculate and naval, walking down a row of sipahis in turbans and khaki. Tearful farewell of the benevolent empire. Tears indeed, but whose.