Page 109 of A Thousand Painted Hours

Tanveer

April 29, 1919

Greylake, Kent

[In Urdu]

Dear Tanveer,

I am so relieved our year of abstention has passed. I thought of writing you a thousand times.

Yes, my brother died. I have landed with Nina and Jon in the country for now. They’ve purchased a small estate not far from London so that Jon might commute easily. Nina has given me studio space in a shed overlooking the river, where a towering willow tree bends over to trail her fingers in the water. It makes me think of you, how delighted you were with the brook near Herewich and the bluebirds who drank there.

England feels like a hollow landscape. All I can do is paint and paint and paint.

I paint portraits of you because I miss you and it helps. I paint scenes of Herewich, lost to me forever through some foolish ancient law that punishes women, and it makes me furious. When I paint, I can own it again, my garden, my bedroom, the cozy, warm kitchen where we cooked and ate, the hearth where wetook our cushions and read to each other. I paint the great old claw-foot tub where we bathed.

I knew a woman at Slade who painted rooms where it seemed someone had just left, a glove on a table, a hat on a chair. She had lost her grandmother, and it helped to think she might return momentarily, and thus I paint the possibility that we might be returning to those rooms any moment. The coverlet and sheets still rumpled from our lovemaking, Topaz asleep in a little ball at the thickest part, the fabric of your dastaar draped over the chair. I paint the table with our dishes still upon it, and a pot steaming on the stove. I paint the garden with our shoes discarded at the edge, side by side.

You ask me to come home, and home truly would be you, wherever you are, but I also know that this time, it is I who must protect you from the quixotic gesture of marriage to me. I hear the news out of India, and I know that the struggle for independence will continue to be central to your life in the next decades. I know this because I know you and I love you more than mere words can possibly express.

I cannot be the wife you need at such a time, and I will not distract you from those tasks you were born to complete. It gives me joy to know you are unencumbered to do the work.

But I do question what forces made me love you with this unshakable depth if we must spend our lives apart. What is the purpose of that? For either of us. Does my longing imbue my work with some beauty it would otherwise not hold? Does your love for me allow you to give more intently to the women of your world? I cannot pretend to answer.

I must admit that my resources are very close to nothing. I should have married at my brother’s urging when I still had some connection to the earldom. Now my worth is only that of a commoner, and I am hardly a spring chicken.

Please remember that I made a vow to young Tanveer, a vow to always put his happiness above my own. I am doing that, even if it does not seem that way to you. I hope we can continue our friendship as time eases our pain.

In the meantime, I remain yours,

Elsie

June 1919

Talwarpur Palace

[In English]

Elsie,

I write to you over a horrific event, that you will not have heard of and has shattered any faith I might have held in the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power.

There has been a massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. These are the barest facts—during a festival in Amritsar, the army surrounded the enclosure of Jallianwala Bagh and blocked the exit, then fired upon the trapped crowd until their munitions ran low. Thousands were killed and injured. It was said to be a warning against the protests that are breaking out over arrests of Indian leaders, but, Elsie, many of those people were there to celebrate a holiday. They were there with their families, their children—

My ribs break with the pressure of my rage. I despair of the darkness in mankind that will allow us to rain such violence upon each other. It has awakened my dreams of the trenches, and I do not sleep.

This must end. It must end.

And what I have seen, at long last, is the truth of your stand against our marriage. I cannot do this work if I am married to you. I fear my anger would poison me against you in some twisted way, even if it was unfair.

I shall mourn what might have been forevermore, but thank you for your devotion to the vows we made to each other so long ago at the pond, to assign ourselves to the happiness of the other above our own. I will offer my own devotion to them in this: You must marry and try to find some happiness in family life. I shall do the same.

Know this—my love will never alter. As long as I live, you will hold my heart.Hum aik jan hain. We are one soul.

When I feel I can write with sanity to Elsie my friend and not my lover, I will inquire toward your feelings, and perhaps we can continue our friendship, and share again our love of books and life and art and freedom. Until then, be well.

Always,