Page 117 of A Thousand Painted Hours

Please forgive my forwardness in writing to you directly. I found your address on my husband’s desk. I wonder if you would consider visiting us in September, in time for Tanveer’s birthday. It is a lovely time in the Punjab, as you may remember.

My main wish is that you might paint our portrait. I saw the painting Gurdaya brought home from Cairo, and I was quite deeply moved. Your work has a depth of compassion and true seeing that is most unusual. I have longed for someone who might be able to see through the damage of my face and paint me in a way that shows who I am. (I assume you know thatI was badly burned as a young woman, but perhaps you do not.)

And to be frank, Tanveer is not well. It is not a disease of the body, but one of the soul, for there is much division among the people of the Punjab, and the British ever try to widen the gaps. I am not a political or philosophical being, and I know he takes courage from your exchanges.

He speaks of you often, sharing your insights and travelogues, and I know that he holds you in very high regard.

Will you consider it? Cairo is not so terribly far, and you must have sometimes wished to visit your childhood home. You would be free to stay for as long as you like, and I have just the space in mind for a studio.

I hope you will say yes.

Your friend by association,

Channan Kaur

I would not go, of course. I suspected Gurdaya’s hand in the matter.

April 7, 1926

Talwarpur Palace

[In Urdu]

Dear Elsie,

Channan told me that she wrote to invite you to come here and paint our portrait. It would honor her so deeply for you to do such work, and I thank you for even giving it a single moment of consideration.

I suspect you will hesitate. I have vowed to be as truthful as possible with you and I will not stinthere. Gurdaya was quite concerned about you after her visit, and I felt similar misgivings over your letter about Peter. Perhaps taking a time for a leisurely visit to the world of your childhood would not go amiss? Channan has already put servants to work making over a room with good, clear light for a studio, and you would be able to visit the tigers and see the work we have done there. We should be free to debate religion and thought and politics until we’re both completely weary of it. It would cheer me to no end.

As for the other, surely after so many years, our youthful attachment will have resolved into a mature and respectful friendship?

Please come.

Your friend,

Tanveer

Tanveer’s letter haunted me for weeks.Hadwe matured to such a place? Perhaps we had. We were nearly thirty, settled into our own lives, both of us married.

But still I resisted. Even when Gurdaya sent a letter about the Bombay gallery, I resisted. I had made a kind of peace with the way of my life, and going to India seemed a fool’s errand, a way to torture myself. What things might be awakened there?

My rational side argued he was a man who kept his word, and he would keep his word to his wife. There would be no danger of dalliance.

In truth, I longed to go. To walk those landscapes, to debate ideas with Tanveer, even to have a chance to meet Gurdaya’s children, and see the tigers. Every time I considered it, a fresh wind of possibility blew through my soul.

But had I truly let him go? Would my old sorrow be reawakened in his presence?

In my studio, the bickering voices battled for days, until I realized that if I actually did travel to India, I would spend the entire time there in this state of anxious longing. Absurd for a woman of my age and status.

I would not go.

The love affair between Margo and Peter began to be a subject of gossip. I only heard the edges of it, of course, as everyone imagined I wanted protecting. They traveled to a dig, and he came home in a sour state. She returned to Cairo a month later, and they took it up again, famously fighting at a club known for hard-drinking expats. They drank and fought and presumably this fueled less visible sex. He was both more alive and more prone to his instability, and I pushed again for a move back to England or to a different posting. Perhaps Kabul, which was a nondrinking society. He was not interested.

It came to a head when Peter arrived at my studio rather late one night. He was quite drunk, had a scratch across his face. I could see by his bleary eyes that he was in an evil mood. “I need a cup of tea,” he said.

“You cannot come in,” I said, holding the door. “Not in this state.”

“Just give me a cup of tea, Elsie. For God’s sake, you’re my wife.”