Page 91 of A Thousand Painted Hours

May 20, 1917

Herewich, England

[In Urdu]

My dearest heart and my dearest love,

You have doubtless regretted your words many times since mailing them, but please do not. I swear I shall not hold you to any of it, for I know what it has cost you to continue to hold the line between us, and I have not always made it easy.

But hear me: you are not to give up. You must fight to live, every minute. I can bear the world if I know you are in it somewhere, but not if you depart so soon. You must live this life you were given, fulfill the tasks that so weigh upon you. You are fighting for an independent India, remember that. Rememberthat your nation will need your hands and heart and vision—and, yes, your passion. That passion cannot be spent on a mere woman (even one so splendid as myself!) and as much as it has sometimes grieved me, I do understand. I understand because I love you, because you are the sugar in my tea and the moonlight on my head. And yes, I must believe our souls live on that other plane, always entwined.

You must live.

When you despair, turn your love to a cat, and allow it to lift your heart. Imagine it can talk.

I am sending books into which you can escape. I’m living at Herewich for the duration, for London is haunted by the faces no longer there, and food grew scarce, and my nerves could just not bear one more hour.

Here, I am painting again, painting the clouds and the flowers blooming in the garden, and I am planting vegetables to eat and share. Imagine me there if you wish, digging and dirty, wearing my brother’s trousers.

You are my truest, most beloved friend, Tanveer.

You must live.

One small beauty: Robins singing in the tree outside my bedroom window every morning. It lifts my spirits to know that their children and grandchildren will be singing long after you and I have departed this earth. They’ll sing again someday in those fields where you fight, too.

Be well,

Elsie

—47—

Mary delivered the telegram at 9:00 a.m. on a gloomy Monday. My heart stopped as she stood there, holding it out.

I thought of all the people I loved who might be alive until I read their death notice on that piece of paper. My mother. My brother. Tanveer. I halted, and I thought, quite definitely, that I could not bear another death. Not one more. I just could not.

But of course I would bear it, just as everyone else had been forced to do.

And then I realized that I wasn’t wife or mother to any of those people, and therefore would not get a telegram. Who, then?

I reached for it, tore it open before Mary had made her way back to her bicycle.

It was from Gurdaya.

Tanveer Injured Stop Taken to Hospital in Brighton Stop Help Stop Hurry Stop

Injured! How badly? Without a second thought, I whirled around and ran upstairs to gather a bag, taking only enough time to be certain the fires were doused in the two fireplaces I used, in the sitting room and my bedroom. Then I flew away to the railroad station.

In two hours, I was in Brighton, and a half hour after that, I stood at the doorway of the hospital.

“I’m looking for a patient,” I said. “Indian. Injured at the front, probably only brought in the past day or two.”

The matron, a thin woman with large kind eyes, nodded. “Most of the Indians have been moved out to Africa, so we haven’t had many arrive here for quite some time. Come with me.”

As we entered the ward, bed after bed after bed after bed of men, a smell unlike anything I’d known slammed me. Instinctively, I covered my face with a handkerchief, then realized how rude it must be, and lowered it again.

The matron gave me a sad shake of the head. “It’s all right. You get used to it, but it takes time.”

“Is it injury?”