That courtyard image remained in her mind all morning: as she called the NGO to explain her absence the day before and was evasive about rescheduling, as she called the photojournalist to thank him for sending the car, as she looked through the photos on her camera, trying to make space on her memory card. The only way to clear the courtyard image of her dreams, she thought, was to replace it, and when she saw again the picture she’d taken the day before outside the woman’s house, she was struck by an idea.
She hired a car and set out again for the village. At the woman’s house she repeated part of the same routine, the increasingly aggressive knocking, her knuckles smarting, still raw from the day before. The woman finally opened the door, startling to recognize Diya’s face, the shock morphing quickly into horror at seeing her there again. Before the woman could ask for an explanation, Diya offered one.
I wanted to thank you for yesterday. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t helped me. I’m a photographer, and, well, I wanted to bring you this.
She handed over a thin brown paper envelope. The woman looked skeptical but accepted it, peering tentatively inside the top flap though nothing more frightening than a piece of paper could have fit inside. The woman pulled out the single photograph within. As she looked at it, Diya watched the woman cycle through an entire range of emotions—confusion, sadness, anger, awe. Diya knew the woman had seen what she’d intended, what she herself saw in the image: both assistance and aversion, the briefest of bonds between two strangers. And the house behind, bearing witness.
I—don’t know what to say, the woman said. It’s nothing, what I did. But thank you for this.
More than nothing, Diya said. No one else, if there is anyone else here, opened their door.
There are other people here—the woman said, then cut herself off. Really, I had what you said in my mind. I thought about your mother, thinking of you, wanting me to help.
Right, Diya said. My mother.
Do you want some biscuits? the woman asked.
Diya agreed. But this time, the woman stood aside from her open front door and motioned for Diya to come inside.
*
Silence, Diya had learned, could be translated any number of ways. Like a ghost, it was its own presence, large enough to fill a room or small enough to slip through a crack beneath a door. And like a ghost, it was eternally famished, feeding on gaps in Diya’s childhood, growing sizeable off words that were swallowed or unsaid, questions never answered.
For instance—questions for a stranger:
What preoccupies you?
Biscuits
Footprints
Salt
Where is your mother?
Behind a door
Inside the dream of her own making
Dancing in the verdant courtyard
What did the woman tell you inside the house?
The stranger once knocked on every door
Cajoled, threatened, begged
No, not the stranger in the mirror
Worse: the recognizable one
Yes, of course they opened their doors to her
Yes, the mother was disguised as a stranger
She salted the earth in the courtyards
Nothing could grow, not even in the cribs
I mean: the misfortune rained down upon them
I mean: misfortune is a generational flood
It washes away all evidence of rain
No, there were never any trees or flowers here
It’s been dirt, just dirt, as long as we’ve all been alive
I mean: I fear she will return
I mean: I hope she will return
This time, I’ll ask what happened to her
I mean: a ghost can wear anyone’s face
*