A God in Every Stone Read online

  Praise for A God in Every Stone

  ‘Full of passion, life and intelligence, it is redemptive and uncompromising; it goes to the place where life and history meet to reveal them as each other. It reads already like a classic, with a timelessness, a wholeness, as if she just sensed it there at her feet, carefully unearthed it, brushed the soil off it, held it up to the light – and now we all have it. That’s how good’ Ali Smith, author of The Accidental

  ‘Passionate … The novel ends with the Peshawar massacre of 1930, the narrative speeding up, almost whirling between different points of view as it depicts the terror on the streets, the violence and the chaos. Vivian retreats into the background, as we feel she must. What remains, like a beautiful bas-relief, is the image of the people of Peshawar honouring their dead, not with poppies but with red rose petals’ Michèle Roberts, Independent

  ‘A God in Every Stone is an ambitious piece of work, and its pages are lit by Shamsie’s eloquent prose. Her feeling for place is sensitive and sometimes exquisite … Shamsie’s passionate curiosity about how empires grow, collapse and die makes this a novel well worth reading’ Helen Dunmore, Guardian

  ‘This is a novel that’s far from run of the mill. The main characters and their storylines are strong enough in themselves, but they also combine very cleverly to build a dramatic climax’ Daily Mail

  ‘Shamsie’s new novel explore the issues of feminism’s first wave, including women’s suffrage and work during the first world war… Shamsie observes these events through a postcolonial lens … and this is a key part of what makes the novel so much more than just a thriller… Pakistan’s place in the world, and it’s becoming has altered people’s lives, drives her stories’ Guardian

  ‘A fast-moving, well-researched story … A valuable reminder that the legacy of the Great War stretched far beyond Versailles’ Sunday Times

  ‘Burns with quiet ferocity in every elegant, measured line … A book about the echoes through history of loss, betrayal and the human cost of colonialism … This is no straightforward love story… Lyrical and furious, A God in Every Stone is fraught with tragedy: the tragedy of war, of betrayal, of lost loves and the tragic cost of colonialism and the fight for freedom. It is also a novel about what remains … Two women with only the most tenuous connections to the novel’s central characters are used to tell its weightiest stories about love, loss and the luminous human capacity for acts of beauty in the most appalling of circumstances. They contrast sharply with Viv, who in her wilful Western assumption of privilege, bears the brunt of much of Shamsie’s elegantly furious writing but between them they give this beautifully written, thought-provoking story the quality of an epic tale ****’ Metro

  ‘Gripping … The denouement is both dramatic and life-affirming… A welcome addition to the genre, Shamsie’s novel, drawing lines of connection across times and places evokes the past beautifully’ Financial Times

  ‘I love Shamsie’s beautiful painting with words’ Shami Chakrabarti, Guardian Summer Reading

  ‘Kamila Shamsie’s powerful and gripping novel explores questions of love, loyalty and national identity’ Irish Times Summer Reading

  ‘Rich … Increasingly urgent, ultimately devastating’ The Times

  ‘This gripping narrative captures the urgency of unearthing the secrets of the past in order to understand how it is shaping each present moment’ Observer

  ‘Exploration of the indomitability of the human spirit and divided loyalties. Elegant and atmospheric, it’s worthy and well-wrought’ Mail on Sunday

  ‘Shamsie is adept at excavating the past and braids of the personal and political to great effect. All the while she builds tension and keeps us guessing about the fate of her characters. The end result is both complex and spell-binding’ Independent on Sunday

  ‘My eyes pricked with tears several times as I read Kamila Shamsie’s new work’ Independent

  ‘A God in Every Stone confirms Kamila Shamsie as a very rare and uniquely rewarding writer. She can brilliantly dramatize conflicts of characters and weave intricate and absorbing plots while also crisply fulfilling the newer, and indeed more formidable, obligations of the contemporary novelist: to set individual destinies in the enlarged and uneven arena of our globalized world’ Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire and An End to Suffering

  ‘Written with a delicate eye for detail, a novel where much happens but what stays with the reader is the author’s effortless prose’ Telegraph Kolkata

  ‘A novelist to reckon with and to look forward to… [Shamsie’s] prose is magical and every line draws you in and leaves you wanting more… Her voice is evocative and one is deeply and illogically nostalgic for a time never experienced’ New Indian Express Chennai

  ‘A rare novel that satisfies the demanding reader at both, the intellectual and emotional levels; that speaks as much to someone in Finsbury Park as it does to someone in Faridabad, Mulund or Marathalli, A God in Every Stone definitely confirms Kamila Shamsie’s place of honour in The Street of Storytellers’ Hindustan Times

  ‘Shamsie is adept at excavating the past and braids the personal and political to great effect. All the while she builds tension and keeps us guessing about the fate of her characters. The end result is both complex and spell-binding’ The Statesman (India)

  ‘Engaging, especially in its balance between suspense and scholarship – a page-turner in the best sense of the word’ Lounge, Mint, New Delhi

  ‘It is always a joy to read a novel by an accomplished writer. And Shamsie is certainly that and more … Her writing has a certain luminosity that imbue even the dreariest of situations with a grace that is as much muscular as it is fluid’ Anita Nair, Asian Age, New Delhi

  ‘Her prose is beautiful, and her strong grasp of history makes it almost impossible to put the book down’ Mail Today

  ‘A stunning insight into the impact on the forgotten Indians who fought so valiantly for a foreign power. Shamsie’s prose travels through time and space to create a remarkable book’ India Today

  ‘Kamila’s research is impeccable, her knowledge of history and geography is excellent… She sweeps the reader into an ancient time, laying out ideas and concepts and moral questions with great finesse’ Tehelka

  For the sisters – Saman, Magoo, Maha

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  BOOK I

  For King and Country

  515 BC

  July–August 1914

  January–June 1915

  April 1915

  May–June 1915

  City of Men, City of Flowers

  July 1915

  July–August 1915

  July–September 1915

  September 1915

  November 1915

  October–November 1915

  March 1916

  BOOK II

  Twentieth-century Herodotus

  April 1930

  The Only Question

  23 April 1930

  23–24 April 1930

  24 April 1930

  24 April 1930

  24 April 1930

  25 April 1930

  On the Street of Storytellers

  23 April 1930

  23 April 1930

  23–25 April 1930

  27 April 1930

  485 BC

  End Note

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Author’s Note

  Ancient Caria, including the site of Labraunda, is in present-day Turkey. In 515 BC it lay at the western border of the Persian Empire; at the other end of the Empire, on the eastern border, was the settlement of Caspatyrus. The exact location of Caspatyrus has never been determin
ed but some historians have placed it in or near Peshawar.

  BOOK I

  The greater part of Asia was discovered by Darius, who had wished to know where it was that the sea was joined by the River Indus (this being one of only two in the world which provides a habitat for crocodiles), and so sent ships with men on board whom he could trust to report back truthfully, including Scylax, a man from Caryanda. These duly set off from the city of Caspatyrus, in the land of Pactyike.

  The Histories, Herodotus

  For King and Country

  515 BC

  Fig leaves and fruit twirl in Scylax’s hands. As he turns the silver circlet round and round, animating the engravings, he imagines flexing his wrist and watching the headpiece skim down

  the

  sloping

  desert of the mountain,

  across the jewelled valley of streams and fields and fruit,

  to land

  splash!

  in the muddied tributary along which it races towards the crocodile-filled Indus.

  Beside the distant riverbank, his ship is a brown smear. His crew think him mad to have spent all night on the mountain; but why explain to them, if they don’t already understand, the wonder of waking with the sun and, in the clear morning air, looking upon the rushing course of the Indus which is laid out before him like an offering. He places the circlet on his head, runs his rough sailor’s hands over the delicate figs embossed on it – in honour of his homeland of Caria, where men are barbarians but the fruit is sweet. So the Persians say – and yet here he is, one of the barbarian men, entrusted to lead the most daring of missions in the Empire. No man has ever navigated the mighty Indus. No man has ever attempted it. Not even Odysseus.

  A flock of white birds swarms around his ship. No, it’s the sails. His crew has worked all night to surprise him with this gift. The ship is ready; the sails catch the wind and billow towards him. He whistles sharply and his horse, tethered further down the mountain, responds with a whinny. Scylax runs towards the noise; the distance between him and the ship suddenly enormous. Today it begins. Today they set sail from the city of Caspatyrus, edge of Darius’ empire, edge of the known world. Caspatyrus – the doorway to glory.

  July–August 1914

  Vivian Rose Spencer was almost running now, up the mountainside, along the ancient paving stones of the Sacred Way, accompanied by an orchestra of birds, spring water, cicadas and the encounter of breeze and olive trees. The guide and donkeys were far behind, so there was no one to see her stop sharply beside a white block which had tumbled partway down the mountain centuries ago and rest her hands against its surface before bending close to touch her lips to it. Marble, grit, and a taste which made her jerk away in shock – the bones of Zeus’ sanctuary had the sweetness of fig. Either that, or a bird flying overhead might have dropped a fruit here, and the juice of it smeared against the stone. She looked down at her feet, saw a split-open fig.

  – Labraunda! she called out, her voice echoing.

  – Labraunda! she heard, bouncing back down the mountain at her. That wasn’t her voice at all. It was a man, his accent both familiar and foreign. But no, she was the foreign one here. She picked up the fig, held it to her nose and closed her eyes. She never wanted to return to London again.

  The reports of the nineteenth-century travellers hadn’t prepared her for this: on the terraced upper slopes of the mountain enough of the vast temple complex remained intact to allow the imagination to pick up fallen colonnades, piece together the scattered marble and stone blocks, and imagine the grandeur that once was. Here, the Carian forces fled after losing a battle against the might of Darius’ Persians; here, the architects of the Mausoleum, that wonder of the world, honed their craft; here, Alexander came to see the mighty two-headed axe of the Amazon queen held aloft by the statue of Zeus.

  Viv walked slowly, trying to take it all in: the ruins, half lost in foliage; the sounds of earth being turned, tree limbs hacked, voices speaking indistinct words; the view which held, all at once, the vast sky, the plain beneath, and the Aegean Sea in the distance. She had yet to become accustomed to the light of this part of the world – brilliant without being harsh, it made her feel she’d spent her whole life with gauze over her eyes. Something small and muscled charged at her, almost knocking her down.

  – Alice! she cried out, and tried to pick up the pug, but the animal bounded ahead, and Viv followed, through a maze of broken columns taller than the tallest of men, until she saw the familiar lean form of her father’s old friend Tahsin Bey crouching on the ground next to a man with sandy-blond hair, pointing at something carved onto a large stone block – a serpentine shape, with a loop behind its open jaw.

  – A snake, the man with sandy-blond hair said, in a German accent.

  – An eel? suggested Tahsin Bey in that way he had of putting forward a certainty as though it were a theory he was asking you to consider.

  – An eel? Why an eel?

  It was Viv who answered, though she knew it was impolite to enter the conversation of men unaware of her presence.

  – Because Pliny tells us that in the springs of Labraunda there are eels which wear earrings.

  The two men turned to look at her, and she couldn’t stop herself from adding:

  – And Aelian says there are fish wearing golden necklaces who are tamed, and answer the calls of men.

  Tahsin Bey held out his hand, his smile of welcome overriding the formality of the gesture.

  – Welcome to Labraunda, Vivian Rose.

  His palm was callused, and a few moments later when she raised her hand to brush some irritation out of her eye she smelt tobacco and earth overlaying fig. The richness of the scent made her linger over it until she saw the German looking at her with a knowing expression she didn’t like. Briskly, she lowered her hand and rubbed it on her skirt, all the while wondering how she would ever rest her eyes in this place with so much to see.

  She woke up early the next morning, still wearing clothes from the day before. She had done little the previous afternoon beyond measure and sketch the columns of one of the buildings – a temple? an andron? a treasury? – but her muscles ached from the walk up the mountain and the half-delirious scrambling up and down the terraces before Tahsin Bey had instructed her to take her sketchbook and make herself useful. By dinnertime it had been all she could do to place her food in her mouth and chew while conversation buzzed around her, good-natured about her inability to participate.

  She arose from her camp bed and changed her clothes quietly without disturbing the two German women in the tent, before stepping out into the hour between darkness and light. There was almost a chill in the air, but not quite, as she walked among the ruins, both hands held out to touch every block, every column she passed. A sharp yip cut through the silence. Looking around for Alice she found Tahsin Bey instead, sitting on the large rock with a fissure running through it – the split rock of Zeus – holding up a mug to her in greeting. Alice was dispatched to guide her up through trees and broken steps, and a few minutes later she was drinking hot tea from the cap of a thermos, watching the sun rise over the ancient land of Caria.

  – So that’s what a rosy-fingered dawn looks like.

  – You must write and tell your father that. He’ll be pleased.

  – Oh, I’m going to write and tell him everything!

  Her father, a man without sons, had turned his regret at that lack into a determination to make his daughter rise above all others of her sex; a compact early agreed on between them that she would be son and daughter both – female in manners but male in intellect. Taking upon himself the training of her mind he had read Homer with her in her childhood, took vast pleasure in her endless questioning of Tahsin Bey about the life of an archaeologist every time the Turk came to visit, and championed her right to study history and Egyptology at UCL despite his wife’s objections – even so, Viv had barely allowed herself to believe he was being serious when he’d asked her one morning, as
if enquiring if she’d like a drive through the park, if she’d be interested in joining Tahsin Bey at a dig in Labraunda. Outrageous! Mrs Spencer had said, slapping a napkin onto the polished wood of the breakfast table. Did he want his daughter running up the pyramids in her bloomers like Mrs Flinders Petrie? Did he have no thought for her marital prospects?

  Father and daughter had shared the smile of conspirators across the breakfast table before Viv rose from her chair to throw her arms around Dr Spencer’s neck. She had been more disappointed than she’d ever revealed during her just-concluded university years when he’d said no, she would not be among the students who Flinders Petrie took to Egypt over the summer – and assumed that meant all future digs were out of the question, too, as long as she was unmarried and under his roof. But there he was, pushing aside his plate, showing her the letter from Tahsin Bey and saying of course she mustn’t miss such an opportunity, and his old friend could be trusted to ensure all proprieties were observed which was more than could be said for Flinders Petrie with that madcap wife of his, and how he wished he could set aside the responsibilities of his life and join them.

  – He’s very proud of you, the Turk said, turning his body slightly towards her on the rock.

  – I know, but I haven’t given him any reason to be proud. Not yet.

  – No? You don’t think he should be proud of your courage?

  – Courage? That’s something I certainly don’t have. You remember my friend, Mary? She’s become one of those militant suffragettes, I regret to say. But even though she’s completely wrong, I see her facing prison and force-feeding, and I recognise courage. But it isn’t there when I look in the mirror.

  – It takes considerable courage to come to an unknown part of the world, away from everything you’ve ever known.