Irfan might also say that she was a woman: she didn’t need to jump in. Just as she didn’t need to be included in the decision to come to Kaghan — it had been for her sake, that’s what mattered — she didn’t need to risk her life. Had she tried, she could never have made a difference.

But she was a stronger swimmer than me. And it was her idea. Her damn return! She’d been warned to leave the girl alone. Instead, her meddling had drowned us all.

But so what if she was a stronger swimmer? Perhaps she didn’t feel strong enough that day. Perhaps it was foolish of me to dive. I could have died. No one wants to die.

I’d fallen behind Irfan on the glacier; I now caught up with him. I asked, my voice shaking, “You have some idea how deep the lake is, don’t you?”

He looked at me as though I’d walked into a mosque with slippers on.

“As deep as Lake Baikal,” he eventually growled, adding, “that’s in Russia.”

“How deep is that?”

“Over a mile.”

I waited, hoping he might add, There’s no way you could have found her. Instead, he checked his damn phone. His way of shooing me away.

Why hadn’t I seen Kiran when I dived? Had I waited too long? That horrible gurgling sound I heard in the water — how could I have heard it in the water? Where had I been? Where had Farhana been?

“In the weeks before coming here,” I said to Irfan, catching up with him again, “Farhana started to change her mind. It had been her idea, yet she grew afraid. You know, because of all the bombings and the kidnappings. I started telling you that, you know, before it happened.” I took a deep breath. “But by then, I was the one ready. She wanted me to call it off but I didn’t want to. She’d already made the proposal so she wouldn’t call it off herself. It was the same way she had doubts just before getting in the boat. Do you remember? It was her idea but then she grew afraid. Did you notice?”

The furrow between his brow sank like a chasm as he opened his mouth to speak. Then, changing his mind, he clamped his mouth shut. When the chasm lifted, he asked, “Did you notice the lake this morning?”

“Yes.”

“What did you see?”

“Calm surface. Clear sky. Malika Parbat’s twin peaks could have been etched in the water. As on that day.”

He nodded. “A lake so clear and bright, but hideous underneath. For months after Zulekha’s death — her murder” (I flinched at the word) “—this lake became a mirror of my own world. Then a voice started to tell me to look for a more hospitable truth. Not everything is as hideous as it doesn’t seem. If I believed in God, I’d say the voice was His. I think it was the lake’s.”


Back at the cabin, we took solitary walks. We cloaked ourselves in shades of green, drinking forest smells. Even at night, I sought my camera. My landscapes of the River Kunhar were cool-headed, as if I’d been the third person in our tent.

Green eyes, green as the leaves of walnut trees, newly shed in the river, before turning black. Green as her bangles, and their incessant chiming.

I never did call my mother from Irfan’s cell.

But I tried to take his advice. I devoted myself to reclothing us, Farhana and myself. I noticed she seemed to be doing the same. At night, we pecked each other quickly on the lips before lights out. When we met in daylight, she’d touch me on the thigh or on my back and the gesture was too deliberate, as if she were trying to recreate a lover she could touch. I’d do the same. I was glad when she followed Wes. She was glad when I followed Irfan. We created phantom foes — the lake, the jinn, the tourists — and phantom friends — each other, Wes, Irfan — but most of all, we created our own doubles. To these we assigned behavior, even roles.

I had dived repeatedly to look for Kiran. So had Farhana.

I had not given up. Neither had Farhana.

I had risked my own life. So had Farhana.

And the entire time, Irfan filled me in on the news. It was the only time he willingly talked to me. Apparently, there were real double agents in our midst, hunting real enemies. I couldn’t have cared less.

I came to think of “him”—this mysterious killer and his double, the accomplice (accomplice to what exactly — a killing in Karachi? So long ago, so far away!) — as some kind of lynx and his shadow. He’d crept down the slopes of Kashmir, kicking up flecks of powdery snow, his footfall a hushed load of velvet, leaping across the crevices of glaciers that might have been growing or receding, this was Pakistan after all, and to a lynx it was all the same. Or he might be a snow leopard from Uzbekistan, lurking low into the new millennium, no longer Soviet or Russian but Central Asian, looking for a skin for his spots. Or a yeti from Tajikistan, slipping into Pakistan from the west, sweeping down to Chitral on a very long tail, before twisting east through Swat and into Kaghan. Or perhaps I was looking in the wrong direction entirely. Perhaps he’d come up from the south, through desert sands that hid airfields for days, a snake mangled by a cluster bomb, a pheasant dropped by a falcon.

What was it Irfan had said, that day he first told me about him? That day. Yes. The killer’s link to this remote, peaceful valley was an accident of geography. And accidents can happen anywhere. I’d been watching Kiran in a magenta kameez walk up the hill to find her goat, Kola. Farhana had held her hand.


I took my camera to the closest town, the town of Naran. I learned that here he, the killer, was called Fareebi: the fraud, the shapeshifter. He was said to be hiding here to avoid suspicion, since all eyes were on the eastern border with Afghanistan. But Intelligence had tracked him — or was he tracking them?

At the store where I’d bought the Kashmiri shawl for Farhana, only five days ago, the shopkeeper unfolded a heap of shawls while a customer recited a local proverb. Nature instructs every creature to shapeshift in case of danger. Each shawl came in a dual pattern, with no clear front or back. The one I’d picked for Farhana had also been reversible. The customer rejected cloth after cloth, but he volunteered an opinion on the Karachi bombing. The death of seven Pakistanis and one Chinese man was revenge for the missile strikes in the killer’s village.

I listened closely. Though the shapeshifter had sympathizers in Peshawar and Karachi, no one wanted him here, not even those angered by the missile attacks. What did the people of this valley have to do with it? No, he wasn’t only tracking Intelligence but tracking them — the locals and their very way of life — this snow leopard, this snow leopard’s jinn. And this false trail he was leaving, it was a deliberate distraction from some gargantuan avalanche about to hit those who weren’t looking. The army rangers, Intelligence, and everyone else crawling along the valley’s spine were fools for walking straight into the trap. Or else they were working together, to trap everyone else.

There was a cluster of men in the store now, all debating who was trapping whom, and none answered my greeting. I moved on. A-salaam-o-aleikum, I said, everywhere I went. No one answered. Geography may be an accident but no one in Pakistan ignores a greeting accidentally. I wasn’t deaf, neither to the silence nor the whispers. “It’s him.” Of course they’d heard of Kiran’s death. Of course their eyes were accusing, even if their words were delivered into each other’s collars. But I never got used to it. It’s him. Two words that sent my face igniting in shame. Two words that made me look over my shoulder, again and again, for him: the fraud, the shapeshifter. Two words that made me glad the herders had few friends. For otherwise, I would be dead.


I sought relief by immersing myself in the many murky legends of the valley. The one that preoccupied me most was the legend of Kagan, whose ancestry remained shrouded in secrecy.

Even if Kagan had been related to the pagan Kafir-Kalash tribe of Chitral Valley to the west, fact is, Kaghan Valley existed long before she was born. Before her arrival, the valley had been part of Hazara, whose history was a history of raids. Along the way, the story went, Hazara picked up more names than a pretty girl picks up suitors on her walk home from a well. Under Persian rule, Hazara doubled as Aroosa. Alexander of Macedonia pitched a plundered Aroosa to Raja Ambhi, who renamed her Abhisara. Abhisara next fell to Chandra Gupta, and then to his grandson Asoka. Upon converting to Buddhism, Asoka named the valley “Takht-e-Hazara,” the throne of Hazara, and this must have been its name when Kagan arrived — from Chitral or the Caspian steppe or a fairy world — to wow the people with her beauty and black robes. Perhaps it was Asoka who graced the valley with her name. The details are lost. What remain are a cluster of sacred rocks from Asoka’s day, though this may not be all.

According to Irfan, next to the Asokan rock edicts lay another holy site, a secret one. It was the site of a small cult of worshippers for whom Kagan belonged to another world, a world of animals and spirits. The only way to reach her was through the ancient practice of shamanism. They offered her lavish gifts and asked for her aid in keeping jealous jinns away from their homes, and their romances.

Though it was not possible to ask openly about the existence of the site, I could look for it. I took a bus down to Mansehra, near the site of the rocks, unsure how to begin. What did a secret pagan shrine look like? The bus had to pass Balakot, near where Kiran would now be buried, and her family would still be grieving. When we stopped in Balakot, I sloped into my seat. Thankfully, people got off but no one got on.

The Asokan edicts were engraved on three large boulders. I spent the afternoon photographing them, and the grove of blue pine and deodar trees on the stony slopes not far away. At the grove, I dug around discreetly, looking for evidence of goddess worship: burned incense; a small idol; flower petals. I found none. I walked back to the boulders for a last view of the edicts before heading back to Naran. That’s when I noticed the children racing up the hill toward me. I hesitated. I continued photographing the rocks. The younger ones giggled, standing next to the rocks so they could also be in the frame. The older boys were more reserved. One of them, his head shaved and covered in a pristine white skull cap, whispered to another, in Urdu, so I could understand, though by now I’d know it in any tongue, “It’s him.”

I was surprised they’d heard about it even as far south as here, in Mansehra, which fell outside the valley.

The younger boy whispered back, “You mean Fareebi?”

And the older one replied, “No. I mean the killer.”

I was considered even worse than the hotel bomber!

I turned around and headed back toward the bus stop. They followed me, a long line of boys, the older ones with hands behind their backs, the younger ones skipping ahead, brandishing sticks, their giggles turning malicious in the blood-red evening.

The bus was getting ready to leave. I raced toward it, only adding to my shame. The boys raced after me. With a chewed end of a pencil, the bus driver was twirling the tape back into a cassette; he didn’t look up at the sound of the jeering crowd. As I stepped on the bus, a shadow slid just beyond the corner of my left eye. I paused, right foot on one step, left foot in the air. The specter slid between the boys: a green satin shalwar, a head of light tawny-blonde hair. As the head turned to face me, I ducked into the bus.


The next day, I stayed in the valley. I told no one what I’d seen the previous day, while hurrying onto the bus. Her, or someone like her. Someone who wore the same green pants. There was nothing special about the pants, and many girls had her hair color. It could also be that I was only imagining it. If I’d thought to photograph her — or it — specters do not have sex — the screen would have come up blank. Just as it had the night before we trekked to the lake. But that vision had been real … I had no idea where my thoughts were leading me and didn’t particularly care to chase after them.

Does a man know when he begins to unravel?

I walked south to the next town, the town of Kaghan, where Kagan was believed to have died. Why did I care? I did not know. It was a long walk. It was the graves dotting the roadside between Naran and Kaghan that I had to see. I had to go there. I did not know why. If I had to find an explanation, I’d say it was a call. It was how I’d felt the night before heading to the lake, when I’d run beside the River Kunhar, and that wretched owl with the girl’s face had cried shreet! I did not want to answer, yet I kept walking.