Bilal chuckles.

‘A lot of shopping you’re doing,’ Doctor observes, looking to the bags in Bilal’s hands, which strain with tomatoes, potatoes, and packets of spices.

He raises a grizzled eyebrow. ‘So much food, beta?’

Bilal looks down at the packets in his hands and grins. ‘I find nothing feeds the soul as well as food. Don’t you?’ He hesitates. ‘My wife – cooking reminds me of her.’

Doctor smiles. ‘She was a good cook, beta?’ Bilal looks sheepish. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Well, you must teach me how,’ says Doctor. ‘I’ve always wanted to learn.’

‘Of course,’ says Bilal amiably. ‘In fact, I was thinking of having a dinner for everyone. You can help me.’

Later, upstairs in his kitchen as Bilal unloads packets of spices into the cupboards, he considers the bag of coriander seeds in his hands; just a few years ago he wouldn’t have known what this was and yet now he knows how to clean it, roast it gently in a pan, and grind it with cumin to get the most out of its flavour. This learning process was how he had managed his grief.

He had been widowed at a young age from a distant wife, left with a daughter on the cusp of puberty. The loss had overwhelmed him with an unbearable feeling he had not known what to do with. Immediately after her burial, he threw himself in his wife’s study and locked the door. Surprised at this passionate display of emotion from their usually docile relative, his family had attempted to break the door down. It was while he was sitting among her papers and complicated books – works that even in her death mocked him with their serious titles and dull covers – that he saw a heavy red book planted on top of one of the shelves. While his relatives banged at the door, he climbed up a small stepladder, pulled the book down, and blew dust off the cover. It was Indian Delights, the legendary local Indian cookbook his mother had bequeathed them for their wedding, that his wife had never used. Curious, he opened the book and turned the pages slowly. He muttered the words to himself under his breath, rolling his tongue over each pronunciation: paratha, korma, jalebi, papadums, and Ras malai.

He ran his finger under each word and wondered what they would taste like. When they finally broke the door down, that was how his family found him; perched upon the stepladder with the heavy book on his lap, his head bent low. He calmly climbed down the ladder and walked past them muttering, ‘Gulab jamuns.’

And that was how Bilal Malek ended up cooking.

He spent much of his mourning period in the kitchen, whisking bowls of cream in the crook of one arm while inspecting a recipe with the other, then ladling rich curries onto visitors’ plates. For hours in the day he read cookbooks and at night he tossed and turned in bed as he dreamed about beating egg whites to stiff peaks and braising fresh garlic in curry leaves. Now, over pots of boiling water, he steams rice and potatoes, sifts through pans of cumin as they toast on the stove.

It softens the blow somehow, makes something come alive again.

***

Sana sits crouched in the cupboard below the kitchen sink.

It makes her feel safe to be surrounded by something that fits her exactly. As if she is enclosed in an egg, waiting to hatch. As if this space were meant for her only. She can hear her father walking about the kitchen, opening cabinets and closing them, whistling to himself. She stays quiet.

When her father whistles, he changes shape; he becomes a fuller, clearer thing, like an image coming into focus in a pair of binoculars.

When her father whistles like this he is remembering her mother. And when he remembers her mother, he turns so crisp and so clear, her eyes almost hurt.

When she was nine, Sana made a discovery at a family wedding that would change the way she saw shapes in the world. A newlywed couple holding hands onstage were laughing together and the man briefly reached over and placed his mouth lightly to the woman’s mouth. Some of the guests laughed and looked away shyly, but Sana stared in amazement. She had never seen such a thing. It seemed to her that in that precise moment, the moment the man and the woman’s eyes met in some understanding, two separate people suddenly transformed into one person with one shape and all their ends and trailing edges joined to form a single perfect outline. The woman was the man and the man was the woman and there were no halves, only wholes with no beginnings or endings.

To see two human beings merge seamlessly into one distinct shape left her breathless.

From then on, she has tried to discover how love affects the shape of things.

She watched how the faces of the workers on the farm changed when they talked about their loved ones; how a divorced uncle of hers talked about his ex-wife; listens to how her father whistles when he remembers her mother. She sees that the signs of love exist in small and quiet ways, from how people look at each other (or don’t), from the way they speak to each other (or don’t), how they touch each other’s shoulders carelessly or search for someone in a crowded room. She scribbles notes, trying to capture it all.

In a history class she learns about the Grecian myth of half humans, how human beings originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces. With such great strength, her teacher had told them, these beings threatened to conquer the gods. To punish humanity for their pride, Zeus split them in half into separate beings.

These halves are said to be in constant search for each other in the world, Sana writes. And that when the two find each other, there is an unspoken understanding between them, they will feel unified and lie with each other in unity for eternity.

It is a passage she keeps returning to. DM

The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil by Shubnum Khan is published by Pan MacMillan at a retail price of R360.