A World for Two

By Mariana Zakova and Un Voltron

The novel is not just about the love, passion, obsession, and friendship across the boundaries. As much as anything else, the novel is also about Karachi, the transcultural metropolis and the capital of Pakistan. One gets swayed by the colorful, bright, and sunny Karachi world. The bustling streets, the exotic charm, and the ethos of its inhabitants are all animated by the authors profound knowledge of Pakistani setting, culture, and ideology. The locales are transformed into sensual and emotional symbols and, therefore, become so much more potent. These add to the nuanced details and to the pieces of dramatic sequence, setting the compelling, vivid, and tender tone of the novel. Once one has unraveled the mysteries of this fiction, one feels the same pangs of loneliness and alienation as the characters, which are somehow related to this Eastern landscape.
Make your flight together with the birds over the dark ocean of feelings.
Love and hate, live and die with the characters.
Leave a novel when you close the last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491888278

Mariana Zakova

Mariana Zakova with his family live in Sofia – the capital of Bulgaria, Europe. Mariana Zakova is coach leader and principal of the 137th Secondary School in Sofia . She works with its professional team for leadership style in education. Mariana Zakova is MA in Bulgarian language and literature, but she has also specialized in the field of modern management - Organization and management in education – Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridsky”;Solving conflicts at school – University for peace and conflict solving - Granada, Spain; Trained in a program for coach leaders of Veleva-Bialec Coaching – Paris, France Mariana Zakova’s interests are referred to her native land Bulgaria – unfamiliar or not well known. Beautiful, because it has everything – a sea- with hot summer and golden beaches; mountains – wonderful where to go skiing… not to forget! But this country also has got its history which has been stolen little by little – by someone or other – not to be known. The history of Bulgaria is the main topic of Mariana’s books – The Voltron’s Circle (2009), Led by Furies (2011) and The Trumps (2011),which contains three novels - The Cries of Samodivas, The Singing Pigeons and I Want to Be with You. They all are united by a common topic – the past of the state Bulgaria, which you don’t know very well. In the way a writer, known in their country, Mariana Zakova departing from the scope the exotic history. Her beautiful story travels not only across countries but also on the continent. The experienced writer begins to live and die with their characters in a breathless, dreamy and at the same time very naturalistic story about life just as it is really. Thus was conceived the next novel AWORLD FOR TWO is not just about love , passion, obsession and friendship across borders . It has everything that lives today in Karachi, transcultural metropolis and the capital of Pakistan. They all are united by a common topic – the past of the state Bulgaria, which you don’t know very well. In the way a writer, known in their country, Mariana Zakova departing from the scope the exotic history. Her beautiful story travels not only across countries but also on the continent. The experienced writer begins to live and die with their characters in a breathless, dreamy and at the same time very naturalistic story about life just as it is really. Thus was conceived the next novel AWORLD FOR TWO is not just about love , passion, obsession and friendship across borders . It has everything that lives today in Karachi, transcultural metropolis and the capital of Pakistan. Here the novel I WANT TO BE WICH YOU - The time comes to go back to the terrible story of Ottoman rule over the powerful state Bulgaria started in the late 14th century and lasted until the late 18th century. 500 years Bulgarians have maintained their faith as Christians. And after these 500 years until today Bulgaria is a country on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe. Terrible times, strong people, beautiful love alive as they succeeded in survive the spirit and the nation. You must read, to look again next Mariana Zakova,s books

Book preview

A WORLD

FOR TWO

Mariana Zakova, Un Voltron

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AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403  USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2014 by Mariana Zakova, Un Voltron. All rights reserved.

Translation from Bulgarian

Dr. Margarita Georgieva

Cover deign by Irfan Ahmed

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   12/19/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8826-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8827-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

I

II

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

I want to describe the flights and landings of this seagull . . . the authors confess at the beginning of this novel. This statement is particularly relevant to the genre the present work belongs to as it addresses the authors’ intention to write as if to trace the flight of imagination into an unknown horizon and beyond the strict divisive borders and limits of East and West. Naturally, one finds something of an enigma, not only in the authorial quest but also in the resulting fiction.

In the rapidly changing postcolonial world, the boundaries are blurred by deepening global influences and the notions of escape, departure, travel and arrival become all the more important. The authors, like flying seagulls, leave behind their country of origin in search of the sun and heat of the East. That is how the postcolonial themes, subjects, motifs and symbols constitute their territory. This might have not been possible if they had not left the familiar landscape and the culture in which they were rooted for radically different ones. This novel explores the intricacies of human nature and contemporary life in the distant and unfamiliar East.

This uncommon Bulgarian novel brings a fresh perspective to the socio-cultural issues riddling the Pakistani Muslim society. With a minute precision and a critical insight, the authors strive to paint contemporary Pakistani life by narrating a dramatic and moving tale of individuals suffocated by their forbidden intimacies and haunting secrets. Their story carries in itself the elegance of the fairy tale, nourished by the exoticism of travel writing and the nostalgia and longing proper to a diasporic identity.

Looking from an edge, from a strongly faceted external perspective, the authors see the characters with their concealed faces and grim eyes gazing at the alienating world with groping intensity, whilst trying to find a niche of their own. The authors play the role of the clear sighted observers of the dark and brooding side of the human being. Their characters come to life as creatures of flesh and blood burning with intense desires, capable of intriguing us. And it is not only the characters, it is every object and every place on which they focus that are rendered alive.

A shimmering hope and joy prevails in the midst of this complex saga of interrelationships. Even though the characters are hemmed by cultural obscurantism, traditional beliefs and the feeling of absence and fragmentation, they move on with their lives. Their existence is full of remarkable possibilities. They establish bonds of love and friendship, and re-affirm cross-cultural solidarities. The ardours, passions, drama and suspense of this fiction infiltrate the different characters and their lives. The authors offer us a very interesting perspective on gender and sexual indentities, along with a few original portraits of strong, independent women.

As the title A World for Two suggests, the novel is not just about loves, passions, obsessions and friendships across the boundaries. An entire world in itself, the novel is constructed as a relationship between reader and writers, balanced on a constant play between you and me, between England and Pakistan, between man and woman. This also is a novel about Karachi, the transcultural metropolis and the capital of Pakistan. One is swayed by the colourful, bright and sunny Karachi world. The bustling streets, the exotic charm and the ethos of its inhabitants are all animated by the author’s profound knowledge of Pakistani setting, culture and ideology. The locales are transformed into sensual and emotional symbols, and therefore become so much more potent. These add to the nuanced details and to the pieces of dramatic sequence, setting the compelling, vivid and tender tone of the novel. Once one has unravelled the mysteries of this fiction, one feels the same pangs of loneliness and alienation as the characters, which are somehow related to this Eastern landscape.

At the crossroads of culture, tradition and modernity, this novel introduces a new voice of Bulgarian fiction.

Dr. Bhawana Jain

The fictional line is just a sign that a connection between two characters exists.

I want to tell you about it! And in a way that has never been before. And never will be.

I could compare everything with an early-morning flight above the sea when the seagulls glide with the winds and hardly move a wing. And then, when they finally touch ground, their bodies can only stop the élan with difficulty and they need time to stand firmly on their two feet.

I have observed that flight. And when I land with the seagull, I stop breathing to feel the bird breathing. I am saddened by the meaning of that landing for it takes away the drive to be part of what we have called space. The sky belongs to the gull; the air and the clouds are hers and the sun is partly responsible for her capacity to fly for she gathers its rays within her body. The sea mirrors all of this and when the gull touches the waves, everything above is melted into the infinitely expectant waters below.

I want to describe the flights and landings of this seagull because they help me visualise the story. I want to tell you a story, the story of a meeting that took place before my very eyes. It was like that!

I want to find the beginning but it still remains in the distance. It stretches far away to that city, far to the East and through the borders of Asia.

The nights are so hot that I cannot sleep.

I know that Mary is not sleeping either.

In the night of the silver moon I can hardly think of anything else but this story. It is a tale that I begin in the hour when everything sleeps. And only the two of us can testify that my words have been uttered. These words have been gathered during many days and many nights, so that I can now truly possess them.

And so, I can begin . . .

I

Come, Mary, and hear me while I tell you the true story of the world over there, to the East, where Behr-ul-Hind washes the warm earthen shores.

I get up early as the muezzin begins his morning azan and prays to . . .

The world around him is so bright, gone silver from the morning heat and the sea vapours which constantly remind you that there is a sea over there, full of humid, odorous life.

I love the sea, as every being that has never approached it. And when such a being discovers the sea for the first time, he remains there forever—if not for real, then, in his dreams . . . of wind and of seagulls, or merely of their smells.

I am now here and I may never leave again if the only woman who can make me leave does not demand it. And this is you, Mary.

I want to find a path from that city in which Irfan has now spent almost all of his forty-year-old life. And to turn back time. I know that Irfan means one close to God, a chosen one. He had been chosen for his capability to represent the beautiful side of life with his dark skin and velvet-brown, sparkling, starry eyes, from which flow rivers of chocolate. In his presence, the East could invade the fragrant West. And our western nights would, on their turn, change the eastern nights into tales about what one can find under the sky. These nights end with the song of the nightingale at the dawn of day so that the magic remains unbroken.

But let us leave aside these thoughts about the confines of a world. They are not preoccupations for lovers. Neither the loves of swans nor those of nightingales, nor even those of any other living thing on earth, are affected by the idea of an ending.

But why are then people affected by it?

Time had departed towards an unknown destination and I had no inclination of stopping it for it could take me back. It was brightening out; the summer was almost there and the fresh warmth of the day swept through the trees in the valley—the summer monsoon was approaching. I could not adjust to the chirping of the thousands of birds serenading, perching along the heavy river, satiating their hunger with the matter deposited by the waters. I smiled to a child with a kite, carried by the wind, or by dreams not yet come true.

Actually, the child was riding on the winds of childhood and chased the kite of its future under the Indian sky.

Irfaaan, where have you been, child? Come and we will fly your kite from the roof!

That was Grandpa who had come back to his kith and kin. To remember again and again where he had been born. The return to this place was like a ritual that he had not managed to complete with his son but that he was now completing with his grandson. He must not forget!

That day was so delightful! For the first time, Irfan climbed to the roof of his forefathers’ house and saw India from the height of its two stories; he saw the river, the streets secreted below the roofs, the small yards surrounded by crumbling walls. And one more thing. Something that troubled his sleep during the following nights.

At that moment his Grandpa was looking at the sky. He loved watching the sky, no matter where he was, because from its colour he could tell what kind of day it would be. And on that day he was floating with the kite he was flying for his grandson. He could not see that his now grown-up grandson saw more than mere sky and kite . . .

On the next day Irfan announced that he would go fly his kite alone on the roof but this was only a pretext. Actually, from there he could see the tiny courtyard of the house behind where a young woman was hanging up wet laundry. She was naked.

For the first time Irfan understood that women have other things on their body, different from his. And this moved him deeply.

The woman in the backyard used to hang up clothes naked every day and every day Irfan discovered something new. First, he saw her breasts—it was strange but beautiful, he thought. Then, his gaze drifted down to discover another very apparent difference and this awoke in him the strange awareness that movement is not limited to the limbs. It was also characteristic for other parts of his body. He looked at himself; he looked back at the woman; and did not have courage enough to ask his Grandpa about it.

The summer glided away so quickly but Irfan did not yet know why the woman walked around naked every day or why her unexpected differences had made him so sensitive.

Then they left and all the Indian cousins bid them goodbye in laughter and tears. Grandpa looked at him in dismay and, who knows, maybe also with understanding . . .

The boy seems to have grown during his visit this summer, he heard him say to his uncle but it was not until later that he understood those words.

Maybe the old man had guessed as old people usually do . . .

Many years later when Karachi became the place where Irfan found his self, time continued to bring him inexorably back to that image, graven in the frame of his childhood imagination.

His mother was a beautiful woman and even as a grown-up, he would sometimes look on her with the adoration of a child. And this not only for her beauty but also for those warm chocolate eyes that he knew he had inherited from her. But most of all, he would watch her in awe because of the beauty she could create with her hands. She made the jewellery worn by women there—colourful, bright and warm, it gathered the sunlight. Sometimes he would think that she had gathered all the flowers in the world, like a sorceress at night, and had transformed them into jewels.

He wanted to paint all of this but it was impossible. His mother never made anything with premeditation and this convinced him that her talent sprang from magic. It was the same with his own gift—he could draw what he wanted without thinking about the outcome on paper.

And on paper, there always appeared the same woman . . . But never naked!

Never? I think about this word and I begin to remember those paintings that so many of our acquaintances took home because Irfan would paint them and then forget all about them and leave them lying around. I arrange them one next to the other in my mind and I see one painting made of many smaller ones. On it, a woman descends a staircase, walks down a dark, small courtyard, hangs up clothes, turns around . . . Oh, the background is dark . . . And each bears the title The Dark Woman.

I know why!

In the days after his return to India, Irfan began feeling a strange mixture of a need to liberate himself from the unexplainable tension in his body and to feel the pleasure that came after. And he did this with the perseverance of a boy who had found the means to take a short peek at a film that had been forbidden to children.

But the child had grown already for in the darkness of his unenlightened soul, he would invariably see that beautiful and different body.

On his paintings he saw her naked too but he kept that nakedness to himself. The clothes made it impossible for others to see his first experience of womankind!

Karachi is a city of such beauty and strength that when you enter it, you remain in it even if you have to leave it later. You can get lost in the narrow streets but how can you regret it when you find yourself in a fairy-tale country of splendour and magic, of colours, fragrances and tastes?

Irfan liked to get lost like this, in his own way too—he forgot that he had ever been elsewhere and he would sit on some sheltered bench in front of a low gate. The old women would look at him with their carefully shielded eyes but he was not interested—he could never see what was in those eyes. Beyond lay a world in which one could find a feeling of bright, saint-like belonging. To what or to whom, he did not know yet but he began to understand later on. He belonged only and exclusively to beauty. And nobody could be his master but beauty.

In the days that he began studying at the college, he was a handsome, tall boy with long dark curly hair. But shy. And when the girls watched him with their hungry eyes, he only felt a thirst for them that he did not want to quench. And he did have a reason—the Dark Woman had not left him yet. She had him entirely—his body, his thoughts and his idea of what he had not accomplished with her. Only his longing and the expectation to satisfy the desires he had already identified remained.

Irfan had become a man. Deep within, he was subjected to an incomprehensible power. That was to last for a very long time . . .

And he was subjected to beauty—forever . . .

Irfan hand only one thing to ask of the woman he liked. He wanted to kiss her lips—only once, during that night.

They were together among many relatives but they were alone. They wanted to say everything but kept silent. Everything around conspired to provoke them and a decision formed in Irfan’s mind—his brother’s wedding would be the moment when he would drive away the Dark Woman forever.

He had never kissed a girl!

Then he understood that this stood at the heart of everything that defined his weakness. It had begun many years ago . . .

Then it would become his force but he did not know this.

The girl beside him was beautiful and had the eyes of a cat. But they only seemed so for her inexperience hand not yet given them the challenging force and the catlike agility of the hunter. For now, they only the colour and shape of the predator that would wake in them, as it happened in every woman.

But in her, the beast was still sleeping . . .

The worlds of Karachi passed away one after the other. One followed another in the boundless fantasy of that boy, grown for the world and within himself. Irfan could no longer restrain the fantasy. It had invaded his territory and conquered his spirit.

Then it revolted against all those who refused to accept its creations. He was a painter and time gradually traced a path towards his unique self. Until the moment he realised that painting was only the least he could and wanted to do. At that time cinema entered his mind and remained there forever. Then he felt at ease with the idea and it seemed likely that he would be master of the future.

Irfan looked back. His thoughts about that girl he had only kissed bewildered him. He still thought of her, imagined her