Laila Rahim’s ‘Departures’ to open at Lahore Museum of Contemporary Art

Lahore sculptor Laila Rahim, age 76, will present ‘Departures,’ the story of flight, loss, and adaptation to a new homeland in the aftermath of Partition. At age six, Laila fled from Delhi to Lahore with her parents and brother. Rahim, a metals sculptor, welds giant sheets of copper, tin, and bronze into origami. The show will open next month and run for six weeks. Rahim will give a lecture at the museum about her exhibit on July 3 at 7 p.m.

Laila Rahim. Seventy-six years old. Origami. A brother.

My God, thought Chandani. I’ve found them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Lahore

March 22, 2016

From the balcony of her flat, Laila watched as dawn illuminated the tin rooftops of the market. Their ribbed tiles appeared like ripples in an ocean. Three vultures with hooked necks darted from side to side, scanned the ground for fresh corpses. Disappointment flashed in their black, beady eyes. They spread their wings, one after the other, lifted off into the air, their barbed talons retracted tight into their bodies.

Below, vendors rolled their carts and wheelbarrows into place, kicked down brakes, unveiled produce and trinkets in neat, compact rows.

Her tea had long gone cold. She tied a dupatta over her shoulders, extended her legs, rotated her feet at the ankles to coax blood flow. She rose, leaned over the railing. A breeze tickled her ears. Crisp air coursed through her lungs. She spotted the blue awning of what was once their very first silk shop, now her studio. During the early years, she and Mahad spent sixteen hours a day operating the business. She worked behind the counter, adduced the luster of the cloth, the slight slubbing of its hand weaving, the intricacy of patterns.

Mahad had manned the back, handled the books, filled orders for weddings, maintained the once dilapidated building. She worked at the counter, helping husbands treating their wives, mothers doting on daughters. She and Mahad had made excellent business partners. He joked with her often in front of all the customers. I’m the luckiest man in the world. My wife is the brains and the beauty.

They closed the shop for three hours in the middle of each day, same as the other shops, and walked back to their flat. Mahad would nap on the sofa with a newspaper spread open on his chest. She’d prepare lunch and keep chai simmering on the stove so it would be warm enough for him when he drank it later. She’d fall in love with her husband all over again while listening to his light snores.