Punjabi moon

The 2002 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize winner.
There were more than 100 entries from a total of eight countries. The runners-up were Clementine Cecil, Gregory Lascelles, Jonathan Ledgard, Rory Stewart and Ben Yarde-Buller.

Just below us we could hear the chowkidar tut-tut-tutting his disapproval on the ground with his stick, pacing up and down, tut, tut, tut, while we two sat together on the flat-topped roof above, our backs to the Lahore skyline. Behind us the plains of the Punjab had been swallowed whole by a syrupy blackness, the villages, the wheat fields and beyond that the border with India. We were sitting in darkness.

Tut. Tut. Tut. The chowkidar continued his agitated walk. He was distressed at the scandal unfolding on the roof of ‘Aunty’s’ house. We were in Pakistan, and here unmarried men and women do not mix alone.

‘What’s this bloody bastard doing?’ snapped my lover, irritated that we were being spied on.