I leaned over towards her as we were standing on the balcony together. I embraced her momentarily and then interrupted her talk with a kiss.

      "I'll take you to all of these places if you like," she said after the kiss ended, resuming her role of tourist guide. "But first, we'll have breakfast."



      Breakfast was simple. It consisted of two large pieces of the traditional Indian bread with jam, which I am sure wasn't an Indian tradition, but it was good nonetheless. The greatest surprise of the morning, however, was Indira herself. In total contrast to the evening before, when she had been almost totally covered with the long traditional gown that she wore, she stood before me this morning almost totally naked, dressed in an outfit as small as a western bikini. I was puzzled by the contrast. She was dressed so sparsely that her appearance would have challenged the most daring western tradition in provocativeness. She wore tiny black shorts that matched the color of her hair, and a super-short blouse made of white silk that was barely buttoned up and mostly open to the sunshine. "And this is India?" I said to myself.

      "I thought this liberal style of clothing isn't allowed in India," I said to her when I finally got my nerve up to comment on her stunningly beautiful appearance that had been hidden the day before.

      "Do you really mean this?" she asked. "Do you really find me beautiful?"

      "Stunningly beautiful," I replied. "I am captivated by your appearance."

      "But what do you mean, Peter, with beautiful? The word beautiful is such an empty word. What does it stand for in your heart? How do you find me beautiful?"

      I began to smile. "That's an easy one to answer, Indira. I find you beautiful like flowers in spring, or like:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

Those are all my beautiful things.

      "Those lines are from an Oscar Hammerstein song," I added. "Well almost they are. They are from a song that we sang as children when the world was bright and new and rich with promises of discoveries that we couldn't yet imagine, or barely imagined, like:

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels

Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodels

Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

That's what we considered to be beautiful things.

      "Can you imagine this, Indira? I can still remember those lines. They speak of a beautiful world that we learned love, even if it seemed like a magical world or a world we couldn't quite touch, like:

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

Silver white winters that melt into springs

Those set the sage for my beautiful things

      "And we built on those verses, Indira. And now that you asked the question what is beautiful, I find that the building hasn't even begun. Could anyone therefore find you more beautiful?"

      Indira blushed and smiled but said nothing in reply.

      "I hope you are not offended by me saying that. At home in America this would be interpreted as coercion, but it really is the truth if I may be bold enough to say so."

      "I am glad you find me beautiful in this magical way, and more so that it makes you happy," she replied. "But I am also grateful for the opportunity to be seen in this more down-to-earth way as a woman, which is traditionally deemed undignified, even at the beach. The long gown evidently reflects of our Islamic background. I'm a bit of a rebel against that too. Of course being sparsely dressed is OK for tourists," she added and began to grin. "The fact that you, as a tourist, are renting the apartment, makes my down-to-earth dress-style that you find so magical in a beautiful way, 'officially' acceptable."

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Stories about War from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche