B005OWFTDW EBOK (35 page)

A little later, the subedar walked up to the hut and called the man outside. He wasted no time on preliminaries.

‘That rider who has just left the fort was a Siahpad,’ the subedar said. ‘He asked questions about you. You know what that means?’

The man nodded dumbly.

‘If you wish to leave,’ continued the subedar, ‘collect some food from the canteen. The men have packed a bag for you. If God wills, we shall meet again one day.’

The couple departed on their camel at early dusk, the man sitting in the middle with the boy perched in front and the woman behind him. Once again the old familiar smell of fear was in his nostrils. The woman had asked no questions. She packed and dressed quickly, first putting warm clothes on both herself and the boy, and then making a light load of the few things which they needed to carry for their journey. The rest of her possessions, those collected over the past years, she neatly arranged in a pile in one corner of the room.

Her man had brought the camel around to the doorstep and made it kneel. He had cleaned his gun and it was back on his shoulders. As she stepped out to mount the camel, she cast a quick backward glance inside the room, her glance briefly touching the firmly packed clay floor, the date palm mats she had woven over the years and the dying embers in the fireplace. Her expression remained as calm and serene as if she had been prepared for this journey for a long time.

The lone camel followed the telegraph line for about twenty miles before the man decided to strike eastwards into the broken country.

They tried to use their knowledge and wits to the full. They varied their pace, changed direction frequently and also the time of travel. They never spent more than the very minimum time at any waterhole. When they rested, they chose the most secluded spot and would pile up scrub and thorn brush to hide them and their camel.

They saw no signs of their pursuers and after five days the woman became a little sanguine. ‘Perhaps the stranger was not a Siahpad. Perhaps we were not recognized,’ she remarked hopefully. ‘Perhaps he kept the news to himself. Perhaps they did not chase us. Perhaps they have lost us,’ she chanted.

‘No,’ the man said, ‘they are after us. I feel it in the air.’

The man was right. On the morning of the sixth day, as the couple were filling the water skin at a waterhole, they saw their pursuers top the horizon.

It was still early morning, when the desert air was unsullied by the eddies of sand and the whirling of dust devils. The party was a considerable distance away but there could be no mistaking who they were. The woman’s husband and her father were riding their camels a short distance in front of the main body of men.

The man called Gul Bibi close to him. He placed his hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes.

‘There is no escape for any of us. There was never any escape. You know what I have to do now?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I know. We have talked about this day many times. But I am afraid, my love.’

‘Do not be frightened,’ spoke the man. ‘I shall follow you. I shall follow you soon.’

The woman walked away a few paces and stood there with her back towards the man. Suddenly she again spoke out. ‘Do not kill the boy. They might spare him. I am ready.’

The man shot her in the back while she was still speaking. He then reloaded his gun and looked reflectively at the boy who stared back at him with unblinking eyes. With a shrug the man turned away, walked up to the kneeling camel and shot it dead. He then stood together with the boy waiting for the pursuers to reach him.

The party rode up to the waterhole and dismounted. The old man was in the lead. He glanced at the sprawled body of his daughter and looked at her lover.

‘Who is the boy?’ he asked. His voice was cold and without emotion. The voice of a stranger. The inky black folds of the headgear hid half the face, but the eyes were the old familiar eyes, which each man of the tribe knew. Eyes that could show anger, hatred, love, laughter, fondness and humour more vividly than anyone else. Now they showed nothing.

‘Who is the boy?’ the Sardar asked again, his voice remaining flat, not even showing impatience.

‘Your daughter’s son,’ replied the man.

The boy stood shivering as the two men talked about him. He was nervously fingering a small silver amulet which hung around his neck on a grey-coloured string.

The husband of the dead woman approached.

‘Whose son is he?’ he growled. ‘Yours or mine?’

The lover did not reply but his eyes again met those of the old man. ‘He is her son,’ he repeated. ‘That silver amulet is hers. She must have placed it around his neck before her death. Do you not recognize the amulet? You gave it to her to ward off evil spirits.’

The old man said nothing, but picked up a stone. His companions did likewise. The lover stood still as the first shower of stones hit him. He started bleeding from the wounds on his face and temples. There was another shower of stones and yet another, before he fell.

At first, he lay half sitting and half sprawling. Then he lay with only his elbow supporting him. Finally, that small gesture of pride too failed him and he lay stretched on the ground, his clothes darkened with blood and small rivulets of it running across his back and staining the ground. The hail of stones continued with the circle of men moving closer and closer. The agony ended only with death, the bones broken and the head crushed beyond recognition.

After they had killed the lover, the offended husband turned to his companions.

‘Now we start with the boy.’ The boy, who had been standing next to the dead camel, heard this and started whimpering.

‘No,’ admonished the old man, ‘the boy’s death is not necessary. We shall leave him as we found him.’

Some of the other men murmured their agreement. ‘Yes, let him stay as he is,’ they agreed. ‘The Sardar is right.’

They dragged the two bodies a short distance away and entombed them separately in towers made out of sun-blackened stones which lay scattered in profusion all around the waterhole. They used mud and water to plaster the towers so that their work might endure and provide testimony, to all who cared, about the way in which the Siahpad avenged insults. The old man took no part in the burial but walked about by himself. He did, however, interrupt his walking for a while and stood at the spot where the bodies had lain.

As soon as the men had finished, they mounted their camels and rode away. After travelling but a short distance, the father of the girl suddenly reined in his camel.

‘I should have brought the boy,’ the older man said, shading his eyes with his hand and staring in the direction of the waterhole.

‘Death would be best for the likes of him,’ burst out the
son-in-law
. ‘The whelp has bad blood in him.’

‘Half of his blood is my blood. The blood of the chiefs of this tribe. What mean you by bad blood?’

‘I still say what I said before,’ answered back the husband. ‘He has bad blood. Nothing good shall come out of him.’

The older man moved his camel up to the other man’s as the rest watched him. He looked around. ‘Let me tell you all now,’ he shouted. ‘My daughter sinned. She sinned against the laws of God and those of our tribe. But hear this also. There was no sin in her when she was born, nor when she grew up, nor when she was married. She was driven to sin only because I did not marry her to a man.’

He pointed a shaking finger at his son-in-law. ‘You know well enough what I say,’ he thundered, his emotions suddenly bursting out. ‘Marry another woman, marry as often as you like. Every one of them shall be driven to sin, for reasons you are aware of.’

At this insult, shouted in his face before the men of his tribe, the face of the other man darkened with rage.

‘You should not have said such things, old man, even if you be our chief,’ he shouted as he drew his sword and slashed at Gul Bibi’s father. Once, twice, thrice he swiped and the old man was already dead as he slid down in small jerks like a broken doll from the saddle to the ground.

With his death, the party scattered. The men did not wait to bury their Chief’s body in a proper grave but left it covered under a thin layer of sand, hoping the approaching sandstorm would bury it deeper. Whether fearful of the evil they had seen or afraid of being involved in another feud, or maybe weary of each other’s company, they just rode away hurriedly.

A
t the waterhole, the boy had stopped shivering after the party departed. He had overcome his fear and was sitting between the two towers playing with some stones and quartz crystals. At first he had tried to prise some stones away from the towers, but they were too tightly wedged together and his fingers made no impression.

As the sun rose higher, he sat quietly watching the clouds of sand-grouse which appeared in the sky. Flight after flight alighted at the edge of the waterhole, dipping their beaks in the water and flying away back into the sun. Their peculiar chuckling calls and the whirring of countless wings provided him some diversion from the horror he had just witnessed.

Then he was completely alone. The thousands of birds, which had kept him company for a while, had disappeared. With nothing to keep him occupied, he became aware of his thirst and hunger. He tried to resist it for a while, but as the pangs of hunger grew sharper, he finally walked over to the dead camel and opened the bag containing food. He ate a little, drank some water and then lay down squeezed against the dead camel as the sandstorm approached.

About the Cover

 

 

 

F
rom the ornate horse-drawn carriages of the Raj to the pioneering craftsmanship featured on the Kohistan Bus Company’s fleet in the 1920s, Pakistan has a long-established tradition of decorating vehicles. The idiosyncratic designs serve as both moving advertisements and indicators of cultural affiliation. Truck artists transform village rickshaws, city buses and commercial trucks into a procession of moving colour.

The cover for
Granta
112 was created by Islam Gull, a truck and bus artist of Bhutta village in Karachi, as part of a greater collaboration with Pakistani artists for the issue. Gull, born in Peshawar, has been painting since the age of thirteen. Twenty-two years ago he settled in Karachi, where he now teaches his craft to two young apprentices. In addition to trucks and buses, Gull decorates buildings and housewares and has worked for several consulates in Karachi, as well as travelling to Kandahar, Afghanistan to paint trucks there. Commissioned with the assistance of the British Council in Karachi, Gull produced two chipboard panels to be photographed for the magazine’s cover, using the same industrial paints with which he embellishes Pakistani trucks. 

Lorraine Adams
is the author of two novels,
Harbor
, winner of the
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize and
The Room and the Chair
(Portobello/Knopf ). She lives in New York City.

Jamil Ahmad
was born in Jalandhar, Punjab in 1933. A civil servant in the frontier areas and a minister in the Pakistani embassy in Kabul, his first book,
The Wandering Falcon
, will be published in 2011 (Penguin India/UK).

Nadeem Aslam
was born in Gujranwala, Pakistan, and now lives in England. He is the author of the novels
Season of the Rainbirds, Maps for Lost Lovers
and
The Wasted Vigil
(Faber/Vintage).

Fatima Bhutto
was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1982. She is the author of three books including
Songs of Blood and Sword
(Jonathan Cape/Nation). She lives in Karachi.

Hasina Gul
is a broadcaster at Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation’s Peshawar station. She is the author of two collections of poetry –
Shpoon Shpole Shpelai, Khutah Khabray Kava
and
Da Hum Hagasey Mausam Dey
.