The Wandering Falcon (9 page)

“As soon as lunch was over, Mullah Barrerai collected the key leaders among the tribesmen and addressed them in our presence. What he told them briefly was that of the two reasons that were being given for the gathering of the tribes against the British government, one was religion, and the other was money. As far as religion was concerned, it was a false argument, because the Germans were also nonbelievers, and their religion was no different from what the British professed.

“As far as money was concerned, the Germans had given some money, but mostly it was promises, and the worth of a German promise had never been tested so far. As against this, from the British side, a representative was now with them, carrying gold, and prepared to match each German promise with cash. So what would they choose?

“It appeared that Barrerai had been talking to these people in the same strain for some time past. Our arrival with packs of gold clearly tilted popular opinion in our favor, and before the afternoon was over, the tribes solemnly decided to accept the payment offered by the British and to disperse after returning the arms that the deserters had taken away. He beckoned for me to move nearer.

“ ‘Are you happy at the outcome?' he asked in a low voice.

“ ‘I don't know whether to be happy,' I replied. ‘Now that the tribes have smelled money, what happens if they get a bigger offer from the Germans tomorrow or think we have more to offer?'

“Barrerai's face broke into his old familiar smile. ‘Ah, you do not understand. If payment were to be made, you would indeed be in deep trouble. Payment is not going to be made. This night, you and I and the money are going to disappear. Do you understand what it would mean?'

“ ‘Tell me!'

“ ‘When this happens, they will lose the only person they have considered honest enough to trust with money. There will be so much suspicion and bitterness that they will never again be able to gather under one banner. So you will secure both your safety and your money. Do you now understand what is in my mind?'

“ ‘I do now. This can work beautifully, but what is going to happen to you? You must take some money before you go.'

“ ‘Friend, taking money from you would be like eating pig meat. Do not ever mention this again. I can always find a living.'

“ ‘But this time you do not understand. If we do what you suggest, you can never be the same person as you were in the past. You will be hunted, because men will suspect you of carrying a fortune on yourself, and they will be seeking you in revenge for stealing their share of gold.'

“ ‘This is of no importance,' he insisted. ‘I have always lived with a little trouble of one kind or another. I know that as a friend you would do the same for me.'

“With that, he refused to discuss the subject any further. He remained silent not only during the few hours we stayed on in the camp, but even as we left for the fort during the middle of the night.

“I don't even know when he left the party. One moment he was there, and the next he was gone. He must have quietly slipped away on the mule he was riding. It was typical of him to leave without fuss and without saying good-bye.”

After a pause, the old Scouts officer once again turned to the Malik of the Bhittanis. “You have heard the story now. Do you not wonder at the generosity which lay within his breast? Can you now understand why I am impelled to visit his grave and pray for his spirit, and why I consider any insult to his memory so unjust?”

The Bhittani chief pondered for a while before replying. “Friend,” he said, “Mullah Barrerai shall ever remain to all of us a dishonest rogue who cheated us out of our due. He made free with what was not his to give. His whim brought sorrow to a large number of men. His crime is no less if he did it out of friendship for you. So let us talk about him no more.” He took the officer by the arm. “Come, have some tea before you leave.”

A thin trickle
of water flowing down the Shaktu River demarcates the boundary between the Wazirs and the Mahsuds—the two predatory tribes of Waziristan. On either side of the river are narrow vestigial banks where Wazir and Mahsud women look after ragged patches of corn. The river provides only a brief interruption. Where the fields end, the convolutions and whorls of bare, cruel rock once again resume their march across the land—occasionally throwing up spires and lances of granite into the sky.

For the greater part of the year, the Mahsud and the Wazir glower at each other from across the distance that separates the two: Mahsuds from their cluster of squat houses with narrow slit-like windows, and Wazirs from the tops of the towers that protect each home. Every few months, their hate and tensions explode into violence and some men die, never the women, who continue caring for the land and fetching water from the river. After a few days of violence, the caretakers of a small shrine near the bed of the river walk out and arrange a truce to last for the next few months, until the silence is once again broken by rifle shots.

The Mahsuds, because they always hunt in groups, are known as the wolves of Waziristan. A Wazir hunts alone. He is known as “the leopard” to other men. Despite their differences, the two tribes share more than merely their common heritage of poverty and misery. Nature has bred in both an unusual abundance of anger, enormous resilience, and a total refusal to accept their fate. If nature provides them food for only ten days in a year, they believe in their right to demand the rest of their sustenance from their fellow men who live oily, fat, and comfortable lives in the plains. To both tribes, survival is the ultimate virtue. In neither community is any stigma attached to a hired assassin, a thief, a kidnapper, or an informer. And then, both are totally absorbed in themselves. They have no doubt in their minds that they occupy center stage, while the rest of the world acts out minor roles or watches them as spectators—as befit inferior species.

Winter was late that year. It was already the end of November, and the men from the Waziristan hills were watching the slow and leisurely change in season with growing impatience. They felt cheated, because a short winter meant much less time for gathering their sustenance for the year. They knew—as did the people of the plains—that winter was the time of raids, kidnappings, and robberies. These long, cold nights that made people huddle in heavy quilts also made them reluctant and slow in reacting to a neighbor's cry for help. There was also very little movement at night, unlike in summer, when one was likely to come across men wandering in the fields at any time, engaged in watering their lands. And, too, the winter nights were long enough to permit a safe retreat into the hills before the dawn broke.

In the houses sprinkled around the Shaktu Valley in Waziristan, three men were turning over in their minds the idea of leading a kidnapping raid into a cantonment about ten miles away from the foot of the hills. Each of the men was aware of what the others were thinking. The first, Sarmast Khan, a Mahsud, was about thirty years old. It was his ventures over the past fifteen years that had provided the necessary capital for the firewood business set up by his two brothers in Karachi. This time, he was in need of money for himself. The father of the girl betrothed to him had been pressing for payment of the balance of the bride price.

In a small house a few miles away, twin brothers, thirty-two years old and from the Wazir tribe, needed money for another reason. Since their first crime, the theft of a beautiful engraved rifle from an official traveling on a government road fifteen years ago, they had accumulated a long record of offenses in the lower districts where their families lived. What this meant was that while they were free to roam the hills, where no policemen would go after them, they were hunted men in the plains.

Now, at last, the twins had been offered a chance to start new lives. A senior officer of the nearest district had agreed to their unconditional surrender, and in return had promised to pardon their past offenses. However, the file had been sent to the government, where a clerk had sent word that their case would go through only on payment of a two-thousand-rupee bribe. The two brothers were placed, therefore, in the ironic position of having to commit one final raid to steal enough money to enable them to start honest lives.

While these men were brooding, other men were similarly worried about how they would spend the coming winter. Sarmast and the twin brothers, Jalat Khan and Zabta Khan, met one morning after the women of the village had left to fetch the day's drinking water. There was considerable agreement among them as to the basic arrangements. They agreed on the choice of the leader—Daulat Khan, also a Mahsud, a grizzled old veteran who was known throughout the tribal areas for his broad humor, his predilection for stories, and the hearing aid he wore, which he had stolen from a farmer some years ago. They were also of one mind about who would keep the person they kidnapped, and who would negotiate the ransom payment.

They decided that the party would, tentatively, comprise ten persons, including themselves. On this basis, the ransom would have to be divided into thirteen shares, with one extra share each for the leader, the negotiator, and the person who provided food, shelter, and information in the city. They also agreed that their group must include at least two men from the Bhittanis—the tribe through whose lands they would have to pass on their mission.

I
t was late in the afternoon, and the deputy commissioner of Bannu was winding up the day's work and wondering whether he could get in a set or two of tennis before dark. There had been a particularly heavy rush of visitors that day, of whom about half a dozen still remained. Of these, one was particularly important—an informer who had brought in useful snippets of information on a few occasions. There he sat, on a wooden bench outside the office—a stocky-looking young man with a beard, his eyes darkened with kohl, wearing a red secondhand ladies' overcoat with a fur collar.

This garment, which might at one time have been the pride of the wardrobe of a suburban American housewife, was unbuttoned. The ivory shafts of two daggers were clearly visible, thrust into the waistband of his trousers.

The deputy commissioner called in a couple more visitors before the informer was invited into the office. It was necessary to keep him waiting for his turn, as any special treatment would be immediately noticed and become the subject of bazaar gossip. It would also demonstrate the anxiety of the officer, placing the informer at a psychological advantage. The selling of information was far from a dishonorable way of earning one's livelihood, and no informer in these parts made a secret of his profession. One such person had even erected an arch to welcome a touring official, with a banner proudly proclaiming that it had been put up by a “spy in the service of the government.”

Some families had been in the information trade for generations. And most of the informers were not owned by one master. They retailed information to whosoever was willing to buy it. They would even sell the same information to more than one person. The more clients an informer had, the better respected he was by his peers.

Tor Baz was, however, a newcomer in the field. He entered the room after taking off his shoes as a mark of respect for the officer, moved toward the lone electric heater, which provided the only warmth in the chilly room, sat down next to it, and started warming his hands and feet while cracking his knuckles. After a while, he looked toward the deputy commissioner, who sat watching him patiently.

“Are you strong, sahib?”

“Are you happy?” responded the officer.

“Are you happy, sahib?” replied the informer.

“Are you well, Tor Baz?” queried the deputy commissioner.

“Are things well in your family, deputy commissioner sahib?”

“Yes,” came the reply patiently. “The blessings of God are with us.”

With this exchange of salutations completed, an essential and inescapable part of any meeting, both men sat quietly for a while, each waiting for the other to speak first. At last Tor Baz accepted defeat and tentatively remarked, “There are strange doings and happenings beyond your border, sahib.”

“A dependable man alone makes a good friend, Tor Baz,” he said. “Tell me all that your eyes have seen.”

“It is for this that I have come to see you,” Tor Baz remarked. “There is a kidnapping gang heading toward this area. Last evening, I myself saw a collection of twenty men at a hamlet of Tori Khel Wazirs. They were led by Daulat Khan, and here is a list of the persons I could identify. There were four persons who were complete strangers to me.”

The deputy commissioner was watching the expression flitting across the face of the informer as he told his tale. He would have preferred at least two more versions of the story before making up his mind, but since there was no immediate likelihood of more informers turning up that late in the day, he would have to deduce the facts the best he could from the material made available to him.