The Far Field

by Madhuri Vijay

  “See how fast they are?” Amina said. “I’ll call you Murgi from now.”

  She was grinning at me with such infectious humor that I couldn’t help smiling back. She possessed none of the sullen heaviness that had marked Riyaz, nor his mother’s aloof scrutiny. She went back to the stove and began making parathas, which she cooked in twos, pulling them apart into impossibly thin, translucent halves when they were done. These I ate with a generous dollop of butter and several cups of tea, and then she stood up, wiping her hands on the front of her kurta.

  “Are you feeling all right? Do you want to go on a walk?” she asked.

  I nodded. I felt surprisingly good, given yesterday’s grueling climb.

  “Then let’s go,” she said.

  First, she showed me around their house. It was very small, consisting of a single short central corridor, which branched off into the kitchen, the little room in which I’d slept, and another room, of which I got only a quick glimpse before Amina closed the door. I saw a mattress laid out on the floor and surrounded by untidy stacks of clothes, a large colorful sheet tacked to the wall like a tapestry. It was, I assumed, the room in which she and Riyaz slept. After this, Amina took me outside onto the mud porch and showed me the outhouse, which was a basic, though spotlessly clean, concrete room with a raised toilet and a drain. We descended a mud track that led down to a rough stone structure with an opening instead of a door. It had, I realized, been built into the slope directly below the porch itself, which formed its roof. A red-and-white cow and a tiny black calf were tied to a log outside, their tails swishing.

  “He was born last month,” Amina said, nodding at the calf. “We also have two mules.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Riyaz has taken them. He uses them for his work.”

  “His work?”

  “Yes. He does transport. Building materials, rice, wheat, oil—people tell him what they want, and he brings it up from the town below, where you spent the night.”

  “He walks that distance every day?”

  She laughed at my surprise. “Sometimes twice a day.”

  We climbed back up to the porch, and she pointed out the boundary of their land, a massive pine tree that marked the place where their fields ended and the neighbors’ began. The pine seemed to be somehow writhing, and I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, until Amina said, in a grim voice, “Crows. There are too many of them to get rid of. They eat everything. Corn usually, or one of our chicks. They even carry off puppies sometimes.”

  She then gave me a tour of the village itself. In my urban imagination, I had always pictured villages as tight-knit clusters of homes, limited by size and proximity, but here the houses were flung wide upon the mountainside, like a handful of brightly colored toys tossed by a careless hand, separated by narrow rocky ridges and terraced cornfields. The paths skirted close to the edge of the mountains; stones occasionally slipped from under my feet and bounced down the slope, farther down than I cared to look. The third time I stumbled, Amina turned and looked at me clinically. “Bend forward a little,” she instructed me. “That way you won’t fall.” I did as she said and felt immediately more secure. “And when you walk downhill,” she added, “bend back.”

  She took me to what seemed to be the closest thing they had to a village square, a flat patch of land that housed a tiny shop, made entirely of dark wood and stone, and a small whitewashed mosque, whose corrugated iron roof culminated in a glinting tower. A man in a kurta was painting the tower, his body lashed to the metal with a single rope, bright green streaming from his brush. A narrow wooden bench ran along the outer wall of the shop, and a row of very old men with wrinkled, mottled skin, dressed in dark, bulky jackets, were arranged on it like dolls in the sun, all of them watching the painter, but when Amina and I came up, they transferred their collective gaze to me. Amina greeted them and introduced me. They nodded once in unison, then resumed watching the painter. Amina winked at me and ducked inside the shop. It smelled richly of paraffin and grain; the walls were lined with close-built shelves that seemed to hold everything from towels and belts to hand mirrors and biscuits. Without bothering to get up, a tall shopkeeper in a cream kurta reached for the small bar of soap Amina requested, giving me a curious look as he did so.

  We walked back to their house in the bright sunlight, and all the while I tried to adjust to the strangeness of this place, its vastness. I had not, I realized, been prepared for it at all. Bashir Ahmed had spoken to us so many times of mountains, and yet the images evoked in my mind had been imprecise and clichéd, all of them stolen, no doubt, from some book or film: gentle, sloping meadows dotted with tiny yellow flowers and vast herds of cows, peacefully grazing. This place with its steep, rugged drops; its narrow, glittering pathways; its tiny mud houses that clung like limpets to the face of the mountain—I had imagined none of it. From our vantage point, I could see, on far slopes, other glinting roofs which were, I presumed, more houses, more settlements.

  We arrived back at the house at the same time as Riyaz’s mother, who was coming from the opposite direction, a curved sickle hanging low in one hand and her face obscured by a massive sheaf of grass, which she had perched on her head. Amina and I stood on the porch, watching as she tossed the grass to the cow, who dropped her neck and fell to munching. I realized Amina was looking at me.

  “Your home,” she asked, “is it very different from this?”

  “Very different,” I said, unable to begin to describe it.

  “Good,” she said simply. “Then you can enjoy it even more.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “But, as I said, I won’t trouble you for long.”

  She grinned. “Still trying to run away? Murgi is the perfect name for you.”

  Riyaz’s mother tossed the last of the grass to the cow and came up to the porch. She started taking down clothes that had been pinned to a clothesline stretched between two wooden poles. She did not speak to us, and I felt the same shyness in her presence as I had before.

  Amina said, “Let’s go in, Murgi. I have to get lunch ready.”

  We went back to the cool, dark kitchen, where Amina began to cut up spinach-like leaves into a bowl. As I watched her, a boy, about five years old, came into the kitchen, trailing a backpack. He wore a school uniform, a checked blue-and-white shirt tucked into dark blue pants, and, as soon as I saw him, I felt the blow of recognition. His face was Bashir Ahmed’s. He had the same green eyes set in the same dark skin, which made them even seem more luminous. The only difference was that whereas Bashir Ahmed’s features had been craggy and carved, this boy was daintily beautiful, with thick, curling eyelashes and a sweet, lopsided mouth like Amina’s.

  “Aaqib, come here,” Amina ordered him. To me, she said, “This is my son, Aaqib.”

  I held out my hand, and he shook it solemnly, a smile lurking in the depths of his lovely face.

  “Quick, go change out of your uniform,” Amina said, and he scuttled off, still with that secret smile, dragging his backpack behind him.

  I couldn’t help myself. “He looks just like Bashir Ahmed,” I said.

  Amina smiled but made no comment. She tossed the spinach into a pan of frying onions, and the hiss and smell engulfed me. I suddenly realized I was ravenous.

  A while later, Riyaz’s mother came in, as did Aaqib, now dressed in jeans and a dirty white T-shirt that read Superstar Happy in pink curlicued letters, and the four of us ate together, the silence broken only by Amina urging me to take second and third helpings of everything. The food was spicy and extraordinarily good. Aaqib ate like a cat, crouched close to his grandmother’s body, cleaning his plate fastidiously with small, deft fingers. Riyaz’s mother ate very little, betraying no sign of contentment or pleasure, and as soon as she was finished, she stood up and left the kitchen. A moment later, I saw her from the kitchen window, vigorously sweeping the mud porch with a dried-grass broom. Amina smiled. “Ma does not like to sit still,” she said.

  Amin
a would not hear of me helping her to clear up, but insisted that I rest for a while. So I returned to the room where I’d spent the night and sat on the mattress looking out of the window at the hazy mountains. I was here. What would my mother have thought of this place? I tried to picture her sitting on the mattress across from me, chin propped on one knee, gazing out at the view. But the image would not hold, and eventually I gave up and fell into a pleasant doze, only dimly aware when the light began to leach from the sky.

  What roused me was the evening azan, floating up the slope, sung by an adolescent boy in a croaking but determined voice. I went out onto the porch to find Amina picking up an iron pot from beside the front door. “Are you rested?” she asked.

  “I am, thank you.”

  She lifted the pot. “I’m going to milk the cow. Do you want to come with me?”

  I accompanied her down to the barn. The sun had just set, and above us, the sky tore itself apart in bloody strips of orange and burgundy. The cow and calf were no longer outside the barn, but I heard their shifting and shuffling from within. Amina ducked inside, and I followed.

  The interior of the barn was dark and damp and smelled of hay, hide, and old, sweet shit. The cow stood tied up along the far wall, rump facing us, and as we entered, she turned her head and rolled her suspicious eye at us. The calf was a small shape beside her, tied up just out of reach. Amina set down the pot and untied the calf, who rushed to its mother and began suckling. She allowed the calf to drink for a while, then pulled it back to its post and tied it up firmly again.

  Now Amina picked up the pot and squatted beside the cow, whose red hide seemed nearly black in the dimness. Her fingers quickly found the mottled pink teats, tugged a few times, then curled in an elegant wave, thumb to pinkie. A jet of milk shot into the vessel with a soft, metallic ring. Like this, she quickly established a rhythm, and standing over her, I could see the milk starting to froth inside the pot, ivory yellow and glistening. I found the whole thing hypnotic, and I watched mesmerized until Amina turned and peered up at me.

  “Want to try?” she asked.

  “Me?”

  She laughed. “Why not, Murgi?”

  Why not, indeed? I squatted and she showed me how to hold the pot between my knees, how to grip the teats, whose texture was rubbery and velvet at the same time. I fumbled with one of them and squeezed. Nothing. The cow rolled her dark eye back at me, unimpressed.

  “Try again,” Amina said.

  After what felt like hours, I managed to elicit a weak, pathetic trickle. Muscles aching and inordinately pleased with myself, I stood and handed the pot back to Amina.

  “You did very well for the first time, Murgi,” she teased. “From tomorrow, I’ll sleep and you work.”

  We emerged from the humid barn, the cool evening air instantly drying the sweat on my skin. Despite my tiredness and disorientation, I felt a spark of genuine pleasure.

  “Thank you,” I said to Amina.

  “What for?”

  “For letting me come here.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, I heard the clink of approaching bells, and her head cocked. “That is Riyaz,” she said.

  Two brown mules, like the ones I’d seen in the town by the river, but sleeker and fatter, came thumping down along the side of the barn. They came to a halt before Amina and me, the one behind bumping its soft black nose against the other’s rump. Empty sacks were tied to their flanks.

  A few second later, Riyaz appeared, a long switch in his hand.

  “Salaam alaikum,” he said gruffly.

  “Walaikum,” Amina answered. “How was it today?”

  “Same as always,” he said. “I had to wait two hours for the same driver, as usual.”

  “But he came? You got paid?” she asked with a touch of worry.

  He nodded without looking at her and flung the switch away into a patch of tall grass.

  I cleared my throat. “Good evening,” I said.

  He started, then nodded in my direction. To Amina, he said, “I’m late for namaz.”

  He herded the two mules inside the barn, the bells around their neck softly clanging. Amina began walking up to the house, gripping the iron pot carefully with both hands. I followed her.

  Dinner was as silent an affair as lunch had been. After Riyaz came back from the mosque, we ate in a semicircle around the fireplace, Amina on one end, ladling out rice and dal and the same spinach we’d had for lunch, and Riyaz on the other, eating stonily, his face drawn back into shadow. Again, I noticed, I was served more than anybody else, and again, Amina would not allow me to clear my own plate, but stood and beckoned me to go with her. She opened a tall cupboard built into the wall at the far end of the corridor and pulled out a thick, synthetic, candy-pink blanket. She placed it on the mattress in my room and said, “Do you need anything else, Murgi?”

  I looked around. “Where will Khadijah Aunty sleep, Amina?”

  “She sleeps in the kitchen, with Aaqib.”

  Another stab of guilt. “I haven’t taken her room, have I?”

  “You worry too much.” Amina smiled at me. “She prefers to sleep there, by the stove. Her legs hurt in the night sometimes, and she needs to keep them warm. And Aaqib won’t sleep anywhere else but with her. Now, tell me, is there anything else I can bring you?”

  “No, thank you. You’ve already done too much.”

  “Now go to sleep,” she ordered. “Don’t forget, you’ve got to wake up early tomorrow.” Seeing my perplexity, she burst into laughter. “The cow, Murgi! Remember? Who else is going to milk her if you don’t, hm?”

  I couldn’t help laughing. She was so charming. “All right, all right. I’ll go to sleep.”

  But once she left me, I could not fall asleep right away. I sat at the window, resting my arms on the rough wood of the windowsill. The mountains were now the darkest blue I’d ever seen; the sky above them was a powdery lavender. I thought of Zoya and Abdul Latief in Kishtwar, but they seemed small, impossibly far away. A light breeze came through the window.

  I saw a figure walk out of the house, and I stiffened. It was Riyaz. He walked to the edge of the porch, then, as if someone had whispered in his ear, he turned his head sharply in my direction. Without thinking, I ducked below the windowsill, then instantly felt stupid. What was wrong with me? Why was I hiding like a child? If he’d had a poor opinion of me before, then this had surely sealed it. I took a deep breath and prepared to explain myself—I’d dropped something on the floor, I’d been searching for it—but when I sat up again, my eyes sweeping the dark porch, it was empty.

  13

  FOR WEEKS AFTER THE terrible scene in Bashir Ahmed’s apartment, I found it difficult to look at my mother. I kept recalling his stunned face, the way he had raised his finger and said, “Get out,” and shame would fill me like a boiling liquid. What made it worse was that my mother seemed entirely unaware of what she had done. When we got back home, she fell right away to cooking, banging about in the kitchen, telling me about a cauliflower dish she remembered her mother making once when she was a girl, and which she was sure she could reproduce only if she spoke the whole recipe out loud. By the time my father came home, she’d calmed somewhat, though the meal we finally sat down to that evening was inedible. The whole thing could have been comedic, my father’s valiant chewing, my mother’s hard gaze challenging him to speak even a word of criticism, but I felt no desire to laugh. Before going to bed that night, I swore to myself that when Bashir Ahmed came back, the first thing I would do was apologize to him.

  But he did not come back. For weeks afterward, coming home from school, climbing off the rusty, groaning school bus at the end of our road, I would manage to convince myself that he was there, and I would start to run, my backpack jouncing against my spine, my feet pounding the pavement, my heart tapping out a painful staccato in my chest, and I would shove the gate open and race up to the door, hoping to find his familiar sandals splayed on the mat, his bundle in the
corner, and Bashir Ahmed himself rising from his end of the sofa, gravely saying, “Beti,” while my mother smiled from her place on the other end. But it never happened. I would burst in to find the living room desolate, often cluttered with the remains of some project my mother had begun and abandoned halfway through, a set of curtains or a crocheted tablecloth, mounds of loose cloth and thread everywhere. And, as the weeks turned into months, I began to hope less and less, until, at some point, I stopped expecting him at all.

  I was now swimming every day and slowly starting to take part in competitions around the city, where I usually managed to snag a medal or two in the freestyle or breaststroke events. My coach, pleased with my progress, told me he would start training me for national-level competitions. I began going to practice earlier and staying later, so my mother, no longer able to spare the time to accompany me, remained at home, and I went instead with a friend, whose family employed a driver. I grew to love the constant and unvarying demands of swimming, the shock as my body broke the surface of the water, the silky parting of it, the reliability of my legs propelling me forward, the rhythm of stroke, breath, kick. I loved the atmosphere of competition: swimmers shaking out their long arms, sizing each other up; the chlorine-scented air; the breeze fluttering the pool’s surface; the crack of the gunshot and the controlled insanity of the race; the muted, faraway cheers of the spectators; the pounding of blood in my ears; and the beautiful, floating exhaustion later on.

  And my mother? Was she happy that I had ceased to trail after her, that I no longer watched her every move with the fiery, unblinking concentration of an acolyte? Or did she mourn what must have felt like an abrupt desertion by her most faithful follower, her audience of one? It was impossible to tell. Sometimes it seemed as if she noticed nothing at all, borne along instead by her usual erratic bursts of energy, followed by long periods when she did nothing but sleep on the sofa. At other times, however, I could sense her watching me, a perplexed look on her face, and I was torn between a perverse satisfaction at thwarting her attempts to win me back and a strong desire to give in. The time I remember most particularly was when she found a squirrel’s nest in her window, lodged between the glass and the mesh screen. While I was in the bathroom, she brought it into my room and carefully placed it, with four blind, squalling pups inside, on my homework. I froze in horror when I walked in, then cautiously approached, both repulsed and drawn by the tiny cries. As I was peeping in at their naked, red bodies, my mother appeared at the door, arms crossed over her chest, the expression on her face both expectant and exasperated, as if to say, Satisfied? Is this what you wanted from me? The look galled me, so instead of exclaiming over the pups, as I might have done, instead of helping her turn the house upside down for an old plastic syringe we could use to feed them, I stepped back and said, “It’s dirtying my homework.” I went downstairs to fetch a broom, but by the time I came upstairs again, the nest was gone, save for a few bits of straw, and my mother was calmly reading a book on her bed. Guilt bubbled in my gut, but I did not dare ask what she had done with the pups.