The Far Field

by Madhuri Vijay

  I was on the verge of turning away, to face the bland building that was now my home, when the passenger side window came down, and my mother’s head appeared. It was followed by her shoulders, then her entire torso and hips. The car was now moving at full speed. Sitting in the open car window, her hair loosened from its messy bun and streaming in the wind, my mother raised both arms into the air. “My daughter is a champion!” she screamed. “Do you hear me, all of you? My daughter is a champion!” My father hit the horn hard. Curious faces appeared at the windows of the buildings around me, and I had to turn my head to hide the tears in my eyes.

  28

  RIYAZ, AS HE HAD promised, did not go down the mountain the next day. He hung around the house all morning, instead, ostensibly doing things that needed doing—using a rusted pair of pliers to fix a wire on the makeshift chicken coop at the side of the house, darning a tear in one of the sacks that he threw over the backs of the mules—but it seemed that each time I looked up from whatever task Amina had assigned me, he was no more than ten feet away, watching me. It discomfited me and at the same time sent a wave of warmth shooting over every inch of my skin. In the late morning, when I came out of the house out to shake the dust from the straw mat in the kitchen, he came up to me and said quietly, “Do you know what I was thinking?”

  I shook my head, hoping Amina would not come out and see us.

  “I was thinking how much fun it would be to work in a shop. My father used tell me about all the different shops in Bangalore, you know, how they sold everything you could ever think of. Even shops full of new cars! What do you think? Could you see me doing that?”

  I looked down at the dusty mat. “What kind of shop would you want to work in?”

  “That’s the only problem,” he said with enthusiasm. “I can’t make up my mind. Clothes would be nice, don’t you think? Or shoes? I could see myself selling shoes. Couldn’t you?”

  I thought of the shoe shop that stood beside Zoya and Abdul Latief’s house in Kishtwar, the boy in the white cap I’d always seen scurrying around with boxes under his arm. Then I thought of the Kashmiri shop on Commercial Street where I’d gone with my mother and Bashir Ahmed, the overly polite man with rings on his fingers. I thought of all the shopkeepers my mother had insulted and ignored over the years, the vegetable vendor who’d flung the tomato to the ground in rage. But Riyaz was watching me, expectation written all over his face, so I said, “Yes.”

  My answer obviously pleased him, because he winked—as if we now had some sort of secret between us—and wandered back into the house, whistling, on the way passing Amina, who was emerging from the house, wet clothes in her arms. She stared at him as though he were a stranger then looked quickly at me. There was nothing accusatory in her gaze, but still I couldn’t hold it. I pretended that a bit of the soot from the mat had got into my eyes and squeezed them shut.

  Riyaz remained in a good mood for the next few hours, and when Aaqib came home from school, he chased him all about the front porch, growling, “I am one of the robbers! Watch out! I am going to eat you!” Aaqib squealed and took refuge in the gnarled peach tree while Riyaz paced around below, snarling, pretending to be a robber or a lion or a leopard, I couldn’t tell what. I watched them from my window, until I saw Amina step out from the house. She was watching them, too, and smiling. I turned away quickly, a strange hot feeling in my chest.

  Riyaz strolled off to the mosque for the afternoon namaz, after which, I knew, would be the panchayat meeting. I went over to Sania’s house but found her distracted, her attention wandering away from our work. All she wanted to do was talk about the meeting, what her father might say or do, what decisions would be made. Eventually, I ended the lesson early and trudged back home.

  Riyaz’s mother was in the kitchen, stoking the fire.

  “Amina?” I said, making it a question; it was as far as our communication could go. She nodded toward the back of the house. I sat down to wait, and soon Amina came to the kitchen holding a glass and a plate. Seeing me, she stiffened, as if she had been caught doing something illegal. I knew right away that she had been with Bashir Ahmed. “Back so early, Murgi?” she asked, attempting casualness.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “The same.”

  “Did you ask him about me yet?”

  “No,” she said quickly. Then she added, “But I will, Murgi. I promise.”

  There was a spot of color in each of her cheeks, and I knew, looking at her, that on this point she would not yield. Was it because she was afraid for Bashir Ahmed’s health, as she’d claimed, afraid that he would fall sick from the shock of seeing me again? Or was there something else? Was she trying to keep me here longer, perhaps? As a companion, as a friend, or whatever she imagined me to be, someone to help her ward off the solitude of her days? She had already confessed as much, hadn’t she, that afternoon at the waterfall? And, if so, what did that say about me? If, as I had come to believe, I considered her a friend, too, then how could I allow myself to stand with Riyaz in the intimacy of darkness? How could I allow his gaze to linger on me, indeed, half desiring it myself? What sort of friend did that make me? Strangely, the mustached face of the subedar came into my mind. People like you don’t have friends in Kashmiri villages. I felt a rush of guilt, then of anger, though I did not know if it was directed at the subedar or against myself.

  Now she walked over to the window and looked out. “It’s getting late,” she murmured. “I don’t know what’s taking so long. The meeting should have been over long ago.”

  “Riyaz said it would probably take a few hours,” I said, regretting it instantly.

  But she didn’t reply, didn’t even seem to register that I’d spoken. For a long time, she looked out at the yard and the mountains; then she turned to Riyaz’s mother and said something brief in Kashmiri. Riyaz’s mother nodded, and Amina turned to me.

  “Want to go for a walk, Murgi?” she asked.

  “A walk? Now?”

  She shrugged. “I just thought we could go to the mosque and back. It won’t take long.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You mean, where they’ll be having the panchayat meeting?”

  “We would never disturb them, of course,” she said with a show of wide-eyed innocence. “I mean, if we’re close by, and we happen to hear some of what they’re talking about, well, then where’s the harm?” She smiled wryly. “Lucky for us, Murgi, men usually like to shout.”

  We heard raised voices long before we approached the mosque. Instead of arriving at it dead on, as she ordinarily would have done, Amina beckoned to me and skirted through the tall grass and weeds around to the back. “Up here,” she said, and shimmied neatly up a walnut tree.

  From up amongst the branches, she peered down at me. “Need my help?” she whispered.

  I shook my head, eyeing the tree. It was a thick one, and there was only one reasonable hold in the bark, which Amina had found with ease. I put my palms against the trunk and took a breath, then hauled myself up. My heel slipped, but I managed with an ungraceful flailing of my right leg to keep my footing. Once I was perched beside her, Amina gave me a nod. “Not bad,” she whispered.

  We arranged ourselves where we could see the men, gathered before the mosque. Most were standing, but a few—the members of the panchayat, I guessed, for Mohammad Din was amongst them—were sitting on plastic chairs. There seemed to be very little order, for several people were talking at once. Then someone called impatiently for quiet, and in the silence, the stocky man with slim fingers, the same one who’d first complained to Mohammad Din of the robbers, stepped forward. “Enough of this. All day we’ve been here, arguing about who saw what, and whether they really saw it, and the whole time, our wives and children are alone at home, where anything might be happening to them. Why won’t you just believe us? Are you calling us liars?”

  Everyone, instinctively, it seemed, looked toward Mohammad Din. He pinched the bridge of his nose in a tired way before replying, “Nobody
is calling anybody anything. We are trying to understand exactly what happened, so we can all be prepared.”

  The stocky man snorted. “Prepared? You want to be prepared, why don’t you ask them? It’s their political parties doing this.” He nodded to a small group of men standing slightly apart from the rest. Each of them wore a red tilak on his forehead, and I remembered Riyaz telling me the Hindu men would be attending the meeting, too.

  There was a threatening stir in the crowd at his words. Mohammad Din glanced warningly at the stocky man, who subsided, but the damage was done.

  “What do you mean by that?” one of the Hindu men called out shrilly. “Our parties are doing this? As if these same things aren’t happening in our own village. As if we aren’t worried about our families. You say you’ve been here all day. Then haven’t you heard us telling the same stories that you have been telling? Are we the liars, then?”

  “Please, let us not argue,” Mohammad Din said firmly. “All of you listen to me.”

  He didn’t raise his voice, but there was a hush nonetheless at his words. He stood up from his plastic chair and looked around at them, with the same grave, intent expression he gave me during our conversations, when, over a cup of tea, he outlined his plans for the village, when he invited me to stay and be a teacher.

  “This is our home,” he said. “It has always been our home, and we are the only ones responsible for it. Nobody, here or anywhere else, is going to help us. We already know that. You people want to fight about politicians, about elections? Fine. But then leave me out of it. That’s not why I joined this panchayat, to sit around and argue about which party is to blame for what. If there are men in black clothes going around and making trouble in the middle of the night, whoever they are, we’ll have to catch them. That is all I know. Hindu or Mussulman, your politician or mine, it makes no difference to me.” He raised his voice slightly. “Our Hindu brothers want proof of our loyalty? Then here is your proof: We will come and stand before your houses at night to protect your families.” He hit his chest softly with his fist for emphasis. “I am an old man, but I will come myself and do it.”

  There was a hush. Both the stocky man and the man from the Hindu village who’d responded looked shamefaced. Mohammad Din gazed around gravely then said, “Now, we must end this silly fighting and discuss seriously what we can do. How can we help each other?”

  “We could make a committee,” someone suggested.

  “Good,” Mohammad Din said. “A committee. That’s a good idea.”

  “We could do night duty,” someone else piped up.

  He nodded. “Yes. Yes. That is also a good idea.”

  “I do not doubt your loyalty.” This was the same Hindu man who had spoken before. “I respect what you said, but what I want to know is this: What happens if things become worse?”

  “Worse?” Mohammad Din frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, worse.” The man hesitated. He was middle-aged, with a prominent Adam’s apple and deep-set, mournful eyes. “Today we may only be dealing with loafers and mischief makers, but what if the next time, it is something else? We all remember what happened five years ago. Those men who were killed were Hindus too, and their Muslim neighbors did nothing. What if the same thing happens again?”

  Amina’s arm flinched against mine. The crowed seemed to grow agitated, and at the same time I caught sight of Riyaz. He was leaning against a tree at the edge of the gathering. At least five people had been blocking our view of him all this while, and though I could have sworn that none of them had moved an inch, all of a sudden, he seemed to be standing alone in a pool of silence, the men on either side melting away like ice, their eyes on the ground.

  Mohammad Din cleared his throat. “That will never happen again,” he declared, but it seemed that he, too, was reluctant to look very long at Riyaz.

  “But can you promise us such a thing?” the Hindu man asked. Emboldened, another Hindu man called, “Yes, can you promise? Mischief makers are all very well, but will you still be standing in front of our houses, protecting our families, when some militant is holding a gun to your face? Will you be standing there when you know that the person who ordered such a thing is one of your own?”

  And as much as I willed him to, Mohammad Din did not reply. He stood there, leaning on his cane, speechless for the first time since I’d known him.

  “That is what I thought,” the first Hindu man said with bitter satisfaction. “All of this talking, this discussion, it sounds nice, but it comes to nothing when there are real lives at risk.”

  All this while, Riyaz hadn’t stirred, but now he detached himself from the tree and began to walk, people stepping aside as he approached, faces turned away. Mohammad Din went quickly up to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and began talking softly and urgently to him. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Riyaz shook his head and pulled away. He gave the gathering a last glance of profound contempt, then began walking away, in the direction of home, a solitary figure.

  There was a flash of movement beside me. Amina was clambering out of the tree. I tried to follow her but soon fell behind, and for once she did not turn around to check that I was all right. She caught up to Riyaz just before the house.

  He turned and stopped. She did the same. Neither of them knew that I was behind her.

  Then she touched his face. She put her hand over the smudge of gray hair at his temple, the very place I had imagined touching, and left it there, looking into his face. Watching that was more painful than I could have anticipated, and I hated myself for it. Then, after what felt like hours, she let her hand drop and went inside, but he remained where he was. At last, he lifted his eyes and saw me standing there. He came toward me, and I didn’t know what I wanted. To hug him tight or to run, though I didn’t know from or toward what.

  “You saw it, too,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “You were there.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was horrible.”

  He shrugged. “I’m used to it by now.”

  “But it’s so unfair,” I said.

  “That is why I hate this village, Shalini,” he told me, “and all the people in it. After what happened, not one person, not even one, came up to my mother and offered support. We were completely alone. And when you’re alone like that, you have only two choices.” He looked over my shoulder. “You stay and put up with it. Or you leave.”

  A single crow swooped down from the pine tree. Its black shape made a slow circle. There was a heavy feeling of nausea in my stomach.

  “Sometimes,” Riyaz said. His voice was strange, and there was a weird, fixed smile on his face. “I have a feeling that this isn’t my life. That I’m not even here. That I’m somewhere else …”

  The crow swung up, hovered in midair, then dropped into the corn as neatly as a stone into a pool of water. I waited but it didn’t come up again.

  “Where?” I asked finally.

  “Does it matter?” he asked with the same fixed smile.

  “Of course it matters.”

  “To whom?”

  “To everybody. To Amina, obviously. To your mother.”

  Then he asked, “Does it matter to you?”

  The question caught me unawares, and it took a second before I said, softly, “Yes.”

  But he’d noted the pause and, to my dismay, he misread the reason for it. “Clearly you’re not sure,” he said. His smile became hard.

  I wanted to shout, No, no, you’re wrong! but my tongue had turned to stone.

  “And what if I told you I saw myself in Bangalore?” he asked.

  It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. It was a measure of how naïve I was, that I had assumed that all these days when he looked at me, when we stood together on the porch and I heard his breath quicken, it was out of mere physical desire. I had yet to understand just how many shapes a person’s desire could take, and how few of them, in the end, took the shape of the body.

  “Would that ma
tter to you?” he went on in that same softly insinuating voice. “Would it matter so much that you’d be willing to take me there?”

  I didn’t answer. His face was a mere inch from mine. Amina could have walked out and seen us. Anyone could have seen us, but I still didn’t move.

  “Would you take me, Shalini?” he repeated. “When you go?”

  I thought of Amina squeezing water from her clothes, lying in the sun, eyes closed. Walking ahead of me, hands clasped behind her back, turning around to say, “All right back there, Murgi?” I thought of the job that had been offered to me, the life I could have here if only I chose to accept it.

  Riyaz’s mouth twitched, but he continued to hold my gaze, waiting for me to reply.

  I see us as we were then, standing eye to eye, laboring hard under the illusion that we were cynical and cold, that our respective tragedies had inured us, put us permanently beyond the reach of further suffering, when the truth was that we were as terrified and lost as babies. Aaqib was probably wiser than the two of us put together.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  A laugh escaped him, a huffing, wheezing laugh that came through clenched teeth. “You don’t know,” he said, nearly spitting the words. He stepped back and gave me a look that held just as much contempt as the one he’d given the men at the meeting. “That’s what I thought. You’re the same as all of them.”