Goat Days

by Benyamin

  How the scary figure controlled the goat—I was spellbound by his performance. Those nervy goats, what happened to their annoyance? After milking some goats, he handed me the vessel. Slowly, I mimicked his actions. Of course, it had all the drawbacks of imitation. It was only after some time that I realized that activities such as milking come naturally to an animal lover and animals instinctively distinguish them from their mimics. Also important is the daily contact with the goats. They say that a goat can understand if a new pair of hands touches its teats.

  Still, I managed to control a goat and placed my hands on its teats. I cannot explain the satisfaction I felt when the first drop of milk fell into the pail. As if I had completed my training for a big job. I had mastery over one of the many goats that must come under my control. The others will eventually follow.

  When I somehow managed to fill half a pail and come out of the masara that morning, I was drenched in sweat, as if I had done some hard labour.

  Fourteen

  Another day, not very different from the previous, came to an end. Meanwhile, the scary figure had trained me in the many ways of herding goats. He demonstrated how to lead the goats—not from the front, but from the sides; and how to beat into control those that try to break away. He taught me how much wheat, hay and fodder should be supplied in each masara.

  That day seemed hotter than the previous one. My throat was parched after every ten paces, and it burned as the lukewarm water from the iron tank travelled down it. Also, because I was not used to the water, my stomach became upset. I don’t know how many times my stomach ran that day. Overcoming the previous day’s shame, I sat down openly to do it, wherever I felt the need. To avoid being beaten by the arbab for trying to clean myself with water, I began cleaning my behind with stones. I concluded that it was customary for each region to use what was most available there. The English have plenty of paper, so they use it for cleaning; for us it is water, and we clean with it; here, stones were aplenty.

  After midday it became humid. I felt like I was being steamed. Fatigue sunk in, and my running stomach made it worse. I complained to the scary figure and to the arbab, nevertheless, my workload was unaffected. The arbab cared only about my work, not about my discomforts.

  I was clammy by the evening, as though I had been soaked in rice juice. My skin felt irritated and inflamed as I hadn’t washed for many days. Hiding from the arbab, I washed my hands and face in the water for the goats. My armpits and pubic area, untouched by water, felt filthy.

  That night I went to bed uneasy. Of course, when I say bed, I only mean figuratively. My bed was the loose sand. The scary figure had appropriated the only cot there. My bag was under it. I would pull out my sheet and spread it on the sand. It was already dirty, but without it, the small pebbles in the sand would hurt. I had an unpleasant night but given the circumstances, only a fool would expect any comfort.

  My discomfort kept me awake even though I was very tired. My thoughts were not of my home country, home, Sainu, Ummah, my unborn son/daughter, my sorrows and anxieties or my fate, as one would imagine. All such thoughts had become alien to me as they were to the dead who had reached the other world. So soon—you might wonder. My answer is yes. No use being bound by such thoughts. They only delay the process of realization that we’ve lost out to circumstances and there is no going back. I realized this within a day. Anxiety and worry were futile. That world had become alien to me. Now only my sad new world existed for me. I am condemned to the conditions of this world. I have fallen headlong into the anxieties of it, and it is better to identify with the here and now. That was the only way to somehow survive. Otherwise, my growing anxieties would have killed me or my sorrows drowned me. Maybe this was how everyone who got trapped here survived, no?

  Can you imagine what I had been thinking about that night as I lay down? About going to the masara early in the morning and milking the goats; controlling the goats as the scary figure did and coming out with a vessel full of milk; the arbab’s face lighting up when he saw me with the milk; and single-handedly herding the goats of a masara and bringing them back. On how to go about realizing those dreams, and the precautions I had to take; about what my drawbacks had been that day, and how I could rectify them.

  I neither bothered about yesterdays nor worried about tomorrows. Just focussed on managing the todays. I think all my masara life was just that.

  Lying on my sheet, I tried to remember the Arabic words I learned that day and their meanings. It had only been two days. But I felt that I had learned more words than necessary.

  arbab

  saviour

  masara

  house of the goats

  khubus

  the only food that I might get here

  mayin

  a very rare liquid to be carefully used (Please do not trivialize it as mere ‘water’. What the arbab feels about mayin is not comparable to our attitude towards water.)

  ganam

  goat

  haleeb

  milk

  thibin

  grass

  barsi

  hay

  jamal

  camel

  la

  no

  ji ham

  yes, arbab

  yaallah

  get lost

  It was only after recalling these words that I realized I didn’t know many more: wheat, vessel, tank, car, gun, desert, dress, bath, shit, loose motion, beating, anger, scolding, tent; and many verbs like came, went, didn’t do, do not know, etc.

  If an Arabic expert among you asks whether the pronunciation and meaning of the words that I have tabled here are correct, I can only say I do not know. I’ve heard them like that, and have learned them like that. I was able to imagine a meaning out of those sounds. So, as far as I was concerned, that was the correct word and the correct pronunciation. After all, what is there in a word—it is understanding that is important. I could understand what the arbab meant by those words; and the arbab could understand me. One does not need to be a linguistic expert in order to communicate.

  As I lay there thinking and musing over the past couple of days, time flew. Pain evaporated. Along with fatigue, sleep embraced my body. Deep sleep. Surely, it must have been past midnight by then. I woke up only after daybreak. The sun had opened his eyes in the east much before I opened mine. I woke up and looked at the cot. It was empty. He must have woken up early and got down to work, I thought. I ran to the masara hoping to be there before he finished milking. But the scary figure wasn’t there.

  The goats had not been given water or fodder. The tanks had not been filled with wheat. Nothing had been done. Their routine disrupted, the goats were restless. I thought the scary figure was engaged in some other masara. I went around all the masaras. He wasn’t to be found in any of them. I wondered where he could have gone so early in the morning. I came out of the masara and sat on the cot. My mind was plagued by doubt, and I bent down and looked under the cot. The previous day I had seen a very old and dirty bag, one which I guessed was his. It wasn’t there! The sprout of suspicion grew.

  Then the arbab came out of the tent and walked towards me. He gave me a vessel and asked me to milk the goats and get him milk. I looked at the arbab apprehensively. Surely the arbab must have understood the meaning of that look—where has the scary figure gone? Then the arbab told me a lot of things. His words were loaded with anger, curses, sympathy, cruelty, disparagement.

  This is what I could gather from those words: he, my scary figure, had escaped from this hell!

  Fifteen

  We had been acquaintances for only two days. I don’t even know if he could be called an acquaintance. A few words were all that we had exchanged. Didn’t know his name, native place, nothing. Still, it hurt a lot when I realized he had gone. I couldn’t fathom the reason for that pain. It might have originated from the anguish of intense loneliness. Suddenly my body was overpowered by weariness. Like the sensation one feels when out of the blue one
hears that one’s uppah or ummah or child has died. But my arbab, the messenger of the dismal news, had no feelings. ‘He’s left.’ Yes, he has. That was all. Where, how, with whom? ‘No,’ he said, as if he didn’t want to know.

  Unexpectedly, I saw a ray of hope. The arbab would react similarly if some day he heard that I had also left. If the scary figure is gone, there is Najeeb, if Najeeb is gone, there will be someone else. That’s all.

  But I was not as hopeful when I saw his attitude and activities on the first day. He shot at the sky with his gun, demonstrated the range of the binoculars, observed me from the top of his vehicle whenever I went out, and drove around me when he felt that I had gone too far. I feared he would never let me escape from this hell. I had observed that fear and precaution in each action of the scary figure. I could discern that fear in each word he uttered to me: Never attempt to flee. He will kill you if you do—that unkind, brutal, ruthless arbab. But after saying all those things to me, he had escaped. Liar! He had been waiting for me to join, had handed over everything to me and scooted. He served me all those lies so that I wouldn’t try to escape. Look, how calm the arbab is. Even his usual annoyance is not to be seen. Only an air of resignation, what’s gone is gone.

  When I thought about my situation, I felt happy. One, the scary figure had somehow escaped from this suffering. Two, I too can escape like this in the future. Three, and most important, I am going to appropriate the cot. I would not have to sleep on the ground again.

  As I got a whiff of freedom, I became very lively. I ran to the masara with the vessel and milked some goats. Of course, I was still an amateur, but I did much better than the day before and did not get as many kicks from the goats. I had come a long way from the previous day’s not-even-a-drop stage. But it would be some time before I was as good as the scary figure.

  I gave some of the milk I got to the arbab, the rest I placed in the masara of the young ones. Then, I began the rest of the back-breaking work. I had to do the work of two people. The camels had to be fed and set free. I supplied enough grass, wheat and fodder to each masara, and filled the containers with water. Meanwhile, a water truck came, and I helped the man fill the tank; a trailer came with fodder, and I helped unload it. Although I worked hard, the jobs at hand were never-ending. Even when it was time to herd the goats (I had started guessing time from the length of the shadow), half the masaras hadn’t been supplied with grass.

  Although the arbab had been watching me work, he scolded me for not taking the goats out. I retorted that without help I could only do so much. The arbab answered me with his belt. A lash across my back. I squirmed in pain. It felt as though that lash would sting and hurt my back for the next six months. As he walked away, the arbab said something. I understood what he said—it was the work done by one person till I had joined the scary figure. At times a strange language can also communicate very well. I ran away crying and finished the remaining jobs. I didn’t get time to have breakfast, nor did the arbab invite me to have some.

  I had just finished herding the goats of two masaras when the arbab called me and explained that a vehicle had come to take the goats to the market. ‘Catch the big ones and load them into the vehicle.’ It was my elder arbab who came in the vehicle. There was no one to help. I entered the goats’ enclosure. Standing outside, both the arbabs would select a goat and point at it, ‘Aadi.’ I would try to catch it, but like a snakefish in water, it would slither away. I would follow it, catch it (How to catch … it didn’t even have any rope around its neck?), and take it up to the vehicle. The next problem was to push it inside the vehicle. I was not strong enough to carry it in. The goat wouldn’t get in willingly. I don’t know how much energy and time I spent on somehow pushing each one into the vehicle. By the time I managed two or three, I was worn out. But the arbabs made me scurry to the masara again and again. They would point to the masara and say, ‘Aadi abiyad.’ I wouldn’t understand which one. Thinking that it was the goat next to me, I would try to catch it. ‘Himar, maafi aswad, abiyad, abiyad,’ the arbabs would holler. Realizing that it was not that one, I would try to catch a bigger one. ‘Himar, mukh maafi inti, aadi abiyad,’ the arbab would hit my head. Only after many mistakes did I finally realize that the arbab was asking me to catch the white he-goat.

  Dragging it out, I somehow pushed it into the vehicle. Again, back to the masara. The arbab would say ‘Aswad,’ I would again commit some blunder before finally getting him the black goat he had pointed at. By the time I finished catching about twenty goats, I fell down, exhausted. I cursed myself and many others. The scary figure got his freedom. My reward: back-breaking labour! A lash that I would never forget! Starvation till lunch!

  Sixteen

  I was learning to face life alone, to train myself in jobs I had never performed before, to try out a new way of life, to get accustomed to an uncommon situation. It was not as if I had a choice; I was utterly helpless. Had we learned that one could get a little water only if one worked till one’s bones broke, we would work till we died, not just till our bones broke.

  Since I had helped out the scary figure for a couple of days, I was confident that the routine jobs would not be difficult and that I could master them. Only the milking and herding of goats needed a little training; the rest even a blind man could do, all one needed was a bit of health and strength. At least that was my understanding. But, as the days passed, I had to learn many new things on my own—the ways of goats, how to rear them, the habits of camels. Circumstances can make a man capable of learning to do anything.

  One day I was taking the goats out as usual—it must have been one week after my arrival—when I noticed that one of the goats looked sluggish and weary. It was pregnancy fatigue—like Sainu’s. When I’d asked the arbab if I should take it out, he had nodded his head in permission. After we were halfway from the masara, the goat moved away from the herd and lay down. Puzzled, I stood near it. After a while, it began to moan and squirm. Only then did I understand that it was going through labour pains. Although I tried to make it go back to the masara, it fell down after three or four steps. Meanwhile, the other goats were already scattered in the desert. As long as they moved in a herd, the goats acted fine. However, if the line got disrupted, if the herd scattered, it was all over. Then their instincts took over. Goats are the only domesticated animals that, despite living with man for about six thousand years, slip back into their wild nature whenever possible. That was why the scary figure had instructed me on my very first day to keep them in line and within the herd.

  Before I could do anything, fifty goats had gone in fifty ways. I was in a dilemma: should I leave the one in labour and go after the rest or take care of it leaving the others to wander around? Finally, recalling the shepherd who goes in search of the lost one, leaving the forty-nine, I decided to attend to the goat in labour.

  Forget goats, I had never seen any animal giving birth. I didn’t know what kind of help an animal in labour needed. I had never had any pets myself, nor had I cared for any of the animals that had lived in my neighbourhood. Therefore, my participation was limited to standing there, watching passively. After a while, I saw a head emerging and, with some horror, I continued to watch. Then involuntarily I ran forward to support the baby as it slowly began to come out, ingesting all the flames of pain. But because of the sliminess of its body, I couldn’t hold on to it. It fell off my hand, to the ground.

  From somewhere, suddenly some old knowledge flashed inside me: the placenta should be removed! I cleaned its face and body with my hand. Its mother was even more conscious of her responsibility towards the kid than me. Within seconds, she licked the baby clean. Soon after its birth the baby began to try to stand up, and succeeded. It slowly tottered to its mother’s udders. I saw that it was a he-goat.

  At that instant, my mind shook free of all its shackles and everything I had been trying to forget hit home. My Sainu is pregnant. When I left her, she was near delivery and I’ve had no news of her since. Maybe
this was a good omen Allah wanted to show me. My Sainu, my wife—she has given birth. A baby boy, as I had longed for. In that belief, I named that newborn goat Nabeel. The name I had thought of for my son.

  My hand and my dress were all wet with the water that broke and the blood from the placenta. Where could I wash? That the arbab would rebuke me if I returned to the masara without the goats was a certainty. I cleaned my hands on my robe and then I lifted that unsteady and beautiful little kid and kissed it. You are the present Allah gave me. Be well, my darling.

  I took Nabeel to his mother’s breasts. Out of the blue, a swift blow flung me some distance away. Only when I regained consciousness after a few stunned moments did I realize that it was the arbab who had kicked me. He was looking at me with burning eyes and pointing at something as he hollered. The rest of the goats were scattered all over the desert. I mumbled a few words like goat, delivery, baby, placenta, etc. But the arbab was in no mood to listen. Angrily, he came forward and pulled my Nabeel away from his mother’s teats. Then, brutally disregarding my helpless pleadings and the mother goat’s heartbreaking look, he went back to the masara carrying Nabeel on his shoulders.

  Leaving the mother goat there, I ran after the other goats. It was only after a great effort that I could somehow gather them. As I walked back with them to the masara, the mother goat followed us helplessly.

  More punishment awaited me when I got back. I was severely beaten and reproached. The arbab accused me on four counts in that day’s charge sheet: one, I had tried to take some water to clean the placenta and blood off my hands and dress; two, I was late to return with the goats; three, I had wasted time by looking at a goat giving birth—goats know how to give birth and don’t need any human assistance; and, four, that was the most severe crime, I’d tried to make the newborn drink its mother’s milk.