by Phil Halton
The men carrying the stretcher had struggled to carry the girl up the sloping path, but if she rode uneasily on her swaying perch she did not show it. She sat perfectly still under the chador, Asadullah Amin walking along beside her.
When they reached the new back door that had been built into the madrassa’s compound, Asadullah Amin looked at his friends expectantly. They continued to hold the girl high, the stretcher resting on their shoulders. Faizal smiled a wicked grin and taunted Asadullah Amin gently. “Friend, would you like us to deliver your bride?”
“Of course,” said Asadullah Amin. “What are you waiting for?”
“Have you considered how much work it was to climb this hill?” asked Rashid.
Wasif giggled at his brother. “You’ll have to pay them if you want her.”
Asadullah Amin held out his hands. “You know I have no money. And neither do any of you!”
“You might have thought of that before you hired us for this job!” said Faizal.
Asadullah Amin looked frustrated for a moment, before he realized that his friends were only teasing him. He laughed, and the others laughed, too. Their merriment was cut short, though, when Mahtab slipped off the stretcher, just as she might do from a horse or camel. She ducked past her husband and his friends without a word, and went inside the house.
The men looked at each other in amazement, and then began to laugh again, even louder than before.
“You have your work cut out for you,” said Faizal. The others continued to laugh.
Asadullah Amin, not knowing what to do, lifted the nearly empty dowry chest with his skinny arms and followed her inside. Setting the chest down, he closed the wooden door behind himself and laid the wooden bar across it to hold it in place. He stepped through the curtained doorway into the tiny room that had been given to him to find Mahtab seated on the one piece of furniture that had been brought in for them, a rope bed. She had taken off the chador and had tossed it on the floor. She glared at Asadullah Amin, who had difficulty looking directly at her for fear that he would blush uncontrollably. She was the first girl from outside his family that had ever spoken to him directly.
She pointed at the chador. “I will not wear that again.”
Asadullah Amin imagined how the other men of the village would look at him if his wife went uncovered. He felt his cheeks go red, and a catch in his throat. “You must wear a chador in the village.”
“I will not,” she said defiantly.
“It is a requirement of our faith,” said Asadullah Amin haughtily.
“It is not and I will not!” she repeated.
“You will not mock Islam!” he said, picking the chador up from the floor and pulling it over Mahtab’s head. She fought him, pushing at him with her hands and pulling at the cloth to get out from under it. As they wrestled, he heard his mother’s chador rip. Without thinking, he drew back his hand and hit her across the side of the head. He hit her hard, so hard that his hand hurt. He hit her again, and a third time, until she stopped struggling. Finally, she pushed herself away from him, staying under the chador, huddled in the corner of the bed.
Asadullah Amin stood by the bed and looked at her, ashamed and uncertain. He thought that he heard her weeping, but was not sure. After a few moments, he took his patu and lay down on the floor to sleep as he had always done. He tried to ignore the sounds that his bride made from where she hunched on the bed.
Wasif lay on his side among the sleeping boys in the madrassa. Beside him was an empty space on the floor, something that never in his memory had there been before. He pressed his hands against his eyes, willing the tears back inside before any of the other boys saw him, trying to act like a man. He knew that from this point forward he would be alone.
CHAPTER 17
The interior of the madrassa was crowded with sleeping boys, both orphans and the sons of families in the village. Their numbers had grown to the point that there was hardly room to walk between them.
The Mullah sat in his usual spot, with the Quran on its stand beside him. He was unfocused and irritable, fidgeting and unable to concentrate. After a long sigh, he blew out his candle and lay down to sleep.
The night passed fitfully, and by dawn he still had not slept. He woke the boys for prayer, ushering them outside where their devotion could be seen by the entire village. Asadullah Amin and Wasif acted as shepherds, moving the boys out of the madrassa in a long stream. Standing outside, the Mullah looked across the valley that was beginning to turn green. The sight of the ploughed fields and the canal, filling with water from the river below, gave him a degree of contentment.
Umar had trudged up the hill from the checkpoint to join the boys in prayer. He quickly washed, using a bowl of water left out for him, and then climbed a short ladder to stand on a wider section of the compound wall. He cleared his throat and began to sing the adhan.
“Allah-u akbar! Allah-u akbar!”
These first words drew men out of the surrounding houses, all recently occupied by families beholden to Jan Farooq. The community gathered in long rows by the water pump to pray.
“I bear witness that there is no God but Allah!” called Umar. “I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah! Hasten to worship! Hasten to success! Allah-u akbar! There is no God but Allah!”
Men and boys lined up behind the Mullah and at his signal began to pray.
On the path carved up the side of the hill, an old man stood leaning heavily on his stick as he walked. Tied to it were a few bells and a heavy cloth, inside of which were bundled the tools of his trade. He wiped a finger across the lenses of his thick glasses, clearing off a layer of dust, and looked around. He had heard the adhan, but he was in no shape to rush up the hill to pray. He looked up and down the hill again, and seeing no one close by to see him, decided not to bother to pray by himself. Instead, he continued to trudge up the path.
By the time he reached the top, all the people who had gathered to pray had finished and had returned to their homes. The man walked through the village, through the alleys between the houses, his stick tinkling gently as he went. At the edge of the houses, he continued, crossing the fields toward the graveyard. When he reached it, he found a shady spot to seat himself by the makeshift shrine to the dead girl, and carefully untied his cloth, laying it flat in front of him. He stacked a few well-thumbed prayer books off to one side of the cloth and took a seat beside them. On the other side of the cloth he laid out a number of small items: metal bowls, necklaces with cylinders to hold charms, chunks of incense, and small bottles of coloured inks. He adjusted the ballpoint pen that was clipped to the breast pocket of his chapan, and took a long strand of prayer beads from his pocket in his right hand. His fingers clicked the beads absent-mindedly as he waited.
It was not long before he was spotted by one of the residents of the village, and word spread from house to house that a holy man was in the graveyard. Soon, one of the farmers, who had recently moved to the upper village, led a woman wearing a chador to meet with him.
“Asalaam aleikum,” said the farmer respectfully.
“Wa aleikum salaam,” said the man. “I hope you are well. I hope that your house is strong. I hope that your family is well. May your health be ever good.” The ritual greetings finished, he waited for the farmer to speak.
“Are you the magician of whom I have heard travellers speak?” asked the farmer.
The man seemed to nod, and adjusted his glasses to peer closely at the farmer. “I am Mullah Shafiq. What troubles you?”
The farmer sat down on the ground in front of the magician, his wife seated just behind him. Mullah Shafiq held out his right hand. The farmer took it in both of his own, and pressed his lips against the back of the man’s knuckles. When he spoke, it was with a tinge of fear in his voice. “Recently, a girl died in this village from the evil eye,” said the farmer.
Mullah Shafiq picked up one of his shabby prayer books and kissed it. “Powerful magic requires powerful protection,”
he said.
The farmer looked sideways at his wife before speaking. “When we moved into our house, it had been abandoned for many years. Everything of value had been stolen long ago, but my wife found this.” The farmer handed a hard ball of dough the size of a marble to the holy man.
Mullah Shafiq rolled the ball around in his palm, and sniffed at it. Taking it between two fingers, he crushed it into his cupped hand. Inside the ball of dried dough was a small piece of paper. The magician let the bits of dough fall to the ground, and carefully unfolded the paper. It was old, and stained with red. Drawn on the paper was an esoteric pattern composed of a grid inside a diamond. In each part of the grid was scribbled writing in a language the farmer did not recognize and could not read. Mullah Shafiq held up the paper so that they could see it, causing the couple to gasp in fear. “Is it some kind of curse that has been put upon the house?” asked the farmer.
Mullah Shafiq ignored him and studied the paper closely. Finally satisfied with his studies, he placed it into a tiny copper bowl that was among the many things spread out on the blanket. He added a few other scraps of paper from inside the cover of one of his books, and held the bowl cupped in his right hand as he spoke a prayer aloud. “Remove the harm, Allah, O Lord of mankind. You are the Healer. There is no healing but Yours, a healing that leaves no disease behind.”
He then produced a match from under his coat, which he struck and lit in a single flowing motion, setting the paper in the bowl on fire. It burned quickly, twisting as it curled into ash, until it had withered into nothingness.
“This was not a curse upon the house,” said Mullah Shafiq authoritatively, “but a ta’wiz inviting a djinn to live there.”
“Inviting a djinn into our house?” repeated the farmer in shock.
The magician nodded. “When the house was built, the natural home of a djinn must have been disturbed. They likely tried magic first to banish it, but if it was too powerful, they may have tried the opposite, and made it welcome instead.”
“But what will we do now? Isn’t our protection gone?”
“I suspect that the charm was losing its power in any case,” said Mullah Shafiq. “Have you noticed things going missing? Objects broken? Fights between your animals or children?”
The woman reached a hand out from under her chador, and pulled on her husband’s elbow. He leaned back to listen to her speak. Her voice was soft but urgent. After listening for a moment, he turned back to Mullah Shafiq. “We do not wish to live with this djinn in our house. Can you help us?”
Mullah Shafiq took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with the corner of his chapan. He seemed to be deep in thought. “I have banished djinn before with great success. But judging by the magic used in this ta’wiz, the one we are concerned with is very powerful. I will have to gather some rare things to crush into the ink …”
The farmer’s face was distraught. “Anything, Mullah, anything that you can do to help us.”
“And so it will cost money,” continued Mullah Shafiq. “As much as four thousand rupees, maybe more. I will only know once I have gathered my materials.”
The farmer glanced at his wife before speaking. “You shall have it, Mullah. Thank you.”
Mullah Shafiq stood and began to bundle his books into his strip of cloth. “I will start right away.” Before long, his belongings were packed up and he was making his way through the village and back to the path leading down to the highway.
The farmer remained squatting beside his wife, looking out over the fields. He had a tear of frustration in his eye, which he hastily wiped away with his sleeve. His wife spoke in a low tone, although they were alone. “How will we find that much money?” she asked. “Can we ask Jan Farooq to loan us more?”
The farmer did not look at her when he spoke. “I will find it. Now, go home.”
He turned his back on her, his face red with shame at the thought of having to borrow so much money. The woman rose up and quickly made the short journey back to her home, not looking back at her husband once. She knew that his shame was only made worse by her seeing it.
The farmer gathered himself together and regained his calm. When he was ready, he walked the short distance to the entrance of the madrassa and dusted off his dirty shalwar kamiz. Taking a deep breath, he ducked under the arch of the doorway to enter the madrassa’s courtyard.
The boys were playing raucously in the yard, watched over by the Mullah, who sat in the shade and clicked a strand of prayer beads between the fingers of his right hand. He noticed the farmer enter the compound, but did not rise to greet him. The farmer walked up to stand beside him and waited, holding his prayer cap in both hands, his nervousness twisting it into a tight roll. The Mullah finally turned from his thoughts to look at him. “Salaam.”
“Wa aleikum salaam, Haji,” replied the farmer.
The men recited a short litany of greetings to each other, the farmer stumbling over his words as he did so. When they were done, the silence lengthened for a few moments as the farmer worked up the courage to speak. “I have a request,” said the farmer, “though it is a difficult one for me to ask.”
The Mullah’s face was impassive as he waited for the man to continue.
“I have need of zakat for my family. I am not a beggar, but a misfortune has befallen us.”
The Mullah’s face softened almost imperceptibly when he asked, “What has happened?”
“There is a djinn living in my house,” said the farmer. “I need four thousand rupees to pay for the ta’wiz —”
Before the man could finish, the Mullah interrupted him. “What nonsense is this?”
The farmer looked at him pleadingly. “Mullah Shafiq has promised to help us, but the material for his charm is expensive.”
The Mullah’s jaw stiffened. “This ‘mullah,’” he said, “Shafiq. Before promising to help, did he also tell you that you had a djinn in the first place?”
The farmer hesitated. “Well, yes, but we found a ball of dough —”
The Mullah chopped his hand through the air to cut the man off. “Buying ta’wiz is forbidden by the Quran.”
“But Mullah, djinn are mentioned in the Quran —”
“Which also says that you are to put your faith in the hands of God, and no other. This man who tells you that he can bring blessings onto your house is a liar. To believe in his power is shirk. It is to disbelieve in the power of God alone!”
The farmer’s face fell as the Mullah’s tirade washed over him. The Mullah jabbed a finger at him. “Where is this ‘mullah’ now?”
The farmer mutely pointed down the hill. The Mullah stood, leaving the farmer standing awkwardly, and left the madrassa at a trot. But by the time he reached the track leading down to the highway, the magician was nowhere to be seen. When he returned to the madrassa, the farmer had also disappeared, though the boys continued to play noisily in the yard. The Mullah spied Wasif in one corner, talking to a small clutch of boys, and he shouted at him in a way that made all the boys stop what they were doing and turn toward him.
“Enough of this idle foolishness. Take these boys inside and practise their recitation.”
“Yes, Ma’alim,” replied Wasif, quickly shooing the boys past their teacher and into the school building. The Mullah took his seat again under a sheet strung up for shade along the edge of the courtyard. He seethed with rage at the wickedness that was taking hold just outside of his own walls. From inside the madrassa he could hear the boys practising, holy words streaming in unison from their lips. The sound calmed him slightly.
The Mullah closed his eyes and recited the words from memory along with the boys, feeling himself slipping comfortably into the familiar flow of the poetry of the Quran. Perhaps an hour had passed when he heard the courtyard door open and close, followed by footsteps and Umar’s voice, cautiously interrupting his thoughts. “I have brought the men that we discussed.”
The Mullah blinked his eyes open, seeing Umar still standing halfway across t
he yard. He waved him closer, composing himself again while pouring a glass of cold tea from a copper pot that sat beside him in the shade.
Umar turned and waved for the men to come through the doorway, and a dozen of them stepped through and approached the Mullah, squatting down in two rows in front of him. “These are the volunteers,” said Umar.
The Mullah stood up and eyed each of them closely. He approached the first man, older than the rest, and squatted down in front of him to better look at him. The man was shabbily dressed but had a broad and powerful chest, and his hands and feet were heavily callused from hard work. He and the Mullah greeted each other, mouthing the ritual words as each appraised the other. When they had finished speaking, the volunteer reached out to take the Mullah’s hand, prepared to kiss it in supplication. The Mullah pulled his hand away, refusing the gesture of deference, holding his hands behind his back. The older man defiantly looked the Mullah straight in the eye, his gaze unwavering.
“Why are you volunteering to join us?” asked the Mullah.
The man’s voice and expression were sullen. “I am hungry,” he said. “And I need somewhere safe to sleep.”
“What kind of work can you do?” asked the Mullah.
“I can do anything you ask,” said the man.
The Mullah handed him a piece of paper from his pocket on which were written a few notes. “What does this say?” he asked.
The man did not look at the paper, instead letting the wind blow it off of his hand and across the yard. “I came for work,” he said, “not to be tested.”
The other men began to show signs of restlessness as the exchange between the Mullah and the older man continued.
“Well, then,” said the Mullah. “First, lead us in prayer.”
The man pointed a finger at the Mullah as he spoke. “Enough of this. We know who we are. And you know what we are. We are not scholars or saints. We know what you need. Give us guns, and we will fight for you. We will fight anyone you want.”