by Jamil Ahmad
The lone camel followed the lightly strung telegraph line for about twenty miles before the man decided to strike eastward into the broken country.
They tried to use their knowledge and wits to the fullest. They varied their pace, and changed direction frequently, and also the time of travel. They never spent more than the very minimum time possible at any water hole. When they rested, they chose the most secluded spot, and even there, they would pile up scrub and thorn brush to hide them and their camel.
They saw no signs of their pursuers, and after five days the woman became a little sanguine. “Perhaps the stranger was not a Siahpad. Perhaps we were not recognized,” she remarked hopefully. “Perhaps he kept the news to himself. Perhaps they did not chase us. Perhaps they have lost us,” she chanted.
“No,” the man said. “They are after us. I feel it in the air.”
The man was right. On the morning of the sixth day, as the couple was filling the water skin at a water hole, they saw their pursuers top the horizon.
It was still early morning, when the desert air is unsullied by the eddies of sand and the whirling of dust devils. The party was a considerable distance away, but there could be no mistaking who they were. The woman’s husband and her father were riding their camels a short distance in front of the main body of men.
The man called Gul Bibi close to him. He placed his hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. “There is no escape for any of us. There was never any escape. You know what I have to do now?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I know. We have talked about this day many times. But I am afraid, my love.”
“Do not be frightened,” spoke the man. “I shall follow you. I shall follow you soon.” The woman walked away a few paces and stood there with her back toward the man. Suddenly, she spoke out again: “Do not kill the boy. They might spare him. I am ready.”
The man shot her in the back while she was still speaking. He then reloaded his gun and looked reflectively at the boy, who stared back at him with unblinking eyes. With a shrug the man turned away, walked up to the kneeling camel, and shot it dead. He then stood together with the boy, waiting for the pursuers to reach him.
The party rode up to the water hole and dismounted. The old man was in the lead. He glanced at the sprawled body of his daughter and looked at her lover.
“Who is the boy?” he asked. His voice was cold and without emotion. The voice of a stranger. The inky black folds of the headgear hid half his face, but the eyes were the old familiar eyes that each man of the tribe knew. Eyes that could show anger, hatred, love, laughter, fondness, and humor more vividly than anyone else’s. Now they showed nothing.
“Who is the boy?” the sardar asked again, his voice remaining flat, not even showing impatience.
“Your daughter’s son,” replied the man.
The boy stood shivering as the two men talked about him. He was nervously fingering a small silver amulet that hung around his neck on a gray-colored string.
The husband of the dead woman approached. “Whose son is he?” he growled. “Yours or mine?” The lover did not reply, but his eyes again met those of the old man. “He is her son,” he repeated, pointing to the huddled boy. “That silver amulet is hers. She must have placed it around his neck before her death. Do you not recognize the amulet? She always said you gave it to her to ward off evil spirits.”
The old man said nothing but picked up a stone. His companions did likewise. The lover stood still as the first shower of stones hit him. He started bleeding from the wounds on his face and temples. There was another shower of stones and yet another, before he fell.
At first he lay half sitting and half sprawling. Then he lay with only his elbow supporting him. Finally, that small gesture of pride, too, failed him, and he lay stretched on the ground, his clothes darkened with blood and small rivulets of it running across his back, staining the ground. The hail of stones continued, with the circle of men moving closer and closer. The agony ended only with death, the bones broken and the head crushed beyond recognition.
After they had killed the lover, the offended husband turned to his companions.
“Now we start with the boy.” The boy, who had been standing next to the dead camel, heard this and started whimpering.
“No,” admonished the old man. “The boy’s death is not necessary. We shall leave him as we found him.”
Some of the other men murmured their agreement. “Yes, let him stay as he is,” they agreed. “The sardar is right.”
The party dragged the bodies a short distance away and entombed them separately in two towers made out of the sun-blackened stones that lay scattered in profusion all around the water hole. They used mud and water to plaster the towers so that their work might endure and provide testimony, to all who cared, about the way in which the Siahpad avenged insults. The old man took no part in the burial but walked about by himself. He did, however, interrupt his walking for a while, and stood at the spot where the bodies had lain.
As soon as the men had finished, they mounted their camels and rode away. After traveling but a short distance, the father of the dead woman suddenly reined in his camel.
“I should have brought the boy,” the older man said, shading his eyes with his hand and staring in the direction of the water hole.
“Death would be best for the likes of him,” burst out the son-in-law. “The whelp has bad blood in him.”
“Half of his blood is my blood. The blood of the chiefs of this tribe. What mean you by ‘bad blood’?”
“I still say what I said before,” answered back the husband. “He has bad blood. Nothing good shall come out of him.”
The sardar moved his camel up to the other man’s as the rest watched him. He looked around. “Let me tell you all now,” he shouted. “My daughter sinned. She sinned against the laws of God and those of our tribe. But hear this also. There was no sin in her when she was born, nor when she grew up, nor when she was married. She was driven to sin only because I did not marry her to a man.”
He pointed a shaking finger at his son-in-law. “You know well enough what I say,” he thundered, his emotions suddenly bursting out. “Marry another woman, marry as often as you like. Every one of them shall be driven to sin, for reasons you are aware of.”
At this insult, shouted in his face before the men of his tribe, the face of the other man darkened with rage.
“You should not have said such things, old man, even if you be our chief,” he shouted as he drew his sword quickly and slashed at Gul Bibi’s father. Once, twice, thrice, he swiped, and the old man was already dead as he slid down in small jerks, like a broken doll, from the saddle to the ground.
With his death, the party scattered. The men did not wait to bury their chief’s body in a proper grave but left it covered under a thin layer of sand, hoping the approaching sandstorm would bury it deeper. Whether fearful of the evil they had seen or afraid of being involved in another feud, or maybe weary of one another’s company, they just rode away hurriedly.
At the water hole, the boy had stopped shivering after the party departed. He had overcome his fear and was sitting between the two towers, playing with some stones and quartz crystals. At first he had tried to prize some stones away from the towers, but they were too tightly wedged together, and his fingers made no impression on them.
As the sun rose higher, he sat quietly, watching the clouds of sandgrouse that appeared in the sky. Flight after flight alighted at the edge of the water hole, dipping their beaks in the water and flying away back into the sun. Their peculiar chuckling calls and the whirring of countless wings provided him some diversion from the horror he had just witnessed.
Then he was completely alone. The thousands of birds, which had kept him company for a while, had disappeared. With nothing to keep him occupied, he became aware of his thirst and hunger. He tried to resist it for a while, but as the pangs grew sharper, he finally walked over to the camel and opened the bag containing food. He
ate a little, drank some water, and then lay down, squeezed against the dead camel, as the sandstorm approached.
Two
A POINT of HONOR
The water hole lay in the area of the Mengals—a Brahui tribe of Baluchistan.
A group of seven men and four camels had commenced their journey toward this oasis while the stars still shone across the sky. From their last halt, nesting among the gaunt ridges of sandstone, they had debouched onto the plain as the day broke. Since then, the party of Baluch had been riding their camels through mile after mile of flat, desolate landscape, with only a few sand dunes to break the monotony. Patiently, they had skirted stretches of oily, ocher-colored quicksand and had bravely pushed their animals through the bruising patches of camel-thorn bushes and burning salt flats.
The sandstorm had broken on them just as the camels were beginning to smell water. For hours, they had lain on the leeward side of a crescent-shaped dune. They muffled their faces and pressed themselves against their animals as the winds shrieked around them and the world turned dark.
The storm ended as abruptly as it had begun. The men unmuffled their faces, gratefully drawing in the fresh and clean air that follows in a storm’s wake, and recommenced their wearisome trek.
This time the men walked. The water hole was only a short distance away, and the animals were tired. If a camel got lost, one man—if not two—would have to drop out. In such circumstances, a camel was not merely valuable, it was life itself.
Despite their raging thirst, the men did not hurry. The closer they came to their goal, the more patient they became. After every few yards, they would scan the horizon. The storm, which had just passed, would have blown away all traces of their track, yet even while they walked they tried to read the ground for any telltale signs of danger. It was at times like these, when one is tired, when one is close to rest, that death must be guarded against most.
Hunted as rebels for months, they had learned their lessons dearly. If a Baluch needed little water and food when on the run, they had learned to do with even less. Betrayed once by the flashing mirrors embroidered on their caps, they had shorn their caps of all finery and trinkets. The traditional black, red, and white of their dresses was by now stained with sweat and dirt to neutral hues. They had also learned to live a life without their women.
Yet the land—their land—had seen to it that beauty and color were not erased completely from their lives. It offered them a thousand shades of gray and brown, with which it tinted its hills, its sands, and its earth. There were subtle changes of color in the blackness of the nights and the brightness of the days, and the vigorous colors of the tiny desert flowers hidden in the dusty bushes, and of the gliding snakes and scurrying lizards as they buried themselves in the sand. To the men, beauty and color were rampant around them, even if the patches of decorative colored cloth had been unrelentingly shorn from their own clothes.
They were still some distance away when they observed the two stone towers. These towers had not been there when they had last visited this water hole a few months ago. The sight made them uneasy.
They approached cautiously, with two men acting as scouts well in advance of the rest of the party. On moving closer, they saw the dead camel with its long neck stretched limply on the ground. At the sight of this dust-colored mound of dead flesh, the party withdrew hurriedly and started riding a wide circle around the water hole, keeping it just in sight. They kept watching and listening carefully, and then decided to advance toward it after satisfying themselves that no life stirred for miles around and no alien sound disturbed the land.
Except for their leader, Roza Khan, all the men were armed. They were carrying muzzle-loading guns with sickle-shaped stocks. Two of the party had, in addition, curved swords without scabbards, tied with twisted woolen cords around their waists.
Roza Khan was an old man. His big frame and height were all that remained of the strength and prowess of his youth—that and his memories.
Overgrown cataracts in his eyes had made him virtually blind. Even in the strongest light, he saw only vague and half-formed shadows. If events had not obliged him to honor his commitments to his tribe, he would have liked to seek treatment at the mission eye hospital, which was set up every winter in a town three hundred miles to the south to provide relief to the desert dwellers. He would have liked to see things, colors, faces, again before he died. If matters settled themselves, he would get his eyes operated on next winter. In the meantime, he would have to continue as well as he could.
He was not a fighting man, and was certainly proving a hindrance to the free movement of the rest of the party. Men might have to die because of him. They might have to pay with their lives for his errors of judgment.
Yet he well understood their need for him. They needed a symbol, and it mattered not to them what his age or condition was. He would stay with them even though he had no special wisdom to offer, either about the ways of the desert or the wiles of men. He knew that his people’s sense of honor and grace were such that they would attribute all heroic deeds to him and all failures to themselves. Nor would they admit to any man that in reality he—their chief—was a creature to be pitied, that the man leading them was one who could not even guide his own camel without muted words of advice from his companions.
Three of the camels were slim-bodied riding animals with graceful necks and slender legs. The fourth was a transport camel. Ugly, thick-bodied, and large-footed, its present mood of ill temper was manifesting itself in the growling rumbles rising from its stomach.
The camels, like the men, had been equipped for the journey. Their finery and decoration had been carefully removed, any unnecessary metal which might sparkle or jingle had been left behind, their saddle loads reduced to the minimum.
Since there was no cover around the water hole, they were able to approach it without fear of an ambush.
They halted a short distance away and took down the water skins. Then one animal was brought to the water and allowed to swallow a few gulps before being led away. There was a rumor in the air that all the water holes were being poisoned so as to deny their use to the rebels. When the animal showed no ill effect, the party proceeded to decamp.
The routine had been established a long time ago. Camels had to be unsaddled, watered, and hobbled. Their pitifully thin bags of provisions were opened, and small quantities taken out. One man was assigned to collect shrubs, another to build a fire from a tinderbox. Food had to be cooked and eaten hurriedly before the sun set.
While this was going on, one of the party walked over to the opposite edge of the water hole to take a closer look at the dead camel. There he discovered the small boy sleeping, pressed against the camel’s belly.
The boy awoke suddenly as the man’s hand touched his shoulders. When he opened his eyes and saw a stranger peering at him, he closed them quickly and screamed. The other men came running. The boy kept on screaming while they lifted him and carried him, struggling all the while, to the old chief sitting next to the fire.
As the boy was set down before him, the old man turned his blind, unstaring eyes in his direction. “Stop your crying, son,” he said. “It is not good to hear a Baluch—even a child—cry.”
Instantly, the boy fell silent, and Roza Khan, sounding both kindly and stern, added, “And there is another good reason for you not to cry. Wailing in a man is like honey in a pot. As honey attracts flies, so does wailing attract trouble. Now, tell me, how did you come to be here?”
The boy remained silent. At last one of the men spoke: “He chooses not to tell, but the story is plain enough. The two towers and the dead camel tell it. We have no need to ask him.” The old man thought for a while. “We cannot leave him here,” he said finally. “We will take him. If there is any food on his camel, add it to ours.” As the men moved away, the chief muttered to himself, “There is surely some kind of an omen in this, though who can read if it be good or bad.”
After finishing the meal, t
hey sat around the smoldering embers and the stones, warm from the heat of the fire. The stars were out in their millions across the clear desert sky. Every now and then, a meteorite would streak across, burning brightly for an instant before it disappeared.
As they waited for Roza Khan to break the silence that had enveloped them, each man, oblivious to the others, started fashioning a small, strange structure on the ground in front of him. Starting with a flat stone to serve as a base, tiny rounded pebbles, sharp splinters of rock, wisps of straw, and twigs were patiently and with complete concentration being balanced and fitted onto one another. In fractions of inches, these diminutive structures were taking shape and rising out of the ground while the men sat. In the last few days they had come upon two travelers who had heard that the government was willing to hold discussions with them under a flag of truce, and to suspend hostilities while the talks lasted. In their whispered conversation they felt that Jangu, who was closest to the chief, would raise the subject on an evening of his choice.
They all knew that this was the evening they had to decide the one important thing that each one had been thinking about while keeping his mind veiled from the rest.
Roza Khan’s dry, rasping cough suddenly shattered their reveries. He cleared his throat and spat over his shoulder. “Which way do we go tomorrow?” he asked, looking around him. “Jangu,” he said, staring toward his right. “You tell me what you think, Jangu.”
The reply came from the man sitting next to his elbow. “Sardar,” responded Jangu, “there is no simple answer. Let us talk about the things we know. Then I shall tell you about the things I alone know. After that, we shall make a decision.”
“Yes, let us do that,” responded Roza Khan.
Jangu Khan went on: “First, we all know the seed from which the trouble has grown. The officers of the district chose to remove and arrest the chief of our brother tribe. We allow the right to make and unmake chiefs only to ourselves. We do not accept the power of anyone else to decide who our chief shall be or shall not be. That is the cause, and we cannot help but fight for such a cause. Indeed, it is a cause of conscience.”