Trespassing

by Uzma Aslam Khan

  Fatah said, ‘If it weren’t for the Chief, I’d go to Sulawesi.’

  Salaamat folded his arms. His Sulawesi was down there, with the Mohana fishermen.

  ‘You’re supposed to say, “What’s in Sulawesi?”‘When Salaamat still wouldn’t answer, he sang, ‘I’ve nursed you like the beat of my heart. I’ve snatched you from the hands of fate.’

  ‘I’m going across.’ Salaamat pulled away. He stood up and began walking.

  Fatah followed. ‘All right. I’ll buy the drink if you stop being so foolish.’

  Children were running along the bank, calling out to two women washing clothes in the river. They held strings in their hands, though Salaamat couldn’t see what was tied to the ends. Not kites, something much smaller. One woman looked up and saw him approach. She sent a child into the hut, probably to call the men. Salaamat now saw what the boy had on the end of his string: a dragonfly, beating violet wings as the child twirled the line around and around.

  4

  The Highway

  Salaamat was roused early in the tent he shared with five others. ‘Get up!’ A man shoved him with the barrel of his gun. ‘Time to go.’ He peered out from under a grimy sheet, grabbing the man’s arm with one hand, his pistol with the other. It was Gharyaal Bhai, and his watch showed just after three o’clock.

  ‘We have a long journey,’ the man grinned. He prodded him once more, gently this time. Salaamat stumbled out with him.

  Fatah had already washed himself. Under the stars his mop of hair shone like a cannonball, dripping over a beaming face. He thumped Salaamat’s shoulder. ‘Ready for test number two, meri jaan?’

  Salaamat dunked his head in the dark river. He shook it dry, spraying Fatah. ‘What’s the hurry? There’s going to be no one on the highway to rob at this hour.’

  ‘We don’t rob. We clean. And you’ll be surprised how many cars we’ll find, especially around Thatta.’

  Salaamat stared at him. Fatah knew his family worked on a farm near there. Why had he planned it this way? ‘Why do we have to go that far south? It will take hours.’

  Fatah smiled mysteriously. ‘We have hours. We might even make it back in time for a quick walk up the gorge, just you and me.’ He winked, walking away.

  One minute Salaamat loved him, the next Fatah was everything he despised. Everything. Anger welled inside him as he joined the half a dozen others awake now too. He helped collect sticks for the fire, his mind racing. What was he, the wife in this marriage?

  Gharyaal Bhai made the tea. The jeep hadn’t brought supplies yesterday. They were down to drinking hot water with only enough leaves and milk powder for color. There was no sugar. Rusks were in short supply. No one betted away cigarettes. The Commander said it was all part of the discipline. No one argued. He was the Chief’s brother-in-law.

  But in private, the men said the Commander had hidden sugar packets under his tent, which was why he never allowed his to be assembled and disassembled during morning drill. They swore they’d seen him digging up sacks in the middle of the night, shoveling crystals down his throat like a lunatic.

  Fatah took the first cup Gharyaal Bhai poured. The men let him. He was, Salaamat had only recently discovered, First Lieutenant Muhammad Shah’s brother-in-law. Salaamat scowled: if everyone around him was related to the Chief in some way, wasn’t he the outsider again?

  The other men too were growing increasingly sullen. They were losing weight. Only a visit to the Chief’s lair or an expedition to the highway animated them. They seemed to be thinking of this while sipping the hot water daubed with token Lipton leaves. In silence, they prayed together for parathas, chat, halwa puri, fresh milk. When no miracle hand served them, they talked about Thatta. ‘We can always get rewri there,’ someone said, and the others cheered up.

  From across the fire Fatah called out to him, ‘Oh Rani, the Chief said if you pass this test too all of us can get as many dishes of rewri as we want.’

  A few men snickered. Though he didn’t like Fatah mocking him this way in public, Salaamat knew many of the others had paired up, some even in his tent. There was plenty of fire to throw around.

  After the measly breakfast, they headed for the jeep. This time no one blindfolded him. He sat, as on the trip to the Chief’s, beside Fatah. The vehicle wove through dense thickets, sometimes paralleling the river, at others cutting perpendicular to it. A lank sunrise slowly crept around them, bringing the flutter of birds and the silence of crickets.

  Gharyaal Bhai reached over and pinched Salaamat’s cheek. ‘You’d better pass because I’m getting very hungry.’ Conversation returned to food. Men exchanged notes on the best dessert ever made by their mothers. As excitement escalated, each man praised his own mother at the expense of another’s. Abuse flailed. Fatah, disgusted, growled, ‘Conserve your strength.’ He forbade anyone to speak of sweets till they were actually being eaten. A sullen silence descended again.

  Further south, the level of the Indus began to drop. Fatah’s jaw muscles twitched. ‘They’ve stolen our Sindhu.’ The others nodded, urging him to continue. He did. ‘Once we called it the life of the lower valley. What valley? This is a desert. What life? We’re being buried alive.’ He recited the famous lines: ‘With homes on the river bank, those who die of thirst, die of their own making.’

  There was consensual muttering, ‘… Of their own making.’

  Salaamat watched his friend, feeling the performance was delivered partly to show him what a fine commander he’d make.

  The jeep took a short cut through the dry riverbed, kicking up dust. It was June but the monsoons gave no hint of calling. The sun rode beside them, stealing up from the parched land, roasting everything in sight. To preserve his saliva, even Fatah talked less.

  Finally, they turned onto the National Highway. Salaamat again thought of his family. They were getting too close to the farm where his sister worked. He looked around him. Judging from the height of the sun, it was close to seven o’clock. They were near Keenjhar Lake; the farm was perhaps an hour away. Sumbul wouldn’t have arrived yet. He wished she had. What if their jeep intercepted her bus? He tried to remember which bus she took in from her husband’s house in the city, and what time it got to the farm. He realized he’d never asked her these basic questions. Now his mind swarmed with many others: if the men conducted raids this far south, who was to say she was safe, ever, not just today? And what about his brothers, Shan and Hamid, whom he always brushed by carelessly at the gate? And his father? Salaamat sighed with relief. The old man did not commute to the farm. He was safe.

  It was the first time he’d thought of the old man with anything but disdain. What was happening to him? His stomach felt woozy. Liquid was floating in there. He squeezed his rectum and pressed a hand to his gut to stop the pain.

  His thoughts returned to Sumbul. He saw her again with a baby suckling her Fanta-cap nipple. She looked beautifully up at him, the deep blue lapis lazuli stones as dazzling as her smile. He swallowed: what did the men do to the women and children on board the buses?

  Fatah was still scowling at the naked riverbed. ‘It looks obscene,’ he declared.

  ‘What kind of vehicles get stopped?’ Salaamat tried.

  ‘Nice ones,’ Gharyaal Bhai flashed his teeth.

  ‘Not buses then?’

  Someone else volunteered, ‘Depends.’

  Fatah looked him full in the face. ‘You’ll do whatever’s expected.’

  And then they turned west and Thatta flew by. They weren’t stopping. The arches of Shah Jehan’s Mosque receded like a massive ribcage: white bone after bone after bone.

  But then there was a bus. It was heading toward them. They headed toward the bus.

  Neither stopped.

  Salaamat grew teary with relief.

  They passed the farm. Inside, perhaps his brothers had already taken their place at the gate. He turned, but saw nothing – no shadows, no movement. Months later, when he saw it again, there’d be armed guards stationed
there. But not today. Now they were entering the strip where his family commuted daily: between Makli Hill and Karachi. He could see the dome of the bat-infested tomb. Not long ago, he’d been witness to a secret tryst there. He carried that secret with him, down the National Highway, and the terror of intercepting Sumbul’s bus rose again. If anyone so much as laid a finger on her beautiful smile, he’d disembowel him.

  He wanted to freeze time. Or maybe it was only in retrospect that he wished he’d wanted to. Later, he’d need to know if Fatah was right: who you are depends on where you are. So he observed the men the way he should have then. He went back to the jeep racing along at 110 kilometers an hour. He gave each man the attention he wished he’d given his brothers, sister, nephew, nieces, cousins, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. He was never able to forget a single line on their faces.

  Dil Haseen: the doolha with the deep, impassive voice, who joined the camp soon after his wedding. The men said he was too deadpan to consummate his marriage. No, he himself had said that.

  Next to him was the baby-faced Gharyaal Bhai, always the first to volunteer for any expedition. Salaamat could see him with teeth bared, meeting a crocodile’s fangs with his own. Those teeth were going to stay far, far away from his family.

  Ali, the malakhras wrestler. He still oiled himself every morning. He shared Salaamat’s tent and Gharyaal Bhai shared him.

  Mirchi, small and eager to please. He hailed from Kunri, which gave the world more red chilies than any other place on earth.

  Those were the four sitting opposite him. On his side, other than Fatah and himself, sat Yawar. Though zealous as Fatah, Fatah did not like Yawar because Yawar was the most educated man in the camp. He insisted Yawar was really a Muhajir spy in Sindhi skin.

  And finally, the soldierly Amar. Broad-shouldered and sinewy like Salaamat, and just as quiet.

  Ten, maybe twelve kilometers went by. They were approaching a village. Wheat and millet sprang around them and the trickle of irrigation canals was heavenly.

  ‘Let’s stop here,’ Ali suggested. ‘We can get a drink.’

  ‘No,’ Fatah shook his head. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  At last the jeep came to a halt. ‘Park around the corner there,’ Fatah told the driver. ‘Come on,’ he said to Salaamat, and hopped outside.

  They walked on the highway, eight men with two firearms each. Fatah positioned Salaamat in front of a wire fence enclosing a field of wheat dotted with egrets. ‘Right here?’ Salaamat protested. ‘In broad daylight?’

  Dil Haseen extended a hand as if testing for raindrops. ‘Sun’s up.’

  ‘What do you mean in broad daylight?’ Fatah snarled. ‘It’s daytime isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe he’s missing his blindfold,’ Yawar suggested.

  ‘Stay there,’ Fatah ordered. ‘The first vehicle you see, you stop.’ The other men crossed the street, leaving Salaamat alone to face oncoming traffic.

  He had no watch, but it must have been after eight o’clock. His throat was so dry he could have sucked on a shoot of grass. In the distance, he saw farmers wandering about, and thought he even heard a goat bleat. Was he beginning to hallucinate? More than four hours without a drink, and with nothing in his stomach but a cup of feeble tea. The seven others stood across from him, maybe twenty feet away. They were haggard, humorless. They wanted nothing more than a cold shower, a hot meal and a soft bed. That ought to have been home. Instead, here they were, fighting for it on a sizzling day in June.

  He began to see double. There were fourteen men across the street. There were two streets and there were four drops of sweat sliding all the way down his nose. When one drop struck his lips it was saltier than the godforsaken sea. He was ready to jump the fence and suck on anything, goat dung if he had to.

  He heard a whistle. Someone waved from across both streets. It was Fatah, and he was excited. Salaamat knew why but he could not bring himself to look. Fatah whistled again, as if he had a bleating goat stuck inside him, the bastard. It was a dark car. Not a bus. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad after all. He couldn’t see the driver but the driver had seen them. About one hundred feet away the car stopped and began turning around.

  ‘Shoot!’ Fatah shouted.

  Salaamat stared as the black car screeched and swiveled. The men had aimed their weapons and the driver panicked. He reversed into a ditch.

  ‘Shoot!’ Now the others were yelling too.

  The engine roared. Tires pealed. The car was on the road again. In a few seconds, it would escape. Salaamat jogged towards it, holding up a pistol but doing nothing else.

  ‘Chootar,’ Fatah ran forward. ‘Fire!’

  The air exploded in gunshots. At first Salaamat thought the shots had somehow turned to little flecks of light and the highway had shrunk into one of Hero’s magic vases. The glow was delicate, astral. Entirely at odds with the bellowing bullets. But then he saw it came from inside the car, or rather, around it. It was the windshield and the windows, and it sprayed the road in a light rain. Within seconds, the highway glittered like a forest of diamonds. When the men ran forward they crushed the diamonds to powder.

  Fatah skidded up to the driver’s shattered window, dragging Salaamat with him. He kicked Salaamat’s shin. He tugged his locks. Salaamat fell in the powder laughing, ‘It’s not her bus!’

  ‘Stand up, cunt.’ Fatah kicked him again. ‘What do you think you’re trying to prove?’ Hauling him up, he kicked a third time. ‘When I say shoot, you shoot.’ This time he shoved him so hard Salaamat lunged forward, head and torso blasting into the broken window, hands flying up to break the momentum with the driver’s shoulders.

  When he saw the man time did freeze. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Are you going to shoot him now?’ he heard Fatah say. The voice was hollow, lifeless. It drifted far into the dusty haze.

  Mr Mansoor gaped out from the car. Glass studded his fat cheeks as though he’d made a mess of a meal. A wound in his flabby arm bled like a faucet. He wheezed, trying to contain the bleeding with the other hand. Blood oozed out from between the pudgy fingers. It turned into a cricket ball and the wounded arm became his daughter Dia. She was running toward him from the top of a hill, in a yellow dress. Barely thirteen. Flushed, leaping with joy. ‘Out!’ she screamed, and her brother at the bottom of the hill in front of their house threw down his bat and sulked into their twelve-foot-tall gate. But her father the umpire waited to embrace her. He judged it a fair ball: her brother was out.

  Salaamat’s hand shook as he tried to hold the gun to Mr Mansoor’s temple. Over his shoulder he said to Fatah, ‘Look at the car. Let’s take it and leave him.’

  A barrel stabbed his spine. ‘Shoot. Next time I won’t say it, I’ll do it. To you.’

  Salaamat pulled the trigger but aimed a few inches down, and to his right. Another red ball exploded, this time above the left knee. Mr Mansoor screamed. His free hand came away from the wounded arm and squeezed the fresh wound.

  ‘Bad shot,’ said Gharyaal Bhai. ‘Not like you.’ He stuck his hand into the window and grabbed the wounded arm. Then he snapped the right thumb loose. ‘You’re going to do the left one. Today. Now. To hell with the cuffs.’

  Between deafening screams, Mr Mansoor pleaded with Salaamat, ‘Tell them to stop. Help me.’

  Had he recognized him then?

  Salaamat did not want the men to know he knew him. Fatah was too unpredictable. If he learned the man was his family’s employer, he might do anything. They’d pass the farm again on the way back. Maybe he’d want to stop there.

  ‘Shut up!’ Salaamat waved his gun in the diamond-raked face. He held Mr Mansoor’s left fingers with one hand, caught his elbow with the other. It was like the first time he’d jumped in the sea: he had to do it quickly, without thinking. He caught the thumb and pulled it forward, in one swift motion, like he’d seen men rev the motor of a scooter. He heard the bone crack. Mr Mansoor put his forehead on the steering wheel and began to sob.

  Yawar s
ettled in the backseat with Gharyaal Bhai. ‘Let’s take him to the Chief.’

  Gharyaal Bhai nodded. ‘But first we stop at Thatta, for rewri.’

  Salaamat got in with them. The others followed in the jeep.

  Yawar punched the back of Mr Mansoor’s head and hissed, ‘Drive.’

  A hand with a slack thumb started the engine and tried to steer. All eight fingers were used to change gears. The wound in the knee bled lavishly. He swallowed hiccups. In the rear-view mirror, Salaamat saw his eyes still stream with tears. Then they met his own.

  Why did dying men and burning buses always look at him?

  The lips trembled but Mr Mansoor uttered nothing more. Perhaps, as his wounds bled and his mind shrank, he didn’t even know Salaamat any more. Maybe, when he’d asked for help, he hadn’t recognized him. Or maybe he chose not to reveal that they knew each other. Possibly, he was thinking the same: the farm was coming up, and his wife and children might be arriving soon. Perhaps, to look for him.

  Salaamat thought now of the Muhajir student who’d crossed the street at the wrong time on the wrong day. If only there’d been a sign: Trespassers will be prosecuted. He said to those small wet eyes in the mirror: Why here, when there were so many other places you could be?

  But Mr Mansoor never spoke again. Not when the men stopped for rewri, and spooned some into his quivering lips. And not when he was taken to the cell from which a corpse was taken out.

  5

  Remains

  AUGUST 1992

  They sat under the same tree where he’d given her the earrings. The leaves were turning crisp. Sumbul said Riffat Mansoor’s farm was in the throes of a water crisis.

  ‘The level in the wells has risen but it needs to rain much more,’ she explained. ‘Poor Bibi. She says when it rains life stops. But when it doesn’t, the spirit just shrivels up and dies, slowly, slowly, curling with exhaustion.’