No Space for Further Burials

by Feryal Ali Gauhar

  In downtown Clovis there was an antiques store which sold old radios and Elvis records, and Coke bottles that looked like the bodies of curvy actresses wearing tight corsets in movies where men wore trench coats even when it wasn’t raining. Most of the stuff wasn’t really antique, not in the sense of being really old or even valuable. There were hair clips and teddy bears and baking tins and canisters of sugar. There were postcards and school report cards and baseball caps and Victorian camisoles and even a wooden toilet which must have sat in an outhouse, also wooden, also stained with the stink of human waste. A lot of this junk would be looked over and carefully guarded by old ladies in pink sweaters and blue hair, sometimes knitting booties for grandchildren, sometimes complaining about the arthritis that flared up on days when the fog rolled in across the San Joaquin Valley and shrouded everything in its mystery.

  At the back of the store were plastic soldiers and war memorabilia locked in glass cabinets. I would stand for hours in front of the cabinet with the collection of gas masks and soldier uniforms from Vietnam. There were dog tags and wireless phones and playing cards, which must have kept the men and boys distracted from the boredom of the long pause between one killing and the next. I would wonder then who brought these things in, these bits and pieces of men’s lives, these badges of courage or perhaps shame, or perhaps just plain old badges which must have shone when they were first worn across someone’s chest.

  In the dream I am looking into the cabinet. I see my reflection in the glass door. When I move away my reflection enters the cabinet and opens the door for me from within. I step inside. There is a searing stench of burning flesh. At the bottom there is a wireless phone with the sound of a crying child through the crackle and hiss of the static. I turn toward the door but it has swung shut and the handle has broken off like the limb of a dying tree. When I pick up the wireless set to call for help it crumbles in my hands, and the dust of its remains pours through the gaps in my fingers onto the glass floor of the cabinet. The sound is like rain falling on dry earth.

  The snow has piled up outside the kitchen door and it is difficult to get out. Karim Kuchak and the others go down to the basement to relieve themselves. I can smell the stench all the way up here, and I know that I cannot go there, balancing above the excrement of a dozen others, piled up into putrefying mounds.

  Anarguli is ready to burst now. I can see the bulge of her belly even beneath the dirty shawl she wears over her shirt. I try not to look at her, terrified that I will be dishonoring someone, her perhaps, her family definitely, even if her family does not exist or has forgotten all about her.

  This business of honor intrigues me. It seems as if everything is connected to a woman’s body—a man’s honor lives inside the body of a woman, and when that honor is violated, it is a woman’s body which must be punished.

  I am learning these things now. I know my mother would want to know about how the menfolk treat women here, in this strange part of the world, and I can imagine the look on her face when I tell her that they destroy the women they love because they cannot bear to lose them to another.

  My mother was lost to another, but she always said that leaving my father was the only way she could have survived. There was only so much of his rage that she could take, and only so many of the beatings which came at midnight once the last bottle of beer had been smashed against a piece of furniture or on the floor of our home in Tranquility, California.

  I remember the blood on her arms which had turned black with shame. But that was not the same as the shame which drove Haji Meer insane. Her shame lived in her white body and chided her for having married a man who had nothing to his name, not even the land that held the bones of his ancestors. My father had nothing but his rage; even his name was not his own, and the woman he had tried to make a life with was lost to another because he had no life to offer her, no words with which to heal the wounds he inflicted on her.

  I am in the emergency room again. There is a young boy we have brought in, unconscious, a stab wound in his rib cage pulsing with blood. He is only fourteen. On the band of his neck there is a tattoo which identifies him as a member of a Tulane County gang. We found him lying off Divisadero Street on the pavement, his blood soaking the concrete. His pals called 911 and told us where to find him. He comes to now and then, and mumbles something we cannot understand.

  He is really young. His breath smells of alcohol. In the ambulance we checked the level in his blood—it was four times higher than the acceptable limit. He has wet his pants, and there is vomit down the front of his T-shirt. On his face I can see the faint trace of a dark mustache. When he wakes up he asks for his mother. He speaks in Spanish, and I respond to him with a crude joke about big men who drink not needing their mothers when they want to pee. He grimaces, and I realize that each time he wakes up he feels the pain of the stab wound, and I want him to sleep again, not to wake while the odor of urine and vomit stick to his skin like a crest of disgrace.

  In the emergency room there are more jokes and more pain as the nurse inserts the catheter into his penis. C’mon, son, be a man—Lord knows you’re hung like one.

  He needs to be given an enema, to flush his bowels. The nurse rolls him over on his side and I can see the blood spurting out from beneath the bandage—there are no stitches yet until the wound is cleaned. One of the nurses throws up the sheet covering him and pulls down his pants. The other one tells him to relax his buttocks, warning him that if he tenses up, the pipe in his rectum will hurt. The boy is screaming now: Stop, please, stop! Jesus Lord, help me, ayuda me, ayuda me, Mamá.

  I look up at the woman who has just been wheeled into the space in hall one. She is young; her skin is pale and her hair dark. She lies on her back with her eyes closed. I can see traces of tears rolling down the side of her face. I am drawn to her as if she is someone I have known. I leave the young boy squirming with pain in the room and walk out into the hall toward her. I stand close and look at her face. It is Anarguli, and when she opens her eyes I see only dark tunnels that lead nowhere.

  Bulbul is worried sick now. He believes that unless we seek help for Anarguli she will die in the process of giving birth. I try to tell him that he is worrying only because his stomach is full. When he was hungry, all he did was look for food, scavenging in the pits outside.

  I regret having said this the minute the words leave my mouth. Bulbul does not respond to me. He just gets up and walks away. It is good that the snow outside the door has been cleared. At least he has a way of escaping his suffering and I have the space to deal with my remorse alone.

  Noor Kaka is in good spirits. It is as if this old man has many lives, surviving one bad thing after another. He smiles his toothless smile at anyone, any time, for any reason, and Sabir reminds me that the Sufi poets say that in disaster or in the absence of disaster, one must remain the same. He tells me that the Wali, the leader, in his normal conscious state, tries in all sincerity to acquit himself of all his obligations to God.

  Further, in whatever state he may be, he treats the people with unfailing kindness and affection. He spreads his graciousness on all creatures; and he bears with good cheer their malevolence. And without their requesting it, he prays to Allah to take good care of them and tries his very best for their salvation. He never takes vengeance on others, and he does his best to keep his heart free from malice against them. With all this he never tries to extend his hands on what belongs to others, and he does everything to keep away from greed. He keeps his tongue under control so that it does not speak ill of them. And he keeps his soul from seeing the failings of others, and he never fights with anyone either in this world or the other. He remains constant, true to his Maker, the Almighty, the Omnipresent Allah.

  Noor has remained constant. All of them have remained the same. Only I seem to have changed, and I don’t know if that is a good thing or the only thing I can do in order to survive.

  There is much one can do to survive. The extent of a human being’s i
magination when pushed against the wall is overwhelming. I think of Bulbul and the bone, and I think of the story Noor Kaka told us the day we ate the camel stew. He smacked his lips and sucked his fingers and then he told us about who he was, what he did for a living, and why he found himself here, among all the others who have nowhere else to go.

  My sons, Waris Khan, Sabir Shah, Bulbul Jan, and you, Firangi Amreeki, I wish to thank you all for your kindness during the time of my illness. I know I was near death’s door and I could see the Angel Israel beckoning to me, but Allah had other plans. Much as I wanted to pass out of this world and into the next, to stand before my Maker and beg forgiveness for any act of mine which caused suffering to another, seeking punishment or reward as Allah saw fit, I knew that there were certain things that had to be done before I passed over.

  One of these things, my sons, was to tell you who I am. The other was to tell you that sometimes Allah rewards the ones He loves with riches in Janat ul Firdaus, and sometimes He presents these riches to His chosen ones while they are still on this earth. I had the good fortune of finding those riches while I lived, even if I have nothing now except the name of my Maker on my lips and devotion to Him in my heart.

  You must think, here’s an old fool, this man with torn clothes and hands worn down with hard labor and age. What riches could he have had, and if he did, where is that fortune now? you will be asking yourselves, my sons. I have thought many times of the words with which to describe this fortune to you, and then I have been afraid that you will think me a worse fool for having told you. But today I feel I must share this treasure with you, even if I have nothing to show that will make you believe my story.

  My sons, I was very young when the king of our beloved country asked for a man to work in the grounds of his summer palace outside the city, in the shadow of the Hindu Kush. My father had been a gardener in the palace grounds and he told me there was a job for me to do. I was excited, for my father did not speak to me often—he spoke rarely at home, and even less to his children. So when he said he would like to take me to the summer palace to meet the keeper of the grounds and see if I had the necessary skills for the new job, I thought my heart would burst with joy. Not only was my father talking to me, he was going to show me the summer palace which none in the family had ever hoped to see.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I asked my mother to wash my good shirt and I sat up polishing my shoes with the soot of the coal fire. I couldn’t even eat the breakfast of naan and Suleimani chai my mother made for us. When we left the house, I looked at my mother and asked her to pray for me. She embraced me and whispered a prayer for me, then kissed my eyes. I waved goodbye to my sisters and younger brothers and walked rapidly to catch up with my father who took long strides and hurried through the alley, his gaze fixed on the ground. The food my mother had prepared for the journey was bundled into a scarf that he carried in one hand.

  My sons, the journey to the summer palace was a long one, but perhaps not long enough for one who is young and full of longing to see the world. We were headed toward the Karez e Meer, outside the city. In front of us we could see the Hindu Kush glistening with fresh snow. The road leading to the foothills was shaded by ancient walnut trees, and often we would see caravans of Bactrian camels carrying fruit between their humps, their heads held high like boats afloat on the river.

  The hills circling the city were covered with vineyards and orchards. Sweet, succulent raisins from the grapevines had been picked and laid out on the ground—I remember the scent of the fruit and the purple haze covering the hillside. There were many trees in this valley—pine and almond, mulberry and peach. And everywhere there was the fragrance of wild grass and lavender, making my head light and my heart even lighter.

  There were brooks and springs everywhere. We could hear their music even before we came across them, quenching our thirst with the sweet, clear water. Above these water channels were the yellow leaves of autumn which played their own music before winter extinguished the life they held in their veins.

  The town of Istalif lay before us like a pyramid, terraces with houses and fields leading to the pinnacle which was crowned by the shrine of a Sufi saint. Beyond Istalif we had to travel through a mountain pass that would close in less than ten days, opening again in the springtime when the snow melted and caravans passed through the Hindu Kush again. The ascent to this pass was gradual, but at a certain point the track suddenly became steep, causing our horses to slip on the frozen ground. We had to dismount and proceed on foot. One horse fell and plunged to his death. I did not dare look down into the ravine where he would have lain, the breath slowly slipping out of him.

  The summit of the Hindu Kush is made of black rock, my sons, granite, hard and relentless. Against that black rock, the snow was of the purest white, and the sun would reflect on it and blind us, leading us toward the edge of the mountain, leading us to the many graves of those who had tried to pass through here before but who never made it to Kohistan, where we were headed.

  To get to Kohistan you have to cross many rivers and water channels. Of the rivers you would know the Panjsheer, but you would not have known that if a man stood on its banks and held out his hands,

  he would most certainly catch the fish that leap out of its cold frothing waters and offer themselves as a meal to a hungry traveler.

  My father did not stop for long, just long enough to feed him and me, or to catch some sleep under a poplar tree. We drank from the rivers or the aqueducts that the people of the villages had constructed in order to take the water to their fields. At a certain place my father told me to drink long and hard, for we were about to enter the valley of shifting sand, the Reg Ruwan, where the earth is soft and the sky far, and water just a thread in a madman’s dream.

  My father told me that Babar Badshah, the king of all kings, emperor of all he surveyed, had described the Reg Ruwan as a stretch of sandy ground leading from the top of a hill to the bottom. Babar Badshah described the sound of drums that would erupt from the depths of that sandy track, and I wondered whether I too would hear the music of the desert.

  It was sunset when we began to attempt the crossing of this stretch of moving sand. We walked toward the junction of two hills where the track began, and as soon as we stepped onto the sand, we heard the hollow sound of drums beating below the surface of the earth. My father told me it was a miracle we had heard the sound, for the drums are only beaten on Friday, the holiest of days, but perhaps it was the saint of Reg Ruwan who ordered the drumming for my benefit. My father smiled at me while telling me this, and my heart filled with pride at being this magnificent man’s son.

  My father told me that the sand had been carried to this part by the northern wind, the Bad e Purwan, which would blow with such force that souls traveling toward the heavens often lost their way and buried themselves in the sand until the wind passed, shifting the sand and covering the tracks of their journey.

  After we crossed the Reg Ruwan, I turned back to look at the setting sun and saw the stretch of sand that cut through two mountains like a river, moving and pulsing toward the lavender fields of that magical place. I wanted the journey to continue for many years so that my father could tell me these stories, so that I could see the wonders that Allah had created for us to behold and to enjoy, but we were nearing our destination and all journeys have to come to an end, my sons, like mine will soon.

  Noor Kaka stopped suddenly. None of us had dared to open our mouths while he spoke, and I had to keep Bulbul from interrupting the old man with a succession of questions he kept whispering in my ear: What is this treasure the old man speaks of? Where is it? Where has he hidden it? Why does he take so long to tell us? Ya Khuda, I pray he doesn’t die before he tells us about this treasure …

  But Noor Kaka stopped just before he got to the destination which had changed his life and made him a richer man. He stopped, took off his glasses, spat on them, wiped them on the edge of his filthy cuff, and placed them in his pocket.
Then he smiled at us and said it was late, that he was an old man, that he needed his rest now, and that he would finish the story in the morning.

  Anarguli has had the most beautiful baby one could imagine. The little girl came at around sunrise after several hours of labor, during which the men in the kitchen had to be sent to the shed to wait out the night. Noor Jehan and Waris asked me to remain in case there was a problem with the delivery. And Hayat refused to leave Anarguli’s side, chanting strange incantations in her own language the whole night long.

  Bulbul was sick with worry and did not even stay in the shed all those hours. Sabir told me he had vanished again and came back only when the sun began to appear from behind the mountains. That was about the time the little girl was born. Noor Kaka has named her Sahar Gul, the Rose of Sunrise.

  Noor Jehan has sweetened our tea with the last of the molasses she was hiding in her secret sack. This is to celebrate the safe arrival of the newest member of our tribe. Sabir says that the birth of a daughter is not usually celebrated in these parts, but this little girl is the future, and if she lives, all our dreams will live on.

  Bulbul beams every time he looks at Anarguli, who sits with the baby in front of the fire. Waris and Sabir have chopped up the desk and the broken chairs in the demolished office so we have some more warmth now. The baby is tiny, almost too small to live through the winter. When Noor Jehan asked me to cut the umbilical cord with the kitchen knife (I insisted we boil some water and clean it first), I feared that I would be cutting off the baby’s only source of nourishment, for Anarguli did not seem to have the strength to feed her child, weakened as she was by hunger and disease.

  But things in this miserable place do not happen as one expects them to. Anarguli appears to have regained her health and her vision, for she fixes her gaze on this child and does not see anything else. Noor Jehan has taken her behind the curtain several times to coax her to let the baby suckle her breast. I don’t know if there is any milk for the baby in Anarguli’s breasts. All I see is that the child is content and sleeps peacefully, while the men snore deeply, dreaming of Noor Kaka’s hidden treasure.