by Bapsi Sidhwa
. . . And the atmosphere of repressed sexuality in Pakistan had not helped. Slowly Carol had begun to realize that even among her friends, where the wives did not wear burkhas or live in special, women’s quarters, the general separation of the sexes bred an atmosphere of sensuality. The people seemed to absorb it from the air they breathed. This sensuality charged every encounter, no matter how trivial. She was not immune. Her body was at times reduced to a craving mass of flesh . . . It was like being compelled to fast at a banquet . . .
“A penny for your thoughts?” Snapping his fingers beneath Carol’s nose, Mushtaq smiled into her eyes.
Carol started, “Oh nothing really . . . It’s so peaceful here, it makes one dream.”
The Major removed his sunglasses. Carol had particularly noticed his eyes the night before in the glare of the hurricane lamp at coffee after dinner. Major Mushtaq, with the unit doctor and a few officers, had joined Carol and Farukh in the Mess sitting room. After coffee they had played Scrabble. Carol had basked in a surfeit of attention. The Major’s tawny eyes, flecked with black like a leopard’s coat, glancing now at her, now at Farukh, had obliterated the presence of all others. He had maintained an uncanny balance, keeping Farukh off the brink of gloom and suspicion even though Carol’s vivacity would normally have been enough to secure his jealous anger. Instead Farukh had himself been warm and relaxed in his friendship with the Major.
Later, alone in their room, Carol and Farukh, for once, had not quarreled.
Now, looking into Mushtaq’s raffish eyes, she felt light-headed. He had this strange effect on her. She wanted to revel in the appreciativeness of his stare. But she knew better. Earthy and brazen, the men here expected subtlety from women. She had already responded too much.
Besides, they were too exposed to the curious stares of tribals filing across the steep track overlooking the lawn.
Carol’s face hardened. Three tribesmen had stopped on the track looking down at her. They held the ragged ends of their turbans between their teeth and their eyes examined her insolently. Primly she crossed her legs. Observing her discomfiture, Mushtaq lifted his head. At once the men turned away.
He laughed, “They haven’t seen the likes of you!”
Carol was furious. What did he mean? After all, she was not naked! The hell with them, she thought, removing a cigarette from her packet of Gold Leaf. At once Mushtaq leaned forward with his lighter. She drew a quick breath and exhaled.
“Maybe I should wear a burkha!” Her voice was sharp with annoyance.
“It’s not as bad as all that . . .”
“It is,” she snapped. “Haven’t they ever seen a woman before?”
“Come now, I should have thought you’d like being noticed,” teased the Major. “You know how it is with us—segregation of the sexes. Of course, you only know the sophisticated, those Pakistanis who have learned to mix socially—but in these settlements a man may talk only with unmarriageable women—his mother, his sisters, aunts, and grandmothers—a tribesman’s covetous look at the wrong clanswoman provokes a murderous feud. They instinctively lower their eyes, it’s a mark of respect. But let them spy an outsider and they go berserk in an orgy of sightseeing! Don’t take it personally. Any woman, whether from the Punjab or from America, evokes the same attention.”
“I . . . I felt they were undressing me.”
“That’s why I told you last evening not to go wandering off on your own.”
Carol looked away.
“Do you know,” he continued, “this morning I had to post a picket to guard you while you painted the river?”
Unexpectedly she glowed with excitement. “Did you really? I didn’t see them. Where were they?”
This was it! A sense of being catered to and protected—servants and leisure. Unhurried sessions with the dressmaker and languid gin-and-tonics on well-groomed lawns. These compensations made her stay despite Farukh’s morbid jealousy. They prevented her from carrying out her repeated threats to divorce him—to go back home. Prolonged morning coffees and bridge, delicious sessions of gossip with the band of women who increasingly formed her social group—American, Australian, British, and other Europeans, married to Pakistanis, who otherwise had very little in common. Sunk into cushions of leisure they shared confidences and wept with homesickness on each other’s shoulders. In moments of lonely alienation, turning hostile, they sneered at strange customs, at modernization not yet achieved, at native in-laws, and dirt, and dust, and primitive plumbing.
Once purged of their resentments they regained the sporty sense of adventure and curiosity that had brought them to this remote land in the first place. Their compensations were the Majors! The bright blue sunlit days!
Carol suddenly thought of Pam, still promoting lipsticks and lotions behind her counter, while she braved the Himalayas and lived in mountains teeming with handsome cave dwellers, tall, sunburned ferocious men. She fashioned phrases for use in her letter to Pam. “The darling of an isolated camp deep in the Himalayas”—“venturing where no white woman had ever gone before”—“protected by pickets!”
Pam would circulate her letter. Carol viewed her old friends with the condescension she had bestowed on her arrival in Lahore on fat, garishly made-up begums. Jammed together they slumped on sofas at “dinner parties,” their tender jelly-bellies giggling.
Chapter 13
The raucous stream hurtled headlong in a spray of foam into the main waters of the Indus. Half a furlong ahead, the purr of the river became a husky, pervading growl. From where she sat, Carol could see the bridge spanning the deep, secretive gorge of the Indus. Mushtaq’s voice poured pleasantly into her ears. His eyes, barely glancing at her face, nibbled on the curves beneath her sweater.
“. . . this set off a string of counter-murders. Seven men dead in two days. The man who had actually molested the girl vanished across the river. But the girl’s relatives are sure to get him one of these days.”
“Can’t you stop this senseless killing?”
“Me?” The Major gave a wry smile. “It’s like this,” he explained. “This side of the Indus, where we’re sitting, is Swat Kohistan. There is a semblance of law and order here . . . at least a killer is fined! If he makes it across the river, we can’t touch him.”
He turned in his chair and swept his arm towards the hills across the bridge.
“That part of Kohistan has no administration. It is inhabited by isolated pockets of feuding tribes, for centuries imprisoned by the Karakoram Range. They have their own notions of honor and revenge; a handful of maize stolen, a man’s pride slighted, and the price is paid in bloody family feuds. Possibly they are better off . . . At least they know where they stand.”
Carol liked the way he talked, the flashes of earnestness that lit his face and his patient, didactic delivery.
“I’ll tell you what happened just a month back. We had to take the construction of the road through a village. It had been evacuated and in compensation the Khan was paid six thousand rupees. Now, that’s a lot of money: you can’t imagine how poor these people are. I thought they’d use the money to better their miserable lot. Do you know what they did?”
Carol shook her head. Her hair fell forward in a flattering, sun-yellow filigree.
“The Khan shot the male members of an entire clan. The next day, a load off his mind and his conscience at ease, he paid his fine to the Wali of Swat. Six thousand rupees, the fine for ten murders!”
“How dreadful!” cried Carol.
“Had he killed them on the other side of the Indus, he would not have had to pay anything at all.” A hint of admiration crept into his voice. “The Kohistanis are quite untameable really. The British tried their darndest . . . They gave up after Sir Bindon Blood had fought and failed to subjugate them at the turn of the century.”
They remained silent for a while. The Major stood up.
“Well, young lady, it’s been delightful sitting in the sun talking to you, but I think I should get back to
work.”
“Oh, please don’t go! What will I do all by myself?” begged Carol, eager to sustain the glow his eyes kindled in her. “Can’t you take the day off? Farukh won’t be back until nightfall and I’ll be lonely.”
Mushtaq decided to stay.
A few minutes later she extended her hands. “Come,” she said, “let’s try the ‘other side of the river.’ Shall we?”
Mushtaq caught the proffered hands and drew her up. “Anything you say, my dear. Wait just a minute. I will arrange for a picket.”
Striding over to a khaki-uniformed jawan by the gate, he issued instructions and walked back to Carol.
“Put a scarf over your head and we will be ready.”
This concession to modesty, he felt, would have to suffice. Carol complied. She was too excited to make an issue of anything.
Carol and the Major leaned over the bridge. Fifty feet below them, the river thundered in blue turbulence.
“Oh, how beautiful . . . how absolutely lovely!” cried Carol. “How did you ever build it?”
“Well, that’s our work.”
“What are those?” she asked, indicating a row of red-painted animal figures that perched, like benign deities, on slim concrete pillars fencing the bridge.
They had to shout though they stood so close that Mushtaq could smell her slight, inoffensive sweat.
“Chinese Lions. They are a gift from the People’s Republic of China,” he went on. “At one time they were believed to frighten off evil spirits—and bring good luck. I like to think of them as sentinels guarding our bridges.”
“They look more like bulldogs, but they’re cute!” said Carol.
“We have just completed another bridge at Pattan, twenty-five miles upstream.”
“Isn’t that where Farukh has gone?”
“That’s right. Why didn’t you go?”
“I don’t know. I’m glad I didn’t,” she added impulsively.
Straddling the gorge over a distance of more than four hundred feet, the bridge dissolved abruptly on a shelf of sand. There a few indefinable tracks led into the cliffs.
They walked over to the sandy bank. It was desolate and Mushtaq looked about uneasily.
“We’d better not lose sight of the bridge,” he said. “Of course, they are scared of the uniform, but you never can tell.”
“What can they do?”
“Take a pot shot at us just for sport.”
“Would they dare?”
“Why not? To avenge us our jawans would just as casually blast some of their villages, routing them out of their filthy caves. A lot of good that would do once we’re dead!”
“Really!” cried Carol, thrilled by the threat of danger, yet convinced that no one would actually kill her. The thought of the possibility of rape vaguely entered the rim of her consciousness.
They stepped up a trail leading from the gorge. A few minutes later, enclosed by granite, they were miraculously isolated on a tiny island of sand.
“How warm it is. Feel it.” Carol let the pulverized crystals run through her fingers. She dropped down on all fours, and a slice of white waist gleamed invitingly. Mushtaq knelt beside her. He was unable to keep his eyes off her ebullient behind. His hand reached out to encircle her waist, and they collapsed on a heap of sand.
Three clansmen had watched the Major and the American woman cross the bridge into their territory. Their shalwars trailing the grit like soft fox-fur, they effortlessly leapt over the boulders. They settled on a sunlit ledge high along the slope.
“It’s the Major Sahib,” whispered Sakhi.
His eyes slit into dancing sapphires reflecting the deep cold sky. “Hah! The show is about to begin,” he proclaimed, gleefully observing the man and the woman in their small domain of sand. His companions smirked contemptuously, gluing their eyes on the interlopers.
Mushtaq lay flat on his back, scanning the arid tumult of rock and cliff. Carol reclined by his side.
“I could fall asleep,” she said. “Let me know if there’s any danger.” She pillowed her head on his arm.
Turning slightly Mushtaq inhaled the shampooed fragrance of her hair. A few strands touched his cheeks, and he closed his eyes.
Carol sighed, looking at the towering jungle of slate beyond them. She felt strangely unreal—adrift. “What a jumble. As if God scratching through the earth, had smashed the mountains in a mad rage . . . He too must have His frustrations.”
Mushtaq’s hand crept under her sweater, kneading her satiny skin. His voice was a husky gurgle, “Ummm . . . When Atlas lifted the world, he held it here. His fingers forced the earth into chasms and the rising mountains; the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush, and the Karakoram . . .”
Their eyes met in quick, exultant triumph and, as if on cue, the three tribesmen broke into a tumult of laughter and catcalls that echoed boisterously.
The Major sat up and straightaway spotted the trio jeering on their sunwashed ledge.
They saw him glance up. High on the ledge, Sakhi pirouetted in a riotous stamping dance, his turban swirling and ballooning.
Mushtaq moved away from the woman. To all appearances, he was unconcerned. At this point it would not do to get up and run. His face set in a dusky scowl, he swore under his breath. Lifting some sand, he allowed it to run nonchalantly through his fingers. Embarrassed, Carol shifted away.
The little tableau on the ledge continued. Intermittently the tribals swung their arms in puppetlike, swirling movements, but the pebbles they hurled did not reach as far as the vulgar smacking noises they made with their lips.
Mushtaq stood up.
“We’d better get out of here.”
He glanced at the wall of granite surrounding them, wondering which path to take. And suddenly he froze. Barely three feet from where he stood, peering through the recess of a dark fissure, gleamed a pale, unblinking face. The Major stood rooted to the spot, taken aback by cool hazel eyes that stared back, unsmiling.
God only knew how long the man had been there, immobile, as though hewn in stone.
Retrieving his wits, Mushtaq sprang forward in a menacing rush and the face dissolved.
Finding their way through the maze of rock, Carol and Mushtaq emerged in full view of the bridge.
At a short distance from the boulders ringing their retreat, slouched a scruffy tribal. The long muzzle of his flintlock rose jauntily above his frayed turban. Legs spread wide apart, he sprawled on a rock. His cold hazel eyes stared at them unabashed.
Walking past, the Major fixed the man with a glowering look and the tribal’s face cracked into the dirty ridges of a smirk. There was no genuine mirth in the face, only mockery. The tribal’s eyes shifted and skewered the woman in ruthless speculation. For the first time Carol knew the dizzy, humiliating slap of pure terror. The obscene stare stripped her of her identity. She was a cow, a female monkey, a gender opposed to that of the man—charmless, faceless, and exploitable.
Catcalls from the ledge heightened to a crescendo. Mushtaq turned away. An intruder in the tribal domain, he was nevertheless livid with humiliation and anger. Followed closely by Carol, he marched across the bridge.
In a frenzied bid to hold the attention of their quarry the men on the ledge leapt, shouted, whirled, and laughed. Tears streaming down their cheeks, they moaned for breath and wiped their noses with the ends of their turbans.
Sakhi fell helplessly against his brother. His hands groped down Yunus Khan’s sheepskin jacket. He lay at his feet writhing in mirth. The sun gilded his thick, dark-blond hair, bronzed his flushed skin, and, excited by the joyous vitality of his laugh, the other two men fell beside him. Teasing him, they grabbed between his thighs. He kicked in self-defense and they lunged and tumbled one on top of another, grasping each other to their panting chests, thighs and arms entwined.
Swamped by the smell of uncured sheepskin and the sweat of unwashed bodies, Sakhi battled for air. He crawled through at last and hooting with laughter, the three clansmen got up and disappea
red down a gully behind the ledge.
Carol poured herself a gin-and-tonic.
“Hasn’t the beer arrived?” she asked.
“No,” Mushtaq’s tone was uncommonly abrupt. He stood just outside her door, looking in.
Carol glanced at him quickly and grew embarrassed.
“It’s good to be back,” she said nervously.
Outside, the high whine of a truck laboring up the mountains grew more distant.
“Damn those tribals,” said Mushtaq more to himself than aloud.
Carol stood against the table looking into the glass which was trembling slightly in her hands. “They made me feel so . . . so inhuman . . .”
“Hey, don’t be upset,” said Mushtaq.
Hesitating a moment, and then closing the door behind him, he walked up to her. He folded his hands over hers and raised the glass to her mouth. Carol took a sip. His hands were warm and reassuring. Moving the glass towards himself, he lightly brushed his lips across her fingers. Carol felt her will drain from her body. Her feet flattened in her rubber sneakers and rooted her to the cement floor. Mushtaq detached the glass from her fingers and put it on the table. His khaki shirt blurred as he moved closer. His hand, pushing back her hair, stroked her as in a blessing. He pressed her to him. She felt the rough wool of his trousers and the hard length of his body all along hers. She was at last feasting at the banquet.
Chapter 14
Army vehicles lined one side of the road and straight ahead rose the stone facade of the Officers’ Mess. Jawans, clad in militia shalwars and shirts, were washing the vehicles and tinkering with machinery beneath gaping hoods. They glimpsed the girl as the truck lumbered by and paused to watch.