by Bapsi Sidhwa
Roaring in first gear the truck was half way down the drive when they heard a desperate voice calling for them to stop. Ashiq rushed alongside the truck window, out of breath. “Coming to Pattan with you,” he panted, “Major Sahib’s given me some work there.”
Seeing the three of them in front, he vaulted into the rear of the truck. In the square cabin window up front he watched the girl’s profile.
The road was rough and unsurfaced. It had only a layer of shingle and was sometimes blocked by rocks and minor landslides, which the passengers cleared. Bits of it had crumbled off where the edges were not, as yet, properly supported. It would take them two or three hours to reach Pattan.
Refreshed by a night’s sleep and elated with the leisure of travel Zaitoon gazed in wonder at rock and earth. She was stunned by the flight of the sheer granite cliffs and the thundering tumult of the river. Heavy blue waters smashed against submerged rock and towered into pillars of geysering white, before being frothed into rapids. Unusual blue-greens swirled at the vortex of giant whirlpools.
More and more the Indus cast its spell over her, a formidable attraction beckoning her down. And, bouncing on her hard seat in the truck, the strangely luminous air burnished her vision: the colors around her deepened and intensified. They became three dimensional. Were she to reach out, she felt she could touch the darkness in the granite, hold the air in her hands, and stain her fingers in the jewelled colors of the river. Trapped between the cliffs of the gorge, the leviathan waters looked like a seething, sapphire snake.
They were more than half way to Pattan when the driver eased the truck to the edge of the road and stopped. Flanked by stretches of chalk-white sand, the river here formed a wide, emerald lagoon.
“Can I go down there?” breathed Zaitoon, and Ashiq and Qasim agreed to the descent.
Sprawled on a warm rock, Sakhi lowered the sheepskin cap to shade his eyes. He had followed the sound of the truck in its passage up the mountain road, its laboring whine distinct from the roar of the river.
“The Major’s truck,” he thought contemptuously. Touching his flushed cheeks to the stone, he was shaken again by a paroxysm of mirth, recalling the Major’s ludicrous antics and his abject humiliation in his love tryst with Carol. Last night, convulsed by fits of laughter, the three clansmen had enacted the scene before their kinsfolk. The villagers had slapped their thighs and howled with delight. Scandal touching the Major was an exhilarating treat. The story would enliven any future encounters with him and provide an endless source of jokes and gossip.
Sakhi didn’t bother to sit up. He had seen enough trucks in the past year to satiate his initial curiosity. When the work in their area had first started, he and his brother had labored on the road. Once the novelty had worn off they felt it was not worth their while to demean themselves doing manual labor for others. Sakhi felt he had come a long way since that day when, eyes wide, he had gingerly climbed into the seat in a jeep—and later put down a bucket of water for it to drink.
When the motor faded, Sakhi wondered if a tire had punctured, and he lifted the top of his head above the rock, to look.
The three-tonner stood a hundred yards upstream at a bend in the road. A man in uniform had jumped from the rear to join a small group already standing at the front. Sakhi could not be sure if one of the travelers was a woman. He scrambled towards a rock almost directly opposite.
Slipping into position in a cleft, he could see plainly the woman and the two men in their descent down the steep face of the gorge.
Gun in hand, the driver remained on guard by the truck. Squatting by the rim of the road he dutifully scanned the mountains on the opposite bank. Satisfied that they were alone, he relaxed his vigil.
Sakhi watched the three figures scramble down the cliff. He could tell by the grip of Qasim’s tread, and by the knot of his turban, that he was of his own race. The girl’s dark color, apparent even at that distance, her timorous, unaccustomed, stumbling descent, her clothes, revealed that she was from the plains. These two, he was sure now, were the man and the girl his father was expecting.
His heart started to beat fast. He was immediately filled with resentment at the young jawan’s presence. Not only was the old tribal accepting a ride from the hated soldiers, but he was allowing the young jawan to walk with the girl—his girl!
The sun was well up in the sky but as yet it did not reach down into the gorge. Beneath the line of shadow, Sakhi saw the soldier’s arm go up to steady the girl. He couldn’t be sure whether the man touched her, but Sakhi’s lips distended viciously. He raised the muzzle of his gun and adroitly began his furtive descent, his eyes reflecting the mad brilliance of the river.
Leading the way, the Kohistani sought the easiest path for the girl to follow. Again she slipped and this time the jawan’s grip on her arm steadied her all the way down to the sand embankment.
“This,” thought Sakhi with contemptuous rancor, “so this is the girl my clansman brings me from the plains!”
He cleared his throat and spat spitefully on the rocks. A bright drift of laughter reached him from below. Hawk-eyed, he followed each movement with growing feelings of humiliation and jealousy. Hatred and fury burned within him, yet he dared not descend any further.
Once they reached the chalk-white sand, Zaitoon stepped away shyly from the jawan and, following Qasim, sat beside him on a rock. Qasim’s eyes glowed with pride and his wan cheeks twitched in a jubilant dance.
“Munni, this is my land—do you wonder I love it so?” Tears threatened to start down his cheeks. “We are here at last,” he sighed, revealing the agony he had suffered in years of separation.
“It is beautiful, Abba,” agreed Zaitoon, enraptured.
Before them, the lagoon spread so wide they could just make out the gleaming line of sand containing it at the other extreme.
“These waters look still from here, but the current is swift, see . . .” said Qasim, tossing a twig as far as he could. It raced away at an astonishing speed.
“Is it very deep? It’s clear as glass yet I can’t see the bottom.” And unexpectedly she asked, in a voice hushed by the mystical effect of the landscape around her, “Abba, the man I am to marry . . . do you know him?”
This was the first time she had asked about him. She could have asked a hundred questions. What did he look like, how did he live, had Qasim ever seen him?
“I saw him a long time back, when he was a child. His father has assured me he is a good boy. He is a man of our tribe, bibi, and I can safely leave you in his care.”
“Leave me, father? Won’t you stay with us?” Zaitoon pleaded.
Qasim smiled. “Don’t worry, Munni, I will stay a while, but your husband will take good care of you. You will like him. He is fine looking. Only a few years older than you.”
At once her heart was buoyant—and at the same time filled with misgiving. Would he like her? In a country where lightness of complexion was a mark of beauty, her own deep brown skin dismayed her. But the jawan liked her. His eyes left no doubt of it. She fell to dreaming. Surely her future husband would like her young face and her thick lashes. She felt alternately fearful and elated.
Ashiq stood apart. Having realized their need for privacy he walked a short distance and sprawled on a bed of sand behind a crag. Abandoning himself to his fancies, he reflected on the girl. She had been shy and smiling. He had thought at the time that his grip on her hand had affected her, though now he wondered if he had not imagined it all. Holding up his palm, he searched the miracle her touch had wrought. Yes, he had felt his warmth pass to her and back between them. His eyes flickered idly on the dark cliffs across the river, and he caught—or he imagined he caught—a movement in an anchored tumble of rock half way up; it was a motion as shadowy as a veil of sand dispersed by wind.
Sensing, even from that distance, the direction of the jawan’s scrutiny, Sakhi froze.
Ashiq stood up. His eyes instinctively sought Zaitoon. Quite near he saw her bending do
wn to a ripple-washed rock. She pushed back her sleeve, plunged an arm into the water, and screamed.
Leaping over the stones, his heart pounding, Ashiq rushed to her side. “What is it?” he asked, relieved to find her uninjured.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, “I—I was just frightened . . . The water was so cold, it burned me . . . like fire,” she stammered.
Ashiq Hussain smiled. Drawing a large, soiled piece of cloth from his pocket, he began tenderly to wipe her wet hand. “Wrap your shawl well around you,” he advised, helping her with the loose ends until she was totally covered.
Raising his head, he carefully scanned the cliff, and once again he caught the subtle movement.
“Come. Let’s go,” he said, and Qasim, having detected the direction of the jawan’s wary eyes, led the way quietly.
Chapter 17
Following a winding descent, the truck rolled into an unlikely pocket of civilization. Tractors, earthmovers, and cranes droned and roared on newly levelled ground, raising a vast cloud of dust. The jungle of mountains had yielded to a more normal surface, a tiny oasis given over to the twentieth century. They were in Pattan. Flowing through it, narrowed by solid walls of granite only slightly above the level of the water, the river at this point allowed the new bridge to span it.
Qasim observed clusters of scruffy tribals working on the road with pickaxes and shovels. He read the marks of his ancestry in each arrogant face, noted the familiar sheepskin waistcoats and shirts made from beaten wool. Uncured leather wrapped around their legs, taking on the shape of their calves, resembled knee-length boots.
Coated by khaki dust, the truck stopped before a brick structure, a row of rooms opening on an elongated verandah. Here four officers sat studying a map. When Qasim salaamed, one of them, returning his salutation, said, “We’ve been expecting you, Barey Mian. Some food is ready if you would like to eat.”
Ashiq was instructed to see to the guests in the kitchen.
As before, the presence of the girl aroused interest. Soldiers, drivers, overseers, and tribals gathered outside the kitchen entrance and peeped in from a window at the back.
“What’s there to see? Go on, get to your work!” shouted the cook, bolting the kitchen door. The soldiers, satisfied with the glimpse and somewhat abashed by the reprimand, moved away, but the tribals hung around the wire-mesh window peering in as at animals in a cage.
Ashiq Hussain studied the faces with heightening anger.
“Get away, you bastards,” he growled, stamping towards the window. Insolent eyes stared back at him in immutable contempt.
Infuriated by their avid, leering countenances, Ashiq impulsively reached for a full bucket by the sink and threw the water at them. The pyramid of craning necks and faces wobbled for a moment, then, swearing and jeering, the wet faces resumed their positions.
“I will deal with these mangy dogs,” snarled Qasim, pushing Ashiq aside. He scowled at the inquisitive tribals, and at the wrath of a man of their own lineage, they blinked in astonishment.
“We’re only looking at the woman who came with the jawan from the plains,” one of them said apologetically in tribal dialect.
“She has not come with the jawan. She is my daughter!” hissed Qasim. “I’ll wrench out your tongues, you carrion. I’ll gouge the swinish eyes from your shameless faces . . .” His clawed fingers quivered. They dispersed rapidly, and he sat down, trembling quietly.
“You’re going to leave this girl with them?” asked Ashiq. “There’ll be no one to protect her.”
“They didn’t know she was of our race. Now they will protect her with their lives!”
“Hah! Kill her, more likely!”
“Hold your tongue!” Qasim retaliated furiously. “And get away from the girl! Haven’t you any decency, sitting so close to her?”
Ashiq stood up and strode out of the kitchen.
“Let’s go,” said Qasim shortly.
Lifting their belongings from the truck, Qasim and Zaitoon placed them in a heap on the fine dust. Ashiq stood by, declining to help. Zaitoon gave him a sidelong smile and he walked up, silently assisting her father in raising the tin trunk to his head. He strapped the bedding-roll to Qasim’s broad back, and Zaitoon picked up the remaining bundles.
Ashiq, saluting the officers, walked down the wide, dusty pathway with them to the bridge. At the bridgehead Qasim turned to him. “There is no need to come any further, my son.”
Ashiq caught the heavily burdened man in a warm embrace. “Forgive me if I said anything to displease you.”
“No, my son, it is I who ask your forgiveness. And convey our gratitude to the Major Sahib. My child and I are truly thankful. Allah be with you.”
“Allah be with you,” replied Ashiq.
Looking at Zaitoon with anguished eyes, he touched her arm and repeated, “God be with you.”
Qasim and Zaitoon walked on to the dark tarmac strip straddling the river. Half way across the bridge, Zaitoon stopped to look over the railing at the central vigor of the waters. “I cross this spot and my life changes,” she thought with sudden reluctance. But the step into her new life had been taken a month back and she was moving fatefully on its momentum. She glanced back at Ashiq standing still and straight by the bridgehead, and she felt a pang of loss.
Ashiq kept standing. He had seen the girl stop and half turn to look at him. It suddenly occurred to him that Zaitoon always seemed to have been poised for flight; even when she entered a room. It was a quiver of her supple body that started in the soles and high, finely drawn arches of her feet.
The sun, already at a sharp angle, brushed them tepidly. Leaving the bridge they trudged up a sharp incline, and through a tunneling fissure into the closed world of mountains. Qasim, in an enveloping sense of familiarity, traversed the almost pathless wilderness with the assurance of a homing bird.
“A short distance and we’ll be there,” he said to the weary girl.
The stark heights they were crossing vividly impressed on Zaitoon what might lie beyond. Brown mountains rose endlessly, followed far up and away by endless snow. Before them stretched centuries of an intractable wilderness, unpeopled and soundless. Zaitoon’s limbs were aching and the uncanny stillness weighed down her slender body. She walked faster, and Qasim had to quicken his step.
Half an hour later, he stopped. “Zaitoon, cover your head, someone is coming.”
Soon she too heard the crunch of footsteps.
All in white, a figure moved into view round a hill; large and white it loomed in the dusky stillness.
“Salaam-alaikum, Misri Khan,” Qasim’s voice boomed joyously in the quiet, and hastening their steps the two men met and embraced. Misri Khan was wearing an enormous flared robe over his puffed-out trousers. The elaborate twists of his white turban spoke eloquently of the pains he had taken for the occasion. Seeing him close, Zaitoon was amazed at the similarity between them. Misri Khan was younger and ruddier, but he had the same eyes, tipped at the corners, and the same sharp, hawk-like profile as Qasim. He appeared self-assured, hard and arrogant.
Stooping beside the visitor, he slipped the trunk on to his own head. “News travels fast. I heard of your arrival a few hours back and was on my way to Pattan to fetch you.”
He laid his palm flat on Zaitoon’s head to bless her.
While they walked, Misri Khan supplied Qasim with news of his kinsmen.
Rounding the shoulder of a hill, Qasim paused. Shading his eyes against the slanting rays of the sun, he gazed at the valley below. “We have arrived!” He looked at the girl exultantly, his heart close to bursting.
They stood on what looked like the rim of a great bowl. The mountains once again stood a little apart and the base of several hills formed a gently undulating valley. Zaitoon studied the flat mud and stone huts sprinkled about the foot of the hills, and the cultivated strips of lush green crop that tiered upwards like a giant stairway. She could make out no single living form.
Once they stepped
within the mud-rampart of the village, each house spewed out its ragged human content and the villagers came running. Three or four fierce dogs set to barking and were restrained. Zaitoon covered her head and the lower half of her face with her shawl. The children, their noses running, their cheeks a fierce scorched red, stared at Zaitoon out of large, light eyes. Their hair was matted with dust, streaked bronze by the sun, and their eyes were amber, green, and blue.
A spry, stooped old woman clutched Zaitoon’s arm with talon-like fingers. After greeting Qasim and being blessed by him, she led Zaitoon possessively from the crowd towards her hut. The men remained in a knot about Qasim, but the women and children, breaking away, followed the old woman and the girl.
Hamida peered at her prospective daughter-in-law through puffy, undefined lids. She had been tall, but arthritis and hard labor had bent her, so that her head bobbed level with the girl’s. When her glance focused on Zaitoon’s inquisitive, apprehensive eyes, she gave an ingratiating chuckle and, anxious to make the stranger feel welcome, ran her claw-like fingers affectionately over Zaitoon’s head. Zaitoon studied the sallow face with a concealed revulsion. Deep scars on Hamida’s cheeks distended her toothless mouth in a curious grin. Old at forty, she had suffered a malicious disease that had shrunk strips of her skin and stamped her face with a perennial grimace. Even when her sons had died and tears had run down her scarred cheeks, she had appeared to be smiling.
The chattering, curious women followed them into a hut, bombarding Zaitoon with questions she was barely able to understand. For a time, she sat huddled on the dirt floor in a corner of the hovel, mutely staring at the unkempt rough faces.
Presently a huge clay tray filled with flat maize bread was placed on the floor in the center of the room. Breaking chunks of the rubbery bread, the women dipped them in a pan of water and fell to eating.