by Siya Turabi
Hassan covered his eyes. He heard a yell, then nothing. He opened his eyes and his father lay still on the ground, a few feet away from the tree.
Hassan ran towards him, but the bees were faster. A great cluster broke away from the nest and swooped down to gather above his father’s body, curled into a ball. The dense cloud shifted upwards, a moving, humming cylinder of power between him and his father.
A groan. Was that him or his father?
Something caught his eye, behind a nearby bush. A tiny flame, where the smoker had fallen. Hassan blinked a few times and then saw that the whole thicket was alight.
His mother’s voice was in his head.
Bring him back safe.
He rose to beat the flames with his shirt but his shirt became a burning rag. He let it go and shouted at the bees, ‘I want to leave with my father!’ He stamped his feet on the flames but the dryness of the forest floor made the fire too eager. His father was limp on the ground, his eyes closed.
That was when the leaves and bushes started to shake. Someone – or something – was approaching from behind the branches that bounced and parted for a giant of a man. The man strode to the middle of the clearing and looked from Hassan to the bees and to his father on the ground. The man took a breath in and whistled, a combination of short and long notes. His mouth made long puffs and small grunts; it was a language. He was talking to the bees and they were listening, the tone of their humming changing.
Hassan watched him. Their eyes met through the smoke and, for a few seconds, Hassan understood the power in this language. Among the sounds, a few made perfect sense, and as Hassan listened, he knew who this man was. He knew who stood a few feet away, solid and real.
The beekeeper.
His hair, the same colour as the cloud of bees that now gathered behind him, was densely matted, and reached down his back, thick and wild. Deep lines like cracks in dry earth were etched on his face and the bones of his jaw and cheeks bulged through his skin. He smelt of honey and wax and old trees. Hassan was caught in a spell of stillness.
The man turned in Hassan’s direction; a nod, and the spell was broken. The beekeeper picked up Hassan’s father like a sack of raw cotton. The fire was gnawing at a dry bush and soon found a tree. Hassan went towards it and began stamping but the beekeeper was moving away and beckoned to him with a nod. Hassan obeyed. He picked up the smoker, the knife, and took the basket and the pot with the honeycomb. Baba had shut the lid tight.
They all went together, humans and bees, through the forest. The bees stayed with the beekeeper up to the edge of the trees, quiet now. The beekeeper put Hassan’s father on the ground and stood up straight. He turned to Hassan, then, looking back into the forest, and said, ‘The fire.’ He strode back through the thickets and bush with a city of bees around his head.
Baba opened his eyes after a few gentle shakes and Hassan lay with him for a while; there was no rush. Geese flew overhead in a triangle formation, going about their busy lives. Lone birds burst into song from inside the forest. The crows were loud but the humming in Hassan’s head was a soft, gentle music.
‘How did you carry me out of there on your own?’ his father asked.
‘It was the beekeeper.’
His father only smiled.
‘The bees didn’t want you. Why didn’t you stop?’ Hassan whispered, too quiet for his father to hear.
As they walked back home, Hassan thought of the nest at the top of that ancient tree. The fire, making its way to the top. The beekeeper, alone against the fire. The bees watching him. At least they were all right. And the trees. How many of them would suffer? Baba leant on his shoulder and Hassan’s ankles gave way for a second.
‘Am I too heavy?’ his father asked.
Hassan shook his head.
A few men and women stood up from behind short grasses in dry rice paddies to look, before bending down again.
‘We’ll come back before the floods,’ his father said. ‘The bees will let me have more, I know it.’
Hassan wanted to scream. The trees. How many of them were dead? He held it all in. Inside the village, people gave them short glances; some of them shook their heads.
‘They think I’ve been drinking,’ his father said.
It was better for them to think that; the truth was more dangerous.
Chapter Five
The front door opened before they knocked; Amma was still at home and she covered her mouth when she saw them. Even when they sat down on the floor, she still didn’t speak.
‘The prize,’ Baba said, taking the jar out of the basket and putting it on the floor.
Her face softened and she smiled; she wanted to believe what she saw. Hassan dropped his head forward and rubbed his shoulders.
‘Well, come on, try some,’ his father said.
She pulled out the stopper. The honeycomb floated to the top and rested on the rim. Hassan leant forward; the golden honey smelt fresh and strong.
His mother took a stick and dipped it into the jar and, making sure nothing dribbled, she touched the honey with her finger and dabbed the lower edge of her eye. She did the same to her other eye and blinked a few times – sticky blinks. She laughed that high-pitched squeal again.
‘It feels good,’ she said. ‘Cooling.’
‘It’s your medicine,’ Baba said, coughing. ‘Now, I need to rest.’
Amma took him to their room and Hassan was left alone with the jar of honey which was sealed again, and the stick that his mother had left on the lid. He thought of the fire. How far had it gone? Had the beekeeper put it out? He scratched his forehead. Baba had gone too far with the bees, all for this small jar.
But if it worked…
He took a deep breath in. He had to do it… He dabbed his finger on the stick and brought it to his lips. Its taste filled his mouth. All the poets were right. The sound of humming played in his ears, distant and faint, and the beekeeper felt close now. Hassan sat back against the wall, exhausted.
They didn’t speak of the fire that day, not even when his mother came back from work. His father rested and recovered from the aches after the fall. Hassan thought he saw sadness in his face but whatever it was, Baba did not look at him. He came out to eat on the floor in the living room on the second evening.
‘It’s a miracle that you didn’t break all your bones,’ his mother said.
That night, Hassan lay back on his bed and put all thoughts of the fire away into a drawer in his mind that had been especially made for unthinkable thoughts. With it safely closed in his head, he saw the beekeeper’s face. Had he imagined the stillness he had felt in the man’s presence? When the beekeeper had looked at him, it had seemed like there had been recognition from both of them. Was that imagined too?
Hassan rolled over. They had managed the unthinkable today; Baba had found the black bees. If only he had not wanted more. The by-now familiar humming was starting again but it was becoming louder, more like the noise of the cloud of bees but steadier and calmer. Sleep came and the sound became a comforting tone in the background broken by hard knocks on the door.
The knocks didn’t stop. It was late.
‘Open the door!’
Hassan shot up and found his mother in the main room. The air was trembling around her and his father was running about, breathing fast.
‘Someone must have told the guards,’ his mother whispered.
Baba picked up the smoker and the knife and shoved them into the basket together with the jar of black honey. He ran out through the back. Hassan ran after him with his heart beating fast. ‘Baba,’ he whispered just in time to make him turn round. Hassan opened his mouth to speak but his father was already clambering over the wall.
The guards searched inside the house while Hassan crouched on the flat roof, watching his father running through the streets. He willed him to run faster, and when he couldn’t see him anymore, Hassan began humming to himself to keep unthinkable thoughts out.
The thud of heavy
boots crashing on metal steps made the dogs on the streets howl.
‘Stand up!’ they shouted at Hassan.
His mother was following them; she rushed towards him, the smell of smoke and chapatis still on her clothes. She stood between him and them.
‘He’s the son,’ one of the guards said – a man with a creased face, someone who followed orders. ‘You were seen hiding a deer with your father.’
‘He’s done nothing wrong,’ Amma said. ‘He’s only fourteen,’ she said.
All three guards went to the edge of the roof and looked out onto the street but his father had gone.
‘We’re watching him,’ the same guard said, nodding at Hassan.
That was when the blood rushed to his head and the ground seemed closer, but he kept standing.
In the early hours, Hassan opened his eyes. Black honey. He longed for that taste again. He moved to get up and realised he was still in his clothes on the bamboo bed under the sky. The guards. Baba running away. It all came back to him now. He flew down to the yard. Could his father have come back? The reeds on the floor were still in a mess. His head felt warm. He ran out into the courtyard where his mother sat under the mango tree, her eyelids drooping, their skin folded.
‘Did Baba come back? he asked.
She looked up at him, opened her arms, and he sank into her.
‘I didn’t say goodbye before he left,’ he said.
A bee flickered between them. ‘See, Amma, that’s a sign. They didn’t get him; I know they didn’t.’
‘Those guards,’ she said, ‘were they Mir Saab’s guards?’
‘Who else could they be?’
‘They could have been from the government.’
‘Who told them?’
‘It could have been anyone. Your father broke the law and called for protest.’
She sat up, pushing him away. He faced her now. She was breathing hard.
‘It would have been dangerous for you if your father had stayed.’ Her voice was different – hardly her voice at all, an earthy sound filled with fire that licked the walls of some deep well.
He went to the square when the sun was beginning to rise. Stallholders were bent over their goods and he held onto his satchel which was slung over his shoulder. Guards could be hiding anywhere, waiting for his father to come back. People shuffled along to the main gates to the fields, factories, or school. Nobody else’s life had changed overnight.
The woman was already at her spinning wheel by the gate. The dark wooden wheel tumbled down, thread and song spinning fast. She opened her mouth to yawn at him and reached down into the piles of cloth on the ground next to her, nodding at his satchel; he moved forwards. The jar was in her lap now, shielded behind the wheel. The smell of coconut was fresh and strong from her hair and skin. He opened the satchel, a great mouth for the jar.
‘He said your mother needs it.’
‘Where did my father go?’
Her hands moved back to the thread and her foot pressed again, up and down. The wheel tumbled, slower.
‘He gave me a message for you,’ she said.
Hassan fastened the buckle of his satchel. His hands were trembling.
‘Go back to the forest and find the beekeeper.’
The metal buckle caught on the skin under his nail. Pink blood the size of a pinhead welled up. ‘Did he say anything else?’
She shifted in her seat, taking her foot off the pedal. The wheel came to a halt and she steadied it with her hand, taking the thread with her other hand.
‘He said that you need to find it before—’
Two guards walked past. They were Mir Saab’s guards, chatting, unhurried. They wore a badge on their caps, a small crown with a deer on its hind legs on each side. Hassan’s heart was beating hard but they didn’t stop. She grabbed his wrist; her palm was rough.
‘Before it’s too late for your mother’s eyes.’
‘Why? Why should it be too late?’ He was only a few inches away from her now.
She let his hand drop but she drew near and whispered this time. ‘You’ll see him again when the floods come.’
‘How do you know?’
She bent her head.
‘Where did he go? Do you know?’ He held out a coin but he was invisible to her. The wheel started again and she began humming, looking straight ahead.
He backed off down the track again until he reached the river and walked along its bank. The workers were already bending to plant rice seeds before the rains came.
Everyone was busy and there were no guards. He was walking so fast that he was panting when he reached the corner where they’d hidden the dead deer among the reeds. Pieces of flesh still hung from the skeleton even though most of the inner organs were gone. He looked around. Baba might not be far, hiding in the forest or living in some thick grouping of trees and bushes by the river, waiting for Hassan to find him.
The beating of wings made him look up. Vultures were arriving but his feet stuck to the ground even when the birds circled the air above. It was like lifting magnets from iron. The more he pushed forwards, the stiffer his legs became. He wanted to go to the forest, but it was hopeless. The vultures waited until he was moving again before they dived down into the reeds.
They ate their meat slowly as they watched him head back to the village.
Chapter Six
Six days later
The floods had still not reached the state of Harikaya yet. There were rains in the north but the Indus River remained tame. Yellow and brown brushstrokes covered the land up to the mir’s fort on the hilltop.
Hassan stood at the edge of the village square, where the evening cries of prayer, the groans of returning workers, and shouts of stallholders flew around. Was his father one of them? He walked against the flow, letting his eyes drift through the heads and faces coming home. People looked back at him; any anger towards his father had turned to pity. Hassan hated pity the most but he saw it everywhere now.
He had woken up screaming one morning, two or three days after Baba had run away. Amma had come to him and taken him into his arms. ‘What is it, Beta?’
‘I’ve lost his face. It’s not there anymore in my head.’
Since then, Hassan had heard her walking about in her room every night, whispering prayers on the beads.
He tapped his waistcoat pocket. The piece of honeycomb was still there, next to his heart, in a small cloth pouch, dry and shrunken to the size of a large coin, but it was all he cared for.
A bee buzzed past his face and Hassan decided to show purpose, for when he showed purpose, people took less notice. He dodged a man on a bicycle with a red cloth wrapped around his head, slid through tired bodies, trotted alongside stray dogs, and sped up past busy cricket matches. A group of boys stopped their match.
‘Come and join us!’ the smaller one shouted. He was no taller than Hassan’s shoulders with bright eyes and his hair streaked with dirt.
‘Come on.’ This was the tall one, with a thin smile.
Hassan shook his head. The thin smile stood face to face with Hassan. The other three boys stood behind their new leader and Hassan backed away, keeping his eyes on all of them and waiting for the laughter. It had come a few times already. Flames down a line of oil.
‘His father ran away,’ the thin smile said.
‘Gone to live with another woman,’ another one said.
‘He didn’t want one who’s going blind.’
Let them think what they liked. He turned away but caught his leg on the rim of a metal bucket of water, tipping it over. His shin hurt and water gushed under his feet. The boys laughed. Hassan stood up to face them.
‘My water!’ a woman shouted, squatting on the pavement with soap on her hands, her wet hair streaked over her face. ‘Chalo!’ she cried, waving her arms.
He wanted to leave but the thin smile drew closer. The boys were like a wall in front of him and he backed off, one step at a time. They didn’t move and he took his chance. He turn
ed and ran down the narrow streets, skidding round corners until he reached the boundary wall, where he rubbed his shin and opened his mouth wide. His jaw hurt.
‘You’ll catch a cricket ball like that,’ said a man who wore the white shirt and trousers of the mill workers. Hassan’s mouth snapped shut.
Outside the gate, he stooped to swipe up a date, still untouched by the ants. It tasted good. Twigs snapped under his sandals, the sound of dry heat on the track. He had purpose now – his mother was finishing work soon. Thirty minutes later, he was at the two cotton mills, set back from the track. The early evening light washed over the cracks in the walls and the peeling paint and made the buildings look new.
Inside, clouds of raw cotton lay in iron trays next to stacks of empty cone-shaped baskets. He continued past doorways that led to the metal frames lined with bobbins. They spun the yarn into different thicknesses. The voices of a few workers made him hurry on. He passed rooms full of tubs of dye before he stepped into the main hall.
Here, row after row of great wooden weaving machines stood before him with only a handful of women left working behind them. His mother was in her usual place at the back, sitting behind a machine. He went towards her, stopping a few feet away. Strands of long greying hair fell out of her plait. Her bare lower arms glistened with moisture and her long cotton shirt stuck to her muscular frame. Paper patterns that she knew by heart lay on the floor. Her feet moved up and down on the press to lift the long wooden shafts high above the weave. She pulled the wooden stick by her head in regular time to let the miniature boats, with bright tails of yarn flying behind them, sail under those shafts across the sea of weave.
Lift and sail, lift and sail. A world of shapes chugged into creation. Hassan stepped forwards. After a minute or two she stopped, and her long fingers checked the smoothness of the geometry on the cloth. Diamonds, stars, circles, teardrops and hexagons. The shapes floated up above the weave. The honeycomb from the forest was made out of hexagons. He tapped his pocket once more. Golden wax.