Wild Boar in the Cane Field

by Anniqua Rana

  I had never talked much to Maalik. His presence was peripheral to my existence and had never moved closer. I never felt compelled to engage in conversation, and, apparently, neither did he.

  He acted strange. Either he would talk too much and not let others interrupt, or he would remain silent and we would never know what he was thinking. Only Bhaggan had long conversations with him, but you couldn’t really call them conversations. She would talk and talk, and he would respond with a word or two.

  So he surprised me when it seemed as if he wanted to connect with me. Was he responding to my despair?

  He stood silently behind me for a while and then, in a barely audible whisper, said, “Everything. I saw.”

  My shoulders stiffened. I covered my head with my dopatta and chose not to respond. He had been that distant figure as I had laid myself on the charpoy. What exactly had he seen? Would I use him as the harbinger of my deeds to Zakia and the maulvi? If he told his mother, she would keep it to herself; so would Saffiya. Then, as Maria had guessed, they would plan a quick nikah, and before I knew it, I would be living in Zakia’s house with her dreaded nephew.

  And, as if sensing my thoughts, he added, “I didn’t tell, but Taaj is gone, again.”

  Did he think Taaj had left because of what we had done?

  He seemed strangely calm. I wasn’t sure whether he was chastising me or supporting me. Before he could clarify, in my defense, I blurted, “Do you know what they’re planning for me? That good-for-nothing scoundrel, Zakia’s nephew—”

  He didn’t let me finish. “You have to marry someone.”

  His calm infuriated me. “But not him!”

  He took a cigarette box from his pocket. “Bring me a match.”

  I’m not going in again, I thought.

  “Amman’s in Saffiya’s room. They’ll talk till late.”

  I turned around to look at him, but the moon had risen, creating a bright halo around him and darkening his face so I couldn’t decipher his thoughts.

  “Only if you let me have one, too,” I dared him, and returned with a box with three matches. “You’ll have to make these work. Your mother counts the matches. She’ll wonder where they went.”

  He lit the cigarette, took a puff, and passed it to me.

  Bhaggan used to let me puff on her hookah on winter evenings when I sat massaging her tired shoulders. Both Taaj and Maalik had seen her sharing it with me and didn’t think much of my taking a few turns on the cigarettes so dear to them.

  I wondered if Sultan had ever smoked. I had never seen him with a cigarette.

  Again, I sensed Maalik entering my mind. How much did he really understand about the situation? How was he the only one of all three brothers who seemed to know my situation? “He was the best of the three of us. He wouldn’t have done what Taaj did to you. And if he had, he would have married you first.”

  Blood rushed to my face, but he continued not to look at me. “He would never have given you a cigarette, either,” he said, retrieving it from me, holding it with a finger and a thumb, and taking a long puff.

  The cigarette lit up his face, and as he blew a long stream of smoke and narrowed his eyes, I wondered why he was bringing up his brother, who had been dead now for so many years.

  “It was ugly the day he died. You know what the maulvi did? He asked me, not Taaj. Taaj couldn’t stand the horror. He asked me, the youngest, to help bathe that dead body. A body that was not even whole. A body with the intestines showing. The bus. It had done something. To the stomach. You’ve seen the slaughtered cows, haven’t you?”

  I wanted him to stop. He was making me feel sick. Why was he telling me all this?

  He stared at me, as if daring me to defy his strength. After a few moments, his eyelids drooped and the stare began to glaze over. His voice seemed to come from somewhere deep within him. A place that was not under his full control.

  “And then you know what the maulvi said? He said I couldn’t tell anyone. He said it was wrong to tell anyone about this sacred ritual.”

  I heard a bus in the distance, and then closer, probably near the village, a dog whined as if something or someone had hit it.

  “Sultan would have made a good husband,” he continued, in the same monotonous tone, while he puffed on his cigarette. “Sometimes when I stay guarding the buffalo at night, or when I sit in that room in the middle of the cane fields, I think of him. And think of our father. He was a good husband, too. That’s what Amman thinks. But he died before I was born. That means I didn’t really have a father.” He puffed some more on the cigarette, until he reached the butt, and then he sucked on it, taking in the magic that gave him strength to vocalize his thoughts. This was the first time I had heard him lead a conversation, and I wondered what had encouraged him.

  Then, as if the power of the cigarette needed to be bolstered, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a bidi, wrapped in dried leaves. “This is better,” he said, as he lit it, sucked on it, and handed it to me.

  I took a puff, not knowing how it would affect me, but by now I didn’t care.

  Maalik took the bidi back and continued smoking it, pausing briefly to add, “So, you don’t have a mother. And I don’t have a father. Maybe I should marry you.”

  The moon had risen higher in the sky and shone directly on his face. Or maybe he had moved. Or maybe I had moved. I wasn’t clear about what was happening. Was it only that afternoon that the maulvi had come to finalize my marriage plans? When I had decided to take my fate into my own hands? But it still evaded me. And now Maalik was giving me a way out. I could escape the destiny that others had chosen for me. I could create my own.

  We sat in silence until the bidi was finished. Something shuffled beneath the chameli bush. The white buds would bloom the next morning. Through the haze and darkness, they looked like flies in white funeral shrouds. I was back in that morning. The morning of the chameli garland. Of the snake scare. Of the pretend wedding. Of the violent death of Sultan.

  The smoke and the fumes built up bile in my mouth. I didn’t know where to turn, so I threw up the potatoes and roti that Maria had shared with me on the chameli bush.

  The Truth

  I never tried a bidi again after that night. The pungent smell sickened me to my core and reminded me of a memory that left me bewildered. Later, I learned that Maalik’s bidis were made not of tobacco and leaves, but rather of a concoction that apparently helped him think straight but confused the rest of us.

  Maalik’s altered bidi added to my sensation of stumbling into a bottomless abyss, my control over my life receding as I fell, but his proposal was like a bucket that scraped me as it was dropped down the well to save me. I would no longer be spending my life with Zakia as a mother-in-law and a husband who would cause me bodily harm. I had been rescued from a death of drowning in verbal and physical abuse. Like Bhaggan, I would live a long life and bear children who would care for me. My mind was still swimming in the murkiness the bidi caused, but I could, at least, breathe. At last, I would escape the burden of an unhappy marriage.

  I answered his proposal with silence, which he interpreted as agreement, as did I. This was what I wanted. Bhaggan would be my mother-in-law. She knew me. She wouldn’t expect anything different than how I had behaved all my life. She would continue to treat me like a daughter.

  As for Maalik, I could live with him. He had also known me all my life. We had rarely played together, but that didn’t matter. And he didn’t seem to mind what I had done with Taaj. He probably also didn’t remember that morning I had tried to entice Sultan to pin the chameli garland onto my hair.

  A buzzing around my head distracted me from my ruminations about marriage. I thought it was a mosquito, attracted by the stickiness of sweat and oil. I brushed it away with my right hand, but the sound remained for a while and was then accompanied by a dull, putrid smell.

  The bug landed on a piece of dung on the ground in front of me. Taaj had brought the buffalo this way, and they had depo
sited a load of dung. The bug hovered around the dung and then began rolling it into a ball. Maria and I had been terrified of these bugs when we were younger. Whenever we’d seen them roll the dung while we’d sat with Jannat to make dung cakes for cooking fuel, we’d started screaming. But my fear was now dead.

  The bug worked hard. The dung ball grew, and the bug rolled it away under a large rock. I waited for it to return, but it must have gotten its fill.

  I stayed outside after the bug had scuttled on, but now I began watching the stars change shape. I sought out the North Star, which seemed to appear in every direction. I heard a jackal scuttle around, making the sounds of day. The night flowers spread their aroma in worship of the sliver of moon, as if it were the sun. No human sounds of prayer emanated from the mosque at that time of night.

  THE NEXT MORNING, after I had made breakfast, Saffiya and Bhaggan called me into Saffiya’s room to tell me what they had planned. I wondered what Maalik had shared with his mother the night before. He never lied, but what was the truth he had told her?

  Neither of my mothers seemed upset with me. Saffiya was in charge. She knew what needed to happen, and Bhaggan sat silently. She never looked up at me, and I wondered why. Wouldn’t she be happy to have me as her daughter-in-law? She had always appreciated the way I cared for her, had wanted a daughter like me.

  “I’ll call the maulvi this evening, and he will do your nikah with Maalik, and then you’ll be married and my responsibilities will be complete. There’s no need to invite anyone.”

  Maalik must have decided to tell Bhaggan that he wanted to marry me without telling her the reason why. I wondered why she hadn’t suggested I marry Taaj or Sultan earlier. Had Zakia asked for my hand so soon that she had caught Bhaggan off guard? Why had she hesitated in asking for it first?

  Even Saffiya had not suggested that I marry Bhaggan’s sons. It would have been so convenient. I would have stayed in the house of my birth and continued to serve them both. But I had also never thought of marrying either of the two brothers. Granted, Sultan had seemed appealing when I was younger, but I also wanted to leave this house. That was how I could have released myself from the fate that I seemed to have bound to as soon as I had been found on that train. The fate that came with Bhaggan’s wiping off the flies and feeding me the lump of raw cane sugar.

  But now we had all reconciled. Saffiya announced my marriage with Maalik, not knowing that I had already shown my agreement to marry him. She didn’t seem angry with me, but she was upset by the turn of events.

  She fidgeted, picking up the spittoon that sat beside her bed, before putting it down without spitting in it. She straightened the pillow that she was leaning on and then picked up the flyswatter, even though the fly she could see was out of her reach and she knew it. She tried to swat it from a distance, but it was oblivious to her irritation, none of which was directed toward me. I wondered how Maalik had accomplished this.

  Bhaggan was also more animated than usual. She seemed to have forgotten her despair over Taaj’s disappearance the night before. She sat on the floor near the door, in her usual place in Saffiya’s room, but her manner was not the same. Usually during her daily meetings with Saffiya, she rarely moved from her position, but that morning she kept shifting her legs, unable to find a comfortable position.

  I thought I knew both of these women well, but I couldn’t understand their reaction to my situation. Wasn’t Bhaggan happy that I would marry Maalik?

  “Nah, Bibi!” she interrupted Saffiya. “Since Sultan died, this is the first time I will see happiness. I know Taaj has left us for a while and might not return to share his brother’s joy, but at least let the village girls sing some wedding songs. Let me cook a special meal. I’ll sacrifice a goat and make a large cauldron of saffron curry for the villagers.”

  Did that mean she was ready to celebrate our union, even though it was rushed? I wasn’t sure what she would say to the villagers. How would she explain that just a day before, she had been helping to arrange my marriage with Zakia’s nephew, and overnight she had decided to marry me to her younger son?

  I stood in front of Saffiya, listening silently to her and Bhaggan continue to plan my fate as if I were still the foundling covered in flies. But, unbeknownst to them, it was a fate that I had helped create. It was a small victory for me, but I would relish it in silence.

  Saffiya picked up the spittoon again and this time shot a load of spittle into it. Then she angrily wiped the excess moisture from her lips with the back of her hand and said, “That daughter of an owl, uloo ki pathi, how dare she? And I had put so much trust in her. She’s a nobody, that Zakia, and she thought she’d send her husband … and he comes and sits here, in my room, and has the gall to tell me he will treat Tara like his daughter, will bring up their children as if they were his own. He sits for so long, making the whole village late for the late-afternoon prayer, pretending his wife’s nephew is a man who can conceive children. There’s no way he couldn’t have known. Wasn’t the man married to his cousin? Didn’t she leave him and never return? If Maalik hadn’t told us, we would have fallen into their trap.”

  I needed to know more. “Why, Bibi? What happened?” I blurted out. What had Maalik said to his mother? Did he know something that I didn’t?

  “Let’s not dwell on it,” Bhaggan was quick to respond. She didn’t look at me.

  “Tell her, Bhaggan. She needs to know the truth. Zakia pretends to be a woman of God, but here she was, trying to make us arrange Tara’s marriage to a man who doesn’t even enjoy the company of women. If Maalik hadn’t told us about his preference for men, you would have been doomed. Zakia would have made me the laughingstock of the village. But why?”

  “Maalik, may he have a long life, told me last night that he had met a man from the boy’s first wife’s village. The man had come to the canal to water his buffalo. Maalik got talking to him, and he said the wife chose never to marry again. She was traumatized by how he hadn’t even touched her. Zakia’s family said it was the girl’s fault that she couldn’t conceive, but everyone has seen the man with other men, holding hands, spending time with them, even after he got married,” Bhaggan explained to the infuriated Saffiya.

  Spittle continued to fly over Saffiya’s bed as her anger increased on hearing the details. She wiped her mouth with her dopatta.

  “What was their enmity against me?” Saffiya continued to question. “I have always been a well-wisher for everyone in the village. You know that, Bhaggan. You, Jannat, and Zakia have all been on my payroll, and I have compensated you all handsomely. I provide housing. I buy you all new outfits every Eid. And this is how I am repaid? By being tricked into marrying my adopted daughter to a man who is not even a man?”

  Bhaggan’s explanation didn’t seem very calming. “The maulvi didn’t want a dowry, but Zakia knows you are a rich woman. You would have given them more than she has seen in her life. I never trusted her. Even on Eid, when I sent them the sacrificial meat, she would ask for extra. She’s greedy that way. Never satisfied. May Allah bless Maalik,” Bhaggan repeated. “He’s saved us all from infamy. He will marry Tara, and no one will expect a dowry from you.”

  Then she looked at me to clarify the gravity of the situation. “Maalik will give you a home, and Bibi Saffiya’s good name will never be tarnished. She will keep her daughter in her protection by marrying you to Maalik.”

  I looked into her eyes, trying to decipher the truth of this story. Had Maalik really known this about Zakia’s nephew but chosen not to tell me when he proposed?

  Having resolved the reason for the maulvi and Zakia’s deception, the two remained silent, collecting their thoughts, and then Saffiya spoke, as if to herself: “And I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of Maalik. Taaj, maybe, but Maalik?”

  Her tone indicated doubt about the direction we would be taking, but then, within the same breath, her opinion changed.

  “Some might say he’s simple, but Maalik works hard. Speaks less. He can ad
d another charpoy to the quarter in the fields near the canal. He takes the buffalo there anyway. You can live there. It’s close enough, and you can come here daily.”

  She was now at her best. She would fix this problem in such a way that the resolution would be even better than expected. Forgetting me, the main reason for all the excitement, she turned to Bhaggan, her partner for the past twenty-five years, and began to plan my wedding.

  So, Maalik didn’t care about what I had done with his brother and Bhaggan didn’t know about it? No one would ever know. But that still didn’t explain why Bhaggan seemed distant. If my situation was now resolved, I would marry Maalik. And he was the simple one, so why was she not happy? She had shown more pleasure the day I had made my first round roti in the tandoor. Having me care for her as a daughter for the rest of her life should have made her ecstatic. Saffiya seemed contained and continued her planning.

  “We can wait a few weeks. There’s no rush. It’ll serve Zakia right. She thought she could make a fool of me. I’ll sacrifice a buffalo. Later today, you can help me bring my bridal trunk from the storage rooms. Hamida’s mother can adjust my pink satin outfit with gold embroidery for the wedding day and the green satin one for the day after. The colors will look good on Tara, even if she isn’t as pretty as I was then.”

  Bhaggan didn’t disagree, and I said nothing. I had seen the outfits just a few months earlier, when she’d been airing out the mothball smell from her marriage trunks. Both outfits had sweat stains under the arms from so many years ago, when Saffiya had last worn them, before I was even born. When she had been bundled off to a husband chosen for her. To the house where she had borne no children and lived with a man who had died within the year.

  Both outfits were better than any I had worn in my life, but I wanted a new one for my wedding day. One like I had seen on the bride on the TV show. I could never tell the color that the bride was wearing, because the TV colors were always a blurry gray, but I knew I wanted to be dressed like a princess on my wedding day, and those outfits didn’t look very royal.