Wild Boar in the Cane Field

by Anniqua Rana

  Even as a child, I wondered how supreme I was, given that our rankings had to do with things over which we had no control. It mattered if we were of a different sex. It mattered if we knew more or less than others. It mattered if we looked a certain way. But, most of all, it mattered when we were born and to whom.

  Animal slaughters were not uncommon in the village, and this was not the first time I had witnessed the spectacle. Maria had often joined her father, Isaac, to clean the blood and gore after a chicken, a goat, or even a buffalo had been sacrificed. Sometimes Maria would be given chicken livers, which we would roast on the coals in Bhaggan’s kitchen, but today the scene had sickened me. It had reminded me of what I could not change in my life. My birth had decided my life, and nothing would change its course.

  But this was not the day to ponder such thoughts. Maria brought me back to the present. Worried that the putrid smell of fresh dung on my skin would destroy all the hard work from the previous night, she ran toward me, ushering me into the kitchen. I still had to eat my breakfast, and later in the morning I would bathe and dress for the wedding. Hamida had ironed my outfit for me, and the three of us, Maria, Hamida, and I, would lock my shared bedroom door to prepare me for the event.

  Oblivious to my stomach churning, Maria tried to force me to have a freshly made paratha and a cup of sweetened, milky tea, but I pushed it away.

  “Amman Bhaggan told me to make sure you finish it,” she said. “She’s worried that her daughter-in-law won’t be strong enough for her son on their wedding night,” she added.

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” I admonished her, half hoping Bhaggan’s concern was true.

  Maria knew everything about what had happened between Taaj and me, yet she seemed to think my wedding would give me a fresh start. All I had done earlier would be forgiven, and maybe she was right. I could at least hope she was. I nibbled on the paratha, not wanting to argue with her. I felt my strength being slowly sapped from me, and I figured she was right that some sort of sustenance would renew it.

  Amman Bhaggan returned to the kitchen after serving Saffiya her breakfast. She took her place on her peerhi by the stove and started cooking parathas for the rest of the staff. As she drizzled ghee on the steaming bread on the darkened tawa, she said, “My daughter, eat your breakfast, then help me with the garlic. I have called Hamida and her mother to help with the other work, but I’ll need you this morning.”

  “But it’s her wedding day,” Maria began to complain.

  “That’s all right,” I interceded. I wanted to peel the garlic. It would make my day return to a normalcy that was familiar and comforting. With my henna-brightened fingertips, I carefully took another piece from the paratha and nibbled on it.

  TO CLEAN THE garlic from my hands, I rubbed lemon juice on them before I bathed under the hand pump, and then disappeared into Bhaggan’s room to prepare for my wedding in the afternoon.

  Maria and Hamida joined me on the charpoy that Maria and I had slept on the night before. Hamida rubbed chameli oil on my body to soften it, and Maria combed my hair to help it dry before she braided it.

  My wedding outfit, now shaped to my size, with Hamida’s mother’s help, lay spread out on Bhaggan’s charpoy. The armpits were still stained with Saffiya’s sweat from when she wore it as a young bride. To hold up my shalwar, Maria had threaded into it a bright red, intricately woven cord, Hamida’s wedding gift to me. The tassels of the cord were decorated with multicolored beads that would probably not stay on too long.

  For my hair, Hamida had made a bright pink cotton braid extender, with gold thread–covered endings, that had already started to unravel.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll fix it,” Hamida comforted me. With only a week to make the two items, she had had to cut corners.

  Maria forced bright green glass bangles over my hands, oiling them to help push them onto my wrists. Two had broken on her first attempt, leaving a trickle of blood and burning cuts on my right hand.

  “I’ll put some powder on the cuts to stop the bleeding,” said Maria.

  “Aren’t you happy that you’re not marrying that creep?” Hamida said, as she bit off the offending gold thread from the hair extender.

  “Can you believe Zakia asked for my hand? And my mother said she would rather throw me down the well than give me that fate?” she added.

  It didn’t bother me anymore that someone whom Hamida had turned down had asked for my hand. Of all that had happened to me in the past few weeks, that was the least troubling event.

  Not getting an answer from me, Hamida continued, “If you ask me, you’ll be happy with Bhaggan as your mother-in-law. She’s always treated you like her daughter anyway.”

  Yes, I consoled myself. Bhaggan is like a mother to me. She will never let me down.

  “Maalik, on the other hand …” Hamida laughed. “I always thought Taaj would marry you. But what do I know?”

  She spoke as if someone had been planning my future. But to me, my fate seemed like reactions to my attempts at happiness. My interest in Sultan had led to his death. My enticing Taaj in reaction to the marriage proposal of Zakia’s nephew had led to this situation I was still unsure about.

  Taaj had not returned after that day I had lain with him. I wondered what he would think when he came home and discovered I’d married Maalik in the time he was away. Maalik seemed happy about the marriage, but Bhaggan was not.

  And me? I would move to a hut in the middle of the cane fields and live with Maalik. I knew Bhaggan as a mother, but as a mother-in-law, would she be any different? If I stayed active, took care of the house, I hoped she would come around and be the caring person she had been before all this had happened.

  Maria and I focused on the bangles and didn’t respond. I felt my face redden, but before Hamida could say anything else, we heard a knock on the door. This startled us both, and Maria swore under her breath as another bangle broke and another thin gash appeared on the back of my thumb.

  “Let us in. Maulvi is here for the nikah,” Bhaggan announced from outside.

  Maria got up and unlocked the door, and Hamida covered my head with a chador.

  The maulvi entered the room, with Hamida’s father, the witness, close behind. Bhaggan stood in the doorway.

  Hamida brought in a high stool so that the maulvi could sit next to me. He sat down, read a few verses, and then asked me three times if I would marry Maalik. I bowed my head three times in agreement and then placed a thumbprint on a paper that I couldn’t read.

  I felt the tender weight of the maulvi’s hand on my head as he blessed me. It must have been his wife who had forced him to speak out for her nephew. He bore me no ill will, and I was thankful for that.

  Maria put her arm around me, and I sensed her silent sobs. I didn’t look up until everyone had left the room, and then I said to Hamida, “Lock the door again, and I’ll change now.”

  Then Maria and Hamida escorted me from my room to a clearing under the shahtoot tree, where the wedding feast and festivities would occur.

  Some of the village women sat on a charpoy covered with newly washed sheets and a few round cushions. As limited seating for the other villagers standing in the shade of the trees, an assortment of chairs had been brought out from the house, and in front of them two chairs were placed side by side for Maalik and me.

  I walked stiffly toward my seat under the trees. My outfit was uncomfortable, and Hamida had pulled my hair too tight when she had made my braid with the extender, which had already started unraveling again. My hand was still cut up from the glass bangles. The black kohl in my eyes had made them water, which Maria interpreted as tears, and I let her believe that.

  This was where I had first lain with Taaj, but a group of village women now sat on the charpoy where I had felt as if I had gained so much control. I stared at the women, and they just talked to each other, ignoring me.

  I wondered where Taaj was right then. I would be doing with Maalik what I had done with him, but without a
frog under my foot. I stifled a nervous giggle at this thought and looked around to see if anyone had seen me smile.

  Bhaggan had a strange look on her face that I could not interpret. Did she see me smile? I looked at my henna-covered feet again, not sure how to respond to her. I couldn’t remember when I had last been so unsure about Bhaggan.

  The wedding meal was served. Maalik came and sat next to me, but no one brought us the mirror to gaze at each other.

  Hamida pulled off his shoe and then turned up her nose, since it was covered in mud. He gave her a ten-rupee note, and she returned it. There was no laughter, no argument.

  For the wedding entertainment, the village women pushed the charpoys to one side and stood them up. One woman stood in the center, and another brought out an empty pitcher, which she would play as a drum with a slipper and her hand.

  The women began to chant a familiar phrase, and the woman in the center danced to the beat. I strained to recognize her, but by now I was tired of sitting on the chair for so long without moving. My back hurt, and I yearned for my charpoy.

  “Rancid rice and lentils ravaged my liver! Rancid rice and lentils ravaged my liver!” the dancing woman gasped. I knew this routine of singing and dancing from other village weddings and times of celebration, like the birth of a boy.

  The women encircling the dancer and the pitcher player repeated the absurd phrase, clapping in unison, a human drum. Eyes shut, face to the night sky, body arched as if doing the limbo, the dancing woman collapsed in a frenzied heap on her back. The others burst out laughing.

  Another dove into the circle, replacing the first as the whirling dervish in the center. As the beat reached a crescendo, the circle of clapping women stepped back. Tearing at her hair and clothes, the woman in the center now chanted, “I crush the white ants that bite me. I crush the white ants that bite me.”

  I now understood the sexual innuendos in every gesture, and the giggles and guffaws that followed. Some of the women had chosen to dress up for the wedding, but most wore mismatched outfits, as if they had left their homes on the spur of the moment. A few half draped their chadors, revealing multiple layers of earrings in one ear.

  My exhaustion escalated as I watched their glass bangles harmonizing to the rhythm of the empty water pitcher, beaten with a broken plastic slipper and a shard of broken pottery. The women relished this mysterious entertainment. Sweating, clapping, thumping, they concluded the performance with a frenzied hilarity, and I waited to be led away to my new home.

  TWELVE DEGREES BELOW THE HORIZON

  Rustling Cane

  I look at the stars and I see you,” Maalik said the night we moved our charpoys outdoors. In my eighth month of pregnancy, the airless mud hut suffocated me. The smell of cow dung and the fear of wild boar were preferable to our one-room home, ventilated only by the cracks in the wooden door.

  The rough rope of the charpoy dug into my left hip bone as I peered into the darkness at Maalik’s two dogs, sitting apart and protecting the buffalo, which stood at some distance from our hut, chewing cud. I could understand why Maalik was mesmerized by these animals he cared for. Their slow, hypnotic movements as they ate, as they chewed, and as they blinked their enormous eyes consumed my thoughts.

  I slipped into a space inside myself as I felt Maalik’s breathing beside me. We had left the other charpoy in the room, so I lay with my back to him while he reclined on the pillow we shared, looking up at the star-filled sky, puffing clouds of bidi smoke toward them.

  A mosquito buzzed above my head, and I sensed the quick movement of Maalik’s hand silence it. We lay in silence for some time, and then the two dogs lifted their heads and stared into the rustling fields.

  Maalik explained sleepily, “That’s not a breeze. Those are wild boar nesting their young. On some nights, they peer out of the fields and look at the buffalo, and I see the sparkle in their eyes. But I pick up the gun that Saffiya gave me, and they disappear.”

  Could boar distinguish between a stick and a rifle? I wondered, but I remained silent, wondering if they chose to listen to our whisperings in the night. A wild boar had bitten off Hajjan’s foot many years earlier, before I was born. I imagined the pain that might cause and felt my baby flutter inside me. I rubbed my stomach to calm her down. My heart began thumping, nourishing my fear. I squinted into the darkness of the fields, searching for the shine of a boar’s eyes.

  My fear reminded me of the night Taaj dared Maria and me to listen to the ghosts of her mother’s dead babies at the canal bank. Our own reflections in the dark waters terrified us. At night, the menace of silent shadows, howling hyenas, and wild boar was treacherously magnified, but I buried my panic deep inside.

  The dogs placed their heads down again. The danger had passed.

  Our bodies touched briefly as Maalik shifted his weight to pull another bidi from his pocket. I was used to his silence during the day, but at night the fumes of his bidi opened his mind and made him talk. He never expected me to respond. He talked and I listened.

  “Sultan died and Taaj left, and I sat by myself with the buffalo. On the canal bank, I watched them dip in and out of the water and stared at the sun sinking into the horizon. Fireflies shone over the glistening black buffalo. And I thought of you.”

  In the past months, I had learned how different Maalik was from my perception of him when we were young. As children, Taaj and I had made fun of him. Laughed when he repeated himself consistently. Ignored him when he talked out of turn.

  Now Taaj was gone. He had not returned since the night we had slept together. His memory was blurring because of the memories I was creating with Maalik. I could remember his handsome face and his laugh. Maalik never laughed, and he wasn’t as handsome, but his thoughts were deeper. I had never heard anyone talk about the things he discussed. And he never talked about them in the daytime.

  But when we lay together at night, he was a different person. He shared his thoughts, sometimes beautiful and sometimes strange. Like his mother, he told stories, but they were different. They were about what he believed had happened in our lives. And they started and ended abruptly, with no connection to each other. I never interrupted or asked questions. He told his stories as if he were talking to himself.

  I lay beside him, imagining his world.

  “You were like the smoldering sun to others. The sun that killed Sultan and lured Taaj. But for me, you’re a star. Just like your name. A star that tells me where to go. The village men and women, they laugh at me. They say you made a fool of me. But I am no fool. They don’t know what I know. They didn’t see what I see. You needed someone to protect you.”

  He took a deep puff of his bidi. “Taaj was the fool. You gave yourself to him. Look at what he did. He left you. But I knew better. He pretended he was smarter than I was. He laughed at me. You did, too. But I didn’t care. So long as you noticed me. The villagers, they don’t realize that’s all I need.”

  Maalik had told me this before. My existence was all he needed. I couldn’t understand. Was this love? Did I feel the same way for him?

  He became more animated as he spoke. “Tara. Allah is my witness. The stars are my witness. If anything happened to you, I would kill myself. Life without you would be my death.”

  This took me by surprise. He was professing his love for me, but I felt nothing.

  My baby inside me kicked for attention, and I stroked her to calm her down.

  “The day we were married, I knew I had caught a star that I could keep. Like the fireflies. But they would die when I clutched them in my fist. Their light dissolved. But you, Tara, my star, you’re with me, and you shine.”

  I stretched my foot to relieve the cramp I felt and thought of the past eight months as his wife, living in the hovel near the cane fields. Every morning I bathed in the canal before the field hands began their work. On the outdoor stove, my kitchen, I made the morning roti and cane-sweetened tea for both of us. I wrapped a piece of mango pickle in a roti for Maalik’s aftern
oon meal when he took the buffalo to water.

  Every day I walked the long distance through the fields to Saffiya’s house to help Bhaggan prepare the meals of the day and returned before sundown.

  Maalik was not a demanding husband. On Eid day, he brought me a pair of green leather slippers with gold embroidery that absorbed the dust from the unpaved paths I walked and became brown. They also became soft, and as I slid my feet into them, I was reminded of the comfort I was becoming accustomed to in my new life. I did a lot of what I had done before I had married Maalik, but now I did not have anyone telling me what to do.

  Every day, I cooked meals that I served to others; every other day, I warmed the soap and washed clothes; and once a month, Maria and I made dung cakes to build the fires to cook the meals and warm the soap. But I did this knowing it was what I did well. All the while, my baby was growing inside me.

  Maalik and Bhaggan became the two poles of my existence. I started and ended my days with him. I spent the time in between with Bhaggan in Saffiya’s kitchen. She seemed to have forgotten her grudge about having to pay for our wedding. What else would she have done but spend her time in the kitchen? That was all she had ever done. She didn’t know anything else.

  At times the two of them blurred into one: hazel eyes, adoration for the dead and disappeared.

  Without a pause, Maalik switched from me to his brothers.

  “Sultan was like a god. I remember him so well. Do you remember him? My hair, it’s not like his. His was always combed back. Mine curls. What do you think Taaj is doing now? Does he think of us? Amman waits for him to return.”

  He always became more excited after his second bidi.

  “And remember that time in the garden when Taaj said you would marry Sultan? But you didn’t. You married me instead. Isaac said we shouldn’t break flowers from the garden. Even now, I understand what he says better than anyone else. Better than his daughter. He can’t talk, but I know what he’s signing.”