Wild Boar in the Cane Field
Page 20
Twelve years after Tara and Bhaggan died and Shahida was born, Saffiya lived on.
Maalik lived, too, as did Maria and Stella. A few months after the tragedy, Jannat passed on, and Maria left her father in the village and joined her sister, Stella, in the hospital. Unlike her sister, she never learned to read or write, but the nuns hired her to clean the hospital wards.
Maria’s life in the village had prepared her to care for others. She used this skill with Maalik, who stayed in the hospital because he had no reason to return to the village. Stella had convinced the nuns to make the ward his permanent home.
As she cared for him, Maria tried to remind him about Tara, hoping he might retain those happy memories. But they had been erased, along with those of his brothers and his mother. She wanted him to know that he had a daughter, and she tried to remind him that he had a brother, Taaj, who might be living in another city. But none of this interested him. He found no consolation in what she shared with him.
We, the flies, knew better. We knew that Maalik was already lost in a world from which he would never return.
FIVE YEARS AFTER the tragedy, Taaj found his way back home and learned from Saffiya all that had happened. He came to the hospital to visit Maalik. He met with Maria and Stella. They huddled around Maalik, remembering the past and at times daring to laugh at memories that seemed so distant. Maalik stayed aloof, spending his days sitting on the hospital bed, venturing out only when Maria or Stella coerced him. Then he would sit on the charpoy outside the hospital entrance, staring at the horse carts and buses driving by.
Taaj had never accomplished what he had anticipated when he had run away from the village. His life in the city was neither better nor worse. But he began visiting his brother and his two childhood friends regularly. As a day laborer, he never had enough work, so he would join them at the hospital. He made just enough to survive. And when he came, he smoked bidis with his brother, reminiscing about the past that Maalik could not remember.
“Maybe if he went to the shrine,” Maria said to her sister, Stella, who had never been to the shrine and couldn’t understand how that would help. “Tara and I went there once with Amman Bhaggan. We bought dolls from there.” She smiled as she remembered that time. “And Maulvi says that Shahida has made it her home. If Maalik goes there, he will see her. He might even bring her back.”
We, the flies, knew that none of these desires Maria harbored could help Maalik. He no longer had the capacity to deal with the past. He was barely surviving the present.
“Taaj must take him to the shrine when he comes next.” Maria was adamantly optimistic.
At first, Taaj was reluctant to do what Maria asked when he arrived on a Thursday. Maria, however, was not going to give up. It wasn’t long before he chose to leave her at the hospital, wanting to take full responsibility for helping his brother find peace.
On Thursdays, the shrine of Sain Makhianwala, the Keeper of Flies, crawled with supplicants. The dying, the close-to-dying, and those wanting death for themselves or for others came with offerings to accentuate their prayers, bringing sacrificial goats, chickens, and sometimes even a buffalo if the need was great, like that of a large dowry or a rich son-in-law, and especially one with a small family.
Sugar balls were all that Taaj could afford to intensify his prayers. Somehow, Maria pulled together enough money for the bus trip but not enough for the gift for the shrine.
We, the flies, hovered over the brothers. Taaj steadied Maalik when the bus took off before they had fully alighted.
As soon as they arrived at the shrine, beggars surrounded the two young men. A coin slipped through Taaj’s fingers, falling soundlessly, rolling past the goat droppings, disappearing under torn newspaper stained with grease from spicy fries. Taaj looked longingly at the lost coin, hoping it was the ten-paisa piece and not fifty paisas.
Mistaking the brothers for beggars, the shrine keeper gave them roti and some daal, which they ate, and then they slept on the bare charpoys provided to supplicants who chose to stay the night at the shrine.
The two brothers slept soundly, as if they were huddled on the charpoy outside Bhaggan’s room. They slept as if their brother, Sultan, were asleep on a charpoy next to them. We, the flies, settled on Maalik’s chest. We heard it beat, and we sensed his peace. We sensed the pleasure of the young man dreaming of his beloved, Tara. Of the day he married her. As if, in his dreams, everyone were still alive. In his dreams, everything that happened unfolded the way he had wanted it to, not the way it had really happened.
We sensed his heartbeat accelerating to the drumbeat of his dreams, as if the village women sang in praise of the young man.
The king of nations, my father’s beloved.
The support of my mother’s heart; my brother ascends the white horse.
And we sensed his body stiffen, as if he dreamed of walking upright toward a white horse, to Saffiya’s house, to collect his beloved, Tara. He turned his gaze, as if to admire his brother’s dance to the beat of the hired drummer, and his mother, throwing rupee notes to ward off the evil eye from her handsome young sons.
He smiled as if he dreamed of pulling aside the strands of roses tied to his forehead to view his bride. The lover in search of his beloved, with whom he would unite by the end of the day. The day of his dreams since he had first sensed the smell of her beautiful, thick braid, seen her laughing eyes, and beheld her luscious lips.
And then Taaj awoke but his brother still slept beside him, and we, the flies, swarmed around.
Taaj stared at the dhamal dancers at the shrine as they stamped their feet and swung their heads, men and women together. The dancing continued until the early hours of dawn. Then he whispered to anyone who could hear, “Water. Can someone give me some water?”
A little beggar girl passed him an earthenware bowl full of water and then pulled him through a small crowd around the banyan tree to the right of the shrine. He drank as if his thirst could never be quenched.
Shrouded in a patched green cassock, Shahida sat cross-legged, oblivious to her surroundings. In front of her was a brightly colored basket filled with white sugar balls, offerings from her devotees.
We, the flies, circumnavigated the sugar pile seven times before landing. Within a few seconds, we draped the white heap of sugar balls with darkness.
Shahida looked down at us but chose not to look at the young man in front of her and recited:
A drop of ink on a white sheet.
Taaj leaned forward, listening to Shahida, and she continued.
Layla is exquisite like the night.
Her dark beauty is invisible to you.
Taaj swayed his head in understanding. Shahida continued to ignore him, but Taaj was now lost in the depth of her words.
We, the flies, saw Maalik awaken, stand, and stretch. We saw his searching eyes, and we saw his acknowledgment as he turned around and returned to his life, leaving his brother, Taaj, at the shrine.
Shahida nodded, then swung her head back, reflecting the starlight in her eyes.
We, the flies, spiraled toward the starlight. Shahida and we became one.
Oblivious to the squalor and stench, Shahida slipped over the devotees before her, swiftly, racing the sunrise over the alfalfa fields, skimming the rising steam.
Elongated by the setting moon, her shadow melted into the fumes of dung cakes beside the river where the buffalo stood sleeping. She hovered over the mangy street dog still searching for his soul but flew rapidly on toward the mud hut in the middle of the cane field.
Her brief life as one of us would soon end, to begin again on the still-damp dung cakes or on some rotting fruit, but before that happened, she would reach her destination.
Her exhausted wings dragged, but as long as she saw the movement around her, she kept going. As a fly, she could transcend space and time.
During the flight, the past became the present and she was no longer twelve; she was not yet born. She was yet to emerge from her mother. To live and rel
ive each moment of ecstasy.
About the Author
Anniqua Rana lives in California with her husband and two sons. When she’s not working as an educator in the community college system, she visits her family in Pakistan and England. The rest of the time, she reads, cooks, travels, and enjoys mystical music and poetry and does whatever it takes to keep her grounded and happy.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Faint Promise of Rain by Anjali Mitter Duva. $16.95, 978-1-938314-97-1. Adhira, a young girl born to a family of Hindu temple dancers, is raised to be dutiful—but ultimately, as the world around her changes, it is her own bold choice that will determine the fate of her family and of their tradition.
Tasa’s Song by Linda Kass. $16.95, 978-1-63152-064-8. From a peaceful village in eastern Poland to a partitioned post-war Vienna, from a promising childhood to a year living underground, Tasa’s Song celebrates the bonds of love, the power of memory, the solace of music, and the enduring strength of the human spirit.
The Belief in Angels by J. Dylan Yates. $16.95, 978-1-938314-64-3. From the Majdonek death camp to a volatile hippie household on the East Coast, this narrative of tragedy, survival, and hope spans more than fifty years, from the 1920s to the 1970s.
The Same River by Lisa Reddick. $16.95, 978-1-63152-483-7. As Jess, a feisty, sexy, biologist, fights fiercely to save the river she loves, Piah, a young Native American woman, battles the invisible intrusion of disease and invasive danger on the same river 200 years earlier—and the two women mysteriously begin to make contact with one another.
Light Radiance Splendor by Leah Chyten. $16.95, 978-1-63152-178-2. Set in Eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century and culminating in contemporary Israel and Palestine, Light Radiance Splendor shows how three generations of the Hebrew Goddess Shekinah’s devoted mission keepers grapple with betrayal, love, and forgiveness.