by Benyamin
Some time after that meeting, when we spotted each other in the desert, Hakeem climbed up a sand dune and shouted to me: ‘I have left a note for you. Read it.’ And he went away. After a while, I went with my goats towards the sand dune where he had stood. There, under a stone was a piece of paper. I read it.
Ibrahim Khadiri has been in this country before this. Knows all places and roads. Plans to abscond. Will take us too. Will let you know if anything materializes. Trust in Allah the merciful.
The joy that fizzed inside me! I cannot describe it in words! I was like a flower that was forced to blossom in the desert. It was a lie when I said I had not been thinking about my homeland and home. An outright lie. My every thought was occupied by fantasies of my homeland. I had only buried them underneath the cinders of my circumstances. I could see them come ablaze as soon as the wind of a chance blew. I felt my heart ache. A draining heartache. I cried. I hugged and gave Marymaimuna who was nearby a kiss. I am leaving, girl, leaving you. I am going. Don’t you have many Aravu Ravuthars and Moori Vasus here to keep you company? I don’t have anyone. My Sainu and I don’t have anyone. I need her. And she needs me.
I prostrated myself on the ground. I thanked Allah the merciful for remembering me. For having heard my cries. For sending the prophet Ibrahim Khadiri to release me. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!
How joyful my day had become. How enthusiastically I completed every chore. The arbab must have wondered about the sudden change in me. Arbab, beware. Only a few more days. It’s all going to be over. I will leave. Then let us see who you will spit at and beat with the belt. You will be alone. Then you will realize the value of this Najeeb.
I hoped my freedom would come soon. But nothing happened that day. I waited eagerly the next day. My anticipation was stronger on that day than the first. But nothing happened. There was expectation the day after that. But its intensity had diminished. Then, with every passing day, the tide of hope slowly began to ebb. It finally ended in terrible frustration. I despised myself and hated Ibrahim Khadiri and Hakeem for cheating me.
The hatred continued for two days. Then apprehension sneaked in. Had they escaped, deserting me? I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. If that was the case, I even resolved to take revenge on them by committing suicide. It was with anxiety that I looked out for Hakeem every morning when I took the goats out. And I experienced an unexplainable tenderness towards them when I learned that they were still there. It was the tenderness arising from the acknowledgement that I was not alone.
Gradually, I began to blame my fate. It was sport for Allah to play with me, have people lie to me, torment me. There is Najeeb to undergo everything you can throw at him. Allah, you didn’t have to do this to me.
In the next few days I began to lose all hope. There is no Khadiri-Podiri to redeem me. My fate is to live here and die here. My days went back to how they had been. With nothing to hope for. Nothing to dream about. A goat’s life.
Thirty
It happened when I was least expecting it. Hakeem came to me driving a goat. ‘Something’s happening day after tomorrow. Be prepared!’ He ran back after saying that. It was as if he had dropped burning embers in my mind. Something. What could it be? Still, he had asked me to be prepared. It was a good omen. But the fear that I experienced then! I suddenly lost all urge to escape. Even when it is set free, a goat reared in a cage will return to the cage. I had become like that. I can’t go anywhere in this figure and form. I am a goat. My life is in this masara. Till I end my life or die of some disease, I don’t want to show anyone this scruffy shape, this scruffy face, this scruffy life. Mine is a goat’s life.
I had been waiting for this chance ever since I got here. But when the opportunity offered itself, I became detached. Life is full of strange contradictions. In those two days, I didn’t make any preparations. Nor did I feel any special excitement. How many times had I readied my mind for such a chance to escape! But my fate felt like that of a bride whose groom ditched her on her wedding day. So I wasn’t willing to raise my hopes. I even cursed Hakeem for trusting the words of that African crook Ibrahim Khadiri.
That evening, surprisingly, the arbab called me to his tent. He asked me to sit inside. I was amazed. ‘Tonight is the wedding of the elder arbab’s daughter. So neither of us will be here. Stay awake through the night and watch over the goats. A fox may come. Snakes may come. Even thieves. You should look after everything. When I return in the morning, I will bring you khubus, biryani and majbus. Okay? You are my trusted servant. I’ve never had a servant like you till now. All the others who had been here were lazy. You are good. I like you. May Allah protect you.’
I nodded my head and listened to everything. This was the opportunity Hakeem had alluded to! If so, today is that happy day. Like a butterfly’s wing, my mind fluttered with joy. But I didn’t betray any signs of it outside. Donning a disinterested air, I came out of the tent. Those words were the reward for all my hard labour till then. Yes, only those words. I hadn’t got anything else.
At night someone else whom I had never seen before arrived in a vehicle. It was only when I saw the whiteness and cleanness of his dress that I noticed my own condition. Oh, how piteous I looked! I rated myself as the god of impurity.
When the visitor drove away taking my arbab with him, a strange enthusiasm possessed me, like the excitement of children left to play at home when their parents head off for a party. I ran around the masara in ecstasy. Shouting, laughing, leaping around. I ran towards Hakeem’s masara. There was Hakeem, so joyful. As soon as he saw me he ran towards me. He hugged me. Kissed me. We hugged and cried. ‘Ikka, I want to see my ummah. Want to see my uppah. Want to see my sister Shahina. I can’t stand it any more, ikka,’ he cried out in grief.
‘Sure, dear. Everything that you want will happen. Didn’t Allah bring us to this point? Just a few hours more. We have the Lord with us. Be brave,’ I consoled him, patting his cheeks.
Ibrahim was sitting on a cot. ‘Aren’t we leaving?’ I went up to him anxiously. Turning to me he smiled, revealing his gums. An innocent smile, like a baby’s. ‘Haven’t you suffered for so long, Najeeb?’ he rose up and touched my shoulder, ‘Just wait a little longer. Let the arbabs reach where they are headed for. From where it takes a long time to return. Don’t forget that we will be on foot. You should return to the masara now. We’ll come and call you when we are about to leave.’
Thus, my days of misery were going to end. I was going to escape from the goat farm. I couldn’t see the future. But it wouldn’t hold so much suffering, I was sure. Allah, most merciful, all praises are for you. All glory is yours.
I ran back to the masara. My bag was there on the cot. A bag crumbling from the sun, the rain, the cold, the wind and the sand. A century of dust caked on it. I tried to brush the dust off and open the zip. The top of the bag got ripped off as I pulled at it strongly. A pungent smell came from it. I had not opened the bag for a long time now. There was no need for it. The pickle Sainu had packed from home was still there. An unrecognizable black, dry thing. It was leftover from what I had eaten with khubus in the first days. I hadn’t finished it, but kept it safely inside the bag to hang on to Sainu’s warmth and smell. When my hopes of meeting Sainu ever again began to dwindle I must have forgotten about the pickle.
I fished out the pair of pants and the shirt I had had stitched before I came to the Gulf. One wouldn’t expect silverfish to survive in the desert. But those brand new clothes were completely decomposed and were useless! The corrosiveness of the desert wind was more powerful than that of sea salt. I wondered how much that wind must have corroded me. I didn’t have anything to take home. An empty-handed return. I threw the bag away.
The goats were getting restive inside the masara, as if they had sensed my leaving. When I walked into the masara, they gathered around me. If you leave, who is there for us, their eyes seemed to ask me anxiously. I was unlikely to meet these goats ever again in my life. My dear brothers, I am leaving. If I remai
n here any longer, I will die. I must escape from here. Never from you, but from my own fate. I like each one of you. I would have died long ago had you not been there. It is you, your love, that has helped me survive for so long. Wherever in the world I go, I will remember you as the brothers who were with me through my misery. I will always love you. It is Allah who brought me to my ill fate in this masara. It is He who delivers me now. I will pray to Him to release you too from this fate. Goats, my friends, my brothers, my blood, goodbye.
The goats came to me one by one. Aravu Ravuthar was the first. I stroked his cheeks. I advised him not to break the hands of the unfortunate one who might come instead of me (may no one else suffer this fate ever again), but to work together courteously. He nodded his head. Next Pochakkari Ramani. She wept. I did too. Then, Marymaimuna. I kissed her. She kissed me back. I told her to give her love to the one who came next. She bowed her head sadly. Then Indipokkar, Njandu Raghavan, Parippu Vijayan, Chakki, Ammini, Kausu, Raufat. I bade goodbye to everyone.
I wanted to weep when I reached the masara of the young goats. I felt like the midwife who had to part from the children who were born into her hands. I had been there when most of them were born. I had been their father and mother since. I had fed them. For a second, I thought of Nabeel. My heart ached from the loss. I lifted up Pinki, Ammu, Razia and Thahira and caressed them. They didn’t bounce away as they used to whenever I went to catch them. They crawled into my hands and into the warmth of my chest. Children, I know your fate when you grow up. You are to be dragged to the market and to the slaughterhouses. I shall pray to Allah to give you the strength to face that enormous destiny. That’s all this poor Najeeb can do. Weeping, I came out of that masara.
I went to the masara of the camels. They were saddened about my departure. The camels were creatures who didn’t give me any trouble. They came and went on their own. When they came they needed a little fodder and water. They were content with that. I could read from their expressions that they loved me. I saw love pouring out of their eyes. We wept, as I hugged them and they hugged me. I don’t have any human being to say goodbye to. All I have is you. You are the ones who kept me alive all these days. As I am to Allah, forever shall I be indebted to you. I wept some more.
Even while heading towards freedom, it is agonizing to depart from our loved ones. I experienced intense grief in that happy moment of freedom.
Far away, Hakeem’s call was heard. I came out of the masara. The goats cried out together. I didn’t look back. Had I looked back, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to leave that place. Hakeem and Ibrahim Khadiri were waiting for me. We left together. To a new world, to a new life.
Thirty-one
Throughout the night, we ran like mad, as if the sky was on fire. There was no specific route to the masara. The vehicles that came there had made a sandy road. We ran beside it, so as to not lose our way. We didn’t know where that path led. Winding through sand dunes that stretched as far as the eyes could reach, that path disappeared into a distant hill slope. Beyond that point, I had only seen the dust raised by vehicles. Anyhow, that path would meet a highway somewhere, we were sure. But we had no idea how long it would take us to get there.
Running wasn’t hard at all, as the moon was bright. We felt that both Allah and nature were with us. All through the way, we didn’t talk or even glance at one another. We just ran. Despite all that running, a feeling that we had not reached far enough, a panic that someone was after us, constantly followed us. We feared that every sound and whirr of the wind was that of the arbab’s vehicle. Therefore, the speed of our running only increased with each second.
After running like that for a long time, we reached a point where that mud trail forked into two different paths. One to the left and one to the right. We faced enormous uncertainty about which road to take to get to the highway. After a lot of discussion, we decided to take the left path. We began to run again.
After running for some more time, a ray of light appeared from far away. When we listened to the sound, we realized that it was a vehicle, moving slowly, swinging and rocking. I felt relief. We had reached the highway. The final means to our deliverance. Suddenly Ibrahim pulled us behind a sand dune. The vehicle was coming in our direction. We could not risk being seen. It could be our arbab. Or some other familiar Arab. Then we would be taken straight to the spot of the arbab’s wedding feast. Moving away from the vehicle’s path, we hid behind the dune. The vehicle crawled past us. Only after it passed us completely did we recognize that it was a mini-lorry. Its driver was the Pathan who brought hay to our masara. Oh, he knew me. Ibrahim thumped his chest. ‘He will save us!’ Shouting loudly, all three of us ran after the vehicle. But by the time we reached the road, the vehicle was very far away.
The frustration and sorrow I felt! I even cursed my destiny and the Lord himself. What greater sorrow than watching your luck zoom past you? Angrily, I pulled my hair and beat my chest.
‘What is gone is gone. It can never be retrieved. What’s the use of lamenting over it? We will find another way,’ Ibrahim Khadiri said.
We decided to wait there and try our luck with the next vehicle. The desert sprawled out dead on its back, desolate and empty. I prayed intently, Allah, let any driver, any familiar person, come our way. But no vehicle came in our direction.
Each of our decisions affect our future lives in one way or another. Now when I look back, I see that it would have been better for us to have waited there. But that night we didn’t think we could afford to waste any time. We felt that it would be stupid to wait. We had to get away as far as possible, as soon as possible. In the morning, the sun would light up everything; there would be no place for us to hide in the desert. When the arbab reached the masara and realized that we were not there, he would come with his binoculars and the gun. He would spot us in the desert, wherever we were. Then our fate would be that of the scary figure’s. We didn’t want that to happen to us. We thought since we had decided to escape, we must escape.
Again, we began to run. Now let me tell you something. If you are in the midst of misfortune, whatever you do will be in the order of first-rate stupidity. I say this from experience. If one thinks logically, we should have run in the direction of the vehicle. But, in our perplexed state, we ran the other way. That stupendous mistake is an example of how panic and perplexity put us out of our rational minds. In retrospect I can only console myself with the thought that this was destined to happen in my life and that I merely ran into my destiny.
We ran as fast as we could, keeping ourselves to the side of the road. The arbab had a vehicle and we were on foot. Within five minutes the arbab could reach what we covered in one hour. So we tried to get as far away as we could within one night and find a safe haven to hide.
As we ran we realized something—we were not alone. There were other masaras scattered over the desert. There too, unfortunate men like us were guarding goats. We saw a couple of masaras along the way which proved to be big hazards—because all the arbabs were not out attending weddings. Even a blind arbab would recognize us as absconders. Our appearance gave us away. Therefore, we ran maintaining a certain distance from the path. But there was another problem. As I mentioned earlier, the moon was bright. If we ran through the plains, anyone could spot us from a distance. And no one would mistake our three ugly figures for those of djinns. So, we ran by sand dunes and hills to have as much cover as possible. But that landed us in more trouble.
One of the hillocks we climbed led us straight into a masara. We didn’t have time to hide. Someone had spotted us. Besides, Hakeem stepped on someone as he ran. When the man got up and looked around he saw some figures running past him. He began to shout ‘Thief! Thief!’ He was not alone in that masara. Hearing him, others in the masara woke up and ran after us, trying to catch us. We scampered past them.
Their arbab must have woken up by then. We heard some shouts in Arabic. Suddenly someone pushed me down from behind. I fell on my face. In the next insta
nt I heard a gunshot. Had I not fallen then, a bullet would have pierced my back. ‘Don’t get up,’ Ibrahim said, lying close to the ground. When they looked, they could not see us anywhere. They seemed astounded. They must have thought that we were indeed djinns. The three of us began to crawl slowly. Our hunters fired aimlessly in the dark for a while before turning back. We crawled and hid behind a sand dune. It was only after ensuring that they had all left that we started running again.
As we ran, I thanked Ibrahim for his kindness and common sense in pushing me down at the nick of time. He was surprised. ‘Me? You were not within my reach. Moreover, I wasn’t expecting a gunshot at all.’
‘Hakeem, was it you?’
‘No, not me,’ he said.
How did I fall down, I wondered. Apprehensively we looked at each other. Only then did we realize the presence of a fourth among us. Filled with gratitude my eyes began to overflow.
Thirty-two
Only around daybreak did we end our marathon through the desert—hurtling, halting, falling, rising and dashing past hill, sand dune and ditch. At some point in the night the moonlight had disappeared and the desert turned into a cavern of darkness. Still, we kept running for our lives through that wilderness.
Hakeem was the first to stop. ‘Enough. I can’t. I need some rest.’ He fell to the ground panting. We were sure that we had covered a lot of distance and would not be caught soon. In that belief I too sat down with him. Actually, I fell down by him. My feet were aching severely. I was panting like a dog. My throat was so dry that I couldn’t utter a word. My heart pounded so heavily it threatened to break my ribcage any moment. My vision was blurred. After sitting for some time, I felt like lying down. Uncaring of the possibility of snakes or centipedes, spreading out my arms, I collapsed. But Ibrahim’s face showed no signs of fatigue. He came and sat with us as though he was enjoying the cool breeze after some light work. Before his great strength, we lay there curled up like stray dogs.
