by Benyamin
At dawn a new sun came calling—of freedom, of new life. I woke up rubbing my eyes as I heard Ibrahim call us. At some point, we had fallen deeply asleep. For a panicky moment, I thought I was in the masara and it was the arbab calling me. But when I opened my eyes, there was no masara in front of me—no goats, no camels, no arbab, no tent. Hakeem was lying nearby, curled up. Suddenly, I became alert. Coming to life, I shook Hakeem. ‘Hakeem, do you see, this is where we are. Our days in hell are over. Now we are free forever. Allah, thank you. Lord of all beings, your benevolence is great. Your love is immeasurable.’ I wept looking at the sky. I shook Hakeem and called him again. Knocking my hand away, he turned over. He was enjoying the deep sleep of freedom. The freedom to lie down till one had had enough sleep. I left him sleeping. Stretching my back, I looked all around. There were small hills and sand dunes all around. I couldn’t see very far. I looked for Ibrahim Khadiri. He was standing on a sand dune, peering into the distance.
‘Ibrahim, can you see a road from there?’ I called out. He didn’t say anything, but motioned me towards him. Anxious about what awaited me, I climbed up the sand dune. Desert! A real desert! An endless stretch of sand as far as the eye could see in the front and the back, on the right and the left. A sea of undulating sand from horizon to horizon! There was nothing to hinder my sight. No tree. No plant. No hill. Nothing at all. Nothing.
It was only then that I got a general idea about the place I had reached. While running we hadn’t noticed when our feet lost contact with hard soil and sunk into loose sand. A cold fear slithered into my mind. I looked at the face of Ibrahim Khadiri. Anxiety was writ on his face too. Hakeem alone hadn’t been infected by that terror yet. He was still deep asleep.
Ibrahim and I looked at each other. Allah, where have we reached? Where did we come from? Where should we go now? Where is the world we came looking for? East, west, south or north? Which direction will take us to our destination? Who knows! There was only sand all around. Dunes of sand. Had it been another occasion, the picturesque vastness of that sea of sand would have held romantic appeal for me. But at that point, that sea really frightened me. Not even a canoe or a boat would do, one needed a big ship to cross it. Lord, how can we cross it? Without a drop of water, without a morsel of food? Once the sun is truly up, it will breathe all its heat on us. Can we make it before that? Lord, you are our refuge. May our infinite faith in you save us.
‘Ibrahim, do you remember, the whole of yesterday we were running westward. Let’s keep going in that direction. It would be impossible to not reach a highway,’ I said.
Without replying, he paced up and down anxiously. Finally, after a lot of deliberation, he said, ‘The city is in the east. We will walk towards the east.’
We woke Hakeem up. I realized something when he rose and brushed the sand off himself. Hakeem had a terrible stench—the same stench that I had identified when I first reached the masara. I had long stopped noticing that smell. But it came back after I left the masara. In fact, I too had the same stench. But it took me many more days to smell it on myself.
We began to walk. It should have been a time to rejoice as our dreams of freedom had finally materialized. But we were worried. The arbabs must have returned and would be looking for us. The realization that all three of us had escaped together would surely enrage my arbab. Where would he have taken his vehicle to find us? Anyway, arbab, we are not in the direction in which you are searching for us. We have arrived far beyond your reach.
But had we really run far enough to be safe? We had yet to cross this desert and find the highway. Some driver would have to take pity on us and take us to the city. Everything would be over if we are spotted by some Arab. From our looks and our clothes, anyone could tell at a glance that we were running away from a masara. My mind was filled with more anxiety than elation. Still, we kept walking, hope pulsating in us. Sleep had helped us regain our energy, we no longer felt the fatigue that had weighed us down the previous night. The conviction that we were not slaves but free men made us march onwards with gusto.
I had no idea that there was a momentous desert odyssey ahead of us.
Thirty-three
The heat of the desert didn’t even touch us. We had withstood its heat and thirst every day. The desert can’t easily overpower someone who has been in a masara for many years. It is only those who live in palaces and head out to the desert out of curiosity or for fun who get tired in its heat. We would reach our destination when the desert allowed it. We had Allah with us. It was our faith and confidence that helped us bravely walk through that desert.
We started to enjoy the sights. It was as if we were going for a festival. Hakeem was the liveliest. He wanted to know the what, the why and the how of each and every thing. In a childlike manner, he asked Ibrahim many questions. Ibrahim, who had immense knowledge about the desert, patiently answered him.
We were really fascinated when we reached a forested valley that had been fossilized over time by the constant sand coatings of ceaseless sandstorms. A place beyond our imagination. Several sand mounds were scattered over a large area. Hakeem was very curious and went down into that valley to touch one. Sand began falling off that mound. I wondered how many centuries of sandstorms had resulted in the transformation of the trees and vegetation of the forest. Fearfully, I imagined the desert as a dense forest with the dust storms gradually devouring it.
‘We should not stay here for long. It could be a very dangerous place. A sandstorm might come unexpectedly. Then we might never escape,’ Ibrahim said.
We had hardly taken ten steps when, suddenly, we saw some movement in front of us. Initially we thought it was water, the alluring illusion of a mirage. Then a hissing sound became audible. Was this the sandstorm Ibrahim had warned us about, we wondered. When we looked carefully, the image ahead danced and swayed, like a garden nodding in the wind. Besides, it was inching ahead. Ibrahim cried out in dread, ‘Snakes!’ Only then did we see clearly. A battery of snakes swaying their heads and slithering forward. Not one or two. It was probably many hundreds or a thousand, in unison. Again, a sight beyond our imagination. They were marching towards us like a huge army, stirring the dust of the desert. There was a huge snake in the front, like a commander, raising its head. Behind it, many soldiers!
‘Hide your head in the sand and don’t move. There’s nothing else we can do,’ Ibrahim said.
Like ostriches we hid our heads in the sand, and lay still. After a while, the hissing approached us. My body was trembling with fear. Ten seconds would suffice for death to come if the fang of one of those creatures even slightly grazed my body. Calling out to Allah very loudly in my mind, I lay still. They moved forward, crawling above us. As each one touched my body, my skin seared as if stroked by a fiery stick. We slowly lifted our heads and looked when we felt sure that they were at a safe distance. All those parts of our bodies that were bare had been blistered as if lashed by whips.
If you are unfamiliar with deserts, you may wonder if this desert was a desert at all. Swarming with living beings it was almost a forest. Snakes, centipedes, lizards, spiders, butterflies, vultures, wolves, rabbits, mongooses and so many other creatures like them. Each with their own paths, their own territories, their own laws—man, his law and his life had no significance here. These creatures didn’t value human boundaries. They were the inheritors of the desert. Allah had bequeathed this space to them. They had been created to live here. And I was the trespasser. The blisters on my body were merely their gentle chastening.
We did not have much problem during the day but had to be careful at night. After sunset, those creatures who hid in holes emerged to catch their prey. Those snakes were dreadfully poisonous. There were more than fifty types of snakes. How many snakeskins did we see strewn all along the desert as we walked! Ibrahim would pick one up and tell us about the snake it came from, and also about the number of seconds it would take that snake to kill us with its bite. Even the bite of some desert spiders and centipedes co
uld kill humans.
Do you know that there are tortoises in the desert? Though not as big as sea turtles, they are of a considerable size. They come out when it is not very hot. They live for about a hundred years and almost forty per cent of their body is water. Even camels, whom we call the ships of the desert, have to drink water once in three days. But the desert tortoises have the ability to store water for six months.
The one creature that I wanted to see in the desert, but couldn’t, was the ostrich. The sight of it hiding its head in the sand still remains only a dream. Another creature I had heard about was the camel spider—that it gnaws away the belly of the camel running at twenty-five kilometres an hour by clinging to its side and that it was as big as an Arab dining plate and so on. When I actually saw it, I understood that whatever I had heard was an exaggeration. It was Ibrahim who pointed one out to me as we were striding through the desert. Since I had imagined them to be quite large, I wondered if the ones I saw were baby spiders. Ibrahim smiled. What I had heard were fictitious accounts about the poor thing. Everything else, other than that it spent its brave life in the harsh desert, was hyperbole.
The desert wonder I saw was the flying chameleon. While walking in the afternoon sun, a gold tint flashed across my sight and disappeared. The chameleons were like djinns or ghosts. They would vanish in the flash of a second. I wondered if it was an illusion created by my tired and heat-dried eyes. They would appear abruptly from the sand and gaze at us, their eyes flickering from left to right as though they were terrified. Sometimes we could see them flying to some distance. In fact, their zooming made it seem like someone was hurling stones from behind us. Many a time I looked back to see if it was so. Then, another flying figure would emerge from the folds of the sand, to leap and soar. I would have never imagined them to be chameleons.
Then, one day, when we climbed up a sand dune, there they were, playing a game of golden hues. They looked like finches prancing up and down some tree branch. About a hundred of them were frolicking in that sand lake. I wanted to catch one and find out if it had wings or if it flew using only its legs. But they flew and dived into the sand so quickly that, forget catching, I could barely see one closely. ‘These chameleons never drink water,’ Ibrahim Khadiri said. If you can live a whole life without drinking water, chameleons, oh golden chameleons who made this phase of my arduous journey so happy, please gift me a trace of that ability so that I can complete this journey.
Around noon the air became opaque with dust and we felt sleepy. We couldn’t see past ten feet. That made our walk even more difficult. It felt as though it was fire that lit up the day and not sunshine. As the heat increased, our bodies wilted. The exuberance that had pumped us up at the beginning of the day had slowly evaporated. But Ibrahim kept encouraging us. ‘Another mile, and we might reach the highway!’ After all it is only hope that makes a man go forward. We walked. But before our eyes it was only the desert that rolled out endlessly. Sand, sand and more sand.
The afternoon passed too and it was evening. We still didn’t find the only thing that we were looking for. The sun that crawled above us to the west deserted us in the wilderness and rode out alone into the horizon. After a day spent without a drop of water to moisten the tongue, the night approached. Gasping and exhausted, we sat on the sand. I broke down. The agony of not reaching anywhere even after a whole day of walking left me in tears. Hakeem joined me in my tears.
In the first days when I reached this country I had often longed to live in a beautiful desert, a desert where sand stretched out like sea. But when I finally came upon a beautiful desert it terrified me. We have heard many stories of those who had to cross the desert. We have read that they were thrilled by their adventures. But all of them were assisted in their voyage by strong camels. To help them, they had the Bedouins, who knew the desert like the lines on their palms. Their bags were filled with food and they had leather canteens full of water. Those who had tried to cross this desert on their own, without food and water, must have fainted in the sand and died, not living to tell their tales. Allah, are we to become like them? We didn’t come to the desert looking for fun. Nor out of curiosity. We came to live. To be alive. To meet once again the beautiful faces of those who love us. To wipe the tears they shed for us from their cheeks. We have reached this spot in our effort to do so. Allah, only you, only your strength, only your way, only your safety can protect us. Please Allah, don’t kill us by roasting us in this desert.
Thirty-four
The next day Ibrahim Khadiri woke us up long before dawn, ‘Let’s walk before it gets hot.’
My swollen legs were heavy as an elephant’s as I got up. Ignoring the pain, we dragged our feet through the loose sand. After we walked a short distance, the sun appeared on the eastern arch. We knew that it would set the sand ablaze.
The sky seemed like an upturned grey-blue basket covering us from above. One side of it began at some corner of the desert. It gradually went up to reach its high point above my head and then slowly came down to its rim in another corner. We were like chickens trapped inside that basket. Somehow, we had to lift it and get outside. But to do that we had to at least reach its rim. A rim that, despite all the walking, we had so far failed to reach. A sense of endlessness engulfed us. Nothing registered in my view but the sheer blue of the sky and the blazing sun.
‘Don’t panic,’ Ibrahim consoled us. ‘The horizon is merely two and a half miles from us. And perhaps just beyond that is the path we are looking for. Don’t get dejected, walk with hope. Once we get tired, we will fall down under this sun for the rest of the day. So walk as well as you can, even if it is a struggle. We have to find a secure place as soon as possible.’
After walking for a while, we came across the signs of a river that had drained into the desert long ago. I was amazed. In that burning heat it was difficult to imagine that a river once ran through these sands. But its lines were still distinct. I visualized how men in the past stood on its shore and drowned while trying to cross it. At the same shore where they died swallowing water, I suffered as my parched throat cried for a drop of water. How far is that moment in the past from my situation? What might have happened in the interim? I imagined the river slowly drying up and the living beings in it gradually perishing. I could hear the trees and shrubs on its banks lament for water. Time, how strange is your face!
By then we had spent two nights and a day and a half without a drop of water on our tongues. We could barely keep our eyes open. We walked in a state of half sleep. When we crossed all boundaries of tolerance of our condition, Hakeem began to moan for water. The problem is we are used to excessive use of water. Man can easily survive without food or water for up to fourteen days. ‘Try to walk thinking about Allah,’ Ibrahim admonished him.
But Hakeem kept on asking for water. All along the way. After walking for some more time, he grabbed my hand. ‘No, ikka. I can’t. You carry on. Let me lie down here.’
I scolded him, ‘Hakeem, don’t give up. Don’t fall down. Walk.’ Then I chanted to him, ‘Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.’ He repeated along with me, ‘Allahu Akbar.’ It was as if that chant and its resonance brought us a new strength. With that energy we walked for a while longer. Then slowly our walk began to lose its vigour and vitality. Our weary legs would not take us any further. We were so exhausted that numbness and pain overwhelmed us. The skin of our feet had become sore from the heat of the sand. Hakeem’s feet were already swollen. But drawing on his remaining strength he dragged his legs and tried to go on. Within the next few seconds, we realized to our horror that it was not possible any more.
Worn out, Hakeem fell to the ground. As if I had been waiting for him to fall, I also lay down near him. Ibrahim scolded us, ‘Get up. This rest will only make you tired. It will not refresh you. This sun will drain the last drop of water from your body. Don’t fry your body like this in the sand, just go on for a bit longer. The sand will get cool. The desert cools fast. Then you can rest. Haven’t we endured
this long enough? Hold on for just a bit longer.’
‘Off you go, dog!’ Hakeem cried in anguish. ‘Have you got us out to be killed? Is this what you had promised us? We were better off in the masara. Even the arbab’s torture was not as bad as this. I can’t! I am tired. Let me die if I have to. You can save yourself if you want.’
I saw Ibrahim Khadiri’s eyes getting wet for the first time during that journey. Helplessly, he raised his hands to the heavens. Then he knelt down and prayed.
The desert was boiling. I felt as if I was lying in Allah’s frying pan. Still, that rest after the long trek brought me relief. Initially I found the heat unbearable. But after lying like that for some time, I got used to it. By then, the sun, the desert and I were equally hot. What remained distinct was the insatiable thirst. But there was no way to quench it. Even the last drop of spittle in my mouth had dried long ago. I beat my breast and cursed my foolishness for not taking a little water in a bottle or some vessel before we ran away. We had left at a moment when all sense had deserted us. Now we had to face the consequences. What else to do?
We realized that what Ibrahim had said was true. The longer we rested, the more tired our bodies became and the more stubbornly they refused to revive. Darkness entered my eyes. I became dizzy. I vomited twice. After a while, Hakeem also vomited. Ibrahim removed his clothes and tried to make some shade for us with them. But that too was inadequate. He tried to raise us up and make us sit. But we just flopped down. I slipped into a deep sleep. Hakeem and I lay there like two stray dead bodies. If he wanted, Ibrahim could have deserted us and found a route to escape. But he kept watch over us till we opened our eyes when it was finally night.
