Shabanu

by Suzanne Fisher Staples

  Nose Pegs

  The sky is pearl-gray when I awake, Mithoo’s nose within an inch of mine. I reach up and rub his forehead. He snorts, and Phulan grabs the quilt away and pushes me out of bed.

  Yawning and rubbing my eyes, I tie a piece of soap into the corner of my chadr. I pick up two earthen pots and a padded ring to balance one pot on my head. The other fits under my arm, balanced on my hip. Mithoo and I set off for the toba.

  Mithoo’s small brass bell jingles cheerfully as he bobs his head, impatient for me to fold back the reed door leading outside from the courtyard. The red cord holding his bell is too tight for his thickening neck, and I promise him a new one. Sher Dil squeezes through the door as I fasten it shut again.

  Crossing the dunes to the toba, I think of Guluband. He seems a part of my life that is long past. His going has taught me both the strength of my will and its limits. I know Dadi thinks my bent for freedom is dangerous, and I’m learning to save my spirit for when it can be useful.

  With Guluband, Tipu, and Kalu gone, Dadi will have to train several of the three-year-old camels to work. I make Mithoo carry the empty goatskin to the toba.

  I look out over our dwindling water supply. Lavender ribbons reflect from the sky in the last few moments before the sun rises. We probably have a month, perhaps three weeks, before the water disappears into the air. The monsoon begins in two months—the time for flowers, mushrooms, and weddings.

  Two-toed camel footprints are baked into the shiny clay at the outer edges of the toba. I lift my skirt with one hand, and the mud squirts between my toes as I enter the water. I push aside the green scum that floats just under the surface and drape the edge of my chadr over the mouth of the pot as a filter.

  I take the filled pot to the bathing rock at the edge of the toba and lift my tunic over my head. I throw my hair forward and pour water on it.

  The sun edges over the horizon. I can feel its heat on my back and shoulders as the water trickles over my scalp. I rub the loamy soap into my hair. I squeeze my eyes shut, letting the soapy water drain down over my shoulders and neck, rubbing it into my skin before rinsing off to conserve every drop. Mama bathed Phulan and me with a single cup of water when we were small.

  My fingers touch a sore spot on my chest, and I look to see if there is a bruise. My shoulders are drawn forward with the chill of the water, and at first I don’t notice that the skin around my breasts has begun to swell. I throw my shoulders back and stare in disbelief.

  I explore my sore little breast buds with mixed feelings. Phulan’s breasts have been increasing in size for more than a year. I wonder with a vague longing whether I’ll ever be as beautiful as Phulan.

  On the other embankment, poor Mithoo walks slowly, skirting the herd, his head turned away from me, bobbing and still looking for a nursing female that will take him to her.

  I look up as Phulan crosses the last dune to the toba. The sun shines through her red chadr, outlining her slender figure in its glow. Two pots balance on her head, and she walks with the liquid grace of a desert woman. She wrinkles her nose when she sees me watching. I hope there’s no trace of envy in my eyes. She dips a knee for me to lift off the pots.

  “Auntie came out and shook me awake just a second after you left. She can’t stand for me to be comfortable.” She pushes out her lower lip, and her eyes flash sideways.

  I press the damp soap into her hand.

  “Here,” I say. “A bath will make you feel good.”

  “Stay with me,” she says. “I want to know everything that happened at Sibi.”

  It’s been two years since Phulan has been to the fair. She always says she doesn’t want to go, that it’s for little girls. I thought she was being spiteful, that deep down she really wanted to go. But I no longer care about going again.

  I hug her and tell her I’ll wash her hair. She pulls her tunic over her head. Her breasts have grown to the size of apples! The vague new longing washes over me again.

  As I soap her hair I tell her about the Bugti girl and her lover. Phulan gasps, throws back her hair, and blots the soap from her eyes with the edge of her chadr.

  “Would they really kill her? Couldn’t she get away?” Her eyes are wide with horror.

  “Where is there to hide in the desert? I’m sure they found her and killed her. Both of them.”

  Phulan shivers and bends her head over the water again. We are silent for a moment.

  I tell her about the shatoosh, the paan maker, and the big wheel. It sounds juvenile to me now, and I feel awkward. I look at my sturdy hands as they rub soap into her hair. Her fingers curve gracefully around the edge of the rock.

  She tells me Auntie has grown more tyrannical by the day. Even the prospect of Uncle’s visit next month—and his gifts of perfume and new dresses—fails to improve her spirits.

  “She’s jealous because she’s old and fat, and you’re the center of attention with the wedding so near.”

  Poor Auntie. Her father was rich. But she was fat and he couldn’t find her a husband. Uncle was a hardworking, decent man with a job in the city. That’s how marriages are made. It was a good match for both of them, for different reasons.

  After breakfast Dadi comes out of the house with a leather bag and a coil of rope.

  “We have to peg noses today,” he says. When Uncle was here this winter, he and Dadi pegged the noses of four three-year-olds to train for work. Even with an extra man, we’d had a difficult time.

  Phulan’s eyes widen and she pulls her chadr across her nose.

  “Don’t be such a goose,” I tell her. Auntie also looks apprehensive as we walk back toward the toba.

  Dadi, Grandfather, and I talk gently to the young camels, trying to get a hand on one. They trot around, showing the whites of their eyes. Their behavior is silly. We never beat our camels, and they have no reason to fear us. I hold out my hand, palm skyward with a piece of brown sugar on it.

  My target is Xhush Dil, which means “happy heart.” He is large-boned and playful. He can’t resist sugar. Grandfather strokes Xhush Dil’s neck while Dadi ties a loop of rope around his fetlock. Making a figure eight, he hobbles the camel’s leg. While Mama feeds Xhush Dil another lump of sugar, Dadi and I tie his opposite rear leg, and with a mighty tug we pull his legs out from under him. He grunts as he hits the ground.

  Dadi grabs Xhush Dil’s upper lip, and Auntie holds on to Dadi’s waist while Mama pierces the camel’s nose with a long needle. Xhush Dil is still trying to get his lip from Dadi’s grasp to find more brown sugar. At first he doesn’t realize what’s happened. After withdrawing the needle, Mama puts the pointed end of the wooden peg into the hole and forces it through. She attaches a goathair cord to the peg in one swift move, just as Xhush Dil jerks his head away.

  The camel roars in surprise and pain and thrashes his head from side to side, sending Dadi and Auntie flying. They land in a heap on the ground. Phulan has stood the whole time behind Mama, her hand clasped daintily over her mouth. Her eyes are laughing as Auntie struggles like an overturned turtle, but she hurries to help her up.

  Dadi unties the hobbles, and Xhush Dil lurches to his feet. His eyes slide wildly from side to side and he snorts and grunts. Dadi keeps a gentle hand on the reins, and Xhush Dil feels the pressure on his smarting nose. When he is calmer, Mama puts mint water on it and he roars again, tossing his head, but now it’s more for show. Grandfather quiets him with a soft clucking sound.

  The sun is extremely hot now, and we spend the afternoon sleeping under a tarpaulin tied from the doorway to the courtyard wall to catch the breeze.

  Over the next week we watch our water dwindle. In the heat of the afternoons, before the wind and dust kick up, we work on Phulan’s dowry, adjusting everything to fit.

  We also dry herbs and think about prepartions for leaving the toba as the water slips away with the hot desert wind.

  Channan Pir

  Our thoughts turn to Channan Pir, the desert shrine where women pray for sons and go
od marriages for their daughters. Travelers stop to tell us a caravan of women will pass on their way to the shrine in a week.

  We leave the night of the next full moon. Grandfather is in fine form. He and Sher Dil gather the camels and our few sheep. Grandfather sings the whole time, his voice strong. The animals follow its sound through the dunes, their bells tinkling.

  Phulan and I ride in a mirrored pannier on Xhush Dil’s back. Mama and Auntie ride another camel. The animals are dressed in wedding livery, their harnesses festooned with silver medallions and bright silk tassels, with shells, bells, and mirrors sewn along the edges of the saddle blankets. Above their knees the camels wear woven goathair bracelets with beaded fringes.

  Dadi, Grandfather, and the little boys ride with us for a while. Sher Dil trots back and forth, guarding the ewes, lambs, and baby camels. He is still a pup, but his shoulders are growing strong, his chest deep and powerful, his fur glossy.

  Phulan looks regal with the red chadr over her shiny black hair. She looks like a flower blooming in the desert sunset, the wind whipping her clothes around her in sheets of color.

  Mama too is dressed in silk, a sequined and embroidered turquoise tunic that shows the green flecks in her mysterious dark eyes. Her teeth and nose disk flash as she tosses her head, and I wish I were half as graceful as she and Phulan are.

  Auntie wears an emerald silk tunic and skirt. It is plain, and I pity her that nothing she wears can show her good points, which sometimes are hidden even from our hearts.

  I ride beside Phulan among the tasseled cushions in the pannier. The camels pitch us forward and side to side.

  Grandfather reminds me to pray for the soul of Grandmother, who died when Dadi was a boy.

  “She was beautiful,” he says, his eyes far off on the distant dunes. “She was so proud when I rode off on Kalu, although she also was fearful.”

  “What did you wear, Grandfather?” I ask.

  “We wore starched khaki tunics and billowing trousers, a fez, and a silver sword.”

  Grandfather touches the bundle that contains his papers, fez, sword, and other things from the past.

  “Hunteray, Kalu,” he says to the old female camel he rides. Grandfather calls all camels Kalu after the great black martial beast he rode in battle for the nawab’s army.

  We travel along the clay track that used to be the ancient Hakra River bed.

  “I remember,” says Grandfather, his eyes far away again, “sitting as a boy under the great banyan tree at the edge of the river, dreaming of when I could fight for the Abassi prince.”

  Auntie rolls her eyes. Phulan and I look at each other. Grandfather’s mind travels back and forth in time with amazing ease. He relives history as if he had been there, regardless of the century. The Hakra River dried up three thousand years ago.

  He turns to Mama. “I remember when the Rajput prince brought your people from India to build the fort at Derawar. They’re Hindus.”

  “But Grandfather,” she says gently, “we converted to Islam when Akbar came, four hundred years ago.”

  “Yes, yes,” says Grandfather, brushing her protest aside. “The Hindu Raja of Bikaner had seized all of Cholistan from Qutb-ud-din, the Abassi general. But we fought valiantly.

  “Both sides had elephants. The elephants lined up on either side of the fortress walls and intertwined their trunks. Lances and spears fell from their sides as if they wore armor. We drove the raja back to India and built fort doors higher than trees, with sword blades at the top so his elephants couldn’t knock them down. But the camels saved the day!”

  We ride in silence for a time, and Grandfather nods off.

  “Allah-o-Akbar!” he shouts, sitting straight so suddenly it knocks his turban askew.

  “It was that battle! We pursued the infantry. The artillery was behind the dunes in the high desert. They fixed their cannons on us and a full-load shot hit Kalu in the chest.”

  Grandfather is silent for a second, his head straight and proud.

  “Kalu charged another furlong before he fell.” Grandfather has walked with a stick and a limp ever since.

  “Father,” says Dadi. “That was the battle Pakistan fought with India over Kutch after independence.” Grandfather’s confusion doesn’t matter. He and Kalu had been a brave pair, and his stories always thrill us.

  Grandfather nods off again, and we travel in silence until the evening breeze picks up and we see the dust from the women’s caravan ahead.

  As our camels pull away from Dadi and the herd to join the caravan, Mithoo tries to follow us. But Sher Dil runs after him, barking fiercely and nipping at his legs. My poor motherless Mithoo shifts direction to rejoin the herd. He dips his head and turns it back over his shoulder, his eyes still on us.

  So much is changing, and I’ve only just noticed. Like a breeze gathering strength, all of us—animals and humans—are growing up.

  The camels know the track to Channan Pir well and need no guidance. Every year we make the trek to the shrine to ask for some kindness from the saint who is protector of all children.

  It will be another hour before the moon is up, about the same time we should catch up with the caravan. We listen to the bells of our herd until they are swallowed by the night.

  The sky is already bright with stars. Phulan and I lie back and count the long, bright arcs they make when they fall. A rim of moon slips up over a mound of sand, and its blue-white light washes over the desert. Suddenly the sand, which looks slatternly gray in the sunlight, shimmers like an ocean of diamonds.

  Before the moon is fully clear of the dunes, we hear the singing of the women in the caravan ahead. Without warning, Xhush Dil’s great shaggy head lifts back and his front feet kick out, and we dance in the moonlight. A song rises in my throat, and Phulan lies back against her cushions to listen as I sing about a man whose lover God has taken away and sent to live among the stars where he sees her every night. He can never have her.

  The women shout greetings as we draw near. “Ho! You must be looking for husbands and sons!” And there is much laughter. Mama and Auntie have cousins among this festive troupe, but it will be difficult to find them. There are too many camels to count, all decorated with mirrors and bells.

  Phulan sleeps. We pass the night in a magical glitter of sand and moonlight, bells and mirrors, singing and clapping and the camaraderie of women.

  As we approach Channan Pir the birds are just beginning to twitter in the trees around the shrine. There are more camels as we draw closer. Sleeping women on bright quilts increase in number from a few scattered shapes to a sea of blankets touching edge to edge. We walk the camels directly to the miraculous mound of rocks under which the saint is buried.

  We circle the tomb once, passing under the thorn tree that shades the mound and past the eternal lamps beside the grave. Green, red, and blue flags flutter softly against the silvery sky. We pass the old ocher mosque with its three green domes and look for a place to camp and leave the camels.

  Mama and Auntie find their cousins and invite them to have tea with us after we have found a spot near theirs.

  Phulan builds a fire while Mama and I unload the camels, and Auntie pours water into the kettle. The ground feels shaky under our feet after pitching and rolling in the panniers all night.

  I hobble and tether the camels and am about to give them fodder when I hear the unmistakable throaty voice of Sharma, Mama’s favorite cousin and my favorite aunt. Mama takes her in her arms and buries her face in Sharma’s hair, and they just hold each other and laugh.

  Fatima, her daughter, takes Phulan and me by the hand, and we look each other over. Fatima has changed little since we saw her at Adil’s wedding last year. She is as delicate and small as her mother is tall and straight. Her face is soft, with a small, round nose, full lips, and tiny, even teeth. Her bosom is full, and although she is not beautiful, she has her mother’s warmth and strength.

  Auntie doesn’t look up from the fire, which she pokes under the kettle.
She disapproves of Sharma, who left her husband because he beat her. He was older and already had one wife who had borne him no sons. He married Sharma in the hope she’d bear a boy child. When Fatima was born he began beating both of them, and Sharma refused to lie with him.

  Slowly she built her own herd of goats and sheep, as well as her courage. Then she left him. Sharma and Fatima are not afraid to live alone. Anyone who might want to harm Sharma should think twice; she is better able to take care of herself than most men are.

  Auntie thinks Fatima is a double disgrace. At sixteen she isn’t married, doesn’t want to marry, and Sharma has no intention of forcing her to marry.

  Sharma is bold and outspoken. Most men don’t like her and are afraid of her. Not Dadi. He thinks she’s wonderful.

  Sharma’s hair is streaked with gray, and her skin is dry and creased. But her hands are graceful and long, her breasts high and firm, and her teeth white and straight. She is about Mama’s age, perhaps thirty.

  When the camels are fed we sit, ankles crossed, eating chapatis and drinking tea, catching up on the news; Adil’s wife is expecting a baby in three months; his elder brother has just had a second child, a girl—too bad, it seems to run in the family. They laugh and slap their knees. Auntie draws her chadr across her face and sits at the edge of the circle.

  Well after the sun is up and the heat has gathered, the bagpipes and drums begin. Sharma and Fatima promise to have supper with us so we can talk into the night. It’s so rare to see relatives, we never run out of things to say.

  We put our belongings away and head toward the shrine to pray for sons for Phulan. We cover our heads and gather our chadrs in folds around our shoulders. We walk silently and are caught in the crush of women sitting with baskets before them heaped with flowers and lumps of white sugar candy. The garlands sell for twenty rupees apiece. Each of us buys a garland for Phulan.

  We approach the peeling ocher mosque in our bare feet. Auntie’s feet are tender from wearing leather shoes, and she sucks air in through her crooked brown teeth as her soles touch the hot sand.