by Tamim Ansary
Khadija frowned. “Some men from Sorkhab. Why do you ask? Oh, not at my invitation, Hajji! Is that what you think? It wasn’t me! I scolded them, I warned them, I cursed them. Is this why you wanted to see me? You think I am conspiring with Sorkhab? I would never—”
“No,” he assured her. “I have never doubted your allegiance. To me.”
He gazed directly into her eyes and with that gaze he melted her very bones. Her body was desire, yearning toward his arms. “To you,” she whispered. “Yes, Ibrahim-jan. Everything I do, I do to make your life sweeter. My allegiance is to you.”
He cleared his throat awkwardly, pulling back. “And I am the malik of Char Bagh. Everything I can do to protect this village, I must do. We are of one mind on this. Yes?”
“Yes,” she agreed, puzzled.
He leaned forward. “Khadija-jan, what did you think of the malang? Did you like him?”
She smiled. “Yes, of course. He tugs on every heart. Why do you ask?”
“As a man, I mean. Could you serve him as you would serve me? Can you—”
“What?” Her pulse suddenly went ragged. “What do you mean?” Suspicion opened up inside her like an infected sore. “Is this Soraya’s idea?”
“It doesn’t matter what Soraya wants. It’s just you and me now, Khadija. It is I who am asking you. Tell me what you think about our dear malang. I must know.”
She half rose on her haunches, despair writhing in her heart. How had she failed to foresee this diabolical move by Soraya? “Malik-sahib, what are you asking of me?”
“If he marries from among us, he will never leave us,” said Ibrahim. “I am asking you to serve this village as you would serve Allah, Khadija. It lies in your power to ensure that Char Bagh enjoys this holy man’s favor and protection to the end of his days. I am asking you to bind him to our village, so he will never move to Sorkhab or—God forbid—leave this valley of ours altogether.”
“And so?” she uttered aggressively. “To put it plainly?” she said fiercely. “When all is spoken and done with? What are you asking? Put it in plain words! You are asking me to …what? Say it! Say it!” she hissed.
“Khadija-jan.” The malik took a breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked away slightly. “I want your blessing to offer malang-sahib a wife from our village. And I am asking you to be that wife.”
In the awful silence that followed these words, in the awful stillness that pressed against the walls of the room like the air inside a balloon, Khadija found suddenly that even here, so deep in the compound, she could hear the frogs croaking by the river.
Despite her fiercest intentions, tears swelled in her eyes and her head swayed from side to side, her rebellious body’s lamentation for herself and for all the helpless widows in this world, doomed to do what they must. “I was your brother’s wife,” she whispered. “Your brother whom you cherished and revered. I was the malik’s wife,” she pleaded, “presiding over this whole compound, east and west.”
“I know, my dearest sister-in-law—”
“All the women looked up to me! I was somebody. And now you say I must—”
“I plead with you,” he broke in. “I never said ‘you must.’ I entreat you. I have spoken to no one else yet, and I will speak to no one unless you say yes! Khadija, appreciate how I am respecting you.”
“And after your brother died and you rose to occupy his place,” she pursued relentlessly, “you looked to me for counsel and comfort, came to me when you needed someone to hear your woes and weigh your thoughts. You have a woman of your own, but you came to me. I know you, Ibrahim, you opened your heart to me, I know you, and you know me. I have felt your eyes upon me. Never deny it. Between us, there have been…”
“Khadija-jan,” he cautioned.
“Feelings,” she said. “Between us there have been—”
“Khadija!” His voice cracked out.
It slapped her out of her trance. How could she have forgotten herself enough to say such words to him? She had come so close to saying she had hoped to be his wife. Or worse. That she would be his concubine, if it was the only way. She wanted to say those words to him. Must they remain unspoken forever? All her soul longed to say it. Your concubine. Ibrahim jan-i-qund-i-gulim. My-dear-my-sweet-my-flower. Take me!
She clenched her jaw to keep the hurt from showing, and when she spoke, her lips did not tremble. Silence would have been safest, but she had to speak, she had more to say, and he needed to hear it. “Now you would send me to the hills to live with this malang and keep him as my husband. I am to live with him in a hut no bigger than an outhouse. I am to wear rags and wake up sleeping on dirt and see the village children come to taunt me. He’s a malang, he can live that way! But me—”
He reared his hand as if to slap, his eyes sternly full of might. “Stop it, stop whimpering, woman. Don’t you even understand what I’m offering? Wallowing in dust? He’s no wallower-in-dust, our malang. He’s a scholar, a poet, a mystic master—a sheikh! My sheikh! The only man I will ever meet who truly knows! Mud hut, you say? Curse you, Khadija, listen! I’m going to offer him half of my land. Half of everything I own! Now do you see? By Quran, with God’s grace, I’ll find a way to rescue all of my brother’s land from debt and you’ll bring that to your marriage too! Your husband will be the first man of the village, above me even, above Ghulam Dastagir and Ghulam Haidar and the rest. And I will rally them to build a compound bigger than this one for Malang-sahib. If Sorkhab can add buildings, so can we. Your husband will rival any man in the valley, your status will be unquestioned, that’s what I offer you. Do not ask what I’m giving up in asking you to do this, Khadija. I would give up Samarqand and Bokhara for just—but we can’t talk of that. Only tell me you’re willing. I must hear it from your own lips. I will not put this proposal to the malang unless you tell me you’ll go to him gladly, contented and full of joy. Will you do this? Look at me. No, don’t drop your head like that, look at me! Will you do this?”
She raised wounded eyes to his, and her heart broke as she released her grip on all the life she had imagined for herself, let it slip away like a stream into a river. Her mind reeled with anxious dread and then she embraced the dark unknown of all the universe and said to her brother-in-law: “Yes, Ibrahim. My darling. If he wants me, tell him I will be his willing wife, and I will be contented with him and full of joy, because you command it. I will do it for you.”
20
The malang stood outside his hut awaiting the men of Char Bagh. Ibrahim led his group forward, arms extended. “Sheikh-sahib, we come to express our gratitude.”
“For what?” the mystic asked idly.
Ibrahim glanced at the others, but saw no guidance there. “You have elevated our village,” he declared. “We cherish you, friend of God. End your wandering, settle among us, we beg of you. We embrace you as our own. Accept from us a gift of land.”
The mystic turned about and looked in each direction. He held his hands up in the attitude of prayer and stood silent for a time. Then he faced the villagers. “Excellent! I have been sitting on borrowed soil, now you give me the soil I sit upon. Thank you!” He began bowing to the elders.
“Oh no! Not this soil,” Ibrahim blurted in dismay. “What kind of gift would that be? We want you to accept fertile land down below, in the bend of the river, close to our irrigation works. From my own inheritance, from this good man Ghulam Dastagir’s acres, from others. We’ve prepared several plots close together, easy to work. Beets and carrots, fine red onions, even sweet peas are growing there now, and there is pasture too, for growing clover. You will have animals.”
The malang brushed a blue butterfly away from his beard. “I accept your offer of land, but only if I can choose the land,” he said, “and I choose this land, up here. I want as much of it as…” The malang gazed about, then opened his arms as if to encompass the entire world: “as I can encircle with my turban.”
A thunderstruck silence greeted this announcem
ent. Ghulam Dastagir grinned in admiration. “Malang-sahib, your wisdom inspires us all. Truly, the deepest riches are not of this world. Never fear for your bread-and-tea, Hajji-sahib. You will not know hunger so long as I draw breath, I swear!”
“Oh, Sheikh-sahib, no!” Ibrahim cried out despairingly. The wreckage of his plans for Khadija smoked in his mind. The thought of her living up here, buffeted by wind and rain and snow—intolerable! But what could he do? Ibrahim’s ardor for his sheikh wrestled with his longing to lavish luxury upon his brother’s widow. “Take this land, if you want, but take fertile land down by the river, too. What’s the harm?”
“Now, now!” Ghulam Dastagir scolded. “Malang-sahib knows best. His reasons are too deep for simple souls such as you and me to fathom, Malik-sahib.”
Ibrahim ignored his fellow villager. That bastard was glad of any excuse to renege on his promise to contribute land to the cause. “We are your own people now,” he implored. “We are your brothers and sisters, your children! As much land as you can encircle with your turban—? That’s out of the question.”
But the mystic shook his head stubbornly. “I want no more land than my turban can encircle. Come back in seven days with picks and shovels and I will show which land I mean.”
The men went back to the village, puzzled. Picks and shovels? The week crawled by. On the seventh morning, Ibrahim collected his cousins and joined the long procession up to Baba’s Nose. The malang stood on the slope wearing nothing but a skull cap on his head, which left his long locks to stir in the breeze. Once the men had assembled, he gestured sweepingly north and south. “This is the land I want.”
“This land can be had by anyone who claims it,” Ibrahim grumbled. “We want to honor you with a gift, and this is no gift, this worthless hillside. This is nothing.”
The malang ignored the village headman and addressed the entire group. “I see you have brought your tools. Good! I will get my turban.”
He ducked into his hut and popped out carrying a ball of silken thread as big as a cow’s head. “This is my turban.” He had unraveled the cloth into separate threads and tied them together painstakingly to make a single long string: the ball he held up now.
The gaping villagers watched him tie one end of his string to a bush above his hut. Commanding them to follow behind and keep the thread from getting tangled, he rambled down the hill, along the hill, and finally up the hill again, trailing string. His meandering path eventually brought him back to his hut. Remarkably, the thread ran out just as he arrived at his original position. He tied the two ends together and stepped back, beaming.
The thread that used to be his turban now encircled a roughly rectangular patch of land that included the entire boulder known as Baba’s Nose. Malik Ibrahim frowned. His sheikh had gone to much trouble to claim a precise amount of worthless rain-fed mountainside. Ibrahim was reminded again of Mullah Nasruddin. The famous fool lay buried in a fortified mausoleum he had built for himself, a citadel with a door of walnut planks, padlocks of stoutest iron, and walls of stone—but only three of them. The fourth wall was missing. Anyone could walk into the tomb by going around to the back. Some said the tomb expressed a profound message, some that the Mullah was mad, and some that he simply forgot about the fourth wall. Others said that his tomb, like his whole career, was just a good-humored but meaningless joke.
Now, here was their own malang, matching Mullah Nasruddin’s zaniest antics.
“You men promised to help me dig,” the malang reminded them all. “I warn you, the work will not be done in a day. Will you help every day until the work is done?”
The men shifted in place. What “work”? They hesitated to make an open-ended commitment to an unknown task, but Malik Ibrahim jumped into the silence. “Of course, Sheikh, whatever you need. We intended to build you a house all along. We can finish digging trenches for the foundation today, if God wills. Where should we start?”
“Up there.” The malang pointed to the cliffs above Baba’s Nose.
“There, Malang-sahib? Are you sure?” Ibrahim gulped. Building a compound on that steep slope would be difficult.
But the malang was already climbing. At the base of the cliffs, he began to dig. A terrace would have to be carved into the hillside before any sort of house could be built, but the malang seemed uninterested in any terrace. He gathered the men close together and urged them all to dig in the same spot, shoulder to shoulder. Watching from below, Ibrahim could see that they were digging more of a hole than a trench or terrace, a horizontal hole thrusting directly into the hill. And then he knew, and his heart withered. The malang wanted a cave. He was having the men dig him a cave. Khadija would have to live in a cave if she married this man! Ibrahim climbed frantically up next to the malang, who was urging the men on with cries of: “Don’t lose heart. Once you tunnel past the rocks, it’s all soil, boys. Into the mountain we go! Dig, dig, dig!”
“Into the mountain, Hajji-sahib? How far?” Ibrahim cried out.
“As far as necessary. Not one hair further. Pick up a shovel, Headman.”
In the blaze of that commanding eye, Ibrahim could not object, not in front of all the men. He fell to laboring like the others. After three hours, the others went down to the village to perform their prayers and eat lunch, and Ibrahim knew none would return that day. How many would come back the following morning? Meanwhile, the malang was still digging. A man could already walk several paces into the tunnel but he seemed to want an even deeper cave. He swung his pick like a lunatic, pausing every once in a while to grunt at Ibrahim, “Fill that bucket. Move that dirt out.” Finally, even the malang dropped his tool. He wiped his brow, dusted his hands against his pants, and moved to the mouth of the cave, where he hunkered down.
“Sit next to me,” he urged Ibrahim. “Did you bring a pen?”
“No, sir. Why would I bring a pen?”
“Always bring a pen when you come to me. Paper and ink as well.”
“For what reason, Sheikh-sahib?”
The malang squinted at him slyly. “Because I might start singing.”
Ibrahim pushed his turban back to scratch his scalp.
“Yes,” the malang confided, “Sometimes I just start spouting song and I would like to know what I sing at times like that. The next time I start, be ready with a pen. Write down every word. Do this for me, and in return, I will let you tell me about your deepest difficulties.”
“You can solve my deepest difficulties, sheikh-sahib?”
“Who said anything about ‘solve’? I said I would listen. Solve—that’s different. Tell me, Malik Ibrahim, when you feel confused, weak, helpless and small, who do you go to?”
Ibrahim stared.
“Who do you show yourself to in your weakness?” the malang insisted. “Who do you trust that much? Whoever it is, that man is your friend. Tell me his name.”
Ibrahim bit his lips, unable to utter a syllable. The only one he could name was a woman, but how could a man’s best friend be a woman? “I am friend to every man in the village,” he muttered evasively, “but I am the malik. I must show only strength.”
“Then all you have are allies and followers. You have no friends,” the malang declared emphatically, “except me. In the eyes of God, Ibrahim, you are an ant. Less than an ant. A mote of dust on the foot of an ant. A speck. So am I. So is any being that can utter the word ‘I.’ So is your village and this valley and those mountains and the entire world—specks, all specks. Insignificant. Today, one man is a king, another a slave. How we shout about it! In a hundred years both men will be dust. What does it matter which is which today? You’re a king or a slave for a flash, like a spark that floats up from a fire and then turns to ash! Dust. You’ll be dust for endless centuries. Which are you truly, then? The form you take for fifty or sixty years? Or the one you take forever?”
“I won’t be dust forever,” Ibrahim protested in alarm. “I am a soul! I will be restored on the Day of Judgment, God be praised, for God is one and Mo
hammad peace-be-upon-him-and-his-descendants is his messenger!”
The malang tossed his head back and laughed. “That will help you on the Day of Judgment, but what good does it do you now? Now you’re alive and drowning.”
Ibrahim prickled with bewilderment. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I am telling, not trying! All right, I will tell you again. Bring a pen and paper up here next time and record what I sing. That’s what I’m telling you. In return, I will listen to your deepest troubles. In fact, I will pay in advance. Talk to me, Malik-sahib. You’re not at peace. What is wrong?”
I have come to ask you to marry the woman I have wanted every moment of every day since I saw her at my brother’s wedding eleven years ago.
The words rang in his mind, spoken in his own voice, though he had never said them out loud or thought them before. He swallowed hard. What could he tell the malang? A man does not go through such turmoil as this over a woman. He had a wife, and he could have another, it just couldn’t be Khadija. Why should that trouble him? What good would it even do to marry her? Khadija was barren. She wasn’t even young. He could find a young new wife, even more beautiful than Soraya, some girl from Sorkhab…He sat with his head bowed, ashamed to realize that his throat was tightening, his eyes glistening. The malang sat grasping his knees with his big hands, gazing out across the valley and breathing in the flower-scented air with manly enjoyment.
“You’re right. I’m weak.” Ibrahim admitted at last. That’s what it came to finally: his deepest fear. Here it was, spoken out loud finally. The confession relieved the pressure behind his eyelids. “I am not big enough to lead this village. People have lifted me to this height because my brother had stature. They look up to me because my father was great. One day they will realize that I am not my father or my brother. I have the heart of a boy and the strength of a mouse, and people will find me out someday and I live in dread of that day, Malang-jan. Now some of the men are pressing me to start a fight with Sorkhab. They’re eager to fight, and they want me to start it. But we have kin over there! If blood gets spilled, it will be on my head. Today they want to shed blood but someday they will regret it, and then they will say who started that fight, and they will look at me, and they will say it was you.”
