by Jamil Ahmad
The hunter returned wearily to the fire and started gathering it in an old tin can that he always carried with him. He was still bent over the fire when the earth started trembling and shaking. Softly, the man cried while he waited for the tremors to subside. He had not tasted meat for two seasons now.
Walking toward the next ridge, Sher Beg turned his thoughts again to Tirich Mir. Yes, he nodded to himself, everything had turned to ashes with the conquest of Tirich Mir. Suddenly, the same villagers who had almost worshipped him ignored him and appeared to look through him when he passed by. Since he could not get his livelihood from mountain climbing any longer, food became more and more difficult to find. His family, who had once walked about with pride, began to feel like hunted animals as the vengeance of the villagers turned against them. A time came when Sher Beg could no longer bear it, and he left his village and family and went away to the plains.
Oh, he remembered now what had happened to Sherakai, the Tiger’s Daughter. He had sold her to somebody before he left, for a pound of opium and a hundred rupees.
He spent a number of years in the plains—how many, he could not remember, but it was a long time before he came back. Hard as he tried, he could not live without the mountains. He could not die anywhere else.
On his return, he found his wife faithfully looking after the small patch of land he owned. She was alone. He never dared to ask her about the children in case she was reminded of his failure to provide for them. It was strange, he mused, that he could not remember the names of any of his children other than Sherakai—the one that by rights he should have forgotten.
In Lower Chitral, it had been raining intermittently for the last two days. Gusts of high winds had raged over the mountaintops, breaking the tall pines as they dipped into the defiles. Sometimes they drove the rain clouds toward one valley; now they scattered them, once again bunched them, and drove them to another valley. Winter was coming early this year, and the mountain people were all wondering whether to risk staying for a few weeks longer in their huts in the hope that the pass would remain open or to start moving with their goods, children, and animals on their three-hundred-mile annual journey to the plains. Some of the families, deciding to play it safe, had already started preparations for the move.
In one of the huts three-quarters of the way up a mountain in Chitral, a couple lay in each other’s arms. Their youngest child lay at the foot of the string bed. The other two children, both girls, and the mother-in-law occupied the second of the two rooms, which they shared with the chickens during the night. The woman was short and stocky, even by the standards of her tribe. She looked older than her twenty-two years. However, she was full of energy and strength, and the decision to move had caused her no more than the usual worry. It had to be done, and what did it matter if they set off now rather than in a few more weeks?
She never considered herself anything other than lucky at being where she was. At one time, when she was eight years of age, she had lost all hope. That was when her father had sold her for a pound of opium and a hundred rupees to a local prince.
It had taken her mother another year to save the money to buy her back, and still the prince had refused to let her go. She could even now feel the terror when, at her mother’s pleading to spare her child, her owner had laughed coarsely and said, “A child? She is a Sherakai. I assure you if she can accept a small finger, she will find no difficulty in accepting a man’s organ.” It had taken prayers, pleadings, and luck—not to speak of her mother’s savings—to secure her return, and that, too, not before her master had made an attempt to prove his boast before he lost her. He had failed but mercifully had not damaged her seriously.
Her mother had managed to get her married three years later, and her husband had nursed her carefully for two seasons before taking her to bed, and she had enjoyed his hidden fire. Looking at him, she would never have thought that his bearded, glowering visage could hide so much passion and gentleness. This night, he had woken up again and again, seemingly unsated. She guessed rightly that the thought of not being able to sleep close to each other for the next few months—the duration of their journey—was making him indulge to excess even at the cost of tiring himself for the hard work that had to precede the start of the excursion.
While she lay awake, she planned the loads for each child. The youngest would, of course, have to be carried on her husband’s back. Although the girl was five years old, she was too weak to manage the fifteen-mile-a-day stages. Perhaps they should let her walk for a few miles each day, to test her legs and see how soon she would be able to join her sisters in sharing their responsibilities.
She got up together with her husband after a silent agreement to make the most of the early hours of the morning. As she rose, she looked affectionately into the other room, where the older girls were sleeping in sacks, and prayed silently that her mother-in-law’s insidious comments on her inability to produce sons would not influence her husband.
These three children were all that had survived out of the five she had given birth to. On the mountain, the survival of the mother and child depended entirely on nature. The timing had to be just right so that the mother did not have to carry the child on the journey during the last days of pregnancy. Most of the children that survived were born immediately on their return to the highlands. If they were born too late, they again found it difficult to survive the downward journey in infancy.
She tried to remember how many of her brothers and sisters had lived. Probably, it was two sisters and three brothers, or was it the other way around? She wondered where they were—dead or alive. Even their names eluded her. Her husband had once talked about a brother of his who, he had heard, was employed in the president’s house at Rawalpindi. He had tried to see him once but could not gain admission. That was before their marriage. He had then spent the evening wandering about the town and had picked up the old matchlock gun he liked to carry with him on their travels. She never remembered its having been fired.
So now they would set off in a few days. No pot or pan or rag of cloth could be left behind. Their possessions were neatly divided into head loads and animal loads, their herd of buffalo and cows about twenty strong, the hens perched expertly on the loaded animals, the husband carrying the youngest, and the mother balancing a broken aluminum trunk that was ancient already when her mother gave it to her as part of her dowry.
Walking, walking, and walking, using the roads at night when the law allowed them to, the side trails during the day, the graveyards and small unmarked patches used for hundreds of years by gypsies for resting and cooking. Avoiding the towns and villages where they were not welcome, as the locals said they were dirty, damaged the crops, and were suspicious about their tendency to steal. They carefully skirted the cities, fearing to fall afoul of the police, and spread out into the plains, where they did menial jobs, working as porters, carriers, scavengers—whatever work they could find—during the three months before starting their long trek back to the mountains.
By the time the family crested the ten-thousand-foot Lowari Top, as the pass was known, they formed a sizable group. Other men, some without families, joined them with their cattle as well as sheep and goats. A group would be less vulnerable to potential hazards as they debouched onto the plains.
The mischief and harassment began as soon as they reached the tree line on their descent. Initially, it caused only minor irritation. They ignored the catcalls and the epithets shouted at them, and even ignored the occasional stone flung at them and their animals. On the third night, however, there was a serious attempt at stampeding their animals and cutting their tether ropes. The provocations could no longer be ignored, and a collective decision was made by the men to guard the animals at night.
Tragedy struck the group two nights later. There was a sudden noise of firecrackers, the angry shouts of the men, the screaming of women and children, and the frightened and stampeding animals adding to the pandemonium.
When d
awn broke and the men returned after rounding up and counting their animals, they found a few sheep were missing; then they were distracted by the wailing and screaming. They ran toward their tents. When they saw the disarray, they rushed around, frantically trying to persuade the women and children to come out from the undergrowth, where they were cowering. It was then that they discovered that three women were missing—one of them was Sherakai. They searched desperately, but they knew the futility of their actions. Her husband stood in a daze with his three daughters.
There was no way he could look after them. He decided to give his daughters away to be cared for while he searched for his wife. To anyone who agreed to take on the responsibility, he offered two of his buffalo. For the youngest girl, who was presently too weak to walk, he offered three. They were to protect his daughters until the mother was found and could rejoin them.
Tor Baz slept soundly in a wayside inn in a nearby village. He had been given a roving commission and a little money by some gem traders in Peshawar who had learned of a recent discovery of semiprecious stones in the hills, of peridot, tourmaline, and topaz. He was to find out more about the location of these discoveries, about reliable contacts in the area and the correct sale prices. He planned to use the initial money to buy some samples so that the quality of the gemstones could be assessed.
On his way back to Peshawar, after completing his assignment, Tor Baz had decided he would stop at the village of Mian Mandi, a notorious market for slave trading. He had never seen it before. It lay in the area of the Mohmand tribe, but he had an instinct that he might collect some useful information there—traders were always willing to exchange gossip on market days. He woke from his slumber with the sound of a truck driving down the road. He thought he heard a woman scream but could not be sure. Tor Baz tried but could not fall asleep again, so he got up, put on his shoes, and picked up his bag. He woke up the owner of the inn, drank a cup of tea, and started walking toward the market.
Eight
THE BETROTHAL of SHAH ZARINA
As one starts off the main road and travels into the valley, there is a steady climb until the track ends about six miles on. At this point, nestling between forest-covered slopes, is a small settlement of houses, some shops, a police post, a school, a dispensary, and a mosque. An unusual sight, as people do not tend to live in villages in these mountains.
In the evening, when the cooking fires are lit, one almost never sees more than two dots of light flickering together at any one spot. What brought this group of buildings and houses together was the unfortunate fact that for years this point was the overnight halt for hunting parties shooting the monal pheasant—a beautiful green iridescent bird that is close to extinction.
The discovery that there were monal pheasants in these parts brought development to the place where Fateh Mohammad, a Gujjar, lived. The yearly visits by local princes and foreign dignitaries encouraged the construction of public buildings made of cement and concrete, with chimneys and glass windowpanes. A small hydropowered generator was also installed.
Among the multitude of tribes inhabiting this frontier region, the Gujjars present a curious enigma. What was curious was that in spite of their large numbers and latent strength, they appeared content to live in the shadow of those around them. To their neighbors, the Gujjars did not seem to exist as a separate tribe or people. Their diffidence and humility had become so ingrained in the course of centuries that they showed no resentment at being treated as an inferior people. Indeed, their stoicism went beyond this. They submitted to the demands of their more powerful and brash neighbors, who denied them the right to settle their own disputes and extracted taxes and free labor from them. Harsh restrictions were also imposed on them as to how they could live and how they could die.
They lived quiet, tormented lives on windswept hilltops and dark, narrow mountain defiles, eking out a living from a soil that was so poor it was unattractive to all others. Under the custom of the dominating tribes, the Gujjars could neither own the land they cultivated nor acquire any other property. All they possessed were their animals and what little they could carry.
Centuries of insult had created a trauma in these people. Very few had any pride left in themselves, their language, or their culture. The next generation was being deliberately encouraged by their elders to, whenever possible, give up their identity and merge themselves into other ethnic groups. Of their children, few knew their own language—they were happy if they could learn Pashto with an accent, which would not betray them in Pathan society.
In spite of being such a poor community, even they maintained a careful and complicated hierarchy. Those who possessed buffalo and migrated every year looked down on those who owned only goats. Those with a few patches of land hewn into the high mountainsides would not marry into those who did not have any. There were some who were so poor that they had neither animals nor land nor houses. They lived on charity and were looked on with pity by others.
When the new mosque of stone and cement was being constructed, Fateh Mohammad supervised the work jealously. In fact, he was so critical and demanding that the contractor had several quarrels with him. Fateh Mohammad had, as the local mullah, presumed that the new mosque would be placed under his charge and he would be installed in it. He was to be disappointed, though, because on completion, a short, rubicund man rode up the valley in one of the timber trucks with a letter from the local official, appointing him as the guardian of ecclesiastical affairs. He also brought with him a loudspeaker and had an amplifier set up to sound the call for prayers.
Fateh Mohammad was a very disappointed man. In fact, he soon had a scuffle with the new preacher and got the worse of it. He brooded for some days over what had happened to him, and made plans to blow up the mosque with dynamite. However, after a few days, he resigned himself to his fate and accepted the fact that the new preacher would look after the locals while he would be left with solely that part of his flock that was spread thinly over the mountains.
Only one gesture of defiance remained with him. Every day at dawn, while the amplifier was still warming up, Fateh Mohammad’s beautiful voice floated into the air, calling the faithful to prayer. In spite of his best efforts, the new preacher could neither silence Fateh Mohammad nor be the first to announce the call.
Fateh Mohammad lived with his family in one of the old houses in this small community. The ground floor, a large room usually meant for animals, was occupied by some poor relations of the owner while the first floor was given free of rent to Fateh Mohammad as a gesture of charity and piety. The owner was a young man without a family who had left for the city on being selected as a police constable some years ago.
Fateh Mohammad’s children were all daughters. He had eight of them, which included an eighteen-year-old by his first wife, who had died in childbirth. On most days he started early, picking a direction and climbing up, homestead to homestead, calling on his flock. He usually returned late in the evening with his collection, which was always in the form of food, usually maize. For these payments, he had to look after a circumcision rite in one place, a wedding or a funeral at another, perhaps an occasional exorcism. Once in a while, people saw him sitting on his rooftop with his children. On these days, he usually drew a small playing board on the earthen floor and played children’s games with them with black and white pebbles.
Since people knew that on these days his family would go hungry, they would bring them food, often stale unleavened bread, which the couple and their ravenously hungry children would consume avidly.
Fateh Mohammad had named his eldest daughter, his firstborn, Shah Zarina. This name was a combination of two words, both denoting aspiration to royal connections. In these mountain areas, the poorer the family, the more high-sounding names it gave its children.
Shah Zarina had been a pretty girl. When she grew up, she might have been described as beautiful. She could usually be seen carrying one or the other of her half sisters straddled on her hip as she
walked in and out of the room the family occupied.
There was little that remained secret in this small community. There were no curtains to hide behind, nor screens of any sort. All that a person did, the life he lived, was open to view.
The spring thaw was setting in after the winter of usual desperation and misery. After each family had withdrawn themselves, the community was beginning to bestir itself. There was a noticeable air of hope that for the next few months, life would be easier. There would be work to do, and the constant torment of hunger would fade to a certain degree.
One night Fateh Mohammad’s wife went out to wash herself. When she returned, she roughly shook her husband awake. “Come out!” she said, shaking with excitement. “Spring has started.” Fateh Mohammad rolled the thin quilt around himself and followed his wife out of the room.
There was a full moon, and it hung half hidden behind the northern cliff. The moonlight was strong and dazzling to the eyes. His wife silently pointed at the moon. A long distance away on the mountain crest, he could see small antlike figures silhouetted against its orb. There was a long chain of them moving slowly with loads on their backs. These were the ice cutters. They were men who lived in the highest village, whose main occupation was cutting blocks of ice from the glaciers and carrying them on their backs down into the valley, where waiting trucks loaded them up and sped away to the cities, to people living in the warmer regions.
The children, who had pretended to be asleep during their parents’ lovemaking, had also trooped out and laughed and clapped their hands at the thought of spring, which would soon be there. They knew that along with the ice cutters, there would also be temporary villages set up of mushroom collectors—men who moved for a few weeks with the snow line, picking up the profusion of mushrooms, drying them, and selling them for export to foreign countries.
