But only for me.
“I’m sorry, Abbu,” I say simply, choking on the words. Ammi’s knees buckle under her and she falls into my father. He grabs her, but I back away.
“Tariq!” Abbu thunders. But I’m already running out the door and into the twilight, my father’s hands reaching for my kurta hem, my mother’s cries trying to pull me back.
I vault over the gate, leave my bicycle behind, and run halfway down the block at a sprint, making my lungs burn so my eyes won’t.
As I reach the corner of the lane, I crash into someone coming around the corner. I bark out an apology and make to keep running before I see who it is.
Sameer. My heart sinks even lower. He is everywhere these days.
“My friend,” he says, almost warmly. “I heard that your family leaves soon. I have come to say good-bye.”
I feel my jaw tighten, afraid that if I tell him, I won’t be able to hold myself together. And Sameer is the last person I want to cry in front of. I swallow hard, try to think of something to say, but am distracted by a flash of gold at Sameer’s neck. A thin chain dangles there, tucked beneath the collar of his shirt. Sameer has never had more than a few rupee to line his pockets. But now he wears gold?
I study the chain, fixing on this detail. Focusing on it helps me ignore the urge to run or scream or break down and sob.
Gold?
Could it have something to do with what he was doing in the market last week? I start to ask him, but then I reconsider. Telling him what I saw could go badly for me. So I stand there, mouth hanging open, the words crawling back inside.
“You will go with them?” he asks.
My family, I realize. He is asking about my family. “Nahi,” I manage.
“They will go without you?” he asks carefully.
“Haan,” I say, and I realize what it means for the first time as I say it aloud. My family will go without me. Even if I try to catch up with them later, it could be almost as impossible to find them as it is to get to Oxford. I heard enough that day at the camp to convince me of that. And those were families who traveled together before they were attacked by dacoits, or simply got lost in the great columns of people migrating back and forth.
But it’s a risk I have to take. “My work keeps me here.”
He nods as if he understands. “Ah, yes. We are alike, this way. I cannot go to Pakistan yet either.”
This is as unexpected as the gold chain around his neck.
He shrugs. “My family has already gone, what’s left of them,” he says. The smile holds fast, but there is a knife’s edge in his voice now.
“But you stay?”
He lays a hand across his chest. “Like you, I still have much work to do.”
My eyes find the gold again. I wonder how he has found a way to make his version of work pay.
“So we stay here together,” he says, “behind enemy lines, as it were?”
I say nothing, kicking at a skeleton of a palm leaf on the lane.
“Who knows? Maybe our paths will cross as we fulfill our obligations?” he presses.
I look up sharply.
“Many men I work with will be very pleased to hear that you remain in your position,” he says. “Men who, when we arrive in Pakistan, will see to it that you and your family may not struggle as other families will—”
“I’m not going to Pakistan for a long time,” I blurt out. As soon as I say it, I with I hadn’t, wish I hadn’t given him some reason to question my loyalty.
But he takes it in stride. “Perhaps these same men might be induced to reward you and your family in other ways, then. Perhaps they can help you get where you wish to go. Wherever that may be.”
And I remember. I remember when Sameer and I were something more like friends. When we were at school together. When I might have told him that someday I would go to Oxford. That someday I would matter.
And I see in his eyes that he hasn’t been collecting information all these years out of idle gossip. He’s been amassing it as currency.
I’ve just given him a small fortune.
I know I shouldn’t ask it, but I can’t help it. What if they could help? What if they could get me to Oxford somehow? “What would I have to do?”
“Simply be ready,” he says easily, taking a few steps away. “Ready to assist your countrymen and claim your reward.”
He smiles, pats my shoulder, and stalks away.
By the time I wind my way back home, my brother is outside.
“Tariq,” he says in a way that tells me he’s been waiting. He sits on a wooden chair, one leg of his trousers tied into a neat knot, tucked up inside itself, hiding the stump of his leg. One hand rests on that leg, the other drums away at a small bundle of black cloth in his lap.
“Arish,” I say. There is no second chair, so I drop down on the ground and sit. Since he came home injured, I have felt ashamed of myself for standing over him.
“I was on the roof before,” he says. “I heard you arguing.”
I hang my head. We are quiet a long while, listening as the city settles, both waiting for the other to begin.
“I’ve spoken to Abbu,” he says finally. “He’s agreed to let you come later.”
I stare up at him in surprise. His face is half in darkness, the other half lit from the lights within the house. He shaved recently, a bright red scab of dried blood highlights his jaw.
“Later?”
He looks at me, his voice firm. “You cannot stay in India forever.”
I lean forward. “I don’t plan to stay in India—”
“I heard your plan,” he says quickly. “If you can call it that.”
I say nothing.
“You’re insane,” he says, “if you think a Britisher will take you home with him. I lost my leg in their war. They called me a hero.”
I drop my head again, stare at my hands. My parents pleaded with him not to enlist. The same way they begged me not to stay just an hour or two ago.
“But what did it get me?” he asks. “The British soldiers I served with, if they went home to England with an injury like this, the government gave them something. Some money or a job. But not us.”
He is quiet a long while, fuming. I know this silence.
“We get nothing. As if our limbs are worth less because they are brown,” he finally spits out. “Our lives.”
“You were a hero,” I say after a beat. I have to say it even if I do not mean it. Even if there is nothing heroic at all in letting yourself be used in the way he has.
“What I am is a cripple.” He shifts in his seat, lifts the leg with his free hand. “But I will not be a burden to you. Besides, you should get more education. Do you know who the safest men in the army were?” His question is a challenge. I don’t bother guessing. He presses on, leaning forward in his chair, the wood creaking with his weight. “The officers. And do you know what most of the officers had in common?” Again, I don’t interrupt. “Papers from Cambridge, or Oxford. They weren’t the best soldiers, weren’t even the best leaders, but they were too damned valuable to be allowed anywhere near a German bullet like the rest of us.”
“Arish—” I’m ashamed now. Ashamed that I’ve thought these same thoughts. To hear him speak them makes me see how wrong it is, how wrong I might be for wanting to be like them.
He silences me with a wave of his hand. “And make no mistake, there will be war for years to come. Do you think all this between the Sikhs and us will die down when we have a border?” He shakes his head. “How much worse will it be when there are real boundaries to dispute, real territories to squabble over? Already there are rumblings of what will happen if Kashmir goes to India—”
“I don’t want to fight,” I break in, “I want to study.”
“When you come back to Pakistan”—his tone dares me to contradict him—“they will want you to fight. But if you have the right degrees, the right knowledge”—he reaches up and taps my forehead hard with two fingers—“th
ey will at least let you fight from a distance.”
He extends his hand, holding out the bundle of cloth from his lap. “Here.”
I take it, feel its weight. I know what it is without even opening it.
“Your knife?” I say. The trench knife was a prize he took off a tank gunner, the only material thing he brought home from Tunisia. I have heard the story a thousand times, watched him sharpen the blade, oil the leather sheath with the snap across the handle. I unwrap the bundle and run my thumb across the grip, the little swastika inlaid in the butt of the handle. The Nazis stole the swastika as their emblem, but it was born in India, where it brings good fortune. Arish knows I need luck more than I need the knife. But so will he.
“I can’t,” I say, returning it to him.
“You’ll need it more than I will,” he insists. “If you stay. If you follow us to Pakistan later.”
“But—”
He shakes his head. “It’s yours now. And if you persist in a fool’s hope, one that will trap you here and put you at the mercy of the Sikh mobs . . . ”
My brother is trying to protect me.
“But what will you do?” I ask, scrambling to my feet. I tie the leather thong at the top of the scabbard around the drawstring at the waist of my churidar, then tuck it inside.
He laughs. “If we even make it to Pakistan alive, and with Abbu’s money still with us, I can run a shop from a chair as well as any man from his feet. I’ll manage.”
“Abbu agrees?”
He hesitates. “I’ve convinced him you will not desert us.”
He doesn’t sound sure as he says this. Or proud. Or protective. Or frustrated.
He sounds resigned.
He stands, leaning on the crutch he retrieves from the floor. “Write to me from London,” he says. “If by some miracle you make it there.”
I nod. My eyes well up again. This time I let them fall. I’m ashamed to cry in front of my brother. But I can’t help it. We both know that a letter has little more hope of finding him after we part than I do of making it out of the country alive.
This may be the last time I talk with my brother. I may never see him again. The possibility of it lands squarely on me, like a punch to the stomach. Suddenly I find it hard to breathe.
Arish waits for me to settle down. I smear the backs of my hands against my eyes, press them hard there, trying to stop the flow of tears.
My brother is patient.
When I finally get my breath back, when the tears seem to have retreated for now, he speaks.
“It is brave, what you are doing,” he says, adding, “stupid, but brave, still.”
“Shukriya,” I manage.
He shakes his head. “Who knew my brother the scholar had such fire in him?” He leans on my shoulder. “Just be sure to bring it back to us in Pakistan,” he says, his voice breaking a little.
We stand like that a little while before he asks me, “Are you ready?”
He doesn’t have to spell out what he’s talking about.
It is time to say good-bye to my parents. Perhaps my last good-bye.
I am not.
But I let him lead me to the front door anyway. For the first time in a long while, I am leaning more on him than he is on me. My right shoulder digs into his side, his hand steering me toward Abbu and Ammi.
And with every step, I am grateful for the feel of the knife there at my hip, the rough stitching of the case scratching at my leg. A distraction from the pain of saying good-bye, a secret bit of my brother the warrior to keep with me.
CHAPTER 18
* * *
ANUPREET
The train is late.
We are crammed onto the platform at the station, elbow to elbow with hundreds of others—family members, business-people—awaiting the noon train from Amritsar.
But it is nearly three in the afternoon now.
The Darnsleys gave me the morning free when Papaji walked me back to work last Sunday evening. He explained that our family was to come from the west, were to resettle with us, and that he would like it if I could come and greet them when they arrived. Mr. Darnsley was very kind to let me go.
But now I am worried as we await the train, worried the Darnsleys will be wondering why I’ve not yet returned.
And I feel awful that I think about this, awful that I fret about disappointing my employer when I should be worried about what all the others around me on the platform are anxious about.
The train.
Trains are often late in India. I’ve heard Mr. Darnsley complain about it more than once, though that doesn’t surprise me, the way that the Darnsleys seem so obsessed with the timings of things. Always taking their lunch at one, dinner at seven. And both Mr. Darnsley and Mrs. Darnsley have made fun of the way that appointments for telephone calls or meetings here seem to be more suggestions rather than actual agreements.
But we Punjabis are not so preoccupied with time, particularly with trains that can be delayed for so many reasons.
An operator who turns up late.
Cattle lingering on the tracks.
Engines broken down.
Anything.
Everyday things.
Until there were other reasons a train might be late. Reasons a train might not arrive at all.
We have heard of things happening.
Of trains being stopped by piles of rocks or logs on the tracks, only to find out that the rocks and logs were put there, placed by gangs of men who then swarm from their hiding places. Gangs who steal. Steal from the passengers who have bundled up all they hold most precious, sold everything they own to make a new start in a new place, only to have it taken from them before they even reach their destinations.
They steal people, too.
Women and girls, my age, older, younger. They are taken. Used. Bought and sold.
That happens sometimes.
And sometimes even worse things. There were rumors about a train that reached Lahore filled with Muslims moving to Pakistan. It arrived at the station carrying nothing but corpses.
After those rumors reached us here in Jalandhar, two gurdwaras were burned down.
“Something’s wrong,” Manvir says again. It is his first time out of the house since his trouble. He was well enough to leave his bed last week, well enough to stand and walk about the garden. But his face is still a sight, a roadmap of yellowing bruises, cuts healing slowly over, his nose cricked to the side now. He cradles the arm in its wrapping against his chest. The doctor has said it will be a few weeks more before the bones heal.
“We don’t know yet,” Biji says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. Even Papaji looks like he is losing hope. The four of us crouch together on the platform, huddled around the tiffins filled with food Biji brought in case Uncle and his family were hungry when they arrived. And though my own stomach is hollowed out now, as all of ours must be, I can’t even think of eating.
I hate this feeling. This fear. The dread. The feeling like something is stalking us from the shadows. A tiger about to spring. It’s there, I know it, can feel it like eyes watching me, but I can’t do anything to stop it.
Across the platform, a few people linger around the ticket windows and the station manager’s small office. Two policemen wander up and down the edge of the platform, their heavy clubs bouncing against their legs.
Suddenly a young man wearing a telegram office cap and uniform bounds up the steps, sprinting for the ticket windows. A hush falls on our side of the platform as every head lifts, every eye falls on him. He looks in briefly at the ticket window, but then continues around to the manager’s office door, knocking once.
He glances across the train tracks briefly as he waits for the door to open.
And in that moment, no one needs to read the telegram to know what it says. His eyes are wide and sad and frightened all at once. He wears no turban. He might be Muslim like Tariq.
The door opens and he all but throws the telegram at the stationmaster, bolting
from the platform, disappearing down the steps, no doubt hurrying to his waiting bicycle.
I watch him disappear and then turn back to the stationmaster. He is opening the telegram. It takes him ages to rip the edges and unseal the message. I may imagine it, but his hands seem to be shaking. He looks across the platform toward us, where we wait with the other families. Then he looks back to the telegram for a moment before his eyes flick back to us. Nervous this time.
All around me, men are rising to their feet.
“Read it!” a voice demands.
Manvir is on his feet. Mother is already crying. Father’s hand is across his mouth.
I watch the stationmaster. His face is grim, but unsurprised. He shakes his head softly.
And wails like I’ve never heard—louder than any train as it pulls into the station or screams out its departure—erupt from the crowded platform all around me.
We are all forced to stand as the crowd edges closer. Biji scrambles to grab the tiffins and find her feet. Around us men begin calling for quiet.
“Read it!” More voices take up the command until the rest of the crowd falls silent, waiting, listening.
I cannot see the stationmaster anymore, but suddenly all goes deathly quiet and still. I look up at my brother, watch his eyes as he watches the other side of the platform, as he listens.
The voice is faint, as if the man cannot muster the energy to shout loud enough to project the bad news. But we can hear him all the same, and the quietness of his voice only makes what he says surer, sadder.
“Train reached Amritsar behind schedule, stop. Most passengers aboard dead, stop. Some wounded, stop. Many missing, stop. Conductor spared to bring train and bodies off the line, stop. Western line suspended until further notice, stop.”
And with that, his voice stops. It all stops. And we all stop hoping.
The cry that rises up now is part mourning, part bloodlust. It is fierce, this sound, echoing around the station, the silenced tracks. Papaji links arms with Manvir and Biji and me as the crowd begins to move, some falling to their knees, keening, others racing for the way out of the station, to the streets.
A Moment Comes Page 13
