Trespassing

by Uzma Aslam Khan

  When they weren’t training, the men slept, played cards, argued, or disappeared in twos and threes behind rocks. Salaamat and Fatah explored the gorge like boys on a field trip. The floor was carpeted with soft pine needles and pigeon shit. Some of the bluffs resembled white volcanic ash, too soft to climb but pitted into chimney shapes so that from the shore, the tiers were like an army of ghosts presiding over them.

  Fatah liked to hop up the cones and peer through the natural windows. He’d strut like the Commander. ‘So. Let us not forget why we are here!’

  If Salaamat didn’t play along he’d smack the back of his head and strut some more till Salaamat, taking pity on him, squealed, ‘Why are we here, sir!’

  ‘Why, you fool. To fight for a separate Sindhi homeland!’ Then he’d pretend to brush his teeth.

  He was two years younger than Salaamat but had already killed three men.

  Today they climbed nimbly up the pass for a better view of the eagle’s nest. Fatah spoke of the last raid he’d been in. Two men on a motorcycle were rounding a bend off the highway when Fatah and three others opened fire. One man had two thousand rupees on him. The other had nothing but a photograph in his wallet. They were shot in the limbs and then Muhammad Shah wanted to try the stun belt recently acquired from Amreeka. So they took the men to the cell farther inland but on the way one bled to death. The other was still in the cell, alive.

  A sheer wall blocked their path so they retraced their steps and looked for another way up. Fatah explained that though the Commander was a chichra, he was right about a few things. They really could never forget where they were. ‘Who we are and how we end up depends entirely on gigraphy.’

  Salaamat said nothing. Fatah liked to talk about geography as much as he liked to win bets. And Salaamat rarely interrupted because Fatah was awesome. He’d gone to school. Real school. He had books he could read. He’d even attended a few months of university. He was not from an old village like Salaamat. He grew up in Karachi and had a kind of worldly air about him that was foolish to refute. While Salaamat had wasted his time painting buses, Fatah had been scanning the highways. He knew more. And he thought more too. He had a clear philosophy, while Salaamat simply drifted.

  Fatah reminded him that he too would have to kill one day soon. Salaamat walked faster, losing sight of the ledge completely.

  They paused on an outcrop. The river looked immensely blue from here. In a few months, when it rained, the glaciers of the north would melt and pour into it, hurling gray debris.

  What would he have done by then?

  He liked to shoot, it was true, but he didn’t know about changing his target. He didn’t want to be pinned down to that. Maybe he’d do it, maybe not, but it was wrong to judge him on that alone.

  The truth was he wished sometimes that the camp weren’t in such a beautiful place. It should have been in a filthy burning city street. In the charred backseat of an overturned bus. The stinking hole Handsome’s workers shat in. Instead it was here, in an isolated patch in the far north of the province. Fatah said most camps were further south, where the banks were heavily forested. Maybe that would have been better. More confining. Dark. These capacious rocks spoke to him. He’d joined the camp thinking it would be his way to at last shrivel up and die, but if anything, the opposite had happened. Salaamat was beginning to like his world again.

  The sand beneath his toes, the scent of the river, the way his hair blew out of the twine of grass binding it, the sky free of dust and haze, the feathery sisky leaves – all refreshed him. Though a strong fighter and accurate shot, he fulfilled his duties with a minimum of interest and his spirit wandered. Instead of distancing himself from the land, he was entering it. And he grew unconvinced that the answer to all his troubles was a separate state. If anything, this land the others wanted to split was showing him how to glue back his splintered pieces.

  But Fatah was awesome and he was scratching a map of Pakistan on the powdery outcrop. He knew the country’s contours from memory. He could draw several countries freehand. He said the map of the world was in his hands. Now he rubbed and fine-tuned the lines, and said, ‘Pakistan is easy – an arm extending from China into the Arabian Sea, with the thumb and little finger sticking out sideways like that.’ He crouched on his haunches and pulled the hem of Salaamat’s ratty trousers, forcing him down too. ‘Sindh is the thumb. Notice none of the countries that affect us most have any shape to speak of. Afghanistan is a shapeless glob. What is Russia? Amreeka? Big like Anjuman but with none of her curves. A bump here, a finger there. Granted, India has some shape. But look at Sulawesi! She has arms, legs, even a braid!’

  Fatah also kept meticulous track of what each country exported to theirs, as Salaamat had witnessed in Hero’s shop. He said those claiming that Sindh couldn’t stand on its own were wrong – they had only to learn to make the equipment and then sell it to others even worse off. ‘Maybe the people of Sulawesi!’

  Salaamat nodded yet his spirit walked away. There was no way to get any closer to the eagle’s nest from here. They should turn around and start again. But the spot was well shaded, and a pleasing wind wafted in from the river sweeping placidly below.

  Fatah went on, ‘So, about this thumb. We are what we are because we’ve lived on it for thousands of years. Once it had pride. Now it has a cuff around it. It’s been bent and beaten and the blood’s been shut off. It dangles impotently. To stand erect, it has to break free.’

  Salaamat knew by blood, Fatah meant the Indus. He’d spoken many times of the dams in the Punjab that were choking off the supply. That province teemed with life from five opulent rivers but it had to have more. ‘More is what the Punjab is all about,’ he’d say. ‘More food, more water, more wealth, more hideously fat men like that Handsome you speak of.’ In much of Sindh, the Indus had dwindled to a trickle.

  Salaamat’s village too had teemed with talk of this. There were fishermen who depended on fish that in turn depended on the mangroves that once flourished in the estuaries. With the fresh water cut off, the trees were withering, and the fish dying. Many of these villagers too had had to leave, and, like Salaamat, bow to those who displaced them. He’d tell Fatah of his nights of rage at Handsome’s, and how ridiculous it was that Handsome’s workers complained of those that displaced them. Fatah would seethe: They’re all bastards. All of them. That’s why we’re here.

  The first thing the Bullets did when they captured someone was cuff his thumbs and the last, dispose of the body in the river.

  Salaamat took a deep breath of the stream of pure air floating around him. The day he’d watched his bus burn, he’d thought he could never find beauty again. He wished he’d been right. He wished God hadn’t lodged that something in him which stubbornly refused to shut down. He wished he didn’t feel God when he heard the eagle’s chicks greet her. He could will himself into a steel nugget, yes, better, in fact, than anyone here. But it was a superficial nugget, as easily rejected as summoned. Beneath the skin, he was as vulnerable as he ever had been.

  Fatah began descending the cliff. ‘We’re not getting anywhere with those birds.’ Salaamat followed.

  They were dropping fast, to a familiar expanse of wild flowers. In amongst the rug of mulch, well hidden by the brittle grass, was a tin can. The other men also hid their supplies here. Fatah’s was a can of liquor, bought from the Mohanas who lived further up the river. Salaamat took a swig and passed it back to Fatah. It was made from oranges and tasted like jackal piss, but he liked it anyway.

  When the can was half consumed Fatah returned to mimicking the Commander. ‘You can see those sons-of-owl fish eggs from the tallest cliffs on the banks. Hey, there we are, slimy yellow fish eggs! You can see us from up here.’

  ‘No you can’t,’ Salaamat punched him lightly. ‘Give me the can.’ After two hefty gulps he said, ‘My God you’re right!’ They laughed so hard their sides ached, and when they shrieked the valley answered back. This made them laugh even harder.

 
Suddenly Fatah asked, ‘What’s the best sex you ever had?’

  Again, peals of laughter.

  Salaamat faced his friend. ‘You know, you’re a total rectangle.’

  ‘Get lost. You came out of your mother feet first.’

  ‘Your head is rectangular, your hands are rectangular, even your smile is rectangular.’ He squinted. Yes, Fatah was shaped like a tree-trunk, with a mop of stiff hair for leaves. He took another mouthful of the tangerine torture. ‘Your teeth too. Rectangular.’

  ‘Give me that,’ Fatah snatched the can. ‘It’s frying your brain.’

  ‘In a rectangle.’

  They exploded again.

  Fatah smacked Salaamat’s cheek and wheezed. ‘So, who was your best fuck?’

  The sun was dipping behind the cliffs on the opposite shore. It must have been about four o’clock. The men would be coming back from the highway, and from the Chief’s. He remembered the women Chikna would sometimes take him to. Oily-skinned, with mascara-clogged eyes. In tight kameezes they’d little to flaunt besides rolls of stomach fat. Never like Rani. But he’d undressed each while thinking of her, so his knees didn’t bruise from thrusting into a whore on a plank of wood covered by a filthy cloth stained with blood and semen. He didn’t taste grime or smell the sweet cakey odor of her make-up as it blended with her sweat. Air didn’t pass through her broken teeth as she snarled, ‘Enough!’ No, he had her positioned in front of a waterfall, just like the one in Dia’s house. Standing, and with the sunlight falling directly on the outer bend of her slightly fuller, left breast.

  He whispered, ‘The best was in a cascade.’

  ‘Ah!’ Fatah admired. ‘Now that’s something I never did.’

  ‘I wanted her stripped to the waist only. Then I took her shoulders and turned her first to the left, then the right. That way the fountain hit each breast exactly at the point where it swelled like a cup, just around the nipple. That’s the best part of a woman’s body.’

  ‘Her neck was long and white,’ Fatah nodded dreamily.

  ‘Her eyes so innocent, so afraid.’

  ‘But what about below?’ Fatah frowned.

  ‘That too,’ Salaamat smiled mysteriously. ‘After an hour or so. She was wearing a green silk petticoat. It was soaked through.’

  ‘Yes. I can see it. Her long hair is drenched. One thick strand clings to a breast. Water drips around and around her smooth cool nipple. You smell her flowery shampoo as you taste the teat.’

  ‘That’s when I unhook the petticoat.’

  ‘It’s too wet to fall down itself. You help. Your fingers slide over the silk around her bottom.’

  ‘The biggest, roundest, most generous bottom God ever made.’

  ‘You cannot wait. You push the slip up instead of down.’

  ‘Her thighs are cold but inside, she is a soft, warm blanket.’

  On the grass they lay perfectly still, their shoulders touching. Salaamat only now realized they were touching. Fatah barely breathed. Slowly, Salaamat turned his head and looked at him. A total rectangle. Eyes still shut. Thick dark lips parted slightly and twitching. Jaw heavy, forehead furrowed. Pictures still fluttering beneath those squeezed eyelids. Muscles contorting as he struggled to maintain his concentration. A mud-colored shalwar in whose side pocket bulged a pistol – a Ruger. Men could upgrade from Soviet to American firearms after they’d killed someone. Yes. In the center of Fatah’s body was another bulge. Like his lips, also twitching.

  Salaamat plucked a stalk of yellow grass. He saw movement to the left of his vision – probably a squirrel. He whispered, ‘And when we’re done I lay her down behind the fountain, and we look out at the curtain of drops. I dry her like this.’ He twirled the flower on Fatah’s nose. ‘And like this.’ Very gently, he kissed his lips.

  Fatah did not immediately respond, nor open his eyes. Salaamat kissed his forehead, then the gray pits beneath his eyes. He brushed his dark leathery cheeks with the flower and kissed the lips harder.

  This time hands came up. They grabbed Salaamat’s locks, yanking him close. Teeth struck his mouth. A tongue sought his with a hunger that made him choke.

  ‘I bet even your navel’s a rectangle,’ Salaamat whispered, helping Fatah undress. He bent down as though, at twenty, to finally give thanks.

  2

  Discipline

  JUNE 1987

  His first test came the following month.

  He got into the back of an open jeep where six men already waited. Fatah draped an arm around him.

  After driving south a few kilometers, the driver turned into a dirt track heading east. One of the men put a blindfold around Salaamat.

  ‘You can trust him,’ Fatah grumbled.

  ‘Those are the rules,’ the man replied flatly, ‘till the Chief says otherwise.’

  Salaamat was not surprised Fatah raised no further objection. He worshipped the Chief. Still, he’d have liked Fatah to throw more allegiance his way. Of the eight men in the jeep, he was the only one they blindfolded. He thought: I am to be the blind, deaf and dumb witness again.

  The jeep stalled several times and he heard men get out to heave rocks from its path. Sometimes Fatah would leave too. Once, another man settled back beside him, resting an elbow on Salaamat’s thigh. When he spoke Salaamat recognized the heavyset man everyone called Gharyaal Bhai, because he boasted of being able to wrestle a crocodile with one arm tied behind him.

  Behind the cloth, Salaamat’s eyelids flickered, alert to the land they couldn’t see. There was a creek flowing – he caught the gentle music as it tumbled by. Woodpeckers knocked at towering gates. Jackals hid in caves, panting softly as the jeep’s tires groaned past their lair. The ravine echoed with bullets fired by the group back at the camp. The noise bounced from cliff to cliff, weaving a web around him. Branches brushed him; threads caught in his hair.

  The Chief, the others said, had a bulletproof vest made of spider silk, just like Genghis Khan did. Salaamat thought of Sumbul back on the farm, enmeshed in a different silk. She told him once what Dia had told her: tiny creatures spit the strongest materials on the planet. Bigger creatures stole them to pretend they were strong.

  So here he was now, on his way to the biggest creature of all. That’s what Fatah called him: bigger than Russia and Amreeka put together (but still no curves).

  The trees thinned and his head burned. Sweat poured down his back. The creek was gone. The jeep accelerated. The jackals ran away.

  When next the vehicle halted, his blindfold was torn off. His head throbbed. He’d never before seen such glare. The clearing was drenched in it. It pierced his eyes and seared his brain. When they led him to the house his eyes were only half-open.

  ‘Ha ha!’ the others laughed. ‘What you’re about to see will make you open them all the way!’

  Fatah smacked his back. ‘You’re going to make me proud.’

  There were two buildings: one the Chief’s, the other for purposes. If he fulfilled his purpose well, he could meet the Chief.

  Muhammad Shah came out of the Chief’s bungalow with keys to the second building. He unbolted a door and they all stepped into solid darkness. After a few moments, with the aid of the glare flooding in from the open door, Salaamat could make out a man tied to a chair. He was blindfolded and gagged. He was naked.

  More men from the Chief’s bungalow followed them inside. When they untied the man he did not change his position, did not even stretch an arm or shrug loose knots from his shoulders. When they pulled off the blindfold his eyes remained shut. Salaamat thought: he can’t stand the light. And when they ungagged him and he did not open his mouth, Salaamat wondered if the captive was even alive.

  The men spoke in his tongue but Salaamat said nothing to them. He was back to talking to himself. He was afraid. The room smelled of shit. It was smaller than his cell at Handsome’s. He saw no bedroll. How long had the man been here? Was he the one Fatah had spoken of weeks ago – the one with the two thousand rupees or the picture?
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br />   The door shut. Flashlights came on. Muhammad Shah passed one to him. Addressing all of them, the First Lieutenant said, ‘This man has mastered the art of shrinking. He does not see, does not eat or drink, listen or even feel. Let me show you.’ The butt of his machine gun struck the back of the man’s neck. He leaned three inches forward and hung still.

  ‘See?’ Muhammad Shah puckered his lips, impressed. ‘This is discipline. He has willed himself into a tiny steel nugget. Sadly, that’s no fun for us, is it?’ He grinned, kicking the man’s shin.

  Salaamat barely even saw it. The back of his neck throbbed as though a frog were lodged there. There was one on each side of his neck too. And one at each temple. Every time they belched, his ears rang.

  The other men closed in on the seated man, the perfect bullet. ‘I can crack him,’ someone said. He lifted an eyelid and shone his torch.

  Ri-bit, the frogs replied, pulsing under Salaamat’s skin.

  Fatah pulled him close. ‘You haven’t switched your flashlight on, stupid.’

  Salaamat flipped the smooth tip under his thumb.

  ‘See those thumb cuffs?’ Salaamat looked. ‘From Germany.’ The circle of iron enclosing each thumb was banded in flesh. Fatah shone his light there like a surgeon at an operating table. Salaamat peered down. ‘It took many days for the cuff to saw through the bone. First it just slipped around, tearing skin, and the wound was only pink. Now look.’ It was turning green. Even the decoration police had never done that to him. Salaamat pressed the side of his neck. A lump moved between his fingers.

  Fatah continued, ‘Gharyaal Bhai bets another week before the thumb falls off. I say just two more days. What do you think? If you’re right we’ll tell the Chief.’ Then he grew distracted by Muhammad Shah.

  Salaamat did not follow him. He’d at last found the courage to look at the man, really look at him. He was wearing leg irons. The legs were so badly cut it was as if a hairbrush made of blades had been run across them. The hair grew in sticky patches. The knees were swollen. Above them, the thighs too were studded with cuts and bruises. Thighs like a plucked chicken’s, with barely any flesh at all. And what about there, Salaamat flashed his torch higher up the thighs. What had they done to that?