After a pause, she added that for the first time in all the years Riffat had devoted to the farm, she was beginning to wonder if it had been a mistake. It had taken so much of her life. Perhaps she should have stuck to imported threads and dyes. ‘I told her, “No, Bibi. You made your dream come true, how can you say it hasn’t been worth it?” She looked so frail, suddenly, and even a little old. She said, lately, she’d begun missing her husband dreadfully again. It would have been nice to simply grow old with him.’
Salaamat played with a strand of Sumbul’s hair. He hadn’t told her what happened on the highway. He hadn’t told a soul. But he’d shared what was heard in the governor’s tomb, after leaving her with the earrings years ago. He knew it was about this she wanted to speak.
She’d sold the earrings soon after her third child was born. Now in her lap nestled a fourth, brittle-boned, unable to retain food. The child was shriveling; dehydrated as the land they lived on. Yet Sumbul refused to accept it. Even with a fifth child in her womb, the fourth evoked as much love in her as the first. She offered him milk. Her breast sagged like a stuffed sock: stout at the bottom, flat at the top. Nipples still Fanta-cap sized but ragged now. She was just twenty: his age that day on the highway.
The boy rejected the milk. Sumbul buttoned her shirt up. Salaamat kissed the child’s feverish forehead. He said, ‘Why do you care so much about your Bibi’s troubles?’
She rocked the child, desperate to get a reaction from him. His thighs, slender as her wrists, bent closer to a tiny, sunken chest. He was moving backwards in time, back to the little foetus in her womb, back to the egg that swam free. Her eyes welled with tears but she blinked them back impatiently before answering him. ‘Bibi has been like a mother to me. She too has suffered great losses.’
Salaamat rolled on to his back in the dirt, gazing up at the top of the thirsty tree. ‘How touching. Aba has been like a father to Bibi’s daughter Dia, and Bibi has been like a mother to you.’
Sumbul turned her head away, whispering, ‘Be gentle with me today.’
He quickly repented. Taking her free hand in his, he asked for forgiveness.
But when she turned to look at him again he saw the shine in her eyes. ‘What do you know about being like a parent, when you won’t accept your real father? You haven’t even returned to our village once since Ama died. Dadi wants nothing more than to see you again before she dies too.’
‘She sent me away.’
‘She had to! We’re much better off now. What would we be doing over there? Serving tea to the jobless for the rest of our lives? There’s no fishing for the men any more. You would have felt as useless as Aba did before we finally left.’
He raised his hands, drawing a partition between them. ‘I would never have become like him.’
‘Pah! You men are all the same. Pining about the past while we think of what’s to come.’ She looked down at the child again.
He pursed his lips, holding back anger. He knew she knew that by leaving everything he’d once had, he was left with nothing besides her. Sumbul was mother, father, and home. He was terrified of invoking her wrath. What if she stopped loving him? The wench: his fear allowed her to manipulate him.
‘You ask why I care about Bibi,’ she continued. ‘Do you know the day after her husband was found, she got straight out of bed and came to the farm? Yes. She didn’t lick her wounds. She didn’t cry to the world. And because of that, the world has done nothing but speak ill of her.’
‘She did not love him,’ Salaamat said, before he could help it.
‘How dare you! Just because of what you heard long ago? It takes courage to go on after a husband’s death. Even more when his corpse is found in the river, with gruesome injuries. Whether you loved him or not.’
Now it was Salaamat’s turn to look away.
Once they’d pledged to always love each other, at any cost. By confessing, he’d force her to break the promise. Even if he shared how he’d practically kissed the ground when it hadn’t been her on the highway, she’d stop loving him.
She was saying, ‘Men have extorted more and more protection money from her ever since. They’re worse than the authorities at the body shop, the ones that bothered you about decoration tax.’
‘How would you know, my innocent one?’ Salaamat replied, wondering why he couldn’t simply let her ramble on. ‘They never smashed your limbs.’
She tossed him another look, but let it pass. ‘So it pains me to know Bibi has even more troubles. And this time, from someone she’d never suspect. Someone I also care about. And someone you do too,’ she looked up, smiling mischievously. And then she couldn’t help it. ‘Exactly what have you seen Dia Baji and the Amreekan boy do?’
Ah! Power to manipulate back! He lay down again, pretending to fall asleep.
‘Oh, you’re evil!’ she cried. ‘But I see through you. You’re dying to tell me!’
He snored.
She clicked her tongue. ‘I’ve tried to ask her but she won’t tell. I’ve even listened at the door when she calls him up but half the time they speak in English. Has it gone very far?’ She giggled, then covered her mouth in horror. ‘Oh but it would be so, so …’ She tried to shake the thought.
He watched with eyes half open. She was more entertaining than anything on television.
‘Aba’s been trying also,’ she went on. ‘But, for once, even he can’t get anything out of her.’
‘Just like a father,’ Salaamat muttered.
She smacked him, hard. ‘Oh this is awful, we can’t make light of it. It’s serious. Serious. It would be bad enough, but knowing what we do, if it’s true.’ Again she shook her head, as if sneezing. ‘It would be almost like … me and you!’ The hand came up again and her face was the picture of shame.
‘Not exactly,’ Salaamat shrugged, feigning indifference. ‘Anyway, from what I heard, they never knew for sure.’
‘Well, if they’re not, then I suppose it’s not that wrong to, well, imagine what they do.’
He snored again.
‘Oh what do you know, anyway,’ she huffed. ‘You need a wife to teach you.’
He couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity.
‘And you’d better marry quickly or no woman will even want to teach you.’ She raised a brow provocatively.
‘Don’t you think I’ve at least twenty more years of good looks ahead of me?’
‘No. Five, maximum.’
‘Well then, I’d better enjoy myself before I lose them. Then I’ll get married.’
But again he found he’d upset her. She was so sensitive, this sister of his, who’d been married to a forty-year-old at fourteen. Kissing her hand, he said, ‘Forget this silly chatter.’
But she wouldn’t. ‘One of us needs to talk to Bibi. Either you, me, or Aba.’
His fingers turned clammy. ‘How can it be me? I’ve barely spoken to her before.’
‘Well, you’re the one who saw her that day. And you’re the one who’s seen Dia Baji with the boy. You can tell her everything you know.’
‘Are you crazy?’ He was shouting now. ‘Why would she believe me? You’re the one she’d listen to.’ Everything you know!
‘Calm down.’ She looked surprised. ‘Just listen. If I tell her what you’ve told me, she’ll still want to hear it from you. The same if Aba tells her. You’re the witness.’
He stood up. ‘That’s always been my curse. But no more. I won’t get involved. No more!’
She clutched his hand. ‘Sit down at least.’
‘Only if you won’t bring it up again.’
‘Fine!’
He sat down.
She put the baby in his arms. ‘Hold him while I fix you a sherbat. Unless you want to come inside?’
He shook his head. He refused to take shelter under Mr Mansoor’s roof. It was bad enough coming to the farm, but a tree at least, in the grand scheme of things, belonged to no one.
The child opened his eyes, aware of an alien scent.
If it repulsed him, he was too spent to protest. The lids fell over eyes like tiny specks of ink, and then went back to flickering.
Sumbul returned with a glass of mango squash. Salaamat hesitated. He drank his drink, in his glass. Still, it was a hot day, and Sumbul had made it especially for him.
6
Fatah’s Law
Outside the farm, Salaamat stood a while on the highway before walking over to his uncle on Makli Hill.
After Mr Mansoor’s body was found, Sumbul had told him Dia wondered often if silk had been the culprit. She needed desperately to find a reason. Business? Rivalry? The dye company that had lost its contract? Middlemen who no longer supplied cocoons? Other factory owners who paled next to Riffat Mansoor? Though they gossiped about her, rich women would pay anything to boast, at parties, that they wore Riffat’s silk. Was it competition, and if so, was it the woman who ought to have been killed?
He’d listen to Sumbul’s reports in silence. If there was a reason, he didn’t know it. Maybe it had to do with Fatah’s law. If there were any other reason, maybe someone else knew what it was. Maybe Riffat Mansoor herself could do some explaining.
Salaamat peered down the highway. The tarmac shimmered in the heat, shooting up into fog. Somewhere beyond the tombs in the mist was the village with the millet and wheat fields. Somewhere in the fields chimed the irrigation canals that, five years ago, had slaked his ears. Perhaps those fields had exhausted their water supply as well. A little deeper into the fog would be the fenced wheat field outside which he’d stood. Egrets had flecked the pasture. They could fly in and out of any fence, but not he. He’d stood watching seven men with guns on the other side of the street turn to fourteen. And then Fatah had whistled and he’d seen the dark car try to backtrack. As if that could ever be done.
They’d stopped for over an hour to eat rewri while Mr Mansoor bled.’ If those bastards don’t hurry up,’ said Yawar, ‘the Chief will never get a look at him.’
Finally, the men returned with a dozen dishes for each vehicle, and again they were on their way. Mr Mansoor’s breathing grew increasingly uneven and he began muttering incoherently to himself. The car swerved unsteadily.
‘This will keep him conscious,’ said Ali, spooning the sweet into Mr Mansoor’s mouth. If he refused it, Gharyaal Bhai wrung the wounded arm and Ali dug into the other with a knife. He’d vomited twice on himself when the car pulled up outside the Chief’s house.
But before that, Salaamat memorized the route. The men had not blindfolded him. He stared outside absorbing every turn, stamping each detail in his mind: left at the spear-shaped rock, right at the flat one. How could he tell them apart? That one had a branch falling mid-way over it. And so on. Twice he got out to piss and mark the spot with stones. His vision was like a telescope. He ceased noting events inside the car. He was going to get on the other side of the fence even if it killed him.
That’s what he told Fatah as Mr Mansoor was thrown into the torture cell. He grabbed his collar and took him around the back. If they were seen, no one interfered. After all, Fatah was First Lieutenant Muhammad Shah’s brother-in-law.
‘You coward,’ Fatah whispered, enraged. ‘You’re going to let others sell you. You’ll become their whore.’
‘I’m already a whore,’ Salaamat choked. ‘Yours.’
And then, for the first time since leaving his village, he began to sob. His shoulders jerked in a spasm of its own momentum, independent of the scream in his nose. He’d never lost control so utterly. He, the best shot, the tightest bullet. And the shame of it all was that Fatah saw him unravel. The dam he’d learned to contain fanned out of him; the water swirling in his gut rushed out. He loosened his shalwar and crapped a stream of rewri three feet from Fatah.
His friend did nothing. He didn’t kick or punch him in his filthy, exposed behind. He held his nose and looked away.
Outside the room from which Mr Mansoor would never escape, the dregs of the love Salaamat once had for Fatah surfaced again. He felt a rush of gratitude: he was not despised. Fatah loved him still.
When Salaamat stopped crying and dressed again, Fatah put a slip of paper in his shirt pocket, just as he’d done on their first meeting. ‘If you run the men will hunt you down, especially now that you know the route to the Chief’s. There’s only one way out for you. Go to the Mohana village we found. Have Hameed Bhai take you downriver. The boathouse will hide you well. When you get to Karachi, find him,’ he pointed to the slip of paper.
‘But who is he? And how can he protect me?’ Salaamat sniffled, staring vacantly at the chit of paper.
‘His company supplies our equipment. He always needs drivers and has used dissidents before. Everyone knows that. You’re running from one chief to the other.’
He went into the cell and that was the last Salaamat ever saw of him.
7
A Visitor
His job with Khurram’s family was simple. He drove a van to the designated place where the clearance agent waited. The fake bill of lading was handed over, the consignment of goods transferred to his van, and the agent paid anywhere between 20,000 to 50,000 rupees, depending on the size of the shipment, and the number and needs of other officials. Sometimes Salaamat met him along the coast of the Balochistan border. At other times, off the National Highway, close enough to the scene of the abduction. He asked no questions, though he did sometimes wonder how the goods came in – at one of the dark bays of Balochistan’s cavernous coast or via the porous Afghan border, like the heroin and firearms? Probably neither. There were more ways to cross borders illegally than legally.
Behind the wheel, Salaamat consoled himself that if he carried a load of torture equipment, it was better than being the one tortured. And he resolved never to belong to anyone again. It made no sense: Fatah’s men got guns from the Pathans and these supplies from a Punjabi, who in turn imported from Amreeka and the Angrez. And Mr Mansoor had been Sindhi. What about Fatah’s talk of protecting his own people?
Never again. He worked only for himself, and occasionally, Sumbul. Nothing else mattered. Something that had come alive again in the gorge had finally shut down for good. God had gone and shrunk everything in His wake. Life was trivial now.
So he’d concluded the day he stumbled down to the Mohana village, after a night spent escaping the Chief’s den.
The stars were still bright when he reached the camp. The men who’d stayed back were asleep. He tiptoed past them and began lumbering up to the top of the world. Just before dawn the next day, he curled under an orange tree outside the thatched hut. The Mohanas nursed him with patience, asking for nothing in return. Some folks were as fine as that. Others weren’t. It made no sense.
The eldest boatman, Hameed Bhai, sat beside him every morning as he drank the reviving broth, echoing Salaamat’s thoughts. He spoke of how his people had built their lives around the river for thousands of years, but now were forced to find other means. It was always the same story. Always the same fight. And it was just so trivial. Every night, he fell asleep to the tune of Hameed Bhai’s lament. The next day, he woke to the women washing clothes, the children twirling dragonflies, and some of the older boys teaching cormorants to dive for fish. He watched as if from a great distance. None of it touched him any more.
On the long voyage down the river, he recalled his grandmother telling him that the last journey – the one that carried the soul to heaven – was in a quiet boat. All he wanted was for this to be that last journey.
He gulped tangerine torture while Hameed Bhai rowed like he was in the prime of his youth, pointing places out to him. ‘The river would feed that lake over there. But the Mohanas who live on it weep now. The lake has grown salty. It is stagnant, filthy. Dead are the freshwater fish: kurero, morakho, thelhi. And what are the people to drink? We were born to water. We drown on land.’
The boatman’s woes drifted in and out of Salaamat’s tangerine stupor, in and out of the river’s song, in and out of the faces of the men who�
�d been with him on the highway. He imagined how they’d acted in the cell, invented their dialogue, and even pushed the button when they did. The next moment, when the oar dipped into the river, it pulled up a weed-entangled Mr Mansoor.
The phantom Mr Mansoor had hung there all the way down to the bank where Hameed Bhai eventually let him off.
Khurram’s father was loud and stout, like the son. He returned Salaamat’s greeting every morning with a hearty, ‘Waalai-kum-asalaam, Salaamat.’ Peace be upon you too, Peace. He never kicked or jeered him. He paid 4,000 rupees a month – twice what Salaamat made after toiling three years under Handsome. He had two daughters, both married, who came often to the house with their children. His ailing wife kept to herself. He had three cars – a Mercedes, Land Cruiser, and Honda Civic. The first for the evenings, the second for Khurram, and the third for the day. A second driver transported him to work. A third was hired for Khurram when Salaamat delivered shipments to the warehouse.
Salaamat’s quarter was at the back of the three-story house. It was twice the size of his cell at Handsome’s and he’d even been given a tape-recorder and a twelve-inch television. When not busy with a consignment, the day was his. He listened to pop songs, watched television, walked over to the nearest video shop, visited his sister or the workers down the street, or, if the daughters called in, played cricket and pugan pugaai with their children. Sometimes he ran small errands for Khurram. If, for instance, there was no ice cream in the house, he fetched it. He also ran errands for Khurram’s friends, such as taking the Amreekan to the cove.
One thing he liked to do was share a cup of tea with the old construction worker down the street. It was a little like being back in his grandmother’s teahouse. The unfinished house, without a roof and doors, was strangely soothing, and as he sat there, he was a little closer to being in a cottage by the sea. He couldn’t explain why. But since the rains, the workers had gone away so he mostly stayed in his room.
Trespassing Page 31
