“I’m sorry,” said Zabo. “I’m terribly afraid. But I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Outside, the hallway was dimly lit but empty. They made their way quickly to where the narrow corridor ended in a room with tattered and broken chairs against the walls, entrances to two other hallways, and two doors to the outside.
“This way!” said Zabo, and she pushed open a door that led to a back garden behind the kitchen. Most of the firing was concentrated on the courtyard and the main rooms at the front of the house.
They ran together across the garden, through just-planted corn rows, trampling newly staked tomato plants that sent their fresh, bitter smell following them to a low building at the base of the compound wall.
A heavy dew dampened the hems of their clothes. Their breath came in pale puffs of mist. The sky was a watery blue, with a soft rim of melon at the horizon.
The noise of the battle was deafening, numbing. They ducked into the shed, which was a storage place for old, disused wheelbarrows, empty cement sacks, broom handles, and other less identifiable debris. Sunlight filtered into it through a haze of dust and spiderwebs.
“Is there another way to get outside the wall besides the main front and back gates?” Shabanu asked.
“Through the stable,” Zabo said, and she led the way. The stable was the best-kept building on the property, better by far than the house. The stalls were clean and smelled only of the fresh straw spread over the floor.
The horses stamped nervously in their stalls, ignoring the basins that contained their morning meal.
Shabanu’s and Zabo’s eyes grew accustomed to the dimness of the stable. The horses looked out over the tops of their half doors, ears pitched forward, nickering softly, begging to be let out to escape the noise of the guns.
“I wish I knew how to ride a horse,” Shabanu whispered.
Zabo shook her head. “Too dangerous,” she said. “We must get out on foot.”
And she led Shabanu to an ancient part of the compound wall. Outside, the earth had fallen away in a series of floods over a period of decades as the river had changed course and the water table rose and fell. The wall had been repaired from the bottom many times, leaving an old footpath gate several feet in the air on the outside. It was one of very few gates that had been closed permanently and forgotten.
Zabo went first. Before easing through a parting of the gate’s wooden planks, Shabanu stopped to look back toward the firing at the front of the house.
On a slight rise outside the front gate sat three lorries with huge guns mounted on their beds. Two were aimed at the massive steel-reinforced front gates. Behind the rise, dozens of vans and minibuses were parked, and rows of gunmen lined the rim of the hill.
The gunfire from outside the wall was overwhelming. Omar must have raised several hundred men to reclaim Ahmed’s land and avenge Rahim’s death.
Shabanu had wondered whether Omar’s years in the West had dulled his instinct for revenge. In the Punjab, a man who murdered his brother was nearly as good as dead himself at the hands of his brother’s heirs.
“Praise Allah in His mercy that all Omar’s bullets fall true,” she said, before letting herself fall gently to the ground beside Zabo on the other side of the wall.
Shabanu pulled her chadr tighter around her face, and, seeing her, Zabo did the same. Shabanu still wore her silver ankle cuffs and her country-made sandals. If anyone saw her and Zabo, Shabanu was sure they looked enough like village women to go unnoticed.
Kept company by the soft gurgle of the fetid water in the sewers on either side of the deserted lane, they made their way from the compound and the outer edge of the village until they had reached the secondary feeder canal that carried irrigation water to the farmers at the edge of the desert. Not a soul was in sight; no doubt the villagers had fled at the first sound of gunfire.
They stopped to rest at the canal, and the water lapped and sucked softly at the muddy bank. Birds sang in the trees over their heads. In the distance the battle still sounded fierce.
“Your father will suspect we’ve gone to the settlement where my family is, near my sister. If he survives Omar’s attack, they will be at risk,” said Shabanu.
“I’m sure he will carry out his threat against your sister and her husband,” said Zabo. “Shouldn’t we warn them?”
“I’ve thought of another idea. If we go to the Desert Rangers at Derawar Fort, they will protect my family. Your father isn’t likely to look for us there. But it will be a long trip on foot. Are you up to it?”
“Anything that takes me away from here,” said Zabo.
They walked along the canal until they could no longer hear the gunfire at Mehrabpur. They came to an old shed at the edge of an abandoned village, and they stopped there to eat some of the food they’d brought. The sun was high in the sky. It was hot, and the air was heavy with dampness.
“We will be safer and more comfortable if we travel after dark,” Shabanu said. “Let’s rest for a while.”
She was relieved to breathe fresh air and to be moving—doing something, not waiting for things to happen. But Zabo’s face was still pale, and she looked frightened.
“Don’t be afraid,” Shabanu said softly to Zabo, and she brushed her friend’s hair back from her perspiring face. “Soon we will be in Cholistan. We will be free, and we will be with Sharma and Mumtaz. We will be together!”
“I’m not as strong as you are, Shabanu,” Zabo said. And she twisted her chadr around her fingers. “And I know my father too well. He is ruthless. He won’t stop until both of us are dead. I know him.
“When Father brought back Ahmed’s body, he was piled on top of the deer and birds they’d shot, as if he were just another head of game. He walked in with his gun over his arm, not afraid at all that anyone would guess it was not an accident.
“And when they brought Ahmed’s body into the house, Father shouted at them to take him out to the stable. ‘You’re getting blood on the carpet,’ he said.
“And, Shabanu, there is something else. I heard him tell Raoul, his farm manager. He has somewhere to hide. He thinks nobody will find him in this place. He may even have gone there before Omar and his men arrived this morning.
“He’s not sane, Shabanu. Because you said you would never marry him he’ll hurt us. It will be more important to him than protecting his land. You saw what they did to Uncle Rahim. It’s just the way he is.”
“I know you’re right,” said Shabanu. “But I know the Rangers will help us.”
“I hope so,” said Zabo.
“And, Zabo,” said Shabanu, taking her friend’s hands. “We must have hope.”
Zabo nodded. Within minutes both of them had fallen sound asleep.
Shabanu awoke many hours later to the sound of camels coming down the canal path shortly after sunset. The large bells tied on goathair cords around their necks made a lovely gonging sound, and their large leathery feet whispered softly through the dust.
Shabanu didn’t want to risk being seen, for Nazir would surely question everyone he came upon. But she wanted to see who it was, so she knelt and looked around the door frame, her heart beating rapidly.
The legs of the camels went past at eye level, looking like the trunks of young trees bent in a windstorm, moving in long, slow, deliberate strides. The camels were loaded with bags of wheat and sugar, a few cook pots and water jars, bundles that swayed and creaked against the wooden frames of their saddles as they passed.
Most likely it was a family coming back to the desert after a trip to the bazaar in Bahawalpur. But Shabanu couldn’t see people. Perhaps they rode atop the camels’ loads.
When the caravan had passed, Shabanu woke Zabo. The evening was hazy along the canal, and she was sure there would be little moonlight to find their way on such a cloudy night.
“We must start moving,” she said, shaking Zabo’s shoulder.
They wrapped themselves in their shawls against the dampness and walked along the towpath until t
hey reached the break in the levee that told Shabanu they should leave the canal path and strike out across the desert.
The night air was cooler and drier once they left the irrigated area. There was no moon at all, and the stars were hidden behind clouds that had been thick and gray in the sky during the late afternoon.
When they were far beyond the villages and could see no lights and hear no sounds, Shabanu switched on the small flashlight Omar had given her. In its tight little circle of light she identified the lay of the dunes and found their direction. She turned off the light and set a pace somewhere between a walk and a run, her ankle bracelets sounding the rhythm of her gait with a soft kachin, kachin, kachin.
Zabo had trouble keeping up at first, but they rested a few moments under a stand of thorn trees, and she seemed to do better when they started off again.
Shabanu stopped to sniff the air, but there was no musty scent yet of the toba near where they would turn off for Derawar.
She moved with the sureness of a desert tracker until they were about an hour from where they’d left the canal. Then Shabanu bent and felt the sand. It was coarse and pebbly. The desert nomads always dug their tobas in the clay depressions along the bed of the ancient Hakra River, which had disappeared many centuries ago to run underground. The river gravel and shells still marked its course through the desert.
She found the damp spots that marked the edges of the large pond that sustained the nomads and their herds for months at a time after the monsoon rains. There she took a turn toward the east.
When they had been on the track to Derawar for less than an hour, the distant sound of the grunting and bellowing of tethered camels reached them. She put out her hand and stopped Zabo.
“Wait here,” she whispered.
She sat on the ground and took off her ankle bracelets, and for the first time that evening she was glad the night was so dark.
The caravan had pulled in between two stands of trees behind a small hillock, which sheltered them on three sides. The camels were tethered on the other side of the hillock.
Three men sat around a fire, talking and taking turns sucking at a large brass hookah pipe. She smelled the warm, sweet aroma of fruity tobacco and brown sugar and heard the gurgle of the smoke being pulled through the water in the base of the pipe. The flames flickered a deep golden orange on their faces as they talked quietly, happy to rest after a long day’s journey.
She sat for a few moments, along the sticklike branches of kharin just behind the hillock that hid her from the men’s vision. She wanted the camels to have some time to get used to her scent before she approached them.
Even so they danced back and forth in little semicircles, and their grunts became higher-pitched as she walked toward them, her palm outstretched.
One old female sat passively over a dinner of greens, chewing calmly. As she chewed, she drew back her head to look down her long broad nose and contemplate the young woman. The female camel wore neither tether nor ankle bracelets.
“Good daachii,” Shabanu whispered, stroking the camel’s neck. “Uushshshsh.” Slowly and silently the old female got to her feet.
And just as quietly Shabanu led her away, keeping the hillock between herself and the men around the fire. She walked out into the desert a half mile before ordering the camel to her knees and climbing up onto her shoulders.
“Uushshshsh!” she commanded again, and the camel lurched to her feet. Shabanu guided her back to where Zabo sat in a thicket of tamarisk.
“This old daachii should make our trip easier!” Shabanu said, her voice still a whisper.
The camel was docile and cooperative, and by the time the sun sent opal streaks across the sky, they could see the massive turrets of the fort at Derawar.
The weather had cleared, and it looked like a fine morning as the sun climbed higher. Zabo slept, her head against the back of Shabanu’s shoulder.
chapter 22
The Desert Rangers occupied a fort made of sand and clay and cow dung that was indistinguishable from the dunes, except for the square edges of its walls in the cool, hard light of the dawn. A white four-wheel-drive vehicle was parked in front.
Shabanu slowed the old camel to a walk, and the change from her gentle lope woke Zabo.
“Oh!” said Zabo. “Oh, Shabanu! That’s Raoul’s jeep. They’ve come after us! Run! Run!”
In response to Shabanu’s command, the daachii whirled. As she did, a single shot rang out. Zabo slumped against Shabanu’s shoulder.
“Hang on!” Shabanu shouted back over her shoulder as the old camel picked up her pace. Zabo’s arms tightened slightly around Shabanu’s waist, and she groaned softly.
Praise Allah, she prayed. In Your mercy let Zabo be all right. I would gladly give my own life to save her. Shabanu thanked Allah for having given her the wisdom to think of alternate plans.
And by the time she heard the jeep start up, they were on the opposite side of the fort, out of sight inside the massive front gate. The camel knelt on the cobbled drive behind the wall. Shabanu pried Zabo’s arms from her waist and climbed down from the hump.
Zabo had been shot through the throat, a neat hole on one side of the soft, pale flesh of her neck and a ragged tangle of flesh on the other. Blood dripped from the side of her mouth.
“Oh, Zabo,” she whispered, and tears burned her eyes. Her tongue felt swollen in her aching throat. “Please, please hang on. I’m here with you. Please fight hard!”
Zabo’s lovely dark eyes were open, but it was as if they were pressed behind glass. They barely moved, and she didn’t blink at all. Shabanu was not sure that Zabo could see.
She lay Zabo’s head against the camel’s massive hump. Her breathing was ragged and bubbly.
She ran to the small door on the opposite side of the cobbled drive from the huge gate, which was pierced through with swords at its top to keep the Rajput princes’ elephants from battering it down in dozens of battles over the centuries.
“Shahzada! Please help me!” she cried, hammering on the door of her father’s friend, the gatekeeper of the fort of the nawab of Bahawalpur. “Please, someone, let me in!”
At that moment the engine of the jeep whined as it headed off down the track to look for her and Zabo in the desert.
Shahzada, who must have been close to his hundredth year, answered Shabanu’s knock himself.
“Do you remember me? I am the daughter of Dalil Abassi. I beg you to help me!”
“Yes, child, I know who you are and why you’re here,” said the old man through his long and widely spaced teeth. His bare skull was covered with the red felt fez of the nawab’s army uniform. He was tall and thin and straight, with a thick stubble of white beard.
“Come quickly!” said Shabanu, dragging him by the hand to where the camel knelt. Zabo had slumped sideways, her face pressed into the camel’s hump. Her blood had saturated the animal’s fur and now dripped onto the cobbles.
Shahzada and Shabanu lifted Zabo from the daachii and propped her up against the animal’s side.
“Please, Zabo, please fight for your life! I haven’t betrayed you! I’m here. We’ll save you,” she whispered against her friend’s hair. Zabo groaned faintly.
“Your sister?” Shabanu asked Shahzada. “Is she still …”
“Yes,” he said. He tore a strip from Zabo’s chadr, wadded it, and pressed it against the ragged hole in her throat. “Hold this. I’ll fetch her.” His sister was a hakkim of sorts—a midwife, a preparer of the dead for burial, an herbalist curer of countless ills.
“Can you hear me, Zabo?” Shabanu asked. Her hands trembled, and tears dripped from her chin and the end of her nose. When she lifted her hand to wipe them away, it was slick and red with Zabo’s blood.
Zabo’s eyes were closed now. Her face was so pale it looked faintly blue. Her breaths were farther apart and shallower.
“Hurry!” Shabanu shouted in the direction of Shahzada. “Hurry!”
But Zabo was gone before he r
eturned with the withered old woman, whose only job now would be to prepare Zabo for her grave.
Shabanu was incredulous. Her one friend who just minutes ago had clung to her with strong and healthy arms—they had been on their way to spend the rest of their lives together, free in the desert with Mumtaz and Sharma and Fatima. She couldn’t be dead! Just seconds ago she was alive!
Shahzada lifted Zabo in his arms and carried her quickly to his sister’s quarters, beckoning Shabanu to follow. She was barely able to stumble after him.
“Did anyone see you come here?” he asked.
Shabanu shook her head. “Whoever was in the jeep thinks we’ve gone into the desert.”
“Praise Allah,” he whispered.
His sister darted out the low doorway with a bucket of water and washed away Zabo’s blood. Then she scrubbed the camel’s fur and pulled the beast inside the nawab’s stable.
Within a few minutes, the desert air had drunk the water and remains of Zabo’s blood, and there was nothing to show that she had died there.
Shahzada and his sister prepared Zabo’s body for burial, bathing her pale skin and praying over her. Shabanu helped them, but she felt as if her hands were ineffectual, that when they meant to tuck the folds of the shroud under Zabo’s shoulders, they merely fluttered. Her lips, when they meant to pray, merely uttered words of grief. Never had she felt so defeated and helpless.
When they had finished, Shahzada lay Zabo, her body wrapped head to foot in a pure white seamless shroud, on a bare wooden table in a back room in his sister’s chambers. He led Shabanu to a tiny dark parlor. His sister brought a plain tray with sweetened tea in a little blue enamel teapot.
“Nazir-sahib came directly here to look for you,” he said. “He remembered that your family went to the Desert Rangers for protection from him one other time. And, I tell you, he will not rest until he finds you. I thought you would be alone. He never mentioned his daughter.”
“Where will we bury her?” Shabanu asked. “I remember you buried Grandfather’s fez and sword in the lapis tomb of the army commander.”
“Yes,” said Shahzada. “Your grandfather was a noble soldier and a fine man.”
Haveli Page 21
