by Bapsi Sidhwa
Time passed. Tales of communal atrocities fanned skirmishes, unrest, and panic. India was to be partitioned, and that summer the anger and fear in people’s minds exploded. Towns were automatically divided into communal sections. Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, each rushed headlong for the locality representing his faith, to seek the dubious safety of strength in numbers. Isolated homes were ransacked and burned. The sky glowed at night from the fires. It was as though the earth had become the sun, spreading its rays upward. Dismembered bodies of men, women, and even children, lay strewn on roads. Leaving everything behind, people ran from their villages into the towns.
Qasim had not been to work for a month. Riots were in full swing in Jullundur. One night, defying the curfew, Qasim stealthily made his way to Girdharilal’s quarters on the first floor of a squalid tenement.
He stood on the landing, letting his eyes get accustomed to the dark. Then, pressing a shoulder against the cheap wood, he quietly tried to force the doors. They were chained to each other from inside.
“Who’s there?” a woman’s frightened voice called.
Qasim paused. Regaining his composure, he knocked politely.
“I want to speak with Girdharilal. It is urgent,” he said, disguising his accent.
Girdharilal cleared his throat noisily. Any intruder would know there was a man in the house. Qasim heard him shuffle into his slippers. Next, the chain was being slackened enough for him to peep through the crack.
“Who is it?”
Qasim examined the slit of light, bright at the top, but dark where the clerk’s face and naked torso blocked it. The crack looked paler where the light filtered through the white loincloth between his legs.
“Who is it? Speak up,” asked Girdharilal, peering into the dark, unable to see who it was.
Slipping the muzzle of his pistol between the door panels, Qasim felt it touch soft flesh. He pulled the trigger.
As he raced away, the clerk’s wretched moan and a woman’s scream rang in his ears. He wondered that Girdharilal had had time to moan. His hand twitched, and the naked gun still seemed to jump as crazily as it had when he fired it. Even as he fled, lights all over the building were coming on.
The next day Qasim heard of the train and rushed to board it.
The train glides through the moon-hazed night, with a solid mass of humanity clinging to it like flies to dung.
From time to time a figure loses its hold, or is forced off and drifts away like discarded rubbish. A cry, then silence.
Compartments and lavatories are jammed with stifled brown bodies; some carry the deadweight of children asleep on swaying shoulders. Women hold on to flush chains, they lean on children cramped into wash basins. The train speeds on.
Zohra sits on the train roof within the protective crook of Sikander’s outstretched arm. He holds on to a projecting waterspout to secure his family against the sway and jerk of the train. The girl sleeps cramped between his legs, her head bobbing on his chest. Zohra holds the baby snugly between her thighs and breasts. The baby presses against a sachet of gold and silver ornaments hanging from her neck. The metal bruises her flesh and the young mother makes little squirming shifts.
Sikander feels a dampness along his thighs. Glancing over his shoulder he sees a black wetness snaking its path down the slope of the roof. In desperation, men and women urinate where they sit. He feels the pressure in his own bladder demanding relief.
“God, let me hold out until Lahore,” he prays.
Whistles screaming their strident warning, the train speeds through Amritsar. Past the station it slows, resuming its cautious, jerky passage. They are nearing the border with Pakistan. Already the anticipation of safety lulls the passengers, and tensions lessen. Here and there a head slumps down in sleep.
Zohra has been praying silently. Now that the danger has abated, she dares to think out loud.
“What about the five hundred rupees we lent to Meera Bai for her daughter’s wedding?”
An emaciated old woman crouching next to her peers inquisitively into her face.
Sikander looks fixedly into the darkness. He doesn’t answer. Zohra senses his tension, and bitterness shoots through to her. They have abandoned their land, their everything, and she thinks to remind him of money lent to a Hindu woman they will never see again. Abashed, she lays her head against his arm, mutely begging forgiveness.
Chapter 4
Qasim has no conception of the city the train is rolling towards. Swaying with the motion of the train, his life in transition, his future uncertain, he absently scans the shadowy flat landscape.
Another forty-five minutes and they will cross the border. The engine is taking a bend. Momentarily the smoke in front drifts to one side and Qasim has a glimpse of the tracks ahead.
It is enough. His wary mountain instincts warn him. In a flash he turns to the old man shouting, “Jump!” Terrified by the tribal’s erratic behavior, the old man leans back, but Qasim slides off the roof.
Rolling neatly down the gritty embankment, he scuttles towards the deep shade of a clump of trees. Night engulfs him.
As the center carriage moves past him he sees the train buck. Only now does the engine driver realize there is something farther down the track. A roar rises from the mass of jolted refugees. The train’s single headlight flashes on. It spotlights the barricade of logs and some unaligned rails. White singlets flicker in and out of the glare. The train brakes heavily and the engine crashes into the logs. People are flung from their scant hold on footboards, roofs, and buffers. Women and children pour from the crammed compartments.
Now the mob runs towards the train with lighted flares. Qasim sees the men clearly. They are Sikh. Tall, crazed men wave swords. A cry: “Bole so Nihal,” and the answering roar, “Sat siri Akal!” Torches unevenly light the scene and Qasim watches the massacre as in a cinema. An eerie clamor rises. Sounds of firing explode above agonized shrieks.
A man moves into Qasim’s range. He is shouting, “Run, Zohra! Run into the dark.” Qasim can just hear him above the clamor. He is a young, broad-shouldered man, and the peasant lungi wrapped around his legs causes him to stumble.
Sikander pushed Zohra and the children off the train and yelled, “Run. Hide in the dark.” He watched from on top. Zohra was pushing her way through the swirling bodies. She was almost beyond the range of his vision when he saw an arm clutch at her. The sea of faces swayed beneath him. Pinpointing her position he leapt, clasping his knife. He half slid, half fell down the embankment and sprang up. A Sikh, hair streaming, lashed a bloody sword. Another slowly waved a child stuck at the end of his spear like a banner. Crazed with fury Sikander plunged his knife into the Sikh’s ribs. He stumbled over soft flesh and the mud slushy and slippery with blood. “Zohra! Munni!” he screamed, barely conscious of his own futile voice.
Forcing his way forward, he is suddenly without his lungi and his long, surprisingly scrawny legs trample the live body of a child. He is moving towards a young woman. The flap of her burkha is over her head. A Sikh, sweat gleaming on his naked torso, is holding one breast. She is screaming. Butting a passage with his head, Sikander pushes past the woman and stabs her tormentor. Again and again he plunges his knife into the man’s back. Frantically waving her arms, the woman is swept away.
“Run into the dark, Zohra! Run!” he screams. A white singlet flashes before him. Sikander crumples to the ground, astonished by the blood gushing from his stomach. A woman tramples over him. He tries to ward off the suffocating forest of legs with his arms. More and more legs trample him, until mercifully he feels no pain.
Qasim sees figures flee the glare like disintegrating wisps of smoke. He sits still, in the undergrowth, biding his time. Although he is horrified by the slaughter he feels no compulsion to sacrifice his own life. These are people from the plains—not his people.
The carnage is subsiding. Already they are herding and dragging the young women away. The dying and the dead are being looted of their bloodied ornaments and w
eapons. An eerie silence settles on the stench of blood.
Qasim, as far as he knew, was alone. He moved swiftly, in shadows, aware that he had to cross the border before daylight.
He had barely started when suddenly a short form hurtled out of the dark at him. He stopped, his heart pounding. That same instant he realized it was a child, a little girl.
Clinging to his legs, she sobbed, “Abba, Abba, my Abba!” For a moment Qasim lost his wits. The child was the size of his own little Zaitoon lost so long ago. Her sobs sounded an eerie, forlorn echo from his past. Then, brutally untangling her stubborn grasp, he plunged ahead.
The child stumbled after him, screaming with terror.
Fearing the danger from that noise, Qasim waited for the child to catch up. He slid his hand beneath his vest and triggered a switch. A long thin blade jumped open in his hand. His fingers were groping for the nape of her neck when the girl pressed herself to him for protection.
Qasim gasped. Was it a trick of the light? Quietly, with one hand, he closed the knife. She looked up and in the mold of her tear-stained features, he caught an uncanny flash of resemblance to his daughter thrashing in the agony of her last frenzy.
Kneeling before her, he sheltered the small face in his hands.
The girl stared at him. “You aren’t my Abba,” she said in accusing surprise.
Qasim drew her to him. “What is your name?”
“Munni.”
“Just Munni? Aren’t all little girls called Munni?”
“Just Munni.”
“You must have another name . . . Do you know your father’s name?”
“My father’s name was Sikander.”
Her use of the past tense startled him. It showed a courage and a forbearance that met the exacting standard of his own proud tribe.
“I had a little girl once. Her name was Zaitoon. You are so like her . . .”
She leaned against him, trembling, and he, close to his heart, felt her wondrously warm and fragile. A great tenderness swept over him, and recognizing how that fateful night had thrown them together, he said, “Munni, you are like the smooth, dark olive, the zaitoon, that grows near our hills . . . The name suits you . . . I shall call you Zaitoon.”
A simple man from a primitive, warring tribe, his impulses were as direct and concentrated as pinpoints of heat. No subtle concessions to reason or consequence tempered his fierce capacity to love or hate, to lavish loyalty or pity. Each emotion arose spontaneously and without complication, and was reinforced by racial tradition, tribal honor and superstition. Generations had carried it that way in his volatile Kohistani blood.
Cradling the girl in his arms, he hurried towards Lahore.
Chapter 5
A dingy, heat-hazed dawn crept down on the landscape. Shadows along the horizon turned out to be clusters of squat mud huts and Qasim could make out the faint stir of awakening rural activity. He had been on the run for two hours and was beginning to feel the weight of the child. Every little while he swept his thumb across his forehead to prevent the sweat from running into his eyes. His clothes were soaked with perspiration and his trousers stiff and black with dust. The girl had not said a word. Sensing his strain, she shifted her weight to ease him.
The sun cleared the horizon, and Qasim made out the glimmer of a canal winding to one side. The bridge spanning it, a slender sleeping funnel, lay straight ahead. Already the asphalt reflected a white heat that dazzled his eyes. They were on the outskirts of Lahore and Qasim wanted to plunge into the heart of the city, into the thicket of Muslim safety.
The uneasy city was awakening furtively, like a sick man pondering each movement lest pain recur. The slaughter of the past weeks, the exodus, and the conflagrations were almost over. Looted houses stood vacant, their gaping doors and windows glaring balefully. Men, freshly dead, their bodies pale and velvety, still lay in alleys and in open drains.
Qasim walked along a path bordering the Grand Trunk Road, and the fine talcum earth, in little puffs, rose up around his knees. He did not see the dust-covered gunnysack until he almost stumbled over it. Casually prodding it with his foot he was appalled to see a body half spill out. The youth, flat-stomached, broad-shouldered, honey-hued, lay incongruously asleep in the dust. Stemmed in its prime the body did not look vacuous—like the discarded shells of the old and sick—it still emanated vigor. His legs were in the sack and just above the lungi tied low on his hips was a wide V-shaped gash, clean as if hacked out of wood. Qasim knew the youth’s lifeblood had spilled from that innocuous-looking wound. By the amulet around his neck, by the trim of his hair and moustache, Qasim could tell that the man was of his own faith. Hindus and Sikhs had fled the area and he wondered what passion had caused a Mussalman to kill this handsome Muslim youth. Death, cheapened by the butchering of over a million people, became casual and humdrum. It was easy to kill. Taking advantage of this attitude to settle old scores, to grab someone’s property or business or woman, Hindu killed Hindu—Sikh, Sikh—and Mussalman Muslim.
“Is he sick?” the girl asked.
“No, dead.”
A man, his erect head balancing a huge bundle of firewood, walked some distance ahead. Quickening his stride, Qasim caught up with him and lightly held his arm. The man swung around, his straight neck still balancing the wood.
“What do you want?” he rasped. His chest heaved with panic.
“Am I in Lahore, brother?” Qasim asked. He felt a lessening in the man’s quivering tension.
“Yes, you are.”
“We are from Jullundur. Our train was attacked. Allah saved us and we have run all the way to Lahore.” Qasim’s grip on the man’s arm slackened. “What do I do now?”
The man relaxed completely and noticed the child for the first time. He pointed.
“Carry on straight. Then ask someone the way to the refugee camp at Badami Bagh. You will find food and shelter there.”
The girl, perched on Qasim’s shoulder, gazed excitedly at all the people grinding together like wheat kernels in a mill. Refugees sprawled on and spilled over the vast, welcoming, hospitable acres of Badami Bagh. Qasim waded into the flood of brown sweating bodies, swimming in heat and dust.
“Will we find my mother and father here?” the child asked in sudden hope at the sight of so many. A thickly turbaned head over a broad back, a tall man crouched over a hookah just that way, a village printed sari, a brown arm aglow with bangles; they all were her fathers and mothers. Riding high, she peered eagerly this way and that, expecting the loved faces to emerge at any moment. “No,” she said, shaking her head with disappointment every time she discovered instead a masquerading stranger. But her attention was easily trapped by yet another similarity and hope welled up once again.
The crowd was thickest under the trees. Qasim bullied his way through and sat down against the trunk of a shady mango. Tired out, he cradled the girl against his chest. Tugging at his shirt she cried, “Don’t you want to look for Abba?”
Qasim caught her face between his palms and looked long into her restless eyes: “I think your people are dead . . . you saw what happened last night . . . I am your father, your new father. You are my little Zaitoon bibi . . . aren’t you?”
The girl gravely regarded the strange, fair-skinned face and slanting eyes.
“You want to be my father?” she asked solemnly.
“Yes,” he said, pulling her face to his cheeks.
She twisted her neck to learn each new facet of his features.
“We won’t find my Abba?” she asked.
Qasim shook his head.
When she fell asleep, Qasim looked at his commitment speculatively. The resemblance was less than the night before, but it was there. He stroked the child’s hair and shut his eyes.
Qasim and Zaitoon slept exhausted under the tree all day. When the sun dipped the heat was still blistering, and it was oppressively humid.
As evening approached a faint breeze at last joggled the scorching mass of air, and moment
s later they were in the midst of a dust storm.
Wave upon wave of fine, sooty dust struck with the force of slashing water—mouthfuls, earfuls, nosefuls of dust. Dust was ground between teeth, breathed into lungs, gulped into stomachs. Throats choked. Stooped figures huddled against the mighty wind. Qasim crouched, protecting the tiny Zaitoon with all he had of arms and clothes. The child clung close. Qasim held the flap of his shirt against her mouth. “Breathe through this,” he shouted, spluttering.
The wind roared like an airplane taking off.
“O, Pathan! Get the child away from the tree!” someone shouted close to his ear.
Pushed hard by a savage gust so that he almost fell, Qasim scuttled away, hugging Zaitoon. The gigantic branches of the mango fought and slashed at the phosphorescent dust. An instant later, wrenched from its roots, the whole tree heaved and crashed slowly to the ground.
Debris hurtled through the air. Bits of wood, empty cans scavenged by the refugees, aluminum utensils, struck Qasim with the force of bullets. String-beds, their frail wooden frames askew, thrashed along, limping like grotesque animals. Flashes of lightning lit the scene as all across the city mattresses, beds, and mosquito nets took off from rooftops. Signboards, tree branches, windows, and odd bits of furniture were flung about. Thunder grew insistent, exploding louder and quicker. The wind worked up into a heightened frenzy. Qasim closed his eyes, blocked his ears and every nerve screamed, “Allah! Allah! Allah!” A huge drop of rain at last plopped on his back, then another. The wind slackened with the moisture. It began to pour. The rain cleared the air, washing the dust off their hands, hair, and clothes, and soaking the parched earth. Cool, clean and sweet, it sucked away the heat. The air grew luminous. The suddenly newly bright-green, rich-brown city was bathed in soft, evening light.
