by Bapsi Sidhwa
“You’ll see how different it is from the plains. We are not bound hand and foot by government clerks and police. We live by our own rules—calling our own destiny! We are free as the air you breathe!”
The spirit of his forebears stirred in Qasim. Already he had forgotten the plains and the humiliations he had endured there. These raw, wild ranges were his element.
Setting their burden down, the two rested in a rocky niche just beneath the road. Qasim had heard of the new road, yet to see it hewn into the cliffs and wind like a tapeworm through the mountain-fast sanctuary of his youth, galled him. They were creeping up, these people from the plains: penetrating remote valleys. Their intrusion hurt his sacred memories, and rekindled the Kohistani hatred of all outsiders.
The moment the roar of the passing truck had been close enough to compete with the noise of the river, Qasim had fired.
Now he crouched, shaking.
Suddenly, the edge of the road bounced dust. A spray of bullets ripped through it.
“We’ll be killed! Hai . . .” whimpered Zaitoon, her face to the earth. The boulders sheltering them appeared to her fragile, as transparent as glass.
They waited in silence for what seemed an interminable moment.
In the truck Ashiq Hussain and the driver also waited, mute and tense. Cautiously the driver peered at the deserted road. Then cupping his hands round his mouth, he shouted.
“Attention! There are five of us in this truck. Each jawan has a machine gun. Give yourselves up or we will blast you . . . all of you. Our airplanes will bombard your villages. You know the agreement the Major Sahib has with your Khans. You know the vengeance of the army!”
He paused, gathering his breath, licking his dry lips.
“I will count ten. If you don’t come forward by the time I finish, we’ll start firing. You can’t hide from our machine guns. I guarantee your safety if you come out.”
Certain of an organized raid, the driver relied on his bluff. It was their only chance. He counted “One! Two! Three . . .”
And a voice piped up hysterically, “It’s a mistake . . . forgive us. It’s a mistake.”
The men watched in amazement as a girl clambered out from behind the rocks. Instead of the traditional black dress of tribal women she wore a flowery print. The shawl, which had slipped off her head, showed a thick, black mass of plaited hair. The jawans here had not seen any civilians from the plains, let alone a young girl. A man, obviously of the hills, stood up behind the rocks at the rim of the road. The fingers of both soldiers tightened on their triggers.
Sensing their suspicion, the girl flew towards them, shouting, “He is my father. It’s a mistake. Please forgive us.”
The driver remained suspicious: “Are there any others?”
“No, only us. There is no one else.”
Zaitoon reached the truck and looked up at the men in their seats. She was terrified. Qasim’s sheepish gaze was supplicating. He walked up, the muzzle of his gun pointing at the ground.
“It’s all my fault,” the girl cried.
The men were dark and, like herself, from the plains. She spoke to them in Punjabi, “Brother, please believe me: I begged my father to allow me to shoot his gun . . . and you happened to pass by. I did not see you, I swear.”
The men were helpless in view of this apparition from the Punjab. The young mechanic looked at Zaitoon with soft, apologetic eyes.
Qasim held his peace. Each time he went to speak, Zaitoon’s voice rose and prevented him.
The two men dismounted. The driver resignedly kicked the shattered wheel.
“It’s over now. You might as well help me change it. Allah knows how I’ll explain this.”
The men fell to work. Ashiq Hussain kept his eyes politely averted from the girl’s face. When he stole a sidelong glance, he caught her watching him. Her eyes were bold and large, contrasting roguishly with the dewy softness of her features. The skin of her full lips was cracked with cold. She kept flicking the pink tip of her tongue between them. Ashiq’s lowered eyes stayed a moment on her small feet, encased in childish, buttoned shoes. No wonder she had seemed to fly when she ran. He imagined her bare feet, narrow, high-arched, and daintily plump. The man whom she had called father had the flaky, light complexion of a hill-man. He wondered at their relationship. The girl’s taut brown skin was obviously of the Punjab, as was his own.
“What brings you here, Barey Mian?” he inquired while Qasim helped him pump up the jack.
“We are returning to our home in the hills. I haven’t been here in fifteen years.”
“Then this is the first you have seen of our road?”
“Yes.”
“It will make it much easier for you to get to your village.”
Respecting Qasim’s age, Ashiq spoke courteously. Besides, he wished to impress the girl.
“Sit back, I can easily fix it,” he said.
The driver, having lit a cigarette, strolled behind a bend.
“Where are you heading?” asked Qasim.
“To our camp at Dubair. It’s two hours’ drive. We have a bridge there, if you wish to cross the river.”
Qasim nodded. “So I was told; we shall be crossing there.”
“We have just completed another bridge, at Pattan.”
“Yet another bridge?”
“Yes,” the mechanic boasted proudly, “the army works fast.”
He looked up, hoping to impress the girl, but Zaitoon had crossed the road. She was gazing down the gorge at the Indus.
Unlike the sluggish, muddy Ravi that sprawled through Lahore, the river here was a seething, turquoise snake, voluminous and deep; and for the hundredth time she thought of Miriam and Nikka. She would persuade them to visit her and share her delight in the mountains and the river. A dreamy smile played on her face.
Having put on the spare wheel, Ashiq wiped the grease from his hands.
“Have you far to go?” he asked Qasim.
“A long way yet.”
“We could take you up as far as Dubair. It will be nearing dark when we get there. You might want to spend the night at the camp.” Qasim accepted the offer gratefully. “Son, that would suit us. We can continue tomorrow. The girl is tired.”
“That’s settled then. We’ll have to ask the Major’s permission of course, but he won’t object.”
Qasim and Zaitoon gathered their belongings and put them into the truck.
Chapter 12
Carol sat on the mangy patch of lawn in front of the Officer’s Mess. Her hair was damp from washing and the tepid sun petted her gently through the settled January cold.
Major Mushtaq raised his voice to be heard above the gush of water that hurtled and exploded down the boulders to his right.
“I think Farukh said you’re from California?”
“Yes, San Jose. We moved from Indianapolis when I was a little girl.”
“You’re still a little girl,” the Major said smiling.
“Not so little: I’m twenty-five.”
“What does your father do for a living?”
Carol had become quite used to having questions fired at her. To begin with she had bristled, finding the questions indiscreet and much too personal, but amiably she had realized that American mores of privacy could not be applied to the friendly, chatty horde of Pakistani relatives she had acquired.
“My father’s in insurance,” she replied.
Clearly not satisfied by the brief answer, Mushtaq’s questioning eyes invited her to continue. She smiled resignedly. “Father went through college on the G.I. Bill, after the Second World War. He’s the standard American success story, I guess. House in a good suburb. Two-car garage . . . He still talks about the rough time he had in the 1930s though. But after the deprivations of his own childhood, he delighted in plying my brother and me with gadgets. He would have gone without to make us happy,” said Carol fondly.
“What were you doing before you married Farukh?”
“I’d sta
rted at Berkeley. I meant to major in psychology. Then I got sidetracked—I met Farukh! And now here I am, exploring the Himalayas. I’m so glad Farukh took you up on your offer of a vacation here.”
Carol laughed, her green eyes conveying their excitement at the sight of the mountains and the stream hurtling by in its urgency to connect with the Indus.
At Berkeley Carol had discovered that she did not have the required dedication for sustained study. The pressure of school assignments could not stand up to the livelier pressure of parties and jazz, and of drives in fast cars.
In the area of sex, however, she had moved timorously. Her conventional upbringing, though modified by Californian liberality and the relaxed morals of an affluent neighborhood, did not permit her to go all the way—except once. She necked passionately. She even tried marijuana. This was just before Rock rolled its way into the history of American music and Elvis Presley into teenage hearts.
The study assignments became intolerable.
On impulse, Pam and Carol went off for a week of skiing in Nevada. Later they drifted into San Francisco and, liking it, decided to stay. They took jobs at Capwell’s (Carol did not tell the Major this. Having experienced a bewildering snobbishness towards working girls since her arrival in Pakistan, she had learned to keep that information to herself).
At the cosmetics counter at Capwell’s Farukh had diffidently handed her a list of creams, lotions, lipsticks, and perfumes to be purchased for his sisters, cousins, aunts, and mother; and a list of aftershaves and deodorants for his male relatives and friends. Carol’s lithe golden arms had reached for the items in a graceful flurry. The bill had mounted to a giddy five hundred dollars. Farukh was handsome, and in a slender, fastidious way, arrogantly male. Immediately she knew he was taken with her fair, good looks. She had agreed to have dinner with him the following evening at the Brown Derby.
Farukh showed her photographs of his family taken in the lawns surrounding his marble-faced bungalow, of nieces and nephews splashing in their swimming pools. Over the next few weeks he gave her expensive perfumes, bits of jewelry and finally a mink coat. His manner, courtly to the point of slavishness, alternated with an assertive possessiveness that made her feel cherished.
“Oh, how I love that man!” she said to Pam.
She gave up her job. “I don’t like to see you waiting on all kinds of men,” Farukh had said.
He also made it plain he did not want her to go out with anyone but himself. There had been a row when she had gone to a movie with Pam. She had been terribly hurt, but had later decided it was a sign of his deep and unique love.
There had also been a row when she had told her parents she was determined to marry Farukh. They were sure her husband would convert her to Islam and force her to live in a harem. Carol considered herself an agnostic, and Farukh put no pressure on her to adopt his religion. Eventually her family was reconciled to the marriage, and the young couple had left for Lahore.
Lahore seemed to love Carol. Pakistani men bent over her gallantly, pressing drinks and lighting cigarettes. Beautiful women, graceful in soft flowing garments, chatted with her in exquisite English. There was a party every single evening. She felt like someone in Gone with the Wind.
Farukh’s sisters took Carol on shopping trips into the mysterious narrow alleys of the Old City, where two people cannot walk abreast. She stared at artisans making gold and silver jewelry, embroidering wonderful gaudy colors on silks, beating copper and brass and fashioning it into enormous jars straight out of Ali Baba, into samovars and round-bottomed cooking utensils and pots and pans. She stood before shops the size of piano packing cases, spellbound by the swirl of color and texture, until Farukh’s sisters, laughing at her delight, affectionately pulled her away.
The older women initiated her into managing servants. Carol could not bring herself to practice the harsh measures they prescribed. They told her that she was spoiling them: that they would take advantage. She didn’t mind the slight liberties they took. She was courteous and kind and the servants appreciated her generosity and restraint.
“I love Lahore,” she wrote to Pam. “It’s beautiful and ram-shackled, ancient and intensely human. I’m a sucker for the bullock carts and the dainty donkey carts. They get all snarled up with the Mercedes, bicycles, tractors, trucks, and nasty buzzing three-wheeled rickshaws. The traffic is wild!”
“Some things are hard to get used to,” she went on, “like the sanitary napkins strewn outside houses in the fanciest suburb. And sometimes I still think if I can’t get away by myself I’m going to scream, but nobody understands that! You can’t plan anything and have it come out the way you expect. Things happen, and you roll with them. But the most wonderful thing here is I don’t feel programmed! The people are kind and hospitable. I’m having a ball.”
After the parties, though, increasingly Carol had scenes with Farukh.
“Why are you sulking? Please tell me . . . I thought we were having such fun. How do I know what’s bugging you if you don’t tell me?”
“I’m so ashamed of you! Displaying your honky-tonk pedigree! You laugh too loudly. You touch men . . .”
“But they’re your friends . . . And what do you mean, touch men! I only . . .”
“Don’t you know if you only look a man in the eye it means he can have you?”
“That’s ridiculous! I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t you? You looked at me, and you got laid.”
“Jesus, Farukh! I’m married to you, remember?” She did not mention Farukh’s jealous quarrels in her letters.
A conscript walked by, saluting Carol and her husband’s friend, the Major.
“I’ve sent for some beer. It’ll be here by the afternoon, with the weekly provisions,” he said.
“Ummm . . . I’d love it. Oh! What was that?” A prolonged crash echoed through the mountains. “Shooting?”
“No, a tree felled perhaps.”
“It frightened me. I’ve heard the tribals can be trigger-happy.”
Carol’s pink nails nervously plucked at her blue sweater.
“Trigger-happy? Yes, I suppose so.”
The Major frowned. Eerie and violent, the atmosphere had already affected her. She had arrived with Farukh only yesterday, and the Major wondered why her thoughts should fasten on death at such slight provocation. Did she realize that life here meant little? A man killed was a candle snuffed out, a tree felled, no more. Lately he had been finding his work in the desolate mountains a burden. After almost two years, he was looking forward to a transfer. His wife had refused to stay in the remote camp. She occasionally visited him from Peshawar where she was living with her parents.
“It’s so good to have you and Farukh with me in this wilderness,” the Major repeated for the third time that morning.
“It’s nice of you to have us,” Carol replied. “Setting up the second foundry really took it out of Farukh. There were delays in obtaining sanctions. When it got going the furnace blew up! Dr. Zaffar said Farukh must get away . . . and you know how much he loves the mountains!”
She stretched her legs and arms and threw back her head. Her sweater rode up to reveal a slip of firm white stomach. Mushtaq turned a little. Smug behind his dark glasses, he gazed obliquely at the tidy fork between her trousers. A glass of orange juice and a childish-looking box of smeared watercolors lay open on a small table beside her. Carol shut the paint box absently.
“I went down the gorge earlier and tried to paint the river. It’s such a lovely color, but I can’t get it right. I thought I’d go down again this afternoon.”
Languidly, she moved her long, trousered legs further apart and looked at the snowcapped mountains beyond the immediate range. She knew the direction of the Major’s eyes and was warmed by an exultant female confidence. He must be around thirty-six, she thought, and in comparison to Farukh so easygoing and self-assured.
Farukh’s absent person, his nervous, suspicious face, suddenly became hateful. The hell with
Farukh, she thought, and his whining explosions of jealousy. Always in the mad mornings, noons and nights, put-puttering through the crackle of the phone, between the lines of a letter, his insatiable suspicions, his morbid craving for what he called “the truth.” “Be honest with me. I can take it.”
“Then what happened?” Farukh would say.
“I told you, he tried to touch me.”
“Where?”
“You know where.”
“Like this?” his hand would crawl up, hurting her, “like this?”
“Yes. Stop it! Yes. But I told you I hated it. I slapped him. He stopped.”
“You’re lying. You enjoyed it. Every bit of it. Most likely you encouraged him. You welcomed him. You devoured him. You opened your arms wide thrusting out your pink tits!”
“My pink tits! There’s nothing special about them!”
“Oh, you’re changing the subject. Don’t be smart with me! You widened your legs like this, and . . .”
“Stop it. You’re insane!”
“Insane? I’m insane? If I am it’s because I don’t know what to believe. You are driving me mad.” Farukh pulled his long fine hair and little tufts of it came off in his fists. “Be honest. You enjoyed it. Don’t lie! I can take it. I can stand anything but deceit.”
He was upon her, shaking her, his pale brown face flushed with ugly red blotches, his eyes insanely wide.
“Okay, okay. If you say so, I enjoyed it.”
“If I say so? Who’re you trying to fool?”
“Yes, yes. I enjoyed myself. I admit, I enjoyed myself.”
The eternal dissection of the slightest details, an interminably reopened wound.
“But I love you so much, you see, you understand? I love you so much. Come on now, be nice to me. I can’t bear it. You’re driving me mad.”
To hell with your madness. Your sadistic, possessive, screwed up love . . .
The scene occurred with monotonous regularity. Now lounging on the chair, facing the Major, her bitterness boiled up. God, I’ll show Farukh. I’ll give him something to be jealous about! And to think she had at first found his jealousy endearing! Of course, it had blossomed into full monstrous bloom only after they were married and in Lahore. She hated what it had done to her. It had corroded her innocence, stripped her, layer by layer, of civilized American niceties. She was frightened to see a part of herself change into a hideously vulgar person.
