The Night Diary

by Veera Hiranandani

  We were too weak to walk much after we left the village, so we found a shady place under some trees and lay there close together. Every once in a while, Papa would pinch our skin and check our pulses and stare hard out into nothing. Dadi muttered prayers and rebraided my hair. Amil lay flat on his bedroll, staring at the sky. He held a smooth pebble in his hands, turning it over and over. Sometimes he would close his eyes, so I kept checking the pebble. He would stop for a few minutes, but then give it a turn or two and my heart would slow down. If I looked at Amil’s empty face I would start crying, so I just watched the pebble in his hand. I had never seen him like this, so still and quiet.

  I wasn’t even thirsty anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. The next thing I knew Papa was waking us up in the dark. The air had cooled. I looked out across the flat, dusty land and could see the slow glow of blue light over the horizon, the first sign of dawn. He had found more mangoes. When had he done this? He pulled off the skins.

  “Eat,” he said, handing them out to each of us. “You must. Suck out the juice.”

  We took the three slippery mangoes, taking weak bites, sucking on them like little babies. Papa had to hold Amil up with one hand and feed him the mango. Amil’s eyes were unfocused. My throat tightened. I crawled over to him and held his cold, bony hand. If I lost my brother, I don’t think I could ever utter a word again.

  After we finished our mangoes, Papa squatted in front of our little circle facing us.

  “Listen,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “There is another village a mile from here. We need to go now. We have to use every bit of strength we have.”

  We nodded and hobbled up and somehow collected our things. I got a burning cramp in the calf of my leg and collapsed to the ground. I started getting them yesterday. I saw Amil and Dadi have them, too. For some reason Papa didn’t have them or he hid it from us. He told us to flex our feet hard and rub the muscle to make them go away. As Papa helped Amil up, Amil bent over and vomited out his mango.

  Dadi walked over and whispered something in Papa’s ear. She shook her head. Papa nodded. They whispered some more, but I couldn’t hear them. Papa helped Amil sit down again. My cramp faded as I rubbed.

  “I don’t think you can walk it. Rest here with Dadi,” Papa said to me and Amil. “I will bring back water.”

  But what if we die before you come back? I wanted to ask. I didn’t want to die, not like this. Is there any good way to die? Maybe when you’re very old, surrounded by all who love you and your heart gently stops beating because you’ve had enough living. But we hadn’t had enough. You didn’t have enough either, Mama. I knew I should be screaming and wailing. But I couldn’t. I had nothing left in my body.

  Papa looked hard at us and put his flat hand on my cheek. He checked Amil’s pulse again and then I saw him take Amil’s hand. He looked at Dadi.

  “Keep talking to him. Try to get him to suck on a small amount of mango, not too much.”

  Then he took two water jugs and walked away from us toward the main path.

  “Amil,” I said, lying down next to him. “Let’s count.” He turned slightly toward me. “We’ll count the number of footsteps it should take for Papa to walk a mile and back. It won’t be long. He’ll get us water.”

  I started counting softly. Amil watched me with his big dark eyes. Again, my mind flew backward to a night in our house long ago. Amil must have had a nightmare. He woke up shrieking. We were probably about seven. I got up and sat next to him. He lay back down and I held his hand. I told him to count as high as he could go. “Only think of the numbers and you won’t think of anything else.” We both counted, his eyes blinking at me. Eventually he went to sleep again. From then on, I did that with him whenever he had a nightmare. Now, here we were living in a nightmare.

  Dadi crouched by Amil on his other side and fed him bits of mango. The mango I ate must have helped me, because the fog lifted a little bit. I counted up to one hundred, then two, then a thousand. I pictured Papa’s steady steps marking the sandy path. Amil closed his eyes. His legs twitched. I watched his chest go up and down and matched my footstep counting with his slow breathing, counting three footsteps for every breath in and three more for every breath out. Dadi sat cross-legged and hummed softly, patting Amil’s shoulder occasionally. I looked at her, my poor Dadi. Her tan and gold sari, tinged with dirt, her face dry and looking even more wrinkled. Her bun had fallen out and a long gray braid trailed down one shoulder. A burst of guilt burned in my cheeks thinking about how many times I’d wish she’d stop sucking her teeth or telling me to do my chores or braiding my hair too hard and too tight. She loved us. She was like an old, soft blanket that I barely even noticed was there. She just kept going, no matter what.

  “Dadi,” I said.

  She looked up.

  I tried to swallow, but my mouth muscles didn’t quite work. “I love you.”

  She waved her hand at me and shook her head. She was right. I shouldn’t be saying such a thing. But I needed to, in case. We never said those words to one another. But it didn’t make me sad, because we did things that meant love. Now I could see it. Dadi washing and mending my clothes, Papa kissing us on our foreheads before bedtime, Amil making a drawing of me. Kazi making my favorite paratha stuffed with fried onions and potatoes. Every day had been filled with things like this. All love, even between Papa and Amil. Why hadn’t I seen this before, Mama? What if it was too late? I reached out and took Dadi’s dry, brown hand and squeezed. She squeezed mine back.

  I didn’t stop counting. I could think and count at the same time. Once in a while I’d lose my place a little bit. An hour had probably passed. I was on three thousand. I counted four steps now to every breath from Amil and then five. I shook him, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  “Amil,” I whispered in his ear, and shook him again. Nothing.

  “Dadi,” I said, and looked at him. “He’s not waking.”

  She shook his shoulder and pressed a piece of mango in his mouth, but he didn’t stir. Her eyes flashed in panic. She pressed her head on his chest.

  “He’s breathing,” she murmured, and then turned her head up to the sky. She began to wail out a prayer, not loud, just filled with pain. I wanted her to stop, but instead I looked up to see what she saw. And then I felt it—a spot of water on my head, tingling through to my scalp. I looked around me. I wondered if I was imagining it. Dadi kept wailing her prayer and I felt another drop. Dadi stopped and looked at me.

  “Did you feel it?” she asked me.

  I nodded. We both tipped our heads to the sky. More and more drops came down. I saw one land on Amil’s forehead, though he didn’t move.

  The rain started to come down harder. I looked up and held my mouth open. A few drops fell in.

  “Nisha, we need to collect the water!”

  I started to feel dizzy as the water hit my arms, my face, inexplicably all this water. And yet it was still out of reach. I thought about the mortar and pestle I had hidden in my bag. I got it out and unwrapped it. I hadn’t looked at it since we left. Just holding it in my hands felt like I had traveled back in time to our kitchen. Dadi watched me, surprise in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. I set the marble mortar down, the bottom of the little white bowl stained with crushed spices. It started to fill up. My throat ached. Then it was full enough for a drink. As much as every cell in my body longed for the few sips it contained, I crouched over Amil.

  “Amil, wake up. I have water,” I said, my voice sounding deep and scratchy, not my voice at all. He didn’t stir. I slowly poured a bit in his mouth and rubbed his throat to help him swallow. He took in a dribble and then coughed. His eyes flicked open and he started to cough.

  “Drink,” I hissed in his ear as loud as I could in my dry voice. Dadi came and held his head up. I poured more water into his mouth. This time he took in a little more. Then I heard a voice from far away, floating out in the
thick rain-filled air. When I tried to listen harder, I didn’t hear it anymore. I focused on Amil again. His eyes had closed. I lifted my head to the sky and let the water fill my mouth and swallowed my first sip of water in two days, cool and so sweet. Liquid diamonds.

  “Amil, Nisha,” I heard. I squinted into the rain. I saw a figure, dark and wet carrying jugs.

  “He’s back,” Dadi said.

  My stomach flipped and my whole body cried out, a sound that was more like the yelp of an animal than my own voice.

  Papa’s dark figure, blurred by sheets of rain, came into focus as he got closer. Then he was right there, standing in front of me and Dadi, who squatted by Amil. Papa fell to his knees on the other side of Amil, dropping the jugs. His face twisted up strangely in a way I’d never seen before. He crouched over and put his forehead on Amil’s chest. Then he raised his head, covering his face. Was he crying? I had never seen Papa cry before. But when he lowered his hands, I saw he was laughing, rainwater streaming down his head and face, his arms now reaching toward the sky.

  “Maybe the gods are listening,” he said in a hoarse voice. He reached around all of our shoulders, pulling us close, our heads touching, covering Amil in a human tent. Papa loved us. I knew I would remember this forever, pack it away in my mind like I brought Kazi’s mortar and pestle, and the dirt, and your jewelry, Mama.

  I grabbed the jug and took a long pull on the water. It felt like breathing air after being suffocated. Papa pushed it away from my mouth. Was he angry with me? Was I being greedy?

  “Go slow. You don’t want to vomit it up.”

  I nodded, relieved. Dadi took some.

  Papa turned back to Amil. He sat him up a little more against Dadi, took his pulse, and shook him hard.

  “Wake, Amil,” Papa said.

  Amil’s eyes opened and closed, but then he smiled a little.

  Dadi and I looked at each other.

  “Papa,” Amil croaked, finally opening his eyes, and pulled on Papa’s arm.

  “Yes,” Papa said gravely.

  “Are we dead?” he said, smiling.

  “You little devil,” Papa said, and slapped him lightly with one hand while holding the jug for him to sip.

  A joke. Amil made a joke. The joy was almost too much. I bent down and kissed him on his cheek. I think we might live, Mama. After we drank and rested for a while and drank some more in the rain, I started shivering and I looked at Amil. He was awake, but trembling. Dadi looked cold, too.

  “We have to get to shelter,” Papa said. “When I walked to the village up ahead, I saw a good place, an old hut. It’s not far, maybe a half a mile.”

  Papa had found a handful of pistachios in the bottom of his bag, and we each had three. The pistachios exploded in my mouth with sweet, meaty flavor reminding me of how hungry I was.

  We helped Amil stand up. Dadi and Papa each put one of his arms around them and pulled him along. They followed behind me. I didn’t like being the leader of our caravan, but Papa said that was safer than me following behind. I had to carry two water jugs, Amil’s bag, my bag, and both our bedrolls. I arranged them on my back, my body struggling against all the weight. Papa carried his stuff and Dadi’s. We joined others on the path again, everyone wet and weighed down with rain. I looked at my feet, which were somehow managing to take one step after another and promised myself I wouldn’t look at anything else until we arrived. We had to stop a few times for Amil to rest.

  “I can’t, Papa,” Amil said on the third time he sank into the mud. He looked so helpless, water streaming down his head, his eyes wide and sunken. That anger in my belly came back. If Gandhiji was walking with us, could he tell me why we have all been sent into the wild like a bunch of starving goats? Maybe this is what those in charge really thought of us, India’s people, when this decision was made. I ask myself again what this has to do with independence?

  “You can,” Papa told Amil in his calm doctor voice, which I had never heard him use on Amil and held out his hand for him. “Only a few minutes longer.”

  We waited and Amil once again rose slowly to his feet and put his arms around Papa and Dadi. We hobbled, soaked, on the path with many other families. Now there was too much water. How quickly things can change. Through the pelting rain, I could see the small buildings of the village up ahead. Papa said to turn toward the left. There was a broken-down wooden hut, but we couldn’t see the entrance. When we got around to the other side, there were at least three other families packed into a single small room, seated on the ground. I guessed they were Muslim families from their clothing and from the topis the men were wearing. The door had been broken off. I stayed back with Dadi, and Papa brought Amil closer and peered inside.

  I looked at Amil in front of me, hanging on Papa. His body trembled violently. Dadi’s hand shook in mine, but not as bad as Amil’s. I shivered a little, too, but still felt better than I did this morning. The air was warm even in the rain, but the water had soaked Amil to the bone. Papa went in front of me.

  “We need shelter. My son will die if he doesn’t get warm,” Papa said to the people inside as plainly as if he were telling them the state of the weather. Nobody spoke. I could hear the rain pounding on the metal roof. One man raised his head and looked into Papa’s eyes. Everyone watched the two men, their eyes locked. I thought about what happened on the trains. I thought about what Papa said about everyone killing everyone. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs.

  “I beg you. We are peaceful,” Papa said, breaking the silence, his voice cracking. The man gave a slight nod and gestured with his chin to the side of the room. There was a shifting as they made room for us. I kept my eyes down.

  We crouched by the wall and sat cross-legged on the ground. Amil sat in Papa’s lap, and Papa put his arms around him as if he were little. Dadi and I sat in front of them. I was closest to the wall, and Dadi sat pressed against my wet arm. After a few minutes I started to feel the warmth of the bodies. I looked back slightly, but Amil still trembled. The minutes turned into hours and Amil stopped shivering.

  The rain ended abruptly, and the sun started to burn through the clouds as if it hadn’t just been pouring buckets a few minutes ago. My heart lifted and I rejoiced in the same sun that almost killed me. We all started to move out of the hut. Nobody spoke. The Muslim families gathered their things. We gathered ours. Papa put his hands together and nodded respectfully at the man. The man nodded back, then we went one way and they went the other.

  As we walked, we took more long pulls of water, our heavy jugs refilled from the rain. Amil seemed a little steadier on his feet, and we joined the growing mass of people headed toward the border, still many miles away. I wondered what it would look like? Would there literally be a line, a wall, guards? I had never seen a border between countries before. The sun felt warm on my back, like a big hand. Go forward, Nisha, it said. It was you, Mama, wasn’t it?

  After a short while, we found another clump of brush and rock to set up camp. Many other families were doing the same. I wondered sometimes why we didn’t talk to anyone. Normally groups this large would overflow with sounds—chatting, laughter, arguments, people calling one another’s names, like the market on any given day. Were we changed forever now?

  Papa said we should stop early today while the sun was still high, and he told us to spread out our things so they would dry. Amil rested on the ground, propped up against a narrow tree trunk. Dadi laid out our bedrolls and net. I went through my bag and unwrapped my diary with shaky, hungry hands. The shawl was wet, but the cover of the diary was only damp. A welcome relief spread through my chest, out to each arm and leg, to the tips of my fingers, even under my dirty fingernails. I put out the bag of jewelry and dirt and the mortar and pestle on the shawl with my diary on top of my extra salwar kameez and underwear. I didn’t bother to hide anything anymore, and Papa didn’t even give my things a second glance.

  He started
to collect dry sticks for a fire and I helped him. We only could find thin twigs under the brush which wouldn’t burn very long, but we found many, and two thicker branches from the lower parts of a bush that seemed dry. He pulled the lentils and rice out from his bag and looked at Dadi.

  “How much should I put in the pot?”

  “Papa,” I said before she could answer. “I’ll do it.” I had watched Kazi cook lentils many times. Even though we had no spices and we were cooking the lentils and rice together, which Kazi would never do at home because it would make the rice mushy, I wanted to watch the water boil. I needed to smell the sweet, nutty steam.

  Papa nodded, his lips turning up in a quick smile. I took the damp bags from him and poured half lentils and half rice into the pot. My hands still shook, but the empty pit of my stomach kept me going. I saw Amil watching me. And then Dadi. They watched me in silence like I was performing magic. I put in some water just to cover it. I could add more if I needed to. Papa had kept the matchbooks in his small leather medicine bag, so they stayed dry. The scraps of wood, still too damp, wouldn’t light. We started hunting for more twigs that had been under the trees and put the damp ones out in the sun along with some dried leaves. We would have to wait.

  After some time, we tried again to light the fire. But it was still too damp. I wanted to punch the ground with my fists. I wanted to scream. I’ve never screamed, at least since I can remember. Maybe I did when I was a baby. I’ve heard Amil scream many times. He screamed for joy, running down the hill past the vegetable gardens. He screamed in anger when we fought. He even screamed at Papa when Papa told him he would take away all his drawing material if he didn’t do better in school, and Papa swatted him in the face. Amil never did that again. I’ve always been afraid that if I screamed, I might break apart in a million pieces. But watching another match die out under the wet wood, I could feel the rush of energy in my throat. I could imagine myself screaming.