Shabanu (15 page)

“Yes,” says the fat one. “The one who bags the most quails gets that one.” There is more laughter.

“What about me?” asks one of them. “I shot the only blue bull. I should have her.”

“Well?” asks the fat one, turning to Phulan. “We’ll pay you handsomely—land, jewelry, money, anything you like.”

Phulan puts her hand on her hip and thrusts it forward, a defiant look on her face. Her breasts are high and firm under her thin cotton tunic.

Oh, I could kill her. What is she thinking? Mama has warned us dozens of times: Nazir Mohammad, the landowner, has hunting parties. He offers each of his guests a
girl, usually a tenant from his land, for the time they are with him. When the man is finished with her, he gives her cash and sends her back to her family. Some people are grateful for the money and are willing to forget the indignity. But Hamir and Dadi won’t, I’m certain.

“We’re not tenants,” I say to him, poking Phulan sharply with my elbow as I step in front of her. “You have no claim over us!”

Nazir Mohammad laughs, and a diamond ring sparkles on his finger.

“This little one is a hot-blooded thing,” he says, coming closer.

We are trapped. Both of us have jars of water on our heads. We can’t turn and run away from this leering fat man. The thought of him sweating over Phulan makes me ill. I snap my head forward, tossing the water jugs down the side of the embankment, and the men scatter as the jars break, splashing mud onto the landlord’s silken trousers.

He curses and the others laugh. I push the jar from Phulan’s head down the embankment, and Nazir Mohammad curses and stumbles in an effort to scramble up the embankment after us, his fat bottom wobbling behind him. The others laugh at his clumsiness, and his face is blue with rage.

Phulan drops the other clay water jar. She is immobilized with fear. Without having Xhush Dil kneel I swing up onto his neck and pull Phulan up behind me. She is not so agile as I am, and her legs dangle as she tries to
pull herself up. I stand and work my way up onto Xhush Dil’s hump, pulling Phulan high enough to grab his neck. Our skirts hike up with our struggle, and Nazir splutters, his feet and trousers muddy, near the top of the embankment. The other men bend at the waist and slap their thighs with thick, hairy hands, tears of helpless mirth streaming down their cheeks.

Mithoo is alarmed now and dances around Xhush Dil as if the big camel were his mother. I urge Xhush Dil into a trot along the canal path, deciding these men must not see where we are going. But they are laughing so hard they aren’t watching. They crumple against one another, holding their stomachs as Xhush Dil gathers speed. We gallop along, Mithoo struggling to keep up but falling farther behind with each of Xhush Dil’s long strides.

Nazir Mohammad has made it to the top of the embankment, cursing in rage and shaking his gun in the air.

Terrified that we are leaving him behind, Mithoo bolts from the canal path and heads straight for our camp. Our makeshift shelters look like desert shrubbery, except that Mama has started a fire, and a dot of orange glints beside the clumps of matting, a thin curl of bluish smoke rising against the early evening sky.

I look back over my shoulder, and the landlord and his friends stand atop the embankment, watching Mithoo’s wild-legged progress toward our camp.

Still I urge Xhush Dil along the canal path, hoping they won’t see where we are going, but my heart knows that they will follow at their leisure to take Phulan away.

When we are out of their sight, I turn Xhush Dil down the embankment. Phulan holds on to me with all her might, terrified at the speed of our flight.

Dadi meets us, his camel walking from the other direction, fodder slung in sacks on either side of the animal’s hump. I jump to the ground beside our lean- to before Xhush Dil kneels, and Phulan falls to the dirt.

“Dadi, the landlord!” I shout, gasping for breath, my heart thundering against my ribs.

“What is it?” he asks, jumping to the ground.

Mama has been tending the fire to make tea when the sun goes down to break our fast. She sits back on her heels, still as a Buddha tree. She lifts her hands to her face. Auntie stands behind her, wringing her hands, silent for once.

“They’re hunting quails by the canal. They’re coming for Phulan when they’ve finished. They’re going to take her away!”

“Tell me what they said,” says Dadi, taking me by the shoulders and looking into my eyes.

“They say they’ll pay. They want her. They saw Mithoo coming here, and the fire was burning.” The words tumble out.

Dadi’s eyes harden, and suddenly I see the wrestler crouching in the circle of men, muscles bunched and bloodlust in the air.

Gently he sets me aside and walks into the lean-to.

“No!” says Mama, fear shaking in her voice. She stands and Dadi comes out, the old country gun glinting gray
and ugly in his hands. “Abassi,” she says, her eyes begging. She runs to him and covers his thick hands with her slender brown fingers. “They’ll kill you without a thought.”

“Nazir Mohammad is very angry,” I say quietly, and Dadi and Mama look at me. “I threw water on him.”

Phulan looks from my face to Dadi’s to Mama’s, her fear mounting.

“Stay by the fire,” Dadi says to Mama. “Shabanu, you and Phulan help Auntie pack the most important things. Leave what isn’t important. Take the dowry, bedding, and food. But keep the fire going.” He leaps onto the curve of his camel’s neck and tucks the gun under the girth of the saddle. He settles himself behind the camel’s hump.

“Where are you going?” asks Mama.

“Hamir will need to know. The landlord knows who we are. If he comes here looking for us and we’re not here, he’ll look for Hamir next. As soon as you can, head for Derawar.”

He looks at me.

“Keep the North Star behind your left shoulder,” he says. “Stay off the track. It will be slower, but they can’t follow you over the dunes in a jeep. I will catch up with you sometime in the night.”

I feel hollow inside. The patterns of my life—the one I have known, the changes I was beginning to accept—shift, and the pieces turn in a swirling nightmare of patches that won’t fit together. But there is not time to think now. I am grateful to know exactly what to do.

Mama kneels by the fire in case they watch from a distance.
It is still light enough that they can see her yellow
chadr
. A gun fires, and another. Mama stops in midmotion, terror in her eyes.

“They’re hunting. We still have time,” I tell her. Four more reports sound.

Behind our camp we strap saddles and bedding, food and cooking pots, our one goatskin of water, and bundles of fodder onto the camels. It’s their dinnertime, and they roar in protest. I can feel the eyes of four men straining on our camp from near the canal, where they will be looking for fallen birds. We have just minutes to get away.

We leave the camels and sheep to Sher Dil, who seems to sense the emergency. He runs in large circles, barking and gathering the animals closer together. The females nudge the babies toward the inside, and soon they are in one group, alert and ready to move through the dust rising from their feet.

The panniers are padded, and within minutes we are ready, Auntie and the boys on one camel. Phulan mounts the second.

Slowly I approach the fire, and Mama and I duck into the lean-to. We cut through the wall on the other side and race to the camels. Mama climbs into the pannier with Phulan, and I leap onto Xhush Dil’s back, twining my fingers into the long, coarse curls on the top of his powerful hump.

“Uuussshhshshsh,” I hiss through clenched teeth. We have removed their bells and bracelets, and I am proud that our great brave camels rise so quickly and silently. A
rush of exhilaration makes me shiver; my fear has turned to excitement. I am clearheaded as we sail silently, but for the thump of our pots against the camels’ sides, into the desert.

The blood races
through the veins in my throat. I want to shout with joy, feeling Xhush Dil’s powerful shoulders pump his legs against the hard-packed clay track into the desert. The sun is gone, and I search for the place where the dunes make looming gray shadows against the green and darkening sky, where we can leave the track behind.

One star winks palely, then another, and we sail between the dunes, our
chadrs
flying, the camels breathing
hard. Sher Dil and the herd follow behind, the distance widening between us.

When we have been running the camels hard for an hour, we slow the pace. The sky is bright now, and the sand twinkles under the camels’ feet like the stars lighting our way. The North Star perches on my left shoulder, just where Dadi said it should be. The bells of the herd have been too distant to hear for some time now, but suddenly a single bell jangles wildly behind us, and a panicked bleating becomes louder and louder. Mithoo has bolted from the herd and struggles toward us in the cooling desert night.

Phulan sobs, her teeth chattering and shoulders shaking. She cradles her head in her arms, which are braced against the back-and-forth and side-to-side rocking of the pannier, where she sits beside Mama.

“Don’t worry,” Mama tells her as I pull Xhush Dil back to walk beside their camel. “They won’t come after us.” Mama strokes Phulan’s hair.

“Can you imagine Nazir Mohammad putting his plump backside on a camel?” I ask, trying to make her laugh.

“As long as we stay off the track, they’ll never find us,” Mama says, stroking Phulan gently.

“The wedding,” Phulan gasps between sobs. “It’s ruined. We’ll never be able to go back.”

She may be right. Nazir’s pride has been wounded badly, and it is unlikely he will let us get away without taking revenge.

Mama puts her arms around Phulan’s quivering shoulders.

“We did the only thing we could do,” Mama says. “Dadi and Hamir will find some way to appease him.”

But I wonder.
Shutr keena
, camel vengeance. It is the way of camels and men of the desert. The price will be heavy.

By now Mithoo has caught up with us, gasping and snorting, his eyes slipping wildly from side to side, showing white. I call softly to him and he falls into step beside Xhush Dil, taking up the stride of the large camel—a fast walk, his long legs lifting us up and over the dunes that shine silver in the starlight. A sliver of new moon rises like hope on the horizon before us. Mithoo’s stride is growing long and adult. He seldom nurses from the milk bag and willingly carries a blanket and water jar. But he is still half infant, half adolescent.

We hold steady at this long striding walk so Dadi can catch up with us. I worry that he’ll have been followed, that the landlord’s men will catch him before he gets away, or that they’ll go straight to Hamir and Murad to exact a price on the spot. My heart grows heavier the more I think about it.

After another hour a more immediate problem is apparent. We have only one goatskin of water, and it could be dangerous for us to go to the well at Derawar. The boys are crying for water, but I’m afraid to stop yet to rest.

“Auntie is thirsty too, little ones,” Mama tells them. “We must be brave and wait for another hour to stop. Then we will all have water and
chapatis.”

Phulan is still crying, her head bent into her arms. Mama kneels in the pannier and lifts Phulan’s face, wiping her tears with the edge of her
chadr
.

“What will happen to Sakina and Kulsum and Bibi Lal?” Phulan wails. I haven’t thought of them. “And Sharma and Fatima?”

“Sharma and Fatima can take care of themselves,” Mama tells her. The confidence in her voice is real. “Hamir and Murad will work out something. Dadi will reach us soon. Don’t worry. We must be strong and ready to do anything they say.”

Phulan seems to take heart, and we settle down to the long, loping walk of the camels, waiting for Dadi to catch up with us.

The boys fall asleep, and the hours pass in near silence. Phulan is calm, perhaps sleeping.

The crabbed pattern of the stars of Cancer are high overhead, and the nights are growing shorter. At the fast clip we were moving when we started it would have taken just six hours to reach Derawar from Mehrabpur, but at this slower pace perhaps it will take longer. Dadi should have caught up with us an hour after we slowed to a walk.

If he hasn’t appeared before we reach Derawar, we will stop and make a camp among the dunes outside the village,
and I can watch the well to see if Nazir Mohammad is waiting there with his jeep and his guns. I relax some.

I think of Sher Dil behind us, still a puppy, his body not yet grown into his broad shoulders, thick legs, and floppy ears, entrusted with our entire herd of camels and sheep. Sher Dil, the lion heart. He could not have been better named.

Our pace slows as the hours turn toward dawn, the faintest pewter line broadening on the horizon as the stars slowly dim and leave the sky as they entered it, one by one.

I must have fallen asleep, for my fingers tingle, twined tightly in the hair on Xhush Dil’s massive hump, my cheek resting against my arm. We should be close to Derawar, but I can’t tell how long we’ve been going so slowly.

A shot rings out across the desert. We are out of the dunes now, and the sound is clear and sends my heart into my throat, where it sits like a toad threatening to choke me. The camels stop as if they are one beast, and turn in the direction from which the rifle shot came, their heads high, nostrils flexing, ears swiveling. We all sit upright, silent and watching.

I whirl Xhush Dil in a narrow turn, finding the North Star where it has fallen near the horizon, and head straight toward it, leaving Derawar off to our right.

The camels hit full stride willingly, but they tire quickly, and within ten minutes a dozen camels with uniformed riders pull up beside us.

“Ho, sister,” says their leader, taking Xhush Dil’s reins. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” They are Desert Rangers. The toad in my throat disappears. I want to weep with relief and exhaustion.

“I am
Subadar
Spin Gul. I have a message from Dalil Abassi, sent by the Ranger post at Maujgarh. Is Abassi head of this family?” Mama nods.