Shabanu (2 page)

“How I’ll miss you next winter!” I say. “It will be so cold without you under the quilt.” I regret the words the second they’re out. Phulan’s moods are fragile.

“I’d rather die than leave the desert,” Phulan says, her whisper shaking in my ear.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” I scold. “You’ll have babies of your own, and I’ll be with you next year.” I brush her tears away.

But I am frightened too. Next year I will be betrothed to Murad, who is Hamir’s brother. The people among whom they have settled in the irrigated area call us gypsies and accuse us of stealing their animals and food. Last year we went to Mehrabpur for Mama and Dadi to discuss the marriage with Hamir’s mother. Our dog was poisoned. Someone stole a baby camel.

This year we will go to Mehrabpur for Phulan’s wedding. Next year we will go back for my wedding to Murad, and each year thereafter when the
toba
is dry Mama and Dadi will go there to graze the animals and visit us. Mama says it’s a good match, because Hamir and Murad have land. Dadi will give us each ten camels with our dowries.

“Don’t worry,” I say, smoothing Phulan’s hair and kissing her tears. But both of us know that their ways are strange, and there are unimaginable things to cry about. Phulan cries herself to sleep.

I awake in the morning, shivering like a baby camel. The sky is gray with tumbling clouds. I crawl out from
under the quilt, and the rain begins with large splatters of water that send little puffs of dust up from the ground.

Dadi is outside the courtyard unloading the camels. He and Mama have been up before daylight packing wheat and milk, bedding, and our belongings onto the animals’ backs. Mama dashes back and forth across the courtyard pulling saddles and blankets into the house again.

“Wake up, Shabanu!” she says, her voice bubbling. She and Dadi have prayed hard for rain, a rare blessing in winter. “Don’t stand there like a stump! Can’t you see its raining?”

“Phulan!” I shout. “We can stay!” She darts out of the house like a sparrow. We hug each other and dance up and down.

“Watch out, you’ll knock over the milk pots!” says Mama, but she is laughing too.

We spend all day inside our round mud house, birds chirping in the snug thatched roof. Dadi brings us camel harnesses to mend, and Grandfather tells stories about his days as a great warrior in the Army Camel Corps of the Nawab of Bahawalpur. His thin, wrinkled face is animated, his eyes lively. Usually he is half-asleep, and we are happy to hear his voice, rough as the windblown sand, telling stories of defending the desert against the Rajput princes from India.

The rain makes us giddy with its bitter, fresh smell. We keep a fire going all day, boiling milk, making tea, and celebrating the rain, not minding the cold.

The rain beats down all morning, but we are safe and dry under the thatch. Sharp bluish smoke from the fire rises in a slow, twisting ribbon and escapes magically through the branches that keep the rain out. By afternoon it’s raining so hard we can barely hear the thunder, and Dadi builds a doorsill of sticks to keep the water from pouring in.

Toward evening he announces he will go out to the
toba
to see how much rain has collected.

“Are you mad?” asks Mama. “There is no such thing as too much water! The
toba
will be there in the morning, and the fuller the better.”

Dadi sighs and sits down again. But he is happy.

While Mama fixes
chapatis
and spiced lentils for our dinner, he sings a desert poem, his voice husky and clear like wood smoke.

Auntie says little, except to cluck at her boys who have grown restless indoors all day.

Auntie is married to Dadi’s brother. Uncle lives in Rahimyar Khan, where he works in a government office. Uncle comes several times a year, bringing Auntie gifts—quilts, shawls, and brass pots. He brings us vegetables, wheat, and lentils. Auntie is lonely. She feels superior to us because of Uncle’s salary and her two sons. But she does her share of the work and is kind to Mama.

It rains all night, and in the morning Phulan and I crawl out from under our quilt, teeth chattering. Mama hands us each a cup of milk tea.

The air is clear—I can smell the sweet absence of dust.
The sand sparkles like water, though the early morning breeze has dried it to powder again. Tiny purple flowers cover the ground, where two days ago there was nothing but camel thorn. The winter sky is blue-green above the lavender line that rims the horizon.

Across the courtyard Auntie comes out of her hut, tucking quilted jackets under the boys’ round chins. She pulls them close to the fire.

“Did God give you rest?” she asks. Mama greets her back.

The sun spreads an orange wash across the swept mud floor, and mellow points of light glint from Mama’s silver bracelets. I am impatient to take Guluband to the
toba
to see how much rain has collected. I take the goatskin and water pots to where he stands tethered to a wooden stake at the edge of the courtyard.

“Phulan, stop daydreaming and bring more milk,” says Mama. Phulan opens the rough wooden door to a baked mud mound at the edge of the courtyard, where the camels’ milk will keep cool through the day. She reaches inside and pulls out a round earthen pot. I rub Guluband’s nose and slip a piece of brown sugar under his lip. He grunts softly as I take his reins.

“Uushshshsh,” I say softly. “Uuuushshshshshsh.” He dips his great head, roaring a protest as he always does, perhaps to let the world know he is a camel. He folds his front legs under him and kneels, sinking quietly to the ground. I fling the goatskin over his shoulder and attach the earthen water pots to his wooden saddle. I climb up
behind his hump and twine my fingers into curls of rough brown hair to hold my seat while he lurches to his feet.

Guluband lifts his head and we survey the gray desert, rising and falling like the Arabian Sea beyond the dunes, with misty mounds of
pogh
and thorn trees floating for hundreds of miles around. I squint and look at the dunes on the horizon, which is inside India.

Sometimes our animals wander across the border, and when I go to fetch them I look hard to see how it differs from our Pakistan. But the same dunes roll on into India, and I can’t tell for certain exactly where Pakistan ends and India begins.

Without a signal from me, Guluband turns toward the
toba
, his feet whispering in the powdery sand, his powerful legs unfolding and stretching in a loping rhythm as ancient as the desert. I think of leaving Cholistan, and my chest swells with a pain so deep it closes my throat and sends tears to my eyes.

“Guluband,
oob chumroo, tori totoo, mitboo
Guluband,” I sing to him softly. His furry ears swivel backward and his feet pick up the rhythm of my voice, the brass bracelets around his legs jangling. His knees lift against his chest, his back legs striding twice for every step of a foreleg. His neck absorbs the rhythm, his head high and steady, and I feel there is nowhere else so grand on earth.

Dadi earns extra money taking Guluband to dance at the fairs in the irrigated areas. When my cousin Adil was
married last year, Guluband danced for hours. Usually it takes drums and pipes to put him into the mood. But I can make him dance with just a song.

We round the last stand of desert shrub and Guluband drops his head, his nimble lips plucking at the thorny stems. His mouth is tough as rhinoceros hide. We are just at the base of the last sand dune before the
toba
, and I hear Dadi singing and shouting on the other side. It must be full of water!

I cluck at Guluband and tug gently on his reins. He knows me well enough to sense I’m in a hurry, and his great legs stretch out, lifting us up and over the dune.

“Allah-o-Akbar!”
shouts Dadi, his head thrown back and the veins in his neck sticking out like goathair cords. He is knee-deep in the
toba
, and his turban falls into the water. His
lungi
also hangs in the water, absorbing it like a thirsty wick. “God is great!” he sings out again, and begins to laugh.

When he sees me, he grabs up his turban and
lungi
and gallops through the water, across to me on the other side. He reaches up to haul me off Guluband’s back. Again he throws back his head.

“Allah-o-Akbar!”
He tosses me into the air, catching me in his strong, lean arms. The water stretches for miles around us, and the camels that have gathered at the edge to drink look at us as if we are mad. Even the females who haven’t had their babies return from the brush to drink.

“How long will the water last?” I ask, not daring to hope it will be enough to stretch through until the monsoon rains in July.

“We can stay perhaps until Phulan’s wedding,” says Dadi, his smile dazzling under his thick black mustache. I throw my arms around his neck and hang on, happy as I ever remember being.

He lifts the water pots down from the saddle, and Guluband lowers his head to quench his thirst. Although the herd has been at the
toba
most of the night, many camels still stretch their necks to drink.

I wade out into the clear water to fill the goatskin bucket. It’s icy, but I’m too happy to care. I return to the edge and fill two pots from the skin. Dadi lifts one to my head and waits for the sloshing load to settle before setting the second atop it. I stand motionless beneath their weight while he fills two others.

They shine when he fastens them to the saddle as though God had sprinkled them with diamonds.

I see the
vultures just before noon—a lazy, circling reminder that life is fragile. Normally snakes and scorpions spend the cold weather underground. But rain in January fills their holes and tunnels, forcing them out, angry and confused, and they bite anything that moves. So the vultures make long, lazy loops in the sky, prowling for anything that falls.

It’s my turn to tend the herd and I am busy. After a
rain the camels don’t need to stay near the
toba
—water is everywhere, and they wander where they want. When the weather is dry, the
toba
is like a magnet; eventually they all come back to drink.

I notice the circle of birds tighten and then hear a dreadful bellow. I am running, my heart on fire, before the first yellow bird dives. The birds gather behind a spiky clump of
pogh
, dropping from the sky now like heavy, feathered sacks. The yellow-gray wings flap furiously. The bellowing continues, though weaker now, and I know the camel is still alive. My legs carry me with what seems like superhuman speed; still it’s forever before I reach the dying female.

I wade in among the swarming mass of feathers, shrieking animal warning sounds, waving my arms and beating at the great bald-necked vultures that have gathered at the camel’s head, waiting to feast greedily the second life leaves her.

More birds, each nearly my height and weight, hover around her hindquarters, waiting to disembowel her. Or so I think until I move around for a full view.

The birds are after her unborn baby! Only its head and front feet extend from the mother. The sack has burst, and the baby’s eyes are shut tight against the brilliant sun. It isn’t breathing yet, but the mother has lost the strength to push, and I know if I can’t pull it out, it will die.

I am exhausted from running and chasing away the vultures. I can’t think what to do. I take another look at the mother’s face. She has stopped struggling, and her
breath comes in short gasps. Her legs are rigid in front of her. Bending closer, I see the swollen flesh around two puncture marks on her nose. I think she’s been bitten by a krait, a snake even deadlier than the cobra.

Camels give birth lying down, but the second the baby is born the mother stands, and the baby tumbles out onto the ground. The shock breaks the cord and knocks air into the baby’s lungs. This mother will be paralyzed within minutes, and unless I can birth the baby, it will die.

I grab the baby’s head and pull, but there is no give. I pull gently at first, then in desperation I begin a steady pressure with all my strength, one hand behind the baby’s head, the other gripping his forelegs. I stop to rest, panting, tears streaming down my face, and notice an inch of neck, wet with mucus, has been born.

With a grunt, I grab both forelegs now and give a mighty yank. Nothing happens. A memory takes shape in my mind of fetching boiled water to a room with moans and soft cries slipping like ghosts through the shuttered windows, of Mama lying across Auntie’s heaving stomach, a woman from the village pulling at something between Auntie’s splayed, bent legs.

I run to the mother camel’s side, screeching at a vulture perched there. She still pants softly. I throw myself across her swollen belly and grab her spine, pressing myself against her with all my might. There is a small gasp, and I slip off, grabbing the baby’s forelegs again, hauling with all my might. An inch of wet shoulder appears. My dress is soaked with sweat from the effort, and I wonder if the
inert baby has been poisoned too and whether if he survives the birth he will find a foster mother. In the January sunshine of a day that began with happiness, suddenly death seems easier, more inevitable than life.

I think of Phulan giving birth, still a girl, in a strange bed with a woman she barely knows yanking at a half-born child between her legs. I hear a low wail and realize it is coming from me.

I take the baby camel’s face between my hands and his nostrils twitch. Again I grab his forelegs with strength that I believe now comes from God—surely I have none left myself. The baby’s chest is out now. Again I fling myself across the mother’s belly. She grunts and I know she is still alive, though the vultures stand now on her neck. I scream at them and they flutter lazily.

I haul on his legs, and the baby is half born. I pray for the mother to go on breathing, to keep the baby alive until I can pull him into the world and he can breathe for himself.

I don’t know how long it takes, but by the time his back legs are free he is bleating and wriggling, trying to stand. I bite the cord, freeing him forever from his dying mother. When that is done, I turn and look at her. “Your baby is safe,” I say. A vulture standing on her forehead ducks its head, and its hooked beak pierces her lifeless eye.