Shabanu (3 page)

I beat at the vultures again, but they are already tearing at the carcass of the dead mother. I clean the baby with my shawl, trying to ignore the gurgling sounds and the
flapping wings behind me. I rub his legs and chest briskly until his soft white fur curls tightly as it dries in the sun. Slowly he becomes more active. All the while he nuzzles me, looking for a teat to suckle.

My legs tremble, and I feel ill. As soon as the baby is able to organize his long, trembly legs, I take my scarf from my neck and tie it around his and lead him slowly away, back to the rest of the herd.

At the
toba
, it seems impossible that life is going on as if this had never happened.

We have six new babies in our herd, all healthy and nursing. I take the new one to the other mothers, but they lower their heads and trot away. He follows me closely, as if I am his mother. But I can’t feed him, and he’ll die if I can’t find a nursing female for him.

Under a thorn tree are two of the water pots Dadi and I filled in the morning. Suddenly I am thirsty and too tired to move. The baby and I rest under the tree, and I lift a pot to fill my cup. The baby smells the water and nudges me, gently at first. I dip my fingers into the cup and hold them out to him. He sniffs gingerly, then sucks greedily, grunting. With difficulty I free my fingers to wet them again. Lying under the thorn tree, I feed him until we fall into exhausted sleep.

When we awaken the sun is lower, and the sky has turned to opal, inevitable dust creeping into the air. In the distance I hear the
kachinnik, kachinnik, kachinnik
of Guluband’s leg bracelets.

“Ho! What’s this?” Dadi shouts, climbing down before
Guluband can kneel. He runs to us. Phulan is covered head to foot in a
chadr
. Now that she is betrothed, she can’t leave the house without the billowy veil—and she still can’t get down from a camel gracefully while keeping herself covered.

I’m so relieved to see them that the words spill out of my mouth in a jumble, and before I can stop them, tears are streaming down my face again. Dadi listens, inspecting the baby’s mouth, ears, feet, and eyes. I choke to keep from sobbing, and he turns to look at me. His eyes are half angry, half hurt.

“Take me to see,” he says.

For a moment I stare at him, then I understand that this baby and his mother were to be part of Phulan’s dowry.

I stroke the baby’s tiny ears and wobbly head. “I think it was a snake bite.” I point in the direction of the flapping swarm of vultures. Dadi goes to have a look.

Phulan sits on the ground, wraps her
chadr
tightly around her knees, adjusts it over her face, and huddles into its folds. She’s so pleased with herself. We are good Muslims, but God doesn’t care what color
chadr
she wears. She has chosen black, and wears it like a martyr.

“You don’t have to hide from me,” I say, and we’re both surprised at the anger in my voice. She lets go of her knees and leans over to push my hair from my face. I can’t stop the tears again.

Dadi returns.

“You did well to save the baby,” he says, and sits down beside us.

“None of the other mothers will nurse him,” I say. “But he’ll drink water from my fingers.”

“You’ll work full time to feed him that way,” Dadi says.

Phulan picks up her milk pot and heads toward a female with a yearling that’s nearly weaned. A woven bag is tied over her udder. We use most of her milk ourselves. With hope in our hearts, the baby and I follow Phulan. But she shoos us away. We go back and wait under the tree.

The baby bleats softly. I know he’s hungry. I untie a cloth wrapped around the
chapatis
from lunch, but the baby isn’t interested. The sun is sinking and the air is cooler, the shadows growing longer and less dark.

When Phulan returns, I fill my cup with milk. The baby smells it and stumbles in a hurry to stick his nose under my arm. I dip my fingers into the warm, salty milk, and he nearly knocks the cup from my hand as he grabs at my fingers. Dadi is right. I can’t feed him enough this way.

I raise my arm so my fingers point downward, like a mother’s teat, and the baby tips his head back to nurse. Slowly Phulan pours milk down the back of my hand so it runs down my fingers into his mouth. His tail flicks, and for the first time today I think he’ll survive.

I name the
baby camel Mithoo for the sweetness of his nature. He’s grown enormous in a month, all white curly fur, big round feet, his head as high as my own. He follows me everywhere, nibbling at my hair and pulling at my sleeve.

The days are warmer now. The air is still clear, and the nights are cool. Flies buzz lazily as I sit in the shade of a
thorn tree watching the herd, picking ticks from Mithoo’s legs and daydreaming about the Sibi Fair.

Mithoo lifts his lip in a toothless smile—he won’t have milk teeth for another month—then gallops off, legs flying for joy until they tangle and he lands like a pile of sticks.

Dadi and I leave for Sibi soon. Mama made me a new long skirt and dress for my twelfth birthday. They’re the first grown-up clothes I’ve ever owned. The skirt is blue, dark as the night sky, with pink blossoms, embroidered with tiny mirrors that sparkle at the hem. I’ll wear it when we set off. I don’t know when Mama found the time, with gathering wood and helping Dadi and making Phulan’s clothes and mending the mud walls and cooking and repairing the quilts.

I turn at the sound of Guluband’s bracelets. It’s Phulan, wrapped inside her black
chadr
, bringing me
chapatis
and milk tea. She’s in her own world these days, caught up in plans for the wedding, wanting to know everything about Hamir and his family, and totally uninterested in her chores.

There has been no more crying under the quilt. As Muslim girls, we are brought up knowing our childhood homes are temporary. Our real homes are the ones we go to when we marry. I wonder how I can ever accept a place outside the desert, without my camels and Mama and Dadi.

Phulan gets down from Guluband’s back without tripping over her
chadr
. Mithoo runs over to see if she has anything for him. She sticks a long slender hand out from under her black wrapping and offers him a lump of cheese.
We laugh at the face he makes at his first taste of hardened sour curds.

A loud bellow interrupts us and we turn to watch Tipu, the stud of our herd, court a female he fancies. He gallops along the edge of the
toba
, a large pink bladder gurgling from the side of his mouth. Perhaps God knows why this is attractive to a female camel, but his target, a young female in her first heat, lifts her head and answers him with a loud bleat.

Tipu mates three or four times a day. His belly is high and tight, the muscles along his back and haunches bulge from his strenuous mating activity.

He trots up to the female, his teeth squeaking as they grind together. A rumbling starts deep in his belly, emerging through the pink bladder in a slobbering, foamy belch. Tipu shakes his head, and the foam flicks out, sticking to the ears and necks of the other camels. The young males and other females move aside.

Tipu nudges the object of his desire and she shies away. He trots beside her as if he owns her. She breaks into a run, bleating insistently now, her eyes turning sideways, showing white. He lopes along next to her as she wades into a clump of yearlings. They scatter, and Tipu hooks his chin over her neck. They circle, the female bleating softly.

All pretense of protest gives way, and with a quick flick of her tail, she kneels down. He moves astride her back, his front legs over her shoulders. She nuzzles his neck,
which arches over her head, and the foam from his mouth smears her ears, like soap when Dadi shaves.

I wonder if it’s the same with humans. Do females want to be owned? I steal a look at Phulan and she knows what I’m thinking. She bursts out laughing.

“Don’t worry, Shabanu!” she says, hugging me, and I hug her back, hard.

A deep bellow sounds from the far end of the
toba
. It is a huge young male Dadi plans to take to Sibi. Each herd has one dominant camel. Only he mates with the females. The others must suppress their ardor. If a young camel challenges the stud, they fight to the death.

Phulan and I hold our breath. If this young male, puffed up and full of himself, challenges Tipu, we will have to separate them or we could lose both of them.

Tipu responds with a roar. He leaves his lovemaking and stands, turning his head to look for his challenger.

Without a word, Phulan picks up the hem of her
chadr
and runs for Guluband to fetch Dadi, who is out gathering wood. I scramble to my feet and reach for the heavy stick I always carry.

Tipu, named after the great Indian warrior, has many battle scars from challenges like this. He spots the younger male, Kalu, which means “black.” He is named for the great black camel Grandfather rode into battle for the Nawab of Bahawalpur. Kalu is larger than Tipu, and very strong, although he is only four years old.

Tipu roars again, lowers his head, and charges. Kalu is
ready with a deft feint. Tipu bumps him with his chest, but Kalu lowers his huge black head, ducks it under Tipu’s chest, and clamps his powerful jaws around Tipu’s foreleg.

I run at them, screaming at the top of my voice. But they don’t even look up. I beat at their heads with my stick, hoping to distract them.

I am enormously relieved to hear Dadi shout to me to get away. He jumps off Guluband’s back while the camel is still at a dead run. Phulan jumps down as soon as Guluband stops, and she and Dadi join me in trying to separate the fighting camels. Both camels are now thoroughly enraged and obsessed with the thought of killing.

Phulan and I beat our sticks against their sides with all our might. The sticks make solid thwacking sounds, but the camels seem not to notice, as we dance aside to keep away from their twisting necks and biting jaws. Both males’ mouths are foaming pink with blood from cuts on their humps, necks, and legs. They whirl and heave, angling for advantage. They’re so large that they seem to move with unnatural slowness, but Phulan and I have to run to keep up with them as they hurl each other about, the ground shaking under our feet, their roars reverberating in our chests.

The sweat runs down from under Dadi’s turban, streaking his face. His mustache is coated with thick, pale dust. He tries to stay near the camels’ heads, jabbing his stick into their faces as they thrash. There! He pushes the stick between Tipu’s jaws.

“Get Kalu off!” he shouts, and Phulan and I slash at the young male’s ribs with our sticks. Happy to have survived his unsuccessful challenge with dignity, Kalu lifts his head and trots away. Phulan and I turn our sticks to the big camel facing Dadi.

Diverted from the fight, Tipu seems to notice our blows for the first time and roars in protest, killing still the only thing on his mind. He shifts his fury to Dadi, whose stave is still jammed between Tipu’s great jaws. The camel backs away and lowers his head, knocking the stick aside with a toss of his neck. His fierce eyes fix on Dadi’s face. I run toward Tipu, screaming, my stick raised to strike at him, but he lowers his head again, preparing to lunge. My blow falls short by several feet, and I throw the stick at him with all my strength. He doesn’t notice when it glances off his ribs.

Dadi locks his eyes steadily on the camel’s, unwinding his turban as he backs slowly away. Tipu rubs a foot over the ground, swaying forward and back, building momentum for a charge. As he lunges, Dadi flings his turban into the camel’s face and runs.

We’re not far behind when Phulan’s
chadr
twists about her legs. Tipu seizes the turban and shakes it furiously, his eyes wild with hatred. I turn back to Phulan and unwrap the black cloth, throwing it to the ground. She looks confused for a moment, but I grab her arm and run, and she stumbles to keep up with me.

I look back over my shoulder to see the camel toss back his brown domed head, shooting Dadi’s turban into the
air as if it had weight, then dashing it to the ground like a broken body. He falls on it with a roar so terrifying the female camels bolt, nudging their babies into the center of the gamboling herd.

Tipu pestles the turban to shreds in the sand with his knees and the pad on his mighty chest. We run like the hot summer wind over the hard-packed earth that surrounds the
toba
, our eyes blurred, the air whistling in our ears, feeling the shiny, cracked clay crunch under our feet.

Once we’re beyond the
toba
bed, the shifting dunes suck at our feet as we scramble up the powdery sand, our progress dangerously slowed. Tipu is still venting his wrath on Dadi’s turban, too absorbed to realize we’ve gotten away.

Phulan cries out and I turn in alarm, but it’s Guluband trotting up behind us. Dadi twines his fingers into the camel’s fur and swings up onto the long muscular neck. He pulls Phulan up behind him and reaches down for me.

“Mithoo!” I say, looking around for him.

“Don’t be stupid,” says Dadi. “Tipu isn’t interested in him.”

“I can’t leave Mithoo alone,” I protest. The females will shove him away. He’ll be frightened.

Dadi reaches down and grabs my arm roughly, hauling me from my feet onto Guluband’s back.

“No!” I scream, fighting to break his grip.

But Dadi clicks his tongue and commands
“Hunteray,”
and Guluband stretches into a long, loping gallop over the dunes, the sand glistening as it flies beneath us. I look
behind and Tipu is smaller against the edge of the water, his head thrown back in a roar.

A hundred feet ahead I spot Mithoo, legs flailing as he runs, veering first to the left, then right, bleating like a little lamb, but headed in approximately the right direction. The brass bell on the red cord around his neck jangles wildly.

Dadi looks back at Tipu and orders Guluband to kneel. “Uuuussshh!” In three strides Dadi catches Mithoo, lifts him into his arms and carries him back. I throw my arms around Mithoo’s neck and Dadi’s, and we all come close to falling off as Guluband rises, back legs first, pitching us forward. Our heads bump, sending up clouds of dust. Phulan and I laugh with relief, but Dadi is silent.