Shabanu (4 page)

Mama and Auntie run toward us, their long, bright skirts and
chadrs
flying out on the wind. Grandpa is far behind, hobbling on his stick. We meet them halfway to the settlement, and Guluband slows to a trot. Mama is gulping air as she reaches up and grasps Dadi’s ankle before Guluband comes to a full halt. She lays her cheek against his foot.

“Thank God, thank God,” she says over and over, tears running down her face. Mama seldom cries.

Guluband kneels and Dadi sets Mithoo down. He scampers away, and I am about to follow when Dadi turns and grabs me by the arms.

“Don’t ever disobey me!” he says, shaking me so hard my head snaps back and forward, back and forward. His eyes are as furious as Tipu’s, and I am speechless. He lets
me go and walks away from us all without a word. For a moment we are frozen with shock and exhaustion. Then Mama breaks away and runs to catch up with Dadi’s dust-streaked back.

That night as the air begins to cool and the desert colors fade after sunset, Mama, Auntie, Phulan, and I prepare dinner in the courtyard. My little cousins play hide-and-seek around the saddles, impatient to eat. Mama is silent as she stirs the spicy yellow lentils in our big copper pot, the firelight flickering on her face. I make the
chapatis
, and when Phulan and Auntie go outside she looks up at me.

“Shabanu, you are wild as the wind. You must learn to obey. Otherwise … I am afraid for you,” she says, her face serious.

“But Mithoo …”

“In less than a year you’ll be betrothed. You aren’t a child anymore. You must learn to obey, even when you disagree.” I am angry to think of Dadi or anyone else telling me what to do. I want to tell her I spend more time with the camels than Dadi, and sometimes when he asks me to do a thing, I know something else is better. But Mama’s dark eyes hold my face so intently that I know she really is afraid for me, and I say nothing. She and Dadi are thinking of how I will behave when Murad and I marry.

Later the house is quiet. Mama is sewing by the last firelight, and Phulan is beside me under the quilt, sleeping. I lie still, thinking of Dadi’s words.

Phulan is the one to be married. How can I forget, the way she arranges her
chadr
around her, languid and important with her new status?

Yesterday we bathed at the
toba
. I watched her secretly from behind the curtain of my own hair while Mama poured water over it. Phulan sat shamelessly naked to the waist, stroking her skin and running her long fingers through her wet hair. Her breasts have begun to poke out into tiny round swellings, each the size of a camel dropping. Her deep-set eyes looked far away.

I looked down at my own flat chest and my arms and legs, brown with the sun, short and rounded with muscle. My body is like Dadi’s, as is my face—large black eyes, with a strong nose and a square chin.

Phulan looks like Mama, tall and slender, with golden eyes and fine features. Her face is open and alive when her fingers fly over the kneading bowl, as if she is trying to see into her new life at the edge of the desert. She smiles mysteriously through the dust clouds that rise from her broom of desert twigs, seeing the sons she’ll bear Hamir.

I have no patience with housework. I rush through folding the quilts and sweeping, cross to be kept from my beloved camels. I mend harnesses and spin their hair into twine, watching the herd while the sun skids across the sky. I can’t abide anything that keeps me from the animals, from running free and climbing thorn trees.

I have known Murad all my life. We’ve played together at our cousins’ weddings. He is four years older than I am, and I always liked him for bothering to play with us.
Perhaps he did so because he could beat us at any game. The last time I saw him was in the fall at Adil’s wedding. He’s sixteen now, tall and serious, and still wants to win at games.

Dadi is a wise man, and I’ve never truly learned to obey him. How can I let a boy with a skinny neck and ears that stick out from under his turban tell me what to do?

The smell of smoldering embers is comforting. In the dying light the smoke climbs straight and narrow to the top of the thatch. I am about to fall asleep when I hear Dadi come in. There is rustling as Mama unrolls their quilt, and they undress.

“They’re back at the
toba,”
he says. “Everything seems quiet. Tipu is resting. The young male has gone away.”

“You’ll have to be careful,” says Mama.

“I won’t be able to turn my back on Tipu until I’m dead and buried,” says Dadi, laughing.

“Can’t you sell him before you leave?”

“Who’d buy him? He’s thin as a stick from mating. I’ll have to watch him every second until we get to Sibi. Such a shame. He won’t fetch a good price, and yet he produces beautiful stock.”

Shutr keena
, “camel vengeance,” is what it’s called. One time a relative of Auntie’s beat one of his camels. A year later the camel crushed the man’s head in his jaws.

In the desert, men aren’t so different from camels. They never leave an old argument unsettled. I soften some and begin to forgive Dadi’s anger of this afternoon. In my heart I know he’s trying to protect me.

We’re ready to
leave. My new dress makes me feel important. Guluband is handsome in his silver harness, polished to a glimmer. The other camels—fifteen in all—wear bright yellow, red, and green tassels, bells on leather harnesses around their necks, and bangles on their legs. They stamp their feet and groan, impatient for us to finish our farewells.

Dadi and Grandfather have clipped the fur on the
camels’ flanks and sides into whorls and chevrons. Phulan and I have washed them in the
toba
and brushed them until they glisten. We have dyed the geometric designs black and made circles around their legs with henna.

There are seven males, including Tipu and the magnificent, malevolent Kalu. Once two males have fought, they never fight again. But we must not turn our backs on either one, for although the quarrel between them is settled, the grudge they bear against us is not.

The males are loaded with wooden saddles Grandfather has made for us to sell, gray camel-hair blankets trimmed with braided cord, quilts, a tent, cook pots, water, lentils, and wheat flour. Two young males carry new babies in panniers on their backs, and the mothers stand beside their flanks, their noses just touching the little ones. We’ve tied the udders of two milking females with goathair mesh bags.

I have kissed Mama and Auntie good-bye and instructed Phulan to find Mithoo a mother to nurse him. As I hug his neck, he nuzzles me, greedy to find the lump of brown sugar I’ve hidden from morning tea. Grandfather stands like a shadow in the half-light, his hands raised in wordless farewell. There seems nothing left to say. Dadi wants to be off well before sunup, for even in mid-February the noonday sun bakes you until you are consumed with desire for water.

Auntie disappears into her hut and returns with a cloth
folded in her hands. Solemnly she shakes it out and drapes it around my head and shoulders.

“A young lady shouldn’t go with her head uncovered. You’re too old to act like a boy,” says Auntie. I yank it away and she presses her lips together into a thin line. Mama lays a hand on Auntie’s arm.

“Shabanu, it matches your new dress,” says Mama, pleading with her eyes. “It’ll keep the sun off your head.” She picks up the
chadr
and lays it again over my hair and shoulders. She takes my face in her hands and kisses it, and looks straight into my eyes. I look up at Dadi, already on Guluband’s back, reins in his hands. He looks straight ahead.

“Thank you, Auntie,” I say, wanting to curse her. Auntie repeats a message for her husband, whom Dadi will see in Rahimyar Khan, that he should send new brass water pots.

Dadi reaches down and hauls me up behind him, and Guluband lurches to his feet without waiting for a command. The dark blue cloth slips to my shoulders. I push back my clean and newly plaited hair and make no effort to adjust the
chadr
.

“Hunteray,”
says Dadi. Guluband shakes his great shaggy head and steps out, and our little caravan is under way.

For the first half hour Dadi and I talk little. We see a herd of black buck, their horns spiraling skyward like smoke. Dadi stands in front of Guluband’s hump to watch
them, and I stand behind, holding onto his shoulders. They sail over a dry
toba
, delicate legs tucked up under them, their horns perpendicular to the earth in the magical, opalescent moment before sunrise.

Dadi jumps down to walk and check the camels behind. Guluband senses I am alone on his back and turns his ears. Softly, so Dadi can’t hear, I sing a few lines.

Guluband picks up his legs, his bracelets keeping beat with my voice,
kachinnik, kachinnik, kachinnik
. Dadi joins our song, making up a question in his clear, rich voice for me to answer and Guluband to dance to across the desert.

Waves of heat shimmer upward, and mirage lakes glisten among the dunes ahead. We slow our pace, and Guluband’s rocking gait lulls me. Dadi and I take turns walking, making sure the younger camels keep up. The air is hot, but a steady breeze cools our skin. And Mama is right—the
chadr
keeps the sun from my head.

We pass Maujgarh Fort, destroyed by time and the feet of thousands of goats, sheep, cows, and children. Nearly half of the dome high above the fort’s walls has fallen since we passed this way last year. Piles of rubble have accumulated at the base of the walls, and inside the half dome, beams stick out in silhouette at odd angles, like broken limbs. A few blue tiles still cling to the pinkish brick hemisphere.

Night falls and we press on to Derawar Fort, where Grandfather fought for the Nawab of Bahawalpur as a young man. Dadi keeps the guiding star on his shoulder. The camels always know where they are. We never worry about being lost.

Dadi leaves me near the south wall to set up camp while he makes his
salaams
to the villagers and the Desert Rangers.

A half-moon and the stars light my way to search the heavy brush for wild sage to feed the camels and tumbling clumps of
pogh
for a fire to make
chapatis
and tea.

The camels are hobbled and lie contentedly, their noses over their dinners. I am kneading dough in a wooden bowl when Dadi returns. He looks happy as he squats to feed the fire.

After we have eaten, we sit quietly, discussing how we should redistribute our load in the morning. The fire flickers golden on his face, with its strong, square chin and mustache that turns up at the ends, and I think he is more handsome than any soldier in the world.

The camels grunt, and we hear footfalls outside the circle
of our firelight. Three Ranger officers in gray baggy trousers and starched tunics with red shoulder boards step into the glow. Their eyes are hard with the difficulties of life in the desert. Yet, like us, they wouldn’t live anywhere else.

They are desert men trained by the Pakistan Army to patrol the Indian border. When one of our people is sick, the Rangers’ doctor comes from Yazman, an hour away by jeep track. The Rangers also help find our animals when they stray across the border.

“Asalaam-o-Aleikum,”
says the oldest of the three, touching his fingertips to his forehead and heart in a formal Cholistan greeting. Their shirts are loose; without their black berets and belts with silver ornaments and buckles, they must be relaxing, just passing time after supper.

“Are you headed for Sibi?” asks the leader. He is tall and very strong looking, but his eyes are gentle.

I whisk milk and sugar into tea over the fire for our guests as Dadi tells them the route we’ll take to Sibi: We will spend tomorrow in the desert. Around nightfall we will reach the Khanpur irrigation canal, and our third night we will spend near Rahimyar Khan. Next day we’ll cross the Indus River back into the desert and the tribal area of Baluchistan. We will wait there to join other nomads, for the tribal territory can be dangerous, and crossing in numbers is safest.

“We hope to reach Sibi in ten days, God willing,” Dadi tells the Rangers.

Two of the Rangers inspect the camels by flashlight.
They return to the fire and motion to their leader. I look at Dadi, hoping they aren’t going to tell us we can’t pass through the area, but he sits calmly, watching the fire and sipping his tea.

They talk softly as they shine their light from one animal to the next. We keep our camels clean and well fed. None of them has a trace of mange. Everyone admires them.

“My men say your camels are extremely fine,” says the leader. They stand beside Guluband, whose proud head towers over the others.

“I’ll give you eight thousand rupees for this one,” the leader says.

Dadi, who has been deferential and extremely polite with the Rangers, throws back his head and laughs loudly.

“The Afghan
mujahideen
will give me twelve in a minute,” he says.

My heart thunders in my chest. Surely Dadi won’t sell Guluband! Our finest camel, who dances for me and waits patiently in the hot sun and stays near when I may need him! We’ve had him ever since I can remember.

The men return to the fire. Dadi eyes me, and I pour more tea into their cups.

“You don’t want to sell such a fine beast to the
mujahideen”
says the officer.

“They offer the best price,” says Dadi, shrugging his shoulders. My hands tremble and I stare at Dadi, willing him to see into my heart and know I will die if he sells Guluband.

“But you know what they do to them?” asks the officer. “They load them with guns and take them across the border. They beat them and don’t feed them. They haven’t any idea how to treat animals. And the Russians fly over in helicopters, shooting every pack animal. A camel like that might last one or two trips. It would be a waste,” he says, shaking his head.