Shabanu (12 page)

Dadi leads Xhush Dil slowly, gently, for slumped against his hump is Grandfather.

“He’s alive!” I shout over my shoulder through the doorway. I can tell by the way his limbs jog. A small moan escapes from Mama’s throat, and she is up and running to Grandfather’s side. I am close behind, Sher Dil and Phulan tripping over my heels.

Grandfather’s fingers are twined tightly in the long, curly hair on Xhush Dil’s ample hump. The stocky young camel sinks gently to his knees without command. We pry Grandfather’s fingers loose. Phulan and I fetch the string cot, and we carry him on it into the courtyard, where Auntie is building a fire. Mama covers him with a shawl and brings a pot of water.

Grandfather’s eyes are open. His cracked lips are parted and he talks soundlessly, rolling his head from side to side. His fingers move restlessly like the claws of a wounded
bird. Mama dips the edge of her
chadr
into the water and presses it against his lips. He turns his head away.

I bend my ear closer to his mouth. At first I hear only the faint hiss of softly articulated air.

Grandfather pulls me closer with hands that are powerful for a dying man.

“Kalu,” he says. “Make Kalu ready. We must get to Derawar quickly.”

I stand and repeat his words. Mama puts her hand on his arm and bends over him.

“Father, we …”

“I want to die at Derawar,” Grandfather says, his voice stronger now. “The nawab will bury me in a martyr’s grave, with turquoise tiles and lapis carvings. He’ll plant colored flags at the head of my resting place so people can pray at the grave of a man close to Allah.”

Mama looks at Dadi.

“We’ll leave by first light, Father,” says Dadi. “Phulan, help your mother. Shabanu, come with me to get water.”

Grandfather closes his eyes. His hands stop moving and lie limp on the shawl that covers him. Mama kneels by his side for a moment, stroking his head and watching him closely.

“Dalil Abassi,” says Mama, addressing Dadi formally for the first time that I can remember. Dadi turns wearily toward her.

“I found him huddled among the camels at Mujarawala
Toba
, where the dunes are high,” Dadi says. “It’s a miracle he survived.”

“He’ll be lucky to live through the night,” Mama says.

“We’ll take him to Derawar,” Dadi says. “We can’t stay here without water. Let him die in peace.”

“The camels?”

“We’ve lost only two or three, and they may turn up.”

Mama nods and turns back to take up her vigil over Grandfather while Phulan and Auntie bustle through the houses and courtyard, stacking quilts and pots, wrapping utensils in bundles, and hauling out the camel saddles.

Dadi and I
squeeze enough water from the sand to fill one goatskin. Our half-full water pots are round and fat, sweating and red, tempting our thirsty eyes.

The light glints orange on Mama’s nose disk as she ties the pots with goathair twine very carefully, as if they hold gems. She hands them up to Dadi, who stands in front of the hump of a gentle old female camel. He handles the pots gingerly, tying them securely to the wooden frame of
the saddle and packing clothing and quilts around them so they won’t shatter.

We load Xhush Dil last with the most important cargo: Phulan’s dowry chest and Grandfather.

Grandfather lies on his string cot, eyes wide and sightless; his once-strong hands, now curled and covered with waxy skin, search restlessly over the pale green quilt that lies across his chest. On his head is the khaki fez of the nawab’s army, its tassel crumpled, the felt faded and torn.

In its center is the bronze star for bravery, brass rays surrounding it like a holy emblem. He earned it for leading the charge at Kutch.

Grandfather’s lips move wordlessly, and Mama and I stop our rushed packing every few minutes to soothe him.

When it is time to leave, Dadi and Mama carry Grandfather on his cot beyond the courtyard, and I follow, leading Xhush Dil. It is our custom never to get onto the camels in front of our house for fear we’ll never return. In normal times it is sad to leave home. Now it is unbearable.

“Uuusshhhshh,” I say softly, and the young camel sinks to his knees with barely a whisper in the sand. Dadi loops cords around the head and foot of the cot, and we hoist Grandfather to where his weight balances the dowry chest on the other side of the wooden pack frame.

Xhush Dil gets to his feet again in a movement so fluid I think he must know the value of his cargo. Dadi lifts the glass of the lantern and blows out the flame. The eerie
blue of near dawn enfolds us, and we move off without looking back.

We pass the place where our raised mud prayer platform stood until yesterday, its delicately molded
mehrab
facing toward Mecca. Dadi looks at the mound of sand that covers it as if he thinks he should stop to pray, but we keep walking.

Mithoo’s head is several inches higher than my own. The bell on the new cord around his neck clangs solemnly as he trots beside me, his feet making no sound in the wind-fluffed sand. The other camels move in syncopation, their loads swaying side to side and back and forth.

As the sun rises, the breeze picks up, printing shivery lines on the sand. We walk, talking little, until heat suffuses the air. We stop once, and Mama ties a
chadr
to the cords holding Grandfather’s cot and lets it drape over him to keep out the blinding white sun.

When we stop in the shade of a thorn tree, the camels stretch their necks to browse. Dadi climbs the tree to cut fodder for Xhush Dil so he won’t disturb Grandfather, whose hands are quiet again under the
chadr
.

I climb up on the camel’s hump to fill a battered metal cup from the water pot. I hand it carefully down to Phulan. Her face is pale, eyes dark, her lips drawn. She hands the cup up to Mama, who sits astride Xhush Dil’s hump and leans over to offer Grandfather a drink. I peer into the pot. The water has receded another inch.

Grandfather won’t drink, but each of the rest of us takes
a swallow. We pass the cup until it’s empty. The two sips I get taste silvery, cutting the parchment bitterness in my throat and leaving me desperate for more.

After we have rested, Phulan and I walk out ahead of the others looking for
sito
, a fragrant grass with roots that run deep in the sand and are sweet with water.

“Do you remember when Uncle led us to Dingarh?” Phulan asks. I do remember. We’d been three days with no water, and Uncle found
sito
far from the track in the area of the largest dunes. Phulan and I head off toward the rolling sand, where the dunes cast peaked and fluted shadows like waves frozen on a sea.

We climb the side of one dune, our bare feet sliding in the scalding sand. Beneath us the desert’s silvery shrubs cast a haze over the desert. But no
sito
.

Phulan makes a sound that catches in her throat and grasps my arm. Over our heads on the tallest of dunes stands a
kharin
bush, its branches blown bare of the lovely pink dog-faced flowers that bloomed before the storm. From its top green-stick branches, a pale blue banner flutters on the rising heat.

Phulan is terrified of ghosts. A traveler has tied his turban to the highest branch and should be waiting in the shade for someone to find him and bring water. But nobody is under the bush.

The turban is faded, its ends tattered. It probably has been there since before the storm. A shudder of horror skips across my shoulders. I start forward, but Phulan pulls me back.

“What if he’s dead?” Her eyes are wide, her fingers flutter.

The legend of the thirsty dead says if you find a thirsty man too late to save his life, he’ll moan and clamor, his ghost following you the rest of your life.

“Get Dadi,” I tell her, and turn back toward the tree.

“Shabanu!” She is terrified.

“Go!” I shout at her. “Don’t be such a baby.”

She looks at the turban and back at me.

“Go!”

She turns and runs down the other side of the dune, her
chadr
a red flame behind her as her feet slip down the hot sand, raising powdery gray clouds.

I look back at the
kharin
, its branches prickly with tiny thorns. The breeze swirls pillows of dust around the dune and hisses through the branches. It’s a desolate place to die. The turban catches, convulses in the wind, and is free again. On the other side of the shimmering white dune, a brown leather sandal lies flat on the sand, as if someone has taken it off in a hurry. Beside it, flapping lazily, is the corner of the dead man’s
lungi
, the only part of him that has escaped the sandy grave.

I have no inclination to disturb him. I sit under the sheltering curve of the dune, wondering how death will come to Grandfather, to Dadi—to all of us.

Dadi hurries around the dune, a jug of water under his arm. I help him push the sand aside. Not very deep a young man lies curled on his side, his face calm as if he’d fallen asleep in the storm. Dadi brushes the sand from his
thick hair and the brows over his deep-set eyes. His face is strong and gentle, and an odd twist of grief turns in my heart. He was someone’s brother—by the grace of God he might have been my own.

I climb into the prickly shrub to retrieve his turban. Dadi turns the man’s face toward Mecca and chants the prayers a family says for its dead. He pours water into his palm and sprinkles it over the lifeless face as a token of the ritual washing of the dead. He wraps the turban like a shroud about the man’s head and shoulders, and we sit silently for a moment, wishing his soul well on its way.

We heap more sand over him. As we turn to leave, Dadi reaches into the jar and sprinkles a handful of water over the head of the grave in the hope that it will quench the man’s thirsty spirit.

The jackals will be hungry after the storm, and it won’t be long before they find him. I shiver again and wish we could make him a better grave.

Dadi rests his hand on my shoulder as we walk silently to the thorn trees where the camels and our family wait in the shade.

We eat
chapatis
, talking little, and wait for the hottest part of the day to pass. Even the boys and Sher Dil are sprawled in the shade of a kneeling camel, fast asleep. Thank God the usual pestilence of flies has been driven away by the storm, and I can nap without covering my face.

Dadi sits beside Grandfather, talking to him quietly. Perhaps he is telling him the thousand things I’d like to tell Dadi that I love about him—and know would embarrass him. Grandfather’s fingers begin to move over his chest again with the nimbleness of near death.

Mama is calm as she talks about Grandfather.

“He was a strong and brave man. I was terrified of him when he asked my father if I would marry Dadi. But he was gentle as well, and he always made me feel like his own daughter.”

I feel oddly detached as I listen to Mama’s soothing voice, her slender hand stroking my head in her lap. Mithoo stands over us, and the muted melody of the camel bells lulls me to sleep.

The sun is hazed with sand picked up by the afternoon wind skidding over the dunes. When it falls lower in the sky, the air cools slightly. We prepare to walk again, and I go to Grandfather’s side.

“We’ll be at Derawar before dark,” I tell him. “Don’t worry. The nawab will receive you.”

I look at Mama, defying her to say it won’t be so. Even I doubt the nawab will remember an old soldier.

We reach the old fort just as the sun slips behind the dunes, and the last pink fingers of light burnish its forty graceful turrets.

The nawab’s green and red flag flutters beside the green banner of Pakistan, and we stand on the hill looking over the lake built by the nawab of a hundred years ago for
his ladies to paddle little boats across. The wind has died, and the last daylight leaves a silvery skin on the water. Mama lifts Grandfather’s head to see the marble dome and vaulted minarets of the nawab’s mosque beyond the fort’s massive brick walls.

“We won’t disturb Nawab
-sahib
until morning,” Grandfather says, then falls back on his pillow, his hands and face relaxed for the first time since we left.

The camels move on, their only sound the
kachinnik, kachinnik
of their bracelets, the gentle thong of their bells, and the creaking of goathair cords against their wooden saddles. We stop beside a collection of torn lean-tos built by other nomads. Our reed mats will make walls and a small courtyard. The camp is within walking distance of the well. Phulan and I have been collecting firewood over the last several miles, and Auntie makes a fire while Mama unrolls the mats.

Xhush Dil sinks quietly to his knees. Dadi and I lower the dowry trunk and the cot on which Grandfather sleeps. We have enough water in the goatskin until tomorrow. At first light Dadi, Xhush Dil, and I will go to the well. Only then will we know whether the water is sweet. The well out here on the edge of the settlement is least likely to have good water. But our goatskins will be empty, and we are so thirsty we will drink even salty water. God willing, the monsoon will not fail this year.

My stomach tightens and my throat burns thinking of the month ahead until the monsoon rains come—thinking that we’ll drink salt water and the grass will shrivel and
the camel’s milk will dry up and the babies will grow weak.

It will be a good omen if the drought ends in time for Phulan’s wedding. I say a silent prayer that the rains will come and that Hamir will be kind to her.

“Grandfather is dead
, Shabanu,” Mama says, leaning over me, shaking me awake in the dark. Dadi leaps up from his quilt and turns Grandfather’s head toward Mecca so his soul can pray.

Everyone is calm, and in the morning it seems we all had known Grandfather’s soul would take flight once it reached Derawar.

Dadi washes Grandfather’s thin and wasted body with the last of our water, chanting prayers for the dead. There’s no time to spare. It’s shortly after dawn, and the heat of the day will be fierce. As he and Mama wrap the shroud around the body, Dadi chants softly in his wood-smoke voice.