Shabanu (13 page)

Grandfather’s worn foot with the split toenail lies inert and topples sideways like a sack of lentils as Dadi lifts the body to slip the white seamless cloth under him. I bandaged that toe for Grandfather. This lifeless foot will never again feel such a thing as a split toenail, and I grieve for it, as if it embodies all of Grandfather.

Auntie, Mama, and Phulan stay to fetch water at the well and to pray. Grandfather is laid out on his string cot, such a small and insignificant little form for the tall and strong warrior of his stories.

The devil sun creeps into the doorway, chasing the chill from the dark reed enclosure. We must hurry, Dadi and I, to find a burial place before the heat … how we would hate to think of his body stinking, swelling up. Oh, we must hurry!

We ride Xhush Dil and the gentle old female camel to the graveyard on the other side of the fort, at the end of the village where the bodies of the nawab’s family and the heroes of the army lie. Over a broken stone wall patched in places with barbed wire, we see the martyrs’ graves—white marble inlaid with turquoise and lapis and tiles, some inscribed with gold—glistening in the sun. Flags flutter over the heads of the long, mounded tombs to mark
the place where the troubled and needy might find a place to pray beside a spirit that has influence with God.

The blue tiled domes of the elaborate tombs of the nawabs’ wives cast bulbous shadows across the empty graveyard. A crow balances on a
kharin
bush that has crept up between the gravestones in the yard, his mouth open but silent, eyes blinking.

A broken gate of wood tips on its hinges. A big brass lock holds together a rusting iron chain. Nobody is in the graveyard, and we turn toward the village.

As I turn the camel into the sun, an old man with a crooked foot hobbles toward us, leaning on a stick, his features indistinct against the bright haze forming over the desert. He is a hand’s length shorter than I am.

“Asalaam-o-Aleikum,”
says Dadi. “Where is the keeper of the tombs?”

The man touches his fingertips to his turban in silent greeting.

“I am Sulaiman, keeper of the tombs,” the old man replies in a voice worn raw by the desert.

Dadi steps onto the strong
U
of Xhush Dil’s neck and jumps to the ground. Each of them touches the other’s fingertips lightly in a stranger’s greeting.

“My father is Jindwadda Ali Abassi of the old nawab’s camel corps,” says Dadi. “He has died in the night. It is his wish to be buried among his brothers who fell in battle in the service of the nawab.”

The old man tips his head as if he hasn’t understood.
Dadi waits. A fly buzzes lazily over the little man’s turban, the first I’ve seen since the storm.

“Nobody has been buried here in twenty years,” he says finally. “Except His Highness’s wife, whose tomb is grandest of all.”

“Is there a place for an old and faithful soldier who wears the medal of bravery on his fez?” asks Dadi.

Again the twisted little man doesn’t speak, and the sun, still hovering over the horizon, scorches my shoulders. I think of the heat corrupting Grandfather’s body. We must hurry, we must hurry, we must hurry!

“The estate of the nawab is being contested,” he says. “Nobody has been allowed on the property for five years, since the dispute went to court.”

“Who is in charge?” asks Dadi.

“Permission to enter can be given by the commissioner in Bahawalpur,” he says, scratching his yellow beard. “But only VIPs are allowed in to see the fort and tombs.”

“Is there nobody here who can make a decision?” Dadi speaks patiently, but I can tell he is growing angry with the stubborn old man who wants to show his meager power.

“The keeper of the fort,” says the gnome, fumbling in his dirty tunic for a cigarette. “He can contact the nawab’s son, who lives in Lahore; he’s a member of the Provincial Assembly, and …”

Dadi turns Xhush Dil toward the fort and I follow, and the old man hobbles a few steps after us.

“There’s no room here, anyway!” he shouts after us. “The nawab doesn’t even have an army now, except for the bodyguard that protects his family from his enemies …” His voice is lost as we leave him behind with his importance.

“Your grandfather is too good a man to lie in such company. He would have given his life for them, yet they deny him a decent grave,” Dadi says, his voice rough with bitterness.

“We must try, Dadi. Grandfather wanted it. We owe him a try, at least.”

Dadi doesn’t speak, but we head back around the tombs, behind the village, a scrappy place of mud huts with crude drawings of animals and men, stars and moons whitewashed on the walls, bare-bottomed children playing among the thorns, dogs running out to yap at the camels’ heels.

We pass the mosque where Dadi and I had gone to pray on our way to Sibi. The white marble domes glisten like fat, juicy onions.

The camels walk slowly up the long, cobbled ramp that leads to the huge wooden doors, just as Grandfather had described them, the tips of sword blades at the top to keep out the elephants of the Raja of Bikaner.

A door of inch-thick bars stands between us and the wooden gates. Dadi calls out, and a thin old man, brown as mud, with a white beard, stoops through the three-foot doorway of the guardroom behind the bars. He slips a fez like Grandfather’s—but red—over his shaved brown head.

“Yes, sir, can I help you?” he asks, squinting up at Dadi through the bars. Dadi jumps down and they exchange greetings. Through the ancient guard’s pure white mustache, three long teeth protrude. Grandfather has told me about those who wear the red fez. They are the nawab’s personal guard. Has the gnome told us the truth about the nawab’s bodyguards in Lahore? Perhaps this is the only one left: he is as old as Grandfather.

He is Shahzada (his name is a mother’s wish that her son had been born a king), and he confirms what the gnome Sulaiman had told us. The estate and the son of the nawab, as well as several of his cousins, all claim not only the fort at Derawar but the nawab’s palace in Bahawalpur and the graveyard and all of the nawab’s lands that remained after Pakistan and India were separated.

“Cholistan was once home to a great civilization,” he tells us. “Now it is just a patch of sand with weeds. But the nawab envisioned pumping the great Hakra River up from under the desert and making this into a fertile valley once again.”

Dadi and I are interested, but we explain that we must hurry to find a burial place for Grandfather. He seems truly sorry not to be able to help. He directs us to the village of the tomb maker. We thank Shahzada and ask him to our camp to share our dinner. It’s our custom to feed villagers when there is a death. But the village is unfriendly, and Shahzada is the only helpful soul we’ve found here.

The rest of the day drags in a blur of heat and frantic
but frustrated effort. First we go to the maker of tombs, but his daughter tells us he has gone to another village. Is there no one else who makes tombs? No, she says, only her father.

So Dadi and I go to the dried up
toba
and dig through the sand down to the clay. The old bed of the Hakra River is hard as rock, with shells still embedded in it, preserved by the desert air. We break up chunks of the clay and pound it into powder, then carry it in wheat sacks to the camels to be hauled back to camp.

Mama and Auntie have collected fresh cow dung, and fortunately there is water in the well. Our goatskins and jars are full.

We load Grandfather, rigid now under his shroud, still on the string cot, onto Xhush Dil with the mud and the cow dung and the water, and set out into the desert to find a burial spot where the jackals, foxes, and wolves won’t find his body.

In the heat of the afternoon, we dig six feet into the ground, Dadi and I taking turns. Mama and Phulan mix the powdered clay, cow dung, water, and sand into desert cement, and we pave the hole as we work to keep it from filling up again.

Within sight of his beloved Derawar, we lay Grandfather gently under a bush in a solitary grave. Dadi turns him on his right side so that he faces Mecca, and each of us throws a handful of Cholistan sand over him, whispering a prayer and saying good-bye.

Phulan and Auntie cut up remnants left from the wedding
dresses to make flags to plant on long sticks at the head of Grandfather’s grave. As the sun sets we bury him, chanting prayers, helping his soul on its path to heaven, and shaping the cement into a fine burial mound. Finally we secure the sticks with the colored flags at his head, where pilgrims might pray.

We walk forty paces from the grave, where we say the last prayers, for already the angels are questioning Grandfather.

When it’s over, we are relieved that his suffering has ended and that his body is safe in the ground. But my heart still carries the promise we made to bury him beside those with whom he fought.

Conversation turns to what we should do next.

“It’s too soon to go to Mehrabpur,” says Mama, taking charge of our plans. “Hamir and his family don’t expect us until Ramadan.”

It is two weeks before the fasting month of Ramadan, still a month before the monsoon rains refill the
tobas
.

“I’ll not stay here!” Dadi says. “I’m happy Grandfather’s grave does not lie in the village.”

Mama nods.

“But there is little choice,” she says, and that is that. We will stay here until we move to Mehrabpur just before Ramadan to prepare for the wedding.

The water at the Derawar well is salty. The camels drink little, and my throat is beginning to ache again with thirst.

When we are back in camp, we resume the normal rhythm of our lives and it soothes us. The boys play with
Sher Dil. Mama becomes cross with them and sends them outside. We make tea, and with milk and sugar the salt water is not so difficult to drink.

Mama and Phulan talk about final preparations for the wedding. I listen to their chatter about dresses and bangles and furniture and plates while I mix the gray salty water into flour for our evening
chapatis
. They never once mention Hamir or how Phulan should behave toward Hamir’s mother when the wedding is over and they all are living together—everything
I
want to know about marriage.

An odd but pleasant tightening in my belly makes my hands skip a beat in kneading the dough as I think of Murad’s serious, dark eyes, and I wonder what it will be like to see him again, knowing in a year he and I will marry.

Outside the circle of our campfire we hear someone approach, singing. Dadi stands and greets Shahzada with a warm embrace. The old guard is wearing a faded tunic over a
lungi
, and there is no sign of his red fez. His bald head is glossy with the orange glow of the campfire.

“Where have you buried Abassi-
bhai
?” Dadi is pleased Shahzada uses the affectionate term meaning “brother” for his old colleague.

Dadi tells him, and the old man nods.

“I will watch over the grave,” he says.

Dadi and Shahzada talk about the drought. We keep few sheep and no cows or goats. But Shahzada says people
are beginning to leave the desert with their animals because the grasses have withered and there is little left for them to eat. Camels can eat almost anything, and our animals haven’t had trouble with sickness and hunger yet.

“The old nawab,” Shahzada says, “believed we could pump water from under the ground onto the land. He used to say, ‘You see how flowers bloom in the sand when there is water? This is not desert. This is land without water.’ ”

A shepherd plays a sweet melody on his flute far out in the desert, calling his flock to graze. They respond with the muted ringing of their bells, ghostly as they pass among the dunes.

Grandfather’s body lies out under the stars, alone for the first time since the sandstorm. I wonder whether his soul is near enough to hear the flute or, now that it is free, whether he can see inside my heart and know I am thinking of him.

“Shahzada-
sahib,”
I say, “could you help us keep a promise to my grandfather?”

“Shabanu,” Dadi says, a warning in his voice.

“I know it was impossible to bury him in the nawab’s graveyard,” I rush on. “Would you put his fez and sword somewhere in an honored place?”

“Oh, could you?” asks Mama.

Shahzada tells us of a tomb built for a general who died in battle and whose body was never found.

“There are other relics in the empty tomb,” he says. “It
is a beautiful one with blue and white tiles, lapis with gold script. That would be an appropriate place for the fez and sword of a man who won the medal for bravery.”

Grandfather’s relics will rest with those of his brothers, and finally his soul will rest in peace.

As the days
pass the well water dwindles, and the people of Derawar pray for early rain. We decide to leave for the edge of the desert and fresh sweet water. We will reach Mehrabpur, where we will plan Phulan’s wedding, before Ramadan. This will be my first year to keep the sacred fast, as children aren’t required to do so until they stop growing.

I wonder how I can survive the heat when I can’t eat
or drink. Not even a sip of this wretched, gray, salty water! I ask Mama.

“It’s a matter of faith and will,” she says. I am not satisfied, but I say nothing and return to my work.

The morning of our departure we bring the camels to the well when it’s our turn to draw water. They stand in a ring, necks extended, waiting for us to fill the trough.

I uncoil the rope on the stanchion over the well and hook it to Xhush Dil’s wooden saddle. Phulan lays the rope across the pulley and drops the goatskin down, down into the darkness of the well until we hear it splash. She tests the rope to see if the goatskin is full, then sucks in her breath when the rope bites into the soft flesh of her palms.

“You take Xhush Dil,” I say, taking the rope from her. How will she manage as the wife of a hard-working farmer—one who will need her help in the fields? She looks back at me as I test the rope. It digs into my palms, but the pain is useful and therefore good.

I signal her to move Xhush Dil forward, but she stands still, looking uncertain. So I tell the camel to pull. I feel an urge to shake her, to put sense into her lazy, romantic head. Xhush Dil strains forward, and the water-filled bucket rises up inside the well, dripping salt water along the mud walls as it comes.