The Pakistani Bride (18 page)

How long ago it was! He had been ripe with manhood then and strong: his arms rock-hard with power. He felt his arms beneath the quilt. They retained their shape but there
was now a softness in his flesh. His veins had pulsated with energy, and now, beneath a touch, yielded to the pressure. How prickly and quick he had been, and how proud.

 

At dawn, Ashiq saw Qasim slip past the pantry window on his way to the toilet. Throwing the quilt aside he sprang to his feet. Smoothing his clothes, and running his fingers through his hair, he stole along the corridor to the girl's room. He opened the door, and his hands trembled. He was breathless as though he had run a mile.

Zaitoon glanced up nervously from the bedding-roll she was tying with a coarse rope. The dank storeroom was lit by only a candle.

I just came to check if you and your father were awake. The truck leaves in an hour.” Ashiq Hussain cleared his throat awkwardly.

“We are almost ready,” said Zaitoon, embarrassed at finding herself alone with the man.

“Bibi, I have something to say to you. May I?” he pleaded timidly, squatting opposite her and talking across the roll of bedding.

The girl looked at him, embarrassed.

Hastily he added, “I have a message from the Major Sahib. He wants me to tell you that if you have any trouble with those hill people you are to come straight back to our camp. You'd only have to walk across either bridge. We will protect you. He also said you may ask your betrothed to see the Major Sahib for work, if he wishes to, that is.”

Zaitoon wondered at the cryptic message. She smiled briefly and said, “Please give my thanks to the Major Sahib.”

“Bibi, there's something else . . .”

The girl nodded imperceptibly—waiting. Ashiq groped for the first word, trying desperately to regain his wits. Speeches
rehearsed last night in the seclusion of the pantry now dissolved into idiotic snatches.

Zaitoon fidgeted. Fearing she might rush from the room, his heart gave a sickening leap.

At last he blurted out, “You're a child. Even though your eyes have the beauty of a woman, they have not seen the world!

“Your father told the Major Sahib that you're not of the hills. What do you know of them? Ask me, I know how they live—all the murders, the bloody family feuds. You are like me. You will not be happy there. Please don't go. I will tell the Major Sahib that you don't wish to go. You have nothing to fear, I . . . I will care for you.”

“No,” cried Zaitoon, “don't say anything to the Major. It is my father's wish. I must go with him!”

Ashiq had meant to argue persuasively but squatting before the cringing, resentful girl his resolve melted.

“Bibi, don't get angry,” he pleaded. “I don't want to upset you. I don't mean any harm. Do exactly as you wish. But remember, we're your friends. The Major Sahib will protect you.”

His compassionate, beguiling eyes conveyed more than he dared put into words. He stood up slowly, “Khuda Hafiz, God be with you,” he said.

Walking out dismally he closed the door behind him.

Zaitoon sat still until Qasim returned.

 

At eight o'clock the truck was ready to leave. They hauled their belongings into the back of it and Zaitoon cast about anxiously. Ashiq was nowhere to be seen.

“You ready, Barey Mian?” the driver shouted from his perch behind the wheel. Qasim climbed in beside him. Zaitoon sat next to Qasim by the window.

Roaring in first gear the truck was half way down the drive when they heard a desperate voice calling for them to stop. Ashiq rushed alongside the truck window, out of breath. “Coming to Pattan with you,” he panted, “Major Sahib's given me some work there.”

Seeing the three of them in front, he vaulted into the rear of the truck. In the square cabin window up front he watched the girl's profile.

The road was rough and unsurfaced. It had only a layer of shingle and was sometimes blocked by rocks and minor landslides, which the passengers cleared. Bits of it had crumbled off where the edges were not, as yet, properly supported. It would take them two or three hours to reach Pattan.

 

Refreshed by a night's sleep and elated with the leisure of travel Zaitoon gazed in wonder at rock and earth. She was stunned by the flight of the sheer granite cliffs and the thundering tumult of the river. Heavy blue waters smashed against submerged rock and towered into pillars of geysering white, before being frothed into rapids. Unusual blue-greens swirled at the vortex of giant whirlpools.

More and more the Indus cast its spell over her, a formidable attraction beckoning her down. And, bouncing on her hard seat in the truck, the strangely luminous air burnished her vision: the colors around her deepened and intensified. They became three dimensional. Were she to reach out, she felt she could touch the darkness in the granite, hold the air in her hands, and stain her fingers in the jewelled colors of the river. Trapped between the cliffs of the gorge, the leviathan waters looked like a seething, sapphire snake.

They were more than half way to Pattan when the driver eased the truck to the edge of the road and stopped. Flanked
by stretches of chalk-white sand, the river here formed a wide, emerald lagoon.

“Can I go down there?” breathed Zaitoon, and Ashiq and Qasim agreed to the descent.

Sprawled on a warm rock, Sakhi lowered the sheepskin cap to shade his eyes. He had followed the sound of the truck in its passage up the mountain road, its laboring whine distinct from the roar of the river.

“The Major's truck,” he thought contemptuously. Touching his flushed cheeks to the stone, he was shaken again by a paroxysm of mirth, recalling the Major's ludicrous antics and his abject humiliation in his love tryst with Carol. Last night, convulsed by fits of laughter, the three clansmen had enacted the scene before their kinsfolk. The villagers had slapped their thighs and howled with delight. Scandal touching the Major was an exhilarating treat. The story would enliven any future encounters with him and provide an endless source of jokes and gossip.

Sakhi didn't bother to sit up. He had seen enough trucks in the past year to satiate his initial curiosity. When the work in their area had first started, he and his brother had labored on the road. Once the novelty had worn off they felt it was not worth their while to demean themselves doing manual labor for others. Sakhi felt he had come a long way since that day when, eyes wide, he had gingerly climbed into the seat in a jeep—and later put down a bucket of water for it to drink.

When the motor faded, Sakhi wondered if a tire had punctured, and he lifted the top of his head above the rock, to look.

The three-tonner stood a hundred yards upstream at a bend in the road. A man in uniform had jumped from the rear to join a small group already standing at the front. Sakhi could not be sure if one of the travelers was a woman. He scrambled towards a rock almost directly opposite.

Slipping into position in a cleft, he could see plainly the woman and the two men in their descent down the steep face of the gorge.

 

Gun in hand, the driver remained on guard by the truck. Squatting by the rim of the road he dutifully scanned the mountains on the opposite bank. Satisfied that they were alone, he relaxed his vigil.

Sakhi watched the three figures scramble down the cliff. He could tell by the grip of Qasim's tread, and by the knot of his turban, that he was of his own race. The girl's dark color, apparent even at that distance, her timorous, unaccustomed, stumbling descent, her clothes, revealed that she was from the plains. These two, he was sure now, were the man and the girl his father was expecting.

His heart started to beat fast. He was immediately filled with resentment at the young jawan's presence. Not only was the old tribal accepting a ride from the hated soldiers, but he was allowing the young jawan to walk with the girl—his girl!

The sun was well up in the sky but as yet it did not reach down into the gorge. Beneath the line of shadow, Sakhi saw the soldier's arm go up to steady the girl. He couldn't be sure whether the man touched her, but Sakhi's lips distended viciously. He raised the muzzle of his gun and adroitly began his furtive descent, his eyes reflecting the mad brilliance of the river.

Leading the way, the Kohistani sought the easiest path for the girl to follow. Again she slipped and this time the jawan's grip on her arm steadied her all the way down to the sand embankment.

“This,” thought Sakhi with contemptuous rancor, “so this is the girl my clansman brings me from the plains!”

He cleared his throat and spat spitefully on the rocks. A bright drift of laughter reached him from below. Hawk-eyed,
he followed each movement with growing feelings of humiliation and jealousy. Hatred and fury burned within him, yet he dared not descend any further.

 

Once they reached the chalk-white sand, Zaitoon stepped away shyly from the jawan and, following Qasim, sat beside him on a rock. Qasim's eyes glowed with pride and his wan cheeks twitched in a jubilant dance.

“Munni, this is my land—do you wonder I love it so?” Tears threatened to start down his cheeks. “We are here at last,” he sighed, revealing the agony he had suffered in years of separation.

“It is beautiful, Abba,” agreed Zaitoon, enraptured.

Before them, the lagoon spread so wide they could just make out the gleaming line of sand containing it at the other extreme.

“These waters look still from here, but the current is swift, see . . .” said Qasim, tossing a twig as far as he could. It raced away at an astonishing speed.

“Is it very deep? It's clear as glass yet I can't see the bottom.” And unexpectedly she asked, in a voice hushed by the mystical effect of the landscape around her, “Abba, the man I am to marry . . . do you know him?”

This was the first time she had asked about him. She could have asked a hundred questions. What did he look like, how did he live, had Qasim ever seen him?

“I saw him a long time back, when he was a child. His father has assured me he is a good boy. He is a man of our tribe, bibi, and I can safely leave you in his care.”

“Leave me, father? Won't you stay with us?” Zaitoon pleaded.

Qasim smiled. “Don't worry, Munni, I will stay a while, but your husband will take good care of you. You will like him. He is fine looking. Only a few years older than you.”

At once her heart was buoyant—and at the same time filled with misgiving. Would he like her? In a country where lightness of complexion was a mark of beauty, her own deep brown skin dismayed her. But the jawan liked her. His eyes left no doubt of it. She fell to dreaming. Surely her future husband would like her young face and her thick lashes. She felt alternately fearful and elated.

 

Ashiq stood apart. Having realized their need for privacy he walked a short distance and sprawled on a bed of sand behind a crag. Abandoning himself to his fancies, he reflected on the girl. She had been shy and smiling. He had thought at the time that his grip on her hand had affected her, though now he wondered if he had not imagined it all. Holding up his palm, he searched the miracle her touch had wrought. Yes, he had felt his warmth pass to her and back between them. His eyes flickered idly on the dark cliffs across the river, and he caught—or he imagined he caught—a movement in an anchored tumble of rock half way up; it was a motion as shadowy as a veil of sand dispersed by wind.

Sensing, even from that distance, the direction of the jawan's scrutiny, Sakhi froze.

Ashiq stood up. His eyes instinctively sought Zaitoon. Quite near he saw her bending down to a ripple-washed rock. She pushed back her sleeve, plunged an arm into the water, and screamed.

Leaping over the stones, his heart pounding, Ashiq rushed to her side. “What is it?” he asked, relieved to find her uninjured.

“I don't know,” she whispered, “I—I was just frightened . . . The water was so cold, it burned me . . . like fire,” she stammered.

Ashiq Hussain smiled. Drawing a large, soiled piece of cloth from his pocket, he began tenderly to wipe her wet hand. “Wrap
your shawl well around you,” he advised, helping her with the loose ends until she was totally covered.

Raising his head, he carefully scanned the cliff, and once again he caught the subtle movement.

“Come. Let's go,” he said, and Qasim, having detected the direction of the jawan's wary eyes, led the way quietly.

F
ollowing a winding descent, the truck rolled into an unlikely pocket of civilization. Tractors, earthmovers, and cranes droned and roared on newly levelled ground, raising a vast cloud of dust. The jungle of mountains had yielded to a more normal surface, a tiny oasis given over to the twentieth century. They were in Pattan. Flowing through it, narrowed by solid walls of granite only slightly above the level of the water, the river at this point allowed the new bridge to span it.

Qasim observed clusters of scruffy tribals working on the road with pickaxes and shovels. He read the marks of his ancestry in each arrogant face, noted the familiar sheepskin waistcoats and shirts made from beaten wool. Uncured leather wrapped around their legs, taking on the shape of their calves, resembled knee-length boots.

Coated by khaki dust, the truck stopped before a brick structure, a row of rooms opening on an elongated verandah. Here four officers sat studying a map. When Qasim salaamed, one of them, returning his salutation, said, “We've been expecting you, Barey Mian. Some food is ready if you would like to eat.”

Ashiq was instructed to see to the guests in the kitchen.

As before, the presence of the girl aroused interest. Soldiers, drivers, overseers, and tribals gathered outside the kitchen entrance and peeped in from a window at the back.