The Pakistani Bride (23 page)

Even if the driver had scanned the view it is doubtful he would have seen the flutter of the slender brown arms in a jungle of granite.

A stone hit Zaitoon hard on her spine. She whirled, her eyes frantically searching the boulders. Another stone hit her head and bounced on, clattering down the rocks. She looked up in terror. To one side of the overhang, almost vertically above her, stood Sakhi. Impassive and intent, the sapphire fire of his eyes did not shift. In the strange Himalayan luminosity that intensifies angles and colors, he towered, inhuman. His gaze held the cool power of an avenging god.

Sakhi's hand flicked again, and the stone grazed her forehead. With her eyes riveted on him in bewilderment and terror, hurriedly Zaitoon scrambled for safety. He jumped, landing as lightly as a cat on a small flat rock. Another leap
and he was level with her. Zaitoon tried to scramble backwards, blindly scraping her knuckles on the rock wall.

Skimming the boulders in vast strides, Sakhi seized her. He dragged her along the crag. “You whore,” he hissed. His fury was so intense she thought he would kill her. He cleared his throat and spat full in her face. “You dirty, black little bitch, waving at those pigs . . .” Gripping her with one hand he waved the other in a lewd caricature of the girl's brief gesture. “Waving at that shit-eating swine. You wanted him to stop and fuck you, didn't you!”

Zaitoon stood in a cataleptic trance. Sakhi shook her like a rattle, and at last she cried, “Forgive me, forgive me, I won't do it again . . . Forgive me,” she kept repeating the words to quell his murderous rage.

Sakhi's face was bestial with anger. “I will kill you, you lying slut!”

He slapped her hard, and swinging her pitilessly by the arm, as a child swings a doll, he flung her from him. A sharp flint cut into her breast, and in a wild lunge she blindly butted her head between the man's legs. In the brief scuffle, the cord of Sakhi's trousers came undone and the baggy gathers at the waist of his shalwar flopped to his ankles. Sakhi froze. Transfixed on the ledge, he blanched. What if someone had witnessed his ultimate humiliation?

Zaitoon knelt in misgiving and suspense. There was no viler insult a woman could inflict on a man.

Sakhi quickly secured the cord of his shalwar round his waist, glowering with thunderous hatred. Zaitoon flinched. He aimed a swift kick between her legs, and she fell back. Sakhi kicked her again and again and pain stabbed through her. She heard herself screaming.

At last he lifted her inert body across his shoulders and carried her home.

That night Zaitoon resolved to run away. Her sleepless eyes bright with shock, her body racked by pain, she knew that in flight lay her only hope of survival. She waited two days, giving herself a chance to heal.

The following morning when she set out with the empty water container, Hamida's weak voice trilled behind her. “Zaitoon . . . Why are you taking the blanket? Here, you can have my chaddar.”

Zaitoon felt the bundle of maize bread she had collected press painfully against her fluttering stomach as she turned to face the old woman who was leaning against the decayed doorpost.

“I don't feel well,” she called, “and it's cold by the stream.”

Zaitoon and Hamida stood a moment facing each other. The older woman felt an emptiness she could not identify.

“All right. But be back soon, my child,” she pleaded.

Zaitoon nodded. The dark blanket around her head bobbed reassuringly. Turning away, she walked slowly up the slope and over the valley rim.

At the stream Zaitoon scooped the clear liquid in her palms and drank until the icy water numbed the fear in the pit of her stomach. She filled the container and sat awhile by the happy little rock-strewn watercourse.

Then, carefully she ventured into the unfamiliar hills.

S
akhi slouched on the overhang. His ears were alert for the slightest sound and his deceptively somnolent eyes were ready to pick any movement at all in the familiar, convoluted landscape. Here he had caught Zaitoon waving at the army jeep.

Sakhi knew each crest and hidden gully for miles around.

An eagle forayed into the gorge and, sweeping up the cliff-face, perched just beneath him, pecking at some unrecognizable prey.

The man and the eagle caught the sound simultaneously. Closing his talons on the carrion, the bird stiffened. He pecked tentatively once more and decided to take to the air.

Sakhi wondered if the swoosh of wings would deter her, but then he heard a distinct crunch on the gravel. She wouldn't dare, he thought. With morbid elation, his lips set in a thin smile; he waited.

The footsteps down the track grew definite and Sakhi now saw the sheepskin cap of a man on his way to the river. He let go his breath and lay back.

Late in the afternoon he lazily threaded his way to the village.

His mother stood at a small distance from the mud rampart surrounding the settlement, as if waiting for him. Anxiety stiffened his spine.

The grimace on Hamida's face widened alarmingly when she spied him. She appeared frightened and her old clawing hands fluttered.

“What is it?” he rasped. The old woman wiped her eyes. “Zaitoon has gone,” she squeaked.

“Where?” he asked harshly.

“She went to the stream this morning,” Hamida pleaded. “I wonder what's happened to the child.”

“Why didn't you tell me earlier?” he snarled, his face ashen.

“I've been waiting . . . I didn't know where you'd gone. I went looking all over.”

“Have you told the others?”

“No,” she reassured him gravely.

The old woman suddenly beat her breasts.

“Hai,” she moaned. “Hai, what has happened to her? Go and look for her . . .” she added needlessly.

Sakhi was already on his way.

He ran. He leapt nimbly across the boulders traversing the undulating distance at a speed that quickened the breeze against him. His heart was a furnace of anger. “My God. If she has run away . . .” The thought sickened him. No. Most likely, she had slipped and hurt herself. Possibly even now a mountain leopard was at her. He prayed it might be so. She couldn't have run away. She wouldn't dare . . .

At the brook Sakhi scanned the surrounding hills. There was no trace of her. Then he saw the container placed upright on a stone. It was full to the brim. In desperation he searched for pugmarks or any sign of struggle or accident in the soft sand by the bubbling water.

He swore aloud, and in impotent rage beat his fists on his forehead. “I knew that bitch would run away.” He had known it, and he had taken no measures to prevent it. He had invited the disgrace that now affected his entire clan. “I should have killed her by the river!” Sakhi lifted a large rock and heaved it angrily into the shallows. He sat on the gritty earth and dashed
his fists against the gravel. Later he climbed to some height to search the landscape minutely.

His eyes smarting with shame, he finally lumbered home. The dusky air was pungent with smoke from cooking fires.

A huddle of men met him at his door. Yunus Khan's glacial, lantern-jawed face swam forward. The expectant faces of his cousins and clansmen swayed and parted to yield his shame and sorrow a silent passage into the hut.

A moment later, Yunus slipped in and closed the door. Sakhi was strapping a bandolier round his chest. He picked up his ancient Lee-Enfield, its woodwork decorated with silver studs. “I'm going after her,” he said, raising his eyes to meet his brother's in a haze of distraction.

One behind the other, they emerged, eyes ablaze in fanatic determination. The crowd of tribals dispersed in a hushed understanding, each to get his own gun and prepare for the hunt. Not a word was said. They identified with the man's disgrace, taking the burden on themselves. Collectively, they meant to salvage the honor of the clan. The runaway's only route lay across the river. Once across, she was lost to them forever. How then would they hold up their heads? The threatening disgrace hung like an acrid smell around them. It would poison their existence unless they found the girl.

There was only one punishment for a runaway wife.

Wordlessly, the men organized their hunt and walked into the twilight-shrouded mountains.

 

Hamida sat in the middle of the waiting women. She buried her involuntary smile on her knees, shading her eyes, and the women could not see her tears course down the deep grooves on her face.

Honor! she thought bitterly. Everything for honor—and another life lost! Her loved ones dead and now the girl she
was beginning to hold so dear sacrificed. She knew the infallibility of the mountain huntsmen.

The old woman was overcome by the memory of her three dead sons: the weight of each child in her body for nine months, the excruciating pain, drudgery, sweat: and scant years later, the heartbreak when, one-by-one, each of her sons was carried home on a crude stretcher swinging from the men's shoulders, their faces grim with the weight of the corpse under an impoverished shroud. In each grief, a nameless dread: how many more lives would the dead one claim? The set faces of the men, their eyes burning with hate and a lust for revenge, their old makeshift guns forever loved and polished, the leather slings decorated with colored bands and tassels, cherished even more for the men they killed.

Men and honor. And now the girl . . .

Visions floated confusedly in her mind. She, who had been so proud and valiant and wholeheartedly subservient to the ruthless code of her forebears, now loathed it with all her heart. Surely God would punish her for this. She knew now she would die.

Her gray, henna-streaked head shook as with palsy, and the women stroking her hair murmured, “There, there, don't fret. They'll be back soon with that bitch's corpse, your son's honor vindicated!”

A
s the search parties were leaving the village Zaitoon was discovering a path through the chaos of boulders, and had scrambled to the end of a narrow cleft. It opened on to a gritty rectangular plateau, and crawling from the dim passage, she sprawled face down on the earth. Gasping with exhaustion, eyes closed, she lay dead to the world.

A little later, she sat up to find her thighs still shaking.

This was the first time she had paused to rest since leaving the stream in the morning. Her every thought bent on flight, she had driven her body relentlessly through the mountains, intuitively following the river downstream.

On trembling knees, she surveyed the sterile landscape. Not a trace of life: not even the droppings of a mountain goat. No sound but that of the cold breeze swooshing up from the deep shadows of the cleft and from concealed channels and gullies. Trailing her blanket, she wobbled towards a cluster of boulders.

Only after settling among them, sheltered from the evening wind and secure from view, did she allow her thoughts to surface. They crowded in on her in a clamoring disorder.

Twilight was fading. A dismal shade smudged the gray-pink sky rent by sharp mountain peaks.

Frightened by the shadows, Zaitoon snuggled into the darkness of her blanket. Its flimsy protection shut out the night. It joggled disconcertingly when Zaitoon tore at the bread. Her hunger appeased, she shut her eyes and lay inert. Inexplicably, the wind had ceased. The immense quiet of the empty world
brooded around her and she grew tense, straining for any sound. The stillness poured its disquiet into her rigid body. She grew vastly afraid. She imagined strange creatures stalking the nocturnal wilderness. Snarling beasts tore at her—inhuman things crept up to touch her; the air within her blanket was lacerated by screams! And throughout, like a malign disease spreading, was the consciousness of Sakhi's insane wrath, his murderous cruelty.

Inching her fingers to the edge of her blanket, she peered out.

It was a velvety, moonless night. Enormous icy stars pierced her face with darts of cold. She looked stealthily at the rocks. Their insubstantial shadows harbored grotesque images. Eyes wide with terror, Zaitoon sprang up. She touched the hard reassuring contours of one of the stones. There was no movement but the knock of her heart.

Trembling, she sat down again, burrowing into her blanket.

Her eyes shut, Zaitoon began to pray. Concentrating on the cryptic Arabic incantations, she extracted from them a faith that once had transformed her childhood nightmares into peaceful dreams. Her voice rose to a whisper. Interspersing the mystic syllables with Punjabi, she begged, “Allah help me, help me. Don't let me be afraid . . . Allah protect me from the animals . . .”

An inconsequential speck, lost in the endless chasms and heights of the Karakoram range, the girl gradually soothed herself with the comforting cadences. In a whisper, prayer and appeal poured from her mouth, and images advanced—of Miriam, of Nikka sitting on the sagging string-bed before his shop, and of Qasim. For a split second she saw Ashiq's handsome brown face and adoring eyes. She tried to hold the image, screwing her eyes shut beneath the blanket, but the features refused to form distinctly. All at once they fused with
the image of Sakhi in the golden handsomeness of the day of their marriage, with the flaming pomegranate blossom behind his ear and his eyes lined with antimony; his hair falling copper from the center-parting; and the lamplight gleaming gold on his strong arms. She sensed the possessed, intoxicating brilliance of his eyes . . .

“But you liked me last night,” he says, and his contrite, bewildered look makes her reach out to stroke his cheeks . . .

Suddenly she longed to see him. With all her heart she wanted Sakhi to find her. His face, ravaged by concern, broken with remorse, floated before her—gently he wooed her . . .