Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories (10 page)

‘Carmel,’ she said softly.

The girl looked up with startled red-rimmed eyes. Then she hid her face again and continued weeping quietly. Natalie made her way to her, bumping her knee against a bed in the dimness, and sat down. She didn’t know what to say so she waited until Carmel’s sobs subsided. She’d lied the other day—her benchmate didn’t stink of old socks and sour milk; in fact she smelled quite nice, of fresh linen and talcum powder. Natalie dug into her pocket for a handkerchief. Carmel accepted it with a mumble of thanks.

‘What’s this place?’ asked Natalie.

‘Don’t you know?’ Carmel dabbed at her face. She looked like a girl out of a magazine despite the sore, red nose. Natalie shook her head.

‘It’s the old hostel dormitory.’

‘Why’s all of that here?’ Natalie pointed to the bedpans.

‘They used this as a military hospital during the Second World War.’

Natalie’s mother had told her about this once, but she’d never quite believed her. On another day, she might have explored the room, its drawers and containers, but this afternoon, Natalie wanted to leave. It was a place of illness and pain and death.

‘My grandmother met my granddad here. She was a nurse,’ Carmel continued. ‘He was a British soldier. A Major-General.’ There was a flicker of pride in her voice. After a moment’s silence she handed the handkerchief back. Their fingers brushed. Carmel’s eyes met hers. Her lashes were wet and dark. ‘You’re kind.’

Natalie didn’t know what to say; she had the grace to blush.

‘Not like the others.’

Carmel put her hand on Natalie’s knee. Her fingers felt hot against her skin. She leaned in closer, her hair undone, framing her face. Natalie closed her eyes before their lips met. It was nothing like she’d ever felt before. A low roar filled her ears, as though she was listening to a shell and could hear the sea. Something inside her unravelled, it uncoiled to the floor, and filled the room, every inch of its dusty corners. The world, with its scorn and derision, receded, and she was left with Carmel’s mouth, which was soft and warm and tasted of tears. For a moment, the ghosts around them, and within, fell silent.

19/87

K
ite warriors wage a faceless war. In the city, on rooftops and terraces and small open car parks, the enemy is hidden, concealed at the other end of the string, probing the sky with slim, curving weapons. Hardened troopers like Suleiman, however, come to know their rivals well, their style of play and combat, even though they wouldn’t recognize them on the streets of Shillong. Amid the carousing flutter of kites during the season, usually deployed by kids after school, there were a few to watch out for, the ones that swirled and snuck around, their string dipped in shards of powdered glass. Most of the expert fighters, down towards Umsohsun and up the hill in Mawkhar, flew small, insidious, single line kites. They were all good at the ‘pull’—when a kite is flown ahead of the others and then tugged quickly, cutting all the lines in its path. Suleiman preferred to fly a larger kite, one with a pastiche of tissue paper that he pasted together with great care. When he was a boy, he would hold the spool for his father, learning to release just the right amount of line. Later their roles were reversed. And now, well, he hadn’t flown many kites since his father died three years ago. Most of the time he didn’t feel like it; it brought back too many memories. The last few evenings, though, Suleiman had noticed a new rival in the neighbourhood. Someone who flew a kite as large as his, and who seemed, Suleiman admitted grudgingly, to be almost as good. He itched to find out if it was true.

This afternoon, he looked repeatedly out of the window, past the guava tree, beyond the line of low tin roofs, at the sky. There were more kites than usual this August, perhaps because of all the trouble in town. Weeks of curfew forced everyone to stay home, and there wasn’t much to do on these long autumn evenings. At least a kite was free to travel, over electric wires and telephone cables and treetops. The large kite was there, swimming invitingly above the rest. So far it had beaten the ones who’d challenged it to a fight. ‘All confident now, saala,’ muttered Suleiman. He was annoyed. Even if he did make a kite that evening, he had no one to hold the spool for him. A few times, he’d called Usman, a young boy from across the courtyard wall, to be his charkha gir. Trying not to lose patience when he released the line too quickly, or not at all, forcing the string to snap. ‘I’m sorry,’ Usman would say, sounding rather miserable, as they stood watching Suleiman’s kite sail untethered, swooping lower and lower until it dropped out of sight. ‘I’ll be better next time.’ But there couldn’t be a next time any more for Usman’s family had packed up and left a week ago. He’d hopped over the wall to say goodbye, and explained, ‘My father says it’s getting too dangerous to live in Shillong.’ It wasn’t an uncommon refrain; Suleiman’s father had told him he’d heard the same from the time Meghalaya was carved out of the expanse of Assam in ’72. After that, many locals in town, frustrated with having ‘outsiders’ running the state and controlling banks and businesses, organized themselves into various insurgent groups—the Khasi Students Union (KSU) and the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC)—and waged a civil war against the government and the ethnicities they saw as most threatening. The ones who had taken their jobs, their resources, their women. Now, around him Suleiman heard ‘It was the Nepalis in ’79, the Bengalis in ’81, then the Marwaris…who knows when it’ll be our turn. We are what they call dkhars too.’ The cluster of Muslim families living in the area rapidly grew smaller.

Suleiman watched the large kite fly unchallenged, and decided it was all a frivolous waste of time. He needed to get back to work. Soon, the room filled with the click and hum of the sewing machine, and he hunched over the cloth, engrossed in the intricate play of line and thread. Fortunate that he was the most skilled, and reasonably priced, tailor in the neighbourhood. Fortunate too that even in times of unrest, buttons came undone, trouser pockets inexplicably tore, and shirts mysteriously snagged on washing lines. Despite the small town he lived in ripping itself apart, people, outsiders or not, still dropped by to have things mended.

Although that was all they did. Especially the Khasis.

Where once they’d chat idly about the weather, share neighbourhood gossip and discuss how close they were to betting the correct thoh teem numbers, now they hurried away, as though he had the plague or terrible body odour. Or worse that his being dkhar was somehow contagious and that others less forgiving and tolerant would know they’d visited him.

‘Khublei, dorji,’ they’d mumble their thanks and shuffle out of the door.

Others from his community were almost as reluctant to stay on. Although from the newspapers they sometimes left behind, he could see why. The pages were filled with reports of disturbances and violence—shoot-outs in Iew Duh and riots in Police Bazaar. A few months ago, he’d read that the central government in Delhi had sent the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to Shillong to ‘help maintain law and order.’ Suleiman didn’t think it had helped much, the presence of the CRPF. In fact, the town seemed more inflamed and enraged. Try as he did to not let it affect him, to cocoon himself against the drama, it had changed his life in subtle ways. He no longer cycled around dropping off tailored and mended clothes to his clients. They were to come pick them up. The skullcap he usually wore had lain untouched under his pillow for weeks.

Today, though, rather than fear, Suleiman felt a deep and profound annoyance. He was tempted to walk up to a member of the KSU and say, ‘I’ve been in Shillong for a long time. I’m thirty-four years old and I came here before some of you were even born.’ He snapped a line of thread between his teeth. All he wanted to do was fly a kite. He glanced out of the window. At the row of houses beyond the courtyard wall. He’d known some of his neighbours for almost two decades—old Bah Swer was sitting outside, dozing as usual, there was Kong Belinda whose jaiñsem he was mending. These traditional two-piece costumes, that women wore pinned over their shoulders, were often sent to him to be hemmed. He knew Kong Belinda liked green, her jaiñsems were usually that colour. At the moment she was hanging up the washing; her daughter Christine, unfortunately, was nowhere in sight. He thought her especially handsome; with a face like a soft full moon and a sheet of slippery dark hair that reached her waist. Her gold earrings, decorated with pink diamond stones, glinted whenever she opened the door and flirted with him, if her mother and brothers weren’t around.

‘Have you brought my clothes?’ she’d say with a smile. ‘The ones I left in your room.’

Suleiman adjusted the jaiñsem material under the sewing needle. It was no good. He ought to get Christine off his mind. He’d be accused of stealing Khasi women away from their men. And who knew what might happen then. At the moment, it was manageable, leaving his house only if he had to, stocking up on food for weeks at a stretch. Often at night, though, there were stones thrown on his roof, shouts resounding in the street—‘Dkhar liah, mih na Shillong.’ You bastard outsider, get out of Shillong. These were the things, thought Suleiman, that weren’t reported in newspapers.

From his window, he could see the path that wound through the courtyard, leading on one end to the main road and the other to the cluster of houses behind his, accessible only by a flight of steep stone steps. He thought that was where the young man was headed, the one who swaggered by, wearing a red chequered shirt and light denim jeans. Instead, a knocking sounded on the door, sharp and persistent. Suleiman looked up from his sewing.

‘Who is it?’

There was no answer. The knocking didn’t stop.

He pushed himself away from the sewing machine. It was best to open the door.

After he undid the latch, the young man walked in without invitation.

‘Ei, dorji, mend this.’

He thrust a black leather jacket into Suleiman’s arms. Across the elbow was a jagged rip.

‘Can you do it quickly?’

The young man cast a glance at the mirror on the wall, and then around the room. Suleiman saw him take in the small kitchen space in the corner with its shelf of pots and pans and stout cooking stove. The tailored shirts and dresses hanging on a clothes horse, the large ironing table, the scraps of cloth on the floor, and finally the rihal holding the Holy Book and the rolled-up prayer mat. The tailor retreated to his workstation, where he fumbled with needle and thread. The young man stood by the door and lit a cigarette; the smell of cheap tobacco quickly filled the room.

‘How long will you take? I have to go to work.’

‘Five minutes.’

‘Good.’

The boy seemed unused to standing still. He shuffled in his place, then crossed to the ironing table, rifled through a pile of clothes, and picked up a large heavy pair of scissors. They made a sharp rasping sound as he snipped the air. Suleiman watched from the corner of his eye. He was about twenty-five, small, like a bird, with their restless energy rather than their grace. His eyes were black and bright, but heavy-lidded, giving him the appearance of being sleep deprived. Or having just woken up from a long nap. Wrapped around the scissors, his fingers were short and rough, and with a line of black grime under the nails.

The cigarette was soon dropped to the floor, and stubbed by an unpolished black boot.

Suleiman sewed quickly and carefully. The garment in his hands carried the faint odour of old sweat and tobacco; the leather was faded yet tough. When he finished, he made a neat knot and snapped the thread.

‘How much?’ asked the young man.

‘Five rupees.’

‘I’ll give you three, okay…’ He placed the coins on the table and snatched up the jacket. Standing in front of the mirror, the young man continued talking. ‘I just lost first round at thoh teem… I can’t afford to pay you so much.’ He was referring to the numbers that the gambling houses released in the morning. It was a lottery of sorts, calculated by an archery game held in an open field at Polo Grounds; there was another one in the afternoon to determine the ‘second round’ numbers in the evening. The young man settled his hair and then held up his elbow. The mended rip was barely visible. His tone became friendlier. ‘Are you a betting man, dorji?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Me too…almost got the second round last week…I bet three and four came. Keep missing it by a few…’ He listed his various gambling exploits. Evidently, it was something he enjoyed, even if he wasn’t very lucky.

‘I won both rounds a few years ago,’ said Suleiman. ‘Clean sweep.’

The young man stared, his eyes wide in disbelief. ‘How did you manage that?’

The tailor smiled. ‘It came to me in a dream.’

‘Aah…I’ve heard about that…calculating numbers from dreams. My granny used to do it…I should have asked her. She’s dead now. Never understood how it’s done.’ He glanced at Suleiman, and added, ‘Do you…know?’

‘Which number came up this morning?’ asked Suleiman.

‘Two.’

‘You can try eight, for the second round.’

The young man laughed. ‘How do you know? You’re a tailor.’