Goat Days (6 page)

I was deputed to give water and fodder to the camels. I went up to their masara, but I was afraid. Do camels hurt humans? If they do, how do they attack? Kick? Bite? Trample? I had no idea. But I had to enter their masara and give them water and fodder. There was no way I could avoid entering the masara because there was a being more ferocious than a camel could ever be—a dreadful arbab, following me with sharp eyes. I stepped into the masara daringly. Expecting a bite or a kick, I walked in between their legs and somehow gave them water and fodder. Later, I had many more opportunities to learn how the right combination of circumstances can forcibly dissolve any man’s fears.

That day the camels didn’t hurt me. I had to fill water in four containers, fodder in four, wheat in two, hay in three. By the time my work got over, I was exhausted. With my eyes, actions and supplication, I implored the scary figure to help me. Whenever he
stood up to help, the arbab came out and prevented him. Only then did I realize that it was the punishment for taking water to clean my backside.

I went and sat near the cot of the scary figure. When my breathlessness and fatigue subsided, I began to feel hungry. The khubus the scary figure had given me was still there under the cot. I did not worry about the fact that I hadn’t been able to clean myself. Couldn’t bother about cleanliness any more. Sitting there, I had four large khubus and gulped down two mugs of water.

When I finished, the arbab beckoned me to the tent and advised me and scolded me. While listening to him, I acted as if I understood everything. Even though I didn’t understand anything, I could comprehend the magnitude of my crime.

After that, for a brief while, it was rest-time. I searched all around for a little shade, but it was nowhere to be found. All that was left was the glare of the blazing sun and the scorching heat. The little shade there was was in the arbab’s tent. He guarded it like it was a sultan’s palace, not letting anyone in. I didn’t have the nerve to creep in there.

The scary figure slept soundly on his cot, unmindful, a cloth on his face to block the sun. The sunlight and
the heat did not seem to affect his grimy body. Folding a towel on my head, I sat near the cot. After braving the heat of the sun for some time, the little rectangle of shade under the cot caught my eye. It felt like the greatest discovery in the world.

Indeed, if the worth of a discovery is measured by its necessity and the demands of one’s situation, to me, my discovery was greater than any other. How long had the scary figure been lying in the sun? Why didn’t he find the possibility of shade, like I did? Elated, I sneaked under the cot and stretched out. Although the sand was hot, my short nap was more pleasing than the sleep I had experienced before.

I must have dozed off when I was called. Again, like I had earlier in the day, I took the goats out, batch by batch. I noticed for the first time the different types of goats and the different types of masaras designated for them. In one, only milk goats; in another, the male and adult females; there were different masaras for goats of different sizes and lambs of different ages; in yet another, sheep; and in the last one, camels.

The gate to the camel enclosure opened as we were going out with the goats. They went on their way, on their own. When we returned with the goats of the
last masara, the camels returned. The chores were repeated—water, hay, fodder, wheat …

The scary figure came with a large pail and I followed him as he went inside the masara of the milk goats. He milked them one after another at great speed. In one go, he filled that pail. Together, we carried it out.

The arbab drank some milk from it, and the scary figure had two cups. Although they told me to drink as much as I wanted, I couldn’t because of its disgusting odour. The remaining milk was taken to the masara of the young lambs. They gathered around the bucket, as if to drink
kaadi
—a type of cattle drink prepared back home from the water used to wash rice—and glugged from it. Again, I noticed—I had started noticing new things with my eyes and mind—that the little lambs were not kept with their mothers. Mother and child were kept separately. No lamb was allowed to drink straight from its mother’s udder. All were given milk in the same bucket. In that case, which mother’s milk did a child drink …? Isn’t it through taste and smell that a child recognizes its mother? It should be like that, whether it be a goat, dog, cow or human being. Is this communal drinking meant to sever the bond a goat and its mother enjoy? Who knows? That is the
way of the Arabs, or at least the way of the arbab. I was fated to obey him. Why should I think and worry about anything beyond that?

Shadows lengthened, the sun disappeared beneath the desert folds. Dusk bloomed, night set in. By then, the night-arbab arrived with the night meal. He offloaded some provisions and water from the vehicle. The day-arbab loaded the vehicle with some things and left.

The night-arbab had brought khubus. No curry for it, though. Just khubus. I understood what my menu for the days to come would be.

Early morning drink: fresh, breast-warm raw milk (only if one felt like it)

Breakfast: khubus, plain water

Lunch: khubus, plain water

Evening drink: fresh, breast-warm raw milk (only if one felt like it)

Dinner: khubus, plain water.

And plain lukewarm water from the iron tank to drink in between meals (only when very necessary).

After finishing the night chores, the scary figure lay down on the cot. I spread a sheet on the sand. The arbab was inside the tent. I wanted to ask him many
things, but as soon as his back touched the cot, the scary figure started snoring.

I was alone. My bag was my pillow. It had the scent of pickle. Suddenly, I recalled the people at home, Ummah, Sainu, our son (daughter) who grew inside her. They must be troubled not having heard of my safe arrival. I felt miserable. My heart felt like it was about to burst. How will I convey to them that I had reached? That I am fine?

I remembered Hakeem. What work would he be doing there? From far, it appeared that he too had landed in a masara. His situation can’t be different. Sad. How many dreams would he have had as he boarded the plane? How can he suffer this at so young an age? He was not very poor. His father was in Dubai. This visa came when they were trying to take him there. ‘Yes, go abroad, without wasting yourself at home. Learn the language and life there. Within two years you can be taken to Dubai,’ his uppah had told him.

Poor boy, how would he endure this arduous life? In my case, I am used to a hard life, mining sand. It’s fine with me. He was only used to fun and frolic back home. What will become of him? These are the designs of Allah. One must endure these things. What
is the way out? The days to come will only be harder. My Allah, most merciful, grant Hakeem and me the strength to endure these sufferings.

The night dawned into my second day in the desert. I slept late that day too, maybe because I was not used to the sleeping posture I had to adopt.

I was exhausted even before the day began. As I got up in the morning, my hands, legs and body ached. My body hurt more than it did after a whole day’s sand mining in the river. More than the pain, it was the irritation of not being able to bathe myself clean after work that bothered me. I would never come out of the river without bathing though I had worked in water the whole day. It was the uneasiness of sleeping in the same dress one wore in the sun, sweating and moving among stinking goats, and being strewn with their urine and dung. My dress stuck to my armpits and in between the legs; to say nothing about my sweat-soaked shoes.

I had hardly woken up when the scary figure handed me an aluminium vessel and gestured that I had to milk the goats. Milk the goats? Me? I could feel a blankness envelop me then. As if I had fallen into a crater of ignorance.

I had never seen a goat so close in my whole life. Okay. You might wonder—haven’t seen a goat closely! Where are you from? Yes, you and I have seen goats. Goats have been living in close proximity of humans since the dawn of settled life—from 7000 or 6000
BC
. A poor creature domesticated by our neighbours Mariyumma, Janakiamma, Velayudhan Kutty and so on. It is a lovely animal. Anyone will feel like cuddling little lambs. Goats give us milk, little lambs, dung. We can drink the milk, sell the lambs at the Thursday fair, use dung as manure for banana trees. Goats eat leftover food and grass. They drink kaadi. They fall sick if they eat cassava leaves and are happiest eating jackfruit leaves. Beyond that I did not know anything about goats. Perhaps you don’t either. Where is their native place? Who are their ancestors? Obviously, I did not know important things like the different kinds of goats, and the qualities of each kind. I was even ignorant about basic details like the number of its teats, number of hooves, duration of pregnancy, period of milk production, how much milk they produce each time, how to milk a goat, how many times to milk it and how to pull its udders for milk. Did they kick with their hind legs like cows or with their front legs
like horses? How does one evade its kick? I didn’t know anything.

I had never asked anyone about goats. And no one had ever told me anything. Had I known that this would be my assigned job here, I could have observed and learned all about them. Janakiamma who lived only a few paces away had two or three goats. I had seen them too—eating grass by the wayside and in the fields, their little ones leaping and bounding. Maybe they were milk goats. Had I known about my present job in advance, I could have practised milking them. But I had barely noticed them. A lot many creatures live all around us. The situation could hardly have been different had I been called to rear cows or to look after dogs. It is only when we have a need that we think about them and regret that we hadn’t noticed, learned or understood them when we had the chance. It was only after falling headlong into this situation that I realized the need to keep our eyes open to our environment.

What else could I do? I had to learn on my own. I entered the masara with the pail and approached a goat. Back home, I had seen the teats of the goats being washed before they were milked. In the desert there was no water even for people to bathe and
clean themselves! There was no question of washing the teats. Slowly, I crouched behind a goat, took the vessel close to its udder and pulled at it. Not only did no milk come out of it, the goat squirmed and leapt away into the flock, kicking down the vessel along with me. Seeing it sprinting crazily, the other goats also ran helter-skelter. One of them ran over me trampling my back. I writhed in pain. Somehow, I got up, crouched behind another goat, one that had stopped running. When I touched its teats, it too was startled and leapt away. I tried to milk yet another, and it ran away too. My Lord, I thought, how can one milk a goat that runs? I was baffled.

Feeling determined, I approached another goat. That ran off too. This continued. After half an hour, when the arbab and the scary figure came into the masara to see how much milk I had got, there was not even a drop in that vessel. What’s more, I was frog-leaping after the goats.

Seeing my plight, the arbab scolded me and went back to his tent. The scary figure came in and took the vessel from me. Then, he demonstrated how to approach a goat to milk it.

Never approach the goat that had to be milked from behind. Approach it from the front. Do not
start milking it straight away. Caress it like a child by tenderly touching its cheeks, ears and back. Stroke its sides, pat its back and then slowly sit by its side. Caress its underside twice or thrice. Then slowly touch its teats. The goat will twitch. Even goats feel ticklish. Like a virgin. Then, ease its discomfort by slowly caressing its teats. At home, its baby would perform this task. And one can only milk after the intimate mother–child contact mitigates the ticklishness and the fondness for the child makes the milk ooze from its udders. There were no lambs here to put the goat at ease and to make milk seep out. We had to do that work too. After ensuring that it has got over its ticklishness, pull the udder from top to bottom using the thumb and the index finger. The pressure shouldn’t hurt, but must be firm enough to draw milk. This control is something one masters gradually. It is the mark of a milkman’s worth.

Do not try to hold the vessel in one hand and milk with the other. When you milk with one hand, slowly caress the teats with the other. Any jumpy goat will remain still. It will not kick, leap or knock the vessel over.

How the scary figure controlled the goat—I was spellbound by his performance. Those nervy goats,
what happened to their annoyance? After milking some goats, he handed me the vessel. Slowly, I mimicked his actions. Of course, it had all the drawbacks of imitation. It was only after some time that I realized that activities such as milking come naturally to an animal lover and animals instinctively distinguish them from their mimics. Also important is the daily contact with the goats. They say that a goat can understand if a new pair of hands touches its teats.

Still, I managed to control a goat and placed my hands on its teats. I cannot explain the satisfaction I felt when the first drop of milk fell into the pail. As if I had completed my training for a big job. I had mastery over one of the many goats that must come under my control. The others will eventually follow.

When I somehow managed to fill half a pail and come out of the masara that morning, I was drenched in sweat, as if I had done some hard labour.

Another day, not very different from the previous, came to an end. Meanwhile, the scary figure had trained me in the many ways of herding goats. He demonstrated how to lead the goats—not from the front, but from the sides; and how to beat into control those that try to break away. He taught me how much wheat, hay and fodder should be supplied in each masara.

That day seemed hotter than the previous one. My throat was parched after every ten paces, and it burned as the lukewarm water from the iron tank travelled down it. Also, because I was not used to the water, my stomach became upset. I don’t know how many times my stomach ran that day. Overcoming the previous day’s shame, I sat down openly to do it, wherever I felt the need. To avoid being beaten by the arbab for trying to clean myself with water, I began cleaning my behind with stones. I concluded that it was customary for each region to use what was most available there.
The English have plenty of paper, so they use it for cleaning; for us it is water, and we clean with it; here, stones were aplenty.

After midday it became humid. I felt like I was being steamed. Fatigue sunk in, and my running stomach made it worse. I complained to the scary figure and to the arbab, nevertheless, my workload was unaffected. The arbab cared only about my work, not about my discomforts.

I was clammy by the evening, as though I had been soaked in rice juice. My skin felt irritated and inflamed as I hadn’t washed for many days. Hiding from the arbab, I washed my hands and face in the water for the goats. My armpits and pubic area, untouched by water, felt filthy.

That night I went to bed uneasy. Of course, when I say bed, I only mean figuratively. My bed was the loose sand. The scary figure had appropriated the only cot there. My bag was under it. I would pull out my sheet and spread it on the sand. It was already dirty, but without it, the small pebbles in the sand would hurt. I had an unpleasant night but given the circumstances, only a fool would expect any comfort.

My discomfort kept me awake even though I was very tired. My thoughts were not of my home country,
home, Sainu, Ummah, my unborn son/daughter, my sorrows and anxieties or my fate, as one would imagine. All such thoughts had become alien to me as they were to the dead who had reached the other world. So soon—you might wonder. My answer is yes. No use being bound by such thoughts. They only delay the process of realization that we’ve lost out to circumstances and there is no going back. I realized this within a day. Anxiety and worry were futile. That world had become alien to me. Now only my sad new world existed for me. I am condemned to the conditions of this world. I have fallen headlong into the anxieties of it, and it is better to identify with the here and now. That was the only way to somehow survive. Otherwise, my growing anxieties would have killed me or my sorrows drowned me. Maybe this was how everyone who got trapped here survived, no?

Can you imagine what I had been thinking about that night as I lay down? About going to the masara early in the morning and milking the goats; controlling the goats as the scary figure did and coming out with a vessel full of milk; the arbab’s face lighting up when he saw me with the milk; and single-handedly herding the goats of a masara and bringing them back. On how to
go about realizing those dreams, and the precautions I had to take; about what my drawbacks had been that day, and how I could rectify them.

I neither bothered about yesterdays nor worried about tomorrows. Just focussed on managing the todays. I think all my masara life was just that.

Lying on my sheet, I tried to remember the Arabic words I learned that day and their meanings. It had only been two days. But I felt that I had learned more words than necessary.

It was only after recalling these words that I realized I didn’t know many more: wheat, vessel, tank, car, gun, desert, dress, bath, shit, loose motion, beating, anger, scolding, tent; and many verbs like came, went, didn’t do, do not know, etc.

If an Arabic expert among you asks whether the pronunciation and meaning of the words that I have tabled here are correct, I can only say I do not know. I’ve heard them like that, and have learned them like that. I was able to imagine a meaning out of those sounds. So, as far as I was concerned, that was the correct word and the correct pronunciation. After all, what is there in a word—it is understanding that is important. I could understand what the arbab meant by those words; and the arbab could understand me. One does not need to be a linguistic expert in order to communicate.

As I lay there thinking and musing over the past couple of days, time flew. Pain evaporated. Along with fatigue, sleep embraced my body. Deep sleep. Surely, it must have been past midnight by then. I woke up only after daybreak. The sun had opened his eyes in the east much before I opened mine. I woke up and looked at the cot. It was empty. He must have woken up early and got down to work, I thought. I ran to the
masara hoping to be there before he finished milking. But the scary figure wasn’t there.

The goats had not been given water or fodder. The tanks had not been filled with wheat. Nothing had been done. Their routine disrupted, the goats were restless. I thought the scary figure was engaged in some other masara. I went around all the masaras. He wasn’t to be found in any of them. I wondered where he could have gone so early in the morning. I came out of the masara and sat on the cot. My mind was plagued by doubt, and I bent down and looked under the cot. The previous day I had seen a very old and dirty bag, one which I guessed was his. It wasn’t there! The sprout of suspicion grew.

Then the arbab came out of the tent and walked towards me. He gave me a vessel and asked me to milk the goats and get him milk. I looked at the arbab apprehensively. Surely the arbab must have understood the meaning of that look—where has the scary figure gone? Then the arbab told me a lot of things. His words were loaded with anger, curses, sympathy, cruelty, disparagement.

This is what I could gather from those words: he, my scary figure, had escaped from this hell!