Shabanu (10 page)

The women shout greetings as we draw near. “Ho! You must be looking for husbands and sons!” And there is much laughter. Mama and Auntie have cousins among this festive troupe, but it will be difficult to find them. There are too many camels to count, all decorated with mirrors and bells.

Phulan sleeps. We pass the night in a magical glitter of sand and moonlight, bells and mirrors, singing and clapping and the camaraderie of women.

As we approach Channan Pir the birds are just beginning to twitter in the trees around the shrine. There are more camels as we draw closer. Sleeping women on bright quilts increase in number from a few scattered shapes to a sea of blankets touching edge to edge. We walk the camels directly to the miraculous mound of rocks under which the saint is buried.

We circle the tomb once, passing under the thorn tree that shades the mound and past the eternal lamps beside the grave. Green, red, and blue flags flutter softly against the silvery sky. We pass the old ocher mosque with its three green domes and look for a place to camp and leave the camels.

Mama and Auntie find their cousins and invite them to have tea with us after we have found a spot near theirs.

Phulan builds a fire while Mama and I unload the camels, and Auntie pours water into the kettle. The ground
feels shaky under our feet after pitching and rolling in the panniers all night.

I hobble and tether the camels and am about to give them fodder when I hear the unmistakable throaty voice of Sharma, Mama’s favorite cousin and my favorite aunt. Mama takes her in her arms and buries her face in Sharma’s hair, and they just hold each other and laugh.

Fatima, her daughter, takes Phulan and me by the hand, and we look each other over. Fatima has changed little since we saw her at Adil’s wedding last year. She is as delicate and small as her mother is tall and straight. Her face is soft, with a small, round nose, full lips, and tiny, even teeth. Her bosom is full, and although she is not beautiful, she has her mother’s warmth and strength.

Auntie doesn’t look up from the fire, which she pokes under the kettle. She disapproves of Sharma, who left her husband because he beat her. He was older and already had one wife who had borne him no sons. He married Sharma in the hope she’d bear a boy child. When Fatima was born he began beating both of them, and Sharma refused to lie with him.

Slowly she built her own herd of goats and sheep, as well as her courage. Then she left him. Sharma and Fatima are not afraid to live alone. Anyone who might want to harm Sharma should think twice; she is better able to take care of herself than most men are.

Auntie thinks Fatima is a double disgrace. At sixteen she isn’t married, doesn’t want to marry, and Sharma has no intention of forcing her to marry.

Sharma is bold and outspoken. Most men don’t like her and are afraid of her. Not Dadi. He thinks she’s wonderful.

Sharma’s hair is streaked with gray, and her skin is dry and creased. But her hands are graceful and long, her breasts high and firm, and her teeth white and straight. She is about Mama’s age, perhaps thirty.

When the camels are fed we sit, ankles crossed, eating
chapatis
and drinking tea, catching up on the news; Adil’s wife is expecting a baby in three months; his elder brother has just had a second child, a girl—too bad, it seems to run in the family. They laugh and slap their knees. Auntie draws her
chadr
across her face and sits at the edge of the circle.

Well after the sun is up and the heat has gathered, the bagpipes and drums begin. Sharma and Fatima promise to have supper with us so we can talk into the night. It’s so rare to see relatives, we never run out of things to say.

We put our belongings away and head toward the shrine to pray for sons for Phulan. We cover our heads and gather our
chadrs
in folds around our shoulders. We walk silently and are caught in the crush of women sitting with baskets before them heaped with flowers and lumps of white sugar candy. The garlands sell for twenty rupees apiece. Each of us buys a garland for Phulan.

We approach the peeling ocher mosque in our bare feet. Auntie’s feet are tender from wearing leather shoes, and she sucks air in through her crooked brown teeth as her soles touch the hot sand.

Women kneel in rows in the packed mud courtyard of the mosque. Rotating their bodies, they toss their oiled hair over their heads, back and forth and around and around with a whipping motion like horses’ tails, in a frenzy of devotion.

Women whirl like dervishes, ankle bracelets jangling, their skirts flying out like disks of color. All around are women: wailing women, silent women with children clinging to their skirts, women dancing and playing flutes and singing songs about the life of the Channan Pir. Beside the entrance to the shrine a woman, her head thrown back, wails her anguish at having lost a child. Another sits in a trance, a small girl crawling under her knees.

The queue grows quieter as we approach the mound of stones. Colored flags snap and curl in the breeze. I lay a fistful of sweets and my garland beside the tomb and bow my head amid buzzing flies. I close my eyes, and the combined sweetness of crushed flowers and burning incense makes me dizzy. I pray with all my heart that Phulan will have sons. In the second before someone shoves me aside to make room for another supplicant, I pray she and Hamir will be happy, and that life will not be too difficult for her.

Afterward, we push our way back to our camp. The camels lie with their legs under them, dozing in the sun. Flies collect in the corners of their eyes, and the heat presses down on us so we can barely breathe. Mama and I tip the panniers on their sides and tie
chadrs
at their corners, making a shelter against the sun. We have a cup of water,
then lie down on our quilts to sleep through the burning white afternoon.

Before the sun sets I take Xhush Dil out into the desert to collect fodder and firewood. We haven’t gone far when we hear bagpipes and drums from the camps where the men wait for their women. A roar goes up, and Xhush Dil and I move closer to see. We stop under a thorn tree. If Dadi sees me he’ll be angry. Xhush Dil lifts his head to nibble the leaves overhead, and I stand behind his hump, holding on to the tree trunk with one arm.

The men stand several deep, jostling for position. One sweeps clear a circle, dust rising in gray clouds around him. Two men wearing nothing but loincloths stand outside the circle, flexing their legs and arms. I am too far away to see their faces clearly.

The crowd cheers as one of the bare-chested men, with shoulders broad as an ox yoke and a round, hard belly, pushes through the circle and lifts his arms above his bald head. But a roar of approval goes up as the other man, much smaller than the first, with a handsome black mustache, comes into the ring, his broad back glistening in the lowering sun.

The two crouch and circle each other, and the tempo of the drums and bagpipes quickens. The smaller man, clearly the crowd’s favorite, turns toward me, thick muscles bunching in his thighs and calves. Something is oddly familiar about him. The larger man lunges, the smaller dodges, catching the arm of the other as he hurtles past,
levering the immense weight and hurling him onto his back in the dust.

They remind me of Kalu and Tipu.… All at once I realize it’s Dadi! My heart thunders. I want to ride through the circle of wildly cheering men and make them stop.

But I am stuck to the tree as if it’s caught me with its thorns. The huge man regains his feet and, in so doing, pulls Dadi’s leg out from under him, slamming him to the ground. The large man pounces on top of Dadi, who rolls away an instant before the other smashes to the earth.

Again Dadi uses the momentum of the other man’s lunge to flip him onto his back and pin his shoulders to the ground. It’s over in less than a minute, and Dadi, the favorite, has won. The crowd is nearly mad with ecstasy, calling for blood.

My heart thrashes inside my ribs as I yank Xhush Dil’s head down from the thorn branches and turn him. The motion catches Dadi’s eye, and my last glimpse of him is of a heaving chest and angry eyes.

We dash up the great, soft dunes and down the other side, over the hot white desert, the wind stinging my face through tears. The sun is gone, and I have little light to gather wood. But I do it with a fury and return with bulging bags to the happy warmth of the women.

As Phulan fills the kettle, Mama begins slapping dough into
chapatis
. She smiles as she works, looking forward to Sharma and Fatima’s visit. I stare at her and wonder, How can she stand him? How can she let a man who
would fight another naked man touch her … and do what the camels do?

“What is it, Shabanu?” she asks, the smile still hovering on her mouth. I turn away, and she goes back to her bowl.

We hear Sharma’s
deep, husky voice laughing and talking, calling out to women camped around us and moving animals from her path long before we see her.

Fatima carries a steaming pot of spiced lentils, and Mama gives each of them a dress she’s sewn. Fatima holds hers before her lovely bosom, and Phulan nudges me with her elbow.

Sharma takes over making
chapatis
, and Mama whisks
milk and sugar into the tea, and they talk about the preparations for Phulan’s wedding. Sharma will bring her
jelabi-wallah
, who fries crispy, sugar-filled pretzels in pink oil. Fatima has a friend who sells flowers; she will bring tuberoses, with the fragrance of royal weddings. Phulan’s eyes glisten, and her sculpted fingers clasp and unclasp with pleasure.

I say little and try hard not to stare at Fatima. How I long to be like her—never to marry, to stay in the warm, safe circle of women.

After we’ve eaten and the stars are brilliant and Mama has shown Sharma and Fatima all of Phulan’s dowry, as well as my
shatoosh
, they sit back and Sharma tells a story about a woman, her friend, who was stoned to death because her husband accused her of looking at another man.

Mama urges me to tell about the Bugti girl and her lover. They listen, horrified and delighted by the stories. Panic rises in my chest, tears building pressure behind my eyes.

Sharma takes me by the wrist and pulls me toward her, encircling me in her arms like a small child.

“Don’t be frightened, Shabanu,” she whispers against my ear. “There are evil men in the world, but the love of a good man is the most beautiful thing God can give us.”

How can she say that after what she’s been through with her terrible husband? She laughs her rich, deep laugh.

I think of Murad, his gentle eyes and his fairness at games. Is any man a good man? In a year I shall be married to him. If he isn’t a good man, I shall be like Sharma—strong and independent.

Still holding me, Sharma sings a song, a
ghazal
about a desert man who searches for his love in the desert as if she were water. Fatima brings her lute, and we listen to their rich, dark voices intertwine with the delicate sounds of the strings.

Sharma sings as if she is in a trance, and when she has sung two or three
ghazals
, she announces that she will sing a
kafi
, a poetic song about the Channan Pir.

sings Sharma, her clean, husky voice traveling back four centuries, quietly setting the story at Uch Sharif, on the banks of the river that has wandered away, leaving this place a desert.

The story is of Raja Sher Shah, the Rajput prince of Bikaner, who hears Bokhari’s prophecy that a child conceived by one of his wives, a Muslim, will grow up to be a Muslim saint.

Sharma’s voice rises and falls in trills and cadences as the story unfolds, and a crowd of women gathers outside the circle of our fire. They bring more wood, their shawls, and quilts and quietly make room for more women.

When he learned of the birth, the Hindu raja took the infant out into the desert and threw him onto a mound of dirt, leaving him to die in the wilderness.

Here Sharma pauses to catch her breath, and Fatima’s tiny fingers pluck out the lilting music on her lute, the
crowd saying “Va, va, va,” softly expressing their pleasure.

sings Sharma. But a magnificent cradle carved of fragrant sandalwood descended from heaven, hovered over the mound of earth, and caught the infant. The raja ordered his soldiers to kill the child, but the cradle carried him up into heaven.

When the raja and his men finally went away, the cradle descended again, and the child grew up in the wilderness, protected by the animals of the desert.

The raja became obsessed with killing the child and frequently sent his soldiers out to search for him, but the animals would warn the boy, and the sandalwood cradle would lift him from danger. The child grew into a wise and gentle man, beloved of all people of the desert, Hindu and Muslim both.

Because of the miracle and the Channan Pir’s simplicity and wisdom, the people of the desert became his followers. Many Hindus converted to Islam because of the saint, but Hindus and Muslims alike come to worship at the mound of rocks where the infant was thrown, and where his body lies today.

The second morning we visit the shrine early, before the pushing and shoving, the singing and dancing begin, when
the birds are just stirring in the thick, thorny branches of the tree that stands sentinel over Channan Pir’s mound of rocks.

Again, like hens laying eggs, we leave our prayers and hopes for Phulan’s sons at the head of the shrine.

For the first time, I feel a communion with the saint; his presence is like a soothing hand on my shoulder. Before Auntie nudges me to move along, I pray for wisdom, and my anger with Dadi eases.

I kiss Sharma and Fatima good-bye as the sun rises behind a thin haze that portends a hot day. While Mama, Phulan, and Sharma jabber about who should bring saris and bangles for Hamir’s mother, turbans for Hamir and Murad, and more wheat and sugar to Mehrabpur for the wedding, I turn to the business of saddling Xhush Dil. There are no tears, for we shall see them again when the family collects after the fasting month of Ramadan for the wedding in twelve weeks.