The Pakistani Bride (26 page)

She moved closer, and the trees took on definition. The sun shot twilight darts, and the young pines, holding their arms poised like dancers, turned the trapped air golden. Zaitoon stepped among the cool, scented trees. The ground beneath her bruised feet was springy with pine needles mellowed by dew and soft as feathers. A little breeze moved, mingling the
scent of grass and pine. The spicy, bittersweet scent brought the sensual bite of pepper-hot
pakoras
to her palate. Spasmodically the air was charged with a delectable warmth sifting through the cold. It felt like the air in the bazaar streets of Anarkali on a cool evening, when the aromatic heat from
pakora
frying pans, from open braziers barbecuing kebabs, alternated with the chill from cavernous hardware and metal shops. She realized with an elated start that she must have moved a long way downstream. In this enchanted world of golden shade and caressing scents, her privation and fear of the past eight days appeared bearable; yet on this same day she had met with the vulture and the leopard.

Zaitoon heard a distant bellow, and glimpsed a faraway settlement in a wide, green, cattle-dotted valley, divided by a faintly etched stream. The hollow horizontal logs channeling the water for cultivation resembled the irrigation system of Sakhi's village. The hill across rose in fresh green terraces, and into the slope small rooms had been dug, of stone and mud and wood.

Slowly she moved through the darkening trees, touching them. She chewed pine needles and bits of stalk and grass that pushed through the carpet of needles. Her body responded gratefully to the caress of nature and she lay down in the softness, feeling the decayed vegetation cool her burning skin.

At night sounds of lament kept reaching up into the stillness, and she felt she knew the inhabitants of that village.

 

Zaitoon awoke before dawn. The settlement below, except for the faint rustle of the stream gurgling through it, slept quietly. The wind had died but a dull roar persisted in her ears. Zaitoon shook her head. She was damp with sweat, and though her fever had subsided, she blamed it for the
humming in her head. Or was it caused by hunger? She plugged her ears. When she removed her fingers, the muffled roar was still there.

She sat up blinking in the dark. Holding her breath she listened intently. Again she plugged her ears, and the hum returned when she removed her hands. Turning her head she tried to follow the sound. Through a gray film tinting the air, touching the dew-drenched tree trunks, she groped her way, but it was as yet too dark. She sat a while waiting for dawn.

In a sudden surge of hope Zaitoon thought it must be the river she heard. Her mind became sharp and decisive. She knew she must leave the dangerous vicinity of the village before it stirred. Keeping the river in view, she would be able to steer her path to the bridge. “Careful now, careful,” she cautioned herself, trying to contain her impatience, afraid of the slightest miscalculation or risk.

The hum increased while she moved. Her heart racing with anticipation, she at last scrambled over slabs of dark, rough granite, where the glimmer of dawn lit a sky-blue stretch of wet satin trembling against white banks. Her face crumpled in gratitude. She wanted to sink into the soft white sand and dip her face in the water.

She rushed down, not caring how, and flung herself on the beach. Rolling over and over, she reached the brink of the river. She drank the water and splashed herself until she felt numb with cold. There she lay, growing warm in the dry sand. Unexpectedly, something touched her—tickling the bare sole of her foot. Her spine arched back convulsively and she retracted her legs.

In a line beyond her feet, his arm stretched out, a man lay face down, his thick, yellowish fingers curling where her feet had just displaced the sand. She could not see his face,
only a matted blur of brownish hair and the ragged length of his body. At right angles to him, supporting his head on his hand, sprawled another tribal. He had a hard, exceptionally pointed chin, and a hooked nose that almost dipped into his mouth. His hooded eyes moved down her body.

Zaitoon knew that a moment ago she had been alone. It was as if the men had risen from some foul depths in the sand.

An arm lunged at her ankles, and she recoiled. Close to her threatened the narrow, rapacious face of her tormentor and the cracked, grimy nails that quivered like talons. Zaitoon sidled backwards. The man casually turned on his side. She hugged her shoulders trying to conceal her trembling.

Cold, speculative eyes measured her wet body. They took in the outline of her ribs, the panting swell of her damp shirt, and the mud in her hair and on her small, terrified face.

Zaitoon knew the madness of the still eyes. She stood up hesitantly and started to walk away.

“O, ay, where are you off to?”

She hurried her pace.

“Wide-eyed little gazelle, we love you. Won't you favor us?”

The crude, smug voice was close, and she whirled to face him. The man had touched her. The other, still sprawled on the sand, looked on coolly.

“Come, let me thaw your cold little heart.”

Zaitoon's desperate eyes held his in horrified reproof. He moved, and despite her terror Zaitoon thought he seemed to be enjoying the chase, like a villager cornering a flustered hen. She ran.

Next, she breathed the stench of his clothes, the sickening, bovine smell of his unwashed body. He overpowered her. She was down.

“You can't escape us, my dove.” The man's husky breath sank into her ears. She flailed at him. He caught her wrists, and it seemed her arms would snap. “How thin I've grown,” she thought. She saw the other man get up slowly and walk towards them.

T
he dank, thick-walled room, with its single pigeonhole skylight, was quiet. Misri Khan lay on a stringy mat alongside a wall. He stroked his beard and from time to time he sighed aloud, muttering a winded string of words: “Allaahhh, help us . . .”

Sakhi sat cross-legged, cramming his mouth with baked maize and drinking voracious gulps of water from an earthen bowl. He held out his hand. Lifting a
roti
from the fire pit Hamida handed him the bread.

She crouched and, touching her cheek to the floor, blew into the fire. She sucked the air in with wide-mouthed “Aaahs” and blew until the wood blazed and crackled. Breaking a rubbery chunk from a tray full of maize dough, she slapped it between her deft fingers until it took the shape of a huge pancake; then she tossed the roti on the fire. She glanced nervously at Sakhi. His eyes were red with sleeplessness. The change in him touched her: there was a grim maturity in the contours of his face, and in the deliberate movement of his limbs. She wanted to stroke his hair, fuss over him, and counsel and console him, but she dared not. Everything about her irritated him: her withered, crooked body, her thin, cracked voice; and especially her timid, defensive insistence on mothering him. A few days back she had ventured, “Son, you must leave some things to Allah . . . you can't be everywhere all the time . . . If you don't eat and sleep properly you'll sicken.”

“You'll sicken,” he mimicked brutally, “and who'll hunt your bitch of a daughter-in-law while I sleep . . . you?”

“The entire tribe's with you—you know she can't get away . . .” Hamida seldom provoked the menfolk but that day she felt she must have her say. “You shouldn't have beaten her like that, son. You knew she was different . . . you frightened her. She'd have come round to our ways in time . . .”

Sakhi had glowered murderously. He would have struck her but Misri Khan restrained him. The men had not spoken to her since. She gossiped with sympathetic clanswomen, but once the men returned, she contented herself with the grunts and moans accompanying her chores. Now she had no more sympathy for the girl. She only prayed for the end of the hunt and for her mournful household to return to normal.

The hunt was organized in shifts. Clansmen scoured the hills nearby and went deep into the mountains, searching meticulously. There was no sign of the girl. The village was tense and the women talked of nothing else. Magic and witchcraft colored their speculations. She was from the plains. Who could tell what knowledge such women possessed? What dark forces befriended the girl? Anyway, this would teach the menfolk a lesson.

Young girls, barely in their teens, gave Sakhi covetous, sympathetic looks. He could have married any one of them.

 

The room was gray with smoke and the open doorway framing the bright air gave it a supernatural brilliance. Hamida hobbled out, an arm on her aching hip. She returned, groaning beneath a burden of firewood. Sakhi turned to scowl at her, and she subsided quietly at Misri Khan's feet.

The room darkened with Yunus blocking the doorframe. Adjusting his sight he sauntered in and squatted across the fire from Sakhi.

“What's up?” Sakhi demanded. “Finish your meal.”

Removing a half-chewed morsel from his mouth, Sakhi placed it resolutely on the remaining scrap of roti.

“I've finished,” he said quietly, challenging his brother to say what was on his mind.

“Munawar Khan is here. He thinks two men from Cheerkhil saw the girl this morning.”

“Where?”

“At Cheerkhil.”

Sakhi sprang to his feet. “So. She is alive! She did find her way through the mountains!” His strained voice cracked with bitterness.

They stared at each other. Yunus Khan was still squatting. “You'd better be off,” he said quietly to Sakhi.

Snatching his gun and cartridge belt from the floor, Sakhi started.

“Wait!”

Sakhi turned impatiently.

“Change your shirt,” said Misri Khan.

“She might be at the bridge already . . .”

“It will take you too long on foot. We'll ride from Pattan. I'm coming with you.”

Misri Khan was already stripped. Hamida fluttered, unwinding his bedding-roll and the old man snatched his clothes from the bundle even before it fell open. Sakhi tore the filthy shirt from his body, and Hamida held out a new slate-gray militia shirt.

 

Flanked by his two sons, Misri Khan strode across the bridge to Pattan.

C
arol's anger at the Major had dissolved. She was honest enough to admit to herself that her demand had been absurd. Marriage would have created grotesque complications for them both. And, strangely enough, she discovered she did not loathe Farukh any more.

Carol made a decision she had not even known she was debating. She would not go back to the States. What, after all, did she have to go back to? Another store? More school—or something equally dreary? Her family would welcome her for a month or two; but then she would have to make a life for herself. Pam or someone like her would make room for her in the same barely furnished third floor walk-up, or another like it. And then she would begin all over again—doing things she had found so meaningless before. She would hate to go back to standing behind a cosmetics counter!

Besides she had too much pride to admit failure—particularly after her defiant insistence on marrying Farukh. Her life in Pakistan was rich: it was exciting, and even glamorous. She had taken it too much for granted, and the crisis in her relationship with Farukh made her realize just how much she would miss it all. She had, after all, put some effort into her marriage. She had adjusted to the climate, the country, the differences in culture and the people—and had come to love them. It would be a shame to throw it all away.

One of the pleasant surprises of her marriage to Farukh was her very special status. As an American married to a Pakistani she was allowed much more freedom than a Pakistani wife.
She could say things and get away with behavior and dress that would have been shocking in a Pakistani—and even in an American. Cut loose from the constraints of her own culture, she did not feel restricted by the new. She had become used to moving, thinking, and speaking with an increasing sense of freedom. Her inherent impulsiveness had burgeoned correspondingly . . . She had not understood the strange contradictions and forces in her new life—and often they tore her apart—but she felt she had come a long way to understanding . . . She was up against Farukh's jealousy of course. She suddenly thought his spate of words and posturings were not as restricting as they appeared. She knew she could handle him with a few adjustments in her thinking and behavior.

Yes, she must make it up to Farukh. She might even stop taking the birth control pills she'd used so faithfully and secretively, an almost subconscious result of her reservations about this country and her marriage. Once they had children, his jealousy might subside . . . maybe, that's what she needed, children. They would anchor her . . . control the dangerous restlessness within her . . .

Carol's behavior towards the Major had become more formal after their quarrel.

 

Sakhi and Misri Khan hovered impatiently in front of the Mess Hall. They had been in Dubair an hour. Yunus Khan had been posted by them to watch the bridge. The Major, Sakhi and Misri Khan were told, was out inspecting the road. He was expected back at any moment.

On their arrival at Dubair they had rushed straight to the bridge. The guard on duty had brusquely assured them that he had not seen a single woman all day. They had searched the chaotic rubble of rock and hills across the river, and now they were looking for the Major. Sakhi and Misri Khan ran
in the dusty trail of the jeep when it rattled over the drive. It stopped at the side entrance to the Mess. Mushtaq was at the wheel.

They accosted him before he could climb down, crowding him in a clamor of salaams and questions. Mushtaq sat back.

“You're here again, are you?” he said wearily. “Haven't you found the girl yet?”