The Wandering Falcon (15 page)

So now they would set off in a few days. No pot or pan or rag of cloth could be left behind. Their possessions were neatly divided into head loads and animal loads, their herd of buffalo and cows about twenty strong, the hens perched expertly on the loaded animals, the husband carrying the youngest, and the mother balancing a broken aluminum trunk that was ancient already when her mother gave it to her as part of her dowry.

Walking, walking, and walking, using the roads at night when the law allowed them to, the side trails during the day, the graveyards and small unmarked patches used for hundreds of years by gypsies for resting and cooking. Avoiding the towns and villages where they were not welcome, as the locals said they were dirty, damaged the crops, and were suspicious about their tendency to steal. They carefully skirted the cities, fearing to fall afoul of the police, and spread out into the plains, where they did menial jobs, working as porters, carriers, scavengers—whatever work they could find—during the three months before starting their long trek back to the mountains.

By the time the family crested the ten-thousand-foot Lowari Top, as the pass was known, they formed a sizable group. Other men, some without families, joined them with their cattle as well as sheep and goats. A group would be less vulnerable to potential hazards as they debouched onto the plains.

The mischief and harassment began as soon as they reached the tree line on their descent. Initially, it caused only minor irritation. They ignored the catcalls and the epithets shouted at them, and even ignored the occasional stone flung at them and their animals. On the third night, however, there was a serious attempt at stampeding their animals and cutting their tether ropes. The provocations could no longer be ignored, and a collective decision was made by the men to guard the animals at night.

Tragedy struck the group two nights later. There was a sudden noise of firecrackers, the angry shouts of the men, the screaming of women and children, and the frightened and stampeding animals adding to the pandemonium.

When dawn broke and the men returned after rounding up and counting their animals, they found a few sheep were missing; then they were distracted by the wailing and screaming. They ran toward their tents. When they saw the disarray, they rushed around, frantically trying to persuade the women and children to come out from the undergrowth, where they were cowering. It was then that they discovered that three women were missing—one of them was Sherakai. They searched desperately, but they knew the futility of their actions. Her husband stood in a daze with his three daughters.

There was no way he could look after them. He decided to give his daughters away to be cared for while he searched for his wife. To anyone who agreed to take on the responsibility, he offered two of his buffalo. For the youngest girl, who was presently too weak to walk, he offered three. They were to protect his daughters until the mother was found and could rejoin them.

 

 

T
or Baz slept soundly in a wayside inn in a nearby village. He had been given a roving commission and a little money by some gem traders in Peshawar who had learned of a recent discovery of semiprecious stones in the hills, of peridot, tourmaline, and topaz. He was to find out more about the location of these discoveries, about reliable contacts in the area and the correct sale prices. He planned to use the initial money to buy some samples so that the quality of the gemstones could be assessed.

On his way back to Peshawar, after completing his assignment, Tor Baz had decided he would stop at the village of Mian Mandi, a notorious market for slave trading. He had never seen it before. It lay in the area of the Mohmand tribe, but he had an instinct that he might collect some useful information there—traders were always willing to exchange gossip on market days. He woke from his slumber with the sound of a truck driving down the road. He thought he heard a woman scream but could not be sure. Tor Baz tried but could not fall asleep again, so he got up, put on his shoes, and picked up his bag. He woke up the owner of the inn, drank a cup of tea, and started walking toward the market.

As one starts
off the main road and travels into the valley, there is a steady climb until the track ends about six miles on. At this point, nestling between forest-covered slopes, is a small settlement of houses, some shops, a police post, a school, a dispensary, and a mosque. An unusual sight, as people do not tend to live in villages in these mountains.

In the evening, when the cooking fires are lit, one almost never sees more than two dots of light flickering together at any one spot. What brought this group of buildings and houses together was the unfortunate fact that for years this point was the overnight halt for hunting parties shooting the monal pheasant—a beautiful green iridescent bird that is close to extinction.

The discovery that there were monal pheasants in these parts brought development to the place where Fateh Mohammad, a Gujjar, lived. The yearly visits by local princes and foreign dignitaries encouraged the construction of public buildings made of cement and concrete, with chimneys and glass windowpanes. A small hydropowered generator was also installed.

Among the multitude of tribes inhabiting this frontier region, the Gujjars present a curious enigma. What was curious was that in spite of their large numbers and latent strength, they appeared content to live in the shadow of those around them. To their neighbors, the Gujjars did not seem to exist as a separate tribe or people. Their diffidence and humility had become so ingrained in the course of centuries that they showed no resentment at being treated as an inferior people. Indeed, their stoicism went beyond this. They submitted to the demands of their more powerful and brash neighbors, who denied them the right to settle their own disputes and extracted taxes and free labor from them. Harsh restrictions were also imposed on them as to how they could live and how they could die.

They lived quiet, tormented lives on windswept hilltops and dark, narrow mountain defiles, eking out a living from a soil that was so poor it was unattractive to all others. Under the custom of the dominating tribes, the Gujjars could neither own the land they cultivated nor acquire any other property. All they possessed were their animals and what little they could carry.

Centuries of insult had created a trauma in these people. Very few had any pride left in themselves, their language, or their culture. The next generation was being deliberately encouraged by their elders to, whenever possible, give up their identity and merge themselves into other ethnic groups. Of their children, few knew their own language—they were happy if they could learn Pashto with an accent, which would not betray them in Pathan society.

In spite of being such a poor community, even they maintained a careful and complicated hierarchy. Those who possessed buffalo and migrated every year looked down on those who owned only goats. Those with a few patches of land hewn into the high mountainsides would not marry into those who did not have any. There were some who were so poor that they had neither animals nor land nor houses. They lived on charity and were looked on with pity by others.

 

 

W
hen the new mosque of stone and cement was being constructed, Fateh Mohammad supervised the work jealously. In fact, he was so critical and demanding that the contractor had several quarrels with him. Fateh Mohammad had, as the local mullah, presumed that the new mosque would be placed under his charge and he would be installed in it. He was to be disappointed, though, because on completion, a short, rubicund man rode up the valley in one of the timber trucks with a letter from the local official, appointing him as the guardian of ecclesiastical affairs. He also brought with him a loudspeaker and had an amplifier set up to sound the call for prayers.

Fateh Mohammad was a very disappointed man. In fact, he soon had a scuffle with the new preacher and got the worse of it. He brooded for some days over what had happened to him, and made plans to blow up the mosque with dynamite. However, after a few days, he resigned himself to his fate and accepted the fact that the new preacher would look after the locals while he would be left with solely that part of his flock that was spread thinly over the mountains.

Only one gesture of defiance remained with him. Every day at dawn, while the amplifier was still warming up, Fateh Mohammad's beautiful voice floated into the air, calling the faithful to prayer. In spite of his best efforts, the new preacher could neither silence Fateh Mohammad nor be the first to announce the call.

Fateh Mohammad lived with his family in one of the old houses in this small community. The ground floor, a large room usually meant for animals, was occupied by some poor relations of the owner while the first floor was given free of rent to Fateh Mohammad as a gesture of charity and piety. The owner was a young man without a family who had left for the city on being selected as a police constable some years ago.

Fateh Mohammad's children were all daughters. He had eight of them, which included an eighteen-year-old by his first wife, who had died in childbirth. On most days he started early, picking a direction and climbing up, homestead to homestead, calling on his flock. He usually returned late in the evening with his collection, which was always in the form of food, usually maize. For these payments, he had to look after a circumcision rite in one place, a wedding or a funeral at another, perhaps an occasional exorcism. Once in a while, people saw him sitting on his rooftop with his children. On these days, he usually drew a small playing board on the earthen floor and played children's games with them with black and white pebbles.

Since people knew that on these days his family would go hungry, they would bring them food, often stale unleavened bread, which the couple and their ravenously hungry children would consume avidly.

Fateh Mohammad had named his eldest daughter, his firstborn, Shah Zarina. This name was a combination of two words, both denoting aspiration to royal connections. In these mountain areas, the poorer the family, the more high-sounding names it gave its children.

Shah Zarina had been a pretty girl. When she grew up, she might have been described as beautiful. She could usually be seen carrying one or the other of her half sisters straddled on her hip as she walked in and out of the room the family occupied.

There was little that remained secret in this small community. There were no curtains to hide behind, nor screens of any sort. All that a person did, the life he lived, was open to view.

T
he spring thaw was setting in after the winter of usual desperation and misery. After each family had withdrawn themselves, the community was beginning to bestir itself. There was a noticeable air of hope that for the next few months, life would be easier. There would be work to do, and the constant torment of hunger would fade to a certain degree.

One night Fateh Mohammad's wife went out to wash herself. When she returned, she roughly shook her husband awake. “Come out!” she said, shaking with excitement. “Spring has started.” Fateh Mohammad rolled the thin quilt around himself and followed his wife out of the room.

There was a full moon, and it hung half hidden behind the northern cliff. The moonlight was strong and dazzling to the eyes. His wife silently pointed at the moon. A long distance away on the mountain crest, he could see small antlike figures silhouetted against its orb. There was a long chain of them moving slowly with loads on their backs. These were the ice cutters. They were men who lived in the highest village, whose main occupation was cutting blocks of ice from the glaciers and carrying them on their backs down into the valley, where waiting trucks loaded them up and sped away to the cities, to people living in the warmer regions.

The children, who had pretended to be asleep during their parents' lovemaking, had also trooped out and laughed and clapped their hands at the thought of spring, which would soon be there. They knew that along with the ice cutters, there would also be temporary villages set up of mushroom collectors—men who moved for a few weeks with the snow line, picking up the profusion of mushrooms, drying them, and selling them for export to foreign countries.

Behind all this pent-up excitement lay the fact that every year, at this time, Fateh Mohammad undertook a visit to these relatively affluent groups, who made their payments in cash and cast-off clothes.

The family did not sleep that night. They spent the next few hours talking about and making preparations for Fateh Mohammad's journey. They laughed as they took out his traveling shoes and mended them, joking among themselves as they packed his traveling bag with a few clothes and some books, and also the charms and amulets that these rough-bearded ice cutters favored. Fateh Mohammad started early with his staff in his hand, and at dawn, when he turned to say his prayers, he found that his house was no longer in sight. He felt sad because he was sure that his family must have been waiting to catch sight of him before the next stage of his ascent.