The Wandering Falcon (17 page)

Afzal Khan,
who was small and handsome, had been walking with the two women for nearly five hours. The last hour had been particularly uncomfortable, with the sun glaring down on the treeless countryside and not the faintest breath of breeze. With each step, a small puff of dust rose from the ground and seemed to hang, suspended in the air. For as far as the eye could see, the trail of dust created by their feet pointed to where their journey had started.

Afzal Khan was feeling the strain. The heat, the dust, and the fatigue were telling on him, and he had been perspiring profusely, particularly under the dome-like skullcap that men of the Mohmand tribe usually wore. This made him all the more aware of the plight of his companions, who were wearing dirty white cotton burkas, the heavy shroudlike garments that served to hide a woman's body and veil her face. The women, who had been chattering among themselves in the morning hours, had fallen silent.

Afzal Khan turned to them. “We shall stop soon for midday,” he told them. “We all need a rest. There is a good kebab shop beyond the next rise.” The women nodded in agreement, too tired to respond more enthusiastically. In muffled voices, they told him to stop so that they could urinate before they reached the village. Afzal Khan stopped, and the women went behind a rock. Likewise, Afzal Khan unslung his rifle, untied his baggy trousers, and, facing the other way, urinated while squatting. He then took a few pebbles and dried the last drops of urine before retying his voluminous trousers.

As he waited for the women to reappear, Afzal Khan thought affectionately about the two of them. They had borne the strain admirably, and without a word of complaint. Shah Zarina had really surprised him. She was young and frail-looking, and for her to bear the journey so well proved beyond any doubt that her stock was sound and that she had the grit, the inner strength, and the endurance that make a woman pleasing. He was half tempted to keep her but frowned at such foolish thoughts. If he started behaving so irresponsibly, he could end up a pauper without too much effort. After all, there were Mohmands better looking than he who had been fated to spend their lives chopping firewood day after day in big cities such as Peshawar and Karachi.

The women joined him after a while, and the party started on its way again. This was their third day on the road. From the verdant and heavily wooded land of Swat, they had climbed down onto the plateau of Malakand, with its irrigated orchards and fields. From then on, it had been a steady progress toward desolation. Fields, cultivation, vegetation had faded miles ago, and the land was now bleak, hot, and dusty. It looked like the middle of nowhere—small, dry hills with tufts of coarse grass sprouting here and there, narrow ravines intersecting the landscape, marking the angry passage of flash floods every year when the rains fell. Afzal Khan knew the country well. “Put him anywhere,” his friends would claim, “blindfold him, and he will still guide you by the smell in the air, by feeling the soil with his feet.”

As Afzal Khan had predicted, the moment they crossed the next rise, the village of Mian Mandi, nestling in the hollow of the hills, suddenly came into view. It was not very impressive to look at—a collection of huts, smaller than those in more prosperous villages, huddled against one another. There was a pool of water on one side of the village, which was reflecting the sun like a mirror, and dark black smoke rose thickly from a hut next to it.

“That must be the kebab shop,” remarked Sherakai, the older woman, to no one in particular. It did not take the party very long to walk down to the village. Afzal Khan took his women straight to the shop, where he made them sit down on a wooden bench lying under an awning made out of reeds and grass.

The owner of the shop sat cross-legged next to a large frying pan, engrossed in scraping burned bits of mincemeat from its edges while the oil sizzled. Small tendrils of smoke rose from the pan and added to the aroma of burned animal fat. He looked up as Afzal Khan walked up to him.

“Two
seer
of kebab and some hot bread,” ordered Afzal Khan. “Make them ready while I go and say my afternoon prayers. Also, send some water for the women. They might wish to wash the dust off.”

After giving these instructions, Afzal Khan walked away toward the pond, which was the major source of water for this area. He sat down near the edge, removed some pieces of scum floating on the surface with a stick, and started washing his arms, face, and feet meticulously.

As soon as he had finished his prayers and returned to the shop, platters of food and a jug of water were set before them by a young boy whose looks and gait suggested that he was serving his owner's physical needs as well. He made eyes at Afzal Khan and fluttered his long eyelashes at him.

“How long are you staying?” he asked softly.

“What day is it?” countered Afzal Khan.

“It is Monday, today.”

“Then I shall have to stay for three days.”

They smiled secretly at each other. Thursday was the sale of women.

“Where can I get a room for us?” Afzal Khan asked.

“We have some rooms, my master and I. I shall talk to him. He listens to me.”

When the boy left, the women slipped their veils off their faces and started to eat from a common plate. Sherakai's face was puckered with distaste. “He is a catamite.” Her peasant morality was shocked at such a blatant exhibition of perversion. Afzal Khan looked reflectively at the sturdy-looking woman sitting opposite him. Her lower jaw was a little too heavy, and the faint smudge of dark hair on her upper lip was prominent because of her fair skin.

“You find all kinds of people in this world,” he told her. “May God forgive all sinners.” After the food was finished, he got up and threw the scraps on the floor. A mangy bitch that had been feeding her pups in one corner rushed out and started groveling for food on the mud floor.

Lifting his shirt, Afzal Khan took out a plastic wallet from the waistcoat he wore underneath.

“What do I owe you?” he asked the tavern keeper. “Have you arranged for a room?”

“Two beds should be enough. The women should be able to sleep together. If they want to sleep separately, I shall get another bed later on,” he answered.

“The boy will show you the way. By the way, I do not rent him out,” he whispered to Afzal Khan, handing him the change. The young boy led the party to where their rooms were. As they turned the first corner, Afzal Khan looked back. The kebab shop's owner sat hunched over his pan, intent on scraping the burned bits of meat from it and preparing for the next customer.

The boy unlatched one of the rooms in a mud-walled courtyard and took two string cots from the storeroom and threw them inside. “I hope you like the room,” he chirruped.

“We do,” acknowledged Afzal Khan. “Get us some bedding.”

“I can offer you my own,” responded the boy coquettishly. Laughing to himself, he went away and returned after a short while with some cotton sheets and pillows. “The drinking water is in the room next door, and if you need anything else, just call me.” He was addressing Afzal Khan but talking to the women. There was pity in his voice as he offered them his help. Another two faces to add to the multitude in his memory, growing with the passage of each Thursday. Women, some little more than infants, some already on the threshold between middle and old age; some who laughed at their fate and others who never stopped crying. Some who appeared once and then vanished completely. Others came again and again, sold sometimes to one man and then to another. There were those who had run away from their husbands or their fathers and those who were running away from life. His memory was only a sea of women's faces, and his small body shook with tension every time he saw yet another face destined to be sold. Yet it was strange that the women had always shown loathing and hatred toward him. He could feel it now, in the two women standing before him.

 

 

A
s the next two days passed, the rooms in the courtyard quickly filled up: sometimes a lone man with just one woman shambling behind him, and sometimes two or three came together who had joined up on the trails leading to the hamlet. The women were always carrying some possessions from their past lives in small, pitiable bundles. One walked with glazed eyes, carrying a blue flower vase in her hands like a candlestick. Another strode along proudly, carrying her man's rifle on her shoulders. There also came men who brought no women. They came to buy and had nothing to sell themselves.

Before the second day was over, the inn was surrounded by small tents, set up and hired out to the visitors. While the men used up the time wandering about, looking at the wares of others, laughing and jesting with old acquaintances, Afzal Khan's women remained in their room except when they went out together to the hillside, when the stars were still glimmering. The monotony of their days was only broken by meals of tea and kebabs brought for them twice a day by Afzal Khan.

With the influx of people, the kebab shop did roaring business. The owner had brought out his transistor and played it the entire day without interruption, not even switching it off for the news or the cricket match commentaries in English. His shop provided a comfortable meeting place for men who had gathered from all corners of the country—groups of them lounging about, chewing and spitting tobacco, some sitting on wooden benches and chairs, others on string cots that had been dragged out and placed in the open. The eating of kebabs and drinking of tea seemed to go on without interruption. The tavern's mongrel bitch and her pups, no longer hungry, looked disdainfully at the scraps lying on the ground.

Afzal Khan was approached by several men, at one time or another, who made inquiries about his women. Some he brushed away brusquely, as he instinctively recognized them as scavengers—found wandering from one village to another, from one market town to the next, trying to manage on the scraps thrown to them either as charity or as commission for acting as go-betweens. There were others with whom he was more patient, though he knew they were small men who could not afford the price he had placed on his women. There were only three men whom he recognized as good customers. He knew two of them of old, as they were regular suppliers to the city brothels, and the third was a young man whom he had not seen before. He appeared to be interested in Shah Zarina, and had not been frightened away at her price, though he did express considerable indignation.

Afzal Khan explained the circumstances of both the women to the customers. Sherakai, he told them, had been kidnapped in a raid but had escaped and returned to find that her husband had taken a younger wife, who had borne him a son. Her mother-in-law, who had never approved of her, lost no opportunity in harping on her failure to provide sons to the family.

As the weeks passed after her return, Sherakai grew more and more frantic. Her mother-in-law's glee knew no bounds. If the new wife had merely felt happy and had forgotten Sherakai in her victory, it would have been all right. But where there had been only taunts and innuendos to contend with earlier, the new wife and her mother-in-law tried to devise all kinds of ways to hurt her cruelly and make her a figure of ridicule and contempt. Then one day they beat her with sticks in front of her daughters, and laughed when she cried out.

“After that, she ran away, and I happened to come her way,” said Afzal Khan. “She claims that she fell in love with me and wished me to carry her off, but I think she prefers humiliation from total strangers than by those she knows. You may rest assured that she will make a cheerful and willing worker,” he told the brothel agents. “She will forget her daughters in no time.”

He was more reticent about Shah Zarina, and admitted that he himself did not know anything about her beyond what she had told him herself. And all she had mentioned was that she had no one to protect her, and that all the village lads were treating her as fair game. Things had come to such a pass that she could not venture alone in the fields without someone or the other trying to tease or assault her. If she complained, the whole village charged her with loose morals—if she didn't, the men became bolder. So one day she had just run away, got a lift from a passing truck driver, and disappeared.

“I believe she is a virgin so far,” said Afzal Khan. “And if I could help it, I would rather sell her for marriage.”

“So she is not in love with you, Afzal Khan?” one of the traders said, and laughed.

“Not so far,” he countered. “But if I try, she would not resist me.”

On the third day, the discussion took a more serious turn. The price of Sherakai was agreed on without too much difficulty. Both the traders agreed to merge their interest and purchased her jointly in equal share. The negotiations for Shah Zarina were more exacting. As a virgin, she was a pearl, and any man would have liked her on his string bed, but the traders appeared reluctant to pay the price Afzal Khan was demanding, and he was not willing to reduce it.

During one of the intervals between negotiations, the unknown young man, whom Afzal Khan had taken a liking to the previous day, came to him again and started talking about Shah Zarina and the difficulties of completing the sale.

“Did I hear you say that you would prefer to sell her for marriage?” he asked.

“That I would,” replied Afzal Khan. “She is a right one for marriage. She would be willing to die for the sake of her man and her home.”

“I think so, too,” said the young man softly. “But I am not rich enough to pay the sum you are asking.”

“How much do you offer?”

“All I have on me is three thousand rupees. I only wish I had more.”