A Promised Land Read online

  Abba had fallen asleep and was snoring softly. She rolled out her own bedding and lay down. She could make out bits of sky among the branches. A nesting bird fluttered about, and a single leaf floated down to her. She picked it up and gently rubbed the soft leaf between her fingers. She thought for a moment about how this leaf was not yet completely dry. There was still some life in it. Reading the literary books Sallu had given her had made her more sensitive.

  The onslaught of the gramophones had begun from all sides:

  Come please, come, please come into my embrace again

  Drip, drip rains the cloud, the intoxicating breezes blow

  Sleep now, princess, sleep, my darling, sleep

  ‘Turn it off, I’m going deaf listening to all these songs!’ someone growled loudly. ‘Throw out your records! Have you no shame playing them?’

  All the records stopped at once as though they’d been snapped in two.

  ‘Children! Play the songs of your own country.’

  My lord, call me to Madina. Oh my lord! Call to me!

  ‘Now that’s really something . . . wonderful!’ someone praised.

  Sajidah leaned over and looked at Abba, hoping all this approval and disapproval had not woken him. But Abba slept deeply in the cool air. There was a lovely smile on his face; perhaps he was having a sweet dream.

  She left me, after yanking her hem from my feeble hands . . .

  This was the voice of a boy who was singing in a theatrical nautanki style. Sajidah listened carefully. She had heard this style as a child and liked it very much today.

  ‘Abey, shut up! These wicked habits won’t fly in Pakistan now. You were mad after nautanki there, and here as well.’

  The singing stopped suddenly, and with that, everyone fell silent, because now the old man was shrieking again.

  ‘I was left holding the ripped hem of her kameez. Where is my daughter? Where is she!’

  Sajidah thought for a moment. What if she too had been abducted like the old man’s daughter . . . Suddenly she felt horrified. She was terrified by the mere thought of it. How could she understand what it was like to break free from the poisonous jaws of violence, for which no antidote had yet been invented?

  She imagined the old man as her own father and burst into tears, and when the heavy feeling had left her chest, she realized she was weeping for him. She felt some relief when she was done crying. Today, as she gazed up at the sky, she wondered why people called the sky a roof. If it was a roof, then why did humans feel so unprotected beneath it? As she fell into a deep sleep without a struggle, she missed the roof of her old home terribly.

  3

  She saw Salahuddin in her dream that night. She was getting ready to depart for Lahore, her bags packed, wandering about the camp, greeting people from her old street and neighbourhood. She asked each of them where they would go and expressed sympathy to those who were not leaving right away. As she comforted them, she noticed Sallu was there too, looking for something.

  ‘You haven’t left yet? How did you get here? Did you deliver your mother safely?’

  ‘Don’t worry about us. I’ve come to see you. Abba has decided we’ll all go to Sargodha, or we’ll live in a village nearby.’

  ‘In a village in Sargodha?’ she asked to reassure herself. ‘We’re going to Lahore.’

  ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll become a lecturer at a college in the city.’

  ‘But . . . but how will I know, Sallu?’ she wept.

  ‘Don’t cry, I’ll find you somewhere or other.’ When he laughed, his dry lips cracked and began to bleed. She tried to wipe the blood away with her pallu, but Sallu suddenly disappeared.

  Her eyes opened. It was a cold night, but she was bathed in sweat.

  ‘I’ll find you somewhere or other,’ she whispered. She was astonished at how real a dream could seem!

  From far off came the howling jackals. There was no hint of dawn breaking in the bits of sky peering through the branches. Someone was wandering about holding up a lantern. First the jackals, then a mysterious wanderer: her hair stood on end. She covered her face. She wished she could wake Abba, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak. It must be some vagrant, there was no way thieves had entered the camp, she comforted herself. Then suddenly, the lantern light was filtering through the blanket and shining into her eyes. She pulled her blanket down slightly. A lantern swung before her. She closed her eyes and screamed with all her might.

  ‘She’s here, she’s here—I heard her scream! My daughter, my daughter!’ The old man’s cries mingled with her screams.

  Many people at the camp ran over to them when they heard the commotion. Then they went away again. She couldn’t hear what they were saying; perhaps they were angry at being woken up. Abba placed a hand on Sajidah’s head and glowered at the old man.

  ‘You’re causing a scene at night now too? Get out of here!’

  Abba stared at the old man, who gazed at fearful Sajidah lost in thought. He paid no attention to what anyone was saying.

  ‘Baba, I screamed, I was frightened!’ she explained as she sat up in her bed.

  ‘Do all girls scream the same way?’

  ‘Yes, Baba!’

  Sajidah reached out and placed her cold hand on his.

  ‘I thought . . . I understood . . . are you very valuable goods?’

  ‘Go on, Baba! Get away from here. Don’t talk nonsense now,’ said Abba. He placed his hand sternly on the old man’s shoulder and the lantern fell from his hand.

  ‘Pick up the lantern and put it away, daughter! Who knows who he took it from!’ said Abba, practically dragging the old man away.

  ‘Go lie down on your bed and go to sleep quietly. Your daughter will come in the morning.’

  Abba took the old man away, muttering as he returned, ‘He’s gone mad, disturbing everyone’s sleep.’ He lay down on his bed. ‘Go to sleep, daughter! Go to sleep. Half the night has already passed. May God let no man lose his mind.’

  Sajidah did not reply to Abba. She didn’t even look at him. She was still upset by the way he’d dragged the old man away.

  Abba had gone to sleep but she couldn’t sleep a wink. She watched the dark sky turn slowly white through the tangle of branches. She heard the clamour of birds as they fluttered away and felt strangely joyful at the sight of the tiny branches and leaves filtering through the blanket. She pulled the sheet wall to one side. Outside, people were bathing with lotas and small bowls.

  ‘Abba! It’s morning!’ she called out softly.

  Morning always looked lovely to her. Abba turned over and gazed at her affectionately.

  ‘You’re up? What were you doing, daughter?’

  ‘Asking for blessings.’

  ‘What blessings did you ask for?’

  ‘Just general blessings, Abba,’ she said, annoyed. ‘All I said was, “Oh, Allah! Please forgive us our sins,”’ she said automatically.

  ‘What sort of a blessing is that, crazy girl?’ asked Abba in a serious tone. ‘How have we sinned? After your Amma left us, I heeded nothing else in the world as I raised you.’

  Sajidah laughed after he went off to bathe with his lota. That was the blessing Abba always asked for himself, but when he’d heard it from her today, he took it as an insult.

  After namaz, people were praying for all sorts of things. It seemed to Sajidah as though prayers for the welfare of the entire world fluttered in those outstretched palms. She thought of Amma. Although there were many things about Amma she’d completely forgotten, she still remembered some. Whenever Amma saw a loved one’s head turned by wealth, she’d remark sadly, ‘Maybe I’d understand if there were such a thing as edible gold.’

  And Abba teased: ‘At least humans can eat rich delicacies.’

  But Abba was always pleased with Amma’s contentment, and when she died, he wept and wept and told everyone that his contented wife had never made any demands on him.

  Now the sleeping children had awoken and they rampaged about. Some c
ried. Some demanded food or drink and pulled at their mothers’ saris. The women scolded and smacked them. One woman’s voice rose above the others: ‘Enough, you little devil! It’s not as if we’re staying! We’ve been living here three days eating charity rotis.’

  Sajidah felt these words keenly. She began to think about how some people are never happy. They never try to feel deeply. Why did they behave so ignorantly? She recalled those young men in filthy shalwars and kameezes who delivered hundreds of rupees worth of naan and food in cauldrons. Their faces shone with joy as they distributed the food. ‘Pakistan is yours, brothers. We are your servants,’ they told everyone.

  Suddenly, a loud cry flew up from the children. Cauldrons of food and bags of naan were being unloaded from carts. The children promptly abandoned their mothers’ sari borders and buzzed about the cauldrons like bees.

  ‘Today, we’ve brought tea as well, badshaho!’ called out a fair-skinned boy as though he were shouting a slogan. ‘There’s also haleem, bhaiyo!’

  He then began corralling the children to one side. ‘Just be patient, kids. The tea’s grown cold.’

  He quietly built a hearth from bricks, stuffed it full of dry branches, leaves and pieces of paper and lit a fire. As the tea warmed, he gathered the children around and began to dance cheerfully about.

  ‘Drink tea, hot, hot! Eat roti, soft, soft!’

  ‘Drink tea!’ the children cried with him.

  Sajidah found this all so sweet, she picked up a glass and ran towards the crowd. Breaking through the throng of children, she held out her own glass to the boy, who stood back bashfully.

  ‘I will be the very first to drink the tea.’

  ‘You can drink my portion of tea as well, Baji! I haven’t even had mine yet.’

  ‘Really?’ she asked, looking at him affectionately. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Ghulam Muhammad, but everyone calls me “Gamay.” That’s my nickname, Baji! And I brought this cauldron, too! And I gathered the donations, even though people wouldn’t give me any because they thought I was just a child,’ he said, telling his entire story in one breath.

  ‘Then this tea must be extra delicious.’

  ‘Drink it and see, Baji!’

  The boy filled her cup to the brim.

  Sajidah had just come for the fun of it but when she saw people walking towards the cauldrons, she noticed there were no women among them. She ran back as fast as she’d come, and when she reached their spot, she saw that Abba had his angocha on his shoulder and was walking towards the cauldrons with his bowl and glass.

  Sajidah sat down on the trunk and began drinking happily. The lukewarm tea boiled with gur overwhelmed her senses at that moment.

  ‘I myself have never made such good tea,’ she murmured, as though she were still chatting with the boy. She smiled cheerfully.

  ‘I won’t eat, I won’t eat, where is my daughter! I heard her scream!’

  She put down her glass. Her fleeting joy evaporated with the old man’s screams. She wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten. She had no idea how anyone could console him. One man steals, another is sarcastic about stealing, a third goes mad from being robbed, and . . .

  Abba was walking back jauntily carrying his food and drink. Was his carefree manner just for her benefit? Abba is sad about losing his home, and he’s doing his best to hide it, she thought.

  ‘Here you go, daughter! It’s nice and warm. The most wonderful tea you’ll ever taste. And look—there’s haleem. They cook it all night long, just the way we make kichari.’

  Sajidah picked up the glass using the end of her sari, poured half the tea into her own glass and handed his back to him.

  ‘Abba, are you truly happy?’

  ‘Yes, daughter! We’ve reached our country alive and well, why wouldn’t I be happy!’ He began to sip his tea.

  ‘Then please eat a bit of naan. You didn’t eat anything last night either.’

  ‘No, daughter! You eat it. I feel as though someone has put a lid on my stomach. I just don’t feel hungry.’

  Sajidah looked hard at Abba, but he was drinking his tea peacefully. He’s not hungry, she thought. Amma had saved every penny for twelve years and built them a two-room house out of bricks. She remembered when she was very young, how they’d lived in one small room with mud walls. When it rained, Amma spent the whole night moving things from one place to another, and Abba sneezed and sneezed as he tried to patch the holes in the roof, until he was exhausted and angry. Amma would make him tea and say soothingly, ‘We won’t live in this house forever.’

  When they moved into their new home, Amma announced proudly, ‘Look, Sajjo’s father! I built us a palace, brick by brick!’ She’d planted a motiya jasmine shrub outside her palace and trained a chameli vine up the wall and went about decorating in all different ways. But building and decorating her palace exhausted her so much that not long after, one rainy night in the month of Savan, she stretched out her legs and fell asleep so peacefully she never got up again. Abba quickly filled in for Amma. He rose when it was still dark, cleaned the house, made tea and toast and small thick rotis. Then he’d wake her affectionately, feed her breakfast, and when she was dressed and ready for school, he’d fasten the lock onto the door, drop her at school and go off to the shop. It wasn’t long before she began to manage the house herself, and when Abba saw her cleaning, he’d get angry and say, ‘This isn’t your work, daughter! Am I getting you a bit of education so you can stoop to such tasks?’ And she would feel sad. ‘But then why do you stoop to them?’ she’d ask. ‘Abba! Don’t say such things!’

  In the evenings, when Abba returned from the shop, he’d wander about examining everything in the house, then water the motiya and chameli.

  ‘Daughter! Who’s been picking the leaves off this chameli?’ Abba had asked her once.

  She’d felt embarrassed and quietly turned away to work on some chore. How could she tell him that Sallu came to visit at night when Abba went to his friends’ houses to smoke his hookah? And when she saw Sallu, she forgot all else and just started absentmindedly picking the leaves off the plant.

  She turned to look at Abba again, but his flat face was expressionless. Really, how could it be that Abba wasn’t missing their home? He couldn’t stand the plucking of even one chameli leaf. He used to declare, ‘I’ll sign over the palace built by Sajjo’s mother to my son-in-law, yes! He’ll recognize my generosity and wash my daughter’s feet and even drink the water from the washing.’

  After Pakistan was created, the rioting picked up steam and their neighbourhood began to empty out too, but Abba still refused to leave. But when he realized their house was about to be invaded by not one, but ten sons-in-law, he left so fast he forgot to lock the door. At the refugee camp, he sat with his head down, mourning his palace, as he muttered, ‘I built a palace, people, bit by bit—my home . . .’

  Tears came to her eyes as she remembered this. She looked outside to escape the desolate memories of the past, and saw a large crowd gathering. She also noticed a doctor in the throng.

  ‘Why are all those people gathering, Abba?’

  ‘I don’t know, daughter.’ Abba cast a cursory glance outside. ‘That tea has done my stomach a world of good,’ he added.

  ‘Good,’ she said. She’d been holding her glass a long time, and now that she’d remembered it, it was cold.

  ‘My daughter, my daughter!’ screamed the old man. She could hear other people speaking too but she couldn’t make out what they were saying from this distance.

  ‘Abba! Go and see what’s happening!’ she said anxiously.

  ‘What’s to see, daughter! The poor thing has gone mad.’ Abba began filling his chillum with tobacco. ‘He’ll quiet down soon. You’re getting upset for no reason.’

  With the last scream, the old man fell silent. People began to scatter. Everyone looked deadly serious. She felt the stillness that spreads after death.

  ‘Abba, the old man hasn’t died, has he? Eve
ryone was gathered and now they’re all leaving, why is that?’

  ‘No reason, dear! I just saw him a little while ago. He was sitting comfortably under a tree. You spend too much time worrying about the whole world.’

  Abba closed his eyes and began to puff on his hookah.

  She felt angry at her father’s indifference. She wished she could tell him, ‘You just think of the old man as a book of accounts. Only sums are entered in that book, but never feelings.’

  She went outside and looked around. Her eyes sought out the old man and the tree under which he sat silently for hours on end. Children played there now. Just then, she noticed Nazim walking swiftly towards her. When he drew near, she looked down indifferently.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ he asked.

  ‘What happened to that old man? People were gathered around him and he was screaming, and now I don’t see him anywhere.’

  ‘The doctor’s sent him to the insane asylum. I heard he was harassing everyone last night. He frightened you as well?’

  So Baba had been sent to the insane asylum. Those people had gathered to bid him farewell. She felt overwhelmed with sorrow. Goodbye, Baba! she said to herself. She was sad she hadn’t been able to say goodbye. At that moment, it seemed impossible that Baba was already far away from all such things. His mind was a gramophone record filled with screams that would keep playing until the needle of his memory wore it down. Then the record of Baba’s mind would be broken, and the insane asylum would get rid of him.

  ‘Are you very sad? Maybe Baba will get better there. These insane asylums are made expressly for sensitive people. You also seem rather sensitive to me,’ he added, and burst out laughing. Then he turned serious. ‘What would happen if scientists made recordings of all the screams in the atmosphere? How would that make these civilized humans feel? They’d all run off to the jungles and dress in leaves, never to return.’

  ‘Abba is inside,’ she said. ‘Abba! Nazim Sahib has come!’