A House Called Askival (9 page)

THIRTEEN

It was the middle of September 1947 and the rains were dragging on. Monsoon was once again playing her cruel trick, that annual metamorphosis from bride of promise to bitter wife. Every year when she arrives, veiled in silver rain and fresh as a flower, she is greeted with jubilation. Grown men dance in the streets, women laugh, children run naked in the swirling water. She is a blessing, a relief from the unbearable heat, a cure for the cracked earth. And how abundant are the fruit of her loins! Crops rise like armies in the fields, trees hang heavy with foliage, vines run rampant over wall and courtyard.

But then she sours, becomes a disease. She floods the place with her brown swill and eats away at the heart of things; pelts people on their way to work, soaks them to the bone and flushes their filth down the streets. In the hills, she infects the houses till they go swollen and speckled, reeking of damp, furniture sagging. Bed sheets never quite feel dry and clothes carry a constant smell of wood smoke from the dhobis hanging them up in fire-lit rooms. At the bottom of wardrobes, shoes sprout a whitish fuzz and in kitchen cupboards, mould stealthily conquers the food. Even the people take on a sodden, fishgrey look as they appear through the mist, rain-spattered clothes clinging to their legs, skin cold.

It was just such a person who came up the path of Askival that wet afternoon, his shalwar legs rolled to the knees, chappals flapping through the mud. Carrying James' hiking back pack and the Memsahib's black umbrella (CONNOR 2), Aziz was returning from the bazaar with the shopping. He walked round to the back of the house, propped the umbrella on the veranda and pushed through the screen door to the kitchen, where the Memsahib was checking a tray of kidney beans for worms. She was peering at them through the grey light from the window, the power having failed again.

Sahib had left the hillside a week before. Two days after Colonel and Mrs Bunce's visit, he and a party of medical missionaries had travelled down to the plains to help in the refugee camps. Aziz had overheard these plans over the wasteland of that supper and when he had finished clearing up, he'd slipped out to the servants' quarters and into the warmth of his bed where Salima and the baby lay sleeping. But he had barely slept, and when he did it was only to enter dreams that left him sweating and crying out.

The night before Stanley's journey, Aziz had made him a packed lunch of army-surplus-Spam sandwiches, a banana and two peanut butter cookies and filled a water bottle from the filter. He'd watched as Stanley lifted his gun out of its box, hesitated, and then returned it. In the days after he'd gone, Aziz begged the Memsahib to explain all she knew, but she was cautious. It was her way to make no fuss, but he could read the map of her face: the contours of worry, the drooping of eyelids from broken sleep, the stretched greyness of her skin. He knew she had not heard from the Sahib since he'd left, though this was to be expected. Few letters were reaching Mussoorie, and a telegram would only be used in emergency. Aziz had asked the Memsahib about their plans. His every move was determined by theirs, and although this had once brought security, it now filled him with unease. He worried they did not understand the forces at work around them in this country that they loved but did not fathom. These two countries, now. The Connors believed, they hoped, they had faith that God would provide and goodness prevail. But if it didn't (and He didn't), they could leave. They
were Americans. They had passports, money, choices, multiple futures, whereas he – and his family – had one: them.

But despite his anxious probing the Memsahib had given nothing away.

‘We don't know the next step, Aziz-ji, but the Lord does.' She spoke in Hindi, the norm for their conversations. ‘And all things work together for good for those that love Him.'

Aziz wondered if the promise included him. He loved Allah. Was that the same? Well, in truth, he worshipped Allah in submission and fear. Did that mean love? He knew Allah to be good and merciful but did not know if that would help him in the here and now, or just in Paradise. Would he and his family be safe if the missionaries were gone? What work could he get? No one else would want his Walnut Fried Chicken and Peanut Butter Cookies. There was no point turning to his parents for support. They were poor as dust and already relied on a meagre share of his monthly earnings. And Salima's people were of no use. She'd been illegitimate and kicked from birth. The day Aziz married her, she'd begged him never to return her to that cursed village. He had promised and prided himself on the life he gave her: a clean and comfortable room in the servants' quarters, food and clothes enough and his own devotion. In turn she had given him the delights of her body and the unsurpassed joy of a son. But now he churned with worry for them. All but his love was under threat.

In the week since Sahib had gone, he had felt fear tightening round him like a snake. By the time he arrived back from the bazaar that afternoon, he was out of breath and his heart thumping.

‘Memsahib,' he said and lowered the backpack, water dripping off him onto the floor. ‘They are all talking in the bazaar. The Punjabis have come. They will kill us!' He pulled off his wet, fogged glasses and rubbed them on his kameez. The Memsahib looked at him, steadily. He could not stop the trembling in his hands as he pushed his spectacles back up his nose.

‘That's not good talk, Aziz-ji,' she said. ‘It just breeds panic and there's no call for that. Did you get the stuff?'

‘Memsahib, it is true! Some Sikhs have already moved into Mullingar Hotel and one Muslim family there was pushed out. Traders are leaving town already. I saw them going.'

‘Well, I think they're being a bit hasty and there's certainly no need for you to worry. You're perfectly safe up here. Now, where's that mutton?' She reached for the pack. ‘We're needing it for tonight's supper.'

‘Yes, Memsahib, but there won't be any more.' He was sweating as he helped her pull open the flap and undo the drawstring. ‘All the butchers are going. They told me.'

‘Well now,' she muttered and pulled newspaper-wrapped parcels out of the bag.

‘And all the cake-wallas, jam-wallas, sweet-wallas, Memsahib!' He passed two jars and a tin to her. ‘All Muslim. All going.'

‘We'll just have to do without, then,' she replied, inspecting the labels on the jars and setting them firmly on the bench. Her mouth was tight.

Aziz stood by the empty backpack and looked at her. On the tray at her elbow some of the kidney beans were moving.

By six-thirty, he had everything ready for supper and was just waiting for James to return from school. He was off collecting ferns and beetles with Paul Verghese and the Natural History Society. Aziz could never see the point. The garden was thick with ferns, the house with bugs. If James simply sieved the flour he would find plenty of weevils for his studies, and should he venture into the kitchen early morning, he might even be greeted by a scorpion, tail high.

Aziz checked his Mutton Stew (recipe of Mrs Meribelle Winshaft) and ran a fork through the rice. He added a tin pitcher of water to the neatly laid table and looked through to the living room where the Memsahib was unravelling an old knitted sweater by the light of a kerosene lamp. A radio beside her was talking like the Colonel Sahib. It was too fast and crackly for Aziz to understand, but he read much from her body as she sat upright, pushed forward in her chair, reading glasses askew on the end of her nose, eyebrows low and scrunched. She kept shaking her head and sucking in her breath, a wet hiss across her teeth.
All the while, her large mottled hands yanked at the wool, the sweater disintegrating on her lap.

There was a crashing at the door.

‘Mom!' James shouted as he came down the hall.

‘What in mercy—?' cried the Memsahib, jumping from her chair, wool tumbling to the floor. James appeared at the living room door, sweaty and rumpled, his torch still on.

‘There's a house on fire on Mullingar hill! I saw it. Just below the Hotel. People were running everywhere, shouting, screaming.'

His wild gesturing made the beam from his torch dance across the room. It hit Aziz in the eyes and he squeezed them shut. Behind the closed lids he pictured the house on the hill, the flames, the black flicker of bodies trying to escape.

Just below the Hotel.

All the houses there – on the steep, rocky, eastern slope of Mullingar Hill – belonged to Muslims.

The next morning, as he was making the porridge for breakfast, Aziz heard Bunce Sahib at the door and slipped into the hallway.

‘Been a bit of unpleasantness,' the Colonel was saying to the Memsahib, ‘and I've taken the decision to get the lot of them out.' Behind him, Aziz could see two Gurkha soldiers, still and erect, uniforms neat, chins sliced by helmet straps.

‘The Nawab of Rampur is an old friend and a good chap. He's got a pile down the other end of the bazaar – used to be Wildflower Hall, you know? Rampur House, now. Well he's given that as a refuge till we get everybody bussed back home.'

‘Mercy!' The Memsahib shook her head. ‘I never thought Mussoorie would be troubled.'

‘Just a matter of time, eh,' said the Colonel. “I've bumped into a few gangs of thugs already. “Any Musselman?” they ask. “Any shikar?” Like they're off on some bloody hunting trip. Appalling!”

Aziz felt a cold sweat break out on his palms. James, still in his pyjamas on that Saturday morning, had come out of his bedroom and
stood listening, one hand across his heart, the other twitching at his side.

The Colonel's voice was brisk. ‘Then last night they burned down that boarding house where the Pathan labourers live, so enough's enough, I say.'

‘Never, never,' the Memsahib murmured, hand on her mouth. Aziz felt sure they must hear the thumping in his chest.

‘I've brought these chaps up from Dehra Dun,' the Colonel Sahib went on, with a jerk of his head to the Gurkhas. ‘Stationed them all through the bazaar. Got some of them rounding up the Mohammedans and escorting them down to Rampur House. This pair'll take your lot.'

‘Well, thank you, Colonel,' the Memsahib said and turned, stopping at the sight of Aziz at the end of the hallway. For a long moment he held her gaze, then dropped his head and slipped back to the kitchen. He wiped his hands on his apron, hung it on the hook behind the door and ran to his quarters.

The Memsahib followed with bags and helped him pack as Salima sat cross-legged on the floor nursing the baby. When the child dropped off the breast, mouth soft and dribbling, eyes closed, she pressed his warm, heavy weight to her back and tied him on with a shawl.

‘We'll walk with you to Rampur House,' said the Memsahib, ‘to help you carry your
samaan
.'

‘There is no point, Memsahib,' said Aziz, shaking his head, eyes glistening behind his glasses. ‘We must only take what we can carry between us, because that's all we can do at the other end.' He did not know where the other end was. It seemed Pakistan was the only safe place for them now, but they knew no-one there.

‘But cooking things and food,' the Memsahib pressed. ‘There will be nothing at Rampur. Let us carry those for you and you can leave them behind if you have to.'

Aziz lifted his hands in surrender.

They walked down the mountain together in the pouring rain, a small troop of ants clinging to giant crumbs. Aziz had a duffel in one hand and in the other a bedding roll wrapped in canvas, bouncing against
his leg with every stride. He wore an army surplus rain mac of Stanley's that swamped him in wet, flapping folds and the smell of kerosene. Under Leota's waxed poncho, Salima carried the baby on her back and several string bags of clothes, the legs of her shalwar plastered to her shins. James had his hiking pack and an umbrella while the Memsahib struggled with another umbrella and a clinking bundle of pots and utensils. The Gurkhas walked in silence at the front and rear, bayonets resting on their shoulders, faces still as slate as rain coursed off the brims of their helmets.

As they passed Mullingar Hotel, they saw the burnt ruins of the houses and breathed the bitter air, thick with the smells of soaked ash and smoke. They were joined by others in the bazaar, all clutching children and possessions, some lugging metal trunks between them, others with rolled-up carpets on their heads. All were bent under the rain, clothes wet against their bodies, make-shift rain shields slipping from their backs. One man carried two chickens by their feet, the birds squawking and flapping, while another tried to lead a stubborn goat. Every few hundred yards a pair of Gurkhas stood, armed and silent. Here and there, a ransacked house, broken windows, a looted shop. At the tiny bangle stall of the Muslim
churiwalla
they saw only smashed glass. A thousand fragments of light and colour broken in the mud, beaten by rain.

But Aziz also recognised unexpected faces in the exodus. The Jain proprietor of Busy Best Stores was accompanying his Muslim neighbours and the Hindu man from Baba Sweets was holding an umbrella over an elderly couple. Mrs Chatterji of the Antique Shop – another Hindu – walked with a large family, carrying their small daughter in her arms as her sari got splattered by mud, and there too was Mr Godiwala, the Parsi Plastics man, with his arm around a bearded friend. On the bend near the bus stop, he saw Mr Harbinder Singh, owner of Paramount Picture House, his tall turbaned frame pulled down by two heavy bags, back soaked, as he walked with a young Muslim couple. He was the only Sikh they saw that day and Aziz did not dare to meet his eye.

FOURTEEN

30th September 1947
Kurukshetra

Dear Leota and James,

It is dark now and late and my candle half burnt. Though tired and sore eager to sleep, I must write this now as Thampan Verghese is travelling to Mussoorie tomorrow and can take it to you. How do I tell what I have seen in these past two weeks? A part of me does not wish to attempt it, for anything I say is like suggesting that a grain of sand is the desert, or one small lick of flame the entire furnace of hell. And yet the burden of it grows heavier in me each day and I must lay some of it down in writing. I do regret if easing my load serves only to increase yours, but I know you will be anxious to hear how we are. Please have no fear for my safety, or that of our brothers and sisters in the Lord. By God's grace we are all protected and in good health. ‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair.'

I will begin at the day I left you. We all met up at Mullingar Hotel at 5am and there were about thirty of us – all the folks on the hillside with medical training that could be spared, plus myself as team co-ordinator and General Dog's Body. We walked down to Kingcraig and by God's
mercy a bus was waiting there and it got us to Dehra Dun in time. But that was where the trouble started. The train was already full, so we had to fit in wherever we could and I ended up standing the whole way. By the end, we had people on the roof and hanging from the windows and perched on the buffers and every bit of running board or doorstep. It was hot and humid, of course, and as more bodies got pushed together there were rivers of sweat running down us and a stench rising up that was full strong enough to knock you out. And I tell you, I dearly wish I had been knocked out before I witnessed the next thing.

The train was crawling down the tracks and at every station the men had weapons. At one of these, a small band of Sikhs and Hindus made their way down the platform pulling open the compartment doors and demanding the Muslims be handed out. At our door they caught sight of an old fellow with a beard hunkered down in a corner. He was furiously denying he was Muslim, but the others in the compartment dragged him forward. I guess they had no choice, what with guns and knives in their faces. I called out that he was old and to leave him be, but they paid me no heed. On the platform they yanked down his pyjamas to reveal he was circumcised and took up such a howling you would not think it human. I will not relate what they did next but can only say it was the most terrible thing I have witnessed and I still pray to our Father to release me from the image of it.

I don't think I really believed old Bunce's report until that moment. Now I believe it all, and worse. If ever I needed proof of a world in the grip of Sin, I have seen it.

We finally arrived at Kurukshetra at dawn, where a truck took us to the camp. There are already tens of thousands of refugees here, mainly Hindus who have come across from Pakistan, but Sikhs also. They arrive in droves every day, some off the trains, some in buses or the backs of trucks, some on bullock carts and horse drawn wagons piled high with possessions. Many come on foot, already ragged and sick, carrying their few belongings, their children, their old parents. Some weep that they have left loved ones on the way because they could no longer carry them, or because they had died. Many women have given birth on the road
– often prematurely – only to pick up the baby and walk on. Some are abandoned by their families as soon as labour overcomes them and they deliver alone. Some have arrived with a dead infant in their arms.

And it is not just the poor, but everyone. I have met lawyers and landowners and wealthy business men, scientists and professors. What they have in common is their loss. Some do not know if any family members are alive. In this land where folks are surrounded by family from birth, to be left alone is almost worse than death.

I cannot begin to record all the stories I have heard. A school teacher from Lahore told of his life-long Muslim neighbours arriving in the dead of night with knives. A young man fled his burning village, but is still haunted by the screams of his family who died in the flames. Countless women have been seized and raped – even girls as young as five – and when I hear the seething desire for revenge I confess I feel it too. And yet I know that these horrors have been inflicted by both sides and that the rising waves of retaliation are serving only to destroy them. Every face is full of misery and hopelessness and a sorrow that we may never comprehend. The words that return to me time and again are those of our Lord's: ‘When ye therefore shall see the Abomination of Desolation … woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!'

Of the many refugee camps across both countries, I believe Kurukshetra is the largest. It is constructed of row after row of make-shift tents that stretch on forever across this dirty field. When I say “tent” I refer to a mean strip of cloth thrown over a string held up with two sticks. It affords only a bit of shelter from the worst glare of the sun, but does not keep out the mud or the flies or the dogs or the rain. For so long the plains were gasping with thirst as monsoon was late, but now it has come, it has brought troubles of its own. Filth and disease are swirling around the feet of all these homeless folks and babies are crawling in it. Nothing can get dry, or clean or healed. Nearly every one of these thousands of people is sick or wounded and the team is overwhelmed. I tell you, at times like this, I wish the Lord had equipped me to be a doctor instead of a farmer, but He has placed me here to dig
pit latrines and plant vegetable gardens and build new wards and what all, so I must accept His Wisdom and His Call.

Before we arrived, there were already half a dozen medical centres in operation and we are setting up more. Each one sees over a thousand patients daily. Smallpox, typhoid and cholera are rife, along with the usual dysentery and tuberculosis, and with the inadequate sanitation, the diseases are spreading fast. Today, Dr Hilda Clutterbuck vaccinated nearly 2000 people for cholera with one kidney basin of alcohol, two steel needles and one syringe. Her glasses became so smeared by flies that the health assistant had to clean them for her, as she would not stop working. Many of the doctors here are refugees themselves, but joining the work seems to help them cope.

Also, the effort of the Indian Christian Council has made a big difference. They offered their services to the government very early on and have called on medical missionaries and Indian believers across the north. Thampan has been one of the main leaders in this and he is praying that, apart from aiding the destitute, it might persuade the government to protect religious freedom in the new constitution. There are many forces that oppose it. I do believe this is our opportunity to show the saving love of our Lord Jesus Christ and I pray many will respond to His grace. It is this hope that sustains me, as our days are long and we fall to our sleeping mats at night exhausted. There is very little food, just one chapatti and tea in the morning and not much more in the evening. I try not to remember our Aziz' fine cooking, but when hunger is gnawing at me, I find I am missing him sorely! Please pass my greetings to him and Salima.

Our team prays together each morning, and though we are tired, it is this half hour in His presence that gives us strength. It is sobering, too, to realise that only in the face of such a crisis have the different Christian groups come together. We are all here: Presbyterians, Mennonites, Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Catholics and Pentecostals. European and American missionaries working alongside our Indian brothers and sisters and, indeed, working under their leadership. This is the Saviour's hour.

Do you know, this place is an ancient battle ground in Hindu mythology? Thampan explained it to me. According to the Mahabharata, it is named after King Kuru who was the ancestor of both the Kauravas and the Pandavas who fought their war right here all those thousands of years ago. And it was here, in that battle, that Krishna was the charioteer for King Arjuna and preached to him about love and duty. And it was that teaching that became the Bhagavad Gita – The Song of Love – that I am told is Gandhi's favourite Scripture. What on earth can he be thinking, now, I wonder?

These last few days I have felt at the heart of darkness. We took a truck along one of the routes of the refugee caravans to pick up the birthing mothers and anyone too weak and sick to keep going. People are heading in both directions along these roads and sometimes they have turned on each other. Everywhere around us dogs and flies were swarming over the carcasses and vultures falling in flocks. I saw a young man too weak to fight them off his wounds and in another place, birds so gorged they could not fly. We had to check bodies lying on the ground for signs of life, and when I moved one slain woman, I found a child was curled beneath her, bone thin but breathing. She was light as rags in my arms and her head flopped like a stone. By the time I got her back to the truck, she had died.

My Dear Ones, my candle has burnt and I am finishing this in the dark. Forgive the horror of what I have told. I hoped it would bring me some release, but I fear it has not and that the distress I have caused you is in vain. Forgive me and pray. I thank our Father that you are safe at Askival. I cannot imagine these troubles extending so far, but in whatever circumstance, I know that you, Leota, will be wise, and I admonish you, James, to be brave.

I commit you both, and dear Aziz and family, into our Lord's Providence.

In His Name,

Stanley