Thinner Than Skin (22 page)

A crow feather. And then the cloth.

Not one of the servants made to endure the beatings, kicks to the head, or severed pay, dared give Ghafoor away. He was as dependable as a stone come loose from a glacier. What he might do would be worse than anything they suffered now.

She was not proud of him for doing it. The inspector’s children were sent to a city hospital and their burns were crippling. The girl
especially, who would marry her now? And without even a mother. The poor woman had played no part in the fine, neither the one imposed on the herders, nor the one imposed on herself, each time she opened her legs for that man whose whiskey tasted of their sweat.

Perhaps it had not been Ghafoor, she told herself, ignoring the rumors spreading through the valley faster than the fire had burned the wife. Faster, even, than Genghis Khan had burned 10,000 villages. From the ashes of the dead, she reminded herself, the King of the Universe had gifted the world its first postal service. Without that gift, she might not have survived her marriage.

He was happy for her when she got married.

He sang for her on her wedding day, the same song about Prince Saiful Maluk and Princess Badar Jamal he had sung before, outside her highland shrine. He suspected she was trying not to listen. She was angry he had not bid for her hand. Many men had come forward to offer their best cattle. Not he. Though his success as a merchant continued to grow, she had been given to Suleiman instead. Suleiman’s family gifted hers almost their entire herd, and when the gift was accepted, members of the tribe had gifted his family some of their cattle. In this way, Maryam was made up for, in part.

He had brought her a wedding gift, that, he could see now, as he waited inside her hut, was nowhere. The two carpets made by women in Tashkent: they had hung on a wall, or so he thought. Would that space there not make a good place? He looked closely above the rope bed, which was unusually disheveled, he thought, but saw no carpets.

The hut was not too clean and not too comfortable. A yurt was lavish and beautifully lit. Kazakh herders were far better off than the Gujjars of Kaghan Valley, and a small part of him regretted coming down here at all. A yurt was sacred, and, after three summers living in one, he decided this was as it should be. It ought
to be a replica of the endless hemisphere of the sky. No boots should be allowed to stamp their will inside. No broken teacups should litter the floor. No clay pot should lie empty. Why was there no drinking water here? These walls were not thighs, the smoke hole was an evil eye, and there was no lattice frame, no womb.

The similarities he had found to exist between the Turkic nomads of the steppe and his own tribe suddenly began to fade. It was true they both lived according to the cycles of nature, carrying goods on their backs, sharing their assets, welcoming guests, and driving their herds from one pasture to the next so a field was never overgrazed. But if what he saw in the steppe was abundance in spite of hardship, what he saw here was ruin because of it. Did Maryam still cleanse her home with juniper branches, or had even she given up keeping this ritual alive? He could not imagine a festival taking place here anymore. He was suddenly glad for the woman beneath whom he could lie each night, the woman with the round white arms, who was waiting for him high up the Oxus River and deep in the steppe.

He had to remind himself that he had been happier for Maryam when she got married than when he did. He had to remind himself that he was here now, in the midst of this wretchedness, for a reason. He needed a plan. He believed himself close to finding it.

She was happy for him when he got rich.

He had not bid for her hand, though he could have afforded to. Instead, Suleiman’s family had placed the highest bid, and the marriage suited both their families.

In recent years, her family had increasingly succumbed to the pressure to settle more, and move less. Though the eye of the state could watch them more closely now, they had been left with little choice. They could not afford to keep ducking the eye. Living solely on cattle rearing was becoming a curse, given all the dying indigenous
breeds and the restrictions on grazing in a diminishing forest. So they bought small plots of land and tried to be cultivators.

During her lifetime, her mother had vehemently opposed the change.
You can harness a horse, but not a Gujjar!
She watched in fury as Maryam’s brother first planted instead of herded, then kicked his ice-encrusted plot, abandoning it for work at a mine. While the contractor pocketed his pay, he took to drink. Others in her family, however, proved more successful. They became traders and merchants, or joined the army. A few, like her brother’s friend Ghafoor, even traveled the world and came home rich. They were welcomed in big shops in big towns. They wore good clothes; they owned good guns. And every now and then, though very rarely, if one went too far, he was asked to leave, and if he returned, the others looked away for as long as they could, without mentioning the crime, without mentioning the legend.

Her husband’s family, on the other hand, had refused to change, a fact which won them immediate favor with her mother. They were herders and always would be. Only with tradition came pride and dignity. Only with seasons and stars, sturdy animals, and fresh spring grass, came peace. They did not own good clothes and avoided even bad guns. But this did not mean they could not benefit from the protection of those who, like Maryam’s more cunning relatives, could knock on the
front
door of the forest inspector’s new house in a crisp white shirt, carrying silver spoons for his very new wife.

She remembered the horse she rode to her husband’s hut the night of her wedding and all the ghee and sugar her family distributed in celebration. The horse died soon afterward, and she did not know why, but she had cried for it. She remembered too the row of donkey carts that arrived at her wedding with guests who had been made to sit on a pile of felled trees. This was one of two favorite ways for the smugglers to transport their goods. They either sent them down the Kunhar to the big lakes of Mangla and Tarbela, where forest officials lay in wait, or they intercepted public festivities, layering the floors of carts and trucks with logs and forcing family members to pile up on them.

It was all a façade anyway, since any policeman stopping them would be an accomplice. And since those who sat on the logs were also made complicit, no one dared complain. By the time Maryam’s guests arrived, their clothes were torn and mud-stained. Some had bought them by saving for months. Others had sewn them on a shared Singer sewing machine that was older than all their children and some of their wives. But when Ghafoor started to sing about Saiful Maluk and his love for Badar Jamal, everybody started to dance and a few even dance-rolled, illustrating their journey on the logs.

She did not dance. She could tell that despite his merriment, Ghafoor’s war with the officials was far from over. She did not care. He had not bid for her hand.

On their wedding night, her husband dislodged his wooden leg. She thought of felled trees hidden in water wells. She was his water well. On subsequent nights, she learned to take it all in, the gray and yellow swirls encased in a walnut cylinder, the smoothness, even the scent; it did not frighten her the way he feared it might. How did it happen? She asked. Two bullets, from a rival Sawati Afghan tribe to the west. If not a forest inspector or landlord or policeman or smuggler, it was other herders. They said his cattle grazed on their land, though they did not own the land either. The land owned them. He bandaged the wound himself, as he had done numerous times for his horses. But he was kinder with horses. When the lesion began to ooze, after attempting to ignore it, he cleaned it so roughly he pushed both the bacteria and the bullet—the second bullet was never found—deeper inside. And then one morning, he saw the color creep beyond the blood-encrusted edge of the bandage, the shade of a terrible bruise, like buffalo hide. He lowered his head and inhaled. The stench made him weep.

“This leg is much prettier,” he said, curling his fingers around her own on the wood. She would stroke the grain of his torn skin too, the rubbery knob without bone. My husband is made of cartilage, she would think. Flexible, yet tough.

He would say he was a good husband. “You are lucky I am not
like the others.” He was right. He did not interfere with her rituals at the shrine, even in recent years, as the pressure to tether her more securely to the Islam spreading toward them increased. He left her to keep the old calendar in place of the Islamic one. They called it Moharram, she could still say Chaitar; they called it Ramzan, she could still say Mangeru; they, Safar, she, Baisakh. And she could continue to mark the date of their departure to the highlands by Nauroz and their return to the lowlands by Het. “Pagan seasons, for a pagan wife,” the others said, but he ignored them, in his calm, dignified way. A dignity as stiff as his leg. The only time he interceded was last year, when she wanted to celebrate Diwali with her children, the way her mother had done with her. He warned, softly, that it would be leaving a sign. A sign too bright, brighter than all the constellations she was free to call by her own names. And so, last year, without his having to say more, she also ceased celebrating Lohdi and Baishakhi. She rejoiced at the passing of the bitter cold only in the privacy of her heart and welcomed the spring only in there too.

When, after Kiran’s birth, Ghafoor started to leave her signs again, she drew inspiration from her husband’s mild, uncomplaining nature. She would temper her pleasure at sight of a cloth or stone, and temper her longing for more. She would draw strength from restraint. Even if she faltered now and then. When one day, seeing the flash of anger in her eyes—
why didn’t
you
try for my hand
—he offered, lamely, more lamely than her husband walked, “I would make a false husband, but I make a true friend,” she laughed in his face. But she did nothing more. She continued to enjoy his stories. She also continued to ignore the rumors floating in the valley ever since the fire had burned down the inspector’s villa: Ghafoor was grown as hard as the company he kept, the company of men from the north who were tough, but not flexible.

Now he was still inside her hut, this man who would not stand idly by while policemen tore through her home, bullied her son,
and mocked her honor. And as calmly as that, Maryam threw open the curtain, ready to talk.

“At last.” He was smiling.

“Why are you here?” she snapped.

“How is Suleiman? Suleimanov?”

She did not giggle.

“Where is he?”

“Why are you here?” she repeated.

“Don’t you want to know whose feather that was?”

She was none too pleased when her fury began to scatter.

“Do you want a story?” he pressed.

The way he spoke to her, it was not unlike the way she would speak to Kiran, when she was tied to her back. And Kiran would listen to Maryam the way Maryam always listened to Ghafoor, wide-eyed and willing.

He was talking. As he talked, her eye—unwide, unwilling—moved to the general space where his wedding gift had hung each autumn, on their return to the plains.

She remembered the day he brought them: two carpets from the north, made by gypsy women who used them to insulate their walls. They were different from the Kashmiri carpets sold in Kaghan. How? he had asked, rolling them out on the floor. She was no expert, and preferred to look, and touch, rather than speak. Kashmiri wool was soft and shiny; these threads were coarse as beards. And the colors! A red so rich it seemed to bleed on her fingertips, reminding her that she had touched herself, there, the night of her wedding, after her husband fell asleep. The red glowed in the center, and she loved how her eye moved from the edging to the bright heart, and back to the edging again. The second carpet did not bleed. It held a resolute zigzag pattern, each line sure and quick—red, orange, yellow, green—each shade sharp and distinct.

He had looked healthy, even happy, his light brown hair parted to the side, beard gone, sideburns thick enough to braid. Still stroking the carpets with pride (as if
he
had made them, she
thought), he said the women dressed like men, in trousers made of animal skins and belts with clasps that pulled in their waists. Maryam’s shirt was loose but her stomach tight. She rubbed it discreetly as he spoke, wondering how the women could weave with their stomachs cinched.

When he left, she hung the carpets behind the bed she shared with her husband. When her son was born, she hung the red carpet over his cot. When Kiran was born, the cot became hers, and she moved the second carpet too. Her husband did not question the extravagance of the gift. Being a friend of her brother’s, Ghafoor was considered part of her family. But over time, he said the gift attracted too much attention, not only because of who had presented it, but because it made them look wealthy. Too wealthy for nomads. So she had taken them down, hoping that when Kiran slept, she would fill the bare wall with her own colors.

She kept staring at the wall, her mind reeling. She hoped her husband had found Namasha in the forest. She ought to prepare lunch. Jumanah would be playing with the goats, as Kiran had done. Younis was at the market, searching for a better life. He wanted to be like Ghafoor, not his father. The convoys were everywhere. A week since Kiran’s death but she only knew it by the number of meals she had coaxed down her family’s throat.

“You did not like the story,” he said.

She moved her eye away from the wall and centered them on his. They were light brown, like his hair, and devious, always. She was glad the sideburns were gone. Each time she saw him, he had changed his look in some way; no doubt he had again changed his name. He wore trousers, not a shalwar, and a belt around his waist with a large silver clasp in a pattern she would have liked to see up close. She moved her eye upward from the belt.

“You did not tell it well,” she replied.

“Then let me try another.” He smiled slyly. “I have been to the Fergana Valley. I have mounted its famous horses. They are beautiful, but none have Namasha’s temper.” He paused, still smiling. So
he had been watching her quarrel with the hag.