This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach (53 page)

The young man saw her indecision, and said, ‘It’s a dead-end to the right. On the left is Kucha Lalmisir first, then the Bhati Gate.’

Tara turned left.

People in almost every house in the gali had woken up. A woman’s voice, from behind the iron grille of a window, asked, ‘Nadira’s bhabo, who’s there, what’s happened?’

Someone replied from across the gali, ‘Some young Hindani. Trying to escape by jumping over from the roof of a house on the Banni side. Some houses are on fire there, I heard.’

‘Hai, baba, they are really bold. I’d have died with fright.’

‘Shammo called over from her roof to say that there was rioting in Banni Hata.’

Tara kept walking quietly. They seemed to know about her even before she reached a spot in the gali. The lane turned, and she followed it.

She had not gone very far when she was pushed to the ground by what felt like a very heavy weight on her shoulders, and someone wrapped her chiffon dupatta tightly around her eyes and mouth. She was lifted off the ground. The gag was so tight that she had difficulty breathing. There was no way she could scream or call out for help. And who was there to call out to? Feeling helpless, she let herself be carried along, gasping for breath.

Tara felt herself being lowered to the ground. Then came the sound of someone thumping on a door.

A faint voice asked, ‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s me! Open up!’ The person who had carried Tara demanded.

The person grabbed Tara’s arm and she was dragged over the threshold into a house. The cloth muffling her eyes and mouth was removed. She found herself sitting in an aangan with a floor of beaten earth. A dim electric light shone from a room on her left.

‘Who’s this you’ve brought?’ A woman said with surprise and disapproval. Her clothes were crumpled and dirty. She looked Muslim.

‘Shut your trap!’ The man ordered. He swore, trying to catch his breath after the exertion of carrying Tara. ‘She’s Hindu. Was trying to run away.’

‘Get the bitch out of here!’ The woman yelled. ‘I don’t want her here.’

‘I told you to shut up!’ He shouted and swore at her, and began pulling Tara by the arm towards the inner room.

The woman again howled in protest, ‘No, no. I don’t want this wretch here. You expect me to put up with a saut!’

The man again swore at her, and then cursed the Hindus en masse. He said, ‘After I’m finished with her, I’ll sell her for twenty-five rupees to Khalifa. Why would I want to keep her! Why are you making all this fuss?’

The woman continued to stand and shout in protest.

The man took Tara into the room and removed her gold bangles and necklace. When he tried to pull her earrings off, Tara removed them and handed them to him.

The woman came to the room and again screamed at the man to throw Tara out. The man placed the jewellery on a charpoy, and swearing obscenities at her, slapped the woman hard on the face twice. ‘Quiet! I warned you.’ He threatened her, ‘If I hear so much as a squeak out of you, I’ll tear you apart.’

The woman went back to the aangan and began to wail. The man sat on the charpoy. He lit a cigarette, drawing heavily on it. Sporadic gunshots could still be heard in the distance. Tara’s legs were shaking. She sank to the ground and sat with her arms clasping her knees, her head resting on her hands. Her circumstances were so shocking and inconceivable that she was unable to think.

The man finished his cigarette and got up. He went to the aangan and drank some water from a clay pitcher. He lit another cigarette and lay down on the charpoy. He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette on the brick floor, turned towards Tara and said, ‘Come here, to the charpoy.’

He called several times. Tara did not move. He got up cursing her, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards the charpoy.

Tara tried to wrench her arm free and pleaded, ‘No, no. I touch your feet and beg you. I’d sooner you cut my throat first.’

The man paid no attention to her begging and pleading.

Tara again tried to free her arm, shouting angrily, ‘Go to hell! May your body rot! Don’t you dare to touch me! Cut my throat first, kill me first!’

The man growled and grabbed her by the elbow. He put his arm under her knees, lifted her and threw her onto the charpoy. Tara’s body was already
hurt and aching from her struggle with Somraj. Her ankle and lower back had been injured when she jumped and fell on the roof. She was still dazed from the shock of being attacked and then gagged in the gali, but she fought back as hard as she could, all the time exclaiming, ‘You may kill me, cut my throat if you want, but I won’t give in to you.’

Nabbu’s wife was sitting in the aangan, crying and swearing at Nabbu and the unknown Hindu woman that he had abducted and brought home, cursing them both that they might be bitten by a black snake, that their bodies might rot and become infested with maggots, and that they might burn in hell forever.

Nabbu was better at overpowering and defeating women than Somraj. Also, he was not afraid of this woman dying, or of her being injured or seriously hurt, or of his being shamed if she screamed. To end Tara’s resistance, Nabbu ripped off her shalwar. Only a strip of cloth around the waist cord remained on Tara’s body. Tara had still not given in and was continuing to resist. Annoyed by her resistance, Nabbu pulled Tara’s arm behind her back and twisted it so hard that she screamed. Her body arched with pain and went limp as she fainted.

A roll of the kettledrums sliced through the silence of the dawn’s early hours. With it came the sound of the sweet voices of Tajo tai and Badru:

O camel rider, on your way to Mecca and Medina,
Stop and turn your camel round.
O camel rider, take us along.
Your camel has bells around its neck.
We’re on our way to the shrine of the pir.

Tajo tai, along with Badru and Mehar who lived in the same house, sang out the prayers in the
asawari
style at four in the morning to alert other Muslims that the time to begin their fast was approaching. Khalid and Imtiyaz also had strong voices. They sang qawalis, sometimes before Tajo began and sometimes after she had finished from their rooftops, to play their part in the pious act of telling other Muslims to eat
sahari
and to smoke their hookahs before sunrise so as to prepare themselves to keep the fast until sundown.

Nabbu did not care what others thought of him, but he could not ignore what his neighbours felt when it came to religious observance, especially the ritual of fasting during Ramadan. He had to observe some religious routines to compensate for the sins of his everyday life. Among his neighbours, Mohammed Nabi, Fazal Deen, Tajo tai and Badrunissa, whom he addressed as bhabhi, maintained a strict watch over who observed the fast and who did not. For Nabbu it was easier to be a part of this group, to make sure that others remained steadfast in their observances than to perform his own religious duties. His responsibility was to check who came to fetch water on the sly from the communal water faucet. He was able to survive the rigours of keeping a daily fast only by keeping himself busy in such tasks.

The sweet-sounding voices of Tajo tai and Badru woke up Nabbu, but he could not forego the pleasure of lying late in bed. In a few minutes’ time he heard Khalid and Imtiyaz singing the inspiring words of the qawali to the beat of handclaps:

‘What do we need from God?
We’ll take what we need from Mohammed …’

Nabbu got up and, to shake off sleep, sat on the charpoy, with his feet on the floor. He mumbled the names of Allah the Holy and the Prophet, kissed his hands rolled into fists and then rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. He heard the sound of someone groaning. He got up, felt for the light switch, and turned on the light. He saw the woman lying next to the wall. She was still in the same supine position as when Nabbu had picked her up from the charpoy and thrown her down on the floor. Her pink silk kameez had rucked up around her stomach and torn scraps of shalwar attached to the cord still hung around her waist. Her wrists, tied together, were behind and under her back. Her hair was dishevelled and tangled, her eyes were closed, and groans came out of her open lips. Nabbu’s wife was not in the room. ‘That lowborn wretch must have spent the night in the aangan to show her disapproval,’ he thought.

Sitting on the charpoy with his feet on the floor, he reached for matches and the pack of Star brand cigarettes that had fallen from the charpoy. He lit a cigarette and called out an order to his wife, ‘Ari, listen. Get up! Do you hear me! Light the fire and make me some tea. I want to have tea before eating sahari.’

‘Make tea! My foot! I’ll be damned if I make you any tea!’ His wife shrieked back from the aangan. She came into the room and continued to heap curses on him, ‘It was you who brought that slut here! Drink her blood! Drink her piss! May she be the death of you! You son of a bitch, I’ll be damned if I make tea for you! You …’

Nabbu exhaled a long plume of smoke, then shouted some obscenities at his wife. ‘You want me to grab your plait and beat you? You want your bones broken?’ he threatened her, ‘Make the tea, or else!’

His wife shot back even filthier curses at him.

Nabbu threw down his cigarette, got up and took a step threateningly towards her. His wife quickly reached into a corner for a long thick pestle used for pounding spices, held it in both hands and raised it over her head in self-defence.

It was pitch dark when Tara came to, with her head and body throbbing with pain. Her shoulders seemed to hurt most. Since her hands were tied behind her back, all she could do was draw up or extend her legs, and move her head. Moans came unconsciously from her open mouth, then they too ceased as her throat became bone dry. Nobody seemed to be around to hear her cries. In the dark, she could not be sure whether there was someone in the room, or she was all alone. She had been tied up and left to die, she felt, and so she would, eventually, suffering and thirsting for water.

She was awoken by the sound of shouts and screams, and opened her eyes. There was light in the room. Nabbu, swearing obscenities, rushed towards a woman standing in the room. The woman swung the pestle at his head. Nabbu stepped aside, then again went at her. When the woman swung at him again, he merely moved his head to one side. The pestle struck his shoulder. He threw the woman to the floor, grabbed the pestle from her hand, and dealt her several blows with it.

The woman screamed. She yelled at him that she hoped he might perish, and went on cursing him between her screams. Nabbu too shouted back obscenities at her as he punched and kicked her. Then he sat on the charpoy, gasping for breath.

Tara lay helpless and unmoving as she watched all this. The sound of qawalis drifted in. The woman was wailing, sobbing and bawling by turns. Nabbu sat on the charpoy, and swore at her, ‘You dare to hit me! I’ll break every bone in your body! I’ll skin you alive. You don’t want to make tea?
Fine. I’ll go and have tea at Moosa’s shop, but I won’t give you a bite to eat. Whatever’s left over, I’ll throw to the dogs, but I won’t give any to you.’

The bugle call announcing the end of curfew rent the air. Nabbu got up, collected the jewellery he had taken from Tara, and tucked it in a fold of the lungi at his waist. He went to a corner where an aluminium pot lay on top of a trunk made from an old kerosene can, took out some food left over from the night before, and went out. As soon as he stepped out, the whimpering and sobbing woman too got up with some difficulty and effort, and went to the aangan where she resumed her wailing with an occasional cry for help, ‘O Tajo tai, he tried to kill me. Badru bhabhi, look how that butcher beat me up.’ The woman seemed to be crying and, at the same time, telling her story to whoever was willing to listen.

Tara wondered what she should do. Only death could end her suffering and pain. She could try to hang herself by making a noose with her dupatta, but her hands were tied. Then she thought of something. She drew her legs up, and summoning up all her strength, turned to one side and came up to a kneeling position. She inched her body closer to the wall, and with the idea of killing herself, began to pound her head against it.

In the aangan, Rukkan was crying and complaining to Tajo tai, Badru and some other women how the previous night Nabbu had brought a saut to the house. She let out a shriek when she heard the sound of pounding coming from the room. ‘…Hai, that wretched thief is breaking open the lock to my box!’ she yelled, and dashed inside.

She rushed back out, screaming, ‘Hai, she seems to be possessed by some evil jinn! Come and see, she’s calling up a jinn!’

Tajo, Badru and Mehar followed Rukkan into the room. They saw that a woman, naked from the waist down and with her hair flying, was pounding her head against the wall. Her hands were tied behind her back.

‘Hai, she’s trying to kill herself, she’s committing suicide,’ Badru said in alarm, and reached forward to grab her by the shoulders and pull her away from the wall. The woman fell sideways and lay there unconscious.

Rukkan again screamed, ‘Hai, she’s trying to kill herself so that her ghost may come and haunt this house.’

‘Shut up!’ Tajo shouted at her.

She untied the woman’s hands, stretched her out on the floor and gently massaged her chest as she mumbled a prayer. Badru and Mehar began to
massage the soles of her feet and her legs. Rukkan was told to bring some water and sprinkle it on the woman’s face.

Tara felt a searing pain in her head. She tried to open her eyes, but could not, because some water seeped in and made them smart. There was a buzzing in her ears, as if bees were lodged inside. Her body felt stiff and painful. She tried moving her head.

Seeing the hurt woman move, Badru put a hand behind her head, lifted it slightly and put a dirty aluminium tumbler to her mouth. When Tara felt the water on her lips, she drained the whole tumbler. Her eyes opened. Feeling that her arms were untied, she tried to raise herself, and sat up with some help from the women. She tried to pull down the hem of her kameez. Mehar picked up Tara’s dupatta lying nearby, and draped it over her knees.