Sardar Saab, I will not sign my name, for this letter may be read. But you know who I am. I am your friend who brings fruits from the mountains. Now listen to me as your friend. You must go. You are being talked about, and today or tomorrow your house will be attacked. Understand what I am saying. Specifically your house. Your sons are known and there is talk about what they have done and they are in danger, much much danger. You must go. I will make arrangements. We have known each other for thirty years and I have sat in your house and you have come to mine. You must go, my friend. I will look after your house.
Papa-ji listened to Iqbal-veerji reading this out, and his face sat still as a lump of slack clay, blurry and softened. Mata-ji took the letter from her son’s hand, and she put her dupatta over her head and wrapped it around her face. She waited by the gate, and when the small hollow knock came she put her mouth to the wood. ‘Tell him we’ll go,’ she said.
‘Be ready tomorrow night at nine,’ the policeman said. ‘A tempo will come. It will be a thousand rupees per person. No more, but no less. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ Mata-ji said. ‘I understand.’
They packed all night and all day. Prabhjot Kaur was amazed at how many things were in a house. Papers, clothes, books, silver jars, photographs, chairs, more clothes, mattresses, expensive combs, shoes, each person had an array of things that were attached to them with tight knots of many-threaded time, each person had a heavy load of things that couldn’t be left behind. Prabhjot Kaur looked at several ranks of dolls she no longer played with, threadbare heads that she hadn’t petted in years, but then she tugged and strained at a paper sack trying to fit them all in, filled it with these long-ago companions until the paper gave way and tore with a single sharp rip. By late afternoon the courtyard and the baithak were full of tottering bundles tied in sheets, and staggeringly heavy suitcases, and iron trunks which took four people to lift. Prabhjot Kaur was trying to decide which books to take when Mata-ji came rushing in. ‘Here, put this on.’ It was a blue salwar-kameez with a square geometric print on rather thick cotton, which Prabhjot Kaur had decided three months ago was fit only for everyday house wear. But here was Mata-ji quite impatient. ‘Take, take.’ Prabhjot Kaur took it and wondered at the heavy tug of its weight. Mata-ji was gone already, out of the door. The salwar was what was heavy. Prabhjot Kaur turned it over and saw that there were little packets of cloth that had been stitched to the waistline, on the inside, just under the nada. There was metal in these little secret pockets, gold, she could feel the smooth, slippery density of necklaces and bracelets. When she walked out into the courtyard after changing, she saw that Mata-ji and all the sisters were wearing the same loose, rough clothing, ready for a strange kind of travel, and that they were all moving with a care-laden awkwardness, as if they didn’t know the edges of their bodies any more. Mani clinked as she walked past Prabhjot Kaur, and yet Prabhjot Kaur was unable to be amused by her attempts to silence herself, her rolling heel-toe walk. Now nobody was saying a word. The sun was gone, sunk, and Prabhjot Kaur sat on a trunk and saw the surfaces of her home recede into dimness. Iqbal-veerji came in, his arms muddy, and washed his hands under the hand-pump. When the water fell on the brick it was very loud, the splatter like an explosion, and Prabhjot Kaur flinched. Then, again, silence.
‘Bibi-ji.’ It was Ram Pari. ‘Bibi-ji.’ She was whispering. Mata-ji said nothing. Ram Pari came in and squatted on the ground next to her, next to the charpai. ‘What will we do?’ she said. ‘What will we do?’
‘Here,’ Mata-ji said. ‘I’ll give you some money.’
Prabhjot Kaur was glad of the darkness, because it hid her face. She had both hands to her mouth. For days now, or maybe it had even been weeks, she hadn’t thought of them. She hadn’t thought of Ram Pari, or Natwar, or Nimmo, or any of the others, the family just outside her window. They had been her students, and she had forgotten them completely. She had retreated to her bed and had given them up.
‘Bibi-ji, where will we go? How?’
‘I don’t know, Ram Pari. Just take this.’
Prabhjot Kaur could see the long shape of Mata-ji’s arm, held out. Ram Pari was the dark lump at the end of the charpai.
‘Take,’ Mata-ji said.
The shapes stayed the same, tilted slightly away from each other, the same distance with the same reaching between them, and a breath forced itself down Prabhjot Kaur’s chest, pierced it, and in that sudden rough pain she had the certain knowledge that the world would never be the same again. She wanted to say something but there was nothing to say.
‘You will leave us, Bibi-ji,’ Ram Pari said. ‘We will die.’
‘Vaheguru will look after all of us.’ Mata-ji held the hand out further, and shook it assertively. Ram Pari sank further into the tight huddle she had made of herself. Prabhjot Kaur thought they might all sit there for ever, under that huge, still sky. Then Alok-veerji came out of his room, loomed out tall above them all.
‘Take it,’ he said, and he took the money from Mata-ji’s hand and lifted Ram Pari by the shoulder and walked her past Prabhjot Kaur. ‘There is a kafila leaving two days from now. There will be thousands of people walking. You can go with them.’ Prabhjot Kaur slipped off the trunk and walked close behind Alok-veerji, and though she couldn’t see him doing it, she knew that he had thrust the money into Ram Pari’s hand. ‘We can’t do anything now. Go.’ He pushed her through the door and turned and went back to his preparations. Ram Pari stood in the passageway between the courtyard and the outside, stood very close to the wall. Prabhjot Kaur took a step forward and put both her hands against Ram Pari’s side, clutched at her, leaned on her, she could feel the cloth against her face, against her eyes, and there was the living exhalation of another person, sweaty and sharp, bitter, Prabhjot Kaur breathed it in. Then Ram Pari forced her hands open. Down the passage she went, a shadow close to the wall, and Prabhjot Kaur watched her go.
The tempo, when it came, an hour late, was not the truck they were expecting but a creaky black car. The driver was a tiny bald man, and he was accompanied by the policeman of the afternoon. ‘Hurry,’ the policeman said. ‘Hurry.’ Iqbal-veerji and Alok-veerji loaded up the boot of the car and tied it down with rope. Two trunks and various bundles went on the roof, and inside the car, on the floor around the seats, they had bundles. But then the car was full.
‘Come,’ Iqbal-veerji said. As they slipped past the baithak, Prabhjot Kaur saw the figures clustered by the corner to the left, she couldn’t see any faces but knew it was Ram Pari and Nimmo and Natwar and the rest. All the way to the gate she stumbled against packages that were being left behind. The engine of the car was already thumping. Papa-ji sat on the right in the back seat, then Mata-ji, then Navneet-bhenji and Mani and then Iqbal-veerji. Prabhjot Kaur sat in the front between Alok-veerji and the bald driver. The policeman patted the bonnet of the car.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘Go quickly.’
As they went, Prabhjot Kaur twisted on the seat, came up on her knees to look back. But all she saw was the policeman, standing quite erect in front of the gate, and Mata-ji and Navneet-bhenji and Mani curled up in the back seat, heads low, like little children settled in to sleep on a long journey. ‘Get down,’ Alok-veerji said, and caught Prabhjot Kaur by the neck and yanked her low. His voice shook and now Prabhjot Kaur was very afraid. Her face was against his side and against the seat, but her eyes were strained open and she could see past the driver’s elbow and through the steering wheel and through the glass, she could see the shape of homes and shops, the white of signs and the sudden deeper black when a street opened out, they turned and turned again and the engine grunted and choked and Prabhjot Kaur was completely unable to tell where they were. Then a series of pops sounded into the sky that Prabhjot Kaur could see through the dirty glass, pops like phap, phap-phap-phap as if a child had burst a balloon, and then a series of others very quickly. It was a happy sound. But the car jogged and twisted and came to a halt, sliding Prabhjot Kaur forward. And n
ow it went backwards. Backwards and backwards so fast that Prabhjot Kaur twisted her hands around Alok-veerji’s shirt and was now crying. She could hear men’s voices, shouting and echoing. And Iqbal-veerji: ‘Take this left here and then the Ravi Road.’ The car moved forward now, turning to the left and throwing Prabhjot Kaur again. They were moving fast now, she felt it in the vibrations jolting her body. Orange light filled the inside of the car, spiralling through the glass and brightening every corner, and she could see the round silver rupee dangling from the key-chain, every detail of the King-Emperor’s face. With a sound like a huge threshing watermill the flames towered up, for a moment filling the windscreen and the window and she shut her eyes. Another turn, this time to the left, and glass broke somewhere and then a sound so loud and so close and so ugly that Prabhjot Kaur knew instantly that it was a gunshot. The car lurched violently from side to side, a screech filled Prabhjot Kaur’s head, she flew forward, and felt the impact of metal against her forehead, and a flowering, tinny echo inside which swallowed her up. Then she was lying on her side listening to a babble of voices, a continuous scream not very far away, and she could not tell where she was until the dark bar above twisted and receded and became one of the spokes of the steering wheel, and again that barking explosion, right above her head, this time she saw a flash, and she twisted herself and thrust herself further into the shadowed space under the wheel, and then again a shot and she shut her eyes.
She could hear Mata-ji weeping. Other than that hoarse gargling noise, it was very quiet. Prabhjot Kaur tried to still the movement of her knees, a shaking which grew from the convulsing of her stomach. She was convinced that this would give her away. She held her right hand against her right thigh and pressed it down hard. Metal scraped, and she knew it was the door of the car, and there was nowhere to go, and she wanted to scream but she held it in, fought against it with her muscles. ‘Nikki, Nikki.’ It was Iqbal-veerji. He drew at her softly and she came out of her coil and held on to his arms and cried. He got her out of the car and she wrapped herself around him. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. But Mata-ji was sitting on the road, and Mani was trying to comfort her. And Papa-ji leaning against the back of the car, his head low and his hands on his knees, and spittle hanging from his mouth. Alok-veerji a little down the road, his body twisted to one side as he tried to see around a corner. Just beyond him there was a shape on the ground, like a bundle of clothes had come apart and scattered its contents haphazardly. It was a man’s body. There was the head, and there was a hand. It was the driver.
Alok-veerji turned. ‘We have to get out of here.’
‘I don’t know how to drive,’ Iqbal-veerji said mildly.
They both looked stunned, as if this one skill they had forgotten to add to their sporting repertoire had suddenly revealed its hidden importance, its secret meaning.
And then Mata-ji stopped crying and said, ‘Kill them.’
Her weeping had been so constant and so loud that when it stopped Prabhjot Kaur felt keenly how quiet it had become all over again, after all the bedlam. It was rather nice. But who did she mean? Mata-ji looked at her husband, and at one son and then at another.
‘Kill them,’ she said. ‘Before they take them too.’
Prabhjot Kaur turned her head towards the car, and then to the street. Navneet-bhenji was gone. Prabhjot Kaur had not noticed until now, but now it was impossible to escape this fact. Navneet-bhenji had been taken.
Alok-veerji came towards Mata-ji, and Prabhjot Kaur saw that in his right hand he had a pistol, and in his left something long and curving. The front of his shirt hung down on the left side like a flap, revealing the inverted arc of his chest. There was blood on his neck, black and flowing, she could see it. And dangling not very far from her face, from Iqbal-veerji’s hand, was a kirpan, no, a sword.
‘Kill them,’ Mata-ji said again. Mani’s face was hidden from Prabhjot Kaur, darkened. Prabhjot Kaur could see only her unmistakable thin shoulders, her forearms as she held Mata-ji. Prabhjot Kaur stepped away from Iqbal-veerji, and raised her head, and saw that his pagdi had come off, his hair hung in a loose coil over his forehead. His mouth was shaking. He was looking at her and she saw him fight for control, bite down on his lower lip to stop it from trembling. Her fear now felt different, like a long, continuous fall from a great height, but in spite of this hurtling drop she felt embarrassment for her brother. She lowered her head and waited. She was waiting for death, a khoon ordered by her mother.
‘I’ll drive,’ she heard Papa-ji say. ‘I can drive.’
Of course, Prabhjot Kaur thought. He used to be a salesman. The car started on the first try, but then they had to push it back and up from the gutter it had dropped its front left wheel into. Prabhjot Kaur turned round and round on the dark street, unable to stay still, trying to face everywhere and afraid of what was behind her back. Then they were all in, and Prabhjot Kaur this time crouched down as far as she could get in the front seat. She pushed at the bundle in front of her with her legs, and when it gave way a little she forced her legs and hips into the little space she had made. She wished she could get under the bundle. She wished there was a little secret space under the seat that she could tuck herself into. She wished for a dark little metal hole which nothing would ever be able to get into, where she could get away from Mata-ji’s horrible croaking sobs, her ‘Vaheguru, Vaheguru’ and her Japji Sahib which pierced all the clatter of the car and Prabhjot Kaur’s own clamorous breathing, and Prabhjot Kaur clapped her hands hard and desperate over the ears.
She saw nothing. She kept her eyes closed. But there was a change in the sound of the road, a difference in the texture of the black under her eyelids, and she knew that they had left the city behind. Near dawn they came upon two trucks of soldiers, stopped by a well. Alok-veerji was afraid, but Papa-ji said there was no choice. They approached them slowly, and just before the car stopped Prabhjot Kaur opened her eyes. The sky was a neutral grey, the colour half-way between black and white. She had never stayed up all night before.
‘These are Muslims,’ she heard Mata-ji say. They were, and their leader was a major by the name of Sajid Farooq. Prabhjot Kaur read it on his breast pocket as she sat on a villager’s charpai, shivering. Sajid Farooq put their car between the soldiers’ trucks that morning, and by the afternoon they had a caravan thirty-one vehicles long. The next morning Prabhjot Kaur saw a line, a stream, a river of walking people that stretched to the horizon. The men and women and children walked behind each other in silence, trudging in the same direction as Sajid Farooq’s trucks, and all the cars. They were moving very slowly, and the trucks and cars moved past each one of them with ease, but it took three hours to leave behind that whole lot. That evening they were met by other soldiers, in the same uniforms and the same trucks, but these were Hindus escorting a convoy of Muslims. Alok-veerji said the soldiers were Madrasis. This was the first thing Prabhjot Kaur had heard him say in two days. His eyes were red and sometimes tears ran down his face and he seemed not to notice them. Sajid Farooq took the convoy of cars and trucks that had come with the Madrasis, put his soldiers in front of them and behind them and drove away. Prabhjot Kaur watched the Muslims drive past, going to Pakistan. Then the Madrasis took the Sikhs and Hindus to India. The trip was uneventful. In two days they were in Amritsar.
Here they lived in a city of three thousand tents. People came from the city with clothes and food, to give to the refugees, and a politician came to walk through the filthy lanes that had been ploughed out by hundreds of feet between the walls of canvas. Prabhjot Kaur hid in their tent when she saw the photographers that came with the Congressman. She felt shame, a powdery burning that sizzled across her arms and shoulders. She saw it in Papa-ji’s face when he took a half-sack of wheat from a bania who had brought a cartload of foodstuff from the city. She saw it in Mata-ji’s crouch, how she sat with her dupatta pulled over half her face, and she saw it in Mani’s long bouts of sleep, in the determined way that she lay herself down and tu
rned away to one side, even when the sun burned on the canvas and the ground felt as if it were heated from underneath. They were all ashamed. Prabhjot Kaur felt it most when she looked at Mata-ji’s face, her nose, her mouth, her lined forehead, and so she never looked at her. She cast her eyes up, or to the side, or examined her own hands, or sometimes, while walking by, just shut one eye or the other so that there was no chance of seeing. In Mata-ji it was unbearable, this shame, but it was in all of them, it hung around them like a bad, unwashed smell. It was shame that constricted Alok-veerji’s throat, so that each word cost an effort of the muscles and emerged compacted and slow.
‘It was an ambush,’ Alok-veerji was saying. ‘It was that Khudabaksh Shafi. He had it all planned.’
Prabhjot Kaur was standing outside the tent, holding a pile of damp clothes higher than her head.
‘You mean for the house? He wanted the house so he scared us out?’ This was Iqbal-veerji.
‘Yes,’ Alok-veerji said. ‘The house. And everything else.’
Prabhjot Kaur’s head hummed with an onrush of blood. This ‘everything else’ was something they never spoke about. Nothing was ever said, not one word. One name had disappeared from the world, taking with it a whole life.
‘I can’t believe that,’ Iqbal-veerji said. ‘I can’t.’
‘Believe it,’ Alok-veerji said. ‘They took the house, they took our land, but they weren’t satisfied with that much. It was all planned. The driver drove us straight into an ambush, they were waiting. There were enough of them to – to take what they wanted. But they didn’t expect us to be well-armed. So they got what they wanted, but they couldn’t kill us all. So they ran. That is the truth about those people. I only wish I had done more. Instead of burning three houses I wish we had burnt a thousand. And killed a lakh of them.’
‘Alok. Be quiet.’