Word Count: 3688 | Reading Time: 13 min
The Mazaar had not been there when Khudadad Ahmad arrived in Chak Churanjah. Before the days of the shrine, and the annual festival of Baba Daal Wala, before the tarmacked roads and gaudy langars with their steaming cauldrons of hot daal and meat had sprung up in anticipation of the devotees and supplicants who came year after year — new faces and old, carrying their longings to the Baba’s shrine — the village was just streets and adobes of parched mud. The sight of it was so wretched that upon laying eyes on it, Khudadad wished that he was on the bus again.
It was 1966. He was supposed to go to Lahore, where new recruits were enlisting for the army. His mother, back at his village in Faisalabad, had put in a word with their Chauhdry, whose son was an officer at the selection and recruitment center, to help him get inducted as a non-commissioned officer. He’d taken the morning bus—the first one going from Faisalabad to Lahore that night—in hopes of meeting the Chauhdry’s son at the earliest. Knowing the hazards of falling asleep on public transit, he’d kept awake for most of the journey, but somewhere after Sheikhupura the weariness from the journey caught up to his body. His eyes watered, legs grew peacefully heavy, and he dozed off only to be promptly robbed in his seat unaware. When he came to, his money and the man who’d taken the seat next to him were missing and, despite pleas and vigorous promises upon the honor of his mother and the Holy Prophet that he would pay his full fare after he reached Lahore and came into money, the conductor shoved him off the bus somewhere outside the village, saying that was as far as they’d take him. Desperate to catch the next bus, he started down the road to the village, hoping to find someone who could loan him some money, but the road was abandoned, and by the time he arrived at the village itself, it had been hours since he had eaten anything. At that moment, despite wanting to catch the next bus, Khudadad started to wonder if he could ask for some food instead. Walking up to the village in that heat had dizzied him, and surely some makai and daal would make him feel right and ready before he started up on the journey to Lahore.
His prospects, however, seemed dim. The village, like the road itself, was empty. It was around midday but not a human voice within reach, not even those children to whom the Sun means little more than an ancient clock. Their hurried steps could not be heard, nor the incessant yells of the village women who always had some reason to yell. He walked down the village road until finally, he started to hear the hum of human life growing louder. It was coming from the direction of the maize fields. Voices arose, twanged and crashed against one another—children, women, and men. The villagers, Khudadad realized with some relief, were gathered outside in the fields. He started in this direction, hoping to ask for some food.
As he drew near, he saw the villagers walking across the maize in broken clumps, bodies to which he could finally assign the discordant noises of human life. At its front were the little boys, running and whooping and cartwheeling ahead of the crowd with boundless energy, certainly the loudest, with those missing their clothes howling the most. They were considerably ahead of the men and women and would look back from time to time to see if the adults were still following.
The men were like a hive in spring. They had eager faces and spoke animatedly, each speaking over and wanting to be heard above the rest. Every now and then they would give an excited whirl to the gandassa or shovel in their hands, as if warming up to put them to use.
Behind this group were the women, the hues of bright red and green clothes striking out against the mud as they cradled children about their hips. Their voices, lowered to whispers, were vigorous in their own way. The women without children, Khudadad noticed, carried waterpots on their hips instead.
As he drew near, he heard some of the words being thrown about. He heard the words feet and maulvi over and over, but he strained to understand. Ahead of him, a boy who was late to the gathering and was missing out on the conviviality of his friends, ran as fast as he could on his naked legs. Khudadad lunged and grabbed him by the arm, knowing that he wouldn’t stop otherwise.
“What is going on here?” he asked.
The boy stared back with large, confused eyes. He blinked only when a fly rested on his eyelid.
“Do you know what is going on around here?”
“The Maulvi. He’s a Djinn!” The boy said, eyes agape and fixed on Khudadad. “He has teeth like a hyena now. He ate two kids from the next village. He’s a Djinn!”
Khudadad had heard stories like this before. Back in his village, when he was young and the family didn’t have food or money, his mother would tell him these stories to take his mind off the hunger and pain. He remembered the story of Nazish, the tailor’s daughter, whose dark hair had caused the Blacksmith’s sons to take their lives one after the other. He remembered how one evening, not heeding her mother’s warnings, she had left her house after dark without covering her head, and how the next morning she was speaking Punjabi only the hundred year-old Ghulam Baba Sidhu could understand. Or how, Basu, the numberdaar’s son, who’d been secretly having an affair with a witch, had been cursed with arm-length hair that grew all over his body after he refused to marry her. The stories made Khudadad feel a sharp ache for home somewhere in his stomach.
“Listen,” Khudadad said. “Do you have any makai at home?”
“I don’t know, ask my mother.”
“Do you have chai?”
“I don’t know. Ma… ma!”
He had begun to bawl and the white hot snot flowing against his face scared Khudadad more than the thought of his mother lunging at him with a water pot, or worse. He unclasped the boy’s hand and watched him hurry toward the pack of children as his kameez billowed in the air and exposed his tiny bottom.
Khudadad wished that he could be in Lahore. He had been there once as a child, when his mother had taken him to the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh for the saint’s intercession and blessings. He remembered the Darbaar where the cauldrons were always steaming, and they always had rice and daal that seared his fingers at first touch. Feeling his palate flood up, he began to walk faster, seeing if he could talk to someone older.
When he finally joined the crowd, he found himself a few paces behind the women. He took a few hasty leaps and came up to a wiry woman with dark, parched skin who was pulling her daughter’s hair. The girl had left something at home and had her hand stretched in its direction as she cried and begged to be let go.
As the woman saw him approach she felt abashed and adjusted the dupatta on her head. Clenching her child’s wrist, she tried hurrying back to her group, but Khudadad stepped between her and the women.
“Do you know what is going on here?” he asked.
“No,” The woman said as she clawed her hand into her little girl’s arm and yanked them forward.
Khudadad attempted to follow, but a considerably older and larger woman than the first blocked his way. Her face was contorted into a mild scowl and she shrugged her eyebrows to ask him what his problem was.
“Please. I just want some makai and daal.”
“Daal? Who is going to get you food right now? We have a bigger problem. It’s the maulvi.”
“Listen, I don’t know about any maulvi. I just want some food. Please, if you could spare me some—“
The woman looked him up and down as if he were insane. “What do you mean you don’t know? The Maulvi is a Djinn! He had a nail in his head that kept him human,’ she said. ‘The barber was putting sesame oil in his head this morning and he noticed the metal in his head. When he pulled it out the Maulvi jumped up and grappled him so hard he broke his back, and then he ate him.”
Khudadad felt hunger biting at his gut. “If he is so strong, how did you catch him?” he said, pointedly.
The woman placed one hand on her hip so that her elbow jutted out. “Are you stupid or something? Don’t ask too many questions.”
The thought of asking one of the men came to Khudadad, but fearing the men might react with violence if he bothered them with questions about food, he refrained from asking any more questions and decided to follow the crowd in hopes that they might stop somewhere with food. He followed them all the way to a giant neem tree in the distance. Beneath the tree was a charpoy and a well, and a large cool shadow where the villagers began to sit one by one. On the charpoy sat three cross-legged men, a hukka in front of each. They seemed important.
The two on the left were considerably older and had an air of grace and stolidity about them, magnified by their silence and piercing eyes. The man on the right was different. He shared the glee and frenetic energy of his townsfolk, and his fidgeting torso and arms suggested that it was taking all of his will-power to stop him from getting up and joining the townsfolk in their kerfuffle. Khudadad overheard someone saying that the man on the right was there only because his son was the only man in the village’s history to pass the national CSS exam. Khudadad looked at the man’s shiny mustache and his starched white shalwar kameez and wondered if this was the man to ask for some food. In the meantime, as he struggled to find a place to sit, his eyes fell on a white sheet suspended from the neem tree with a rope. He had ignored it before, thinking it was a simple chador hanging from the vines, but a second look revealed the sight of a scuffed-up beard on a boy’s face. Khudadad sat down next to the well, far away from the charpoy. He peered at the figure hanging from the tree.
His eyes fell on the boy’s face and feet, the only parts of his body visible from the sheet. His feet were leathery like everyone else’s in the village, but they seemed cleaner, shapelier and generally well-tended. They were also pointing in the direction opposite to that taken by normal feet. Khudadad had never seen anything of the sort before, and he wondered if he was really watching a Djinn. He gazed at the boy’s face and tried to make out the teeth with which he had torn the village barber apart. Instead, he noticed his age. The boy was a good ten years younger than Khudadad himself. He seemed less like a Djinn and more like the kids in his village madrassa who would place a net in the lawn outside the mosque and play volleyball after asr. Khudadad noticed that the boy was scanning the crowd below him with half-open eyes and a wry smile upon his face, patient, mischievous.
After everyone had settled down, one of the old men on the charpoy — dressed in a stately white kameez, turban, and dhoti —raised his hand and the noise ceased. He took a giant whiff of his hukka and proceeded to blow a slow stream of burnt tobacco into the air. The steam reminded Khudadad of the cauldrons and he folded his arms against his stomach. The old man turned his gaze towards the boy dangling from the tree and stared him in the eye.
“Chacha Ameer doesn’t feel afraid, does he?” One of the women whispered, her eyes wide open.
“Now tell me, does Chacha Jee’s age really permit him to anger a Djinn like that. Why, he only has to blow air from his mouth and the Chacha will be flying all the way to Lahore!” One of the cheekier men remarked. The other’s proceeded to hush him up.
“So, are you a Djinn?” The old man finally spoke up.
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me!” The old man boomed and broke into a cough that lasted until the man next to him, the father of the man who had passed the CSS exam, slapped him on the back a few times to clear his windpipe.
The old man stared at the Djinn with new venom. “If you do not tell me the truth, I will throw this taweez upon your neck and you will melt into the Earth.”
The boy did not answer.
“Tell me, was it you who impregnated the Dhobi’s Naito?” The man gestured towards the crowd and a young girl with a protruding tummy stood up with the help of two older women. Khudadad thought that she was pretty.
“Do you recognize her now?”
“No,” The boy replied and rolled his eyes. He seemed bored with the entire business.
“If you do not answer with the truth, we will beat you once again.”
One of the men raised his sugar-cane stalk in the air and those around him gave out an angry roar. The boy did not answer. He kept staring at the old man and the crowd with his smiling face.
The resignation seemed to fascinate Khudadad, who found he could not break his gaze away from the boy’s face.
The old man in the center whispered something to Chacha Ameer and he nodded faster than usual. He took another whiff of his hukka before turning back to the boy.
“Very well. If you do not tell us the truth, we will have no choice but to kill your demon seed when it is born.” He pointed to Naito with his trembling finger.
When the boy did not answer and rolled his eyes, Chacha Ameer yelled ‘Answer!’ and reached for his shoe like a man possessed, hurling it at the boy. The shoe, an old leathery chappal, flew past the boy’s head and got stuck in one of the branches.
The crowd fell on their stomachs, laughing and smacked their hands on the ground as the Chacha banged his old stick on the ground to maintain decorum. The same young man who had made the remark about the Chacha’s age suddenly stood up, contorted his face and feigned a throw similar to the Chacha’s. The laughter was harder this time and the Chacha fired his second chappal in the direction of this fellow, which, unnoticed to those present and laughing, had flown over the entire crowd and landed straight into the well next to Khudadad.
Khudadad, who ought to have noticed this chappal, could not find himself moved by anything other than the thought of a roti, anything except perhaps the boy, into whose lucent face he was staring. He suddenly noticed that the boy was looking back at him, returning his smile.
The old man in the center this time got the Chacha to calm down. He turned to his right to seek the help of the man whose son had passed the competition exam, but found that he had already toppled over his charpoy and was now on the ground holding his stomach in howls of laughter.
During this time, at the edge of the fields, a dusty wind had picked up speed and Khudadad realized that the ground was not burning his feet anymore. The canopy of the world had changed into clouds of wet cotton that seemed to have invaded the sky from the west. They hovered about menacingly and Khudadad wondered if the trial was going to be dragged through the storm.
“I will give you one more chance, Djinn,” said Chacha Ameer as some amount of composure returned to the crowd. “Confess to your crimes or I have this.”
Khudadad’s eyes fell on the amulet in Chacha Ameer’s hand. It was a square patch of leather with a black string going through one of its sides. The boy was laughing at the Chacha now. Khudadad thought it odd that his teeth were a little jagged.
“Confess to your crimes, Djinn!” Chacha Ameer said as he hung the amulet on top of his stick and raised it to the boy. As the staff grew nearer, the boy began to grind his teeth against each other. Since his torso and legs had been bound, it was difficult to tell whether he was trying to get away or writhing angrily at Chacha Ameer, but as soon as the staff was within range, he stretched his neck and gave it a good knock with his head. The staff flew back down and hit Chacha Ameer squarely in the forehead.
There was a fresh round of laughter, much more vicious than the one before. The Chacha, furious, used his free hand to massage the point of impact, which had already begun to turn redder than the skin around it. Khudadad wondered if Chacha Ameer was going to need a moment to compose himself and he thought about making his plea for food again, but the presence of a cold drop on his nose caused him to blink and look up. The sky, it seemed, had decided to join in on the ruckus. He picked up his voice to tell the villagers about this development when a sudden gust of wind nearly blew him off his feet and threw a cloud of dust into the air.
Khudadad tried running to his right but bumped into a man who had been running for the left. He managed to stay on his feet and resolved simply to move in whichever direction his feet took him. He managed to survive two elbows, three knees, four torsos and exactly one shoulder until finally his frame met a surface so immobile and unrelenting that he lost all of his energy against it and fell. Panicked feet trampled over him, knocking away what remained of his breath and strength, and he wondered whether this was where it was going to end, hungry and forgotten beneath a hundred feet. Then he heard something snap. Thinking that it was his own back, he waited for the darkness to come and tried to find one clear image before his time came. He did not want the swirling torrent of dust to be the last thing he saw before the angels came to his grave. As he turned his head towards the right, he saw that the dust had begun to settle. He could see the fields now and running in their direction, the boy, who had been freed from the tree by the strong wind. Khudadad saw him run into the sugarcanes with his gleeful face scanning the crowd, his feet turned backwards as he ran into the stalks and vanished.
Soon, the wind calmed completely and there was light rain. The people around Khudadad helped each other up. A villager helped Khudadad sit up and he realized that he felt no pain; no hunger, no love, no joy. At the center of his chest was an emptiness unlike any other he’d felt before. He heard a woman yelping somewhere above him.
“He’s gone! He’s gone!”
Khudadad blinked his eyes and saw the white sheet dangling from the neem on its rope. He saw the dome of Data Darbaar in the torn sheet hanging, and smelled the daal and the rice, the scent of his village and his mother. He felt like he was finally beginning to understand something.
“Praise Allah for the blessed saints.” He muttered this silently at first and then screamed it as one after the other of the village people gathered around him. They asked how he knew the boy was a saint, but he wouldn’t answer. He was on the floor swinging his head when one after the other, the villagers too began to understand. The boy had been their gift from God; they realized that the boy, the saint, must have broken the barber’s back as punishment for his sins, and that by killing him, he had likely saved him and the rest of the village from a Hell guaranteed in the afterlife. The villagers understood that the entire day— the boy, the gathering, the wind, the rain—it had all been a sign from Allah. They understood that they had angered Him by tying up the boy and that they needed to redeem themselves.
“The traveler, he is a man of God,” Chacha Ameer said, clearing people away from the figure of the Khudadad, pointing a trembling finger at him. “We must tend to him!”
They tried feeding him gur, parathas, even some desi-chicken cooked in ghee, but he could not be moved. It was only when the boy with the giant eyes and the large woman who had blocked his way told them what the man had asked for that they realized the will of Allah. The boy was immediately sent to the Chauhdrys’ to ask for some daal and makai roti. When the daal arrived, they placed the steel plate and the wicker basket filled with roti near the man of God and waited for their judgement.
Gradually, and with slow hands, Khudadad reached for the makai in the wicker basket.
***