not been to work for a month. Riots were in full swing in Jullundur. One night, defying the curfew, Qasim stealthily made his way to Girdharilal’s quarters on the first floor of a squalid tenement.
He stood on the landing, letting his eyes get accustomed to the dark. Then, pressing a shoulder against the cheap wood, he quietly tried to force the doors. They were chained to each other from inside.
“Who’s there?” a woman’s frightened voice called.
Qasim paused. Regaining his composure, he knocked politely.
“I want to speak with Girdharilal. It is urgent,” he said, disguising his accent.
Girdharilal cleared his throat noisily. Any intruder would know there was a man in the house. Qasim heard him shuffle into his slippers. Next, the chain was being slackened enough for him to peep through the crack.
“Who is it?”
Qasim examined the slit of light, bright at the top, but dark where the clerk’s face and naked torso blocked it. The crack looked paler where the light filtered through the white loincloth between his legs.
“Who is it? Speak up,” asked Girdharilal, peering into the dark, unable to see who it was.
Slipping the muzzle of his pistol between the door panels, Qasim felt it touch soft flesh. He pulled the trigger.
As he raced away, the clerk’s wretched moan and a woman’s scream rang in his ears. He wondered that Girdharilal had had time to moan. His hand twitched, and the naked gun still seemed to jump as crazily as it had when he fired it. Even as he fled, lights all over the building were coming on.
The next day Qasim heard of the train and rushed to board it.
The train glides through the moon-hazed night, with a solid mass of humanity clinging to it like flies to dung.
From time to time a figure loses its hold, or is forced off and drifts away like discarded rubbish. A cry, then silence.
Compartments and lavatories are jammed with stifled brown bodies; some carry the deadweight of children asleep on swaying shoulders. Women hold on to flush chains, they lean on children cramped into wash basins. The train speeds on.
Zohra sits on the train roof within the protective crook of Sikander’s outstretched arm. He holds on to a projecting waterspout to secure his family against the sway and jerk of the train. The girl sleeps cramped between his legs, her head bobbing on his chest. Zohra holds the baby snugly between her thighs and breasts. The baby presses against a sachet of gold and silver ornaments hanging from her neck. The metal bruises her flesh and the young mother makes little squirming shifts.
Sikander feels a dampness along his thighs. Glancing over his shoulder he sees a black wetness snaking its path down the slope of the roof. In desperation, men and women urinate where they sit. He feels the pressure in his own bladder demanding relief.
“God, let me hold out until Lahore,” he prays.
Whistles screaming their strident warning, the train speeds through Amritsar. Past the station it slows, resuming its cautious, jerky passage. They are nearing the border with Pakistan. Already the anticipation of safety lulls the passengers, and tensions lessen. Here and there a head slumps down in sleep.
Zohra has been praying silently. Now that the danger has abated, she dares to think out loud.
“What about the five hundred rupees we lent to Meera Bai for her daughter’s wedding?”
An emaciated old woman crouching next to her peers inquisitively into her face.
Sikander looks fixedly into the darkness. He doesn’t answer. Zohra senses his tension, and bitterness shoots through to her. They have abandoned their land, their everything, and she thinks to remind him of money lent to a Hindu woman they will never see again. Abashed, she lays her head against his arm, mutely begging forgiveness.
Chapter 4
Qasim has no conception of the city the train is rolling towards. Swaying with the motion of the train, his life in transition, his future uncertain, he absently scans the shadowy flat landscape.
Another forty-five minutes and they will cross the border. The engine is taking a bend. Momentarily the smoke in front drifts to one side and Qasim has a glimpse of the tracks ahead.
It is enough. His wary mountain instincts warn him. In a flash he turns to the old man shouting, “Jump!” Terrified by the tribal’s erratic behavior, the old man leans back, but Qasim slides off the roof.
Rolling neatly down the gritty embankment, he scuttles towards the deep shade of a clump of trees. Night engulfs him.
As the center carriage moves past him he sees the train buck. Only now does the engine driver realize there is something farther down the track. A roar rises from the mass of jolted refugees. The train’s single headlight flashes on. It spotlights the barricade of logs and some unaligned rails. White singlets flicker in and out of the glare. The train brakes heavily and the engine crashes into the logs. People are flung from their scant hold on footboards, roofs, and buffers. Women and children pour from the crammed compartments.
Now the mob runs towards the train with lighted flares. Qasim sees the men clearly. They are Sikh. Tall, crazed men wave swords. A cry: “Bole so Nihal,” and the answering roar, “Sat siri Akal!” Torches unevenly light the scene and Qasim watches the massacre as in a cinema. An eerie clamor rises. Sounds of firing explode above agonized shrieks.
A man moves into Qasim’s range. He is shouting, “Run, Zohra! Run into the dark.” Qasim can just hear him above the clamor. He is a young, broad-shouldered man, and the peasant lungi wrapped around his legs causes him to stumble.
Sikander pushed Zohra and the children off the train and yelled, “Run. Hide in the dark.” He watched from on top. Zohra was pushing her way through the swirling bodies. She was almost beyond the range of his vision when he saw an arm clutch at her. The sea of faces swayed beneath him. Pinpointing her position he leapt, clasping his knife. He half slid, half fell down the embankment and sprang up. A Sikh, hair streaming, lashed a bloody sword. Another slowly waved a child stuck at the end of his spear like a banner. Crazed with fury Sikander plunged his knife into the Sikh’s ribs. He stumbled over soft flesh and the mud slushy and slippery with blood. “Zohra! Munni!” he screamed, barely conscious of his own futile voice.
Forcing his way forward, he is suddenly without his lungi and his long, surprisingly scrawny legs trample the live body of a child. He is moving towards a young woman. The flap of her burkha is over her head. A Sikh, sweat gleaming on his naked torso, is holding one breast. She is screaming. Butting a passage with his head, Sikander pushes past the woman and stabs her tormentor. Again and again he plunges his knife into the man’s back. Frantically waving her arms, the woman is swept away.
“Run into the dark, Zohra! Run!” he screams. A white singlet flashes before him. Sikander crumples to the ground, astonished by the blood gushing from his stomach. A woman tramples over him. He tries to ward off the suffocating forest of legs with his arms. More and more legs trample him, until mercifully he feels no pain.
Qasim sees figures flee the glare like disintegrating wisps of smoke. He sits still, in the undergrowth, biding his time. Although he is horrified by the slaughter he feels no compulsion to sacrifice his own life. These are people from the plains—not his people.
The carnage is subsiding. Already they are herding and dragging the young women away. The dying and the dead are being looted of their bloodied ornaments and weapons. An eerie silence settles on the stench of blood.
Qasim, as far as he knew, was alone. He moved swiftly, in shadows, aware that he had to cross the border before daylight.
He had barely started when suddenly a short form hurtled out of the dark at him. He stopped, his heart pounding. That same instant he realized it was a child, a little girl.
Clinging