Uzma Khan - Trespassing

Salaamat plucked a stalk of yellow grass. He saw movement to the left of his vision — probably a squirrel. He whispered, ‘And when we’re done I lay her down behind the fountain, and we look out at the curtain of drops. I dry her like this.’ He twirled the flower on Fatah’s nose. ‘And like this.’ Very gently, he kissed his lips.

Fatah did not immediately respond, nor open his eyes. Salaamat kissed his forehead, then the gray pits beneath his eyes. He brushed his dark leathery cheeks with the flower and kissed the lips harder.

This time hands came up. They grabbed Salaamat’s locks, yanking him close. Teeth struck his mouth. A tongue sought his with a hunger that made him choke.

‘I bet even your navel’s a rectangle,’ Salaamat whispered, helping Fatah undress. He bent down as though, at twenty, to finally give thanks.

JUNE 1987

His first test came the following month.

He got into the back of an open jeep where six men already waited. Fatah draped an arm around him.

After driving south a few kilometers, the driver turned into a dirt track heading east. One of the men put a blindfold around Salaamat.

‘You can trust him,’ Fatah grumbled.

‘Those are the rules,’ the man replied flatly, ‘till the Chief says otherwise.’

Salaamat was not surprised Fatah raised no further objection. He worshipped the Chief. Still, he’d have liked Fatah to throw more allegiance his way. Of the eight men in the jeep, he was the only one they blindfolded. He thought: I am to be the blind, deaf and dumb witness again.

The jeep stalled several times and he heard men get out to heave rocks from its path. Sometimes Fatah would leave too. Once, another man settled back beside him, resting an elbow on Salaamat’s thigh. When he spoke Salaamat recognized the heavyset man everyone called Gharyaal Bhai, because he boasted of being able to wrestle a crocodile with one arm tied behind him.

Behind the cloth, Salaamat’s eyelids flickered, alert to the land they couldn’t see. There was a creek flowing — he caught the gentle music as it tumbled by. Woodpeckers knocked at towering gates. Jackals hid in caves, panting softly as the jeep’s tires groaned past their lair. The ravine echoed with bullets fired by the group back at the camp. The noise bounced from cliff to cliff, weaving a web around him. Branches brushed him; threads caught in his hair.

The Chief, the others said, had a bulletproof vest made of spider silk, just like Genghis Khan did. Salaamat thought of Sumbul back on the farm, enmeshed in a different silk. She told him once what Dia had told her: tiny creatures spit the strongest materials on the planet. Bigger creatures stole them to pretend they were strong.

So here he was now, on his way to the biggest creature of all. That’s what Fatah called him: bigger than Russia and Amreeka put together (but still no curves).

The trees thinned and his head burned. Sweat poured down his back. The creek was gone. The jeep accelerated. The jackals ran away.

When next the vehicle halted, his blindfold was torn off. His head throbbed. He’d never before seen such glare. The clearing was drenched in it. It pierced his eyes and seared his brain. When they led him to the house his eyes were only half-open.

‘Ha ha!’ the others laughed. ‘What you’re about to see will make you open them all the way!’

Fatah smacked his back. ‘You’re going to make me proud.’

There were two buildings: one the Chief’s, the other for purposes. If he fulfilled his purpose well, he could meet the Chief.

Muhammad Shah came out of the Chief’s bungalow with keys to the second building. He unbolted a door and they all stepped into solid darkness. After a few moments, with the aid of the glare flooding in from the open door, Salaamat could make out a man tied to a chair. He was blindfolded and gagged. He was naked.

More men from the Chief’s bungalow followed them inside. When they untied the man he did not change his position, did not even stretch an arm or shrug loose knots from his shoulders. When they pulled off the blindfold his eyes remained shut. Salaamat thought: he can’t stand the light. And when they ungagged him and he did not open his mouth, Salaamat wondered if the captive was even alive.

The men spoke in his tongue but Salaamat said nothing to them. He was back to talking to himself. He was afraid. The room smelled of shit. It was smaller than his cell at Handsome’s. He saw no bedroll. How long had the man been here? Was he the one Fatah had spoken of weeks ago — the one with the two thousand rupees or the picture?

The door shut. Flashlights came on. Muhammad Shah passed one to him. Addressing all of them, the First Lieutenant said, ‘This man has mastered the art of shrinking. He does not see, does not eat or drink, listen or even feel. Let me show you.’ The butt of his machine gun struck the back of the man’s neck. He leaned three inches forward and hung still.

‘See?’ Muhammad Shah puckered his lips, impressed. ‘This is discipline. He has willed himself into a tiny steel nugget. Sadly, that’s no fun for us, is it?’ He grinned, kicking the man’s shin.

Salaamat barely even saw it. The back of his neck throbbed as though a frog were lodged there. There was one on each side of his neck too. And one at each temple. Every time they belched, his ears rang.

The other men closed in on the seated man, the perfect bullet. ‘I can crack him,’ someone said. He lifted an eyelid and shone his torch.

Ri-bit, the frogs replied, pulsing under Salaamat’s skin.

Fatah pulled him close. ‘You haven’t switched your flashlight on, stupid.’

Salaamat flipped the smooth tip under his thumb.

‘See those thumb cuffs?’ Salaamat looked. ‘From Germany.’ The circle of iron enclosing each thumb was banded in flesh. Fatah shone his light there like a surgeon at an operating table. Salaamat peered down. ‘It took many days for the cuff to saw through the bone. First it just slipped around, tearing skin, and the wound was only pink. Now look.’ It was turning green. Even the decoration police had never done that to him. Salaamat pressed the side of his neck. A lump moved between his fingers.

Fatah continued, ‘Gharyaal Bhai bets another week before the thumb falls off. I say just two more days. What do you think? If you’re right we’ll tell the Chief.’ Then he grew distracted by Muhammad Shah.

Salaamat did not follow him. He’d at last found the courage to look at the man, really look at him. He was wearing leg irons. The legs were so badly cut it was as if a hairbrush made of blades had been run across them. The hair grew in sticky patches. The knees were swollen. Above them, the thighs too were studded with cuts and bruises. Thighs like a plucked chicken’s, with barely any flesh at all. And what about there, Salaamat flashed his torch higher up the thighs. What had they done to that?

He couldn’t look.

Yes he could.

Up, up, there in the center, just below another straggly, sticky bush matted with something brown, and something white.

He could not look.

He switched his light off.

He was the one being violated. Angrily, he turned to demand of Fatah: Who did everyone think he was? A damn puppet?

But Fatah was still with Muhammad Shah, who was handing him something like a wheel. In his own hands, Muhammad Shah held a knot of wires. A third man fiddled with a switch.

‘He looked! He looked!’ Another squealed. It was the one who’d shone the torch in the captive’s eyes. ‘He opened them! I swear he did!’ Then he frowned, ‘You did, you bastard, admit it!’ He began kicking him.

‘Shut up, mouse. If you keep on we’ll wire this all wrong and what good will that do our friend?’ They laughed.