Benyamin: Goat Days

Together we herded the goats towards the wilderness. After we had walked for some distance, the arbab clapped his hands to call me. I walked back to the tent where the arbab placed something in my hand. I looked at it — as far as I could make out, it was a pair of binoculars. I had no clue as to why he had given it to me. Thinking that it was meant to find runaway goats, I prepared to go back with it to the desert. ‘ Shuf … shuf …’ the arbab prompted me to look through it. I was curious. I was holding a pair of binoculars for the first time in my life. I looked through its twin lenses. Oh, how clear everything looks! I marvelled. Objects that were kilometres away appeared so near, so clear. Even the marks on the goats were plainly visible. I looked all around. I was happy. ‘Shuf?’ the arbab asked. I nodded in agreement. He grabbed it from me and took it inside the tent.

Then he lifted up the pillow and drew out a double-barrelled gun. He walked out and aimed at the sky. A bird was flying high up. He aimed at it and fired a shot. Bingo. The bullet hit the bird and it fell. The arbab smirked at me. I was petrified.

‘Shuf,’ the arbab repeated.

I nodded.

‘Yella, roh …’ the arbab pushed me after the goats.

That moment, I realized that my life had become inescapably bound to those goats.

Casting off the previous night’s thoughts of escape, I walked into the desert. I remember: it was only sheer emptiness that filled me then.

The scary figure was far ahead of me by that time. I looked at the desert stretching out before me. This place was quite different from deserts I had heard about or seen in pictures. The word evokes in us waves of sand. But it was nothing like that. It was all hard soil and boulders. I had seen a similar landscape when I had been to the eastern parts of Kerala. There was only one difference. And a big one. Unlike in our place, where vines spread through the rocks and sand, there was not a speck of green here. It was a sterile wasteland. I could not help but wonder why these goats were taken out. Though the goats were instinctively sniffing for grass on the ground, they got nothing.

After a while, I caught up with the scary figure. Leaving the goats to roam, the scary figure sat on a boulder. I sat on another — I didn’t have anything to do, and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to ask him about so many things. But how? The only language that I had was that of signs, and he was not even looking at me. What was he gazing at? Neither at the heavens nor at the earth, merely into emptiness, I thought. After some time, he got up and herded the goats together. It was a somewhat difficult task. There were about a hundred goats. When one ran this way, the other headed in the opposite direction. By the time they were somehow beaten back to the fold, yet another would have run away. After gathering every goat with some effort, the scary figure began to walk back towards the fence. As I didn’t know anything, I merely watched.

Together, we reached the enclosure. When he told me something, I guessed he meant ‘You proceed to the masara with the goats, I’ll follow.’ Ah, then masara means the enclosure for goats. So, mayin must be water. At least let me learn the words like that.

I brought the goats to the enclosure. He came with the grass. Together, he and I brought water and hay to the masara. Did I say masara? Look how quickly I switch to Arabic.

We went to the next masara and took its goats to the desert. It was only after we had taken the goats of two or three masaras that I became conscious of the purpose of these excursions — these goats were not taken out to be grazed, but merely to give them some exercise. A limb-stretching morning exercise to cure the lethargy of their daily existence.

The sun began to blaze furiously. All the goats had been brought back from the daily jaunt. Every one of them had been supplied water and feed. Then, an awful thing happened. The call of nature became severe. I hadn’t performed the early morning bodily needs. The last time I had managed it was before boarding the plane in Bombay. It hadn’t been necessary the previous day as I hadn’t had anything to eat. But the four or five khubus I had consumed in the morning began to have an effect. But where could I do it? I didn’t need the screen of four walls. At home, the riverside or a bush cover was good enough. One could also wash in the river. But, here, there was not even that minimum privacy. It was wide open all around. It is true that everyone did it and everyone knew that everyone did it; still, as humans we expect some privacy for certain actions of ours, don’t we? I was apprehensive about sharing this with you. Then I decided I must, merely to explain how apparently trifling issues agitate and distress us. If such private dilemmas are not laid out in the open what is the use of telling a story?

I tried to calm myself. But this was not something that I could suppress. With every second, the discomfort increased in my stomach. Slowly, I walked to the other side of the masara. There was now at least a screen of goats between me and the arbab, and between me and the scary figure. That was more than enough. Closing my eyes, I did it.

Relief. The utmost relief that one could get in the world.

I rose up after throwing some sand and stones on it, like a cat. I needed to clean up. That was not difficult. There was plenty of water in the tank. I could carry some in a bucket and clean myself behind the grass or hay bales. I collected water in a bucket and walked behind the bales.

Before the first drop of water fell on my backside, I felt a lash on my back. I cringed at the impact of that sudden smack. I turned around in shock. It was the arbab, his eyes burning with rage. I didn’t understand. What was my mistake? Any slip-up in my work? Did I commit some blunder?

The arbab snatched the bucket of water from me and then he scolded me loudly. Lashed at me with the belt. When I tried to defend myself, he hit me more ferociously. I fell down. The arbab took the bucket and went inside the tent.

This was what I gathered from the arbab’s angry words in between lashings. ‘This water is not for washing your backside. It is meant for my goats. You don’t know how precious water is. Never touch water for such unnecessary matters. If you do, I’ll kill you!’ Thus I learnt my first lesson. It was wrong to wash one’s backside after taking a dump.

I got up, feeling very uneasy. I had never faced such a predicament in my life. It was almost as if I lived in a river. Without water, nothing happened in my life. Cleanliness had been my ideology. I would get annoyed when Sainu didn’t bathe twice a day. And I was always in water! But the breaking of all my habits began that day, didn’t it? The harshest for me was this ban on sanitation.

I came back and sat on the sand, below the cot. The scary figure was sitting on his bed, eating khubus. He handed two or three to me. I couldn’t imagine eating anything without cleaning myself. I refused to touch the food. Then I saw a sight at a distance. A herd of camels, about fifty, marching in a line. It was a grand sight. The first time I saw a camel. The largest in front, and the smaller ones forming the tail. There was no one to lead them or herd them. They chose their own path.

As they came near us, I looked at them in amazement. It seemed that their heavy eyebrows signified all the severity of the desert. Nostrils opening and closing like the gills of fish. Broad open mouth, strong neck, coarse hair like in a horse’s mane, ears erect and horn-like. I was most attracted to and most frightened by their detached look. I looked into the eyes of one of the camels for a brief second. I retracted my gaze as if I were looking at the sun. It felt as though the depth and the breadth, and the severity and the wildness of life in the desert were crystallized in those eyes. It must be the impossibility of its situation that lies congealed behind the camel’s impassive countenance. I would like to describe the camel as the personification of detachment. Those camels went past me and walked inside the fence on their own. It was their own masara.