Shabanu Read Online Free PDF Page A

before you leave?”
    “Who’d buy him? He’s thin as a stick from mating. I’ll have to watch him every second until we get to Sibi. Such a shame. He won’t fetch a good price, and yet he produces beautiful stock.”
    Shutr keena
, “camel vengeance,” is what it’s called. One time a relative of Auntie’s beat one of his camels. A year later the camel crushed the man’s head in his jaws.
    In the desert, men aren’t so different from camels. They never leave an old argument unsettled. I soften some and begin to forgive Dadi’s anger of this afternoon. In my heart I know he’s trying to protect me.

Safari
    We’re ready to
leave. My new dress makes me feel important. Guluband is handsome in his silver harness, polished to a glimmer. The other camels—fifteen in all—wear bright yellow, red, and green tassels, bells on leather harnesses around their necks, and bangles on their legs. They stamp their feet and groan, impatient for us to finish our farewells.
    Dadi and Grandfather have clipped the fur on thecamels’ flanks and sides into whorls and chevrons. Phulan and I have washed them in the
toba
and brushed them until they glisten. We have dyed the geometric designs black and made circles around their legs with henna.
    There are seven males, including Tipu and the magnificent, malevolent Kalu. Once two males have fought, they never fight again. But we must not turn our backs on either one, for although the quarrel between them is settled, the grudge they bear against us is not.
    The males are loaded with wooden saddles Grandfather has made for us to sell, gray camel-hair blankets trimmed with braided cord, quilts, a tent, cook pots, water, lentils, and wheat flour. Two young males carry new babies in panniers on their backs, and the mothers stand beside their flanks, their noses just touching the little ones. We’ve tied the udders of two milking females with goathair mesh bags.
    I have kissed Mama and Auntie good-bye and instructed Phulan to find Mithoo a mother to nurse him. As I hug his neck, he nuzzles me, greedy to find the lump of brown sugar I’ve hidden from morning tea. Grandfather stands like a shadow in the half-light, his hands raised in wordless farewell. There seems nothing left to say. Dadi wants to be off well before sunup, for even in mid-February the noonday sun bakes you until you are consumed with desire for water.
    Auntie disappears into her hut and returns with a clothfolded in her hands. Solemnly she shakes it out and drapes it around my head and shoulders.
    “A young lady shouldn’t go with her head uncovered. You’re too old to act like a boy,” says Auntie. I yank it away and she presses her lips together into a thin line. Mama lays a hand on Auntie’s arm.
    “Shabanu, it matches your new dress,” says Mama, pleading with her eyes. “It’ll keep the sun off your head.” She picks up the
chadr
and lays it again over my hair and shoulders. She takes my face in her hands and kisses it, and looks straight into my eyes. I look up at Dadi, already on Guluband’s back, reins in his hands. He looks straight ahead.
    “Thank you, Auntie,” I say, wanting to curse her. Auntie repeats a message for her husband, whom Dadi will see in Rahimyar Khan, that he should send new brass water pots.
    Dadi reaches down and hauls me up behind him, and Guluband lurches to his feet without waiting for a command. The dark blue cloth slips to my shoulders. I push back my clean and newly plaited hair and make no effort to adjust the
chadr
.
    “Hunteray,”
says Dadi. Guluband shakes his great shaggy head and steps out, and our little caravan is under way.
    For the first half hour Dadi and I talk little. We see a herd of black buck, their horns spiraling skyward like smoke. Dadi stands in front of Guluband’s hump to watchthem, and I stand behind, holding onto his shoulders. They sail over a dry
toba
, delicate legs tucked up under them, their horns perpendicular to the earth in the magical,