Shabanu Read Online Free PDF Page B

leader. I look at Dadi, hoping they aren’t going to tell us we can’t pass through the area, but he sits calmly, watching the fire and sipping his tea.
    They talk softly as they shine their light from one animal to the next. We keep our camels clean and well fed. None of them has a trace of mange. Everyone admires them.
    “My men say your camels are extremely fine,” says the leader. They stand beside Guluband, whose proud head towers over the others.
    “I’ll give you eight thousand rupees for this one,” the leader says.
    Dadi, who has been deferential and extremely polite with the Rangers, throws back his head and laughs loudly.
    “The Afghan
mujahideen
will give me twelve in a minute,” he says.
    My heart thunders in my chest. Surely Dadi won’t sell Guluband! Our finest camel, who dances for me and waits patiently in the hot sun and stays near when I may need him! We’ve had him ever since I can remember.
    The men return to the fire. Dadi eyes me, and I pour more tea into their cups.
    “You don’t want to sell such a fine beast to the
mujahideen”
says the officer.
    “They offer the best price,” says Dadi, shrugging his shoulders. My hands tremble and I stare at Dadi, willing him to see into my heart and know I will die if he sells Guluband.
    “But you know what they do to them?” asks the officer. “They load them with guns and take them across the border. They beat them and don’t feed them. They haven’t any idea how to treat animals. And the Russians fly over in helicopters, shooting every pack animal. A camel like that might last one or two trips. It would be a waste,” he says, shaking his head.
    I can’t bear it. I manage to stand quietly and back away from the fire. Dadi doesn’t look up, but I can tell he is watching through the edge of his vision. I turn and run blindly. Thorns grab at my skirt and sink into my bare feet. I run until I reach the wall of the fort, and lay my face and hands against its bricks, still warm from the afternoon sun.
    My eyes adjust slowly to the desert starlight. There are no shadows, and the stars illuminate everything to an equal intensity. Nothing has color, only infinite shades of brightest light and blackest dark, but even insects are visible in the sand.
    I walk, making a circle around the huge fort, leaving our camp and the sleeping village behind. Back beyond the ancient mosque is a garden, where it is said the Abassi prince kept seventy wives in richly decorated underground cells. Standing outside the sagging wooden gate, I look into the now overgrown garden and imagine dozens of jeweled consorts laughing and singing under the trees, pulling silken veils over mysterious smiles. Prisoners, willingly or unwillingly they lived their lives according to the wishes of their fathers and their prince.
    Dadi is snoring in his bedroll when I return. The fire barely flickers as I check the animals. Guluband nuzzles me gently, looking for a piece of sugar.
    I take an onion from our bag of provisions. I peel away several strips of skin, tying a piece inside my hem and putting the others at the corners of Dadi’s bedroll to keep the scorpions away. I spread my own quilt on the ground and immediately fall into a deep sleep. Several times in the night Tipu roars in protest at being tethered.
    In the morning we go to the beautiful old mosque built by the Nawab behind the fort. The latticed marble balustrades and intricate tiled floor already are warm in the pink and golden predawn light. I know I mustn’t pray to Allah for Guluband, but I keep him in my heart as I whisper along with Dadi when he recites from the Koran.
    During the next days my mind is blank as the sky. The scrub and dunes give way to the dank, green irrigated area. Dadi and I talk only when it concerns the track or the animals. We pass along a road crowded with camels carrying mountains of sugarcane and bullock carts that clatter and jingle. In the fields women harvest winter wheat, their heads