A Moment Comes Read online

  TO ROBIN,

  FOR SEEING THE PROMISE,

  AND TO CAITLYN,

  FOR HELPING IT GET THERE

  “MEN ARE CRUEL,

  BUT MAN IS KIND.”

  —RABINDRANATH TAGORE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Angie Wright, Laural Ringler, Beth Miller, Julia Mesplay, and June Bradbury for reading, encouraging, and being amazing. Thanks to Mary Beth Conlee, Karen Prasse, and the wonderful staff at the Burlington Public Library for the critiques and the research help. Any errors are my own. Thanks to the Puget Sound Writing Project and Janine Brodine for their tireless support of writers at all ages and stages. Thank you to Neera Puri, Damini Puri, Vineeta Arora, Inderpreet Sahney, Ayushee Arora, Ibadat Sahney, Mrs. Bajwa, Meenakshi Mohindra, and the entire Bhavan Vidyalaya family in Chandigarh for sharing stories, for checking my Punjabi phrases, and for making India like a second home. Thank you also to Namrata Tripathi, for checking my phrasings. Again, any errors are my own. Special thanks to the late Shibani and Captain T. P. Singh. You are missed. Thanks to Donna Booth and Kevin Schubkegel for never minding how I took over the conference room, and to the staff of TLC preschool for helping me carve out time to revise this book. And always, always, always thanks to Jimmy, Evie, and Arun for everything else.

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  TARIQ

  JUNE 3, 1947

  “I know you will make us proud, Tariq,” Master Ahmed calls out to me as I step onto the dusty sidewalk outside the school gates.

  I lift my palm to my face, fingertips to my forehead, bow. “Khuda hafiz.”

  “And may He guard you as well,” Master Ahmed replies. “Give my best to your parents.”

  “Shukriya.”

  I speed up as I round the corner with its scrubby cricket pitch. It seems like longer than a year has passed since I sat for my examinations, since I enrolled at the college. Doing nothing has a way of slowing time. The college shut down after the professors got scared and quit teaching, when both the school and the faculty became easy targets for the Sikh mobs. And with no school, with nothing changing but the way people all over Punjab seem to have gone crazy, I’ve felt stuck. Trapped, even.

  But now. Now there is hope.

  My hand sneaks into my pocket, just to make sure the slip of paper is still there. I have already memorized the number of the house on Mani Margh, the time of my appointment with this Darnsley man, the few details about the job. I don’t need the paper anymore. All the same, I like knowing it’s there, like a railway ticket. Proof that I have someplace to be.

  Someplace other than Abbu’s shops, selling gold and stones.

  And maybe, just maybe, someplace other than India altogether.

  This Mr. Darnsley must have gone to Oxford. Why else would this chance come?

  I walk half a mile, rubbing the paper like some kind of talisman, my mind racing ahead to how hard I’ll work to impress this Englishman. It’s perfect, really, the timing of it all. I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t notice the crowd of men running up the lane behind me until they overtake and surround me.

  I let go of the paper and brace myself for a fight before I see the men are Muslim, most of them around my age. A few wear prayer caps, but there is not a pagri on the head of any of them, and all have hair cropped close like mine. My hands uncurl.

  They are not interested in me. Let them pass.

  But then one stops a few yards ahead, turns around. “Tariq!”

  My hands clench.

  “Sameer,” I say. Sameer. There’s always trouble when Sameer turns up. Even when we were at school together, he had a way of finding trouble, of drawing me into it.

  He fights the current of the men, grabs my arm, and pulls me into the flow.

  “What’s going on?”

  “What do you think?” he asks, smiling. He is a little winded. The mob is keeping up a quick pace. There must be twenty or thirty men here.

  Up ahead, two of them break off from the pack, dash over to a market stall, and snatch up armfuls of cricket bats. They’re already back in step before the shopkeeper even has a chance to say anything. Not that he would. Not that any of the people in the shops would. They have all stopped to watch.

  Someone near the front begins the chant. “Pa-ki-stan Zin-da-bad.”

  The stolen bats begin to filter through the mob, still keeping pace. Sameer hands one to me before taking one for himself.

  My gut turns inside out, hollow. I look around for some way to get myself out of here.

  “Pa-ki-stan Zin-da-bad.”

  “I have to get home!” I yell so Sameer can hear me over the chanting.

  His face goes hard. “No you don’t, brother.”

  The fellow on Sameer’s other side, a giant of a man, with a heavy beard that makes him look even more threatening, leans around to give me a look. A look that dares me to say I need to go home again. I shut my mouth.

  I don’t know where we’re going, or what we’re going to do when we get there, apart from the fact that it will be not be good. I’ve been careful so far. Managed to avoid getting caught up in any of this violence. Allah’s teeth! Why today of all days?

  Even if I could sneak away, I’m as worried about what Sameer will think of me—what he might say about me—as I am about getting hurt in some brawling.

  This is no time to let loyalties be suspected.

  Some of the men with bats in their hands have taken to beating the tips against the ground in time with the chant. “Pa-ki-stan Zin-da-bad.”

  The lane widens, empties into a little cuanka. Across the way, moving in from the other street, another mob is moving in. Bigger than ours.

  My grip tightens, and I realize that this is it. I’m going to have to go through with this, just to survive.

  But instead of clashing with the other mob, they take up our chant and we merge together, angling south across the square, which is empty now.

  “Pa-ki-stan Zin-da-bad.” Some fifty voices chant together.

  We are heading for the gurdwara, I realize.

  The Sikh temple is not the only one in Jalandhar. It is not the biggest or grandest, either. A single small dome squats in the center of the roof, topped with the gilt khanda, the crossed swords glinting in the morning light. It is nothing fancy compared to the dozens of gurdwaras in town.

  But it is the only one that has no outer wall to protect it.

  There are still people inside. I can hear the prayers spilling out the windows.

  No . . . no . . . I can’t do this.

  “Pa-ki-stan Zin-da-bad.”

  I can’t . . .

  “Ready?” Sameer presses close and asks me.

  No. I don’t want to be here. I can’t be here.

  But I manage to nod, even though I know I look as scared as I feel.

  Sameer leans around, forces me to look at him as we slow up. He lifts an eyebrow, shakes his head. The same shake he used to give me when we were kids and I wouldn’t take him up on a dare.

  But he doesn’t have time to say anything. The mob abandons the chant and rushes at the whitewashed sides of the building, screaming.

  And it begins.

  The building is burning before I even see that some of the men have been carrying cans of petrol. But there are people still in there! Maybe kids. Maybe women.

  It all happens too fast.

  Rocks sail through the windows; glass shatters inward. Rags soaked in oil and set alight find their way through the holes. But the people inside—

  It’s a nightmare come to life.

  I don’t know what to do.

  Sameer is gone, joining the attack. I should run now.

  Sikh men begin to pour from the building, chased out by the smo
ke. But as soon as they step outside, someone is there to make sure they don’t get far.

  The bodies begin to pile up at the entrance without even making it to the street.

  There’s nothing I can do to stop it. I don’t know how to begin to stop it.

  The only thing I can do is run before I have to do anything to hurt any of them.

  I don’t see Sameer. If I go now, he’d never know.

  But I’ve barely taken a step when movement to my right catches my eye. A man, his white pagri already black with smoke, launches himself from one of the broken windows on the ground floor. The fight is centered toward the front of the building. No one is there to meet him when he comes out.

  But then he sees me. Me, standing there with a cricket bat outside his temple.

  He screams, brandishing a kirpan, the little sword flashing silver in the sunlight.

  He rushes at me, the knife tracking straight for my chest. I freeze, but I have to move. Move! Maybe I could knock it from his hand, knock him off balance, give myself time to get away. But what if I miss? What if my timing is off? But I have to try. So I lunge forward, swinging the bat like I have in matches a thousand times before. I swing as hard as I can for his arm. But to my horror I realize he’s moving too fast. . . . I’m going to miss his hand . . . and I can’t stop.

  The end of the bat catches him square on the chin. Blood spits from his mouth as his head snaps sharply back.

  He drops at my feet, the knife falling from his slack hand.

  I can’t move for a second, the impact of the bat jarring through me like an aftershock, the crack of his jaw echoing in my ears. But I am still standing.

  The man is completely still. Allah, please, no . . .

  He lies facedown in the dirt, blood running from his mouth and chin. No, no, no. I can’t have killed him. Can’t have. I only meant to keep him from killing me. I didn’t mean to—

  My stomach retches, and I bend forward, heave into the dirt. My hands are covered with a spray of blood—his blood. I get sick again.

  Maybe he isn’t dead, I tell myself. Maybe he’ll wake up later. He would’ve killed me. And as I think it, I realize someone still might.

  I straighten, look up quickly, and ready the bat in case someone else is coming at me. There are bodies all over the courtyard. A pile of them blocks off the front entrance, and the mob I came with has spread itself out, picking off the others coming out the windows now. I don’t see any women. Or children. I don’t know if it means they’re all still trapped inside, or if they just weren’t here today. I hope, I pray it’s the latter.

  Just then Sameer sprints by with a couple of other men on their way to the back of the gurdwara, where more must be trying to escape. He catches my eye, glances down at the body at my feet, the bat in my hand, and raises his own bat in salute. He gestures for me to follow before disappearing around the side of the building.

  But I don’t. I throw the bat down next to the man I hit—the man who hasn’t moved, hasn’t even stirred. Then I turn and run.

  CHAPTER 2

  * * *

  ANUPREET

  The seam on my face is healing.

  My fingers walk the distance from the bone beneath my eye to the hollow of my cheek. It bubbles and puckers, but it’s better than it was before.

  “Stop touching it, girl,” Biji says without even turning away from the roti puffing on the stove.

  Just as I open my mouth to ask how she knew, she tells me.

  “I cannot hear the pin moving, which means you’ve stopped rolling out the chapatis. Get back to work.”

  I pinch off another chunk of dough, press it down with my hands before finishing it with the pin.

  “It will not heal if you worry it so,” Biji clucks, flipping the roti on the tawa.

  “It is nearly healed,” I argue.

  Biji clucks again, like an annoyed hen, then draws her hand away quick from the heat and slips it into her mouth. “It will fade more,” she says sternly, “if you leave it be and stay out of the sun.”

  Stay out of the sun. I have not been out of doors since that day three weeks ago. I have scarcely seen sun or another soul outside of Biji, Papaji, and my brother, Manvir. At least I won’t be so alone soon.

  Biji turns and flips her braid over her shoulder to keep it from the flame. “How many?”

  I survey the pile of dough still remaining. “A dozen, I think.”

  Biji nods. “When your uncle comes”—she sighs—“we will make dozens more. Little ones eat nothing but bread.”

  I smile at the thought of sharing the house with my youngest cousins.

  “Uncle’s wife will help,” I say.

  Biji makes a sound that translates to something like we’ll see about that. She’s never met Uncle’s wife or his children. But I can tell by the way she’s been busy scaring up extra bedding and studying the arrangement of the three small sleeping rooms in our house that she’s excited, too.

  All of us will be happier to have the house feel crowded for a while. To have something else to worry over besides my scar or whether it is safe for me to go outside.

  I have not returned to school. My teachers have sent lessons home when they could, and Vineeta and Neera have sent me notes tucked inside the packets from time to time, but even those have come less often. It feels as if they are forgetting me. As if I had died.

  I am allowed to go to gurdwara, but only with my dupatta pulled low over my face like a veil. And once Biji let me walk to the end of the street, but only because Manvir was with me.

  But no going to the market, or anything by myself, since it happened.

  I long for the day when Biji sends me to the lane to meet the milk wallah on his motorcycle. I used to hate getting up so early in the morning for the task, but now I can only remember the lovely way the milk flowed into the pot from the ladle, the quiet ticking of the motorbike engine as it cooled while he dipped and poured, dipped and poured.

  “Hello?” I hear my father call from the front door of the house.

  “Here!” I shout.

  Papaji joins us in the small cooking porch. “What smells so good?”

  “We’re not ready for you,” Biji says. “Why so early?”

  Papaji hesitates. “Gagandeep closed early. There was some trouble this morning at the gurdwara nearby.”

  Biji stops. “Trouble?”

  Papaji waves her off. “Nothing to worry about,” he says. But he’s lying. If they shut up the shop early, when every day Papaji talks about how crowded it is . . . Mr. Gagandeep wouldn’t give up half a morning’s business for nothing.

  “Where is Manvir?” Papaji asks.

  “Helping Navdeep with his father’s roof. He’ll be home soon,” I say.

  My father looks relieved, shoulders falling just a bit. He is tall, still taller than Manvir, whom Biji swears is still growing. But Papaji says his brother, the uncle I have never met, will tower over them both. A single loop of black hair has escaped Papaji’s pagri, dipping toward the collar of his white shirt. The creases on his pants are still as sharp as when he left this morning. I should know. I pressed them there.

  “Were you busy?” Biji tries to pretend things are normal.

  He sighs. “Very. A chemist is always busy. Though fewer come to buy medicines. The Muslims come to buy tooth powders and things they need for their journeys, or things they fear they won’t be able to find after they shift west. And those who stay behind, they buy medicine of a different kind.”

  Biji stiffens.

  “And we are out of what they require,” he says sadly. “When the tenth man came in requesting cyanide tablets after I’d run dry after the third inquiry—”

  “Take the food to the table, Anupreet,” my biji breaks in, thrusting a bowl of chana saag at me, the chickpeas studding the spinach like stones in the road.

  I take the bowl wordlessly, look to Papaji, who seems able to see only my scar, and slip inside to the table.

  Before I am out of
earshot, she hisses at him, “Do not speak of such things in front of her!”

  “Anupreet is nearly sixteen. She is not a child—”

  “And she has the scar to prove it!” Biji shoots back. “Why fill her head with more fear?”

  “Does she know what the men want poison for?” Papaji asks.

  I want to rush back in and tell them that I do. That Inderpreet showed me the wooden box her father gave her a month ago, the white pill inside. That she should take it if her virtue was threatened—

  “She knows enough to stay inside the house!” Biji returns.

  “You keep her in the house!” Papaji says back quietly.

  “For her safety. You saw how men used to look at her—”

  Papaji’s tone softens, his voice stepping lower. “What happened in the shop that day didn’t happen because she is a beauty. She was in the wrong place at the wrong moment.”

  Biji slams the pot onto the stove. “We live in the wrong moment. All of us. The whole of the Punjab.” Her voice fades as I hear the slip of the roti against the tawa, the flip as it settles on its other side.

  Papaji is silent a moment.

  “She’ll die inside this house if we keep her chained up.”

  “Better than dying in the street,” Biji mumbles.

  I reenter the kitchen, fetch the pile of roti, and carry it to the table.

  After I’ve gone, I hear Papaji again.

  “Maybe there is another way,” he says.

  I can feel Biji’s asking, the question steaming in the air like the puffs that escape from the pinholes in the surface of the bread.

  “Mr. Bennet came to see me today,” he said.

  “The Irishman?”

  “He’s hiring household staff for a man coming to work on the boundary award.”

  Biji lets fly a string of oaths. “You want her to work?”

  “In a safe place. In a compound. She would live there. Earn some. It will be good for her.”

  I reappear, feel my biji’s eyes on me as I fetch plates and go again. They know I’m listening. They must. I can feel it in the way her eyes watch my movements, then flick nervously to the scar on my cheek.