A Moment Comes Read online

  “He doesn’t speak to me,” I reply. Which is true. He tried once, early on, but Shibani and her husband sort of shooed him away, like a chicken that had wandered from the yard into the house. But he doesn’t speak much to anyone, really. Tariq is careful with his words, counting them out the way a banker watches coins. He spends each one carefully. And he hadn’t wasted any on me.

  Manvir grunts as if this is the only way a Muslim and a Sikh could breathe the same air, by pretending the other did not exist, but still he frowns.

  “He looks at you,” my brother says, turning full round, stopping to glare hard at Tariq.

  “You think everyone looks at me,” I say, pulling at his arm before Tariq can read the fire in my brother’s eyes.

  “Everyone does.”

  He had been looking at me, but not the way Manvir thinks. I’ve caught Tariq sometimes from a window, or waiting near the kitchen. I think maybe he is lonely, like me, and wants someone to talk to. I feel bad that Shibani and her husband chased him off those times. He only needs a friend.

  Besides, Manvir is wrong. If my brother could see Margaret with her yellow hair, he’d know how wrong he is. Why would anyone think I’m pretty with Margaret around? But I’m tired of fighting with him about it, so I change the subject.

  “They have rooms for everything!” I gush to Manvir as he exchanges sat sri akals with the porter who holds the gate open for us. “There’s even a room for Mrs. Darnsley to get dressed in. Just for her dressing! Can you imagine? A whole room for clothing and powders and perfumes and no bedroll on the floor?”

  “And you’ve your own room in which to sleep?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “In the attic. There are two beds. The housekeeper and her husband were meant to stay up there, but he can’t climb the stairs, so they sleep in the room near the kitchen that was meant for me.” I stop short of telling him that I’ve slept in both beds, just for the joy of being able to choose. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and climb into the other bed just to feel the coolness of the sheets against my legs, just because I can. I don’t mind at all having to make two beds in the morning.

  I check his expression, see the clouds forming there. I’ve said too much. My brother, after all, is still living in our little rented house soon to be crammed even more full.

  “I’m sorry, Manvir,” I whisper as he pulls me into the street. “It was thoughtless of me—”

  He stops, looking both ways up the crowded margh. Then he looks at me.

  “What did you say?” But there is no malice in his tone. No resentment.

  I hesitate. “I should not have boasted about the house when you—”

  He waves my concern away. “I am not cross with you, Anupreet,” he says, eyes flicking away from mine to a pack of young men across the road. “I’m distracted. Too many things to think on.”

  “Then let me use my paisa to hire a rickshaw wallah,” I protest again. “I have enough to get us home and—”

  “We need as much as you can give us for the household, sister,” he says, avoiding my eyes.

  I look down, ashamed at having wanted to return home in a rickshaw when Biji is stretching the chapatis out thinner and thinner every day. But I can’t help it. I have never earned money before. The urge to spend some of it tugs at me.

  “This way,” he says under his breath, steering me toward the center of town instead of toward the school and home.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  He hesitates. “Home.”

  “But why—” I point at the route that we took last week when Papaji brought me, the quicker way.

  “It isn’t safe now, Anu,” Manvir says quietly. And suddenly I understand why his eyes are shifting around, dancing across the streets and the shop windows like a mongoose before it strikes at a snake. He’s afraid.

  “Why?”

  He avoids my eyes. “There is a Muslim neighborhood two streets over from the school—”

  “I know,” I say. “But there was a Muslim neighborhood there last week, and the week before that. It’s been there since before we were born—”

  “A man was beaten to death there two days ago. A Hindu.”

  I go silent as he pulls me across the road, weaving between bullock carts, waving off rickshaw drivers.

  “All over the city,” he says almost in a whisper when we reach the other side, “it’s getting worse. You remember my friend from school, Aryan?”

  I nod.

  “He was attacked last week. His mouth gagged with the scraps of his pagri and his hair cut off.”

  I stop short. “Is he all right?”

  Manvir nods. “But he is angry and humiliated. And it won’t be long before even good, peaceful men can take no more.”

  “You wouldn’t—”

  He steers us around a heap of steaming dung, the straw bristling from its surface. “I would do my duty.”

  Duty. It seems such an old word, trotted out again now to rally my brother and other mudas like him. Long ago, that duty was sacred. We Sikhs were trusted to protect our Hindu brothers and sisters against the Moghuls and Islam. Guru Gobind Singh raised the army to protect against invading Muslims.

  It was so long ago. Hundreds of years have passed. Hindu families stopped giving their eldest sons to the Sikh faith just to bolster the army, as they used to. There was no need.

  Sikhs and Muslims were mostly friendly, some even married each other. But then it all changed when the British said they would leave. And there were more of us than there were of them, so the Muslim leaders always made noise about not being treated fairly. But that was only politics.

  Until it wasn’t.

  Overnight, things changed. It was like monkeys and birds who’d been living in the same trees suddenly deciding that wouldn’t do anymore and started eating one another.

  I grew scared. Going to gurdwara wasn’t peaceful anymore. Now we hurried through the songs and prayers so all the men could gather after worship and talk about duty again. And it wasn’t just in Jalandhar that things got bad. All through the Punjab, even as far as Bengal in the east, where even Ghandiji’s fasts could no longer keep the Muslims and Hindus from killing one another. Duty? What kind of duty was killing?

  No. I don’t like to hear my brother talk of duty.

  Manvir glances behind us for the second or third time since we left the main square.

  Before he can stop me, I too look back. And I see what worries him now.

  A group of boys—most younger than Manvir—are following us. They catch my eye. The one at the front points, turns to his fellows, and says something that draws laughter from their ranks.

  “Who are they?”

  Manvir shakes his head. “I saw them only when we passed the tobacco shop.”

  But I realize with alarm that I had. One or two of the faces are ones I’ve seen lingering near the compound. And even if all the faces aren’t familiar, the shape of the boys is.

  A pack always looks the same.

  “Why are they following?”

  Manvir doesn’t answer. Instead he pulls me quickly sideways into the market stalls and we begin to run, taking a right at the first lane, then a left at the next.

  “Cover your hair,” he orders, checking to see if the boys are still following.

  I obey, pulling my dupatta around my head, my heart pounding now.

  “What do they want?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer, steering us through the maze of vendors.

  I thought the scar might have stopped the stares. Or at least drawn them for another reason.

  We fly past the bangle seller. Then through clouds of greasy air spilling out of the samosa stand, and on and on, until we emerge on the other side of the market, breathless. Still we run until we make it to the safety of the lanes across the wide expanse of Chandi Margh.

  Until we are sure they are not following us anymore.

  We slow to a walk. I fight to catch my breath. I’m afraid of the attentio
n we might be drawing. People watch when you run. They watch to see what you’re running from. Running to.

  “I’d have fought them, you know.” Manvir is seething. “I’m sick of running. Sick of it.” He kicks a cup dropped from the chai wallah’s cart hard, sending it shattering against the wall.

  Would he? If I hadn’t been here? All of them? And what if they had run us down? Who would have caught the worst of it? Me or Manvir?

  “They’re gone now, anyway,” Manvir says, taking one last long look behind us. “We’re safe.”

  Safe. I think about the word as we continue walking. What does safe mean anymore? I wonder if I’ll ever feel safe again. I wandered these markets and streets freely just a few years ago.

  And then I grew up.

  I didn’t even notice until Biji began looking at me, by turns with pride and regret. That was how I knew I was pretty.

  And when the men began to stare, that’s when I knew it was a problem. When Papaji began trying to put a few more pieces of jewelry aside in the hiding place at home, bangles of thinnest gold, but gold nonetheless, hoping he might have enough to make me a suitable dowry. I began to work even harder at my lessons, perfected my stitches, hopeful someone might notice me for something other than my face.

  Manvir suddenly pulls me close. “Biji’s right that it’s a crime,” he’s saying, scowling at a man leering at me from an open doorway.

  “What crime?” I ask, looking hurriedly away.

  “That God make a child both pretty and poor,” he says, sending his voice high and reproachful like Biji’s scold.

  I laugh; he clucks like Biji does.

  “But he also made me swift,” I say, feeling to urge to run again. “And he gave me a brother to watch out for me.”

  His expression darkens. “I should have been there that day,” he says, angry. “That cur wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near you if I had been. I’d have killed him first.”

  I know he would have. But he wasn’t. And I’m glad for that. Mostly.

  “Have they asked about it? The scar?” Manvir asks, glancing at it peeking from beneath the edge of my dupatta.

  I don’t want to talk about this. Don’t want to see Manvir get worked up over it again. “I told them I fell.”

  “Hmm,” Manvir says. “Simpler than the truth.”

  It is. It is simpler than explaining how I was standing in the shop when a bomb in the street exploded, shattering the large window in the storefront.

  It is simpler than that half truth.

  Simpler than saying that the glass didn’t cut me until a man picked it up, pinned me against the wall, pressing my arms to my chest. Simpler than explaining that he held it to my cheek as I froze. Simpler not to repeat the words he uttered in Urdu, words whose meaning I still don’t know, but whose shape and sound rattle inside my head when I’m sleeping, and then scream out like a peacock’s shriek.

  Simpler than saying that had the shopkeeper, Mr. Singh—who’d known me from the time Biji carried me into the shop to buy cakes and sweets when I was a baby and had greeted me that afternoon with a smile and a nod as I waited behind the others—had Mr. Singh not struck the man with the marble slab he used for pulling out naan . . .

  Then I would have more scars than I have even now.

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  MARGARET

  “This is inexcusable,” Mother complains, scowling at her wristwatch.

  “Time is relative in the Punjab, Mother,” I remind her. And it is. According to Daddy, no one seems to give much weight to appointment times or dates or anything like that. Here, people show up hours or even a day late to meetings or to repair the toilet or to install a telephone. Even our train from Delhi had sauntered into the station a full two hours behind and then idled there for another hour before we pulled away. And no one but Mother seemed to even notice.

  “I told him precisely ten,” she fumes.

  “We could go without him,” I offer, knowing full well she’ll refuse. The pictures are the whole point for her.

  Instead, she surprises me. “I suppose we must,” she says, but she doesn’t get into the car. She ducks back into the house. I’m left standing there with the driver, who shrugs and smiles apologetically.

  Inside I hear Mother’s voice echoing out from Daddy’s study windows upstairs. I can’t make out the words, but my father’s soft murmured reply seems to calm her. Another minute ticks past, and just as I’m about to go in and see what’s up, I hear her on the stairs, heels clicking double-time against the marble.

  “We’re ready,” she announces, triumphant, sailing out the door, Tariq hurrying along behind her holding Father’s Brownie camera like it’s made of glass.

  Tariq?

  The driver straightens up, drops his smile, and steps forward as Tariq comes out. He chatters something at him in Punjabi, and I don’t need to speak the language to understand that he’s put out by Tariq being there. A lot of the staff are, as a rule. The housekeeper gives him the stink eye whenever he passes by. I’ve watched from my window when he comes back from his errands, when the guards on duty seem to take pleasure in moving as slowly as possible in opening the gate for him, glaring at him as he passes through.

  I asked Father why Tariq is so unpopular. He told me he hadn’t noticed, but expected it had to do with Tariq being Muslim.

  “They’re terribly suspicious of one another, particularly these days,” Father said. I realized that all the men working here wore the turbans that the Sikhs were required to wear, hiding their long hair up inside. Even Anu’s father and brother, when they came to fetch her for her afternoon off, wore the turban.

  Only Tariq has his hair short, his head uncovered.

  Tariq starts to reply to the driver, voice even, eyes low. He gets half a dozen words out before the driver begins shouting over him, and Mother intervenes.

  “He’s coming with us,” she says firmly to the chauffeur, who looks like he wants to say more but instead forces a smile and an “of course, madam,” before reaching to open her door.

  I slide in beside her, feeling embarrassed for Tariq. Things get worse as he goes around to the other side of the car and climbs in the front seat. The driver huffs and fumes, but it isn’t as if Tariq could ride in back with us. I suppose the driver wishes Tariq might ride along perched on the bumper or something. I see people do that all the time from my windows. There aren’t many cars around, and those that do pass are often overflowing with passengers, some piled on the roof. The motorbikes are even worse. I once saw a single motorbike (no sidecar!) carrying a driver, his wife, and three children, one perched on the tank in front of the father, another on the handlebar, and the third, a baby, sleeping in his mother’s arms while she balanced behind her husband.

  At any rate, I’m glad Tariq gets to ride inside. Glad I can sneak looks at the back of his head.

  The car roars to life and we’re under way. Tariq hunches over the camera, fiddling with the knobs and dials.

  “You do know how to use a camera, don’t you, Tariq?” Mother asks him.

  He nods. “Mr. Darnsley showed me how.”

  “Good,” Mother says. “Then we’ve no need of the newspaperman. We can take our own photos and have them released back home. Always better to do things for oneself, right, Margaret?”

  “Tariq can translate for us too,” I add.

  Mother jabs a finger at the air. “Quite so. You’ve really rescued us, young man,” she says to Tariq, adding, “though my husband was loath to spare you.”

  Tariq murmurs his thanks and goes back to working with the camera.

  I spend the rest of the ride alternating between staring at the back of his head and looking out the window. It’s delicious to be out, wonderful to be seeing more of the city, even if it is from inside the car.

  And even more perfect to be out with him. I sneak my looks at him, noticing how thick his hair his, how it curls a bit over his ears.

  It takes us twenty minutes
to break free of the constant stopping and starting as we inch through Jalandhar proper. At the outskirts, the road opens up a bit and the car picks up speed. We pass smaller marketplaces, the houses grow shabbier, the temples less frequent. And then, after ten miles of this, we begin to climb a squat hill.

  At the top, the driver pulls to the side and gestures out the window, pointing. Tariq listens, then twists in his seat to speak to Mother and me.

  “The camp is below,” he explains. “The driver thought you would like to see it from here before he drives down into the valley.”

  I have to lean across Mother’s lap to look, and what I find makes my mouth drop open.

  I’ve never seen anything like it.

  Tents and shanties lean up against one another, fighting for every spare square inch of space. Narrow lanes cut through the makeshift city like fissure cracks in a pane of glass. And everywhere are people. The whole camp, which stretches impossibly far, all the way to a muddy brown river in the distance, moves and thrums like an animal in too small a pen.

  “Oh my,” Mother whispers.

  I say nothing, can’t for how nervous I am all of a sudden. It’s so much bigger than I expected. What can we possibly do? Suddenly I’m ashamed of that stupid camera in the front seat, ashamed of the fact that, though I wouldn’t have admitted it before, I was a bit excited about the thought that snaps of me looking heroic might turn up in papers back home.

  Even more shaming: I feel scared.

  “Drive on,” Mother whispers, and the driver steers us back onto the road, letting the long sloping track pull us down to the camp.

  Two hours later I’m dressing the wounds on the gnarled feet of an old woman. She’s impossibly thin and bent in all the wrong places, but she keeps smiling at me, beaming a grin that is no less beautiful for having only half its teeth. She chatters at me in Punjabi, pointing and smiling.

  And though the sores are rancid, oozing wicked-looking yellow stuff, and I can’t understand a word she’s saying, I’m happy.

  We were warmly welcomed by a couple of doctors and a man who is some kind of manager. They showed us around and told us about a few of the people here. They even arranged a few photos of us standing with some families, speaking to the administrator, handing out bars of soap, things like that. Tariq followed us meekly, snapping the pictures, but the doctors spoke fine English, so we had no need for a translator.