Shabanu Read Online Free Page B

hard my head snaps back and forward, back and forward. His eyes are as furious as Tipu’s, and I am speechless. He letsme go and walks away from us all without a word. For a moment we are frozen with shock and exhaustion. Then Mama breaks away and runs to catch up with Dadi’s dust-streaked back.
    That night as the air begins to cool and the desert colors fade after sunset, Mama, Auntie, Phulan, and I prepare dinner in the courtyard. My little cousins play hide-and-seek around the saddles, impatient to eat. Mama is silent as she stirs the spicy yellow lentils in our big copper pot, the firelight flickering on her face. I make the
chapatis
, and when Phulan and Auntie go outside she looks up at me.
    “Shabanu, you are wild as the wind. You must learn to obey. Otherwise … I am afraid for you,” she says, her face serious.
    “But Mithoo …”
    “In less than a year you’ll be betrothed. You aren’t a child anymore. You must learn to obey, even when you disagree.” I am angry to think of Dadi or anyone else telling me what to do. I want to tell her I spend more time with the camels than Dadi, and sometimes when he asks me to do a thing, I know something else is better. But Mama’s dark eyes hold my face so intently that I know she really is afraid for me, and I say nothing. She and Dadi are thinking of how I will behave when Murad and I marry.
    Later the house is quiet. Mama is sewing by the last firelight, and Phulan is beside me under the quilt, sleeping. I lie still, thinking of Dadi’s words.
    Phulan is the one to be married. How can I forget, the way she arranges her
chadr
around her, languid and important with her new status?
    Yesterday we bathed at the
toba
. I watched her secretly from behind the curtain of my own hair while Mama poured water over it. Phulan sat shamelessly naked to the waist, stroking her skin and running her long fingers through her wet hair. Her breasts have begun to poke out into tiny round swellings, each the size of a camel dropping. Her deep-set eyes looked far away.
    I looked down at my own flat chest and my arms and legs, brown with the sun, short and rounded with muscle. My body is like Dadi’s, as is my face—large black eyes, with a strong nose and a square chin.
    Phulan looks like Mama, tall and slender, with golden eyes and fine features. Her face is open and alive when her fingers fly over the kneading bowl, as if she is trying to see into her new life at the edge of the desert. She smiles mysteriously through the dust clouds that rise from her broom of desert twigs, seeing the sons she’ll bear Hamir.
    I have no patience with housework. I rush through folding the quilts and sweeping, cross to be kept from my beloved camels. I mend harnesses and spin their hair into twine, watching the herd while the sun skids across the sky. I can’t abide anything that keeps me from the animals, from running free and climbing thorn trees.
    I have known Murad all my life. We’ve played together at our cousins’ weddings. He is four years older than I am, and I always liked him for bothering to play with us.Perhaps he did so because he could beat us at any game. The last time I saw him was in the fall at Adil’s wedding. He’s sixteen now, tall and serious, and still wants to win at games.
    Dadi is a wise man, and I’ve never truly learned to obey him. How can I let a boy with a skinny neck and ears that stick out from under his turban tell me what to do?
    The smell of smoldering embers is comforting. In the dying light the smoke climbs straight and narrow to the top of the thatch. I am about to fall asleep when I hear Dadi come in. There is rustling as Mama unrolls their quilt, and they undress.
    “They’re back at the
toba,”
he says. “Everything seems quiet. Tipu is resting. The young male has gone away.”
    “You’ll have to be careful,” says Mama.
    “I won’t be able to turn my back on Tipu until I’m dead and buried,” says Dadi, laughing.
    “Can’t you sell him