The Pakistani Bride Read Online Free Page B

neck, he started to choke him. Death was the price for daring such an insult to his tribe, his blood, his religion.
    Frantic cries rang out of “Murder! murder! The Pathan will kill him!” and the two were wrenched apart.
    Girdharilal, faint with shock, trembled while Qasim hurled abuse and threats of vengeance at him in his hill dialect. Girdharilal did not catch a single word, but he could not miss the meaning.
    A senior officer appeared. The situation was explained to him, and Qasim was ordered to apologize. He refused, and his clansman was sent for. After a roaring argument, the clansman finally persuaded Qasim to say the necessary words. He uttered them with the grace of a hungry tiger kept from his victim by chains. An uneasy peace ensued. Qasim learned from his cousin that killing, no matter what the provocation, was not acceptable by the laws of this land. He would be caught and hanged. These were the plains, with no friendly mountains to afford him sanctuary.
    Â 
    Time passed. Tales of communal atrocities fanned skirmishes, unrest, and panic. India was to be partitioned, and that summer the anger and fear in people’s minds exploded. Towns were automatically divided into communal sections. Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, each rushed headlong for the locality representing his faith, to seek the dubious safety of strength in numbers. Isolated homes were ransacked and burned. The sky glowed at night from the fires. It was as though the earth had
become the sun, spreading its rays upward. Dismembered bodies of men, women, and even children, lay strewn on roads. Leaving everything behind, people ran from their villages into the towns.
    Qasim had not been to work for a month. Riots were in full swing in Jullundur. One night, defying the curfew, Qasim stealthily made his way to Girdharilal’s quarters on the first floor of a squalid tenement.
    He stood on the landing, letting his eyes get accustomed to the dark. Then, pressing a shoulder against the cheap wood, he quietly tried to force the doors. They were chained to each other from inside.
    â€œWho’s there?” a woman’s frightened voice called.
    Qasim paused. Regaining his composure, he knocked politely.
    â€œI want to speak with Girdharilal. It is urgent,” he said, disguising his accent.
    Girdharilal cleared his throat noisily. Any intruder would know there was a man in the house. Qasim heard him shuffle into his slippers. Next, the chain was being slackened enough for him to peep through the crack.
    â€œWho is it?”
    Qasim examined the slit of light, bright at the top, but dark where the clerk’s face and naked torso blocked it. The crack looked paler where the light filtered through the white loincloth between his legs.
    â€œWho is it? Speak up,” asked Girdharilal, peering into the dark, unable to see who it was.
    Slipping the muzzle of his pistol between the door panels, Qasim felt it touch soft flesh. He pulled the trigger.
    As he raced away, the clerk’s wretched moan and a woman’s scream rang in his ears. He wondered that Girdharilal had
had time to moan. His hand twitched, and the naked gun still seemed to jump as crazily as it had when he fired it. Even as he fled, lights all over the building were coming on.
    The next day Qasim heard of the train and rushed to board it.
    Â 
    The train glides through the moon-hazed night, with a solid mass of humanity clinging to it like flies to dung.
    From time to time a figure loses its hold, or is forced off and drifts away like discarded rubbish. A cry, then silence.
    Compartments and lavatories are jammed with stifled brown bodies; some carry the deadweight of children asleep on swaying shoulders. Women hold on to flush chains, they lean on children cramped into wash basins. The train speeds on.
    Zohra sits on the train roof within the protective crook of Sikander’s outstretched arm. He holds on to a projecting waterspout to secure his family against the sway and