Goat Days by Benyamin Page A

take it no longer I ran to the arbab’s tent. The sight I saw! The arbab crouched in a corner like a coward. More than anything else in the world, the arbab feared water, I felt. Nowhere had I ever come across so frightened a man. The arbab seemed to fear water falling on his body, as though it were the touch of a jinni. As the rain droplets blew into the tent, the arbab retreated even farther into the corner. I thought the arbab had probably not had a bath even once in his life.
    In an unprecedented gesture, the arbab invited me into the tent. When I tried to sit on the floor, he made me sit on the cot. Like a frightened child, he grabbed my hand and then slithered under a blanket to screen the sight of the rain. Sitting in that posture, my hand touched something under the pillow. Cautiously, I tried to feel it again. It was the arbab’s gun! Slowly, I pulled it out. The arbab did not notice, he was chanting ‘ya Allah, ya Allah’ and praying for the rain to stop.
    A kind of wildness came over me. Just aim and pull the trigger and you will be saved. There is a vehicle outside with the key hanging from the ignition. You can find the road and escape somehow. This is the chance, the moment Allah the merciful has ordainedfor you to escape. If you do not use this moment, you might never get a chance like this, ever. You do know that such opportunities do not come again and again. Do it. Escape from this hell somehow. My hand indeed moved towards the trigger.
    Suddenly the arbab started praying loudly, ‘My Allah … you kept us safe. Had Najeeb not been here, I would have died of fear now.’ That was the first time that the arbab said my name. I had even doubted that he knew my name. He usually called me ‘himar’ or ‘
inti’
. That call of prayer softened my heart. I didn’t feel like escaping after killing a coward who had been crying for my help. I returned the gun to its place.
    I felt very hot inside the tent, so I removed my wet sheet and released the arbab’s hand. I threw away the wet clothes and bravely walked into the rain. Initially, my body pulsated with pain, as if it were being stabbed by several arrows. I endured it, and the pain gradually faded away. After that each raindrop refreshed me. I enjoyed that rain. Like lambs that can sense the coming of rain, I leapt around. And thus, after a very long time, the rain washed me clean. Dirt quietly trickled down my body.
    At some point in the night, as the rain eased, the arbab ran out of the tent and drove away in his vehicle.The other arbab did not come that night. After a while, the rain grew heavy again. That whole night, I was free, out of anyone’s coercion or control. That night I could have run away. But I didn’t go anywhere. As always, I didn’t know where to go to reach a safe destination. So I gave up the desire to escape. How many such opportunities to escape do we give up every day? We who throw away the golden bowl of opportunities when it comes into our hand.
    That night, I felt the need to do something. Something that violated captivity, something that would have annoyed the arbab. If I didn’t do anything, it would have been a waste of those precious moments of freedom. The desire blossomed instantaneously: I must go up to the neighbouring masara, I must see my Hakeem. He was dropped there the night we arrived in this country, and he has not been seen since. I did not even know whether he was alive or dead or if he had escaped. The poor boy was so near, yet so far. It was only then that I registered the extent of my cocooned existence. Once or twice I had asked the arbab about Hakeem, but he had ignored the question as if he hadn’t heard it at all. In that downpour, I walked towards Hakeem’s masara. Apprehensively I knocked on the gate fastened with an iron padlock. Ifeared that I would be in trouble if there were arbabs present. Still, I called out. ‘Hakeem, Hakeem, can you hear me? This is me, Najeeb … the Najeeb who had come