Goat Days by Benyamin Page B

to the Gulf with you … Are you there?’
    There was no reply despite my incessant knocking. I was about to walk back disheartened when I saw a shadow moving far away. I called out loudly. ‘Hakeem! Is that you? It’s Najeeb.’ I was afraid the rain’s snake-whistle would drown my voice.
    But I saw the shadowy figure slowly walk towards me.
    ‘Hakeem, is that you? Come closer, it is me, Najeeb.’
    When that figure came near me, I looked at it carefully. Dark, skinny, dishevelled, ugly. Another scary figure. This was not my Hakeem. He did not look like Hakeem. Hakeem was handsome. Very fair. Very good to look at. Strong for his age. I had even advised him in jest to stay put in Bombay and try his luck in Hindi films.
    ‘Is there someone called Hakeem here? He is a friend of mine. He came along with me. I haven’t seen him since then. Do you know him, or where he is?’ In one breath, I bombarded the scary figure with questions as he walked towards me.
    For some time, the hideous figure stared from the other side of the gate, as if I were speaking in a strange language. Then, quite unexpectedly, he hit his head against the gate and started crying. I got scared. Then, between sobs, came his heart-wrenching cry, ‘My Najeeb ikka.’ It was only then, only then, that I recognized Hakeem. Alarmed, I understood how circumstances could redraw a man’s shape beyond recognition. I could estimate how the same circumstances must have changed me too—completely. I had not looked in a mirror since I had entered the desert. If I had, I might not have been able to recognize myself as well.
    He cried a lot, recalling his ummah, uppah, relatives and Allah. I had no answers for him. I only had the strength to cry with him, holding his hands to my chest through the iron railings. The night washed away in tears.

Twenty-one
    It rained for two more days. The masara was filthy and full of muck by the time it stopped. The foul smell of goat droppings, urine, decaying hay and grass rent the air. It took me three or four days of back-breaking work to clean it all up.
    Then the desert’s vaults were flung open for the winter. It was foggy and cold in the mornings. When I got up and looked around, all I could see was the white film of winter. Everything—the masara, the goats, the arbab, the tent—disappeared into that whiteness. It was only around nine o’clock that the fog faded and everything became visible again—though the hour is a guess on my part, for I was a lonely being with no sense of time—and, so, all routines were disrupted. During summer, the days were very long. The sun rose very early, by about three in the morning, and the light didn’t fade till eight at night. But in the winter, the sun didn’t rise till nine, and thelight would fade just after lunch. By four it would be completely dark. So the hours one got to do work were limited. In the winter one had to finish work in about six to seven hours, the same work that took ten to fifteen hours in the summer. Moreover, it was hard to work properly because of the cold. Even at noon it was spine-piercingly cold. I could not even touch the water. My hands would become numb if I had to work with water. It was in those days that I learned that even cold water could burn skin. On one occasion, blisters appeared on my left palm as if it had been scalded with hot water, after it was in cold water for some time. I have heard that it is cold at the poles, but I don’t know from where such cold comes to the desert!
    I didn’t have any special clothes to protect me from the cold. I only had that abaya, the long unwashed garment that the arbab had given me on my first day, which I never removed from my body. What I had was a woollen blanket left behind by the scary figure. I wore it during the first days of winter, but it was a bother. How could one run after goats and enter the masara to fill the containers with water or hay wearing a blanket? I gave it up. It became my habit