Iqbal Read online

  “You can be sure about it,” cried Karim. “You should see how worried Hussain Khan is that Iqbal won’t finish in time or that he won’t do it well or that he’ll make some mistake, and the rug will have to be thrown away. Oh, he’ll cancel the debt all right. You all know how generous and fair our master is.”

  Many of us had doubts about that, but we observed Iqbal with new envy. He was going to succeed.

  “Hussain won’t cancel the debt,” Iqbal said slowly. “My other masters didn’t. The debt is never canceled.”

  So what hope did we have? Why then did we work from dawn till dusk? What right did Iqbal have to claim such awful things? After all, he was the newest arrival and luckier than everybody else. How could he crush us like that?

  Even Salman and Ali thought he was lying and that he would be freed.

  “You’re a liar!” shouted Alì, almost in tears.

  Salman trembled with anger.

  In the following days many of us started to resent Iqbal, saying that he was arrogant and that he sided with Karim and Hussain Khan.

  I tried to defend him, but I was only a little girl.

  I had fallen into the habit of sliding over to Iqbal’s pallet and chatting with him almost every night before going to sleep. I didn’t believe the mean talk about him, and if the master canceled his debt, well, I’d be happy for him.

  We would sit in the dark and listen to the city: the sound of the traffic that never stopped, but that at night became dulled and muffled; sudden voices; the mumbling of a man who hadn’t respected the precept of no alcohol; and those mysterious, confused city night sounds that we couldn’t identify. We had both been born in the countryside, and there the noises that broke the silence of the night all had a name and a familiar origin: a bird of prey, a buffalo that had gotten free, a stray dog wild on following a scent, and sometimes the rustle of a restless spirit whose mark we would find on the bark of a tree the following morning. We never really feared the spirits, because we understood they were a part of the natural world.

  But we didn’t know city life. We had only caught glimpses of it through van windows when the master took us away from our families and brought us to the carpet factory. I remembered people running from one place to another, more people than I had ever seen before, and they all looked like they didn’t really know where they were going.

  Iqbal could remember more about cities, because he had changed masters. Once he had seen dozens of kites dancing in the spring sky. And he remembered a bus—one of those enormous, shiny, multicolored buses we have in Pakistan, full of headlights and taillights and chrome, with horns that blast like a whole herd of buffalo so that they can make their way through the chaos of traffic. It had been the first time he had seen one.

  “Me?” said Iqbal. “I’d like to get on one of those buses and sit down next to a window and go all around the city—twice, even—to see where all those people are running to.”

  “No, no,” I said, “it’d be more fun to go to the cinema and see one of those love stories Karim tells us about. There are even big, bright posters with the stories and pictures of the actors all over the city. Some of them are so famous that people recognize them on the street.”

  “Actors don’t walk around in the streets.”

  “What do you know about it? Some do.”

  Sometimes we talked about our families, what we still recalled about them, or even what we had already forgotten and would never remember again. I had no recollection of my father, and only a faded image of my mother, but Iqbal could remember everything. He remembered his relatives and his village. He even remembered exactly where things were placed in the hut he lived in. He described to me how his father always got up before dawn to go down to the stream to wash, and then walked toward the stable with his hair still wet.

  Iqbal confessed that he went over his memories, one by one, every night before he went to sleep, so he wouldn’t forget them.

  “What do you do with them?” I asked.

  “They help me,” he answered.

  “To do what?”

  “To get away from here.”

  I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I didn’t mention the idea of escaping to him again. I thought he had said it to impress me or that maybe it made him feel better to pretend it was possible.

  There’s nothing wrong with Iqbal believing we’ll be free someday, I thought.

  And I also thought, If only we could!

  But to escape meant having a place to escape to, and what could I do, outside in a city I didn’t know and that frightened me? Who would protect me from all those noises I couldn’t even name? I’d probably end up like Karim, who preferred to stay with Hussain Khan. But still, I’d never tell on Iqbal’s plans.

  Maybe that was why I could never reach the edge of the bathroom window frame: I was afraid of what lay beyond.

  And why should someone like Iqbal—someone who was about to be freed after paying his debt—why should he want to run away? It didn’t make sense to me.

  So I kept my peace.

  But three days later, just as the foreign buyers were about to arrive, Iqbal didn’t keep his.

  Five

  It was a special morning. When foreign customers arrived, Hussain Khan couldn’t bully us too badly in their presence. He had to convince them that we were treated well.

  “These are my apprentices,’ he would say, distributing affectionate pats left and right. “Here they learn an honest profession that will assure them a better future, one without hunger and poverty. They’re like my own family.”

  I really don’t know if the foreigners believed him or not. Foreigners were funny that way. You didn’t know what to make of them. Usually they were elegantly dressed men with cold eyes, but every now and then a woman would visit, a lady whose legs and arms weren’t covered, and she would say, “What lovely children!”

  I’m not so sure we were so lovely.

  That morning we had a bigger breakfast than usual—which alone put us in a good mood—and we were allowed to laugh and chat while we waited to pass the filthy curtain outside the bathroom.

  The numskulls had already finished, and for the sake of the foreigners they wouldn’t be chained to their looms that day. The rest of us were waiting on line, pushing and shoving.

  “Be good, children! Be good,” called the mistress, but it didn’t sound like her usual nasty warning. Even Hussain, who usually appeared halfway through the morning pulling up his pants and sleepy-eyed, was already awake and agitated. He was sweaty and talked nonstop.

  Karim was terrified by the idea that something could go wrong and that Hussain would blame it on him. The finished carpets were ready in the storage room and the ones in making were on display on the looms. There was almost a festive air to the place. I was waiting for my turn, little Maria hanging on to my skirt, and I was trying to avoid Alì’s elbows and Salman’s pinches. I felt a strange feeling inside me, one like wind in my breast. I was sure that I could jump very high—soar and finally reach the edge of that window frame.

  Certainly nobody could have imagined what was going to happen

  Nobody was paying much attention to Iqbal, who was standing beside his loom. Most of the children avoided him, because they were envious. Also he tended to keep to himself, as though he was occupied with serious thoughts.

  I never got my turn at the bathroom that morning, and I never reached the window that looked out on the flowering almond.

  Hussain, nervous and excited, paced around the workshop. Suddenly he stopped and turned white. He was looking at something behind us. I remember his shocked eyes and his mouth slowly opening and revealing his tobacco-blackened teeth. I’ll never forget what I saw next.

  Iqbal was standing next to his loom. Behind him was his carpet, that marvelous carpet with its complicated design in a rich blue that had never been seen before. It was perfect. Iqbal had worked better and faster than anyone else could have. The foreigners would go crazy over a rug like tha
t.

  Iqbal was pale, too, but not as pale as Hussain Khan. He took the knife that we all used to cut the ends of the knots, raised it above his head, and seemed to look each of us in the eye. Then he calmly turned and cut the carpet from top to bottom, right through the middle.

  No, I thought, don’t …!

  In the silence that had fallen over the workshop we heard the distinct rrrriippof the sliced threads.

  Hussain Khan screamed like a stuck pig. The mistress screamed. Karim screamed, because he always did everything they did. We saw them take off across the room, raising a cloud of dust and lint, tripping over each other, cursing and swearing as true believers should never do.

  Before they could grab him and take the knife away, Iqbal had cut twice more and the world’s most beautiful blue carpet was in pieces on the red earth of the floor.

  The silence seemed to last forever. Instinctively looking for protection, we had gathered in a corner of the workshop. Hussain Khan was standing in front of Iqbal, threatening Iqbal with his sheer size. His face was red and the swollen veins in his neck looked ready to burst. He was holding the knife he had taken from Iqbal and for a terrible moment we all thought, He’s going to kill him!

  The mistress sobbed and collected the pieces of rug from the floor, wiping off the red dust as if a miracle might put them back together.

  Karim held his head in his hands. He was desperate, even though it wasn’t his property.

  “Hell child!” hissed Hussain. “Hell child! They said you were a rebel, a traitor. They said, ‘Hussain, don’t trust him! He’s a viper. A poisonous snake. An ingrate.’ But I, blind and stupid, I thought … you’ll pay for this, oh, you’ll pay.”

  “Into the Tomb,’ howled the mistress, “throw him into the Tomb and never let him out again!”

  They grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into the courtyard. We followed, but stopped at the door like a group of frightened baby chicks. We saw Iqbal’s knees scrape on the stones on the ground, his arm bang against the edge of the well. The master stopped at the rusty iron door and pulled it slowly open on rasping hinges. We saw him disappear down the steps into the dark, jerking Iqbal after him. Then we heard the awful, terrifying sound that haunted our sleep: the grate of the Tomb as it was raised and then bang! as it fell closed. The sound echoed in the heavy heat of the courtyard.

  We couldn’t breathe. The air was motionless. The dust lay still. Only the horseflies stirred, continuing to bite at our legs, but nobody even attempted to swat them away.

  Hussain Khan came back up from underground. We heard his slow heavy footsteps. When he emerged into the sun he squinted his eyes. He closed the door with one final push and approached us where we were still clinging together at the entrance to the workshop.

  “To work!” he growled.

  We returned to our looms. We took up our work. All together. The same movements. The same sound of the comb.

  Tunf. Tunf. Tunf.

  Hussain stood behind us, in silence. We could feel his eyes look through us.

  Tunf. Tunf. Tunf.

  Alì, who worked on my right, mouthed the words, “Why did he do it?”

  I gestured quickly, “I don’t know.”

  As he was being dragged over the stones of the courtyard, just a second before he disappeared, Iqbal had turned his head and looked at me. He wanted to say something.

  I wasn’t sure I understood. But one thing seemed clear: Iqbal was as frightened as we were, but he had done it, all the same.

  Six

  The Tomb was an old cistern, buried under the courtyard, closed by a grating at the foot of a damp, slippery stairway leading up to the iron door. There was no light down there, according to those who had been locked in, except around mid-afternoon, when a few rays of sunshine managed to filter through the holes and cracks caused by age and rust in the door to the courtyard. And there was virtually no air: You nearly suffocated down there.

  “You can’t breathe,” said Salman, who had experienced the Tomb a few months before because he had accidentally broken the blue-and-gold-flowered glazed pitcher the mistress used when she brought us water in the morning.

  “You feel yourself suffocating and you think you’re going to go mad. It feels like someone’s grabbing your throat and squeezing. And then there’s the dark. After a while you begin to see strange shapes, and colors, too, but they don’t help you; they only scare you. I heard of someone who went crazy in the Tomb and nobody recognized him.”

  “And then there are spiders,” another boy said, a boy who came from the mountains and talked differently, “this big,” and he showed the palm of his hand. “And scorpions: They’re bad. They pinch and sting and they’re poisonous. And then there are snakes.”

  “There aren’t any snakes,” Salman said scornfully. “There’s no water anymore.”

  “Yes there are,” answered the mountain boy. “I saw them.”

  “You’ve never been in the Tomb.” Salman silenced him. “You’d better keep quiet.”

  That night we were all wide-awake, despite our fatigue and hunger. The master had made us work an extra hour after sunset and hadn’t given us any dinner. The foreign clients had come, they had barely noticed us, they had loaded the carpets into their vans and cars, and they had left. Probably Hussain Khan had done good business. Usually after the departure of foreigners he celebrated with the mistress late into the night and we could hear music playing from the radio. But it wasn’t our music, the music we heard at fairs when the men gathered to sell their animals. The master played a strange, noisy music, and we couldn’t understand the words of the songs.

  “Foreign stuff,” Karim said knowingly, “music that comes from far away.”

  But after this visit by the foreigners the house was dark and silent, menacing.

  “You’ll all pay,” Hussain had said before he went to bed, “you’ll pay for your friend. Because you were all in on it, I’m positive.”

  Only a couple of the dim-witted and timorous children had tried to claim that they had no part in Iqbal’s rebellion. But they had been pinched into silence. Who of us could be mad at Iqbal? We were all too worried.

  “It’s too hot,” I said. “How can he survive down there?”

  “It’ll be like the brick-kiln,” said Salman, “maybe worse. I can’t remember anyone being put in the Tomb in midsummer. Can you?”

  Everybody shook their heads. The sun had been unforgiving that afternoon, and we were covered in sweat, even now that it was night, and we could feel our heads boil, like in a fever.

  Please, just shut up! Just shut up! I wanted to scream. Maria and Alì shook with fear at my side.

  “I saw someone come out of the Tomb in summer,” said Karim, in his deep, almost grown-up voice. “Five days Hussain kept him there. It happened many years ago. I was little then, but I can remember well. There was this boy, bigger than me; I don’t know where he came from. One of his ears was missing, and he had a fierce look. He was like a wild dog, and we were afraid of him.”

  “What did he do?” we asked.

  “He refused to work, that’s what. So Hussain whipped him. He whipped him good—you should have seen it. The boy didn’t make a sound.”

  “And then?”

  “He kept on refusing to work. And when Hussain got near him with the whip again, ready to skin him alive, you know what he did? He bit into Hussain’s arm and wouldn’t let go.” Karim spat in the dust, “Just like a dog.”

  “So the master put him in the Tomb?”

  “Five days he kept him there.”

  “And did he come out?”

  “Yeah, he came out. They carried him out like the dead, but he didn’t die. He was all burned from the heat and his skin had peeled away. He lay for a week on his pallet, and we put a wet rag on his face. Then he got up and began to work. Anyway, he was never the same. He was still like a dog, but like the kind that carries his tail between his legs.”

  “Iqbal won’t be like that,” I exc
laimed.

  “He’ll give in, too,” said Karim. “What do you think? He’s not so special. Probably he’s defied all the masters he’s had, and that’s why they keep selling him, even though he’s so skilled. But Hussain, he knows what to do with him.”

  “Iqbal won’t give in,” I repeated, “and we have to help him.”

  There were a few vague murmurs of agreement.

  “Help him?” muttered Karim. “So far we’ve skipped dinner thanks to him.”

  “You can just shut up—you ate anyway,” Salman answered back. “I saved some bread.”

  “And I have some water,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “You’re crazy,” yelled Karim, “I forbid you…. If the master finds out he’ll take it out on me.”

  “Shut up!” Salman repeated.

  We slipped toward the door of the workshop, which Hussain Khan triple-locked every night—a useless precaution, in my opinion. After all, where could we go?

  “He has the keys,” said Salman, and he pointed to Karim. “Open it. Fast.”

  “Forget it!”

  “Let’s do it this way. You open the door and you come along. If the master finds out, you can say we were trying to escape and that you were coming after us to catch us. But if you don’t help, I swear …”

  It’s true that Karim was older, but he was thin and weak and had never been very brave, while Salman was strong as an ox and feared by all.

  Karim scratched his head, stood on one foot, then on the other, and looked around for moral support. Not finding any, he spat in the dirt—angry and frustrated.

  He found the big iron keys deep in the folds of his trousers, sniffed a bit, acted the victim a little longer, then opened the door.

  It was just past midnight when we found ourselves outside. It was a moonless night, with a clean, black sky, because there are rarely clouds in the sky on a summer night. The air barely moved the leaves in the trees. We stood in the doorway for a minute, so our sweaty faces could dry.