Spirit of a Mountain Wolf (2 page)

Razaq’s breath caught in his throat when he thought of his father. Never again could he ask him anything or climb up the mountain ridge to the forest with him to hunt. And his mother—she kept him working hard, but he’d never thought what it would feel like to not have her calling him, urging him to do his work well, or trying to kiss him, and cuffing him across the head playfully when he refused. He’d give anything to be walking down to the stream with the buckets to get water for the house. If only he had the time over, he’d never do anything grudgingly for his mother again.

“Here.” The man indicated the path leading down to the village.

Razaq could see a line of people winding along it toward the Indus River that surged thousands of feet below where the village was. Many—men, women, and children alike—were weeping; others stared ahead as if they could still hear the roar of the earth. He wondered how their neighbours had fared; his friend Ardil’s family still lived near them, though Ardil didn’t anymore. Halfway down the mountain, Razaq caught sight of the village or what was left of it. The mud and shale buildings were flattened as though a giant had stomped on them. Boulders had rolled into the smaller stream that ran through the village. Bigger stone houses had been cut in half, and Razaq could see the emptiness inside them.

When he reached the village, he saw boats coming from the western tribal area across the Indus. A jeep full of the khan’s men roared toward the village on the gravel road, creating a cloud of dust. People huddled in groups near the damaged mosque. Some houses still stood, but people were too frightened to go inside. Most, like Razaq, had no house at all.

The man left Razaq with a group of people, and there, Razaq found Mrs. Daud. It was her daughter, Feeba, who he would marry in a few years, but for now she was still young, only twelve. “Auntie ji?” He found himself clinging to Mrs. Daud as if she were his mother, and he was a young boy. Mrs. Daud burst into sobs.

“Auntie ji . . . ?”

“They are all gone. The children in the madrasah.”

Razaq didn’t think he could feel anything else, yet his voice sounded strangled when he asked, “Feeba?”

Mrs. Daud spoke and wept at the same time. “She took the boys to the madrasah. She never came home.” Her voice rose to a wail when she said “home.”

Over Mrs. Daud’s head, Razaq watched more jeeps drive into the village and screech to a stop at the madrasah near the mosque. The second story of the madrasah had collapsed onto the floor below. The jeeps were stacked with bags of flour, salt, tea, sugar, and milk. The men took out shovels and picks.

“Excuse me,” Razaq said to Mrs. Daud. “I must help.”

He felt he had to do something. He couldn’t help his own family, but maybe he could help someone else.

A man handed Razaq a shovel, and they set to digging out the rubble. There were dozens of men helping, yet they found only a few boys alive: those who had hidden under the teacher’s table. None were Mrs. Daud’s sons. There were many dead, and Razaq shifted his mind someplace else so he could work like a buffalo and not think of the bodies they found. Even when Feeba’s body was recovered, he could only stare at her. In the distance, he heard the fresh wails of the mothers as they were told of the deaths.

How would they bury them all by nightfall, the required time? The maulvi’s son, the priest, called for winding cloths from one of the jeeps. Other men had been digging a long ditch, and the bodies were laid in rows; it looked as if a tribal war had been fought and lost.

Razaq saw the khan by the grave site, leaning on his shovel. Razaq approached him.

“Janab, could some men help me lift a tree off my father so I can bury him?” Razaq averted his eyes in respect as he spoke but tried not to look afraid. Everyone knew khans could be moody and might order you killed if they decided you deserved it. But the thought of his father alone on the mountain at the mercy of wild dogs had haunted him all morning, and he kept his chin high.

Something flickered in the khan’s eyes as he looked at Razaq’s face. Then he called to two older boys. “Hussain, Abdul, go with him. Take your shovels.” The order came with a movement of his head and hand.

The boys slung their AK-47s over their shoulders and joined Razaq. He was so tired he felt like dropping to the ground to sleep, but he had to bury his father. As they began to ascend the pathway up the mountain, he looked back to find the khan staring after him.

“Did you lose many in your family?” the shorter boy, Hussain, asked as they walked with slow, long strides.

“All.” Razaq’s tone was terse.

“You should come with us then, shouldn’t he, Abdul?”

Razaq glanced at him. “Why?”

“We are being trained to fight. We keep the mountains safe from militants.”

“Don’t you have a family?” Razaq asked.

“In Swat, I have a family,” Abdul said. “I miss them, but this is good work. One day, I shall make some money and send it back to them.”

“I don’t want to fight,” Razaq said.

All he wanted right then was to do what his father had done, and his father before him: live on the mountain in peace, keep sheep and goats, and grow corn. Marry Feeba, too. He squeezed his eyes shut as the images from the madrasah finally brought the tears.

Hussain and Abdul strode behind him. It wasn’t unusual to see men cry openly when someone they loved died.

The boys grunted and strained as they used the shovels as levers to pry up the tree and roll it off Razaq’s father. Razaq hesitated when he saw his father’s injuries.

“Come,” Hussain said. “We must dig.”

For the next hour, Razaq had no energy to think about what his father had suffered. It was a mercy the ground was soft. They laid his father inside the earth. The boys waited while Razaq checked his father’s pockets and found the purse. He took the tarveez from his father’s neck and tied it around his own; he gently unbuckled the sandals from his father’s feet and put them on. Then they covered him. Razaq brought rocks and laid them on top.
That should stop the jackals
. He stood and stared at the grave. This was the land his father had worked; now it was his portion. Could he build another house? It seemed too difficult a task.

He thought of the words that were said when baby Tameem died. “Allahu Akbar, God is great,” he murmured.

They heard a wild dog howl.

“We must go,” Abdul said with a quick glance up the mountain. “It is getting late.”

The moon was high when the boys reached the village. Razaq thanked them and sought out Mrs. Daud. She was still awake, laying blankets over plastic on the ground. Her face was tear streaked, and her hair had fallen down. He felt sorry for her: she had lost everyone as he had, but she had rarely gone out of the house, and here she must feel so exposed.

“I was given some chapattis, beta,” she said when she saw him. “Here, I kept two for you.”

She handed them to him in a daze. Razaq wasn’t even sure if she knew who he was.

He lay on the ground nearby, wrapped a blanket around himself, and put some chapatti in his pocket to eat in the morning before the fast began. He wished he had his shawl his mother had woven for him. It was much warmer than the blanket.

During the night, a man walked by and lingered near Mrs. Daud. Razaq sat up and the man moved on. He decided then he would stay with her: she needed him, just as his mother would have.

The next day, two things happened: an army truck trundled into the village, and in its wake came a jeep of aid workers. The villagers called them Angrez. Razaq heard some men saying the Angrez shouldn’t be there, that they would have to leave. Both groups gave out tents. Razaq stood in line at the army truck, but there was much pushing and shoving. Twice Razaq fell out of line—he was not big enough to fight a grown man, and besides, he had been taught to respect his elders. To see men acting like this troubled him. Some men took two tents. Finally, by persistence alone, Razaq managed to get one for Mrs. Daud. With it came a saucepan, a spoon, and two tin cups.

Mrs. Daud gave him a small smile when she saw the tent. “I did not want to sleep in the cold again. You are a good boy and young enough to sleep in it with me.”

Razaq thought he probably wasn’t, but his lack of mustache made him seem younger. He recalled how Uncle Javaid had shaved his beard off on purpose. “Men in the cities do that,” he had said to Razaq after another argument with Razaq’s father.

The Angrez had set up some tents and were giving out food packages. Most of the tribal men were fighting for flour near the army truck. A soldier stood by with a rifle cocked, shouting at them to form a line. Razaq had never seen mountain men stand in a line and didn’t think much of the soldier’s chances of succeeding. Very few men had gone near the Angrez, and Razaq decided to see what was happening at their tents.

First, he saw a woman, younger than his mother, but with strange reddish-brown hair as if she had put henna in it. Her shawl kept falling off her head. Even Layla, his youngest sister, could keep a shawl on. The woman smiled at him, but he didn’t smile in return. He was definitely too old to be smiling at young women; her husband may beat him. He’d seen a man kill a stranger for speaking to his wife.

The woman said something, but he didn’t understand. A white-skinned man joined her, and Razaq stiffened. Would he think he had been talking to the woman? She said the strange words to the man, and he turned to Razaq and smiled as well. This time Razaq allowed a tentative smile back.

“You are welcome,” the man said in Urdu. “We have programs for young people like you since you have lost your school. Come tomorrow—we will teach you Angrezi, English. It will help you get a job.”

Razaq took more notice when he heard the word “job,” though he didn’t think much of the rest of what the man had said. How young did they think he was? He hadn’t been to the madrasah since he was twelve, and even then his attendance was sporadic. He checked the animals, milked the goats, and only then went to the madrasah if he had time. He used to memorize his verses while he was working; if he got them wrong the teacher would beat him with a stick. The old teacher always called him by his full name: Abdur-Razaq. It was as if he thought it a sin to shorten it to Razaq as his family had done.

“Here’s some food for today.” The Angrez man gave him a small bag of flour and some salt and tea. “Small bags are best,” he said, “then no one will notice.”

Razaq wondered what he meant until he saw a man beaten up on the path and his big army bag of flour snatched. He managed to deliver the food to Mrs. Daud intact. She was weeping again and still hadn’t started a fire, so Razaq went to find wood. When he returned, Mrs. Daud sniffed.

“If my husband were here . . .” She broke off, then said, “But you are here now, beta, thank you.”

Razaq was uncomfortable with her calling him her son. Older women often called boys his age “beta,” but Mrs. Daud sounded as though she truly believed he was her son. What if he needed to return to his land and rebuild the house? Would she let him go?

That day, Razaq’s time was spent collecting wood, bringing water from the river, and jostling in lines for more food. The army didn’t stay but appointed an elder in the village to administer the food they had brought. Razaq found it had been easier to get food at the Angrez tents, even though he knew many of the men distrusted them.

The following day, he ignored the Angrez man’s invitation to learn English and helped search for bodies instead. The local khan estimated more than half of the people in the village and surrounding tribal areas had died in the earthquake. Since the maulvi had also died, his son, Wazir Ahmad, led the prayers outside the mosque. Although the building still stood, it was deemed too dangerous to use because of the aftershocks.

“Almost everyone died in Balakot,” Wazir Ahmad said. “Allah be praised not all of us have died here, but winter is coming soon. We must help each other to rebuild.”

“But how?” one man called out. “We have no materials, no money.”

“We can use the stone from the broken houses,” another man said.

“If you have a stone house. Mine was mud.”