Fibs and Fables

Chapter 2

Anwar Khan sat at the edge of his seat, gently massaging the strained muscles in his neck. They were nearing the fifth hour of the Panchayat. An impending sense of doom settled over them. He subtly looked around, trying to gauge the expressions of all the attendees for the millionth time since they started.

There was not much to anticipate; everyone knew how this meeting would end, but it did not soothe the tension in each of their veins. The Panchayat was established as an ode to democracy, a place where anyone could express their concerns and grievances. But the villagers usually did not approach the Panchayat on their own; they went to the heads of their respective clans, and it was the leaders who usually brought up the subjects in the official meetings. Though the Panchayat was deemed a self-governing body, just like any institution, it too had to bow its head when it came to power and money, which meant that the verdicts were most often made by the Khans and Maliks. He had to acknowledge that neither party has ever explicitly abused its power before. But looking at Zubair, the supposed future heir of the Maliks, he knew that an era of corrupt power was just around the corner.

Today, there were no petty thefts or property disputes for them to pass verdicts on. It was the good old Malik vs. Khan drama. Anwar could not remember a more tumultuous time than this during the last few decades. He had believed that the two clans had set aside their differences and moved on for the greater good. He could not have been any farther from the truth.

Anwar's eyes settled on Malik Mukhtar, his visage marred with worry lines and tension. The Malik head had always been a proud man, proud of his bloodline but never arrogant, someone who stood along with his people, someone who stood beside his brother when they strived to revolutionize their system. But time hasn't been kind to him.

The whispers about the power imbalance in the Malik family had long reached his ears. And he, along with most of their men, knew that Malik Mukhtar had no hand in the recent developments. But as the head of the clan, he was still being prosecuted when the real perpetrator lounged beside him, his mouth spitting fire and poison.

It was pathetic to see a future heir trying to hide his incompetence beneath his arrogance. His ignorance was fueling his misplaced anger—the same anger that had burned down three of their safe houses and one of their fields under the cover of night.

It was known to everyone that it was Zubair Malik's men that had torched the fields last month, but their men had been a little too late. Drowsy and disoriented, by the time the villagers and guards had reached them, the hooligans had escaped, the starless night eluding the culprits and thus leaving them with no concrete evidence to point their fingers at the Maliks. Then the pattern continued, with the rats finding inopportune moments to light up the safehouses closest to their borders. They had lost fifteen sacks of grain and three dozen sacks of seeds. And at last, they were caught red-handed in the middle of trying to burn down the cold storage.

A few days in their custody, and the men even confessed about the jaggery they stole from their mother's kitchen. They did the same today, confessing to every little crime and on whose orders they did it, and unsurprisingly, the blame fell squarely on Zubair Ali's shoulders. Anwar watched as the younger man's face twisted in indignation; his eyebrows scrunched, highlighting the jagged scar that he had somehow obtained in the last year.

"Lies. This is a forced confession. They might have tortured my men for all these days and finally wrenched this false confession to smear dirt on the Malik name."

"There are eyewitnesses who caught your men in the act of arson," one of the jury members chimed in.

Anwar tsked, there was no point in preaching reason to a raging bull; they were uncouth creatures blinded by anger and driven by a thirst for violence.