The Night Letter

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

There were fourteen other boys from the village going to the Deobandi school. Half the population came to see them off. Women were discouraged from attending since, among other reasons, cries of grief might distract from what was supposed to be a happy occasion. The cleric pinned flowers to the boys' shirts as if they were already dead and told them they would be closer to god when they learned the words of his prophet, Mohammed. Raham scanned the crowd and saw his father and wanted to see the blue figures of his mother and grandmother next to him but they were not there, only other men and he couldn't see Sultana either.

A truck was coming from down the road , dust obscuring it to the wheel wells so it looked like it was floating. "The cloud that will carry me away," Raham thought. The truck was festooned like a Hindu elephant like most of the other trucks but each one had its own unique patterns and Raham recognized this one as belonging to Talal, Sultana's step father. Now he knew he wouldn't see Sultana at all today because he never saw her when he was around.

Talal jumped down from the truck and the crowd cheered. Raham could think of no one less worthy of it. He always had the look of a starving dog scavenging through midden dumps. Talal pumped his forearm in the air as if he were holding a rifle. He lowered the tailgate of the truck and the boys, flowers still pinned to their shirts, disappeared into the gloomy cave of the cargo area. Raham felt the truck start, almost knocking him off his feet and everyone crowded the tailgate area, the only place with fresh air, to steady themselves, and to get their last look at the village. The truck was moving slowly so it was only gradually that the image shrank like a balloon being let of air, then disappeared.

The careful exit was just for show. Once the village was out of sight, Talal stopped the truck and jumped into the back without lowering the tailgate. He had to secure his cargo for the long journey. The bed of the truck was littered with bits of leather tack. The boys had left it where it was because it looked unusable. Talal picked up the twisted bits and tossed them to the boys, some of whom avoided them thinking it involved some kind of work they had no training or inclination to perform and some of the boys made an effort to catch them on the chance the alternative would be worse. Raham dodged the twisted leather knot aimed at him and the boy next to him picked it up by the two leads. He held the thing one way and then another. He turned the bit end inside out then back and did the same with the running end. Finally, he decided it was a harness, donned it like a vest, and secured himself to the wooden slats built into the side of the truck. Raham did not think he would have fared as well with the puzzle. The leather was worn smooth and white in places from the sweat of other human cargo and friction of use. It looked like the tack of a beast of burden and had probably been cast off from that purpose.

Two of the boys were Qari and Najib and they always wanted to be together. They were among the first to snatch their harnesses and helped to fix each other to the side of the truck. If another boy tried to get between them as space grew tighter, Qari would threaten to beat him up. He wasn't very big, smaller even than Najib but he was by far the fiercer of the two. Even the other boys who knew they could beat him didn't want to mess with him because they knew he wouldn't back down and they just didn't want a fight then and because Qari and Najib formed such an exclusive pair nobody wanted to come them. They shared what little food they had brought with them and even fed each other. They wiped the sweat from each other's eyes and the tightness from each others shoulders until the other boys quite regretted having no such partner. When one of the boys confronted them Qari bloodied his nose while Najib sat, legs crossed and did not move a muscle.

There were not enough leather harnesses to go around so some of the boys got rope. The solution spread through the cargo area and in an instant the twists were untwisted and tangles made straight and all the boys had secured themselves to the side of the truck except Raham who had never been good with knots or rope.