i The Qur’an in fact states that sick people, travelers and warriors on jihad may break their fast and make it up later. Suleiman, therefore, would have been triply justified in taking the medicine.
j Mr. William is an unbeliever, not a Muslim.
13. ON THE TRAIN (1982)
Hail Red Army in Afghanistan! Down with Islamic reaction! No to the veil! Extend gains of October Revolution to the Afghan peoples!
At the end of his voyage he took the Khyber Mail back to Karachi — second class this time, for financial reasons (cost: about Rs. 103). It brought back to mind his nightmares of the Karachi railway station, City and Cantt — the wild-eyed woman holding out a hand and bringing it slowly to her mouth, then stretching it out again, saying, “Give me only for food — only for food!”; the soft, persistent “Hello, mister? Hello? Hey, mister!” gradually increasing in volume as the Young Man walked past until it became a desperate shout, the faces of the red-uniformed coolies contorting with rage when he clung to his pack, and always people staring, staring at him, moving in like flies if he so much as slackened his step, old men bellowing offers of hotels and rides and hashish, filthy kids standing there with waiting palms, and all of them crying out to him to help them, until for frustration he could have killed them.
The Khyber Mail, anyhow, was packed even worse than usual, it being the Eid holiday at the close of Ramazan. Second class was just wooden benches. Men slept braced between seat tops and the luggage rack, the rest of their bodies entirely in space; or piled on the floor, pushing at each other in their sleep. To go to the latrine you had to step on heads or fingers. (There was no toilet paper; the doorknob was slippery with shit.) If you were lucky enough to be sitting on a bench, two or three heads were heavy against your ankles like cannonballs; someone else casually slung his legs up on your shoulders; a third had his head on your thigh — and stretched full-length on the bench was another sleeper, anyhow, so that everyone else on it, including you, had to sit an inch from the edge. When the Young Man couldn’t stand it anymore he got down on the floor with the others. A man pressed up against him fiercely in sleep, pushing him at a slant against the faces of other sleepers. He slept for half an hour. Then finally when he couldn’t stand it anymore there, either, he sat up on the floor. Above him, in the little space where he had been sitting, was a stack of feet originating from all directions — five or six pairs of feet, each on top of the others.
An acquaintance invited him into an upper berth. He accepted with alacrity, for there were little army-green fans up there, on the ceiling. He discovered immediately, however, that they did nothing. When he put his hand right against the grille he could barely feel any disturbance in the air.
“Are you married?” his companion asked shyly.
“Soon,” he said.
This evidently excited the fellow, for the Young Man felt his hand poking slyly in his ribs. It was 3:00 a.m. He reached out to push the hand away and found it to be the foot of another aerial slumberer.
The instant he had gotten on the train (the General’s son Zahid had driven him to the station and found his coach for him), sweat began to run down his face, as with everyone else’s, so humid with bodies it was in there. During the two nights of the journey it only got worse. Every time the train stopped, the fans stopped and the lights faded to red-eyed bulbs. It was an express train, so, unlike the Yugoslavian trains of that appellation, it didn’t stop at every single station — it stopped at every station but two. He got desperately thirsty. Few pleasures of beauty or love, or any other, are as wonderful as the satisfaction of thirst; few needs are more tormenting. At those midnight stops, sometimes he’d see (in the larger towns of the Punjab) a man presiding like a bartender over Fanta and Coca-Cola, the bottles not even cold the way they were in the daytime when musclebound old men with sad faces walked up and down the trains, carrying buckets filled with drinks in ice and crying — “Bottali! Bottali! Soda! Yaukh!”* (“bottali” sounding to him like beetles or insects) — no, now there was just the filthy, hazy, soggy night as they trundled on and on through the farmland province, and the man seated behind the counter with his bottles would refuse to come to the train window — and there was no predicting how long they might stay at any one station — fifteen minutes? half a minute? — so climbing out the window was very risky and he never did it.
On his trip back to the base from the raid, the Young Man traveled with four friends who had given up their jihad for his sake. (In every respect, it seemed, he was a burden.) The way was very steep for the last two hours; it was der möskel, very difficult. When he began to fall behind, he told them to go on; presently he was all alone, and walking among unfamiliar hills. He thought: Oh, God, I’m lost in Afghanistan, and with no water. But he kept on walking; and after a while he recognized a landmark, a view he’d stared at through his telephoto for days as he looked toward the tanks, so he kept going until the angle of vision was right, and he saw the beginning of the forested mountains and knew that he had made it. —China, china, he kept saying to himself, licking his lips: —Spring, spring.
Suddenly he saw two of his companions a hundred feet below him. It was almost sunset. —“Asalamu alaykum,” he said. They had been wandering all over the hills looking for him. — “Ouilliam, Ouilliam,” they sighed tolerantly. — He expressed his apologies. — One of his friends helped him down the last hill with his strong hand. The Young Man was in an agony of thirst. He kissed the Mujahid’s hand with his bloody lips. At the china he drank a quart of obuh, then settled back for serious and attentive consumption. As he walked the last hundred yards to the spring, he had kept thinking: I’m so happy, I’m so happy, I’m so happy.
Now on the train he was not as thirsty as that, but still he was thirsty, and it was hard to think of anything else in the world. They stopped at a little station, and a banana seller came by. The Young Man hissed, the way the Pakistanis did.
“Hello,” the banana seller said in English.
Bananas were safe; you could peel them. And they would be moist inside. There was a great cracking lump in his throat.
“Bananas,” he croaked, not knowing the Punjabi word.
The vendor went back to his cart and pushed it away, walking down the tracks to the next car. The Young Man hissed and hissed, without any luck. Finally the train began to move slowly away from the station, and he passed the man again. He held out a five-rupee note pathetically. The banana seller stared at him, said something, and thrust a giant bunch of bananas into his hand — it must have been forty or so. The train went on. Evidently most people used a one-rupee note for that transaction.
A few of his compartment mates had woken up, and they laughed at him and his many bananas good-humoredly. “Okay,” they said to him delightedly. “Okay.”
The bananas were juicy and sweet. He ate about twenty of them right away to satisfy his thirst, and gave most of the remainder away over the hours.
One man had a flute. He played sitting on a seat top. The flute was gorgeously carved and painted with rings of color.
“You like?” the flute player said when he found that the Young Man could speak a little Pushtu.