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THE LUCK OF THE THREE LEGGED DOG
I know, as I know my name is Nisram, that the three-legged dog is favored of Allah, for
the streets of
Basir Rashid, may Allah grant him peace, was my husband. He was a
godly man with only a few small vices. He was a man of business, diligent in
his work. From a stall of grand proportions in the market place, he sold
electronic things from the nation of
Allah blessed us with a son. We called him Akbar. Even while he yet suckled, I kept a stall of modest
size in the market, a mere table with a woven awning overhead and a blanket
alongside the table for overflow. I sold stacks of golden melons, pistachios
heaped in straw baskets either in the shell or out. Fruits,
vegetables, spices. The rosemary I grew myself. All around the women exclaimed
that my rosemary was unexcelled in the sweetness and strength of its savor.
The Russians came to
My husband was away when six policemen from the ministry
came to my stall in the market. Two of them drew me forth, and one knocked me
to the ground with his fists and stood over me while the others took or
destroyed my goods. I didn’t cry out until they trampled my rosemary underfoot.
Then the leader, swarthy and strong, smelling of sweat and tobacco, came
over. I said to him, “Sir, I don’t know
what offense I have committed.”
He spat upon the ground beside me and said in a voice so all
could hear, “Whore, hide thy shame.” He slashed me with the long stick he
carried, and I curled into a ball with my hands over my head. Akbar ran to help me. They stopped beating me and turned on
him, knocked him to the ground and handcuffed him to a post in the next stall,
then turned back to me. He cried out, “women will not
come forth without a burka! Women must not be seen in
public without a male relative!” With each command, he slashed me with his
stick. He grew weary of talking and beating at the same time, so he signaled
another who came and helped beat me while he continued to shout. “Women will
not go to school! They will not engage in commerce, for such leads to
fornication and whoredom and is a snare set by Satan for the unwary!” I wanted
to cry out, for it is true, “please, even The Prophet himself worked for a
woman of business, and later she became his wife.” But I dared not.
They turned on my son again. Not only had he intervened, but
also they said he had been listening to an audiocassette from his father’s
inventory. For his interference, they beat him with sticks while he was still
handcuffed to that pole. But for listening to the audiocassette, they loosened
his restraints, and cast him to the ground again, then they kicked him on his
ears, “…for you have defiled your ears! Allah does not love people who listen
to the music of the infidels and devils that issues
from audiocassettes!” Akbar died.
When Basir,
my husband returned, his son was dead, his wife sorely beaten, his shop and
goods destroyed or taken away by the vice police. He said nothing. He sat in his chair, hardly moving the day
through. In time, his cousin and some friends came and spoke to him, and told
him he must redeem his honor by going to the mountains and taking up arms
against the Taliban.
A month later, my husband’s cousin, wounded in his arm,
returned from the foothills of the
Tell me, what could a woman do, left alone in times such as
these? I could not even emerge from the house without a male relative at my
side, yet I had none in this place. Mr. Rassul Sayyuf came to my house. He is the man who, with his
brother, brought produce from the countryside in the pickup truck for me to
sell. Mr. Sayyuf, looking very sad, said I was a poor
widow woman, and for that reason he would help me. As he prepared to leave the
first time, first zipping up his trousers, he reached in his pocket and flung a
handful of coins toward me. They struck me as I lay naked upon my cot, and fell
to the floor and rolled about. The he was gone.
I wished my husband and my family were
back, and tore my hair and wept, and said I would rather be dead. Then I arose.
I saw some small thing moving in the street through the window. Still naked,
hugging myself, I squinted to see better. There was a
girl there, no more than three. She was squatting in the street. I leaned
closer to the window. She was picking
bits of grain from the manure of cows and camels that had traversed the street,
rubbing them with her fingers, then eating them. I
knew immediately that the child was a sign sent by God to remind me that Mr. Sayyuf’s presence had been of His will,
and that without him, I would have no bread. There is indeed no God but Allah,
and Allah forsakes not his own.
So Mr. Sayyuf is the father of my second son, Malik.
Mr. Yassuf, from the time of Malik’s
birth, has had little to do with him. I think that is because Malik is the issue of a whore. But he ceased to fling the handful
of coins toward me when he leaves. Now he leaves them on the table beside my
cot.
Malik is slender as a reed. He was a well-turned-out boy with
dark hair. He had hazel eyes. If mischief dwelt in those eyes, it was only in
small amounts.
The three-legged dog hopped about
in a hunching, vulgar way. The neighborhood children found this and the leering
smile amusing, so they threw tidbits on the ground before her to see her hop.
That is how Malik,
now six years old, was occupied on the day of his maiming. He had pilfered a
scrap of bread, and after rolling it between his palms to make it easier to
pitch, he threw it before the three-legged dog. It was at that moment, without
warning, that an aerial bomb exploded a block away. The aircraft that dropped it
flew so high it was neither seen nor heard.
I ran through the
smoke and dust to where he had played. I saw nothing but a clump of fabric and
gore. I went closer. It was Malik. His blood soaked
the clay of the street around him. His arms and legs were severed, and there
was only blood where his eyes had once been.
I gasped as I worked,
but I did not weep, nor did I cry out. I ripped bands of fabric from the hem of
my garment and wrapped them around the stumps of his limbs. I draped a strip
over the bridge of his nose. I looked at my hands. I wished that they were red
with my own blood instead of his. I wiped them on my burka.
I sat on the dirt beside him and hugged myself, for I didn’t know what else to
do. I shook as if it were very cold
Malik’s uncle came. He urged me into the back of the pickup truck, then passed Malik to me. I could
not look at Malik, so I looked at my burka. Already threadbare, now it was ripped at the hem and
streaked with blood. Torn fragments waved in the breeze as the truck gained
speed. I did not want to look at the burka, either.
So I looked into the distance as the truck rattled and bounced along toward the
hospital called Wazir Akbar
Khan.
***
Malik’s uncle arrived, the brakes squealing as he stopped in front
of my house. He sounded the horn of his truck. He only nodded as I gathered up
the hem of my burka and climbed up into the truck. He
released the brake and the engine roared and clattered as the truck lurched and
bounced forward to begin again the journey to the Hospital. Once there, I
followed Malik’s uncle through the gloom of the
corridor that led to the room where there were rows of cots with the sick and
injured on them. Malik lay on a low white cot at the
end of a row. He had bandages where his eyes once were and over the stumps of
his limbs.
“Malik?”
He awakened and began to shriek,
“Allah, the beneficent, the merciful, forgive my wickedness.” He called out in
a voice made shrill by his pain and terror.
“The dog! The dog, it is biting me very badly.
Someone please take it awa-a-a-ay. What evil did I do
that the dog would bite me so?” He became more confused, and moaned and babbled
in a language known to him alone. He wept as he spoke. his
tears leaking from under the bandage over his eyes.
The other patients cried out,
“Hush that small jackal’s howling that we may rest.” “Quiet,
banshee.” “In the name of Allah, silence!”
Malik’s uncle glowered at them, and stroked the boy’s fine black
hair. Malik began to toss from one side of his narrow
cot to the other. “MAMA, MAMA, where are you, Mama?” I gathered him to me. He
was too light to be my son. I glanced down, saw the shine of his hair, leaned
against him and remembered the scent of him. I rocked him, and whispered in his
ear the stories of how the elephant got his trunk, and of the crow that stole
the kings’ gold coin, and sang low to him of flowers that bloom in the desert
after the flood. He fell asleep.
“We must go,” his uncle said.
I first wiped the spittle from
the corner of Malik’s mouth, then rose and followed
him closely down the dark corridor of Hospital.
***
I heard Mr. Sayyuf’s truck coming before I saw it, for the muffler no
longer functioned. I peeped through the window and saw him. When he came
through the door, I was naked, recumbent on my cot, fingers interlaced behind
my head, legs splayed, for that was his preference.
He said nothing, nor
did I. He unzipped his trousers, and drew forth his penis. He was slight of
stature, and that which he drew forth was proportional to the rest of him, but
I gasped, shrank back as if I were about to be assailed by a bull. He looked at
me fiercely, wrinkled his brow, took a deep breath and squared his shoulders
before he fell upon me and thrust his organ into me. He grunted,
his movements like the hopping of the three-legged dog. I responded with moans,
first as if of pain, then as if of lust, as I undulated beneath him. He was
quickly done, withdrew and regained his feet.
I sat upon the edge
of my cot and said, “A bomb fell upon Malik. He is in
the hospital called Wazir Akbar
Khan.”
Mr. Sayyuf said nothing. He picked
up my blue burka from the floor and wiped his spent
and withered organ before dropping it back to the floor and rezipping.
Finally he said, “I know.” He reached into his pocket and laid the handful of
coins on the table of unplaned alder wood beside my
cot. He turned and strode toward the door. Then he stopped, turned and withdrew
a roll of bills from his pocket and counted off half a dozen. He hesitated, then
counted off four more. He stepped over and placed them on the table over the
coins. Then he turned and was gone. I
gathered up the money, held it tight, and peered through the window as his
truck roared down the street.
As Mr. Sayyuf, his truck going
ever faster, sped toward the end of the street, the three-legged dog hopped
directly into his path. The truck did not slow even one bit. I held my breath,
waiting to see the remnants of the dog emerge from beneath the truck’s path.
Then, at the very last instance, the dog somehow emerged from the near side,
the front wheel barely missing her.
That dog, I know, is favored of Allah, just as I know my
name is Nisram.
~
The above story was originally published in The
Watermark, Vol. X.
© John R. Guthrie
The
Chickasaw
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