For years afterwards the men of Shirmal spoke of Bombur Yambarzal’s great, and unusually selfless, feat. By turning their familiar world of pots and pans into an effigy of horror, by sacrificing his own much-treasured dignity and pride, by insulting them with the weapon of himself, he awoke them from their strange waking sleep, the powerful hypnotic spell woven by the harsh seductive tongue of Bulbul Fakh. No, they would not arise against their neighbors, they told him, they would remain themselves, and the only creatures they would slaughter would be animals meant for tables at which people were celebrating moments of private joy. When Bulbul Fakh saw that he had lost the day, that his knifelike clarity had been blunted by Yambarzal’s obfuscating creation of a comic grotesque, he went without a word into his residential quarters and came out with nothing more than the ragged bundle he had carried on the day of his arrival in Shirmal. “You blockheads aren’t ready for me yet,” he said. “But the war that is beginning will be long, and necessary, too, because its enemy is godlessness, immorality and evil, and thanks to the corrupt heart of man in general and unbelieving kafirs in particular that is a war that cannot easily be brought to an end. When your hearts are open to me, at that time I may return.”
Bombur Yambarzal had never married and now that he was past fifty he no longer expected to find a bride. But in the eyes and faces of some of the matrons who watched him as he marched clanging and dripping back to the kitchens to take off the silly armor of righteousness and peace, he saw something he had not seen in women’s eyes and faces before: that is to say, affection. The widow of a recently deceased sub-waza, Hasina Karim, known as Harud, “Autumn,” on account of her red-tinged hair, a handsome woman with two grown sons to take care of her material needs but nobody to fill her bed, accompanied him without being asked and helped him take off his pots and pans and wash the chicken blood from his skin. When they were done Bombur Yambarzal attempted for the first time in his life to flatter a member of the opposite sex. “Harud is the wrong name for you,” he told her, meaning to continue, “They should call you Sonth, because you look as young as the Spring.” But anxiety made his mouth foolish, and sonth, to his great discomfiture, came out as sonf. “Because you look as young as aniseed” was an idiotic remark, obviously. Embarrassed, he flushed deeply. “I like it that you’re clumsy with compliments,” she consoled him, seriously, touching his hand. “I never trusted men who were too smooth with words.”
In spite of the waza’s boldness, there was a tragedy that day. Unknown to everyone except Bulbul Fakh, three young men, the sparsely bearded Gegroo brothers, Aurangzeb, Alauddin and Abulkalam, a trio of disaffected, layabout young rodents whom Bombur did not trust to do much at banquets except wash the dishes, had slipped out of the mosque the back way and headed for Pachigam, looking for trouble, and giving themselves courage from a bottle of dark rum of which Bulbul Fakh would most certainly have disapproved. Much later that night, under cover of darkness, they slipped back into Shirmal and locked themselves into the empty mosque. They were just in time. Before dawn broke, the immense figure of Big Man Misri the carpenter arrived in Shirmal on horseback, with axes in his belt and rifles slung across his shoulders. “Gegroos!” he yelled as he galloped into town, rousing all those villagers who were still asleep. “You have met my daughter, and now you must meet your God.”
Zoon Misri had been raped. She had been on her way to Khelmarg to gather flowers when it happened. She had been dragged off the hill path into the forest and held down on the rough ground and brutalized, and even though a sack had been thrown over her head she had easily identified her three assailants by their whiny, nasal Gegroo voices, which were unmistakable even though the brothers were horribly drunk. “If we can’t get the blasphemous whore herself,” she heard Aurangzeb say, “then her prettiest friend will do fine.” “Too fine,” Alauddin had assented, “she was always too stuck up to look back at the likes of us,” and the youngest, Abulkalam, concluded, “Well, Zoon, we see you now.” After the rape her assailants ran off giggling. She found the strength to walk, bruised and torn, down the hill to Pachigam, where in a frighteningly level voice she confided all the details of the assault to Boonyi, Gonwati and Himal, not daring to tell her father (her mother being some years deceased), and even though they comforted her and bathed her and told her she had no reason to be ashamed she said she could not imagine remaining alive with them inside her, with the memory of their intrusion, with their seed. Boonyi, dreadfully weighed down by the feeling that Zoon had suffered in her stead, that the wounds inflicted on her friend had been meant for herself, was the one who told the carpenter the news. Big Man Misri did little to relieve her of this burden. As he saddled his horse he told her, “The three of you keep her alive. It’s up to you. Get it? If she dies I’ll be asking you why.” Then he vanished into the night as fast as his horse could take him.
When the Gegroo brothers sobered up they realized that as a consequence of their stupidity their lives had suddenly become worthless, and their only hope was to remain within the sanctuary of the mosque until the army or the police showed up and restrained Zoon’s father from crucifying them, chopping them to bits or whatever else he might be planning by way of revenge. Big Man Misri did indeed have a number of vile fates in mind for each of the three Gegroos, and when he informed the gathering Shirmalis of the nature of the ratty brothers’ crime nobody had the heart to dissuade him. However, the consensus of opinion was that the carpenter should not violate the sanctity of the mosque. Big Man Misri tethered his horse to a tree and shouted to the Gegroo brothers, “I’ll be waiting here whenever you decide to come out, even if it takes me twenty years.”
Aurangzeb, the eldest Gegroo, attempted bravado. “It’s three to one and we’re heavily armed,” he yelled back. “You’d better look out for yourself.” “If you come out one at a time,” mused Big Man Misri, “I’ll slice you like kababs. If you all come out I’ll certainly get two of you before you get me, and you don’t know which two that will be.” “Besides,” added Bombur Yambarzal, angrily, “it isn’t three against one. It’s you three little shits against every able-bodied man in these parts.” The men of Shirmal had ringed the building to make escape impossible. After a few hours a jeepload of military police did arrive and warned all present that violence would not be tolerated, a warning which everyone ignored. “By the way,” Bombur shouted to the terrified Gegroos, “no food or drink will be brought to you. So let’s see how long you last.”
The sky screamed as invisible warplanes scarred it with savage white lines. There were battles beyond the border near Uri and Chhamb, where Colonel Kachhwaha, unaware of the siege of Shirmal, was earning his battle spurs. The war between India and Pakistan had begun. It lasted for twenty-five days. During every minute of that time, except for the small intervals required for him to perform his natural functions behind a nearby bush, Big Man Misri like a rock squatted outside the door of Bulbul Fakh’s mosque with his saddle by his side. Food was brought to him from the kitchens of Shirmal, and a kindly young village syce stabled, fed and exercised his horse. A steady stream of visitors from Pachigam brought him news of Zoon, who was living with the Nomans, acting quiet and docile, and even smiling once or twice. The men of Shirmal took turns sitting with Big Man, and the police, too, worked shifts. And gradually the voices emanating from inside the mosque fell silent. The Gegroos had threatened, complained, cajoled, wept, ranted, quarreled, apologized and begged, but they had not emerged.