Belonging .
Hawah never returned. This was only the beginning. Raids steadily increased and with them, more bodies. Those who weren’t killed were captured by enemy tribes, into marriage or servitude.
On the morning of the winter solstice, weeks after Haj’s burial, Uma handed me her finest, thinnest dagger to hide down my breeches.
‘If they take you, you will need this,’ she explained.
I handled the needle-like blade, my heart buzzing. ‘But I cannot win against older warriors. Besides, I am better with a bow and arrow. Or with my birds.’
She smiled bitterly. ‘It’s not to fight, foolish child.
When they capture you, they will use you – as a servant, and a body.
They’ve done it before, to plant fear in the rest of us.
Our enemies are the bordering clans allied with the rival empire.
They want to conquer these lands, so they conquer the people first, including their bodies.
When they take you, grab this knife, my child. ’
‘And then what do I do, Uma?’
‘Slice it right here,’ she said, gentler and warmer to ease the cold suggestion, pointing at her own throat. ‘It will end your life, and that is better. The enemy will never be able to keep you.’
I nodded, but a profounder thought hit me. Studying the sorrow lacing Uma’s eyes, had the enemy once captured her?
Instead of asking, I accepted the blade.
Her words haunted me in the gloaming that evening as I was fastening rope around stone, my twin buzzards soaring in circles from my shoulders to the fir trees.
Babshah Khatun came beside me. ‘Enough with this.’ She pulled my hands aside. ‘Today is a festive occasion, and our tribe is mourning. They need hope.’
I hesitated, glancing around. Because of the first raid, the flooded dam spoiled our pastures.
A drought followed. With harvest diminished, trade with nearby villages at a loss, tributary taxes heightened, settlers from the west eating away at any good grasslands, and our herd thin.
. . . famine was becoming a mounting problem.
‘Hope will not feed the animals nor line our stomachs.’
In response, Babshah kicked the stones, and the buzzards cawed above us.
‘Babshah,’ I protested. ‘Uma says to prepare stones for the elders to tie around their stomachs, to stop hunger pangs.’
‘Nonsense,’ she said and stifled a yawn. She kicked at more rocks.
‘Nonsense?’ I gawked.
Earlier, I had caught Sheeth, my elder cousin, catching worms near the stream to fry.
Without being able to trade for stalks of milled wheat, we dried grass and white mud to a powdery dough and used it to make dumplings.
Two children died that night from hard stools.
My stomach felt heavy, as if a rock protruded from my gut.
Our only relief came from a flock of thin mares and pearl wheat cultivation around our river canals.
We’d always migrated in a circular pattern from southern winter to northern spring grasslands around Lake Xasha.
The khan had discussed migrating further for better pasture, but the rival clans at the end of the pass would never let us settle further.
Already they were hungry to conquer us, sniffing our weakened state.
‘Why does the khan not ask my dada, the emperor, for help?’
Babshah stilled. ‘Not that greedy fool.’
‘The emperor cannot be a fool.’
‘Gah.’ She batted her hands. ‘An overseer, a king – he could be God’s chosen one and my words will not change. He needs us more than we need him. We’re the important ones, guarding the routes here for his goods and tea trade, while fighting his enemies.’
‘Do you hate him?’
She looked thoughtful. Her girlish lashes cast shadows beneath her eyes.
‘No. As long as he leaves our tribe be after we pay him our tributaries. See, child, these emperors love our lands but are troubled at what to do with the people living on them. The seasons change, a new conqueror sweeps in, uses our trade, turns our clans against each other, tells us to attack for their sake and defend their borders, and when they’re overthrown, the next overseer comes in and does the same.
I’ve had enough of empires and soldiers. ’
‘You married a khan.’
She ducked her head, smiling behind a curtain of dark braids. ‘I was thirteen years and he was as young too. But my khan swore he was an honourable boy and look at him now. Unlike the emperor, the khan’s greed has limits. He is a good man.’
‘The emperor must be a good man too. He’s my dada.’
‘Perhaps. I once reasoned with your uma to refuse to wed him, but if she hadn’t wed him, would you be born?’
I couldn’t understand much of her words at the time, about the politics of conquerors. I did understand though that only Babshah was daring enough to slander the most powerful man of our lands. I lifted my hands to hide my grin. ‘I’m happy I was born.’
Babshah smiled wistfully. ‘As am I. Now what of my idea, child? Let us feed the tribe hope with a story.’
‘A story won’t feed us,’ I grumbled.
‘Hope is its own sustenance,’ she said softly. Her grey eyes, like weak milk-tea, warmed my soul. ‘Tonight, we’ll remind them about the tale of the Raven and the Crane.’
I sighed and flattened my hand on my chest. ‘Order me, Babshah Khatun.’
That eventide, night struck like thunder, quick and loud – a storm cloud sweeping aside the light. I called out to my cousins from the centre of the yurts. Many of the older tribesmen trickled forward, keen on a tale to sweeten a bitter black winter’s night, for Babshah was to tell a story.
The clouds hung low, a thin rime to the air that stung my eyes.
The youngest clumped together before the blaze, fur shawls wrapped around their leathers.
I grabbed my beryl chador, a gift from Babshah’s girlhood, laying the veil atop my yak-wool cap, which clinked with beaded coins above my ceremonial mask.
Babshah too veiled herself before the tribes-people, as many chief folktellers did.
A blue scarf was knotted at the top, resting down her back; red beads and hawk feathers fringed down her forehead and a silver stone necklace nestled against her throat.
She sat herself at the front. Her heavy fur robes, worn and frayed, brought a comfort that eased the shoulders of the people.
The black sormeh around her eyes, the only feature outside the veil, made for a chilling stare.
It demanded the presence of even the wind, which sat and sighed for the tale.
My stomach dropped at seeing our tribe’s dwindled numbers. Once, humans lived as long as the people of Nuh, to over five hundred years. But in these days, people only lived to two hundred. With the famine and harsh alpine pastures, our tribe would be fortunate to make it past forty.
I stood beside Babshah on the frozen dirt.
She extended her arms. ‘In a time when the world was a babe and the Heavens spoke to mortals, there lived a great messenger named Prophet Nuh. With a heart as vast as the ocean and a voice that echoed through the ages, for ten centuries but fifty years less, he warned his nation of impending doom. Alas, they turned deaf ears. Do you know what came next?’
‘A Heavenly punishment!’ I sang.
‘Indeed,’ Babshah agreed, in a deceptively light voice.
‘The Divine opened the floodgates of Heaven and the sky sobbed upon the world. Even the clay vomited forth floodwaters, a mighty torrent that swept away humanity. Only Prophet Nuh and his faithful boarded the ark, sailing through waves that cleansed the world of its corruption. But few remember who else was on that ark. Show us, young daughter.’
I swung my arms. My gold-threading flashed before the firelight. My buzzard answered the call, shrilling as it flew around my head, its feathers drifting to the yellow grass. I hid my satisfaction.
The crowd leant in.
‘On Nuh’s ark were three birds sent by the Divine: a Heavenly Three-Headed Raven and a Heavenly Crane,’ I spoke.
‘Yet the third bird, the mighty Simorgh, wise beyond measure, soared above the ark, following its own path like us nomads, only to descend at the end of.. of an era—’ Something in my chest lurched, and my practised words stumbled.
I grabbed my throat, hoping the crowd didn’t notice.
Babshah continued, saving my mistake. ‘For centuries the ark drifted, until the floodwaters receded, and the clay emerged from the depths. The Heavenly Birds sighted land, and humanity on the ark settled upon the world again. For generations, the Heavenly Raven and the Heavenly Crane accompanied a clan from amongst Nuh’s virtuous descendants.
Using their Heavens-bestowed abilities, the birds defended the growing kingdoms, healing wounded, battling jinn-folk and black magick invaders.
But as prophets came and went, darkness crept once again into the hearts of men. ’
I fell and swooped and twirled with the hawk, our shadows against the firelight re-enacting the ancient battles. When the buzzard flapped over my head, I plucked loose a feather.
‘One day,’ Babshah said, ‘there was a monk who always fasted and paid alms-tax. His name was Eajīz. He was not privy to the matters of worldly men. But as humanity learnt black magick, and worshipped jinn-folk, naming them as deities, darkness spread. The Jinn Wars began. When his tribe was threatened, Eajīz, the monk, felt a calling to safeguard them. He prayed and recited the Divine’s seventy-seven names.
In answer, the Heavenly Crane and the Heavenly Raven each gifted a feather to that righteous monk.
But it was more than a humble gift, for the feather bestowed seventy-seven gold bonds that connected the monk’s body to the Heavens.
These bonds fed him an extraordinary power tied to a Heavenly virtue. Strong enough to rival even the jinn.