Read Online The World is a Carpet by Anna Badkhen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anna Badkhen
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sky and vanished over Uzbekistan’s airspace. Soon the tanker was also gone.
The villagers talked about that for a few days, too.
O ne bleak cold morning, on a quest for diversion, a small deputation of men and women crammed into Choreh Gul’s threadbare house. She was sitting on her haunches by the bukhari , trying to keep warm. Her youngest son, Zakrullah, squirmed next to her on a blanket quilted from old rags.
The neighbors watched Choreh Gul reach inside her dress of blue and white rayon and pull out a pendulous right breast. Barren. No milk at all. Sucked dry by life on this loess ridge that jutted out of a desert just as barren. By days of dividing up pittances of rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner among her family. By her five other children. You see? Choreh Gul pitched forward and, kneeling now, lifted her deflated breast by a pinch of pale skin. She dangled it like a white flag of defeat. She looked down at it accusingly. As though she hoped to shame it into lactating. Then she tucked it inside the dress again, sat back on her haunches, shrugged.
A pathetic thing, this breast.
The neighbors murmurously agreed.
Zakrullah, for whom this useless breast was intended, writhed soundlessly, naked from the waist down. Forty days old and hungry. Loose and wrinkled and spookily old skin drooped from his angular pelvis. His shirt and two quilt coats tinkled with the coins Choreh Gul had sewn onto his clothes to ward off evil spirits. His scalp and forehead glowed a fluorescent fuchsia from the permanganate solution with which she had slathered his head. She thought maybe it would help with his headaches. She thought maybe he had headaches. And even if he didn’t, the permanganate solution and the amulets were the best she could do for Zakrullah. Since she had no milk.
Zakrullah coughed once.
The neighbors nodded at the baby in a kind of unsurprised resignation. They agreed that he, indeed, was quite ill. They agreed that nothing could be done for him: no woman in Oqa had enough milk to spare for someone else’s infant, and no one had the time or the means to take him to the free doctor in Dawlatabad. They also agreed that most newborns in Oqa looked like that after a few weeks, and many of them survived.
L ate-winter wind blew merciless and raw, and drew a gunmetal sheet of clouds over the melancholy plains. Half a dozen dust devils moored the gray land to the gray sky. The wind had brought a biting drizzle like myriad glass shards to Mazar-e-Sharif, bleached the city of color, slathered it with ankle-deep mud. The Hindu Kush floated above low clouds like brushstroke mountains in a Japanese ink miniature.
But in Oqa, not a drop fell. Not even to spot the slate dust, let alone coax new plants out of it, and the village goats had just about denuded whatever forage was left in the threadbare wasteland.
“I don’t know,” Amanullah had said that morning, screwing up his strabismic eyes. As though his squinting could have squeezed some green out of the cold, sheet-iron plains. “Must be something wrong with us.”
Qaqa Satar’s Toyota jerked and squeaked over tussocks and ruts in this bleak desert. In the backseat Choreh Gul was carsick. She had never been in a car before. From time to time, Qaqa Satar would stop the car, and she would get out and vomit discreetly, as only a woman in a burqa could. Then she would gather up the wind-whipped and billowing nylon ruches of her veil and climb back into the car and take Zakrullah from her husband’s lap, and Qaqa Satar would slowly depress the gas pedal again. Another half a mile conquered. Zakrullah was going to the doctor after all.
Choreh Gul had greeted my idea that Zakrullah should travel to the government hospital in Dawlatabad in Qaqa Satar’s car with little enthusiasm. It seemed like a chore. It seemed like a very long journey for just one child—and what to do with the other five, two girls and three boys, while she was away? Also, her husband
The villagers talked about that for a few days, too.
O ne bleak cold morning, on a quest for diversion, a small deputation of men and women crammed into Choreh Gul’s threadbare house. She was sitting on her haunches by the bukhari , trying to keep warm. Her youngest son, Zakrullah, squirmed next to her on a blanket quilted from old rags.
The neighbors watched Choreh Gul reach inside her dress of blue and white rayon and pull out a pendulous right breast. Barren. No milk at all. Sucked dry by life on this loess ridge that jutted out of a desert just as barren. By days of dividing up pittances of rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner among her family. By her five other children. You see? Choreh Gul pitched forward and, kneeling now, lifted her deflated breast by a pinch of pale skin. She dangled it like a white flag of defeat. She looked down at it accusingly. As though she hoped to shame it into lactating. Then she tucked it inside the dress again, sat back on her haunches, shrugged.
A pathetic thing, this breast.
The neighbors murmurously agreed.
Zakrullah, for whom this useless breast was intended, writhed soundlessly, naked from the waist down. Forty days old and hungry. Loose and wrinkled and spookily old skin drooped from his angular pelvis. His shirt and two quilt coats tinkled with the coins Choreh Gul had sewn onto his clothes to ward off evil spirits. His scalp and forehead glowed a fluorescent fuchsia from the permanganate solution with which she had slathered his head. She thought maybe it would help with his headaches. She thought maybe he had headaches. And even if he didn’t, the permanganate solution and the amulets were the best she could do for Zakrullah. Since she had no milk.
Zakrullah coughed once.
The neighbors nodded at the baby in a kind of unsurprised resignation. They agreed that he, indeed, was quite ill. They agreed that nothing could be done for him: no woman in Oqa had enough milk to spare for someone else’s infant, and no one had the time or the means to take him to the free doctor in Dawlatabad. They also agreed that most newborns in Oqa looked like that after a few weeks, and many of them survived.
L ate-winter wind blew merciless and raw, and drew a gunmetal sheet of clouds over the melancholy plains. Half a dozen dust devils moored the gray land to the gray sky. The wind had brought a biting drizzle like myriad glass shards to Mazar-e-Sharif, bleached the city of color, slathered it with ankle-deep mud. The Hindu Kush floated above low clouds like brushstroke mountains in a Japanese ink miniature.
But in Oqa, not a drop fell. Not even to spot the slate dust, let alone coax new plants out of it, and the village goats had just about denuded whatever forage was left in the threadbare wasteland.
“I don’t know,” Amanullah had said that morning, screwing up his strabismic eyes. As though his squinting could have squeezed some green out of the cold, sheet-iron plains. “Must be something wrong with us.”
Qaqa Satar’s Toyota jerked and squeaked over tussocks and ruts in this bleak desert. In the backseat Choreh Gul was carsick. She had never been in a car before. From time to time, Qaqa Satar would stop the car, and she would get out and vomit discreetly, as only a woman in a burqa could. Then she would gather up the wind-whipped and billowing nylon ruches of her veil and climb back into the car and take Zakrullah from her husband’s lap, and Qaqa Satar would slowly depress the gas pedal again. Another half a mile conquered. Zakrullah was going to the doctor after all.
Choreh Gul had greeted my idea that Zakrullah should travel to the government hospital in Dawlatabad in Qaqa Satar’s car with little enthusiasm. It seemed like a chore. It seemed like a very long journey for just one child—and what to do with the other five, two girls and three boys, while she was away? Also, her husband
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