Читать книгу The Track of the Wind - Jamila Gavin - Страница 6

In this age of darkness

Men have become as dogs. Rag Sarang

A man came to Deri. The few people who glimpsed him on the way said he was a monster. He had been beaten till his bones were shattered and he had been so badly burned that his face was nothing but a smudge – with eyes that could not close, a nose reduced to two holes and a mouth which was merely a slit. He looked like a badly made rag doll. So he draped himself with a shawl – even when the sun was at its hottest – and wound the loose end of his turban round his face.

He came by foot – travelling alone. Invisibly.

He learned to be as unnoticed as a brown lizard against the brown earth. By day he merged perfectly into the background, by night he slept rough in fields and ditches, or in the disused bungalows of departed Britishers. He walked for months and months, begging for food or getting the hospitality of gurudwaras on the way. At last, he came to his own land.

Day after day, he hung about in the fringes of the undergrowth watching the life of the village. He peered through his painful unshielded eyes at those who worked the soil beyond the sugar-cane fields. He took up residence within the ruins of the old palace by the lake, considered too haunted for people to frequent, and bided his time.