Goat Days by Benyamin Read Free Book Online Page B

was to fill those tubs with water. So I did just that. Before he came back with the goats, I had filled the tub in that section.
    Similarly, I filled water in the third and fourth sections. It was not easy. My back began to ache from carrying the bucket filled with water. Besides, as the noon sun blazed, the heat became oppressive and I grew thirsty.
    When he was about to take the goats out from the next section, the arbab came out of the tent and told the scary figure something in Arabic. He concurred, nodding his head. Then the arbab came over and handed me a long stick. I received it with both myhands. It felt as though I was going through my initiation ceremony as a shepherd.
    Together we herded the goats towards the wilderness. After we had walked for some distance, the arbab clapped his hands to call me. I walked back to the tent where the arbab placed something in my hand. I looked at it—as far as I could make out, it was a pair of binoculars. I had no clue as to why he had given it to me. Thinking that it was meant to find runaway goats, I prepared to go back with it to the desert. ‘
Shuf … shuf
…’ the arbab prompted me to look through it. I was curious. I was holding a pair of binoculars for the first time in my life. I looked through its twin lenses. Oh, how clear everything looks! I marvelled. Objects that were kilometres away appeared so near, so clear. Even the marks on the goats were plainly visible. I looked all around. I was happy. ‘Shuf?’ the arbab asked. I nodded in agreement. He grabbed it from me and took it inside the tent.
    Then he lifted up the pillow and drew out a double-barrelled gun. He walked out and aimed at the sky. A bird was flying high up. He aimed at it and fired a shot. Bingo. The bullet hit the bird and it fell. The arbab smirked at me. I was petrified.
    ‘Shuf,’ the arbab repeated.
    I nodded.
    ‘Yella, roh …’
the arbab pushed me after the goats.
    That moment, I realized that my life had become inescapably bound to those goats.

Eleven
    Casting off the previous night’s thoughts of escape, I walked into the desert. I remember: it was only sheer emptiness that filled me then.
    The scary figure was far ahead of me by that time. I looked at the desert stretching out before me. This place was quite different from deserts I had heard about or seen in pictures. The word evokes in us waves of sand. But it was nothing like that. It was all hard soil and boulders. I had seen a similar landscape when I had been to the eastern parts of Kerala. There was only one difference. And a big one. Unlike in our place, where vines spread through the rocks and sand, there was not a speck of green here. It was a sterile wasteland. I could not help but wonder why these goats were taken out. Though the goats were instinctively sniffing for grass on the ground, they got nothing.
    After a while, I caught up with the scary figure. Leaving the goats to roam, the scary figure sat on aboulder. I sat on another—I didn’t have anything to do, and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to ask him about so many things. But how? The only language that I had was that of signs, and he was not even looking at me. What was he gazing at? Neither at the heavens nor at the earth, merely into emptiness, I thought. After some time, he got up and herded the goats together. It was a somewhat difficult task. There were about a hundred goats. When one ran this way, the other headed in the opposite direction. By the time they were somehow beaten back to the fold, yet another would have run away. After gathering every goat with some effort, the scary figure began to walk back towards the fence. As I didn’t know anything, I merely watched.
    Together, we reached the enclosure. When he told me something, I guessed he meant ‘You proceed to the masara with the goats, I’ll follow.’ Ah, then masara means the enclosure for goats. So, mayin must be water. At least let me learn the words like that.
    I brought the goats