Partitions: A Novel by Majmudar Amit

Author:Majmudar, Amit [Majmudar, Amit]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2011-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

5

ARRIVALS

Masud wakes up in the cart and squints into the late morning light, his back aching and half his face finely printed by the leather of his black bag. At some point in the night, he shifted it from belly level, where Billi had nestled it, to under his cheek. Yesterday’s interrupted shave has given his face a split shading, dark scruff on one side, darker beard on the other. Now, on his paler side, this network of intricate lines seems to have aged him more swiftly.

A bewildered glance infers nothing from his driver’s back. The small body, wrapped in a white sheet, seems shaped like a woman’s, and he assumes she is sleeping. The only thing that reassures him are the strays, who aren’t alarmed. None of them are looking his way. One, low to the ground, trails an olfactory hunch off the road. Masud scoots off and lets the cart go on without him. The farmer senses the cart shake and lighten, and he looks over his shoulder to make sure nothing has fallen. He sees the doctor standing in the road, dogs calmly sniffing circles around him, and he raises a hand. Masud, still uncertain what has happened, raises his hand in answer.

He doesn’t know it, but he is almost at the border. Only two hours, at his rate of walking, from the closest camp. He never knows when he crosses the border. It is too early in the border’s life cycle: it hasn’t budded checkpoints and manned booths yet, hasn’t sprouted its barbed wire thorns.

He could get to the camp before noon, if all he does is walk. Lucky and Rimzim, who have kept up with the cart on foot all night, come running with summaries of the cases up the road. Two hours stretch to four. They have picked up the skills quickly, having attended dozens of examinations the prior day; Masud’s questions, around the adult patients, were often posed directly to them. So they collect the information they know he will need: where is the pain, how long has it been going on, is it dull or sharp or throbbing. Or, as is more often the case, where did they cut you, when did they cut you, what did they cut you with. The first patient he treats that morning is Lucky. Spiral whip welts wrap his forearm like two snakes up a caduceus.

I follow Masud into the camp. Here, too, there is no physical boundary. No sign, no appreciable transition. It forms itself gradually, like a city approached from the countryside. First the outskirts. Huddles of people, human shanties. Then, as he walks farther, he passes a gradual scatter of tents. Or not tents exactly, but staked and propped lengths of burlap or saree. Under that richly colored shade, large-eyed hunted mammals cower and peer up at him. The tents get closer together, and then, by an orderly dereliction, corridors define themselves. He can look down them for hundreds of yards. He can stand at their intersections.

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