Read Online Shabanu by Suzanne Fisher Staples - Free Book Online

we pass through the tribal area without incident. Dadi insists I ride so people will see we’re a simple family coming from Sibi to cross the desert. He has left several thousand rupees in his belt, enough to satisfy any thief we should meet. The rest of the notes are rolled into the hollowed wood of the camel saddle frame.
    Spring comes early to Cholistan, and already the days are hot. The puppy is panting in his basket. I dip my cup into the water jar and offer him a drink. He tries to wriggle out of the basket and looks at me with bright black eyes. He hasn’t had attention since we left, so I pull him out and hold him in my lap for a while. He bites at my fingers. I tap his nose, and he stops biting and looks up at me. He’s a smart one. Instead he licks my palm. I tap his nose again, and he looks at me as if to ask “Nowwhat?” He drinks more water and falls asleep in the crook of my arm. I put him back in the basket. He barks for a long while before falling asleep again.
    Our trip passes in a dull routine of walking, sometimes riding the old female camel, and stopping to eat and sleep.
    Dadi has given up trying to talk to me. He walks along, singing in his husky voice, and sometimes talks to the camel, sometimes to the puppy. He calls the puppy
Sher Dil
, which means “lion heart.” It’s a good name, for the puppy is strong and unafraid. When Dadi lets him out of his basket at night, he tumbles and tugs at the edge of our quilts and runs in circles before collapsing between us.
    I have thought about Guluband often since we left Sibi. I summon his image and want to feel sad or angry or lonely. But apart from moments at night when I sit up in stark fear, waking from a dream of guns raining bullets down on him, I feel strangely detached, as if he’s with a part of me that now is gone. The only feeling I have left is of weight and heat and the white dusty air as we walk through the desert on the alien side of the Indus River.
    On the eighth night we reach Rahimyar Khan. We must finish shopping for Phulan’s wedding. Since we have just the one camel, we go straight into the bazaar. It’s strange to see so many people after a week alone in the desert.
    In the bazaar, Dadi leaves me to look for shawls for Phulan’s dowry, while he goes off to find Uncle and a place to tie the camel. I finger the prickly polyester and wool shawls arranged in bright stacks of red, green, turquoise, and yellow, folded to show clumsy stitching. I don’tlike any of them. The shopkeeper thinks I’m a child and tells me outrageous prices.
    I leave the shop and walk down the crowded lane to another, where an old man who reminds me of Grandfather sits peacefully on his floor, staring out into the daylight. He starts when he sees me, staring as if he’s seen a ghost.
    “I’m looking for fine shawls for my sister Phulan’s dowry,” I announce. The old man invites me inside.
    “What color?” he asks. I rub one bare foot over the other, thinking about it.
    “Well, what color are her eyes?” asks the old man, his eyes surrounded by skin crinkled with kindness.
    I haven’t thought of it, but Phulan’s eyes are a tawny color like liquid gold. I try to explain, and he lays a finger against his lips, thinking a moment.
    “Wait here, child,” he says, and jumps down from the platform of his shop floor, slips into his sandals, and disappears around the corner.
    I walk through the shop, looking at the woolen shawls stacked neatly, the soft colors mixed together unlike in the other shops. I see a pale green the color of desert shrubs and pull a woolen shawl from the pile. As I hold it up and the folds shake out, my breath catches. The embroidery at the ends is like the flowers on the trellises in the landowners’ gardens—deep, dark red like desert roses, and delicate pink like the blossoms of
kharin
.
    The
kharin
should be blooming when we reach Cholistan, and for the first time since Wardak led Gulubandaway, I feel a stirring in the