malalai khan

The sun was nearly gone now, but Helai had still not found the lamb yet. Darkness slithered in like snakes through every pebble and blade of grass that she stepped on. The last of the fading light outlined the mountain slopes bordering Afghanistan in a crimson streak that reminded her of the blood of slaughtered animals on Eid. She shuddered and, turning around, ran back through the brambles and out on the dry field where the sheep were bleating, her dark blue dupatta flying behind her long, chestnut-brown braid.

The sound of prayers echoed in the distance as she tread down the valley road lined with mulberry trees.

“Helai! Ay Helai!” Her mother called from below.

“I’m coming!”

She led the flock into a small pen made of dried walnut branches, and fastened the make-shift gate with a jute rope.

Her eyes pierced through the darkness as she felt her way down a winding dirt path, past the mud-brick walls, until she came to a curtained doorway. 

“I’m here!”

Faint, yellow light fell from a lantern on pots and pans laid against the walls, her shadow dancing as she moved across the courtyard and sat on one of the wicker cots, her lub-dub of her heart slowing down. Her breath steadied while she looked up at the sky where a waxing moon shone pearl-white.

“Don’t sit down like that. Go wash yourself and offer the prayers.”

A stern voice said, followed by a middle-aged woman who emerged from the room, a faded pink scarf tightly wound around her face.

“The lamb got lost again.” 

“If it’s not found, watch me let you tend the sheep then. Not to mention you come so late. Your prayers will get missed, now go.”

Without another word, Helai got up and went inside the outhouse. She heard someone grumble outside.

“The south side of the wheat has gone completely bad. What is God punishing us for!?”

“I told you to sacrifice two rams on Eid, but you didn’t listen to me.”

And so her mother and father went bickering about.

She reached around her neck and took out a small, golden band tied to a black cord. She smiled to herself.

What is God rewarding me for?

*****

The night sky glittered like white and blue sequins as red planets dotted the eastern portion. Her mother slept soundly beside her while Helai kept a count of all the falling stars, her father and brothers snoring from the inner chambers.

Her eyes were drooping just when she heard a quiet baa.

Her head shot up, poised.

A bleating of a lamb.

She quietly took off the quilt and draped the dupatta around herself, slipping into her rubber slippers sewn together at the edges. Staring at her mother’s face for a minute, Helai tiptoed across the courtyard and through the dusty curtain. 

The world at night felt calmer than before. No wind blew, no leaf brushed over, not even the cicadas sang. The slice of the moon lit the path all the way as she slowly went on. 

Spirits of saints and demons were said to have been haunting the earth at night. 

They only curse the sinners.

I am not one.

She reached the pen where she found the sheep resting peacefully. 

But just then, her heart yanked from her chest.

A bone-chilling screech tore through the stillness, echoing through the hills and then—silence.

Helai gazed wide-eyed in the distance, searching for a lamb, for a wolf, for blood. But nothing appeared, nothing cried again, nothing moved.

She pushed past the sheep and sat there on the straw covered with droppings, the smell of hay and cud filling around her, until clouds cascaded into the sky as a faded sun rose from behind. 

*****

“What happened to your eyes?”

Helai shook her head and retorted “Nothing” while her mother looked at her in suspicion.

“You won’t be tending to the sheep today,” she said as she washed the clothes near the stove, “You’re becoming old,” her tone cutting and final.

Helai didn’t want to say anything back anyway—her head hurt like nails were being driven through her eyes.

She hung the clothes on the line to dry, right beside the outer wall. Laughing voices drew near, boyish and happy, and then Helai noticed his subtle lip-tugging smile as Atal’s emerald green eyes locked in with hers for just a fraction of a second, her face concealed behind the line. And then they were off, gone somewhere else. She felt her face turn red and completely blank.

Oh God.

The world spun around her but a hand on her shoulder jerked her back to the surface. 

“Whatever is wrong with you today!”

Her mother’s hardened, hazel eyes stared down at her.

“I need some rest,” Helai blurted out. 

Somewhere away.

“Go lie down after you’ve offered your prayers.”

Helai looked away, biting down her inner cheek.

*****

The sky lit up orange once more, and Helai did not listen, again.

She walked out soon when her mother had gone to visit a sick relative in another colony of hovels up the white-pebble road. This time, she followed a grassy path that ran alongside a small stream. But she cut halfway through and went on as the running water guided her, looking around the trees, her mind still hazy from last night.

She reached a rugged hillside where an outcrop of slate lay, the dark and smooth surface glistening subtly under the gentle touch of the golden hour, wet from the gushing mouth of the stream that opened through large, wet boulders. Moss covered the soil, dark and damp under the shade of a pomegranate tree.

Helai breathed the fresh air in, as the evening set in, and closed her eyes. She waited, and waited, and she waited more. 

But no one came. 

The sun was down now.

Her mind started racing.

Did he get caught?

My father will kill me.

Are they coming for m—

“Oh, all men are like that.”

She whipped her head around to find a woman clad in dark, her dress highlighting her tall, slender figure, with charcoal-black hair neatly wound into a bun. She appeared to be about the same age as her mother.

Except that she was strikingly beautiful. 

“W-Who sent you here?”

“Sent? Oh, I live here.” 

She gazed, beckoning Helai’s stare as her thin, red lips curled into a smile.

“You know waiting is pointless for something that you will never get.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh Helai, you know what I am talking about.”

“H-How do you know my name?” 

“I know lots of things.”

Helai shook and sat down on a boulder, while light melted away from the sky. After a small pause, she asked, “What do you know?”

But the woman didn’t answer. Instead, she picked a ripe pomegranate off the tree, peeled it, and bit into the fruit, the vermillion juice dripping from her chin. She came closer to her until only a few inches apart from Helai’s gaping face. 

“You can save your love by saving his heart before it rots.”

The woman put the half-eaten pomegranate in Helai’s hands, and pointed a pale, talon-like finger at her breast, and then clutched the black cord around her neck, smiling at the golden band. 

“How sad,” she remarked and turned around in a sweep of her velvet dress. She swayed away into the forest, disappearing behind the rusting foliage just as mysteriously as she had appeared. 

A distant howl echoed through the hush of the forest.

Oh no. 

Oh no. 

Oh no.

Helai only then realised how dark it was, blackness leaking into the day again. A full moon shone behind drifting clouds.

She felt her hands getting heavier and wet and looked down to find deep scarlet blood dripping from a half-consumed heart.

She jumped up and let out a piercing shriek, dropping it on the ground where it seeped slowly into the grass. She frantically brushed her hands over her dress, staining the white all red like a splash of paint on a blank canvas. 

Cursed, cursed, cursed.

Her lip trembled and her legs gave away to a newfound strength of manic fear as she darted down the stream again, her eyes tightly shut, branches and twigs scratching at her as if the trees did not want her to leave.

God save me.

God help me.

Helai didn’t stop until she found the village’s dirt path, where a towering minaret was silhouetted against the sky. 

An old man with a grey beard emerged from inside the mosque with a thin book in his hand, wearing a chequered turban on his head. He heard Helai panting and stared at her constitution, her dishevelled hair and bare collarbone. 

“OH ALLAH! OH ALLAH! LOOK AT THIS WITCH!” He called out, flailing his arms around. And right then, several men came out of the mosque, from which Helai recognised both of her brothers and her father. 

Her heart sank into the pit of her stomach as she stood frozen like a statue, rooted to the ground. She felt her arms getting grappled and shook, curses thrown around.

“You witch, you are the reason the crops have been dying. You’ve brought nothing but doom since the day you were born. You were never meant to live.” 

She heard a familiar voice say.

Her eyes were blurred with tears.

Her throat tightened with an overwhelming lump.

She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

The mullah pointed at the blood smear on the cleats of her dress.

“Don’t think we don’t know anything, you whore.”

And he tore the ring from her neck.

“That’s not what it is… I didn’t do anything… I haven’t done anything, I swear!” Her voice cracked through.

Leave me alone. 

Leave me alone.

Leave me alone.

“Kill her tomorrow at the crack of dawn during the call for prayers. The Earth must be cleansed of dirty hags like her.”

Helai lost her balance, and the world shut up around her.

*****

Silence woke her up as it deafened in her ears.

Helai opened her eyes to the darkness that looked back at her.

Her head shot up and hit the wooden leg of an upright cot, wincing in pain as if the headache wasn’t enough the day before.

The pungent smell of dried blood filled around her, nauseating.

She got up and felt her way around the room as shapes formed before her, realising it was the small, unused shed nestled near the outer wall. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom and fixed upon a sliver of dim light seeping from the edge of the door.

She clawed at the hinges and beat the planks, her nails digging at the old wood. Pain struck through her fingertips that gnawed out as she screamed in agony.

And then, she felt the rotten planks break apart slowly.

Helai laughed—a manic chuckle left her lips—while hot tears washed down her cheeks. She knocked and beat until moonlight flooded through. 

She crept her slender body under the hole in the door, her skinned knuckles burning.

Her chest opened like an envelope had been removed from around her heart.

Every place is a prison. 

Every person is a prisoner.

Looking around, she did not see anyone. A snore came from somewhere inside the hovel. She quietly strutted towards the sheep pen, her bare feet brushing against the dusty path.

Exhausted, she ran her fingers across the woolly coat of a sheep, but it stirred abruptly, letting out a loud bleat into the night, and cowered away.

Helai quivered and sprinted outside, only halting when she reached the door of a small, bricked cottage where an earthen water pitcher rested. She pressed her parched lips to its mouth and closed her eyes. Cool water flowed into her, but then—clack.

She felt something hard fill her mouth, and spit out on the ground to find yellowed horse teeth. The pitcher slipped from her tremulous hands, shattering into shards to scatter more teeth, not a drop of water in sight.

A shrill scream escaped her mouth as she scrubbed her tongue feverishly with her fingers, only to throw up all over. Her eyes watered as she kneeled down, her forehead touching the ground.

Forgive me. 

Forgive me. 

Forgive me.

She felt a gaze set on her and looked up.

She drew in a sharp breath as Atal’s eyes met hers, his figure silhouetted against a moonlit, barren field.

“Atal…” Her voice trailed off, her legs shaking as she tried to get up.

He looked at her like she was an entirely new form of being.

“Atal… you promised we’d run away.”

He shook his head.

“But you are a witch.”

“I am not.” 

Her tears boiled away.

Liar. 

Liar. 

Liar. 

Liar.

In a frenzy, Helai grabbed a sickle from a nearby wheelbarrow laid against the cottage, and slashed it across him without a second thought. His eyes widened in a stony fright as his body fell limp to his knees and collapsed forward onto the ground, darkening the soil.

Black blood spurted out as she cut through and through his chest, slicing open his heart through relentless stabs.

Her shoulders heaving, she realised the gravity of what she had done, and a wave of nausea crept over her. She scrambled to her feet and ran across the moors, the soles of her feet bloodied from sticks and stones, her breath coming in short, rapid gasps.

She hastened towards the valley path through the thickets until she found the stream again. Terror coursing through her frozen veins, she bolted along the banks but this time, it didn’t end at a boulder. She kept going and going, until she fell over a white, bloodless corpse of a lamb, the head punctured between the eyes, maggots eating away the flesh. 

Her heart drumming inside her ears, Helai scampered up the hill and shut her eyes tight, running to the edge of the valley that led to a ravine, where the riverlet cut through the steep mountainside.

*****

I wrote this for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize last year. I did it a week before the deadline so it was sort of chaotic. Didn’t make it to the shortlist but I had a lot of fun writing this one. I’m currently working on this year’s!