The Outcast

In the beginning, people made fun of Sakina when she started working alongside male laborers in a brick kiln. She was a divorcee whose husband had left her after she gave birth to their sixth daughter. The man remarried. The woman was left empty-handed. She was an illiterate and penniless woman in need of work. She had no skills like stitching or embroidering and had neither time nor money to learn those skills. The opportunities for women in the village were primarily of a housemaid or a washerwoman. Wives were wary of letting a young, pretty, divorced woman into their homes out of fear that she might snatch their husbands. So, she decided to enter a male-dominated profession with the help of a few friends.

“Why do you want to make your life more difficult than it already is?” they tried to dissuade her.  

“I am not a man. I could not give birth to a man. But I can do as well as a man”. She replied defiantly.

“And who is going to acknowledge that?”

“I am past the need for acknowledgement or appreciation.” 

“You won’t be able to live with what the people would say.”

“I already am living with it”, said Sakina, “It does not matter anymore. I’m an outcast anyway.”

So, she started working in a brick kiln. After some time, she melted into the mundane and trivial, but still remained the butt of heinous jokes inside the village and at her workplace. When the laborers at the kiln would gather under the shade of a tree to drink cheap wine, she would still be at work. The supervisor scolded the men for their laziness. The men threw dirty words at her, but Sakina stayed deaf to their insulting remarks.

The night when she was turned out of her home by her ex-husband, had liberated her from life-long mental tethers of dependency on men. The men at the kiln were not yet aware that they had lost their power over this unrestrained wildness within their civilized structure of society. Or perhaps, they were cognizant of their helplessness and hated her all the more for it. They sought to turn her out of their realm.

“I say we harass her physically!” This was Abdul Latif, a dark slim fellow, thirty-five years old, with a shock of black hair on his head and an equally shocking large moustache on his face. As he said this, he gave this emblem of power a twist with his left hand along with an evil leer.

“That would be short and over quickly”, someone said.

“Not if we all have a go!” Another man said. This was followed by deep-throated and open-mouthed laughter.

“But that doesn’t get rid of her permanently,” Saqib, a fellow with a lisp, complained in a bored voice.

“How can we get rid of her permanently?” Rasheed asked.

“You marry her and tie her to your mother’s bedpost!” A hearty laughter followed Abdul Latif’s remark.

“Let’s lock her up inside the kiln”, young Qadri chirped up as though he was not suggesting taking a human life, but playing hide and seek with the woman. Silence followed this suggestion. The older men looked at this lad of twenty and slowly let his idea sink. Then, they awarded him with appraising glances and approving nods.

So, it was decided that on Friday, when all the men went to the mosque for the Juma prayer, two of them would come back before the others. Sakina used to pray under the shade of the tree in the men’s absence. Sometimes, she lay down for rest on the charpoy with a sheet covering all of her. Rashid and Yaqub would have to tie her up in the same sheet, bind a cloth over her mouth and take her all the way down to the fiery pits of hell.

Excited and nervous at the adjournment of their unholy meeting, the men began to count-down the days till Friday. It was a full five-days away! They had also decided to lure away the supervisor from the kiln under one pretext or another so that they could proceed easily. Their structured planning exhibited a shrewdness akin to seasoned criminals. They were no longer men. They were hunters. That primitive spirit was aroused to its fullest inside these twenty-first century men.

On the fateful day, a warmth was coursing through the plotters. The whole episode had assumed the quality of an intriguing and entertaining project. Afternoon arrived without incident and the party left for the mosque. After some time, the designated duo doubled back to the brick kiln. Quietly, they crept up to the charpoy where the pariah lay hidden beneath a huge sheet. Instantly, they tied a strap of cloth over the place which should’ve been the victim’s mouth, then bundled the burly woman in a neat heap and tried to lift the bundle between them. She was heavy and did not put up a struggle. Even then they were panting halfway to the kiln entrance.

 “My God! This woman is heavy.” Yaqub exclaimed.

“Looks like she’s dead already. Neither makes a sound, nor puts up a struggle. That’s how she got beaten by her husband easily,” said Rashid.

“She’s a heavy sleeper,” Yaqub said. The two men laughed at this pun on ‘heavy’.

They took thirty steps to the entrance of the kiln. Soon, Yaqub and Rashid had disposed of their goods in the heat and fire of the killer kiln. Her workplace would soon be her burial ground and no one would be any the better aware of it. The two grinned evilly at the accomplishment of their superior mission and hurried back to the mosque to mingle with the crowd.

A crow cawed in the branches of a tree high up above the charpoy. It had witnessed the whole murder. But he was not the only witness of this scene. In the shadows behind the kiln and trees a tall, brown figure stirred to motion. It had been hiding still for twenty minutes. It let go of the brick in its hand which had been used earlier to strike a blow to the molester’s head.

Clever than his fellows, Abdul Latif had decided on his own to use the woman to his advantage before his companions finished her off for good. He had caught up on her silently. He coaxed and tempted her with his protection by telling her what the others were planning to do and tried his best to have his way with her. Then, he resorted to threats and force. Sakina had had long experience of countering force. She somehow picked up a brick from the ground and hit him on the back of his head. The assaulter went unconscious. She dragged him to the charpoy and covered him with a sheet and hid herself to see if he had told the truth. It was him that Yaqub and Rashid had carried and disposed of in the kiln.

When the men came back they were struck silent to see Sakina still alive, working as usual. The oldest and most respectable among them, Hanif, rounded on Rashid and Yaqub, “Whom did you carry down to the grave?” A murmur of unrest spread in the crowd of some twelve labourers, then somebody screamed, “Where is Abdul Latif?” The question echoed all around them until they realized what they had done. They looked at Sakina with unmatched wonderment. “How did she come to know what they were about to do?” they asked each other. “How did she subvert their efforts?” They were afraid to admit that they were afraid of this woman.

“Inform the police!” someone shouted.

“Shut up. What are we going to say that we murdered the wrong fellow?” Hanif barked. Inside his heart, he found respect and admiration mixed with awe for this woman.

“Witch!” Rashid shouted.

Sakina stood up straight at this and glanced imperiously at the crowd. The group felt that it would melt under her scorching gaze. Slowly, they began to disperse in a mixture of astounded silence and fear. Behind her, the towering structure of the kiln rose as a silent monument to honour her wildness.