Beneath the Banyan Tree
By Sonia Vora

Kashmir 1967
It was always in May, Vikas remembered, that the nights became as hot as the day. The humidity lingered foretelling the season of rain to come. That evening as he sat on the floor for dinner Vikas tugged at his sticky white banya until his mother told him to stop. His mother and sister brought the thalis in and placed them on the floor, first for his father, then for him and his dadima who had come to live with them after his grandfather’s death in February. His portrait hung above the best chair in the sitting room and dadima often sat there, sewing and singing until dark.

Vikas wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, smearing lentils across his face. His sister, Jaya, stuck her tongue out at him, grinning. Her dark hair, that she spent so much time trying to straighten, curled impudently against her pale brow.

They ate in silence for a few moments. His mother picked up the metal bowl filled with tightly packed rice and offered it to their father. “Amani stopped by today,” she said. “She invited us to a birthday party for their son tomorrow night.”

“Really? Mahmud-saab is having a party?” his father replied, repeating the invitation in a louder voice for his mother.

“I wonder that anyone in the village would go to their home,” dadima said. “The Muslims have been keeping quiet lately.”

His father frowned. “We should go. Show an example.”

Jaya looked at him sharply, but remained silent. Ever since her sixteenth birthday last year, she had become more serious, acquiescing to her parent’s wishes to marry this year. Vikas never thought of his friend, Naji Mahmud, as Muslim. The tension between Hindus and Muslims surrounded them; especially living in Kashmir, but the people touched by the violence lived far off in another world. He was excited for the next evening, which would surely mean tea and cakes, and maybe even sparklers after dark.

Despite dadima’s prediction, all of their neighbors came to the party carrying homemade sweets. Vikas walked in with his parents and felt immediate relief from the heat in the dim interior. Like his own father, Naji’s father worked in the government offices. The Mahmud’s layout was similar to his own home, but the chair cushions were more worn and the tile floors were bare, feeling cool and dusty against his feet. Unlike his own home, filled with images of Krishna and Ganesh and Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, Naji’s home contained no pictures of gods. Vikas wondered what Muslims worshipped when they prayed.

The kitchen was stuffed with bustling, rustling women and a table had been set up in the courtyard laden with steaming plates of samosas, pakoras, kebobs and jalabees. The air over the table wavered with the heat, scented with the sharp spices and sweetened oil. The men stood out here, standing in clusters near the table or under the lemon tree for shade, their mustaches drooping in the heat. They were quieter than the mass of women inside, who were shouting and laughing at each other in a constant chorus only they understood. The men bent their heads together as they spoke, creating an atmosphere of congenial clubbiness that was protected even as the clusters broke up, remixed and gathered again.

Jaya had said she was ill and stayed home, so Vikas looked for the other boys. He found them playing soldiers in the front garden. Naji looked up from a huddle of boys and waved Vikas over. Naji, Vikas, Rajiv and Atal would be the Indian army and the others would be the British. Vikas’ schoolmate, Bipin, dropped to the ground and fired his stick like a rifle. Everyone grabbed a stick, and forgetting about the carefully constructed strategies, ran around shooting and shouting until their mothers called them to eat.

They rushed through the house and out the back door to the table. Vikas grabbed a fresh jalabee. It was electric orange, thin and firm. He bit into the crispy sweet at the fattest curve, the scalding liquid sugar filling his mouth, and licked his fingers before reaching for another. Eventually, they were shooed out to the front porch. The boys squatted in the corner, greedily stuffing the rest of their food in their mouths. The fathers followed them to sit under the shade of the porch, fanning themselves and drinking sweetened limejuice.

They discussed the village and the rain, and then one of the uncles mentioned the riots. Vikas tried to listen over the sound of dogs barking the streets. His father sat with his legs crossed and a metal tumbler in his hand. Someone passing in the street threw some rocks at the dogs, and in the sudden quiet one of the men said, “Well, everyone knows Jinnah was in the pockets of the British.” All the men looked at Naji’s father, who remained impassive smoking a cigarette, his face hidden in the shadow.

“Naji!” Bipin gestured for them to move away. In the last streams of daylight, Vikas could see the boy pulling packets of firecrackers out of his pocket.

“Let’s sneak behind the house where the mothers are sitting and light them. Then before they go off, we’ll jump in front of them with our sticks and pretend we’re shooting!”

They all waited for Naji’s reaction. He thought for a moment, his brow furrowed and then smiled.

The boys eased around the side of the house, backs pressed against the stone walls. Bipin held his fingers to his lips before he lit the firecrackers and threw them down. Then they jumped out shouting, surprising the mothers and girls who sat around in a semi-circle, drinking the tea cooling in their saucers. The boys started laughing and then panicked as all the mothers turned towards them, rising in their seats.

“Run!” Like scattershot, the boys took off in all directions. Vikas crawled under the fence and ran through the yards. He could hear the shouting behind him and then Naji was there, point towards a crumbling section of the wall that bordered his street. “I have a secret hiding place,” Naji said. “I’ll show you.”

They ran over scrubby grass and came to a listless creek. They crossed it and found themselves in a clearing encircled by dry yellow hedges. In the center stood the largest banyan tree Vikas had ever seen. The grotesqueries of the banyans always fascinated him – he loved the way the tree limbs stretched upwards and then let out rootlets than descended back to earth. It was a tree trying to be two things at once. The boys quickly climbed into the leaves and waited, panting after the race.

The shouts grew more distant and soon faded away. Vikas felt his stomach turning. Maybe he was going to throw up. The bubbling kept rising into his chest and then his throat. He opened his mouth and started laughing. Naji looked at him in surprise and then grinned. He leaned backwards and the branch cracked. Grabbing his arm, Vikas pulled him back and they both howled together. There was some wild and free sitting in the tree laughing into the night as the adults ran around helplessly below. No doubt his mother would beat him, but for this moment, Vikas knew it was worth it.

As the weeks passed, the summer’s heat intensified. The whole country was as quiet and tense as a field before a thunderstorm. Vikas stood in the shadows of the entryway as his mother measured him for his school uniform.

“Ma,” he said. The uniform is fine. I want to use the money for books.”

“You have money for books, monkey! Your feet are sticking out of your trousers like a scarecrow, and you’re asking for more books. Please!” she said, squatting and stretching a long measuring tape down his leg.

Vikas actually wanted the money to go see American films in Cawnpore, but stood as still as he could manage, and then followed his mother into the kitchen. The buttery smell of frying onions rose from the pan as his mother started cutting the coriander, glistening with dew, and gossiping with the cook, Krishna. The heat buzzed with fat black flies. The radio crackled with static and the indistinct voice of the broadcaster describing a riot in Delhi.

“Vikas, please,” his mother called out. “I don’t want to hear any more of that news. Turn it off.”

At dinner, Vikas asked about the riots. His father sat underneath three small portraits that hung between two windows overlooking the courtyard where the wash was hung to dry. The two larger pictures were of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. His mother strung carnation buds together and hung them as garlands on the pictures, refreshing them every few weeks as they dried. Many years before, his father had hung a third smaller portrait of Maulana Azad. When his wife protested, his father had quoted Azad saying, “I am part of the indivisibly unity that is Indian nationality.” The neighbors shook their head at his father’s foolish naïveté.

“The struggle is almost over. After Independence and Partition, there was too much bad blood. Sometimes when people have been locked in a cage too long, they don’t know how to leave when the door is opened without crushing one another.”

Vikas’ sister Jaya sniffed. His father, Vikas noticed for the first time, had gray hair at his temples.

“It’s the British,” his dadima said. “It was always the British.”

Vikas saw his mother looking at his father and then looked away.

“Ma,” his father said. “What do you mean?”

Dadima’s fingers, cupped around her last bit of rice and dal, opened suddenly, dropping the food in her lap. “The British! They always hated us! And when we humiliated them into leaving, they started all this trouble between Hindus and Muslims.”

“But I thought it had been the British soldiers who tried stopping the fighting during Partition,” asked Vikas, puzzled.

“Hah. Don’t be so naïve. They always despised us, treated us less than animals. In 1919, they massacred us in Amritsar. grandfather was there, Vikas! He saw it all. You know, you’re just like him, in some ways,” she said, looking at him thoughtfully. “He always wanted to believe the best in people.” Dadima shook her head, pushing back her black-rimmed glasses with her ring finger.

“That’s not always a bad thing, Ma,” his father said. “There are millions reasons to start fighting. But once the first shot has been fired, no one needs a reason to keep fighting. It becomes it’s own justification. Vikas, you should remember that.”

Outside the window, Krishna plucked washing pins and held them in her mouth as the cotton bed cover, painted in indigo and saffron, waved and flapped in the wind. Vikas felt his sister looking at him.

“Why don’t you ask your friend Naji what the problem is?”

Their father looked at her in surprise but before he could say anything, Vikas spoke.

“Why should I ask Naji?”

His sister looked away, a muscle twitching in her jaw. Vikas thought she might not say anything and suddenly it was as if she burst, words falling out her mouth like the bombs in the American films.

“I’m so sick of this. All day we hear about these dogs, these people, killing us, torturing us, and we’re supposed to sit here and do nothing? Why are they still here? They have their own country now. I wish they would just get out and leave us in peace. They’re disgusting, these…musalmans.”

It was the way she said the last word, the way she almost spit it out. Vikas felt sick. Shocked silence mushroomed in the small room.

“Jaya.” His father’s voice was quiet. “Go to your room, now.”

She rose violently and ran out. His mother looked at her husband and started to rise. He shook his head and she slowly lowered herself down again.

Vikas picked at a scab on his leg as his father stood up. Without looking at him, Vikas asked in a voice he could barely hear himself. “What was she talking about?”

“Muslims,” his father said, looking tired. “Muslims and Hindus. India’s cross to bear, as your Father McGregor would say.” His father left the room, his shoulders brushing against the garlands, dry petals falling as he passed.

Dadima passed away in her sleep in July, just after the days of fasting for Vishnu. Vikas’ father lost weight. His mother’s voice, murmuring softly, came through the thin walls between the bedrooms. For the next several days, neighbors came to sit with the family and say prayers. Whispers filled the living room as his mother made tea for the visitors. “She couldn’t be apart from her husband. They had been married over fifty years. Inseparable.”

The family went to the river all dressed in white and scattered dadima’s ashes. On the opposite bank of the wide, lazy river, two wild dogs with matted fur and exposed skin circled each other snarling. The sun poured over the landscape like burning gold, saturating skin and stinging eyes. As the priest sang the final prayer, Vikas wondered if Vishnu would welcome dadima personally with his violet arms open, or if his grandmother would return to earth again on her journey towards Nirvana.

Afterwards, Vikas sat in the living room, squeezed into his grandmother’s favorite chair with Jaya. Several of the neighboring women sat in the room, fanning themselves with the ends of their saris and singing aartis from their prayer books. There was a knock on the screen door and Vikas stood up to answer it. Naji’s mother hesitated on the doorstop holding her shawl over the top of her head with one hand.

“Hello, Vikki,” she said quietly. “Is your mother home?”

He nodded suddenly aware of the silence in the room. The other women were looking at their tea or out the window. Vikas’ mother came into the room and paused in the doorway. In the long, wordless moment, Vikas felt the tension ripening slowly. Then his mother stepped forward, breaking the spell. She came to the door and held Mrs. Mahmud’s hand. “Thank you for coming, Maheen,” she whispered. “Won’t you come in?”

“No, thank you, Sharmila. I just wanted to give you this burfee with the sonivarakh. I know dadima liked the gold leaf more than the silver.”

Vikas’ mother looked down at the tray filled with the precisely cut squares of sweets. When she spoke, Vikas could hear the tears in her voice. “That was very…” she began. “Thank you. Please – come in.”

Jaya stood up from the chair and left the room. Her feet made soft slapping sounds against the tile as she walked away. Mrs. Mahmud smiled gently, bowed her head and left. Vikas followed Mrs. Mahmud and opened the gate for her. She placed her hand on his head for a moment and then left. As he dropped the metal bar in the hold, Vikas heard the scolding voices coming from the open windows.

The sun was bulging and heavy in the late afternoon sky and the heat lay across the city like a shroud. Barefoot, Vikas crossed the street and hesitated at the gate. He could hear a man shouting inside Naji’s house and somehow today he couldn’t bear it.

He shuffled along the alley, wishing he had brought his sandals as the dust and tiny shards of rock scraped his feet. Spotting an Ambassador car inside one of the neighbor’s open gates, he wandered over to marvel over the blazing blue metal. Vikas ran his fingers along the polished chrome bumper that jutted boldly away from body of the car. The driver was sitting on a wicker chair fanning himself in the shade of the house when he spotted Vikas. He rose, dropping the paper, and waved his arms above his head.

“Hey bacho! Bhag jo!”

Vikas made a face at the driver and ran out the gate and through the crumbling wall at the end of the street. The thorny grass pinched more than the gravel and he stopped to soak his feet in the creek, now running faster after the rains. Silver fish splashed in the current. On the hill beyond, Vikas saw Naji sitting under the banyan tree and was suddenly happy. He ran across the footpath and dropped next to Naji, panting.

“Hi!”

Naji didn’t look up, but shuffled over to make room. Vikas noticed the beginning of a bruise on Naji’s arm and without thinking, reached over to touch it.

“It’s nothing,” Naji said, tugging his sleeve over it. He looked over at Vikas quickly, brushing his hair away from his face. Vikas felt his own thick hair expanding in the humidity and for a moment wished he could have Naji’s straight, untidy hair.

“I’m sorry about your grandmother,” Naji said.

Vikas felt the sick thudding in his stomach return and said nothing for a few moments. Both boys watched the creek flowing and the churned, dusty field. Distant mountains edged the horizon as the sunrays flowed around it like a stream. Vikas thoughts returned to his home and the women sitting on the floor.

“I think she missed my grandfather.”

Naji nodded, his eyes still fixed on the horizon and Vikas felt unaccountably relieved. He sat back on his hands and stretched out his legs.

“Your mother came by with burfee.”

“I know,” Naji said and then hesitated. “My father was angry that she went. He hit his hand on the table and then grabbed my arm when I tried to stand in front of him.” He stopped abruptly, his eyes wide.

Vikas had never seen his father angry. He tried to imagine his father shouting and hitting a table but he couldn’t.

“I think he felt bad,” Naji continued, not looking at him. “He went to his room and my mother told me to leave for a while.”

There were no sounds except for the distant traffic. Vikas felt responsible. His fingers, digging into the knotted earth behind him closed around an errant twig. He pulled it around him and pointed it at Naji.

“Stick them up, cowboy,” Vikas said, savoring the unfamiliar words he had learned from the American films.

Naji looked at him astonished and wrinkled his face. He tried to look annoyed but couldn’t help smiling. “That’s not how you say it. This is how you say it.” He stood up and put his hands on his hips, looking out into the middle distance towards the sinking sun. “Stick them up cowboy!”

“No!” Vikas shouted standing up. “That’s not right. I have a gun. So I’m the police. You’re the villain.” Vikas grinned wickedly. “Actually, you don’t have a gun so you’re the girl.”

Naji glared at him and reached out suddenly to grab Vikas’ stick. Vikas pulled it back and started running. Naji chased him around the tree and ran in the other direction. Vikas ran into him and they both fell over, Naji trying to wrap his arms around Vikas’ head. They were both laughing and shouting. Vikas felt the twig snap and tried to tickle Naji to get him off. Naji pushed him away suddenly. “That’s no fair,” Naji said, but without heat. They lay there in the dirt next to each other, trying to catch their breath. In the swollen reddish light, Vikas looked at Naji’s profile, at his delicately curved nose and one-sided smile. They lay there until the sun set.

Jaya was getting married in early August. Their home was now filled with women and the sounds of cooking, sewing and cleaning. The small room where dadima used to sleep seemed to be bursting with colors; flowers of gold, red and pink lay in piles for the ceremonies. Vikas liked the peace in this room, far away from the clanking pots, the women who sang and shouted in the kitchen and the plaintive cries of the fruit sellers outside. Vikas went in there every day, lifting the fragrant clusters, feeling their compact coolness and letting them fall between his finds down to the soft carpets below.

His father took Vikas to the bank to get the money for Jaya’s dowry. The aching sun formed a square of light just inside the doorway, and the men would move into the dim interior quickly as they entered.

Vikas sat on the bench under the spinning fan that ruffled the papers on the tables. He watched the other customers in their olive green suits and dusty leather sandals, counting their money. They looked so different from his father who always wore a simple white kurta. His father waited patiently for his turn and then, to Vikas’ eyes, spent a lot of time exchanging pieces of papers, receipts and bills with the clerk before they could leave.

As they walked out, a few men called to them. Vikas held the dowry bag proudly – he had never held so much money in his life.

“So Gauravji, mubarak on your daughter’s wedding. No doubt you are busy this week.” It was Chetan Uncle, with his black beard and bass voice, who lived two houses down.

His father thanked him and Chetan Uncle continued, “Don’t forget we have a meeting next week.” A group of veiled women walking by, wearing full hijab. It was only this summer, Vikas realized, that the Muslim women began wearing the full veil. The men waited until they passed and then one of them spit a thin red stream of supari onto the road. “It’s time we decided as a community what we are going to do about this problem.”

“What problem, exactly?” his father said.

The men looked at one another and then the leader walked closer to Vikas and his father. “You can’t hide your head under the sand anymore, Gaurav. This is a national emergency. We’re in the middle of a civil war.” He lowered his voice even more; Vikas could barely hear them. “They want our land. They kill us. You’ve heard of the bandits. What makes you think they won’t come here? Do you think we’re safe? You know that religion. Do you want that sleeping next to you in these times?” Chetan Uncle stood back and looked at his father squarely.

His father was quiet. “The bandits are not our neighbors. You know the Koran doesn’t sanction murder –”

“It tells them to kill infidels. Does any other religion say that?” Chetan Uncle interrupted. Vikas’ father didn’t respond and Chetan Uncle sighed. “You’re living in a dream world. Come to the meeting or don’t. But you’re going to have to pick a side.”

As they walked home, Vikas slipped his hand inside his father’s even though he had just turned twelve. A sudden wind blew the dust on the streets around them. The weight of the dowry bag grew heavier as it dragged Vikas’ hand down.

That evening, when he was getting ready for bed, Vikas saw a candle flickering in the window across the street. Naji must be back, he thought happily. The friends had devised the candle code to keep in touch with each other like the American Indians they had seen in the films. Vikas stood up and padded over to the window. He lit his candle and blew it out. They rarely saw each other since their school separated Hindu and Muslim students a month earlier.

He heard his door opening and turned quickly, hiding the smoking candle behind his back. His sister was in the doorway. Vikas was amazed at how old she looked now. Just a few months ago she looked like any other girl in the village. Now, she looked like a woman, her black hair pulled back like their mother, her large eyes steady and unsmiling. Vikas barely recognized her.

She sat on the floor by his mat. “I’ll be leaving the house on Saturday.”
“I know.” Vikas was surprised at how sad he felt. Even if they had grown apart recently, he still felt like a piece of him was leaving.

“You have to take care of ma and papa.” Jaya looked thoughtfully at the wall.

“I will.”

“They’re getting old and…”

“And what?”

Jaya looked at him and in the weak light of the moon, he could see sharp flecks of white in her eyes. “They don’t understand what is happening in this country. We have to know who our friends and our enemies are.” Jaya’s voice was cold and Vikas felt like he was looking at a stranger again.

“I know you’re friends with that…”she said, before stopping herself. “With that boy across the street. I know you sneak away to play with him.” Jaya sounded calm, but there were ripples of anger at the edge of her voice. “You’re getting too old not to know what’s going on.”

Vikas looked at her shadowed face.

“At least they know how I feel. I told them I want to be married in a pure Hindu house. I had to fight them, but it’s my wedding. I don’t want anything to spoil it. It will be a clean home.” She stood up and brushed down the front of the lavender salwar kameez she slept in. “I’m sorry your friend can’t be invited.” She looked across him to the window opposite. Vikas saw the strike of the match and the candle flare; it wavered for a few moments and then went out. Jaya looked for another moment but it didn’t come back. Vikas felt his stomach wrench as she left.

Vikas assumed that Jaya had meant that Naji’s family couldn’t be invited when she said she wanted a pure Hindu wedding. When he came down the next morning however, he saw that wasn’t all she had meant. In the dining room, there was a faded outline on the wall, next to Mahatma Gandhi’s picture, where the frame of Maulana Azad used to be.

The meeting was held at Chetan Uncle’s home the following week. Vikas’ father, dressed in white kurta pajama and sandals, stopped in the doorway. His mother stood there waiting, holding the screen door open as he reached for her hand. A humid gust carrying the scent of burning wood filtered into the room. She clutched his sleeve and leaned her face against his shoulder for a moment.

Vikas watched from the hallway before returning to his room. Lined loose papers were strewn across his cot and he made a half-hearted attempt to straighten them out. He had started a film script with Naji many months before and had been trying to complete it before school began. Wandering over to the window, Vikas sat down on a three legged stood. Naji’s house was dark. The stool wobbled and Vikas reached over to his desk for something to wedge the leg with. His hand brushed against a newspaper he had taken from his father’s room. There was a blurred picture on the front page of a stalled train and bodies lying on the ground. He flung the paper away from him and leaned his head against the cool limestone wall. After a few moments he stood up and walked over to where he had thrown the paper. Muslim rebels had ambushed Hindu soldiers traveling to Kashmir. Instead, they had found civilians who tried to defend themselves. The paper called it another blatant example of why Muslims should be expelled from Kashmir and called for more military presence in Muslim-occupied neighborhoods. Vikas could hear the squeal of the train as the brakes grinded to a halt and the screams of children dragged off the train.

He climbed out of his window and ducked through the hedges to avoid the creaky gate. He ran to the meeting house and kneeled by the window, trying to hear. The voices were already raised in anger. As if parroting the paper, one voice called for “their expulsion.” Have you read the papers? They’re slaughtering us in our sleep! They’ll kill us if we don’t get rid of them. I saw we eliminate the problem now. Tell them they have to leave the village. Why are they staying? If they won’t leave, we’ll make them. I still have a gun from the army.

Then there was silence, a curious wondering silence that explored the echoes of this statement. Then Vikas heard his father speaking. “Are you talking about murder?” He said it quietly. If he had spoken loudly, they would have shouted him down, Vikas knew. Anger, his father always said, only leads to more anger. It was the first irrational emotion on the path to madness. Then another voice spoke, “We don’t have to talk about violence. We’re not those people. We’ll just tell them to leave. They’ll listen to sense.”

“It’s time to start talking sense. Partition was twenty years ago. We have our land and they have theirs. Most Muslims have gone, the rest should go as well.”

One voice, mottled with tobacco said, “And if they don’t?”

There was another pause and then his father spoke again. Vikas risked a glimpse inside.

“Partition. It was supposed to solve all of this twenty years ago and what happened? We’re still fighting the same war. We can’t live in the same country, the same state, the same village. What’s next? Our country has already been carved into two pieces, like some dying bloody animal. When does it stop? Who makes it stop?”

In the unbending silence that followed, the other men in the room shrugged their shoulders. The men were rising from mats on the ground, picking up the sputtering oil lamps, bowing their heads and lightly pressing their lips with their fingers as they walked out. Chetan Uncle walked over to his father, still sitting, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s these evil times, Gauruv. One man can’t stop the tide. We can only protect our families. What else is there?”

His father stood up and opened his mouth to speak. His cheekbones pressed against his thin skin casting a shadow on the gray stubble. Shaking his head, Vikas’ father left the room after pressing his lips to his mouth in the doorway.

Vikas watched the last man, Chetan, take a deep breath and slowly exhale. He pushed the mats aside and put the middle table back. Then he picked up an oil lamp and walked to the doorway, putting his finger to his lips as he paused in front of the picture of Shiva, destroyer of ignorance. “Lord Shiva, our savior. Protect us and deliver us from evil.”

Emerging from the front gate, Vikas saw the group of men standing in front of one house, knocking on the door. There was no answer and they started banging on it with their fists. He ran to Naji’s house but it was dark. He ran out to the street again and saw the shadows of the men moving across the street. Backing away as quietly as he could, Vikas eased to the side of the road and then ran for the crumbling wall. There was no one at the banyan tree. The twisted limbs creaked in the wind casting shifting shadows on the ground. The moon was rising in the sky surrounded by a court of stars. Vikas looked around desperately. Had they already left? Vikas sat down on a flat rock, his stomach churning. He heard a splash and looked across the creek. Someone was hurrying across the water. Naji burst out and for a moment stood in the light of the moon before running towards the tree. Crying, he threw his arms around it. Vikas came up behind him and put his hand hesitatingly on his shoulder. Startled, Naji stepped back and stared at him wildly, blindly. Then he double over, his body racked with sobs and Vikas put his arms around him to hold him up. Vikas lowered Naji gently on the ground and sat next to him until the violence subsided. He rested his chin on Naji’s shoulder, pressing his face into his friend’s neck.

This closeness, this fierce twining of terror and relief coursing through every limb, threatened to send Vikas flying off the ground back into the tree branches where they had first laughed into the sky.

They didn’t hear the others’ approach, the splashing in the water, the dry twigs cracking. The moon had drifted behind a cloud and it was black all around.
“Naji! Where are you?” The voice exploded around the boys like a gunshot in the woods. They jumped apart, staring at each other in the dark. It had come, it was now. “Naji! I know you’re here! Where are you?” The voice sounded angry, and something else as well. Naji grabbed Vikas’ arm and pulled him up. He held him for one moment, his arm clutching Vikas’ sleeve his mother had just earlier that night, then pushed him away roughly. Naji moved quickly towards the creek as the moon emerged and lit the landscape.

“I’m here, Papa.” Vikas saw a larger dark figure come through the trees, right in front of where they had been sitting, and walk quickly over to Naji. If he hits him, I’m going to come out, Vikas thought. I won’t let him get hurt again. Naji stood there, the white light, striped by the branches, falling across him. Vikas saw Naji’s father lean forward, peering into his face and then grab him – enveloping him in his arms, so tightly Vikas thought he could hear Naji gasp. His father was crying.

“Thank Allah! I have found you.” He pushed him back and looked at him. “Naji, we have to leave tonight. You know this, don’t you?” Naji nodded and his father looked up to the sky, one hand on Naji’s shoulders the other flung up as if he were grabbing the moon. Naji took his father’s arm and gently held it. As they walked down the creek to cross it, Vikas crept forward from behind the rock’s cover and strained to see them. He saw Naji helping his father across the creek and watched as they paused for the old man to put his sandals back on. For a moment, Naji looked back to the clearing to where Vikas stood under the banyan tree, and then they were gone.
For months, Vikas wrote letters to anyone he could think of that might know where Naji’s family went. He kept a vigil on his neighbor’s house, peering through the windows for any sign of activity in the stillness.

When Vikas was twenty, he was accepted into an engineering program in the United States. As he packed for the journey that would take him to New Delhi, Dubai, London and finally Boston, he found an old movie script he had written with his friend. They had sat under the tree, looking up at the backward bend of the branches and talked about the films they would make. Vikas and Naji would sit there for long hours, planning and arguing, as the sun dropped below the horizon, a blue mist hovering in the air above them, descending until it turned black with the night.

Vikas held the yellowing script bound together by string threaded through the side and dared himself to open it. He hadn’t thought of the old village in years. He had been so innocent then, believing that defining good and evil mattered, that people could tell the difference. He remembered that terrible and wondrous time dimly. It was as if he were walking into a dark room from a bright terrace, at first only sensing the outline of the walls and chairs and tables. He knew if he waited he would adjust to the light and the outlines would fill in with color and shapes and details, but he no longer wanted to. He closed his suitcase and walked over to the door, pausing. He held the script over the trash bin. The feel of the crackling paper frightened him. Vikas threw the manuscript in and walked out the door, hoping to forget the village and his memories of India.

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