Love Across the Salt Desert K N Daruwla The story "Love Across the Salt Desert" is set in the village of Khavda, located in the Desert of Kutch, Gujarat, India. The author has used this backdrop to effectively symbolize the thirst that the two protagonists feel for one another--so the scorching sun of the desert becomes a metaphor for their parched lives which were looking for satiation. He also extends the drought prevailing in the land to be an expression of the same deprivation and with the fulfillment of love in their lives, come raindrops to end the three-year old drought.
The protagonists were ordinary people –the kind one would expect to meet living in the places that have been described—on the two sides of the India-Pakistan border. She was Fatimah, the daughter of a spice seller, and smelt of “clove
...s and cinnamon”; her laughter “had the timbre of ankle bells”; her eyebrows were “like the black wisps of the night”; and her hair “was the night itself” He was Najab Hussain, known for his “diffidence”, “strangely introverted” with “dreamy eyes” and with whom no one could ever associate any “act of bravado”.
His father Aftab Hussain worried about his son and thought he would never be able to “charge money for what he sells” in the future. Najab would often cross the desert and go to the other side of the border to sell tobacco leaves, sometimes accompanied by the smuggler Zaman Shah. Once across the border, they stayed with Kaley Shah, the clove-seller, an “absolute rogue”, known for his hard bargaining. It was here that she met his daughter, Fatimah, and though she was quite
“taken up by this quiet, pleasant young man” she couldn’t “elicit a word out of him”.
She was herself going through pressure from her family to marry a man from the village known for his “slurred speech and grotesque stammer”. But love took its natural course and before long “he had flung his arms around her in a reckless, dizzy moment” To her unasked question, he told her that he would come back and he also decided that he would return alone—without anyone else to “cramp” his style and ever since his return to India he had been restless to get away, confident that he would be able to negotiate the Rann alone.
One day, unknown to all except his mother, he set off for this daring mission, with Allaharakha, his father’s camel, for company, across the salt desert. He was armed with his mother’s gold bangles for Kaley Shah and with that he was supposed to get back cloves. Zaman was furious, and so was Aftab because his “fledgling” had “blundered” because he was attempting to cross the Rann without Zaman’s support, which was a foolish thing to do.
Braving all, Najab stayed at Kaala Doongar, a black hill covered with basalt. For the next three days he only negotiated wasteland without any sign of life. Following the stars, he pursued, and found himself at Sarbela, beyond the International Boundary. Rest became imperative as it was impossible to move during daylight, with the Indus Rangers watching from their watch towers.
The distance between him and Fatima was now less than ten miles and when the “corrugated cloud had covered a substantial portion of the sky” Najab decided that
“this was the time” to make a dash disregarding the Indus Rangers, and the Indian BSF jawans, the fact that his camel might be overworked and that he still had to cover quite a portion of the “mirage-chequered, trackless wastes of the desert”. There was no time for rational thought—the “face of Fatimah beckoned him like a mirage”.
Najab crossed the International Boundary Pillar number 1066 and he knew the route he would have to take, but the Indus Rangers had spotted him, so what followed was a chase and a flurry of bullets “flopping in the sand” around him—the “rising wind” “churned the dust into his eyes and then rose between the hunter and the hunted”. Half an hour later, he was alone in the Rann, scared about his own safety and about Allaharakha’s condition as well; his feet were cracked, the desert was throwing up “white needles” which were hurting his eyes; and the desert itself seemed to trick him with its mirages.
When he finally spotted smoke rising from a dung-fire, he knew he had arrived “within range”. He waited for nightfall, knocked on Fatimah’s door and though she was panic-stricken, he dark eyes “lit up the dark of the room”. A constable came looking for a “smuggler” but Kaley Shah assured him that not even a sparrow had entered his house, but when Fatimah told him “You have a guest” he felt “terrified” at the thought of having “a smuggler in the house, with the police prowling around all around”.
He was even more displeased when he knew that Najab had not brought any tendu leaves with him.. His mother’s gold bangle did the
trick however and the next two days were spent buying cloves and arranging to get Allaharakha grazed at a distance, to ward off any suspicions. When Fatimah told him about the family’s plans to get her married, he suggested to her that they should ride across the Rann on Allaharakha’s back. When her father fell asleep, she slipped out and met Najab who was waiting on the outskirts with Allaharakha for her.
As they proceeded on the journey back to his home, it didn’t occur to her even once that she was leaving one country and entering another—“for her it meant just a shift in dialect, a smear of Kutchi added and a little of Sindhi sandpapered away” Aftab had spent a restless night, opening the door three times, thinking his son had returned and the fourth time when the knocking was really persistent, he unlatched the door and found Allharakha “shying away from a streak of lightning” and as Fatimah stepped into the room, the rain started pelting down, sweeping away “three years of drought”.
The story runs along cliched lines but its simplicity is what works and leaves the reader with the feeling that “Love indeed conquers all” and that it has the capacity to break down barriers – of Geographical borders, barriers of society, financial impediments and hierarchical norms. It relates the story of two innocent souls, simply, and without any embellishment, keeping the hostility between the two countries in the background and not letting the political reality come in the way.
