The village of Lambhore can’t be found on a map, but it lies somewhere deep in the province of Gujrat, eastern Pakistan. It is so small that I can usually walk through it in twenty minutes if I travel through all of its paths and alleys and twists and turns. Dry dirt and sand cover the ground and the exterior walls of the village homes. The villagers burn wood to keep warm during the winter, so the smell of fresh smoke from burning firewood is cemented in the air.
The ground throughout the village is made of light beige, sandy bricks. The bricks were once a bright, solid red when they were first installed during a time when Pakistan did not exist but pre-Partition British India did. Over time, over conflict the color of the bricks faded. Some of them jut out while some are missing and, if I’m wearing flip flops, the contours of the bricks dig deep against the thin soles. For this reason, the villagers have to be careful when walking through the village. If they’re looking up and not down—one wrong step—and they may fall. The houses in the village are connected with bricks and some of the red bricks on the walls are left uncovered by the faded, ripped concrete. The roofs of the homes are open and flat, so that women can dry the clothes in the sun during the day and cats can prowl at night.
The path toward my grandfather’s house is narrow. Whenever my family and I drive the eight hours from Islamabad International Airport to his village, our cab stops halfway through the alley to the house because if the driver went any further, he would be unable to drive back.
Time seems to stop here. Many of the villagers use the local Imam’s call to the five daily prayers as their source of time. No outsiders come except for occasional guests, motorcyclists and rickshaw drivers traveling to some other destination. Every day, a few street vendors selling fruit, veggies, or household items will pass through the village. They yell out “KAYLAAAA LALOOOO” or “NASHPATHIIIII LALOOOO.” They stretch their words, hoping the entire village can hear them, and their voices echo off the alleys’ walls.
The alleyways in the village are often riddled with the dung of water buffalo that pass through. The buffalos’ nature is wild – their eyes are wide and piercing. But they have been tamed. The village herders tie their snouts with rope to keep them from biting. When I happen to be walking in the village while they are rushing by, I quickly step up on a stair in front of a house and press myself against the gate, stilling my breath and attempting to avoid looking at them in the eye. No amount of rope can still the longing inside of them to bite, to roam free.
Once, one of the water buffalos escaped from a small farm owned by a villager. It was nighttime, and my cousins and I were walking home from a relative’s mehndi, or pre-wedding ceremony. We were walking through the alleyway that would lead us to my grandfather’s house. And that’s when we saw her.
A lone buffalo in the distance. She stood in a clearing to our left, and if we just walked about 50 feet, we could reach her.
She was midnight black against the blue, starry sky. I swear that even in the dark night, I could see her eyes shine. Without restraint.
We could hear her snorting, furious. She was caged and now she is free. Untamed. My cousins told me to walk quickly, but not run, because that could set her off after us. I wrapped my soft gold dupatta around my shoulders—hoping it would protect me against her rage.
When we reached our house, my cousin pushed shut the gates, but I was not so sure that even the heavy steel could keep the buffalo from breaking through with her silver horns.
If I’m walking through the alleyway in front of my grandfather’s house and I look up, I can only see a sliver of sky between the houses’ open roofs, which are extended toward each other. But just outside the confines of the village is vast, lush farmland lined with streams and the occasional cluster of Arabic Gum and Salt Cedar trees. It can be a bit jarring to move from a place so constricting to one so open. I often climb to the top of the open roof of my grandfather’s house to see how far the land outside the village travels. But it seemed like I could walk and walk and walk and I’d never see where the earth meets the sky. The sky and the land are open and limitless. They stretch and stretch outwards together.
I once commented on this to a friend of my cousin’s several years ago when she was about 9 years old and I was 14. She said in Punjabi, “The sky seems limitless. I want to explore it, but I’ve never flown in an airplane. I hope to be a pilot when I grow up.”
Her wide eyes shone when she told me about her dream of reaching the sky. I just smiled and looked at her, not wanting to break the shine in her eyes with the truth. We were both children, but already I knew of things that are often left unspoken. Perhaps she did, too – she had already started to wrap a dupatta around her head, so her thin face looked smaller than it was. Not one strand of hair was left untucked from her scarf.
It was a bright, warm winter afternoon, but the homes shaded us from the sunlight. We were walking through the narrow, broken path in front of my late grandfather’s house, where the open roofs of the village homes meet the sky.
I saw her again when I went back to my grandfather’s village a year ago. She had stopped going to school when she turned 15. I never asked why.
Faiza Ikram is a Master of Arts student in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse program at DePaul University. She is a peer writing tutor at the University Center for Writing-Based Learning and lives in Oak Lawn, IL.