Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? by Anita Rau Badami

with absolute certainty that Kanwar’s entire family had died: he had seen it with his own eyes. But a fifteen-year-old boy with a cracked voicewho claimed to be from Dauri Kalan said that he had with his own eyes seen Kanwar’s five-year-old daughter Nimmo in the sad procession that had wound its way through the burning fields of Punjab.
    The old man had shaken his head at this and said, “Don’t listen to him, daughter. He makes up stories. The poor boy has lost his entire family and it has affected his mind. He tells everyone who comes here that he has seen their kin in that kafeela. Yesterday he said that he was from Nandayal village, today he is telling you he is from Dauri Kalan.”
    “But then how does he know my niece’s name?” Bibi-ji asked. She turned to the boy. “You said Nimmo, didn’t you?”
    “Nimmo, my little Nimmo,” repeated the boy obediently. “My sister Nimmo.”
    Bibi-ji didn’t know whether the boy was talking about his own sister or her niece; Nimmo was such a common name. She looked closely at the boy, wondering if he could be Kanwar’s older son, but that child would now have been little more than seven years old, whereas this boy looked to be fifteen or sixteen.
    Bibi-ji asked him a few more questions, but all he could tell her was that he had seen a girl called Nimmo in the kafeela. She imagined two long caravans of people working their way across the new border, one heading for Pakistan and the other towards India. So many millions leaving their living and their dead without farewell or proper ceremony; perhaps somewhere in their midst was Kanwar’s daughter, small, lost, terrified. If she was alive.

    The clatter of shutters descending from the shop next door alerted Bibi-ji to the fact that it was five o’clock and time to close up. She folded Kanwar’s letter carefully, noting that the thin paper was beginning to tear along the folds, that Kanwar’s words were disappearing along those same lines. She pressed it to her lips, smelled the faint scent of lavender. How much she had loved that smell once, she remembered. There had been a time, when she arrived in Canada, that her life had been lined with lavender. Inside their home—underlying the strong odours of garlic and turmeric, cumin and coriander—a sensitive nose could catch the determined drift of lavender. Dried lavender lay scattered in her underwear drawers and in her shoes. She was identified not by the sound of her footsteps, but by the fragrance of lavender that preceded her arrival and remained like a memory after her departure. But after Kanwar’s disappearance, she had swept all the soaps and perfumes from her cupboards and into the garbage. She shook out the sachets that she had tucked into the folds of sheets and towels and in the drawers. But no matter what she did, the smell of the herb clung to her like guilt.
    She slid the letter into its envelope and replaced it in her bag. One day she would find her sister and bring her family to safety in Vancouver. For that search, she would need money; she and Pa-ji must buy, sell and invest to become wealthy. She owed this much to her sister. Withthat defiant thought, she began to count the cash. Her mind shifted to the possibilities presented by the silent street outside her window. Opportunities like pearls, she reminded herself. It was only a question of spotting them. Perhaps a restaurant. Perhaps they could buy the small house with the For Sale sign that she had passed a few days ago. Then they could rent out the apartment upstairs and have a steady stream of income … She emptied the day’s takings into a pouch, locked up and, with Lalloo following, climbed the narrow flight of steps up to the apartment.

FOUR
T HE D ELHI J UNCTION

Vancouver
1967
    N ineteen sixty-one was a momentous year for the world: the handsome young John F. Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic president of the United States, and a few months later a Russian named Yuri Gagarin