The Babul Trees

Author: Rizwan Ahmed Memon

Children rushed to see me as I entered the Edhi center. I was different from them in many ways, but one thing that we had in common was that we were all orphans. The supervisor in charge of the orphanage introduced me, “Children, this is your new friend, Kuee. She is older than all of you!”

One of the small children smiled shyly at me, “Welcome, Kuee. You will be safe here.” The supervisor showed me around the center and told me how to act and what to do.

The children wanted to talk to me, but I remained very silent and alone for many days. I worried that they would mock me, but no one did: Everyone seemed to have their own sad pasts. One day the supervisor of the center came to me, “Kuee, the children really want to hear your story. Would you care to tell it to us?”

“I don’t have a story,” I quietly replied.

“Everyone living here has a story to tell,” prodded one of the older girls. “Please tell us: Why did you come here? How did you get here? Where are your parents?”

I looked down at my small feet and remained silent for a few seconds, hesitant to speak.

“Come on, Kuee, don’t be shy. We’re all your friends,” the supervisor encouraged.

I lifted my head and began: “I was born with a birth defect. I am not a child; my body has been stunted by this defect. I am almost 30 now, but I look like a 3-year-old. I remained at home all my life to avoid being mocked. I did not dare to play with other neighborhood children for fear of being teased or ridiculed by them. I could only do a few things normally because my legs and arms are too short and weak. Despite my deformities, my father and mother loved me very much; I was their only child. Kajlo, our dog, served well as my guardian, my ally, a co-conspirator in mischief, and my best friend.

We lived by the graveyard in Samtiya, in a house without walls. Thorn trees surrounded our house. Mother told me once that when they came to that place, only babul trees grew there, so they wanted them to stay. The graveyard isolated our house from the other houses that stood on the far side of the cemetery. Olive orchards and ponds were the beauty of our Samtiya. My father, Habib, cut the thorny branches of the babul trees, and put the branches around our house as a fence to protect us from intruders. The thorny branches made it difficult for anyone to pass unscathed. We felt happy in our little world.

My father ran a donkey-cart, delivering farmers’ vegetables to the city, to make ends meet. My devoted mother, Basran, eagerly sewed quilts and coverlets. She always helped my father run the house.

I played games with my only loyal friend, Kajlo. One of our favorites was “Thread and Note.” I would tie a thin, white thread around a ten-rupee note and then sit by the door. Kajlo would take the note and leave it in the middle of the road. When people passing by saw it and tried to grab it, I would pull the thread back. It was fun pulling the thread back as people saw and tried to grab the note. We loved that game. Our house didn’t have a real wooden or iron door; Mother had hung a quilt on the logs of the babul trees on either side as a door. We had only a single room covered with a thatched roof and babul logs as beams supporting the mud brick walls.

Although my parents were only 50 years old, their hard lives had taken a toll on their bodies. Our difficult days started about three years ago. Father’s only source of money had been delivering produce to the city of Larkana on his donkey drawn cart, but he had grown too old and weak to operate it. Unfortunately, Baba, my father, had a serious accident: He lost control of the donkey, and the cart fell into a ditch, breaking both of the wheels. With the loss of my father’s only means of livelihood our lives became difficult.

The hard life was also wearing out my mother. Her body was becoming frail and her eyesight was failing to the point of not being able to thread a needle to sew the quilts. We didn’t have enough money to buy food, and many nights we went to sleep hungry.

Father started to look after the graveyard in order to get tips from the visitors. He swept the graves, watered the little neem trees, and put stones over the graves. He would go there early in the morning when people visited their loved ones. People didn’t give him much. He barely made fifty rupees, and that was not every day. We suffered. Our dire situation forced my mother to beg. She went door to door in the nearby village.

I will tell you about one of our days, New Year’s Eve. The previous night, we had had nothing to eat. Mother was pretending to be asleep, covering her entire body with an old worn out sawar, a cotton coverlet. Father, Kajlo, and I were sitting in front of the fire that served as our kitchen under the babul tree. We cooked without gas, appliances, China pots, or an oven. We ate meals on the pindis made out of date palm tree leaves, and we had plastic bowls. We burned the dried branches of the babul trees as our only fuel. These thorn trees had always been useful to us. When the Fajr Adhan—the morning call to prayer—could be heard, Mother removed her sawar. She could no longer bear to see us so hungry, so she was thinking about going to Akil early that day. “Dhia, Kuee,” she called me—our relatives called me Kuee, meaning a small female mouse.

“Ji, Aman,” I replied.

“I cannot see my slippers. Kajlo must have taken them.” Father heard us; he had the slippers on his feet. Kajlo had brought them to him to wear because his own shoes had become too worn and one of the shoes’ soles had come off. Father removed the slippers and gave them to Kajlo.

“Woof, Woof,” said Kajlo. He went to Mother and put the slippers before her feet. I saw Mother had been wearing two kamizes because she didn’t have a sweater. She opened her box and took another kamiz.

I stared at her as she removed the knee-length shirt. “Why are you taking this kamiz, Mother?” I inquired.

“I am going to wear it because it is so cold. I am going to Akil,” she said without hesitating.

“Mother, it is too early,” I said nervously.

“I’ll walk slowly. By the time I arrive there, the sun will have risen,” she favored me with her reassuring smile.

“There might be stray dogs on the way. Dogs live in the guava orchards on the left side of the road,” I reminded her.

“They won’t harm me,” she said with a firm resolve. Father looked at her with red, tear filled eyes. She took a babul stick and a small torn bag. I worried people would laugh at her because she had worn three different colored kamizes.

The sun had grown high in the sky, and Mother hadn’t returned yet. Commanding my body to move, I crawled to the nearby pond, diligently scanning the road to see if my beloved mother was coming.

It was a very cold morning, with a stiff breeze making the air even colder. After a few minutes, I could hear Kajlo barking in the house. This dog had spent many years with us and had faced many difficulties with us. He came out sniffing the dust to find me. “Woof, woof, woof!” barked Kajlo. He was probably asking me to get inside the house. I looked at the dog and at the road. I thought about how hard it must be for Mother to go every day to beg in Akil. Kajlo pulled my kamiz and insisted that I go inside. I didn’t move. I could only see my father sweeping a grave, collecting the fallen dried, yellow leaves from the neem tree in the graveyard.

After another hour I finally saw Mother, slowly making her way home. Her gait was measured, but her smile was infectious. I wished I could help her, in any way. I wished there was something I could do to provide for my family. That day, I felt very inferior and helpless; I was the child who would never grow.

“What are you doing out here? Get inside,” Mother said as she reached me. “Look, I have brought enough food for tomorrow, too!”

My eyes filled with tears. She hugged me and said, “Good days come after the hard days. My child, don’t you cry.”

Kajlo barked at Baba to tell him that Mother had brought food. The dog had been hungry too. “Mother, I commented, “Kajlo is happy to see the food.”

“Yes, he is. He has been here for a long time.” Mother pattered his head. “Our relatives don’t feel our pain the same way Kajlo does: He understands our situation. The humans have lost their humanity, my child.”

“Why don’t you go to the relatives for help, Mother?”

“They know everything about us. I have gone to them for help many times, but they haven’t done anything for us. There is a saying in Sindhi: Crying before the blind is useless.”

“Mother, I have also heard Father saying that asking for help from relatives is like asking for berries from a babul tree.”

“Yes, but these babul trees have been very useful to us, more useful than our relatives and neighbors.”

Mother distributed the food equally to everyone, including Kajlo. We ate the food and thanked God.

Our days continued like that, until one night when Father got very sick. Mother took the lantern and went to Akil to call on the doctor. She forgot to take her stick in her hurry. When she returned, Father had stopped breathing. Mother burst into tears, crying, “The doctor wouldn’t open the door; neither the medical store man. I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t do anything for you.”

In the morning, Mother went to get help from the people on the other side of the graveyard. She gave Baba’s brother’s phone number to one of the men, and he informed him of Father’s passing away. The neighborhood men dug a grave for Father and buried him. Uncle arrived from Khairpur after his burial. There were not many people in the congregation. Some women food and remained at our house of thorns until evening, and by the end of the day everybody had gone. My uncle left a thousand-rupee note in my mother’s dupatta and said, “It was God’s wish; we can do nothing.”

Father’s death caused Mother a great deal of sorrow. She was broken-hearted and was becoming weaker and weaker every day. Her eyesight was rapidly declining, and she could no longer walk to Akil. Although she never wanted to, she went into the neighborhood to beg for food on the other side of the graveyard. I collected the small, fallen, yellow flowers from the thorn trees and put them in a plastic bag, which Kajlo took to my father’s grave. My uncle never came to see us or pray at Father’s grave.

Two years after Father’s death, Mother’s eyesight was now completely gone. The only way for her to reach the neighborhood was with the help of a babul stick. One day, she didn’t come home for a long time. I was terribly worried because Mother had left in the morning and she didn’t return by evening. Kajlo constantly barked.

 The neighbors found Mother dead in a pond where she had fallen. She had hit her head and drowned.

The villagers phoned my uncle, once more. He scarcely waited until mother was buried. He took me to Khairpur and had me admitted into this orphanage. He didn’t allow me to take Kajlo with me.”

Tears filled my eyes. I felt a warm hand on my shoulder.

“You are a very brave woman,” said the supervisor.

“Yes, very brave,” The children agreed. “You’ve had a harder life than all of us!”

“Children, this may be the saddest story I have heard in a long time. There are rights for neighbors in Islam. I try to live by one instruction that a saint gave me: Love thy neighbor. We are commanded to take care of those less fortunate than us. It is hard to believe that people live in such abject poverty in Pakistan. For relatives to not help Kuee’s family is unthinkable to me. How the world has changed!” The supervisor cleared his throat. "We have all fought our battles, and the battles with hunger have been the toughest. Kuee has very bravely fought both the battles of hunger and disability.”

After listening to my story, the orphan children seemed to have felt lucky to have “normal” bodies. Their sadness seemed to lighten a little, feeling cheered up for themselves yet genuinely empathetic of my fate. “However,” I told them, “I am happy with the way God created me.”

“Let this be a lesson,” the supervisor stated. “Kuee is a differently abled person! She is good at counting and she picks up languages easily. She has picked up a good deal of English and Chinese in no time at all!”

“That’s right,” I told them, “The paradox of handicapped people is that the lack of ability in one area often results in a greater ability in other areas. For example, blind people are often gifted musicians or skilled at massage. Deaf people often have a very precise sense of sight.”

“And short people often have big minds!” said the supervisor. “Kuee, thank you for telling us your story. Children, time to move to your rooms now.”

I watched the children go, but I could see the light in their eyes. The supervisor and I had given them a lot to think about, and maybe, just maybe, they would use this knowledge to make the world a better place.

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For more stories, purchase Memon’s books:

“The Reflections” and “Innocence and Foolishness.”

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