The Bitter Way Home
By Sidrah Haque
Zulfikar pressed tightly at the throbbing knot of pain between his eyes, a tell that the migraine was onset.
His fingers travelled the expanse of the pillow next to him in a sleepy haze, feeling for Nicole. It was cold, empty. His eyes opened with a jolt.
He wasn’t in Beaconsfield anymore.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness in his room. It was still the middle of the night in Sargodha, back in his father’s mansion, in the dead of December.
December.
The nostalgia from four Christmases spent in Iowa bit like acid burn in the back of his throat. Zulfikar shook his head hoping that the lingering memories would fade, and with it, the stench of pine cones and Burberry Woman he swore he could smell just now; memories that only prolonged the migraines. He stretched a hand for the white Excedrin tablets on his bedside, chugging them with a glass of water from a pitcher one of the servants must have left.
Zulfikar turned his head to a side, catching a glimpse of his face in the dresser’s mirror just opposite. He studied the purple circles under his eyes that he had convinced his mother were just jetlag, and not down to the spiral of depression he had been caught in, ever since his return back home a week ago.
The prodigal son had come back. All the months of his parents’ blackmailing, feigned illnesses, the intervention of mediatory relatives, and snapping off the purse strings seemed long forgotten as he was embraced inside the airport instead, with threads of rose garlands and a procession of drummers outside baggage claim.
When the Prado carrying him and his parents crossed into the concertina wired walls of the four kanal house of his childhood, he did not feel anything. The immaculately manicured lawns lay insipid, bordered by pink chrysanthemums, pastel snapdragons, bobbing calendulas, delicate petunias, but they appeared as a spattering of color. There was no tug of familiarity.
Besides Zulfikar - their only child - the lawns were the pride and joy of his parents, a tour of the greens mandatory after every luncheon and dinner thrown for his father’s business crowd. Zulfikar was ushered through a throng of cousins gathered at the entrance to welcome him to cheers and scattered rose petals. The house vibrated to the thrum of the chest-high speaker spitting out a loud Punjabi bhangra.
**
A soft knock at the door just then interrupted Zulfikar’s dark thoughts. He turned in bed to face the door, the migraine medicine having allowed only a restless nap. He glanced at the clock, 6.20 am. A second knock didn’t come, but he saw the doorknob turn carefully. A dupatta-clad head peeped through, the white maalmaal unmistakable.
“Zulfi… are you up?,” his mother whispered, hovering at the periphery of his room.
“Yes, maa.”
“Your father wants you. He’s going to visit the zameen. Wear your Hunters.”
**
Talat’s mind was a chaotic mess.
He nodded as the loitering farmers, who gazed expectantly at him, the deep lines of worry and hesitation darkening their salutations like a death. He didn’t linger among them.
He turned to his son, who was trudging behind, peering at the lines of fattened orange trees with wonder. At least Talat had one less worry.
“Baba… this is amazing,” Zulfikar exclaimed in English, a new lilt to the way he spoke.
Talat remained quiet. He signaled to his tehsildaar towards the car. The sixty-two year old henchman had henna-ed white hair, but he knew the signal for when the sahibs were to be left alone.
Talat walked in between the grassy knolls, breathing in the citrusy scent of his orchards. He stopped near a bellowing canal that had been constructed to accommodate the ground water pulled from a freshly commissioned tubewell. He had personally overlooked the team from the water department that had pinpointed the optimal location for the pump, measuring the water table with a piezometer. He gazed at the solar panels running the system, providing glistening, sweet water to the fruit trees.
After a brief stillness, he finally spoke.
“Son… the orchards are dying.”
Zulfikar looked on, stunned, at his father. He studied his face carefully in the meek December sunshine noticing deep wrinkles that the years had added on to his face.
“What do you mean?”
“The yield has fallen to just half of what it was four years ago…the trees are diseased. I’ve tried everything, but every harvest the rot keeps coming back.”
Zulfikar approached an orange tree nearby and trained his eyes onto the hanging bud. He couldn’t believe he had missed it earlier. Four years of being away shouldn’t have discounted a lifetime of growing up on these fields. He saw the brown spots bruising the oranges and the leaves, rotting cankers that made the fruit disqualified from exports. They would sell for virtual pennies in the local market, enough to cover the transport.
His eyes quickly swooped through nearby trees to confirm his panic.
“Baba, let me look into some new pesticides, I’m sure there something new in the mark–”
“It’s not that simple,” his father’s voice a near whisper.
Talat looked around the lands, his eyes glazing with emotion.
“It’s everywhere. All over Punjab. I’ve been travelling down south, meeting family and landlords along the way. Most of them keep thinking new pesticides from the Middle East or China will work – but they won’t admit to themselves that it might be the end. It’s the weather… the winters are colder and the sunshine is different than it was years ago. It doesn’t prickle you like it used to. The smog has itself wrapped around our necks like a noose, dulling the sun. It’s like this all winter long.”
Talat’s eyes gazed up in the skies. Zulfikar now pieced together what was wrong. He had sensed something different as soon as he had landed. He thought it had something to do with Iowa. But the realization hit him hard; every pull of his breath felt like an intake of small splintering dust.
“The harvest season has shrunk. It used to span six months long. We used to have enough fruit to go into summers, remember that when you were a kid?”
Zulfikar nodded at his father’s broad back. He still hadn’t faced his son, and Zulfikar sobered as to why.
“It’s down to two months now.”
Talat trudged alongside the newly built tubewell, his son following suit silently.
“I’ve made a deal with the Maliks.”
His son froze. He must have misheard.
His father hated the Maliks with an unmatched ferocity. The two Arain brothers whose land had bordered theirs were tyrants, ruling with a black heart. News filtered in through the years, passed on by travelling agents, disgruntled tenants. The elder Malik beat his tenants if they were unable to make quota, and made them sit on the ground when he ruled from a charpoy every morning. He rationed their sugar and denied the right for anyone to educate their daughters. He was the judge and jury in the jirgas held on their land, giving him absolute control over his area. Bribing the police to stay away meant there was no respite. The younger brother was less potent, but equally incapable of any sort of intervention, allowing soulless reign.
Zulfikar’s mind reeled at the thought of the Maliks. His father had abhorred them, steering clear of their invitations over the decades.
“I’m selling 1,000 jareebs to them. I’ll get the final check on Friday.”
Zulfikar’s fists folded with anger. He couldn’t understand it. This land was their legacy. He had grown up on these fields, whiled away his youth climbing the branches of these trees, the farmhouse was his personal castle, promised to him growing up.
He never wanted to take over, never wanted to be what his father was for a living. But to throw away a family legacy to the animals that neighbored them, literal monsters who treated their tenants like the filth underneath their boots.
He swallowed the venom that filled his mouth.
“How could you?”
Talat stopped. He slowly turned back, finally gazing at his son, unsure what he just heard.
“How could you, Baba? How could you give half our lands away like that to those… monsters!”
Talat looked at him, his chin jutting out, turning swiftly towards the cold sun.
“They were the only takers.”
“What about—what… what about selling it to Naseer chacha? Or Ambreen Phopho? Or keeping it—”
“Nonsense, son. No one wants to buy land anymore, it’s a dying tradition. And why do I need to hold on to so much anyway? I’d rather invest in some commercial plots for your sake. It’ll be easier for you to manage.”
Zulfikar quieted at the unspoken meaning behind his father’s words.
Of course, he never wanted this. He hated his father’s life, getting up at the brink of dawn, always mingling with the tenants over trifling issues, the petty politics that plagued their lives, worrying about them constantly. It was always something that took his father away from Sundays with his family or called back early from summer trips up north.
Something or other about these lands kept his father chained to them. Whether it was sowing season, or harvesting, or gathering the market agents, or sending red and white boxes of kinnows to a whole ungrateful khandaan whose only feedback was that last seasons’ produce was better.
Zulfikar hated everything the lands took away from him, but he couldn’t come around to hating the lands. These fields had meant everything growing up. They were his refuge when he travelled with his father, his playpen when the panchayaats grew boring, his wonderland when it was plucking season.
Warm feelings for the clumpy, plush soil under his boots spread to his very soul, burning something deep in the recess of his heart.
His mind flickered to Iowa, a glimpse of his life there, Nicole lounging sweetly by his side on their twin bed, the duvet uncovering her warm body.
Zulfikar looked at the solid contours of his father’s shoulders and back, a few meters ahead of him.
“Baba… you need to rip that check.”
Sidrah Haque is a Pakistani writer with a Master’s degree in Public Administration and fifteen years of experience in the field of federal trade policy. Her writing reflects the many places she has lived and the countries she has visited. Her work has appeared in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Cerebation Magazine, Alhamra Literary Review, and publications by Oxford University Press, and has been recognized by the Zeenat Haroon Writing Competition (2024) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation (2007).
She can be contacted at sidrahhaque@gmail.com.
Instagram: @sidrahhaquewrites
Substack: https://sidrahh.substack.com/