Love Across Borders (3 page)

“To Neha and Riyaz, for proving to me that
politics can be ignored.”

∞

ABOUT YAMINI VASUDEVAN

A writer and editor, Yamini has worked with some of
the biggest names in the publishing world—Harper’s Bazaar
(Singapore), The Singapore Women’s Weekly (Singapore), and The
Hindu Business Line (India). She has also co-authored 'Singapore
Indian Entrepreneurs: Dreams to Reality'. Her writing spans
political and historical narratives and analysis, qualitative
business issues, travel and lifestyle. Fiction is a long-standing
love, and she has recently penned a couple of short stories and a
full-length romance novel. Yamini has also published several
fiction and non-fiction pieces for children. You can read her
published works at
yamini16.wordpress.com
.

***

What Kind of Book…

…do you read late at night, undisturbed and
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One Stupid Comment

SHUCHI KALRA & SABAHAT
MUHAMMAD

Jahaan was tired. The peace negotiations had
been going on for hours now, and all the talking was making her jaw
ache. Such petty things to be discussing—
who cares about a tree
here, or a mountain there? We came to end the war, can’t we just
agree on that and be done with it? Go back to our respective
corners and…

Her gaze fell on Aryan. His smooth skin was
deeply tanned from years spent in the sun.
Probably as tough as
an elephant’s, too.
Looking at his aquiline profile, she wasn’t
so sure that she wanted to retreat. The deep orange strip down the
back of his jacket denoted rank: the chieftain’s son, perhaps?
Well, she was no less than a princess herself. It was only a matter
of time before her father handed over the reins of the tribe in her
sure hands. It’s too bad, she thought, that he was the enemy.

A tribe elder said something mundane and she saw
Aryan’s eyes roll; she realized he wanted this over with as much as
she did.

Aryan had sensed her watching him. Like her, he
was deeply aware of her in the cramped tent. Every once in a while,
he had let his gaze linger on her porcelain skin and those emerald
eyes that made the rich silk of her green robes pale in
comparison.

They were the only two of their age at the
negotiations—representatives of the next generation—and he was
curious about her. As curious as he was about the magnificent white
stallion tethered right outside the tent. When the group eventually
broke for refreshments, Aryan got up to get a better look at the
animal.

In the year 2130, horses were rare—almost
extinct, in fact—and he had never seen one outside of his
grandfather’s picture books. How would it feel to touch it, ride
it, feel its pulse throbbing as it took off with the speed of…?

“Have you ever seen one before?”

Aryan whipped his head around at the soft
statement. Jahaan was standing right behind him, watching him.
“No.” His words were clipped. He was curious about her, yes, but
had no reason to be
friendly
.

“Would you like to take a ride?” Jahaan’s
question took him by surprise. It was an odd gesture of
conciliation between tribes that had been enemies for
centuries.

Damn, is she reading my mind?
“Ummm…”
This wasn’t the time for ifs and buts. What if she changed her
mind?
“Okay.”
How difficult can it be
, he thought,
to
ride one of these things?

Less than two minutes later, he was sitting
behind a beautiful, intriguing woman on an animal that, just a day
ago, was a silly fantasy. Aryan gritted his teeth in pain as his
butt repeatedly smacked down on the horse’s back. He forced his
mind away from the torturous rhythm of the ride, and shouted
against the wind.

“Where did you get this?”

“The horse?” Jahaan turned her head slightly to
look back at Aryan. “I don’t know—we’ve had him since I was
born.”

“Won’t they be angry at you? For taking the
enemy
out on a horse?”

Jahaan gave a short laugh. “By sunrise, we’ll be
allies—we are here to negotiate
peace
, after all, aren’t
we?”

“My grandfather said we were allies thirty years
ago. It took one man’s stupid comments to break the alliance
then…”

“Are you planning on saying something stupid?”
She was mocking, confident, a wry smile pulling at the corner of
her mouth.

He narrowed his eyes at her as her silky hair
stroked softly against his face, and he turned his head to dislodge
the strands. “Not
planning
on it, no…wha—” Jahaan had moved
her head at the same time, trying to get her hair under control.
Her hand jerked on the reins just as a snake slithered onto the
path before them. The white horse reared in panic, almost throwing
his ride. Jahaan pulled at his mouth, but he sensed her fear at
almost being thrown, and ignored her command. The horse’s sleek
skin stretched over bunched muscles as he turned from the path they
were on, and launched himself away from the canyon where the camp
was set up.

“What the hell happened?” Aryan’s words were
snatched away by the wind, but Jahaan heard them. Struggling to
control the wayward animal, she yelled back.

“Just hold on. Whatever you do, don’t let
go!”

***

The stallion had run for hours, or it had seemed
that way. Jahaan had dropped the reins after the first minute and
just clutched at his mane, letting him ride out his fear. Aryan, by
that time, was deeply regretting the ride, but like Jahaan, he had
just held on and waited for the mad dash to end.

As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jahaan
slipped off the horse. It was damp and frothing slightly at the
mouth and obviously needed a rest. Aryan awkwardly followed. He
forced himself to remain calm as he looked around. He had no idea
how far the horse had run. More troubling than the darkness,
though, as he patted his pockets for matches, was the silence.

“Where the fuck are we?” Jahaan’s whisper
floated from across the trembling horse. “Can you see
anything?”

“Just enough.” Aryan found the matches, and
casually tore a strip of fabric off his shirt. Cautiously feeling
along the ground with his feet, he found a small, rotted branch of
wood. He wrapped the fabric around it, adding some sand to slow
down the burning, then held up his makeshift torch to get a good
look.

It was a dark, dark night without a moon, but
the yellow flame bounced off the black salt of the desert, and
Jahaan drew in a sharp breath of fear.

“Are we on the Kutchee Rann?”

“You stupid…” Aryan caught himself before he
went any further, but Jahaan glared at him.

“You think this is my fault? I couldn’t control
the horse!”

“Exactly! You couldn’t control it. I thought you
knew how to ride.”

“I
do
know how to ride, which is why
we’re still alive, you pompous
jat
.” The ancient word caught
him a bit by surprise, and as he opened his mouth to lambast her,
the torch flickered wildly, and Jahaan looked at him with a tinge
of panic.

“If that goes out…”
People didn’t come back
from the Kutchee Rann.
“We’ll never find the way back in the
dark.”

He kept his voice calm, assured. “We’ll sleep
here and wait for light. The sun will rise.”

He swept the torch around, looking for something
that could pass as shelter. The desert was notoriously cold at
night.

He heard her take a deep breath. “We should dig
a hole, to sleep in. We’ll stay warm that way,” she finally
offered.

He nodded. “We will get out. We have a horse, a
huge advantage over…others…who may have gotten lost here.”

They had been walking, slowly, Jahaan leading
the horse, in search for a soft bed, and something that would
buffer them from the cold. She stumbled, unable to see where she
was stepping, and let out a sharp cry as she fell. Aryan swept the
torch towards her, and the light fell on a crumbling stone wall.
Jahaan had stumbled into some ruins, barely standing, but there was
a wall, and a few pillars, enough of a structure to give them the
illusion of shelter. The torch created a warm ring of light, and,
tethering the horse to one of the stones, Jahaan and Aryan searched
for a soft spot under the wall, where they could dig a hole large
enough for them to snuggle into.

***

They had to use their hands to dig. The horse
stood idly by, unconcerned by the humans’ frantic movements. The
torch had, mercifully, survived the wild flickering, but was
burning down the stick at an alarming rate, prompting the two to
speed up their actions.

“Fuck.” Aryan had scraped his hand against
something sharp, breaking skin as he pulled away. Salt from the
earth stung the wound, and he sat back for a moment. Jahaan was
down in the hole, already almost three feet deep, and she saw the
sharp edge that had wounded Aryan sticking out of the ground. It
was metal, which seemed odd to her.
Metal, on the salt
plains?
This place was a wasteland, a desolate tract of land
that was rumored to be an endless desert without signs of any life,
pitted with deep pockets of quicksand and natural traps that meant
that humans rarely found their way out. As a result, humans
never
ventured in.

She started digging around the edge, smoothing
away the sand as she found straight edges of what was clearly a
box. Aryan silently joined her, ignoring the sting of sand and salt
against his hand.

The box was huge. The two struggled together to
pull it out of the sand and into the hole they had dug. It was
buried deep within a nest of wooden planks, and they were both
panting with exertion by the time they lifted it out of its
cocoon.

It was beautifully engraved but rusted and
weathered.

“It’s beautiful.” Jahaan reached out to stroke
the ornate edge of the box.

“It looks like it was…deliberately buried.”

“Hidden, do you think?”

“Wait—the planks! We can light a fire, and
figure out what this is.” He scrambled out of the hole, and Jahaan
grabbed a handful of the crumbling planks and passed them up to
him. Within a few minutes, the flickering torch settled as the fire
found new material to burn.

Jahaan was already examining the box, but there
seemed to be no lock, no visible way to open it. Frowning, Aryan
rested his hand on a corner, and pushed down. Jahaan jumped as a
small handle popped out in front of her.

“What on earth?”

“Pull it.” The handle came away in her hand.
Aryan took it from her, turned it around and pushed it back into
the slot it had come out of. The box split in two.

“How did you know how to do that?”

“You grew up riding horses, I grew up reading
books.”

They both looked down at the scrolls of paper
that had slipped out of the open box. There were pictures, stacked
neatly just below the scrolls, and what looked like a stamp.

“I read too—just never heard or read of a box
like this.”

Aryan frowned. “I read about a box
just
like this; it had something to do with an important event…” He
pulled open a scroll, and suddenly sat down with a thud. “
The
Kutch Treaty
…” His voice was a mere whisper.

Jahaan saw the familiar crescent and star that
was their tribe’s symbol on the paper. Right next to it was an
ornate blue wheel, Aryan’s tribe...

“What was the Kutch Treaty?”

Aryan smoothed his hand over the textured paper,
his brain feverish with the idea that he held the original treaty
in his hand. Could this be a way forward out of the desolation in
which they lived? How, he wondered, how was this in such good
condition?

“It was the beginning of the end. A treaty to
unite our tribes forever.”

“The beginning of the end?”

“Something happened—it’s not recorded what,
exactly. But that was the beginning of a war that lasted almost
twenty years, and ended with something called a nuclear disaster.
It’s the reason we live in tents…” He pulled up the pictures and
fanned them out in front of Jahaan.

Important men and women posed in front of
awesome concrete structures. Shaking hands and smiling, people
posed against lushly green, decadent buildings, under the shade of
tall trees and bright flowers; she found images of long cars and
sleek planes, technologies and a way of living that hadn’t existed
in this land for almost a hundred years, but she had read about in
the books she read.

***

When the sun rose, the young couple was already
astride the horse. The metal box sat awkwardly between them. Jahaan
had scouted the land earlier, and in the stillness of the desert,
the tracks of their journey into the Kutchee Rann were clearly
visible.

Hungry, thirsty and hot, they slowly followed
the tracks with a new sense of peace and complicity settling
between them. The box held precious secrets—knowledge that had been
buried for so long, but could surely help them build a new
country.

“Can you imagine working together, living
together, like they said in the Treaty?”

“We worked together last night, Jahaan. If we
hadn’t, we may have been much worse for the wear this morning.”

“Hmmm. Let’s hope the elders see it the same
way.”

Aryan agreed. He had been surprised at how much
they had in common. He had been brought up to believe that the
Druks were their mortal enemy. Before this wild night, he would
have been too afraid to be alone with her, sure she would slit his
throat at the slightest provocation.

***

It took the young couple a whole day to return
to the camp. Darkness had fallen, and Jahaan was letting the horse
make essential decisions about the way back. They had travelled in
comfortable camaraderie, but had begun to droop with fatigue as the
landscape finally changed from barren desert to rocks, mountains
and sparse trees.