Read an exclusive excerpt from Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand

At some point later in time, in Sri Lanka, the ace batsman of the Pakistani cricket team starts hiccupping right before a match, and he just can’t stop. They give him water, tell him to hold his breath, slap him on the chest, thwack him on the back, but he’s hiccupping so hard the dressing room is jumping. Are you trying to kill me or what, asks the batsman, his red face damp with tears, and a bowler gets super serious, says that he once knew a woman whose hiccups would only go away when she was given a swift kick in the back. The whole team bursts out laughing. Fighting back hiccups and tears, the batsman says, yaar, if you’re so into kicking, then go ahead and kick. The other players start making fun of the bowler: we’re not football players here, we play cricket. If you wanted a bat to the backside, or to hit a six, we would have helped you, they say.

I’m not joking, says the bowler in a serious tone. I used to call her Amma.

The players begin to enjoy this. And she must have called you son!

Yes, but her daughter called me murderer.

Why, son? chuckle his comrades. She saw you holding a bat?

No, ji, she saw me holding a Kalashnikov, that’s why.

Oh my God, yaar! Listen to this guy! Too good!

But the cricketer is serious. It had been a painful time in his family. His father had died in an accident and the responsibility for his sisters and mother had fallen on his shoulders. He’d had to quit his studies and was accepted into the army on his uncle’s recommendation. He was sent to Landi Kotal, to guard political prisoners.

He told them there had been two women from India. One old, one scared. There was no special need to guard them all the time, guns at the ready, but orders were orders. So we set our guns to one side, he explains, and discussed cricket. He tells them that she told him that once she’d fallen down and her husband had rushed over to lift her up, but she fought him off from the ground, saying, get away, get away, Imran will miss his six.

She’d been caught in Khyber without a visa. Her Pakistani hosts had brought her there on a tour.

At this, the team cries out, what’s so special about that, yaar? One guy says he took his Indian friend last week to see Mohenjadaro without a visa. The rest share stories as well. They all begin chiming in about who has taken their friends and relations sightseeing where, without visas. Who needs a visa, come on, we just picked up a car and set out. To Karachi. Takshashila. Chitral. Mardaan. Indus. Hazara. We were going to go to Swat and Kashmir. But one evening before, my uncle called from Islamabad, don’t be stupid, every authority cuts in on every other here, you spoke to the Brigadier, but ISI, Border Force and so on, if anyone finds out, your guests would be finished and so would you.

This is what happened. After all, it was Khyber, says the serious young man.

The chiming in starts up again: when we went to India we had a visa to go to just two places but still they took us all over: Bijnaur. Karnal. Moradabad. Vrindavan. Gujranwala. Ambala. Banaras. Atrauli. Bhopal. Khatauli. Malabar Hill. Park Street. Shimla.

Who gets caught for the way they look? But Khyber is Khyber. Your lady had become a bit too much of a tiger.

Tigress, says he whose sobriquet had been murderer. She said, I will not leave, and insisted she must discuss the good old days with the father of our big boss, and only then would she consider shifting. She got some kind of bee in her bonnet and wouldn’t budge an inch. Drove our bigwigs up the wall.

And then? Whether they believe it or no, the cricketers begin to enjoy the tale.

There was a plan to deport them. Then…he falls silent.

Then? Someone asks after a pause.

Then she started hiccupping.

Hiccupping? Yes, we had completely forgotten that. But this time no one laughs. There’s a peculiar tension in the air.

What the bowler tells them next is so strange that no one knows how to react. It might seem humorous, but for some reason they’re having trouble finding it funny, even though the whole hiccupping part was hilarious.

So here’s what happened:

That night…, says the cricketer who had been a guard…she starts hiccupping and just won’t stop. It’s so bad it’s getting hard for us—there were four of us—to sleep. Finally we can’t stand it anymore, so we go and knock on the door of the room these two women are staying in. Everything okay, Amma ji? When none of the big officers are around, we call her Amma Ji. Nawaz Bhai too. Who is Nawaz Bhai? someone asks, and he explains. Her daughter comes out and tells us, Ma is having a hiccupping fit. We guards give her water. But it doesn’t help. We’ll call the doctor and tell Nawaz Bhai, we say. At this, Amma ji says, No, not yet. Just give me a whack on the back. Her daughter gives her a whack. Harder! she says. After a couple times the hiccupping calms down.

So, all better? the cricketers ask after a silence.

Then it started again in the morning. Now all us guards and Nawaz Bhai start giving her suggestions of what to do. Drink water, but just a drop at a time. Hold your nose with one hand, drink water with the other. Drink from the glass, upside down and backwards. Hold your breath, count to a hundred, then breathe out. I’m bringing the doctor, I’m telling the Superior, we were going on, when she again instructs her daughter to hit her on the back, hard, and then she’s fine.

Story over? asks one of the listeners.

No, says the storyteller, it’s just beginning.

When the hiccups return, Amma ji has us drag out a mat and unroll it. She stands before it. Insisted her daughter should come diving at her and not punch but kick her, hard in the back, in the stomach, in the side, whichever side was facing her.

Did the daughter agree? The listeners are astonished.

Never, how could a daughter agree to such a thing?

And then?

And then she says to me, hey, you’re a cricketer, come on over and show your skills.

And then?

And then her daughter agrees.

Yes, everyone understands, if you’re going to get kicked, let it be one of your own, why an outsider?

But then, we too kicked her.

Whaaaa….? The cricketers, agog.

As time goes on, it becomes a game we all enjoy greatly. And a crow she used to feed from her plate, he sits on the wall and cheers us on, cawcawing rowdily as if in applause. She gets the hiccups, we run and grab the mat, then take a running start and give her a kick, bam. The crow hops down and bounces around us, cawing. Day by day our kicks grow stronger. Amma ji falls every which way on the mat, and after a few rounds of practice the hiccupping stops. If it doesn’t, she lies panting on the mat for a while, then gets up and orders us to kick again! The crow also eggs us on. I have the very best kick of all, and she started encouraging me in particular to go for it. I come running and somersault like this in the air, whack!

You behaved in this manner towards an old woman?

That’s it, he raises helpless eyes, her insistence, her perseverance, her love, all were such that when she said, do it, we’d do as she asked. Without fail, she’d fall with a plunk when I kicked her, then jump up again. And he demonstrates such a mighty kick in the air, that the rest of the players reach out automatically as if to protect an invisible woman.

Wow, amazing, dude. You could have hurt her.

That’s what all of us said. That’s why we suggested we lay a mat out in front of her, to cushion her fall when we kicked her. So she wouldn’t get injured.

Yes, that makes sense.

But she has something else in mind. She pulls the mat away so swiftly, it’s like she’s the youngster. And she berates us so much that none of us even has the strength to give her advice again. She shouts, do you want me to fall flat on my face? I will not fall like that. I will fall backwards, gazing at the sky above, lying on the earth.

No matter if the bullet comes from in front or behind or anywhere else.

You mean kick.

Or hiccup.

No, bullet. What she meant was bullet. The storyteller has grown serious—sad. She says, this is Khyber, a monument to two crazy countries. Anything can happen here. A bullet or a kick. Nothing is within our control. But I must fall comfortably. At my age, in my bed, I must lie down elegantly; I shouldn’t end up like a broken old toy.

And then? someone asks, with a gulp.

And then we continue to kick, Amma ji leaps smartly into the air, folding up her cane click click click, and ends up lying back on the mat, laughing at the sky so hard we all start laughing as well.

You’re making this up, ventures someone.

It truly was an unbelievable time.

And the hiccups? The cricketer who’d got the hiccups asks. Neither he nor anyone else has noticed that his hiccups have stopped.

She didn’t even have them.

Wow, what sort of joke is this? It’s not even funny.

It wasn’t funny. Nawaz Bhai was weeping copiously. They weren’t even hiccups, he says. She just started hiccupping so she could practice falling properly.

When she got shot? The questioner sounds angry, the way you sound when you think you understand, and then your understanding gets pulled out from under you like a rug and you fall flat on your face.

Yes.

And did she get shot? Someone whispers.

The one who’d had the hiccups makes a strange sound. Don’t laugh, he says. I feel as though a bullet was fired in some other century but didn’t stay in that century. It keeps hitting the people who came later, they keep getting mowed down. By now his voice shakes a bit.

Stop it. The captain scolds. What sort of mood are you people getting into, right before the match!

And in that match, the hiccupper established his record at 105 not-out. After 99 runs, when he hit the ball past the pavilion for a sixer , he leapt into the air and executed a glorious flip, landing so that he didn’t fall: he simply lay down and gazed affectionately up at the sky, holding out his bat in friendship.

(Excerpted with permission from Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell; Penguin Random House India. The book is available for pre-order and will be on shelves on March 21, 2022)