And she could see those fake horns now, from behind the ferns. They were the ones from Balakot. They were the worst. And the most recent. It was not till last year that they started showing up here, which was why her husband forbade her from celebrating Diwali. These men from Balakot knew how the nomads suffered because of the grazing fees and cutting fees and annual permits and taxes and fines and the pressure to be still. Like her mother, they knew the history. Though she was too far away to hear them, she could see them circling two young boys of another tol. The boys were no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. She could guess that the hajis, who did not look much older themselves, would begin their sermon by recalling the policies of the British. That is what the younger hajis with the little horns called them. Not Angrez like everyone else. So smart in their black vests.

The two women were now behind a row of tall bhekkar shrubs, the trunks barely wider than them. “The British colonized your lands and instituted a forest policy for their greedy pockets!” She could hear them clearly now, speaking Hindko in a strange accent. They knew it had never been their land, and never would be. “And before them, that Sikh dog Ranjit Singh and his followers, they also crushed the glory of Islam!” She could now see two older men, with turbans wound differently from Gujjar men. “Until the birth of the great martyr Syed Ahmad Barelvi, who devoted his life to jihad!”

Then issued a long account of the Battle of Balakot, where Barelvi was martyred. She had heard it before. She knew what was next. The martyr was buried in Balakot, making it sacred ground (yet they condemned idolatory!) and an inspiration for their cause. The British had gone, but there was another infidel stalking their land, for whom the government of Pakistan fought repeatedly, first against the infidel Russians in Afghanistan and now against our own Afghan brothers. Would they not join the cause, these brave Gujjar men, whom neither the British nor the Sikhs nor the forest nor the mountains nor the rivers had ever been able to tame?

She could see one boy nodding, while the other scratched the dirt with his broken rubber slippers. His feet were caked in dirt. The two young hajis wore Peshawari chappals, gold embroidered on beige and brown leather. On the center strap of each slipper was a large red pom-pom. The older men wore chappals of scuffed black leather. One of them now began cajoling the boy scratching the dirt. He ruffled his hair. He pinched his cheek. “What do you say?” He made kissing sounds. The boy, still looking down, mumbled something that made the men laugh. The other boy played with a gold chain around his neck. It looked expensive, that chain. He was still playing with it with one hand when he grabbed the bashful boy’s hand with the other and welcomed everyone into a hut. Within seconds, the red pom-poms were leading the way.

Like the forest inspector and tax collector who had always plagued them, and like the policemen, soldiers, and spies who plagued them now, these wrongly turbaned men could also be placated with ghee and sugar, mutton and bread. The more they preached, the hungrier they grew. She did not know what would happen once their supplies ran out.

From what she could hear the men say tonight, outside in the baithak, whose walls did not reach high enough to touch the roof, allowing her to listen freely — for though she must work with men in the forest she must not gossip with them in the hut — this year the patience of the men from Balakot was also running out.

Unlike the preachers of last year, the men said, this lot was not going to stop at words. They were younger and had training camps. They were armed. They had already used their guns against villagers to the south and west. They wanted to recruit; their sons were not safe. They were waging a Sunni jihad against non-Muslims and all allies of the infidel, including anyone linked to the government. This meant the men in convoys, as well as the tax inspector and forest inspector. They were not interested in the forest, unless it was to use it as a camp, should they need to move from Balakot. They had told the Gujjar men that they understood nomadic living.

Maryam pulled away in indignation. Herders did not pray regularly at the mosque, since their migration took them too far. The men from Balakot had at one time chided them for this. Now they called themselves nomadic? She stilled her breast, then glued her ear to the wall again.

One man — it was the voice of a man who had bid for her hand before Suleiman’s family had won — said it was a shame how these men, like their inspiration Syed Ahmad Barelvi two hundred years ago, targeted Muslims. “They say Americans are killing Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Palestine, and Iraq. Then why kill us?”

“They have not killed us. Yet.” Maryam felt this to be the voice of Laila’s father. It was like distinguishing between bells again.

There was a long pause.

“Who do we cooperate with? The government or the militants?”

“Both.”

“Then they will both be watching us. And they will both strike at us.”

There was another long pause.

“It is true,” a voice broke the silence at last. “We will neither get dry in the sun, nor wet in the rain.”

There were murmurs of agreement, followed by a different proverb offering the same disturbing truth: they were caught between two sides that rejected them equally.

“Do the convoys even care about Fareebi any more?” This voice was high-pitched and clearly peeved. “That shapeshifter?”

“Did they ever? Who was he anyway?”

“Is,” said a young boy, his voice just beginning to crack. “I saw him just today.”

She heard his head being smacked. “Do not lie.” It must have been his father.

The boy muttered an apology.

“In what shape did you see him?” another man asked, his voice distended in a grin. This man too she could recognize. On her wedding day, he had ogled her, then too with a grin. He had bid for her with one sick buffalo, nursing juniper brandy in his cup.

“The boy is too active in his head,” said the father, and there were mutters of support, the transgression swiftly forgiven.

She could hear teacups secured to the floor, hookahs inhaled. With one breath came eight words that spoke for them all. “Who even knows who is doing what anymore?” Followed by deep grunts of approval. “Dust rises when the cliff falls.” More approval, more gurgles of smoke.

After a while, a voice she did not recognize asked, “What about that man from your wife’s side? The one who has come back?”

On the other side of the wall, Maryam tried to keep very still.

“That crow on a stone.”

She flinched. It was a saying reserved only for the most mistrusted. Ghafoor was being accused of preferring to be by himself instead of with his family. This was not entirely fair, given that they had told him to leave, all those years ago.

“What about him?” The voice was Suleiman’s.

“Is he with the militants?”

This time the pause was so excruciating she wanted to knock on the wall, tell them to hurry up and answer.

“I saw him talking to them.” It was the voice she had not recognized.

There were murmurs of surprise. “What do you mean?”

“First he tried to talk to me. Something about the police and how we must stand up to them. How we could not be enslaved. How we could learn from the Uzbeks and the Uyghurs and the nomads of the steppe,” the man spit, “whose women are like men. He thinks he can come back after all this time and lead us? If you want to lead, stand in line.”

There were shouts of “Well said” and “That one never brought us anything but trouble” and “Now he is back, he will bring worse.”

“No.” Suleiman’s voice was surprisingly firm. “He is not with them.”

“No? His mouth is well-slit.”

A few men laughed.

“Indeed.” Sulemian cleared his throat. “It is because he is full of contradictory speech that my wife’s family turned to him. As you know, I have wanted no compensation for our loss.”

There were murmurs of support, and the air was filled with blessings for Kiran.

“It is the will of God.”

“It is the will of the skies.”

“It is the will of the mountains.”

“It is the will of the goddess.”

At this last there was much shifting and throat-clearing. Maryam knew it was the father of the child who had spoken out of turn. Clearly, the child had taken after his father, for people did not call out to the goddess in public anymore.

It seemed the only way to end the awkward silence was by steering the conversation back to the crow on the stone.

“Are you sure he is not with the militants?”

“I am sure,” said Suleiman, his voice still unyielding.

“If he is, he can tell us what to do,” countered another voice, also a stranger’s.

“If he is, he will not tell us what to do,” said Suleiman. “But I have said he is not. He is with other men. Men who might have contacts with these men, but who have different interests. I do not know what. But I know it is not Sunni jihad.”

“What is it then?”

Perhaps Suleiman knew she was there. She had listened to their chatter on many nights, after her family had eaten and the children were in bed. Perhaps each time he returned to her from the baithak, her eyes revealed all that her ears had received.

“Well?” repeated the peeved voice. “If he is not with them, what is it he wants?”

“Justice.”

“Justice?”

Then Maryam heard a sound, unnatural, like winter rain, or summer snow. It fell everywhere around her, from high above the wall. No, it was neither snow nor rain. What fell was far worse. It was the sound of men bonded together in derisive laughter.