The Tale of the Gambler of Kashmir

Kifkef began::

"The villages of the Kashmir Valleys are notorious for their love of gambling. I say ‘love’ and not ‘passion’ or ‘addiction’ simply because only a dedicated heart can bring them back to the card table that had stripped them of all they had the week before.

The villagers bet on which day the rains will arrive each autumn and by how many inches the great lakes will rise. They bet upon the arrival of snow and on the first day of Spring when the ice cracks with terrifying reverberations through the valley, causing mothers to drop their babies; and drinkers their glasses of whiskey.

They place money upon the arrival of the unborn and even upon the life-span of the elderly (sometimes taking matters into their own hands in the wilder towns). They gamble on the weather for the day and the first words of the imam’s sermon.

Not a soul is to be found without a pair of dice in his pocket or a pack of cards; lucky coins to be tossed or a backgammon mat rolled up in a knapsack. Of course, it has always been a point of honour to accept any challenge and players will rarely leave a match until their wives drag them off by the hair. Not that the lust for the realm of chance is confined to the men alone - it’s just that the women usually think to save something to put tomorrow’s food on the table.

And so it is that no class system or hierarchy has ever settled in these mountains. Today’s rich can be tomorrow’s poor as the fall of the dice dictate. Every soul lives at the mercy of the twists of Fate; they might as easily end the day being pampered in the Parlours of Pleasure as be making a bed in a haystack, begging for their bread.

But whereas the people of Kashmir could use their obsession to their benefit, drawing some insights into the intrinsic insecurity of life, I am sad to say that the idolatry of Hinduism has drifted north, arriving on the winds like a virus. Nowadays most tend to trust in paper-mache images of guardian spirits and deities of the area. It’s imagined (may Allah forgive them.) that a strategic sacrifice of incense, fruit or even a few drops of your own blood can encourage the right card to fall into your hands at the poker table. When one favoured spirit lets them down they simply switch their loyalties to the chosen divinity of their opponent - After all, no one can be lucky forever.

Or so many people thought until a change came over the ox dealer Khan. Even amongst the bold souls of this valley he was known as a ferocious gambler. As a youth he entered a dice game of especially high stakes and in the final round of betting he could not meet the final raise - He volunteered his eyeball in lieu of the necessary five gold coins. He threw double one and, true to his word, cut out his eye with his pocket knife and cast it upon the pile of winnings of his opponent, who fainted at once.

But though this act won him fame and prestige up and down the valley, soon afterwards he married a green-eyed girl from a wealthy family in the South. She was raised with a joyless morality and, much to the tongue-clucking disapproval of the locals, Khan fell under her spell and withdrew from the arena of Chance. He wouldn’t even enter a casual contest of who-can-spit-the-furthest when he encountered friends on the road.

Yet as familiar as the people of Kashmir are with the winding paths of Fate, still it came as a great surprise when Khan’s wife died in childbirth, along with the babe she had carried for so many long winter months.

Odds had barely begun to circulate as to whether she’d be buried, cremated or sunk to the bottom of the lake, when Khan came tearing into town, riding bareback the most wild of his oxen. His arrival cut all the idle chat in an instant and no one missed the wild look sizzling in his one good eye.

“Alright.” he yelled, “You bunch of spineless leeches. Set them up. Dice, cards, coins - the lot. I’m not leaving here until you’ve all lost everything you have or else you take my other eye, ears, tongue and balls too.”

Although none were without sympathy for his grief, the village did not take well to Khan’s insolence and they rose to the challenge with indignation. Card tables were set up in a row before him and he threw dice on a craps table to the side.

But it quickly became clear that this was no ordinary bout of gambling. Khan stood in their midst as a man unafraid of anything - a man who could not give a damn if he won or lost, lived or died.

With such a soul before them, Khan’s opponents found themselves steamrollered into submission, their wills cracking as they folded against the farmer’s hell-bound bluffs and then calling his perfect hands.

No one had ever seen gambling like this. In a matter of hours every house, animal and shirt button - everything in the village - was all signed over to Khan. But he didn’t seem in the least bit satisfied.

“Will no one here gamble with me?” He roared. Realising that they had only their lives remaining to put at stake, the crowds turned and fled rather than lose face by declining to bet. Khan looked around at the piles of gold and precious stuffs he’d won. He spat in disgust upon the heaps of coins and took off into the woods.

He walked with abandon, not caring which paths he took, steered by an unconscious will. He slept out in the open, chancing that his throat might be ripped open by wild cats. He carried no food or water with him, unafraid that he might not come across what he need.

At length, after many desolate days of wandering in silence through forest glades and alongside rapid icy streams, Khan emerged from the dark, leafy shade and stepped out in the open. He stood before a powerful river that rushed towards an imposing gorge. The cliffs on both sides rose too steeply for even the wild goats to climb.

These beasts kept short the lawns that sloped down to the water’s edge. But here and there the grass gave way to bubbling pools - And from these boiling geysers suddenly blew a hundred feet up into the air before settling down again. The sequence of the eruptions seemed to be quite random.

Then from behind him there came a gnashing of teeth and the terrible stench of rotting flesh - Khan at once understood what forces had led him to this place.

He turned to face a gang of fifteen demons, smacking their lips and grinning maniacally. Some had two or three heads or else multiple mouths, eyes or hands. Others sprouted massive genitalia from their bellies - But all were equally awful.

One of the smaller demons with wings and a long green neck covered in slime floated up into the air and squawked:

“Aieee. A fat farmer makes a welcome change from a diet of goats. Shall we boil, roast or fry him?”

“I think raw on a bed of salad.” croaked a fat ball of lard from one of his many drooling mouths, “But I’m taking the head.”

Of course, at this claim they immediately began to quarrel and fight amongst themselves over their proposed meal. It was only after a number of eyes and teeth had been gouged from their sockets that the deep voice of Khan got their attention.

“Why fight when you can gamble?” He suggested. “Each of us shall stand over one of the boiling pools of water and whoever is the last one alive, when the others have been scorched to death, will have a ready-cooked banquet awaiting him.”

A spark alighted in the eyes of every demon there - For if they love to kill, devour and fuck, they love nothing so much as to gamble. So much so that they will always pay their gambling debts, albeit with a lot of whining, scowls and threats. For they know that if any of them were ever to cheat on what they owed, then no one would ever trust to gamble with a demon again and their race would lose its greatest joy.

And so it was that when Khan and the demons took their places astride the boiling pools, even as the water began to bubble beneath them in warning of an approaching eruption, none gave up their honour by running away.

One by one, each geyser blew a boiling cascade into the sky - whoosh. And carried with it a demon’s final cry of agony before it landed a few moment later with a thump, the skin ripped open and the insides thoroughly cooked.

With each shriek of death and resulting stench the surviving demons became more and more afraid. They watched the corpses land around them and began to lose heart for this particular game. Especially since Khan stared at them with perfect calm, indifferent to his own terrible risk.

Finally, only three demons and the ox farmer remained. Exchanging glances the gruesome creatures decided they didn’t like the odds. Without a word being spoken they turned and fled from the gorge at full speed, hoping to leave their shame behind them.

Khan gave a sigh and stepped away from his geyser and down to the river’s edge to wet his throat. A moment later the pool where he’d been standing blew and he cursed his good luck. He looked up at the sky between the dizzy cliffs and shouted:

“What do you want from me? I gamble my possessions, my body, my life - And you let me win. But this is no victory. I lost my wife and child and now I have nothing left to lose. What do you want from me? My soul?”

At these words there came a sound like a sympathetic cluck of the tongue.Khan’s eyes tracked the sky behind him just in time to see the rock that hit him smack on the bridge of the nose..

When the villagers saw Khan return a few days later, their hearts sank - they were hoping that he’d fallen and broken his neck somewhere so that they wouldn’t have to pay up. But to their surprise he said nothing about the debt and just walked over to where he’d left his oxen and continued on his way.

After this time, all games would halt when Khan passed through. Because when they looked into his eyes they felt uncomfortable inside. It was like he was living in another place though he still walked among them. There were even those who doubted that this was the same man they’d known before and accused him of being an impostor.

In general, the villagers tried to avoid his company as much as they could and kept all dice and cards from his sight. His presence made them feel strangely foolish, as though all that they were playing for was suddenly as worthless as a moment ago it had been a huge stake.

If Khan noticed this change in his reception he made no sign of it and continued to drive his oxen as he’d always done. But if one looked closely, a clear light could be seen shining from his eyes. While he still walked among them and busied himself with the day to day affairs of this world, he was already living in the one that is to come."

Chapter 9