In the villages, the looms usually worked late.
Cotton did not care about the clock; it only cared about hands that kept moving. The weavers had begun taking pride in the new orders coming in through Sandalbar—bolts of plain cloth for uniforms, sacks for grain, sheets for the clinic. For the first time in years, men talked about regular work instead of simply, "If Allah wills."
They also talked about something else.
They talked about the Farabi posts.
Every village now had one: a squat, brick-walled stronghold at the edge of the houses, with a short flagstaff, a thick timber door, and an aerial wire rising from the roof to a bamboo mast. Two Farabis lived there on rotation, rifles racked just inside the door, wireless set on a shelf like a small, humming idol.
People had learned the drill. When trouble came, you did not stand in the street and shout at fate. You grabbed your children and ran for the post.
For a while, that had worked.
When bandits had last tried a big raid, they'd met brick walls and disciplined rifle fire instead of scattered, panicked villagers. The attackers had lost men and face. Word had spread along the canal: Sandalbar has its own police now. Better to try somewhere else.
The bandits listened. And then, as winter crept closer, they changed the rules.
The first test came on a still, cold night.
In Chak Panj, the loom sheds were lit, the lane glowing with lantern light and the dull, steady thunk of shuttles. Women husked grain in courtyards; somewhere a boy practiced his letters on a slate, mouthing the alphabet under his breath.
Then the dogs started barking.
Not the lazy bark at a passing cart, but the sharp, staccato alarm that turned every head.
A shout came from the canal bank, a warning that broke into three different directions at once—"Daku! Daku!"—and before the first loom fell silent the habit drilled into the village took over.
"Stronghold! Run to the post, run!"
Doors slammed open. Mothers snatched up sleepy toddlers from charpoys; older children clutched little ones' wrists. Men grabbed whatever they could carry in one fist—a ledger, a pouch of coins, a small box of jewellery—and then dropped most of it at the first scream.
The Farabi post door banged open.
Inside, the two men on duty were already moving. One kicked over the lantern shield, flooding the courtyard with yellow light. The other yanked the rifle rack open, hands moving by habit: bolt, cartridge, sling. A third shape—off-duty but half-dressed—stumbled from the small back room, pulling on his boots as he came.
"Women and children inside!" the havildar barked, voice cracking through the chaos. "Men to the side wall! No one in the main lane—move!"
Villagers poured through the low doorway, pressing themselves against the inner wall as ordered. Babies wailed, somebody prayed loudly, somebody else cursed even louder. The Farabis climbed to the roof firing-step, rifles braced in the narrow embrasures that commanded the main approach.
Below, in the wireless room, the youngest Farabi twisted the crank on the field set with sweaty fingers.
He had a sentence already written in his head. They drilled them every week.
"Headquarters, Chak Panj reporting, dacoits in village, fire seen—request mobile column, over."
The set crackled back almost at once, a clipped, familiar voice from Sandalbar HQ.
"Chak Panj, message received. Column moving. Hold your position. Do not pursue. Protect civilians. Over."
"Will comply. Over and out."
The Farabi let out the breath he had been holding and looked up through the stairwell at the rooftop, where his comrades waited behind brick.
They were ready.
The bandits never came within rifle range.
They skirted the obvious approach, moving like a dark, spreading stain between the loom sheds and the outer houses. They did not try to storm the post; they did not even fire a shot at it. Instead, they went for what lay furthest from those thick walls.
They kicked in the door of the first loom shed, dragged the finished cloth bales out into the lane, and splashed them with lantern oil. Someone laughed as the first flame caught and billowed up, cloth that had taken weeks to produce turning to greasy smoke in seconds.
"Take what you can carry," a man called. "Burn what you cannot."
They obeyed with practised speed. One grabbed a small cash box. Another tore the brass bangles off an old woman's arm. A third found the boy who had been working late over accounts, fingers still ink-stained, and shoved him forward with a sack of tools.
By the time they were done, the sky above Chak Panj glowed orange.
On the roof of the post, the Farabis could see the flames, but they could not see targets. Firing blindly into the dark, with villagers still scattered between houses and sheds, would have been suicide.
"Hold fire," the havildar snarled through his teeth, eyes burning with helpless anger. "We don't shoot shadows."
They watched the raiders melt back into the night, running between fields and canal embankment, always just on the edge of the lamplight.
Twenty minutes later, the growl of an engine announced the arrival of the mobile column from HQ: a lorry with ten Farabis and a corporal, rifles ready, wireless aerial bouncing. They roared into a village that was already half-charred and half-silent.
Nobody was dead.
The loom sheds were.
Two weeks later, it happened again.
This time it was Chak Bawan, further down the distributary. The village had been proud of its new status; they had even painted a sign over their shed in shaky but careful Urdu:
"Sandalbar Supply – Cloth for Lahore & Montgomery."
It did not save them.
The bandits came just before dawn, the hour when the fire in the angithi has died down and even the crows are still thinking about getting up. Again, the first warning was the dogs. Again, the cry went up and people ran for the Farabi post.
The two men on duty did everything right. They flung the gate wide, shoved civilians inside, slammed the bar into place, and took up positions. One man dropped into the radio alcove and cranked furiously.
"Chak Bawan to Headquarters, dacoits in village, fire, over."
"Message received," HQ answered. "Mobile column moving, over."
"Understood. Holding."
Outside, the pattern repeated.
The bandits flowed around the line of sight, picking off whatever lay furthest from the post: loom sheds, outer rooms, a stack of newly woven sacks that had been left in the lane ready for loading. They moved fast, not like men searching a village, but like men following a memorised path.
At one house, where the loom was inside a courtyard, they found more than they expected: a girl of twelve or thirteen, awake early to fetch water. They shoved her forward with the stolen cloth, ignoring the mother who flung herself at their feet and grabbed at their ankles until someone cuffed her away.
On the rooftop, the Farabis watched forms flicker and vanish between buildings, never standing long enough to offer a clean shot.
"Bastards," the havildar whispered. "They learn."
Again the lorry came late: not through negligence, but because the roads were what they were and the distance was what it was. They arrived in time to help douse fires, carry water, and comfort people shaking with shock.
They did not arrive in time to stop a loom from burning or a child from disappearing.
The mobile corporal wrote his report that morning on a crate outside the post: No civilian casualties inside post. Extensive economic damage. One minor female missing, presumed taken.
He did not have a column for the thing that lay thickest on the ground: fear.
The reports came into Sandalbar HQ in a thin but steady stream.
Ahmed read them in the mornings with a mug of bitter tea, the ink of each scribbled line staining his mood darker. He began pinning a small red marker on the estate map for every such raid.
After the fourth or fifth marker, Jinnah walked in and stopped.
"How many?" he asked quietly.
"Five with fires, three with only looting and beatings," Ahmed said. "Two kidnappings confirmed. They never touch the posts. They never shoot at the Farabis. They go around, like water finding every crack."
He tapped a stack of folders with one finger.
"They know we tell people to run to the strongholds. So they let them. They let us get all the bodies behind brick. Then they punish them for obeying our orders."
Bilal, at the side table, had been marking radio coverage circles in pencil around each Farabi post. He looked up at that.
"You're saying they've stopped trying to hold ground," he said. "They're not here for territory at all."
"They are here to prove a point," Ahmed said grimly. "That if you work for Sandalbar—if you build looms, if you weave cloth—you will not die, but you will lose everything except your life."
He flicked one of the red markers with a fingernail.
"Life inside our walls," he added, "and ash outside."
Jinnah's gaze rested on the map a long moment.
"Before we decide what to call it," he said at last, "I want to hear what it feels like. Bring them here."
He did not have to wait long.