The victory parade had broken the fear, but it had not built the walls.
In the week that followed the "Walk of Shame," the Sandalbar Estate trucks were running hot. They carried bricks, cement, and wireless equipment out to the ten new villages.
Jinnah did not want temporary camps. He wanted permanence.
"A tent says you are leaving," he told Ahmed. "A brick wall says you are staying."
In each of the ten villages, a standardized Farabi Outpost was constructed. It was small—just a single room with a reinforced door, a flat roof for observation, and a secure cabinet for the wireless set. But in a landscape of mud and thatch, these brick squares looked like fortresses.
1. The Watchmen (The Local Three)
"We cannot put three fully trained Farabis in every village," Ahmed argued, looking at the roster. "We don't have the manpower. And if we recruit too fast, the quality drops."
"We don't need soldiers in every lane," Jinnah corrected. "We need eyes."
He laid out the plan Bilal had drafted.
In every village, the headman was asked to nominate three men. They were not given rifles. They were not given uniforms. They were given three things:
A heavy brass whistle.
A high-powered kerosene signal lantern.
A stipend of five rupees a month.
They were the Auxiliaries.
"Their job is not to fight," Jinnah explained to the village elders. "Their job is to be the alarm bell. One man watches the fields. One watches the canal bridge. One sleeps during the day and watches the lanes at night."
If they saw dust rising, or strangers moving in the sugarcane, they blew the whistle. The sound would alert the armed Farabis in the brick outpost, who would radio HQ.
It's a sensor network, Bilal noted. Low cost, high coverage. You're turning the villagers into the CCTV system.
2. The Blind Spot
But there was a problem.
"The men can watch the fields," Bilal said one evening. "But they can't see inside the houses. In this culture, a strange man—even a Farabi—cannot enter the zenana (women's quarters). If a bandit is hiding there, or if someone is sick, we are blind."
Jinnah nodded. He knew the conservatism of the Punjab countryside. A male doctor or a male soldier stopping at a doorway was a wall that could not be crossed.
"We need access," Jinnah said.
"We need women," Bilal corrected.
3. The Recruitment of the Sisters
The proposal caused more of a stir among the village elders than the guns had.
"You want to hire… a woman?" the headman of Chak Bawan asked, looking as if Jinnah had suggested hiring a goat to fly a plane. "To do what? Carry a gun?"
"To save your sons," Jinnah said smoothly.
He didn't pitch it as a military role. He pitched it as Healthcare.
"Malaria kills more of your people than bandits do," Jinnah argued. "Cholera takes your children before they can walk. My male guards cannot enter your homes to treat the womenfolk. I need a woman in each village—a widow, perhaps, or a dai (midwife)—who can be trained to dispense medicine."
The elders grumbled, but they could not argue with the logic of fever. Every family there had lost someone to the "shivering sickness."
And so, the recruitment began.
They didn't choose young, unmarried girls. They chose the survivors. The widows who had no one to support them. The sharp-tongued midwives who knew every secret in the village. Women who were already tough because life had given them no other choice.
One woman from each of the ten villages.
They were brought to the Sandalbar Estate, not to the barracks, but to the clinic.
4. Mary's Classroom
Dr. Evelyn was busy with surgeries, so the task of training fell to Mary, her sharp-eyed assistant.
Mary stood at the front of the clinic's storeroom. On the table before her wasn't a disassembled rifle, but a large jar of white tablets and charts of the human body.
The ten women sat on mats, watching her with a mix of skepticism and curiosity. They were used to home remedies—turmeric for wounds, honey for coughs. They had never seen a pill in their lives.
"This," Mary said, holding up a white tablet, "is Quinine."
She spoke in Punjabi, her tone no-nonsense.
"It tastes like the devil's sweat. It is bitter. Your children will spit it out. Your husbands will complain."
She leaned forward.
"But it is the only thing that stops the shivering death. When the mosquito bites, and the fire comes into the blood, this is the water that puts it out."
For the next week, Mary drilled them.
Identify: How to tell the difference between a simple cold and the malaria rigors.
Dosage: Half a tablet for a child, two for a man.
Hygiene: How to boil water properly so it didn't just look clean, but was clean.
Intelligence: (This part was whispered).
"While you are inside the house checking for fever," Mary told them quietly, "you look. You look for extra food being cooked. You look for a stranger's turban cloth drying in the corner. You look for fear in the wife's eyes."
"And if we see it?" asked the widow from Chak 17, a scarred woman named Zooni.
"You do not speak," Mary said. "You finish your work. You leave. And then you walk to the Farabi post and you tell the Havildar that 'the fever is bad in House Number 4'."
Zooni smiled, a slow, grim expression. "We understand, sister."
5. The Network Goes Live
By the end of the month, the system was active.
In ten villages, thirty men with whistles walked the perimeter, their lanterns bobbing like fireflies in the dark.
And in the courtyards, ten women moved freely. They carried tin boxes marked with the Red Crescent of the clinic. They were welcomed into homes where no policeman could ever go. They checked pulses, they forced bitter pills down throats, and they listened.
Bilal looked at the map in the office. It was no longer just pins. It was a web.
Outer Layer: The Buffer Zone (Madhu's men).
Middle Layer: The Whistle-blowers (local men).
Inner Layer: The Farabis (the strike force).
Deep Layer: The Women (the intelligence and health network).
"You have built a state," Bilal whispered to Jinnah. "You have taxes (grain), you have defense (Farabis), and now you have a public health system."
Jinnah looked up from his desk. He was writing a letter to the Governor, requesting a formal license for "Rural Health Visitors."
"It is not a state," Jinnah said, though there was satisfaction in his voice. "It is merely… efficient estate management."
Call it what you want, Bilal thought. But you just installed the antivirus software for the whole district.
Outside, the whistle of a train blew at the station, carrying crates of Sandalbar cloth to Lahore. The engine of the estate was finally running on all cylinders.