The telegram from Harrington did not come through the usual runner. It came via a drenched police constable on a motorcycle, skidding through the mud at the Canal Bungalow gate.
The man was soaked to the bone, his uniform dark with rain that had followed him from the north. He handed the wet envelope to Ahmed, saluted shakily, and didn't even wait for a reply before kicking his engine to life and retreating. He knew bad news when he carried it.
Jinnah took the envelope. The paper inside was damp, the ink blurring slightly.
URGENT WARNING. UPPER CHENAB CANAL BREACHED NORTH. FLOOD WATERS DIVERTED INTO LOWER BARI DOAB. EXPECT CATASTROPHIC LEVELS IN 24 HOURS. EVACUATE LOW LYING CHAKS IMMEDIATELY.
Jinnah stood on the verandah of the Sandalbar Estate. The sky above was a bruising purple, heavy with water that had not yet fallen here, but was destroying the world fifty miles north. The air smelled of ozone and wet earth—the smell of a storm that had already eaten a district.
He turned to the large map Ahmed had pinned to the wall—the same map that now defined his world.
"Show me," Jinnah commanded.
Ahmed traced the lines with a shaking finger.
"We are here," he said, pointing to the far right and middle of the district map, where the railway line intersected the canal belt. "The Sandalbar Estate is on the high ridge near the main line. We are safe."
His finger moved left, sweeping across the cluster of villages they had just annexed—the ones Jinnah had fought the Zaildars to protect.
"But the ten new villages... the 'Orphans'... they are here." He tapped the cluster of squares marked Chak 96/6-R, Chak 99/6-R, and the low-lying Chak 134/9-L. "They are in the depression. If the canal breaches its banks, that whole bowl fills up like a teacup."
"And the wheat?" Jinnah asked.
Ahmed looked grim. "Still in the fields, Sir. It was a late sowing, and the rains started early. They have cut it, but it is lying in stacks, unthreshed. If the water hits it, the grain rots. If the grain rots, they starve."
Starvation leads to riots, Bilal whispered, the cool analyst voice cutting through the panic. Riots lead to the Army. We lose everything.
"We have twenty-four hours," Jinnah said, rolling up his sleeves. "Mobilize everything."
1. The War Footing
The Sandalbar Estate transformed from a farm into a forward operating base in minutes.
"Ahmed," Jinnah ordered. "Forget the cotton gins. Take the truck and every bullock cart we own. Your priority is not the people yet—it is the fodder. If the flood comes, the cattle die first. Buy every bale of dry fodder you can find in the Montgomery mandi and stack it here, on the highest ground behind the Bungalow."
"Yes, Sir."
"Havildar!"
The head of the Farabis stepped forward, saluting. He looked worried.
"The new villages do not have Farabi units yet," Jinnah said. "They have no radios. They have no discipline. They only have trauma from the Zaildar war. They will not trust us."
He looked out at the darkening sky.
"Split your force. Send three men to every village—Chak 97/6-R, Chak 134, Lalianwala. Tell them to move. Not tomorrow. Now."
"Sir, they won't leave the wheat," the Havildar warned. "A farmer will drown beside his crop before he abandons it. It is his life."
"Then tell them," Jinnah said, his voice cutting like cold steel, "that Sandalbar is buying it."
The Havildar blinked. "Sir?"
"Tell them to load the wheat onto their carts and bring it to our high ground. We will weigh it and store it here. If it rots, the loss is mine. If it survives, they can buy it back at cost. But they must move now."
That, Bilal murmured, is an expensive insurance policy.
It is cheaper than a famine, Jinnah replied.
2. The Exodus of Chak 134
In Chak 134/9-L, the panic was already setting in. The canal water had turned brown and angry, lapping dangerously close to the embankment. The usual gentle gurgle of the irrigation cuts had turned into a threatening hiss.
Varun, leading the Farabi squad, stood in the village square. The wind was whipping dust into their eyes, stinging like sand.
"Move!" Varun shouted. "To the big estate! The Barrister has opened the gates!"
The villagers were paralyzed. They had just survived the Zaildar's thugs; now the sky was attacking them. An old man sat weeping by a pile of golden wheat sheaves, refusing to move.
"It is all I have," the man sobbed, clutching the stalks. "Let the water take me."
Varun didn't argue. He grabbed a sheaf of wheat, threw it into the back of the estate truck that had just roared into the village, and hauled the old man up after it.
"The Barrister says the wheat is his problem now!" Varun yelled over the wind. "Your problem is living to eat it! Get in!"
Slowly, the paralysis broke.
A chaotic caravan began to move East, toward the high ground of Sandalbar. Bullock carts groaned under the weight of unthreshed wheat, their wooden wheels sinking into the softening mud. Women carried bundles of bedding on their heads, clutching babies to their chests. Children herded goats that bleated in terror at the thunder.
They moved past Chak 136/9-L, picking up more refugees as the water began to spill over the canal banks behind them, a silver tongue licking at the road.
3. The High Ground
By evening, the Sandalbar Estate looked like a refugee camp.
The high ground near the Royal's Restaurant junction (as marked on the old maps) was a swarm of activity.
Jinnah stood at the gate, watching the procession. He did not look like a barrister today. He was in shirtsleeves, his boots muddy, his usually immaculate hair windswept. He was directing traffic with a walking stick like a conductor.
"Carts to the left!" he shouted. "Wheat stacks under the tarpaulins! Livestock to the fodder depot at the back!"
The Farabis, usually guards, were now porters. They heaved sacks, carried children, and guided terrified buffaloes into the makeshift pens Ahmed had constructed using fencing from the chicken runs.
Evelyn was already at work. She had set up a triage station at the entrance under a canvas awning.
"No one enters without a check," she ordered. "If you have fever, you go to the isolation tent. If you have cuts, you get iodine. I will not have a plague follow the flood."
Mary was distributing rations—flatbreads and dal cooked in the giant estate cauldrons that usually fed the workers.
"Eat," she told a woman from Lalianwala who was shivering with shock. "The Sahib has ordered enough grain for a month. The water cannot reach you here."
4. The Water Comes
It hit at midnight.
A roar like a passing train echoed from the west. The embankment near Chak 96/6-R finally gave way.
The water didn't rush like a tsunami; it crawled. It was a black, silent sludge that swallowed the fields they had just evacuated. It filled the depression where the ten villages stood, turning mud huts into dissolving islands.
From the roof of the Canal Bungalow, Jinnah watched the dark water creep toward the railway line. It stopped three hundred yards from his boundary wall, lapping against the rise of the land.
The estate was an island.
Inside the walls, two thousand people from the ten villages huddled under makeshift shelters. Their wheat was stacked in pyramids covered with canvas, safe and dry. Their cattle were chewing on the fodder Jinnah had bought that morning.
Ahmed walked up to the roof, holding a lantern against the wind.
"Chak 134 is underwater, Sir," he reported softly. "So is 99. If we hadn't moved them..."
"We did move them," Jinnah said, his eyes fixed on the black horizon where the villages used to be.
"They are asking to see you, Sir," Ahmed said. "The elders. They are down in the yard."
"Tell them to sleep. We will talk in the morning."
"They won't sleep, Sir. They are saying..." Ahmed hesitated. "They are saying the Zaildar promised to protect them and fled. You promised nothing and saved their harvest."
Jinnah turned away from the flood.
Legitimacy, Bilal whispered in the dark. It doesn't come from a vote. It comes from being the only thing standing when the water rises.
"Go down, Ahmed," Jinnah said. "Tell them the water will recede. And tell them Sandalbar does not charge rent for survival."
He looked back at the map in his mind—the ten villages were no longer just circles on paper. They were mud and water, and they were his responsibility. The flood had washed away the old administration.
Now, there was only the Estate.