He had been gone a very long time.
Twelve years, by the reckoning of the people at home in Sultanpur. Twelve years of walking, all the way east to the sea and back again. And in all that time there had been no letter, because there was nobody to carry one.
At home, his wife Bibi Sulakhni Ji used to walk down to the river by herself in the mornings, so that she could say out loud the things she could not say in the house.
River, she would say, you have been flowing past this bank for hundreds of years. People have laughed on this bank and people have cried on it and you go on just the same.
They tell me I am fortunate. It is years since I have seen his face.
Even soldiers come home. Even men who go away to fight come back once or twice in twelve years. What sort of master is he serving that never gives him a day.
And then she would cry, which was why she came down to the river, because there was nowhere in the house where a person could do that in peace.
At the end of it, with her eyes shut, she would say a small prayer of her own. You are gracious, she would say. You are looking after the whole world. Look after me a little as well.
One evening she stayed down there so long that her son Siri Chand Ji came running to say that his mother had gone out in the morning and had not come back.
So Bebe Nanaki Ji went out to find her, along the bank, in the dark, and heard her before she saw her, crying by the water.
And Bebe Nanaki Ji put her arms round her and wiped her face and said, do not cry, and brought her home.
Now Bebe Nanaki Ji, who had known who her brother was since he was a baby in the house at Talwandi, missed him differently. She missed him without any bitterness at all. But she missed him.
That night she asked for him, the way she had asked before.
Brother, she said. It has been ten years and you have not shown us your face. Be kind to us. We are longing.
One day went by. Another day went by.
On the third morning it was just getting light, and there was a cool wind, and Bebe Nanaki Ji was in the kitchen churning buttermilk.
She had the butter in one hand. She was singing to herself while she worked, the way she always did.
And a figure crossed the verandah and came in at the door.
And a voice she had not heard for twelve years said one word.
Sister.
She was up and across that floor before she knew she had moved, and going down at his feet, and he caught her halfway and would not let her get there. He put his arms round her instead and said: the Lord bless you.
He could see she was too glad to stand up properly, so he walked her back inside himself, and sat down, still holding on to her, and she lifted her head and looked at his face, and looked at it, and looked at it.
Then her husband Jai Ram Ji came in and stopped dead in the doorway, and then bowed, and then was embraced.
Stay, he said. Stay with us now. Everybody would be so glad.
Then Siri Chand Ji came in and saw his father and went to his feet.
And when Bebe Nanaki Ji had got her breath back, she sent for the one person who was not yet in the room.
Bibi Sulakhni Ji came.
And she went down at his feet and cried, and this time it was a different kind of crying altogether. And he looked at her with the greatest kindness, and blessed her.
Then everybody came. All the neighbours, everyone who had ever loved him in that town, all through the day and all through the night.
And in the morning he went away again.
Goodnight. He was gone for twelve years, and when he walked in he did not say hello. He said sister.