A Season for Martyrs: A Novel (6 page)

After a time, the weeping ceased, although Bibi Sayedah’s shoulders continued to shudder from time to time, like aftershocks after the first earthquake has turned the earth loose. Shah Latif sat down on a facing chair—there were only two in their simple house—and took out his prayer beads, whispering some of the ninety-nine names of God under his breath, slowing his breath and closing his eyes. He prayed for his wife: that Allah Saeen would restore her to her senses quickly and that no harm had befallen anyone they loved.

Ya-Majid, Ya-Wajid, Ya-Wahid, Ya-Ahad, Ya-Samad, Ya-Qadir, Ya-Malik, Ya-Rehman, Ya-Rahim.

Eventually his wife lifted her head and gazed at him with watery, swollen eyes. Shah Latif felt a heaviness descend upon him: she was still not much older than a girl, and he hated to see her cry. She had wept only once before: as she was leaving her parents’ house to come into his as a bride. He still remembered the heavily shrouded figure, the
akhiyaan
over her face, wreaths of roses weighing down her slim shoulders, as she took step after tiny step in the wedding procession. Someone had brought a Quran and held it over her head for protection, and her fingers, painted with henna but lacking jewelry, were trembling as they clung to the edge of the veil over her head—for Shah Latif came from noble people, who could well afford to put the twisting gold
ver
on her ring finger and the
nath
through her nose; but Shah Latif himself had forsworn the riches of this world and wished his wife to follow the same path. She had agreed, but when he saw the tears sliding down from under the
akhiyaan
and onto her delicate throat, he wondered if she was weeping out of sadness or for fear of the life that he, already a well-known ascetic, would give her.

He owned next to nothing—a few bowls, a copy of the Quran and of Rumi’s
Masnavi
his most prized possessions. But he was rich in mind: he could speak five languages, including Persian and Arabic; and rich in lineage, tracing his ancestry all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, which attracted the family of Bibi Sayedah, while his kindness of manner and gentleness of speech swayed Bibi Sayedah’s own affections toward him.

When Bibi Sayedah had come to his house and they were left alone on the night of their wedding, he had brought her a cup of milk flavored with honey and rose water, and bade her drink from his own hand. After she had her fill, he drank from the same cup, looking deep into her eyes, and she had lowered her face, unable to bear the intensity of his gaze. He tenderly laid his hand on her forehead and breathed a prayer over her head, then pulled her to his chest and kept her close there, wanting to imprint the very essence of her onto his heart.

Very quickly she became the love of his life, and he hers. She was a perfect companion to him: serene and contemplative, she moved through the house with utter calm. He even admired the thoughtful way she would put on her shoes, leaning against the wall with one hand supporting her weight, lifting her feet gracefully, first the right and then the left. He was a man of few words, preferring to save them for the pages of his poetry, but he couldn’t help it if his poetry, spiritual and ethereal, became suffused with earthly love; even if his verse was meant to be an unending love song to the Beloved, he couldn’t help but believe that what he felt for his wife was the perfect metaphor for what the Sufis had always felt for God. He’d absorbed their teachings, understood the beautiful symbolism of Sufi poetry, with its yearning and despair at the separation between the Beloved and His lovers, among whom he counted himself. But he had always thought that love would transport him to the heavens; he had never realized that it also sank down deep, into bone and blood, flesh and marrow—until he had married his wife.

And so he had written the tragic love stories of Sindh, putting down into verse the folk tales of that ancient land, inspired by the grace in his wife’s smile, the welcoming presence that gave him his center, and helped him to face the hardship of travel.

The web of power grew in Sindh, trapping all within its silken skeins: the Pirs who were descendants of the Sufi saints and the guardians of their shrines arbitrated for the tribesmen in their conflicts large and small; the Kalhora kings recognized their power and used it to their advantage, gifting the Pirs with land and money in return for their political support and the allegiance of the tribes.

Shah Latif ran from this juggernaut, and the jealousy of the Pirs and Mirs who feared that this man of God might approach the Kalhoras for a share of the power. Instead, he visited the four corners of Sindh and the outlying borderlands, roaming the plains, the rushing rivers, the flower-filled dales. He meditated at the Ganjo Hills, south of Hyderabad, spent days of contemplation at Hinglaj and the mountains of Lasbela in Balochistan. He visited his wife in some of his dreams, seeing her standing in the doorway of their house and waiting for him with a glass of sweetened
lassi
in her hands, or cooking him a simple meal infused with love.

He did not stop there; he went on to the foothills of the Himalayas, those sweet lands of Hinglay, Lakhpat, and Nani, and Sappar Sakhi, where he communed with yogis and
sanyasis;
to Junagardh and Jessalmir; joining in with Hindus and Buddhists and sun-
worshippers and fire-worshippers, all in search of the Truth. He practiced yoga with a wizened yogi and compared the similarity of the
asanas
to the bowing and prostration of Muslim prayer, and observed that indeed there were many paths to achieving union with God. And furthermore, that wish to be one with the Lord was a universal desire; if one practiced the correct rituals, every cell would awaken and sing the praises of the Creator.

But no matter how far he traveled, his one secret desire was to be back in his home, under the same roof as his wife. The pious, virtuous Sayedah Begum, whose eyes remained downcast in prayer, who was hidden from the view of other men—for, like all women descended from the Prophet, peace be upon him, she practiced
purdah,
seclusion from the outside world—and who remained his hidden pearl, his treasure, his heart’s dearest.

Shah Latif had always assumed that she had known how he felt about her. He thought she knew it from the way he woke in the middle of the night to cover her with their one threadbare quilt. He thought she knew it when he nursed her through her fevers and grippes. He had never thought of taking a second wife, ever, even though it was his right to take a second or a third or even a fourth.

So when she told him that day that he found her weeping at the kitchen table, why she was upset, he was completely stunned.

“I was waiting for Bibi Hanifah to bring me some
ghee
from the market. She said that she could find a better price for me if she went to the
dargah
of your grandfather, Shah Abdul Karim, as the
urs
is beginning and the farmers are bringing their goods to the shrine every day now.

“When she went to the shrine, she sat for a while to listen to the sacred songs, as the beating of the holy drums uplifts her a great deal on days she is tired from carrying her child. They began to sing the
sur
of Sassi-Pannu, in honor of the fact that you are Shah Karim’s grandson, and the composition was a particularly melodious one, so she sat entranced for some time. And then she overheard two women talking behind her. They were saying … they were saying …”

“What were they saying?” said Shah Latif. He looked down at the floor, not wanting to reveal any emotion, but inside he was displeased that Bibi Hanifah was bringing back gossip from the
urs
. It was a festival meant to celebrate the saint’s death—his marriage with God—but trust people to contaminate the sacred days with the vulgar and the venial. He prayed to God for patience, and waited for his wife to continue.

“They said …” Bibi Sayedah swallowed hard; he could see the gentle undulation in her throat. She was slim as a girl, the skin of her throat almost translucent, like fine rice paper. “They said that … that you love the Seven Queens more than you do your real wife. And that is the reason Allah has not yet blessed us with a child.” She sank her head into her hands and began to weep anew.

Shah Latif stared at her, aghast. This was worse than he imagined: death was traumatic, but there was sweet succor in the thought that a true believer was finally achieving annihilation and would never again be parted from God. But this puerile village gossip …

He was no stranger to it; he sometimes walked disguised in the market and heard the whispers. Shah Latif was revered by many as a man of God but he was not without enemies who disliked his popularity among the tribesmen of Sindh. They spoke in hushed tones about how his wife was barren, how he was uninterested in affairs of the world, in having children like normal people. Why did he not take a second wife? Why did he not send his wife back to her people? Could there be something wrong with him? Was he like the Pathans, who, it was said, preferred young boys to women?

He had been able to bear it, but he had hoped that his wife, secluded in the home, would have been spared the wagging of their malicious tongues. But he had been wrong. It had reached his own doorstep, like a tide of sewage that raised a stink for miles around, and was impossible to wash away.

But to accuse him of loving the Seven Queens more than his own wife! It was outrageous. Blasphemous. The Seven Queens, the great heroines of Sindh, whom Shah Latif had immortalized in his poetry—Sassi, Marvi, Noori, Leela, Sohni, Heer, and Moomal—they were manifestations of love between God and man, lover and Beloved. They were not mortal women whose affections were to be competed for among men; they were not meant to be objects of lust. And they were never meant to be competition for his own beloved Sayedah Khanum.

In Marvi’s loyalty to her true love, Khet, Shah Latif had secretly extolled his own wife’s faithfulness to him. Sassi, who ran barefoot across the desert and died in search of her Beloved, made him wonder if his wife, too, would cross a desert to find him if he were lost and wandering. The tears Sohni wept on seeing the wound in her love’s thigh brought to mind the tears of Bibi Sayedah on the night of their
rukhsati
. And as Rano had braved the eerie magnetic field that surrounded Moomal, Shah Latif too wished to penetrate the walls of his wife’s heart, so that she would cast off her normal modesty for once and show him affection in her eyes, utter endearments more rare than diamonds and rubies.

Shah Latif rose from his chair. He went silently to the door, gathering up his long cloak and his walking stick. He did not need to tell his wife that he was setting out on a journey: she was used to him walking out of the door and returning later that evening, or after a month. It was one of her gifts to him, the ability to endure his absence without resentment. He did not know where he was going, but he knew he had to go; his soul was most elevated when his feet were moving. Sayedah Begum too got up and began to grind wheat for the evening meal. Already her face was composed again, her eyes large and gentle, fringed with lashes like the graceful chinkara that lived in the Thar Desert.

They did not exchange any words, any farewells or entreaties to take care, to go in safety. Her faith in God was absolute: she entrusted her husband to Him every second of every day, and so there was never a need to acknowledge the connection that could never be severed.

His two pups, Moti and Kheeno, leapt up when they saw him emerge from the door, but he did not reach down to pet them as he often did when going to the village. They whined and scrabbled in the dirt, then sat on their hind legs and watched him go.

After a time he came to the shrine of his grandfather, Shah Abdul Karim. Its green flags fluttered in the wind; people were milling around, some with purpose, some aimlessly. The
urs
would be well under way tonight, with thousands joining in the celebrations, reciting poetry, listening to music, dancing in ecstasy. The market bustled with farmers and traders selling their wares; tables groaned under the weight of gold and silver, silks and embroidery, leather and brass amid the bleats and cries of goats, sheep, even camels in a small camp set up on the open field in front of the
dargah
where a man had come all the way from Thar to sell his precious beasts. The sound of santoor and tabla, reed flute and sarangi mingled with the scent of incense and roses, weaving a tapestry of aural and sensual pleasure that the Lovers would feast upon tonight.

A few
malangs
came up to Shah Latif, spotting him standing a small distance from the crowd. Dressed in their robes with begging bowls hung around their necks, they greeted him and sought blessings from him, a few lines of new verse to be sung at the festival tonight. But Shah Latif was silent, and soon they dropped away from him and melted back into the crowds. The truth was that his heart had been broken by the slanders, and he had nothing left to give to any of them.

He turned and walked away again, and as he walked, he recited the verse that he had written soon after his marriage, never telling anyone that he had written it for her:

The heart has but one beloved,

Many you should not seek:

Just give heart to one,

Even hundreds may seek;

Weasels they are called,

Who get betrothed at every door.

But the camel seller, the man from Thar, called out to him as he passed. “O great Shah! Where do you go?”

Shah Latif stopped, surprised that this man, a stranger, recognized him. “Peace be upon you, o Man of Thar. How do you know me?”

The man laughed. He was thin and dark, weather-beaten, and wore an
ajrak
wrapped into a turban on his head. “Who does not know the Shah of Bhit, whose
Risalo
has spread far and wide? As long as there are men in Sindh, you will be known. But why do you walk away from the
urs,
when most people are only just arriving?”