Revolt

Barefooted, Massi Fiza panted up the marble stairs and dashed straight through the mosquito-netted door and the brocade drapes, into the village goldsmith’s lounge. Clutching her jute laundry bag against her flat chest, she hovered over the seated figure of her friend Rukhsar, exclaiming: ‘Another suicide bombing!’

Perched on a pile of cushions, an aluminium casket of gems in front of her, the village
siniaran
was engrossed in the nimble task of inserting tiny pearls into a gold bridal collar set.

‘What?’ Rukhsar cried, abandoning her work, not relishing this sudden intrusion late in the evening, just when the next episode of her favourite Indian drama was about to start.

Shabnum, Rukhsar’s 24-year-old eldest daughter, sitting reading a play on the sofa, gawped; the house linen had already been collected. Nevertheless she cheerily offered:

‘A cup of our Italian coffee, Massi Fiza?’

The jute bag slipped out of Massi Fiza’s hand. Grimacing, Shabnum quickly reached to retrieve it from their
kashmiri
silk rug, rolling her
kajal
-lined eyes in disgust. The laundrywoman rarely had time to wash this item.

‘Massi Fiza!’ The goldmistress, now quite rattled, reached up to shake her friend’s arm. ‘You OK?’

‘Another bombing!’ Massi Fiza repeated as if in a trance.

Rukhsar was now on her feet. ‘What? Where?’

‘In two mosques in Malakand.’

‘Oh, Allah Pak, not another one! What’s happening to our poor country? So many innocent people killed by explosions and those American drones!’

‘My sons! What if …?’ Massi Fiza stopped short, lowering her gaze.

‘What would they be doing in Malakand?’ Rukhsar’s eyes narrowed. ‘Have you got their phone numbers?’

Massi Fiza shook her head; numbers just did not tally with her brain cells and technology of any sort frightened her. Therefore she had never learned to use those ‘silly’ mobile phones, as she called them.

‘Sit and relax, Massi Fiza. Shabnum will make your favourite coffee from the
expensive
pot, whilst I finish the pearlwork on this necklace.’

Massi Fiza pulled herself out of her trance but remained standing.

‘What are you reading, Shabnum?’

‘Ruhi’s book,
Othello
– a sad
Engrezi
love story. A drama by William Shakespeare.’ Shabnum cheekily held it up, her cheeks heavy with laughter. What would the semi-illiterate
laundrywoman
know about literature?

‘Engrezi kitab?
Weelly Speer?’ squeaked Massi Fiza, staring in awe at the English book.

The English alphabet had always intimidated her; her punishment for mixing up the upper and the lower cases in her fifth class was a good telling-off from her sour-faced teacher, who, as known to the entire village, had only been educated to a tenth
jamaat
class herself. Massi Fiza did triumph in some areas, however, managing to master words like ‘cat’ and ‘dog’.

‘Never mind “Willy Speer” – let’s talk.’ Rukhsar chuckled at Massi Fiza’s struggle with the name of the great English Bard. The laundrywoman’s five primary classes in an under-resourced village school never quite qualified her to sample Shakespeare’s masterpieces. Rukhsar’s twelfth class, however, in the posh college in town, did.
Romeo and Juliet
still remained the
goldmistress’s
favourite Shakespearean drama.

‘Whose set are you working on now, Rukhsar-ji?’ Massi Fiza’s envious eyes were hawked on the necklace.

‘Saher’s … the lawyer woman’s wedding.’

‘Of course! What an exciting week, Rukhsar-ji,’ Massi Fiza smirked, colour rushing back into her gaunt mahogany-brown cheeks.

‘Is it?’ Rukhsar challenged, settling back on the soft pile of cushions in the middle of the room, sure that her neighbour had plenty of salacious news to share; her keen eyes behind the large designer glasses assessing both the emotional landscape of her friend’s face and the necklace still to be completed. Rukhsar happily forfeited her favourite Indian drama serial in order to acquaint herself with the goings-on in Gulistan.

‘So! Tell me!’ Rukhsar eagerly prompted, her high-
cheekboned
face coquettishly sloped to one side, adding a healthy jowl to her neckline.

Forgetting about her wicked sons and the suicide bombers, Massi Fiza, her grey eyes alive and mischievous, took a deep breath and proudly announced:

‘The landowners’ “princes” are back this week!’

‘Princes?’

‘Yes, the
zemindar
“princes”. Haughty Mistress Mehreen’s son Ismail is coming from London for his wedding. Gentle Mistress Gulbahar’s son Arslan is flying in from New York tomorrow morning. And sour Mistress Rani is busy preparing for her daughter Saher’s wedding. And …’ Fiza stopped, tiptoeing to stand in front of Rukhsar’s tall fan to cool a hot flush stinging across her shoulders and up her scrawny throat. Enjoying the welcoming breeze, she lifted the three amulets garlanding her neck.

‘Go on then …’ her friend slyly goaded. The village
dhoban
was now in her element, ready to part with the juiciest piece of news.

‘She’s back!’

‘Who?’

‘Laila! The potter’s … after years!’ Massi Fiza abruptly stopped again.

‘Oh!’

‘Well! Did you not expect it – with him returning? You must have seen her? The door is opposite yours.’

‘No, I’m too busy with my work to peer over roof terraces and eavesdrop on the goings-on in my neighbours’ houses, Massi Fiza!’ Rukhsar scoffed good-humouredly before asking, ‘What will happen?’

‘We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we, as it’s all happening at the white
hevali
? And that’s where I’ll be, first thing in the morning. Good old Begum tells me everything. Of course with quite a bit of bossing in between! Shabnum, my
ladli
, where’s my coffee? You’ve heard everything now!’

The topic of bombing was duly thrust aside. What happened elsewhere could not be helped, as long as it had nothing to do with their Gulistan or intrude into their lives.

‘In any event what can I, a humble laundrywoman, do to stop such atrocities?’ she silently bewailed.

Then she paled, a sombre thought crossing her mind, remembering the long, thick, black beard framing her son’s narrow face the last time he had visited her. ‘What if my sons have got in with the wrong company? And been brainwashed by those horrible men!’ Then laughed aloud at her runaway imagination, making her friend raise her head from the bridal collar set in her hand.

Massi Fiza immediately straightened her face; there were some things you did not share even with good trusted friends.

‘Oh, Allah Pak! I forgot the box!’

‘The box?’ Rukhsar duly dropped the pearl between her fingers.

‘The Gujjar’s poor son … waiting thirteen years for the American green card is returning home in a box! Guess what, he got the card, but two days later snuffed it … heart attack or sugar problem. His poor family is at the airport to collect the body. Can you imagine it? All those years of waiting and cheating on his wife?’ Massi Fiza hastened to explain as Rukhsar’s neatly plucked, arched eyebrows had shot up. ‘You know he kept a Hispanic mistress in Chicago! The
besharm
man made no bones about it, openly boasting, and in front of us women, too, about cohabiting with her … to get that yellow card! Fancy abandoning your wife and kids for years, and when it’s time for the poor lot to join him he shoots up to the heavens! Bad timing or what! No one dares to mention his American
haram
brood he has left behind. Two lots of children on two continents! Terrible!’

Making a face in distaste, Rukhsar nimbly picked up another tiny pearl from the casket. ‘I hate this modern curse – this migration thing, Massi Fiza! It destroys families! My heart bleeds for
his poor Zubeda, patiently biding her time for years and now left with a house full of luxury items, tears, four children to wed, not to mention looking after his elderly parents for the rest of her life! She’ll not see America, I tell you! Do you think anyone will let her go now – unless her son takes her!’

‘Well, it’s not that bad!’ Bristling, Massi Fiza went on the defensive, thin mouth tightly pursed. ‘Migration – going to
velat
must be good or why else would all these young people go raring off to foreign lands, with their families eagerly packing them off? Even their wives remain contented – delighted with their bank balances. Look at their homes, their standard of living, Rukhsar-ji!’

Massi Fiza would not eliminate the raw envy from her tone. That was how she felt. So why bother hiding it from her friend? How she craved that somebody would arrange for her two
good-for-
nothing sons to migrate to somewhere in the Middle East. Then she, too, could add a second storey to her house as her neighbours had done.

It still rattled her that the bricklayer had turned their humble dwelling into a grand two-storey villa entirely swathed in marble. Not an inch spared! All from their son’s hard work, digging roads under the scorching Abu Dhabi sun.

Massi Fiza was particularly annoyed because the bricklayer’s house not only dwarfed her three-roomed humble house, but its high walls aggressively blocked half the sunlight that her laundry business desperately needed. The bricklayer was now a bricklayer in name only, since his son’s foreign remittances padded his bank account. And the airs of his womenfolk, especially the illiterate, big-mouthed mother Jeena, grated on Massi Fiza. Within months they had graduated into a class of their own on the village social ladder, particularly on the scale of snobbery.

‘Rich but no manners!’ Massi Fiza fumed in front of her many clients. The bricklayer’s household delighted in repaying her animosity by packing off their laundry to the other village laundry house, the
dhobi ghat.

‘Well, it has not made a two
paisa
difference to the quiltmaker’s home! Poor Zeinab is still digging holes in her fingers from
all the darning she does with those long needles. The floors of her house are
still
brick-lined and the roof, I believe,
still
has a mud veneer that she annually slaps on herself with her calloused hands,’ Rukhsar stridently reminded her friend, now quite worked up on the subject of migration; hating people who abandoned their families to migrate elsewhere.

Irritated, she was about to scold, ‘Massi Fiza, I wish you would wear a bra sometimes!’ but stopped short. Instead, she averted her gaze from her friend’s brown nipples poking through the thin lawn fabric of her
kameez
. Rukhsar knew the cheeky answer her friend would throw her way. ‘Allah Pak has not blessed me with your large bosom! There’s practically nothing for the cups to hold! So why bother, and in the summer heat?’

Rukhsar proudly glanced down at her own perfect bosom to make sure that it was not ‘swelling’ out of the neckline of her
kameez
from her crouched position.

‘That’s because her son-in-law’s wealth has gone into his parents’ city house,’ Massi Fiza scoffed, unaware of her friend’s train of thought on nipples and breasts. ‘Oh dear, I must be off.’

‘Don’t forget to keep me informed.’

‘Of course I will! Especially about what’s happening in the homes of the three
zemindar
sisters. Master Arslan is coming tomorrow morning. Begum tells me that there’ll be a big
homecoming
party that Master Haider will host. But will they let
her
through the door? That’s the
big
question. We’ll have to see, won’t we! It’s going to be quite an exciting time in our Gulistan.’

‘For you, Massi Fiza, yes! But I’m stuck here in
chardevari
, behind these four walls, working on these gold
machlis
!’ Rukhsar gently teased.

‘Must hurry. Need to soak the whites!’ She scurried out of the room; for once without drinking Shabnum’s Italian coffee. Meeting the grey-haired master goldsmith on the stairs, she blushed, hurriedly draping her red-dyed muslin shawl over her chest. With a shy smile Massi Fiza sidled past him, muttering her ‘
salaams
’ at the bottom of the steps, whilst shuffling her feet back into her green, bleached, plastic sandals.