Season of the Rainbirds (18 page)

Alice turned her head from side to side – ‘Nothing.’ She shook her head again and tucked behind her ear a lock of hair that had escaped the pin. But then she placed both hands over her face and began to sob again, violently.

‘Has brother-ji said anything?’

Alice dried her cheeks, blew her nose on her stole and swallowed hard. ‘It’s my father.’

The wrinkles on Zébun’s forehead became pronounced. ‘Is he unwell?’

Alice stared at the wall in front of her. ‘No,’ she managed to say before her eyes filled with tears once again. A droplet hung at the tip of her nose.

Zébun lost her temper. ‘What then?’

Alice spoke with one hand still covering her face, as though she wished to hide it. ‘I heard him talking to my mother. I was in the next room.’

A simple idea came to Zébun. She nodded and smiled. ‘Are they looking for a suitable young man for you?’ she asked and said, ‘Well, Alice, all we women have one day to—’

‘It’s not that,’ Alice interrupted softly. She inhaled rapidly through her mouth and tried to steady her breathing. ‘I was in the next room and I heard my father say to my mother that she had given birth to an ugly daughter. He said every time he looks at me he wonders what kind of djinn or bhoot I am. And I heard him spit in the corner of the room.’

Zébun let herself watch the floor, silent as she tried to grasp what Alice was saying.

‘And he did mention marriage. He said he wonders how he’ll ever get rid of me. He said we’re so poor we can’t even tempt anybody with a large dowry.’

She leaned towards Zébun, perhaps asking to be held. But Zébun did not move.

A few minutes passed before Alice stopped her swaying and uncovered her face. Her eyes were red and her mouth was smudged. Wet from her tears was trapped in tiny films under the curving hairs of her face. She lit the fire under the meat. Zébun took a step back to allow her to light the second burner with the same matchstick. Their eyes did not meet.

Zébun said, ‘Wipe your eyes, girl. Brother-ji is home, he might come in.’

‘All we need to do is to appoint a new watchman, that’s all.’

Mujeeb Ali opened the cupboard and, from the section neatly stacked with documents, he took out a file. ‘It will take you a long time to understand how things are done in this place, Azhar.’

Azhar, seated behind the desk, took the fountain pen out of his pocket and unscrewed the cap. Mujeeb Ali brought the file over to the desk and placed it unopened before him. ‘How was Gul-kalam chosen?’ Azhar asked.

Mujeeb Ali took the empty chair across the desk. ‘No one remembers. He used to supply firewood to people’s houses and sometimes milk the cows. Over the years he became the nightwatchman and brought his family down from the mountains. His brother began painting houses. Just one of those things.’

Azhar opened the file and, without reading, scrawled his signature at the bottom of the page. He lifted the corner of the first sheet and signed the next page. ‘It shouldn’t be your exclusive decision as to who guards the town at night,’ he said without raising his eyes from the papers. ‘Who are these people anyway? I’m not sure I feel comfortable with the idea of four armed men roaming the streets at night.’ His voice was courteous, but strained.

Mujeeb Ali listened patiently, unblinking. ‘It’s not just my men. There were two policemen with them last night, as there will be tonight.’

Since it was Tuesday Azhar had spent the afternoon at the courthouse hearing criminal cases brought by the magistrate. It was the only time of the week when he was sure to be in town. A deputy commissioner had to preside over the weekly sessions court in every town under his command: so even if Azhar had lived elsewhere he would have had to journey to this town once a week. Otherwise Azhar kept erratic hours, arrived and left whenever he wished. So every Tuesday there was a barrage of people congesting the arches outside the courthouse, as they waited to see him: there were those who needed passports and identity cards for departures to the Arab countries; others offering bribes to secure a favourable outcome of cases; fathers of unemployed sons, mothers of nubile daughters; sharecroppers needing loans to buy oxen. For the rest of the week these people would leave messages and gifts outside his house – baskets of fruit and vegetables, sides of meat, embroidery and lace, cakes of white perfumed soap, cages of songbirds. Once there was a fighting cock with a plucked neck and a tiny canvas muzzle over its beak, and once, even more surprising, there was a large bouquet of flowers. In the beginning Azhar used to send these things to the mosques but then it began to seem easier just to drag them over the threshold. People also approached him through Mujeeb Ali.

Tired and hungry he closed the file and looked Mujeeb Ali straight in the eye. ‘And I would like your men out of the post office.’ The noises of the heaving river outside the house and the heat were making it difficult for him to breathe.

A curt smile came to Mujeeb Ali’s lips.

Azhar spoke again: ‘If anything needed to be done I would have authorised it. Any order would have gone from me to the superintendent of police and from him to the police inspector.
He
should have carried it out.’

Mujeeb Ali picked up the file. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you don’t approve of what I did?’

‘No.’ Azhar returned the pen to his pocket. ‘You are just a citizen. It was outside your jurisdiction.’ Then immediately, as though it only needed mentioning – was not to be lingered on, not to be stressed by allowing a silence to mount up – he lowered his voice and said, ‘You must try to understand my position. The town is without a post office now. I have divisional superiors to report back to. And since the suspension of the Constitution I am also answerable to the provincial martial-law administrator.’

Mujeeb Ali laughed indulgently. ‘Is that what bothers you?’ Expression had returned to his face. ‘Your divisional superior, as you so respectfully address him, and my brother Nadir used to play marbles outside this very house. Nothing has really changed since then except that now they play polo on the General’s private grounds.’

The words came out in a shout. ‘That is not the point.’

‘Calm yourself, Azhar. You were not here and the matter had to be dealt with urgently.’

‘Urgently? There is nothing here that needs to be taken the least bit seriously.’ Azhar had stood up, straining forwards, his palms splayed on the desktop.

Raindrops hurled themselves against the glass of the window. From the quality of the light Azhar sensed that it was past five o’clock. He walked around the desk. ‘I have to go now,’ he said lightly.

Mujeeb Ali’s eyes followed him unseeingly to the door. ‘I’ll have the post office keys sent to the barracks.’

Azhar turned at the door and showed him his empty palms. ‘You have to understand my position.’

The weather showed no signs of lifting. Smoky, silver-edged clouds piled up above the house. Plants thrashed in the gale and the rainwater corkscrewed down from the eaves and clapped on the edge of the parquet veranda. Arshad Ali was on the veranda with his niece when Mujeeb Ali emerged from the door behind them. Uncle and niece appeared to be discussing the parrot hanging above their heads. Arshad Ali pointed at the bird through the parallel bars at the base of the cage. ‘Does it talk?’

The girl shook her head vigorously. She had her little arms locked tightly around her uncle Arshad’s neck. ‘The man who sold it to us said it would talk since it had a band of black feathers around its neck. But that was painted on,’ the child explained singingly.

Arshad Ali adopted the same sing-song voice: ‘Well, you had better keep it away from my falcons because they eat parrots. One of them is from the same clutch of eggs as three birds belonging to the king of Saudi Arabia. It has fourteen feathers in its tail.’

Mujeeb Ali approached. ‘How long are you staying this time?’

Arshad Ali did not look up. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. He had arrived just before dawn, after an absence of eleven months, bringing with him several cages of hawks, falcons and eagles. He had spent the months in the north-west, living amongst tribesmen.

The girl lifted her head and inclined it sideways, her eyes and mouth rounded in anticipation. ‘I hear someone,’ she whispered. The door opened and Nabila came in.

‘Go inside, son,’ Nabila told her daughter who had rushed to greet her. ‘Find your sisters.’

Mujeeb Ali, standing till now, sat down in the cane chair.

Nabila curled her lips. ‘That deputy commissioner was here again, wasn’t he?’ She addressed her husband. ‘He asked me whether you were home and I couldn’t lie.’

Mujeeb Ali gave a nod. ‘Yes, he was here.’ There were lines across his forehead, intersected at the bridge of the nose by a deep vertical indentation. Nabila watched him anxiously. ‘Ji, Asgri is selling everything and going back to Sind. Everything – the shares in the mines, the land, the houses.’

Again an uncertain nod.

A group of servant girls, carrying mosquito nettings and bamboo poles, was crossing the length of the opposite veranda. The froth-like nettings were light and diaphanous and from this side the girls looked as though they were hidden by smears and smudges of white paint.

‘Keep your ducks and hens locked up from now on,’ Arshad Ali shouted across the courtyard. His gaze stayed with the girls until they disappeared into one of the bedrooms. Then he turned to his brother: ‘I bumped into Tahir, Saji, Alli and Kamal when I got in last night. I’ll join them on the patrol tonight.’

Mujeeb Ali touched his armpit and asked, ‘Have you got your …?’

Arshad Ali nodded and touched the hard metal of the gun beneath the fabric of his own shirt.

Nabila said, ‘I want you to be careful with that thing. You used to go patrolling during the elections and I remember what used to happen then.’

On Sunday, after seeing Maulana Hafeez washing the floor – his trousers rolled up to mid-shin, his elastic-strapped wristwatch pushed up to the elbow – Mujeeb Ali had sent two servants to the mosque. Maulana Hafeez had initially objected to the appointment as wasteful extravagance but had finally agreed to take on one of the boys.

‘It’s the same every year,’ the cleric murmured to himself as he instructed the boy to keep the courtyard door shut against the invading water lizards, to prevent the soiling of the prayer-mats.

Magrib was said in the hall, the space being big enough for the handful of men. After the prayers, instead of collecting their shoes and leaving, the men gathered around Maulana Hafeez.

Eagerly, Maulana Hafeez straightened his spine against the wooden steps of the mimber, the pulpit.

‘Maulana-ji, we have an important matter to discuss with you.’

Maulana Hafeez lowered his head while his hand patted the velvet of the prayer-mat, feeling for the rosary, in ever-widening arcs.

‘It’s the matter of the deputy commissioner and that girl.’

Maulana Hafeez nodded, his eyes shut.

‘It’s setting a bad example for the whole town, Maulana-ji.’ Maulana Hafeez recognised the voice. ‘We all have daughters and sisters. If we allow the DC and that girl to continue then we could be said to be condoning this sort of behaviour.’

‘And others might be encouraged, Maulana-ji. It’s almost as if we are telling them that we tolerate such sinners,’ someone near the back said.

Maulana Hafeez raised a quelling hand. ‘I myself have been giving a great deal of thought to this matter and there are a number of ways which I think will lead to a satisfactory solution. However …’

Someone raised himself to his knees: ‘I own that house, Maulana-ji. I didn’t know what kind of a man he was when I let it to him. Since I am the owner of the property he’s implicating me in his sin.’

‘You won’t have to worry about that for long. I have a feeling he’s going to buy Judge Anwar’s house from the widow and live there with that girl.’

‘They say he has a wife and two children in Lahore. That’s why he’s away all the time.’

Maulana Hafeez raised his hand again. ‘Nothing has been proved yet. But as I was saying—’

‘Everything has been proved, Maulana-ji. She has moved in with him. She was seen by half the street buying vegetables on the doorstep.’