The Holy Woman (22 page)

M
ADAME, THE FORMER
Headmistress of the village girls’ high school, had now retired and Firdaus, to
everyone’s
delight, was unanimously elected by the school management committee as the new Headmistress.

Firdaus sat in her office preparing important
documents
for a presentation for the special guests she was expecting later in the afternoon. A principal from a women’s college in a nearby town was interested in building links with girls’ high schools in the villages. Firdaus flicked through the last page, satisfied with the paper she had prepared, when she heard footsteps in the veranda outside. ‘Are they here already?’ She rose from her seat. Without the customary knock, the door was pushed abruptly open. Firdaus blinked at the person standing in front of her and sat down in her armchair.

Kaniz’s tall frame dominated the room. For the next electrifying few seconds, both women stared at one another, speechless. Kaniz’s cold dark eyes were
insulting
in their appraisal.

‘
Assalam-Alaikum,
Chaudharani Kaniz Sahiba,’ Firdaus managed to offer, having recovered her poise and remembering her social graces. ‘How can I help you? Please do sit down.’ Firdaus nodded towards the chair.

Kaniz darted a look of utter disdain at the chair, then back to Firdaus’s face. The ‘chit’ was ordering her about!

Firdaus glanced at the wall clock. Any minute now the guests were due to arrive. She had no desire
whatsoever for either Kaniz’s company or a confrontation with her. It was only too apparent that Kaniz was itching for the latter. Firdaus thus quickly debated with herself as to how she could get rid of her without any unpleasantness. Why was she here anyway?

‘Is there anything I can help you with? I have some guests arriving soon, Auntie, you see.’ Firdaus explained politely, calmly looking Kaniz in the eye.

‘Yes, you can definitely help.’ As frosty as the icicles on the Kashmiri mountains, the words ricocheted around the room. ‘Why did you and your mother target me and my son to wrap your evil web around?’

Taken aback, Firdaus closed her eyes behind her
reading
glasses and mentally counted to three – an effective habit she had adopted a long time ago, in an effort to contain herself and her temper, which was foul when it erupted.

‘I don’t understand. We have set no evil trap or web around you, your son or family. It must be that wild imagination of yours that makes you think that, Madam Kaniz,’ Firdaus replied coldly.

‘Don’t you “madam” me,’ Kaniz hissed, her dark, almond-shaped eyes narrowing with fury. ‘You and your mother have destroyed me and my family.’

Firdaus’s heart was now thumping away
uncomfortably
in her chest. The conversation was getting more and more out of hand and she didn’t know how best to deal with the situation.

‘I repeat, Auntie, I don’t know what you mean. I have nothing to do with your son,’ Firdaus tried,
fearing
that she was fast being sucked into the eye of the hurricane of Kaniz’s twisted imagination.

‘You have nothing to do with my son, you say! You wicked, conniving women. You and your mother have
been after him for years. God knows how many glasses of milk with
tweez
you and she have toppled down his throat. He has left home because of you, you bitch!’

‘That is enough!’ Firdaus shot up from her chair, thoroughly shaken by the woman’s venom. Her brown cheeks now a shade of bright red and her hands spread flat on the desk, Firdaus leaned all of her slender
five-feet
body towards Kaniz and through gritted teeth ground out in her most authoritative voice – the one she used on her pupils.

‘If you please, Madam, out of my office and out of my life. You have no manners, but I will not sink to your debased level, by matching abuse with your abuse. However, let me tell you that I wouldn’t touch your son, or any other member of your family with a barge pole, let alone marry him. You can keep your precious Khawar. Make jam out of him, for all I care,’ she ended viciously, surprising even herself. Kaniz had apparently brought out the worst in her.

‘How dare you say that! Keep your evil mouth shut, you slut. He has left home because of
you
. I don’t know what he sees in you. You are such a plain creature!’ The look of insulting disgust on her face and the way in which her lips curled down in contempt at the corners made Firdaus’s hands tremble on the desk.

‘He has not left your home because of us, but because of
you.
He couldn’t bear to be near a viper of a mother like you!’ Firdaus had now dispensed with social
proprieties,
having decided that this woman deserved no respect. ‘I have not plied him with any evil amulets – I do not believe in them. It is only ignorant, superstitious and evil women like yourself, who believe in them. I never had designs on your son and never will. I am ashamed to admit that my mother would have liked
such a match, but she is foolish, like you. No, Chaudharani Kaniz, I would never marry your son, even if you crawled on your hands and knees and begged me to.’

‘That will be the day!’ Kaniz shouted, scandalised. ‘Me – crawl to ask for a washerwoman’s daughter’s hand in marriage.’ Her eyes almost rolled in their sockets.

She was abruptly cut short by Firdaus’s hand
stamping
down three times on the bell on her desk. Itching to strike the woman, Firdaus was shocked by her own feelings of violence towards Kaniz.

The school caretaker, the
chaprassi,
came running into the room.

‘What is it, Madam Headmistress?’ Respectfully addressing Firdaus, he fearfully looked from one angry woman to another.

‘Please, Baba Jee, show this unwanted visitor out of our school. In future make sure that you are on duty at the door. We don’t want any
nathu pethu,
any unwanted guests, to crawl into our school.’

Shocked by her own stream of venom, Firdaus
nevertheless
felt better for it. Kaniz gulped back a retort. Bursting to give Firdaus another mouthful, she found herself almost blindly and mutely following the
chaprassi
out of the room.

Leaving the room a dazed, humiliated woman, Kaniz felt as if she had lost a full three inches from her height. ‘Thrown out by a
chaprassi
! I, Kaniz,
chaudharani
of the village! And by whose orders? A mere washerwoman’s daughter!’ she screamed in her head, wanting to run away and hide somewhere.

As she crossed the school courtyard, she saw a group of women, smartly dressed in designer
shalwar kameze
suits, enter through the gates. Firdaus, having followed
Kaniz out of the office, moved eagerly forward to
welcome
and greet her guests. Kaniz looked, with
bitterness
, at Firdaus’s outstretched hands and arms. Now totally ignoring her, Firdaus led her guests to her room.

Feeling defeated, Kaniz slinked away, pulling her shawl further over her forehead, hiding her face.

There were two shiny cars standing outside in the school’s small car park. Those important-looking people had evidently come to visit the washerwoman’s daughter! Kaniz’s mouth tightened again in disgust and rage.

Her head was still reeling. By the time she was a few yards away, Kaniz wasn’t sure who she was any more. It was as if Firdaus had somehow stripped her of her
identity
as the
chaudharani.
The sickening image of Firdaus being hugged one by one by those women, with smiles of pleasure on their faces would stay with Kaniz till the day she died. Firdaus had really turned the tables on her. She had succeeded in making her, Kaniz, feel like a washerwoman while she preened herself as the
chaudharani
of the school.

A
S HE WALKED
by himself in one of his vegetable fields, Siraj Din bent down and prodded the dry earth with his walking stick to check how moist it was underneath. The irrigation system was definitely
working
. A tractor, driven by one of his workers, Faisal, passed him by. Siraj Din continued with his leisurely walk, heading back towards the village.

Passing the girls’ high school, he didn’t notice the
woman sitting on a large boulder on the edge of the path, until he was only a few yards away from her. With her head bent and her
dupatta
partially concealing her face from his sight, he couldn’t make out who she was. Was she a visitor from the city or from another village? But there was no luggage in sight.

As he approached, the woman heard the tapping sound of his walking stick and looked up. Siraj Din was very surprised.

‘Kaniz, my dear, what are you doing here sitting in the middle of the path?’ he asked, stopping in front of her. It was so unlike her; she always travelled about in her car. The village path and a dusty boulder were the last place anyone would think to find Chaudharani Kaniz.

Kaniz stared back blankly. Siraj Din’s shrewd old eyes recognised the pinched look about her mouth. Her normal poise was missing; the expression on her face was an unfamiliar one. Lost for words, she continued to stare up at him. Her lips struggled to say something, but failed to move apart, as if sealed with cement. Siraj Din was now mildly alarmed on her behalf. He saw that there were two other women passing by, one with a large bundle of sugar cane on her head. They inclined their heads in respect as they met his eyes and bade him ‘Salam’. He bent his head slightly in acknowledgement and leaned forward to pat the shoulders of the women. He knew both of them by name, and their family backgrounds.

‘Are you all right, my dear daughter?’ he prompted gently as he turned once more to Kaniz. Siraj Din addressed all the women in the village with the term ‘daughter’, with the exception of those three who, because of their age, he addressed as ‘sisters’.

Kaniz was never ever known to be at a loss for words. If anything, Siraj Din chuckled to himself, she was a great mistress of speech, adept at keeping it flowing and putting people in their place.

‘She had me thrown out, Baba Jee,’ she whispered, so quietly that he almost didn’t hear. Turning her face away from his gaze she looked down to the ground.

‘Who had you thrown out, my dear?’ Siraj Din coaxed.

Kaniz glanced up sharply, anger dancing in her eyes, indignant that he hadn’t understood who she had meant by ‘she’.

‘She! She! That witch! That
charail,
who has got my son wound round her little magic finger. That
washerwoman’s
daughter!’ The stream of words had now jetted out with all the innate vehemence and hatred she bore in her mind and heart for Firdaus.

‘You mean Firdaus?’ Siraj Din guessed astutely.

‘Yes! While she welcomed with open arms, hugged and kissed her “elevated” guests from the city, she ordered the
chaprassi
to throw me out like a beggar. Can you believe it, Baba Jee? Me, the
chaudharani
of the village, being shown the door by that chit of a woman who isn’t worthy enough to clean my shoes.’

‘My dear Kaniz, don’t get carried away now.’ Siraj Din tapped his stick gently on the ground, a discreet smile crossing his face.

‘Baba Jee, I felt as if I had been robbed of my
identity
, when I walked out of the school gates,’ Kaniz confided as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘I have sat on this spot since the afternoon. My head reels in disbelief. Who am I? I keep asking myself. Tell me, Baba Jee, aren’t I the village
chaudharani
any more? Is this the way to treat a respectable older woman? She has done it
deliberately, to humiliate me and rub my face in the mud. She has turned my son against me. He has left his home. Now she had me evicted from the school. Who is she, Baba Jee? She is nothing but an upstart. Her mother’s hands are still greased with the grime of the dishes she scours in your son’s home!’

‘Kaniz, my daughter, take it easy. I think you have got carried away with your imagination. I am sure Firdaus would never have you thrown out.’

‘But she has, Baba Jee. Why are you taking her side? I am sure I am going to have a heart attack from this.’ Kaniz’s cheeks flamed red in pique.

‘I think I know what you mean,’ he said thoughtfully ‘what you must have gone through. I experienced something similar once in my life. I have learnt that we are kings and queens in our small, self-centred domains. What is hard for us to believe and accept is that outside the perimeters of those domains, we are nothing, Kaniz. I, too, had a rude awakening myself, when I was treated shabbily at Makkah by someone. I, too, reeled back in shock, my ego totally bruised. Like you, I began to doubt my own identity and sanity. At the end I realised, and it was brutally brought home to me that it was a good experience for me, to look outside my self-created, self-centred world. Here in the village I am the master of all things. In the city, I am just a senile old man.’

‘You are
not
a senile old man! And I am
not
getting carried away, Baba Jee. She did have me thrown out,’ she asserted impatiently.

‘Never mind. Don’t upset yourself further. Why don’t you come to terms with everything? I do know what has been going on. Why won’t you let your son marry Firdaus?’

‘Never!’ Kaniz shot up, thoroughly outraged, her eyes glowing red with anger.

Siraj Din’s mouth curved into a ghost of a smile, his brown bushy eyebrows well arched in amazement. This was the Kaniz he knew: loud, volatile, always sure of herself and infinitely domineering. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, judiciously remaining silent – letting her calm down. Kaniz remained standing, her body stiff.

Siraj Din began to walk using his stick. Kaniz joined him and silently they walked side by side towards the village. Siraj Din knew he hadn’t endeared himself to her by his words, but he persisted, nevertheless.

‘You never forgave Fatima, did you?’ Siraj Din stated softly.

Kaniz froze, stopping in her tracks. Her face turned accusingly towards him eyes wide and mouth slightly open. Siraj Din stopped too.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked in a barely audible voice.

‘You know what I mean. I know everything that has gone on in this village, Kaniz.’

She stared in disbelief at the wiry upright old man, with his thick cap of henna-dyed white hair and beard. Her eyes stood out large in her face.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about, Baba Jee.’ Kaniz pretended ignorance, in an attempt to bluster it out. She was surprised and shaken that the old man knew, even after twenty-nine years. ‘Why do I have to forgive Fatima?’ she continued, injecting a false note of sarcasm in her voice, as a smile lit her face.

Siraj Din’s lips twitched with laughter. Kaniz had an impeccable knack of recovering her poise quickly. The smile on his wrinkled face grew prominent.
Nothing, and nobody could ever keep Kaniz down. She bounced back with a vengeance.

He continued to walk for a few more yards, tapping his walking stick on the way. Kaniz walked by his side, waiting for him to say something, her body tense. Siraj Din stood still in the middle of the dusty path, his stick drawing a circle, and turned to the woman by his side.

‘You are being deliberately obtuse, Kaniz. You know very well what I mean. You haven’t forgiven Fatima for jilting Sarwar, your husband. Now you see the pattern being repeated, with your own son interested in Fatima’s daughter.’

Colour flared high in Kaniz’s fair cheeks. Throwing social etiquette to the wind, she forgot the code of respect for elders.

‘Baba Jee, I think in your old age, your imagination has got the better of you. What …’ she was about to shout out the word ‘nonsense’, but she just about
managed
to pull it back in time, knowing that it would be too offensive to the elderly man.

Just then, Siraj Din’s loud laughter rang out through the air, startling her. Perplexed, she watched helplessly as his tall slim body shook with mirth. Only Kaniz had the temerity to stand up to him and say what she liked without mincing her words, and then get away with it. His own daughter-in-laws, particularly Shahzada, wouldn’t even have dared to look him in the face, while speaking to him – let alone insult him by saying that his imagination had run away with itself!

‘
Khudah Hafiz,
Baba Jee, I must go home. My sister is waiting there for me and I have no time to waste in discussing the washerwoman or her chit.’ Siraj Din’s words had put the life back into Kaniz. Finding the subject of his allusion too unsavoury, she wished to be
gone before he said anything else, and before she herself said something she might later regret. Straightening her shawl around her shoulders, she scuttled off leaving Siraj Din behind.

Siraj Din continued his stroll back to the village with a smile still hovering around his mouth. He was immensely glad that Kaniz wasn’t
his
daughter-in-law. God forbid, he would have been in his grave by now. She would have led them all quite a dance if they had to put up with her waspish tongue night and day. Her self-centredness, her arrogance and volatility would have destroyed the domestic harmony in his son’s household a long time ago. Siraj Din was so grateful to his wife, Zulaikha, for choosing such suitable daughters-in-laws, like Shahzada, for example.

The thought of Shahzada, brought Habib to his mind. His son had still looked very unhappy when Siraj Din had last visited them in the town. It was over a year since Zarri Bano had become a Holy Woman. His daughter-in-law, Shahzada, was still not as forthcoming towards him as she used to be. Outwardly, he couldn’t fault her. She appeared the same. She paid him due respect, served him his meals and made the right remarks when he visited them in their home. What was the matter then? Siraj Din mused.

He knew the answer, just as his son had painfully come to know it. ‘She has closed the doors to her inner self and has left us outside. She will never let us in again.’ He wondered sadly whether Shahzada would ever forgive them. Surely time was meant to thaw hearts?

Zarri Bano, Habib had told him, had gone to England, on the invitation of one of her university friends.

Siraj Din missed his eldest granddaughter. He shook his head. She was definitely not the Holy Woman that he had envisaged. He was beginning to wonder whether it would have been better to have allowed her to marry Sikander. At least then she would have stayed at home, and led a normal life, rather than roaming around the world on the pretence of attending one
convention
or another.

His mind, no matter how broad he tried to make it, couldn’t yet digest the idea of his beautiful granddaughter all alone and in the vicinity of strange young men. It wasn’t safe for a woman to be without the protection of male kin. Their Zarri Bano was totally alone in Egypt! Siraj Din feared for his granddaughter. Men could mentally rape a woman just with one look, even if she was covered from head to toe.

He recalled the sight of his son’s solitary figure, as he paced the grounds of his estate. Habib’s words: ‘Have we done the right thing by Zarri Bano, Father?’ sprang into his mind.

‘Of course we have!’ Siraj Din spoke aloud to
himself
. Zarri Bano was destined to inherit all her father’s wealth and to become the
Bibi
– the Holy Woman! It was her
kismet.