The Pakistani Bride (12 page)

Then a strange thing happened. Nikka beckoned towards the house and Miriam, with only a chaddar over her head instead of the burkha, came out and sat down with the men, out on the busy pavement. This was without precedent. Miriam sat stooped, shading her face from Qasim with her chaddar as she listened to Nikka. Zaitoon saw the chaddar slip off her hair and lie unheeded on her shoulders. She appeared agitated and glanced frequently at Qasim. Then turning to him, she addressed him as boldly as she might a woman in the privacy of her own rooms.

Qasim, not lifting his studied gaze from the pavement, spoke but little. Miriam, her agitation mounting, talked faster,
gesticulating, and pushing back strands of gray hair that fell forward into her eyes. People passing by looked at her inquisitively.

Miriam brushed her cheeks with her fingers and Zaitoon guessed she was weeping. Should she go down? She desperately wanted to discover what this was all about, but a young girl added to the scene might attract too much curiosity. She fidgeted, but stayed upstairs, waiting.

 

It was almost six years since Nikka's release from prison. As he listened to his wife expostulate with Qasim, he showed a weariness, a reluctance to impose his will as forcefully as of old.

Miriam blew her nose into her shawl. She wiped the damp left on her fingers on the strings of the charpoy. She had no control over the tears that slipped down her face.

“Sister, I gave him my word,” Qasim spoke gently.

“Your word! Your word! Your word! What has your word to do with the child's life? What? Tell me!”

Qasim did not reply.

Miriam glanced up and noticed Zaitoon's intent face at the balustrade.

“Brother Qasim,” she coaxed, “how can a girl, brought up in Lahore, educated—how can she be happy in the mountains? Tribal ways are different, you don't know how changed you are . . .” And as rancor settled on Qasim's compressed lips, she continued in a rising passion, “They are savages. Brutish, uncouth, and ignorant! She will be miserable among them. Don't you see?”

Qasim stiffened. A beggar, his limbs grotesquely awry, manipulated his platform to Qasim's feet. He grimaced defiantly. “Paisa,” he demanded in a hoarse inhuman whisper. “Babooji from the hills, paisa.” Attuned to the whims of almsgivers, he sensed the futility of his plea and wheeled himself away before he was kicked.

Qasim tried to control his fury. “Sister, you forget I am from those hills. It's my people you're talking of.”

“But you've been with us so long, you're changed. Why, most of them are bandits, they don't know how to treat women! I tell you, she'll be a slave, you watch, and she'll have no one to turn to. No one!”

Qasim flushed. He glared at Nikka while directing his icy remarks at Miriam.

“How dare you,” he said. “You've never been there! You don't understand a thing. I have given my word! I know Zaitoon will be happy. The matter should end.”

“I know she won't! Oh dear, how I love her. She's like my daughter . . . I've reared her . . .”

“But she is my daughter!” Qasim cut in with biting finality.

Miriam flushed into hysteria.

“Is it because that Pathan offered you five hundred rupees—some measly maize and a few goats? Is that why you are selling her like a greedy merchant? I will give you that, and more,” she said with contempt. “Nikka will! How much more do you want? We will buy her!”

Qasim now looked at her directly, his face white with anger, his eyes malevolent.

Miriam felt the chill impact of his fury and an anguished stab of futility broke her voice. She continued in a crazed whisper, “Why not marry her to my husband here? Yes, I'll welcome her, look after her. We have no children and she'll be my daughter. She'll bear Nikka daughters and sons.” Nikka vainly tried to cut in. “Look!” she said, “I have gray hair. I'm getting old. She will comfort our old age.”

The men were struck silent.

“Miriam, Miriam, you don't know what you are saying! You are overwrought,” Nikka soothed her.

Qasim was in an angry sweat, ashamed, and touched.

“Sister Miriam, it is not for the goats and maize, please believe me. It is my word—the word of a Kohistani!”

Nikka was dazed by the trend the conversation had taken.

“It's the suddenness of the news that is upsetting us so much. I'm sure it's not as bad as we imagine. After all, Zaitoon is Qasim's daughter, and he will do his best by her . . . look, bibi, why don't you ask the girl yourself . . . see what she has to say? That is, if Bhai Qasim agrees . . .?”

Qasim remained silent. Heedless of the impatient honk of a truck, a horsecart rumbled by. The warning jangle of tonga bells, shrill cries of tea-stall urchins taking orders, all the clamor of the dense place, combined to spin a cocoon of privacy around the charpoi.

“Come bibi, let's go in,” Nikka said finally.

Qasim watched them go indoors. After a while, deep in thought, he got up and went into his own room.

 

Setting his hookah by the bed, Zaitoon handed Qasim his cup of tea. Lowering her lids, tipping her head back, she eyed him with melting consideration. All the screen heroines she admired practiced this trick, and Zaitoon frequently peered at the world tipsily through her thick lashes. Once, mimicking her, Qasim had teased, “What's the idea of this . . . ? You look like a freshly slaughtered goat.”

Recalling the remark, she widened her eyes artlessly, and began to massage his legs. “Stretch out, Abba, you look tired.”

Qasim lay down and the girl expertly kneaded his legs.

“Abba,” she asked at length, “is something troubling you?”

Qasim didn't answer.

“Why was Aunt Miriam crying? She sat outside without her burkha . . .”

Qasim studied her lithe body as it rocked to and fro. The pressure of her supple fingers felt curiously dainty and childlike.

“Bibi, we talked of your marriage.”

Zaitoon felt her body tremble. She froze, digging painfully into Qasim's legs.

“Sit down, child,” he said, “What do you think of it?” Zaitoon pulled her chaddar forward over her face. Her voice was barely audible. “Anything you say, Abba.”

She waited. The hookah gurgled soothingly whenever Qasim drew on it.

“You saw the stranger I was talking to?”

She nodded.

“That was Misri Khan, my cousin. I've promised you in marriage to his son Sakhi.”

Zaitoon sat still. A blind excitement surged through her.

“I think you'll be happy,” he said at last. “We will set off for the hills before the month is over. I'll ask for leave from the warehouse.”

Zaitoon sat, unable to move.

Qasim's eyes wandered about the room assessing their luggage.

Beneath a cotton rug stiff with years of grease and dust was the tin trunk. It served as a shelf for an assortment of cans containing condiments and tobacco, bottles of oil, tonics, and aphrodisiacs. He noticed a china bowl filled with dark red henna paste and his eyes lit up. Zaitoon had ground the henna leaves on a stone mortar that morning. Qasim was nearing fifty and he dyed his beard not to disguise the gray, but to accentuate it. White hair, a sign of wisdom and age, entitled him to respect. His head, hidden by his turban, he kept clean-shaven because of the great heat in the plains.

Qasim's glance lingered on the only decoration along the flaky walls: his pistol and his rifle. They hung by their holsters from rusty nails, and above the pistol, on a crude rack, wrapped in a square of frayed red silk, the Holy Quran.

“Bibi, read me some verses.”

Zaitoon's prowess with the holy scriptures never failed to awe Qasim, and he followed the somber movement of her lips with pride.

Their bodies rocked to the lilting Arabic cadences.

 

Miriam held Zaitoon's arm in the bustle at the station. Neighborhood women who had come to see Zaitoon off moved in a black, burkha-clad bunch behind them. Carrying bundles, Qasim and Nikka walked ahead. In front of them, leading the way with the tin trunk on his head, stalked the coolie.

“Buch key! Take care!” the coolie warned, and the people parted to make way.

Zaitoon's eyes flashed at the excitement of travel. Families, gathered with their luggage, waited like untidy mounds of rubbish. Bangled arms reached out of burkhas when mothers chased after straying children.

An old man was awaiting the Khyber Mail train. Garlands of roses and crisp paper money encircled his shoulders, and pressing about him in a clamorous throng were his children, grandchildren, relatives, and neighbors. Disentangling his beard, the old man beamed at them. Impatient to start, he had arrived at the station four hours before his train was due.

“Bring us water and a talisman from the Holy City,” shrilled the older women from behind their veils.

“Bring us wristwatches, and cameras,” shrieked the young.

Coolies trotted past, trunk upon trunk of luggage towering on their heads. Enormous holdalls swayed from their arms, “Buch key! Take care!” they cautioned.

Then, at some esoteric signal, the coolies squatted in a red row along the platform. Within seconds the engine steamed in.

Qasim and Nikka pushed their way into a crowded compartment. The women remained on the platform while the men arranged the luggage.

Miriam had tried her best to dissuade Zaitoon from going. “You are ours. We'll marry you to a decent Punjabi who will understand your ways. Tell your father you don't want to marry a tribal. We'll help you.”

But Zaitoon, swung high on Qasim's reminiscences, beckoned by visions of the glorious home of her father's forefathers and of the lover her fancies envisaged, merely lowered her head and said shyly, “I cannot cross my father.”

Then Miriam, knowing Zaitoon's mind was made up, stroked her head and said “
Bismillah
”—“God bless you.” She gave her a gold necklace embedded with colored glass, a dozen gold bangles, and her red wedding outfit.

Miriam stroked Zaitoon's arm as if she were a blind woman leading a loved one. She could feel the girl quiver with excitement. “Are you happy, child?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Zaitoon, and at once felt embarrassed.

“God give you a long life, keep you always happy and smiling.” Miriam caressed her head. She, too, had married at sixteen. “Bless you,” she said, and Zaitoon, suddenly tearful, hugged her close.

They clung together weeping, the girl lost in the folds of Miriam's burkha. Zaitoon did not need to say, “Thank you for everything,” or, “I'll miss you.” She sobbed, whimpering, “I'm leaving my mother . . .”

 

A whistle shrieked. Qasim and Nikka embraced hurriedly.

“Come on, Zaitoon,” Qasim urged, and Nikka gently pulled the girl away from his wife. Qasim saluted Miriam.

Nikka blessed the girl. “God be with you, child,” he said tenderly. “Remember you are our child as well. If you're not happy, come straight back to us. God be with you.”

Ever so slowly the train began to move.

T
he three-tonner wound along the dirt road with an easy, powerful drone. It was going to Dubair with the routine supply of vegetables and stores that included the Major's beer.

“See that?” The driver glanced at Ashiq Hussain but the young mechanic slumped by his side, his army cap over his face, was fast asleep.

The road rose and swerved sharply round a projecting cliff and the driver saw a fallen bulldozer, strewn on the rocks far below. A week ago, it had plunged two thousand feet down the river canyon. Two men had died.

Instinctively, the driver steered another arm's length clear of the edge of the gorge. They were in the region described by the ancient Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hsien as the Black Mountains.

 

A shot rent the still air and the bang of a bursting tire echoed through the mountains. The three-tonner lurched crazily. Its heavy back wheels skidded and wrenched it in a wide arc across the road.

“Damn! Some bloody fool fired at us!” the driver said to the dazed mechanic.

The truck had its nose to the sliced mountain wall, its back wheels barely clearing the treacherous edge. Both men ducked and knelt crouching on the floorboard. Ashiq Hussain loosened the safety catch on his gun. He bobbed up
swiftly but saw nothing. “Stay low, you idiot,” cautioned the driver.

 

“Oh God! Why did you do that, Abba?” gasped Zaitoon, her voice faint with shock.

“Hush . . . keep your head down,” Qasim whispered. The gun shook in his hand. Crouching low, he held her down.

 

After years of longing, Qasim was returning to his people at last; to the house of his ancestors and the beloved land of his youth. The vigorous air and the sight of the stark mountains elated him. They stirred in him a long dormant pride. His mood was expansive as they trudged along the road. A bedding-roll and the tin trunk were strapped to his back, and Zaitoon carried an assortment of bags and bundles. Qasim talked incessantly.

“Bibi, you will like my village. Across the river, beyond those mountains, we are a free and manly lot.”

He searched the girl's face wistfully. Zaitoon, ecstatic with the wonder and beauty of all she saw, paid him flattering attention.

“You'll see how different it is from the plains. We are not bound hand and foot by government clerks and police. We live by our own rules—calling our own destiny! We are free as the air you breathe!”

The spirit of his forebears stirred in Qasim. Already he had forgotten the plains and the humiliations he had endured there. These raw, wild ranges were his element.