The Pakistani Bride (19 page)

“What's there to see? Go on, get to your work!” shouted the cook, bolting the kitchen door. The soldiers, satisfied with the glimpse and somewhat abashed by the reprimand, moved
away, but the tribals hung around the wire-mesh window peering in as at animals in a cage.

Ashiq Hussain studied the faces with heightening anger.

“Get away, you bastards,” he growled, stamping towards the window. Insolent eyes stared back at him in immutable contempt.

Infuriated by their avid, leering countenances, Ashiq impulsively reached for a full bucket by the sink and threw the water at them. The pyramid of craning necks and faces wobbled for a moment, then, swearing and jeering, the wet faces resumed their positions.

“I will deal with these mangy dogs,” snarled Qasim, pushing Ashiq aside. He scowled at the inquisitive tribals, and at the wrath of a man of their own lineage, they blinked in astonishment.

“We're only looking at the woman who came with the jawan from the plains,” one of them said apologetically in tribal dialect.

“She has not come with the jawan. She is my daughter!” hissed Qasim. “I'll wrench out your tongues, you carrion. I'll gouge the swinish eyes from your shameless faces . . .” His clawed fingers quivered. They dispersed rapidly, and he sat down, trembling quietly.

“You're going to leave this girl with them?” asked Ashiq. “There'll be no one to protect her.”

“They didn't know she was of our race. Now they will protect her with their lives!”

“Hah! Kill her, more likely!”

“Hold your tongue!” Qasim retaliated furiously. “And get away from the girl! Haven't you any decency, sitting so close to her?”

Ashiq stood up and strode out of the kitchen.

“Let's go,” said Qasim shortly.

Lifting their belongings from the truck, Qasim and Zaitoon placed them in a heap on the fine dust. Ashiq stood by, declining to help. Zaitoon gave him a sidelong smile and he walked up, silently assisting her father in raising the tin trunk to his head. He strapped the bedding-roll to Qasim's broad back, and Zaitoon picked up the remaining bundles.

Ashiq, saluting the officers, walked down the wide, dusty pathway with them to the bridge. At the bridgehead Qasim turned to him. “There is no need to come any further, my son.”

Ashiq caught the heavily burdened man in a warm embrace. “Forgive me if I said anything to displease you.”

“No, my son, it is I who ask your forgiveness. And convey our gratitude to the Major Sahib. My child and I are truly thankful. Allah be with you.”

“Allah be with you,” replied Ashiq.

Looking at Zaitoon with anguished eyes, he touched her arm and repeated, “God be with you.”

Qasim and Zaitoon walked on to the dark tarmac strip straddling the river. Half way across the bridge, Zaitoon stopped to look over the railing at the central vigor of the waters. “I cross this spot and my life changes,” she thought with sudden reluctance. But the step into her new life had been taken a month back and she was moving fatefully on its momentum. She glanced back at Ashiq standing still and straight by the bridgehead, and she felt a pang of loss.

Ashiq kept standing. He had seen the girl stop and half turn to look at him. It suddenly occurred to him that Zaitoon always seemed to have been poised for flight; even when she entered a room. It was a quiver of her supple body that started in the soles and high, finely drawn arches of her feet.

 

The sun, already at a sharp angle, brushed them tepidly. Leaving the bridge they trudged up a sharp incline, and through a
tunneling fissure into the closed world of mountains. Qasim, in an enveloping sense of familiarity, traversed the almost pathless wilderness with the assurance of a homing bird.

“A short distance and we'll be there,” he said to the weary girl.

The stark heights they were crossing vividly impressed on Zaitoon what might lie beyond. Brown mountains rose endlessly, followed far up and away by endless snow. Before them stretched centuries of an intractable wilderness, unpeopled and soundless. Zaitoon's limbs were aching and the uncanny stillness weighed down her slender body. She walked faster, and Qasim had to quicken his step.

Half an hour later, he stopped. “Zaitoon, cover your head, someone is coming.”

Soon she too heard the crunch of footsteps.

All in white, a figure moved into view round a hill; large and white it loomed in the dusky stillness.

“
Salaam-alaikum,
Misri Khan,” Qasim's voice boomed joyously in the quiet, and hastening their steps the two men met and embraced. Misri Khan was wearing an enormous flared robe over his puffed-out trousers. The elaborate twists of his white turban spoke eloquently of the pains he had taken for the occasion. Seeing him close, Zaitoon was amazed at the similarity between them. Misri Khan was younger and ruddier, but he had the same eyes, tipped at the corners, and the same sharp, hawk-like profile as Qasim. He appeared self-assured, hard and arrogant.

Stooping beside the visitor, he slipped the trunk on to his own head. “News travels fast. I heard of your arrival a few hours back and was on my way to Pattan to fetch you.”

He laid his palm flat on Zaitoon's head to bless her.

While they walked, Misri Khan supplied Qasim with news of his kinsmen.

Rounding the shoulder of a hill, Qasim paused. Shading his eyes against the slanting rays of the sun, he gazed at the valley below. “We have arrived!” He looked at the girl exultantly, his heart close to bursting.

They stood on what looked like the rim of a great bowl. The mountains once again stood a little apart and the base of several hills formed a gently undulating valley. Zaitoon studied the flat mud and stone huts sprinkled about the foot of the hills, and the cultivated strips of lush green crop that tiered upwards like a giant stairway. She could make out no single living form.

Once they stepped within the mud-rampart of the village, each house spewed out its ragged human content and the villagers came running. Three or four fierce dogs set to barking and were restrained. Zaitoon covered her head and the lower half of her face with her shawl. The children, their noses running, their cheeks a fierce scorched red, stared at Zaitoon out of large, light eyes. Their hair was matted with dust, streaked bronze by the sun, and their eyes were amber, green, and blue.

A spry, stooped old woman clutched Zaitoon's arm with talon-like fingers. After greeting Qasim and being blessed by him, she led Zaitoon possessively from the crowd towards her hut. The men remained in a knot about Qasim, but the women and children, breaking away, followed the old woman and the girl.

 

Hamida peered at her prospective daughter-in-law through puffy, undefined lids. She had been tall, but arthritis and hard labor had bent her, so that her head bobbed level with the girl's. When her glance focused on Zaitoon's inquisitive, apprehensive eyes, she gave an ingratiating chuckle and, anxious to make the stranger feel welcome, ran her claw-like fingers
affectionately over Zaitoon's head. Zaitoon studied the sallow face with a concealed revulsion. Deep scars on Hamida's cheeks distended her toothless mouth in a curious grin. Old at forty, she had suffered a malicious disease that had shrunk strips of her skin and stamped her face with a perennial grimace. Even when her sons had died and tears had run down her scarred cheeks, she had appeared to be smiling.

The chattering, curious women followed them into a hut, bombarding Zaitoon with questions she was barely able to understand. For a time, she sat huddled on the dirt floor in a corner of the hovel, mutely staring at the unkempt rough faces.

Presently a huge clay tray filled with flat maize bread was placed on the floor in the center of the room. Breaking chunks of the rubbery bread, the women dipped them in a pan of water and fell to eating.

Much later, Qasim and Zaitoon were led to the jagged entrance of a cave. They crawled to enter, but once inside they could move around freely.

They spread their bedding on the floor and lay down for the night. It was bitterly cold and the exhausted girl snuggled close to her father for warmth. She fell asleep almost at once.

A few hours later, she awoke, unaccountably restless. She had a vague recollection of an unpleasant dream: she had been standing by the river, admiring its vivid colors, when a hand had come out of the ice-blue depths and dragged her in, pulling her down, down . . . Now her experiences of the previous day crowded confusedly into her mind. A new wakeful fear crystallized. With the shrewd instinct of the damned, she sensed the savagery of the people she had just met. She knew poverty and the harshness of their fight for survival made them the way they were, and her mind revolted at the certainty that to share their lives she would have to become like them.

The frightened girl began to cry, her muffled sobs absorbed by the ancient walls of the cave. Her father beside her slept undisturbed.

 

The piercing wail of a jackal rent the night, and the village dogs started barking. Terrified, Zaitoon flung herself upon Qasim.

“What is it, child?” he asked. “That's only a jackal. It won't harm you.”

The girl sobbed aloud. Qasim, not accustomed to hear her cry, was perturbed. “What is the matter, Zaitoon?” he asked again.

“Abba, take me to the plains when you go. Please, don't leave me here. Take me with you.”

“Hush, Munni, be quiet,” he said, gently holding her close.

“Abba,” she sobbed, “I don't want to marry. Look how poorly they live; how they eat! Dirty maize bread and water! My stomach hurts.”

Qasim tried to laugh. “I ate the same bread, and I have no bellyache.” Then he spoke seriously, stroking her head, “My child, they are not as poor as they appear to you. It's only their way of life. You will get used to it soon. Then you will like your husband and my people. Why, we've only just come here.”

The girl clung to him desperately, digging her fingers into his shirt, her legs grasping him in a vice. He felt her body quiver against him.

“Abba,” she begged in a fierce whisper, “take me back. I'll look after you always. How will you manage without me—and the food? If I must marry, marry me to someone from the plains. That jawan at the camp, Abba, I think he likes me. I will die rather than live here.”

Qasim was furious. He was shocked by her brazen choice of words and the boldness of her contempt for his people.
A sudden dread that perhaps he had not directed the course of the girl's life correctly upset him and kindled his wrath. He wrenched at her slender, clinging fingers and pushed her away.

“Hush, Zaitoon, that's no way to speak to your father. It is not seemly. A decent girl doesn't tell her father to whom he should marry her.”

“But father . . .”

“Now understand this . . .” Qasim's tone was icily incisive. “I've given my word. Your marriage is to be a week from today. Tomorrow your betrothed goes to invite guests from the neighboring villages. I've given my word. On it depends my honor. It is dearer to me than life. If you besmirch it, I will kill you with my bare hands.”

He sat up, heedless of the cold that needled his uncovered body. Zaitoon cringed at his unexpected fury. He groped for her and his hand closed round her throat.

“You make me break my word, girl, and you cover my name with dung! Do you understand that? Do you?”

She lay quite still, her eyes large with fright and comprehension.

“Yes,” she croaked, her will utterly defeated.

The pressure on her throat lessened. Qasim unlaced his fingers and let go.

But his nagging fear for the girl, his misgivings, would not be stilled. The feel of her soft, vulnerable neck persisted in his fingers. A moment later, torn by remorse, he kissed her. He stroked her head and whispered brokenly, “I have given my word, child, my word . . .”

The girl reached for Qasim and in her dread clasped him comfortingly close to herself.

T
awny hills vibrated to the sharp, quick beat of drums. A group of young men danced in a circle. Waving their arms, whirling at a dizzy pace, they leapt into the air. Occasionally, a joyous volley of gunfire heightened the revels.

The marriage had been solemnized, the feast served, and amidst laughter and cheering the groom was led to the room where his bride awaited him.

A man atop the valley rim let out a fierce, wild cry and the sound echoed down the valley. Catching it the men flung it back, until the carefree ululation spread, reverberating among the mountains. The clean cold air was filled with a noise as natural to the wilderness as moaning winds. Then like a wind dying, the sound diminished, until quiet settled once more upon the valley.

They were alone now. Diaphanous and tinsel-dusted, her bridal
ghoongat
formed a tantalizing veil over her face and form. The groom awkwardly, wordlessly, lifted the veil to see his bride's face. She must have been almost as curious, for her eyes, which he had expected to be demurely lowered, met his own in dizzying appraisal. Sakhi moved back a trifle, smiling self-consciously. And now the girl lowered her eyes. He appeared tall to her and incredibly strong. The hair beneath his turban and on his moustache glistened gold, and in the shadowy lamplight his sun-gilded face gleamed, as did his vivid blue eyes. Her heart beat faster, and a warm glow suffused her body.

Sakhi surveyed his diffident bride with mounting excitement. Here was a woman all his own, he thought with proprietorial lust and pride, a woman with strangely thick lashes and large black eyes that had flashed in one look her entire sensuality. But, even as he thought this, the corroding jealousy of the past few days suddenly surged up in him in a murderous fusion of hate and fever. He tore the ghoongat from her head and holding her arms in a cruel grip he panted inarticulate hatred into her face.