The Pakistani Bride (30 page)

The Major, watching from afar, noticed Misri Khan's back straighten. He saw the triumphant swagger in Yunus Khan's gait and Sakhi's relaxed lope as they resumed their journey. Wiping his brow, he smiled. His promise to the youth would hold.

 

Ashiq Hussain walked up with the tattered blanket. “You took a long time getting back,” said Mushtaq.

“I think the girl's gone mad, Sir.”

“What girl?” Mushtaq asked stonily. “I thought I instructed you to deposit the roots at the Mess.”

Ashiq was baffled for only a moment. “Yes, Sir!” he saluted and held out the blanket.

“There is no use for it any more. Burn it.”

Mushtaq recalled the girl's thin fingers pulling torn strips of cloth over her bare skin. She would be all right, he mused. In a few hours he would quietly stow her away in the vehicle taking Farukh and Carol to Lahore. Let Carol take care of her! She could hide her in the States! Or perhaps Ashiq could propose marriage after a decent interval—she would be as securely hidden in his village. Of course, the old Kohistani who had brought her here must never know she was alive . . . a pity . . . he had appeared to love her. Still, he was to blame for imposing his will on something that was bound to end in disaster . . .

“Isn't a jeep going to Pattan this afternoon?” he asked abruptly.

“Yes, Sir.”

“I think it could leave earlier. Say, in about fifteen minutes? Those tribesmen are weary, they could do with a ride.” He indicated the three tribesmen far up the road, and as he spoke they followed the road round a bend in the hill and disappeared.

Bapsi Sidhwa
is the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of several novels:
An American Brat, Cracking India, Water
and
The Crow Eaters.
She is also the editor of the anthology
City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore.
Her work has been published in ten countries and has been translated into several languages. Among her many honors, Sidhwa has received the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/ Harvard, the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writer's Award, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan's highest national honor in the arts, and the LiBeraturpreis in Germany. She has also been inducted into the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame.
Cracking India,
a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, was made into the film
Earth
by internationally acclaimed director Deepa Mehta. It was also listed as one of the best books in English published since 1950 by the Modern Library. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, and brought up in Lahore, Pakistan, Sidhwa now lives in Houston, Texas.

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Interior design by Wendy Holdman
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

© 1983, Text by Bapsi Sidhwa

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data

 

Sidhwa, Bapsi.
[Bride]
The Pakistani bride / Bapsi Sidhwa.—
1st American ed.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-571-31904-3

(pbk. : acid-free paper)

1. Orphans—Fiction. 2. Women—Pakistan—Fiction. 3. Culture conflict—Fiction. 4. Himalaya Mountains Region—Social life and customs—Fiction. 5. Pakistan—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title.

PR9540.9.S53B7 2008
823'.914—dc22

2007032041 CIP

 

This book is printed on acid-free, recycled (100% postconsumer waste) paper.