Authors: Qaisra Shahraz
S
IRAJ
D
IN RE-ENTERED
his hawaili, with his walking stick tapping a firm sound on the marble floor of his courtyard. Sadiq, his old mali, who was watering the thirsty rose- bushes, raised his head and stood up, arching his aching back. Putting the watering can on the ground he rushed over to his employer, hurriedly removing the light morning blanket from his shoulders. Ignoring his manservant, Siraj Din handed over his walking stick and went looking for his wife Zulaikha.
He found her sitting with her three grandchildren and Shahzada in the large living room. They were all laughing. Jafar’s small body was doubled over. The dimple in Zarri Bano’s face had dipped her cheek becomingly, as she comically narrated and mimicked what Kulsoom Bibi had said and done to her on her last visit to her home.
Laughing, Zarri Bano glanced up at her grandfather, expecting a smile in return. Instead she was offered a bleak stare. The smile on her beautiful young face slipped. She turned to her grandmother for reassurance and explanation, quickly vacating the large armchair. ‘Here, Grandfather, please sit down.’ She hastened to place a thick bolster behind his back.
Zulaikha’s eyes were fixed on her husband’s face. ‘You missed breakfast with your grandchildren, Siraj Din Sahib. They are leaving soon,’ she gently chided
him. Still no answer. ‘Where did you go?’ Zulaikha was baffled by his silence and the look in her husband’s eyes.
‘Shahzada, my dear, could you please take the children outside? I need to talk with your mother-in-law alone for a moment,’ Siraj Din requested with quiet dignity.
‘Of course,’ Shahzada stumbled to her feet, ushering her three children out onto the verandah, ignoring Zarri Bano’s look of confusion.
Outside, the child couldn’t help asking, ‘Mummy, what is going on? Why is Grandfather behaving so strangely this morning?’
Shahzada pretended not to hear.
Inside, Zulaikha’s eyes remained on her husband’s face as she moved to sit near him on the sofa.
‘Sahib Jee,’ she began respectfully, ‘Why did you send the children outside?’
Siraj Din closed his eyes tight for a few seconds, before turning to meet his beloved wife’s gaze. ‘What I have to tell you is not fit for the innocent,
masoum
ears of my grandchildren. I want you to send them back to town this very morning, with their parents, instead of later.’ He hastened to explain, noting the worried look on his wife’s face. ‘Something is going to happen this afternoon, and I don’t want even the
shadow
of this event to touch my grandchildren. They must get out of this village as soon as possible.’
‘What is it, Siraj Din Sahib? Please tell me.’ By now, Zulaikha was feeling faint with anxiety.
Each word weighed down as if by lead bars, Siraj Din repeated what Hajra had told him. All that time, he kept his gaze fixed on the door, in case Zarri Bano or Ruby happened to rush back into the room.
By the time he had finished, Zulaikha had physically
drawn away in horror, her hand held to her warm cheek. There lay two feet of awkward space between them.
At last she uttered, ‘I can’t believe that this has happened in our village. It is so,
so
terrible, Siraj Jee. What are you going to do?’ Her voice brimming with fear and misgiving on her husband’s behalf.
‘I don’t know, Zulaikha. This is why I am so afraid. How am I going to tackle this terrible crime? Yet I am forced to do it. I look to my lord, Allah pak, to guide me. Unfortunately I am duty bound as the village elder, landlord and Buzurgh to sort out this crisis, but Zulaikha my dear, dear wife, I would at this moment give anything to swap my role with any other man, no matter how lowly his role happens to be. I don’t want this responsibility, Zulaikha. I wish to God that I could wake up and find it is all a bad dream. How does one treat a case like this? I am not equipped to deal with this matter.’
This note of appeal was one Zulaikha had never heard before. For the first time in his life, her lord and master, the powerful landlord of the village, who always ruled his household with a will of steel – and that included treating his wife as subservient to him – didn’t know what to do.
Today he was seeking her guidance and showing a vulnerable side of himself. The irony was that he had spent over forty years of their married life trying to subjugate his iron-willed but very intelligent wife. He had never quite succeeded.
To his chagrin, he had discovered early on in his marriage that his Zulaikha was made of ‘firmer stuff’, for she had made it perfectly clear to him on their very wedding night that she wouldn’t be ruled by him, the way he ruled his menial servants. On the contrary, she
was not only his wife, but also his ‘equal’ in every way, and therefore demanded, deserved and expected equality and respect. He never quite reconciled himself to any of those terms. It took him long years to find out that he had to accord his wife respect in order to earn hers.
In those early, turbulent years, they had many arguments in their bedroom and in bed. It all centred on the subject of Siraj Din’s effort to tame his wife. A wife, however, who wouldn’t be tamed. With time he grew resigned to this. And if he was honest about it, he asked himself ruefully, ‘Do I really want her tamed?’
Zulaikha, for her part, accorded him the respect due to him as a husband and as a village landlord. She saw to all his needs, but she never bowed down to him either in gestures or in words, always returning the proud taunt, ‘Allah pak is my master! You are a human being, only a mortal – like me. Treat me with respect and equality. We are a cloak, a garment, unto one another, complementing one another. You do not have any special power over me, Siraj Din, just because you are a man – and one who triumphs over killing the spirit of another! That is what you are trying to do to me, isn’t it? Trying to kill my spirit! Do you really want a meek – submissive wife – who will say ‘yes’, ‘yes’ to everything?’ She paused for breath.
‘Is that what you
really
want Siraj Din Sahib? Delve deep into your heart, my husband, and examine your feelings with honesty and be big and noble enough to face the reality. For I, I am sorry to say, can never be a submissive wife. I will not be made a scapegoat for your sister-in-law’s domineering ways. For I know she rode roughshod over your brother. You must remember I am
Zulaikha! Not her! I am not domineering. Just an assertive woman who demands her rights and respect.
‘If you cannot stand my spirit and instead regard it as a threat to you then I am not the right person for you, and you will have to divorce me. Either you learn to accept me as I am, or we go our separate ways, Siraj Din Sahib. This is the choice you have to make!’
Siraj Din had listened with a bemused laugh. Divorce his beloved wife! He would never do that. He loved her passionately. Yet she
was
a threat to him. No doubt about it. Yet he had deliberately never told her that. He knew all along that she was right. She would never change, and wasn’t it morally wrong of him to expect her to change to suit him and his male ego?
At times he had delighted in her high-spirited manner, for she always told him what she thought of him. He knew where he stood with her.
She was a good mother, a wonderful wife and an industrious and efficient landlady of the village, who got on very well with everyone and earned for herself high esteem. Then why was he cursed with a nagging wish to dominate her, to assert himself, and to show that he was the true master of the household? At the same time, he knew in the depths of his heart that she was his true equal and perversely he would have her no other way.
‘Wasn’t that why I chose Zulaikha, in the first place?’ he asked himself, bemused.
‘No!’ his mind shouted, recalling the real reason. She had proved a challenge to him. She had been a haughty, high-spirited, beautiful, young woman, who hadn’t been overly impressed that, this most eligible of young landlord’s had asked for her hand in marriage. On the contrary, she had accepted it as a matter of fact.
Peeved, Siraj Din had vowed to himself that he would have a delightful time taming and training his lovely bride, and bringing her down a peg or two.
To his dismay, he found
himself
brought down a peg or two. It was a bitter lesson for him to learn that women too could be very stubborn, especially when it came to a matter of principle, and would answer him back.
In the company of other people, she always treated him with courtesy and respect. Behind closed doors, she was like a cat at times, but in the public arena she adopted the demure look of a dutiful wife, who took her place with pride beside her husband. Always making sure that nothing tarnished his
shan
and his
izzat
, his honour and respect in the eyes of their fellow villagers.
Zulaikha stared up at her husband, marvelling sadly that it was the first time ever that he had directly appealed to her as an equal. With her heart swelling simultaneously with love, pity and pride, she reached out to his hand, pressing it gently.
‘Don’t worry, Siraj Din Sahib. Everything will be fine,’ she coaxed, ‘but it is no dream, I am afraid. I regard it as a sort of a test of your wisdom. I have faith in you, my dear husband. You will know what to do. You will be fair and just to everyone. I know you will do what is right for us all. Also, you must consult the imam in the other village. This sort of matter deserves careful deliberation, thought and action.
‘You cannot afford to take a wrong step. People’s lives are at stake in this matter. A wrong decision, my dear husband, will have a lasting and devastating effect on all concerned. You must deal with this matter with
intelligence, sensitivity and care. And above all, let your head rule, but not your heart. Remember this.’
Siraj Din listened in silence, marvelling at her wisdom and advice. And I had wanted a meek wife, with no thoughts and ideas of her own. Could a wife like that have given me such advice in this hour of need? he taunted himself. In a spontaneous gesture, borne out of love and gratitude for her support, Siraj Din reached out his hand and caressed her cheek.
Awed and honoured in return by this action, Zulaikha glanced up at his eyes and caught the tender, uncertain expression in them.
‘Thank you, Zulaikha, my dear wife. What would I do without you and your wisdom? And you have been threatening to leave me for the last thirty years. Promise me that you’ll never do so!’
Zulaikha heard the appeal in his voice. Both touched and humbled by it, she realised with her heart singing that she had reached a new milestone in her relationship with her husband. Late in life, yes, but coming from him it was a big step. She remembered his words and the vulnerable look that went with them. Taking his hand she tenderly kissed both the back and the palm, before returning it to his lap.
‘I’ll never leave you, Siraj Din Sahib – that is, until Allah pak takes me away from this world,’ she reassured him in a quiet voice.
He fixed her with a horrified look in his green eyes. ‘Don’t say that, Zulaikha! I couldn’t bear life without you!’ He looked totally bereft. He didn’t miss the shadow that had crossed her face.
‘You will manage well without me,’ she said lightly. ‘At least there will be one person less for you to
dominate.’ Then she laughed, avoiding his eyes before getting up to go out.
‘Don’t tease me on this subject, Zulaikha. It is very cruel!’ He too laughed, but the laughter didn’t quite reach his eyes. Was she hiding something from him? What did she mean by that comment?
‘I am going to sort out the presents for our dear, lovely grandchildren before they leave. Jafar wants to take lots of
ghur
. Shahzada won’t let him because of the holes in his teeth.’ Zulaikha attempted to lighten the atmosphere by talking about Jafar’s love of molasses.
‘Send my two
shegirds
to see me, Zulaikha. They need to be urgently informed about this unfortunate matter. Sulaiman can then announce the kacheri after the
zuhr
prayers in the mosque.’
‘Very well,’ Zulaikha answered quietly, closing the door gently behind her, and going off to help her daughter-in-law Shahzada to pack.
K
ITES OF DIFFERENT
colours and motifs swayed over the houses in the village. The Pakistani green and white flag flew in the breeze from one of the minarets of the village mosque. An air of frenzied expectation hung over each household. At last, the azan, the Imam’s call to prayers from the mosque minaret rang out loud and clear. It was the time!
Never before had the villagers waited for the signal of the afternoon prayers with such trepidation as they did on this fateful afternoon. Everyone, whether out in the fields or inside their homes heard it. Today nobody ignored the azan – even the lazy ones. The men dutifully abandoned whatever they were doing and flocked to the mosque to offer their prayers, respectfully behind the young Imam, Sulaiman. The women and young girls headed for their bathrooms to perform their ablutions. Modestly covering their heads, they said their prayers in the privacy of their homes.
Fatima was already sitting at her wooden prayer-table on the verandah, ready to pour out her heartfelt prayer to Allah pak. The rays of the afternoon sunshine beat straight on her back. For the first time in her life, she got her prayer sequence, the ‘
rakahs
’, all mixed up, forgetting how many she had offered. Furthermore she lost the thread of the
surahs
she was reciting – three times.
‘The wicked girl has affected my brain – now I can’t
even remember the words of my prayers. This is terrible! Allah pak, forgive me!’ Fatima beseeched in exasperation. With the prayer sequence finally finished, she raised her hands high in the air to offer her special earnest prayer. ‘Allah pak, please listen to the
du’ah
of an unfortunate woman, who houses a sinner. Please forgive her for what she has done. Have mercy on her soul, for you are the most merciful – the most compassionate. Please don’t let anything happen to her. As much as I hate her, I don’t want a single hair of her head harmed. We are all vulnerable creatures who fall prey to our desires – we can err so easily and be led on a wrong path. It is as human beings we make mistakes. And as human beings we suffer for our mistakes. And it is as human beings we ask for forgiveness. Please have mercy on my
badkismet
niece. She is not the only one to blame. That Haramzada is to blame too!’ Thus Fatima ended her fervent prayers, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the embroidered border of her head shawl.
When she finally stood up from the prayer-mat her eyes hungrily traced the woven picture on it of the Holy Kabah in Makkah Sharif.
I haven’t even had a chance to see this holy building and to cleanse myself of my sins, she thought. Now I am burdened with hers too! How will I ever wash away this new dreadful sin? How will I ever survive in this village with my head bowed? Oh Naghmana! Naghmana! You doomed woman, you have well and truly dumped me too in your mess. I will be labelled forever as the aunt of ‘that whore’. Allah pak, forgive me! I have done nothing to deserve this! How could you do this to me, Naghmana? I daren’t even think about your badkismet parents. What are they going to do when they find out? You have shrouded us all in
shame. You madwoman. Our
baraderie
, our clan, will never recover from this! Could any household recover from such a shameful deed? Oh Naghmana, I wish you had never been born! Or that you had never shown your manhous face to this devil. What did you do to him? What magic potion did he drink from you? What magic have you cast over him?
Stepping off the prayer platform, she walked under the verandah to her bedroom. Reaching up to the top shelf of her showcase, she took down a copy of the Holy Quran and sitting perched on her palang, she began to loudly recite Surahs from Chapter Five.
Finished with the reading, she held the large copy of the Holy Quran against her cheek, printing feverish kisses on its beautiful designed cover.
‘Forgive me, Allah pak! I held Your Holy Book in my sinful hands. Have mercy on us all.’
Placing the Holy Quran back in her wooden best china cabinet, Fatima glanced up at the ceiling of her room. Her niece’s room was directly above her own. Wrenching open her wooden chest of drawers, she pulled from it a plain grey linen suit.
Carrying it on her arms, Fatima strode up the stairs to her niece’s room. Mutely she stared at the bolted door for a few seconds, bemused by what she had done – ‘I have locked her in!’ – and with trembling fingers she thrust it open.
In the room with the shuttered windows, her niece sat on the floor, near one of the bedposts, her head resting on her upraised knees. Fatima’s eyes scanned with distaste Naghmana’s hair, spread out in disarray around her face, and in knots on her shoulders.
‘Tie up that unseemly mane of yours,’ she ordered. You are not in a fashion show now.’
Sitting down on the bed, she reached over and grabbed hold of Naghmana’s hair, scooping its mass from around her shoulders. Knots of hair came away in Fatima’s hands. She glanced down at the ones on the floor and in Naghmana’s tight fist. Like a puppet in her aunt’s hands, Naghmana let Fatima pull her offending hair into shape. With several long strokes, Fatima tightly braided it into one thick chunky plait. Then she threw the plait over Naghmana’s shoulder for her to have a look.
The mosque’s loudspeaker was turned on again. It was time! Fatima’s hand froze over her niece’s plait. The word kacheri, was clearly pronounced. The court was to be held in the village community hall.
Naghmana too had heard it. She lowered her head further over her raised knees, immune to the painful hold of her aunt’s hand on her hair, her runaway heart thumping crazily.
With a catch in her voice, Fatima jeered down in her niece’s face, ‘See? You are being summoned. You badkismet woman! Scrub your face of the muck you are wearing and put these clothes on. I am not going to have you parade in the kacheri in this tarty outfit of yours and with that paint on your face. Wear this chador on your head, and make sure that it remains there!’
The chador was thrown over Naghmana’s bowed head. It fell to the floor. Stepping over it Fatima slammed the door shut behind her.
Naghmana stared at the threadbare shawl. Her shame grew deeper as she spotted a large tear in one of its corners. Standing up, she glanced at the suit with distaste. She picked up the tunic from the bed. It was a shapeless garment, twice her size and ugly in style. In despair Naghmana dropped it on the floor.
‘Is all this real? Is all this really happening to me?’ she cried.
Kulsoom’s hard knocks on the door, had Naimat Bibi scurrying out of her bathroom. She pulled and clutched at the top end of her shalwar, holding on tightly to one end of the string, in case it slipped out of her hand. In her hurry she tripped over a
lota
, the toilet ablution utensil. To her dismay the water gushed and spilled straight onto her plastic sandalled feet, neatly wetting the hemline of her shalwar.
‘
Mesebt
Kulsoom!’ Naimat Bibi cursed under her breath. ‘Why does she always get me into such a mess? This time a wet one.’ Still cursing, she shook the water out of her plastic sandal. Now she would have to go out with uncomfortably wet sandals, and a damp hemline plastered to her ankle.
Still clutching the nala string in place and tying it tightly around her waist, Naimat Bibi dashed to her front door. Schooled from years of practice, she masked her annoyance and instead flashed a smile of greeting at her friend waiting outside her wooden door.
Pleats of impatience lined Kulsoom’s narrow weather-beaten forehead. ‘Come on, Naimat Bibi! I expected
you
to call on me, not me to be waiting out here for you! Have you not heard the announcement from the mosque? If we are to take Sardara Begum and Jamila with us, we need to hurry. You know what Sardara is like. She’ll take ages to leave her home with those legs of hers. Then it will be a long trek to the madrasah. Also, I am going to Chaudharani Kaniz’s hawaili first, to let her know what is going on. If we reach the madrasah first, we can keep a place for the Chaudharani and ourselves in the front row. All
together – side by side. Wouldn’t that be great? Hurry!’ She glanced back at her friend’s door. ‘Don’t forget the latch on your door! Think of your moneybox – we don’t want it stolen while we are all at the kacheri! All those hundreds of chapattis you had to make to earn that money!’
Still holding her shalwar aloft, Naimat Bibi dutifully followed behind her friend to Sardara’s home, for the second time that day.
Sardara was indeed a very lucky woman to have two messengers visiting her twice in one day and within the space of four hours. Her three women guests had insisted on accompanying them to the kacheri. An air of nervous expectation hung over Sardara’s large courtyard. There was a drama in the making in the village that the twin daughters wouldn’t miss for the world in this otherwise very boring place, where nothing ever seemed to happen. However, they marvelled now at their good fortune in coming to visit the village at the right time.
Out in the courtyard, Naimat Bibi and Kulsoom had to wait patiently for the young women to get dressed. They were still hurrying to and fro, from the verandah to the bedroom, apparently busy ironing out the different layers of their chiffon dupattas. One had already burnt a hole in one corner of the border. Hence another suit had to be quickly dug out from their heaving luggage case.
Sardara exchanged sly looks with her two friends, arrowing her eyebrows at the twin daughters of the kurmani. Like her friends she waspishly wondered why they had to change. Weren’t they already dressed in their very best clothes? In fact, they looked as if they were ready to go to a lavish wedding party and not to a
court gathering. The kacheri was a very grave affair, and this was a particularly unfortunate one – with adultery as the subject matter.
Sardara and her two friends sat perched on the charpoy, trying their best to hide their impatience behind polite smiles. Naimat Bibi and Kulsoom exchanged nervous glances; both questioning their wisdom in coming to Sardara’s home first. Agile-minded and with quick foresight, Kulsoom instructed Naimat Bibi, in her ear, to take Sardara ahead and to also collect Jamila Bibi on the way. She herself would escort Sardara’s three guests to the madrasah.
Jumping off the charpoy, Naimat Bibi agreed with alacrity, remembering Sardara’s legs and the snail-like pace at which she would be walking through the village.
‘Yes, of course, Kulsoom Jee,’ she murmured. In her mind she was already busy calculating how many minutes it would take them to reach the madrasah courtyard. At least twenty and by that time, all the chairs on the front row would be taken!
Sardara’s kurmani, sly by nature and habit, had meanwhile kept an eye on her host and her two infamous friends, paying attention to their ducked heads and whisperings. Not at all affronted by their behaviour, she carried on taking powerful puffs on the hookah pipe, letting the water gargle cheerfully in the steel base, much to Sardara’s annoyance.
Her face masked with a polite smile, not fooling anyone, Sardara turned from her kurmani. ‘Come on, Naimat Jee, with my legs we had better hurry. Kulsoom, can you bring my three guests with you? I know you’ll want to go with your daughters, Neelam Jee.’
Neelam Jee kindly assented, knowing perfectly well
that her host was eager to be off and that it was her foolish daughters and their obsession with clothing who had kept everyone waiting.
Not apologetic by any means, she offered, ‘No problem, Sardara Jee. Please be off, and with your poor legs, you’ll need to be. We’ll probably be there before you.’ Then she cupped her hand around the hokah, drawing another powerful puff.
Not missing the taunt, and thoroughly fed up with her unwanted guests, her kurmani’s smoking habit and her innuendoes about her ‘poor legs’, Sardara angrily swept away.
‘Come on, Naimat Bibi, let’s get off!’
She wished to God she had a magic wand that she could wave to whisk her Neelam Jee and her daughters from her home. Did Allah pak provide magic carpets? She knew what she would do with them.
Naimat Bibi leapt to Sardara’s side, trying to pace her step with the swaying, wobbly movement of Sardara’s large hips, as she bravely embarked on the mammoth task of walking all the way to the kacheri. She hadn’t braved such a venture for years. The other parts of the village were foreign territory to her now. No other event in the village had been worth trying out the remaining strength of her poor legs. Her animals had sapped all her energy.
At the end, to Sardara, the journey appeared like four miles. The madrasah was in the other section of the village, but she didn’t want to dwell on that fact. It was better to forget the distance. After ten long minutes they reached their first port of call. Jamila’s home.
Warmly ushered in by Jamila’s daughter, Shahnaz, Sardara thankfully sank onto the soft padded seat of the
swingseat on the verandah. As she blissfully felt herself relax, Sardara wondered ruefully, how she was ever going to get up again.
Inside her bedroom, Jamila was still on the bed retching into the thukhdan. Naimat Bibi stood by and watched, her eyes going to the clock on the newly painted wall. There were only fifteen minutes to go before two o’clock. By now, all the seats would definitely be taken up by the men. The kacheri was normally a men’s affair. Today, however, nobody could predict how many women would turn up too.
‘Are you sure, Jamila Jee, that you are well enough to go?’ Naimat Bibi ventured to ask, in the timid hope of persuading her friend to stay at home.
Turning a pasty face to her, Jamila nodded dumbly, trying to massage her abdominal muscles with her hands.
‘What if you feel sick while you are there, Jamila? Have you thought about that? You surely don’t want to broadcast your condition to the whole village, do you? The men will be there too, you know – dozens of them,’ Naimat Bibi boldly pressed, visualising herself sitting beside Jamila’s doubled-up figure, with all those present watching and wondering what was going on. The thought had her blushing.
No, I will get Kulsoom to sit next to her. She’ll cope better with this sort of thing, Naimat Bibi decided nervously. I won’t be able to cope with Jamila’s condition in public.