by Samra Zafar
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the two most important people in my life—my
best friends, my cheerleaders, my partners—my daughters.
Pseudonyms
The following names are pseudonyms:
Ahmed Khan, Aisha, Mr. Altaf, Angela, Aziz, Beenish, Fahad, Farah, Fatima, Hazeema, Junaid, Maria, Maya, Mohammed Ali, Nasreen, Renu, Sadia, Saira, Shahid, Sonia, Warda.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Pseudonyms
Prologue
PART ONE
Chapter 1: Mehndi
Chapter 2: Time Bomb
Chapter 3: The Proposal
Chapter 4: Rukhsati
PART TWO
Chapter 5: Samra-Begum
Chapter 6: A Good Wife
Chapter 7: Turbulent Waters
Chapter 8: Shopgirl
Chapter 9: The Sticky Web
Chapter 10: Dark Days
PART THREE
Chapter 11: In Business
Chapter 12: School at Last
Chapter 13: Time Away
Chapter 14: Talaq, Talaq, Talaq
PART FOUR
Chapter 15: On My Own
Chapter 16: The Way Forward
Chapter 17: Freedom
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Photo Section
About the Author
Praise
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
I wake to the crackling of bird calls outside my bedroom window, the anemic light of a Canadian spring morning seeping through the curtains. I lie very still, listening. The house is quiet. My in-laws are in the bedroom down the hall. My husband sleeps ten feet below me, in the den. My infant daughter slumbers peacefully beside me. At first, I’m surprised to see her. Why didn’t I put her in her crib in the room next door last night? Why is she still here with me? And then I remember. I rub a painful spot on my upper chest. My heart aches almost every morning, but today my ribs are sore as well.
As my drowsiness falls away, another feeling works its way through my body. A frayed, rippling tension, a growing brittleness: anticipation and fear. At any moment, the cold brick house will come alive, and I will be thrown together with the rest of the inhabitants. If all goes well, Ahmed will take his lunch and walk wordlessly out the front door, and I will start on a long, dull day, locked here in the house with his mother and my daughter. The hours will creep by, broken only by chores, television, empty chat.
But perhaps it won’t be dull. Yesterday was not dull. Or at least it didn’t end that way. And I have come to understand that in this new world of mine, anything other than grey monotony is scary. Anything else is dangerous.
My daughter shifts. I can hear my mother-in-law’s slippers as she begins to pad about her room. It is time for me to go in to say salaam. It is time for me to head downstairs with the baby. It is time for me to make my husband’s lunch. It is time for me to start my dreary routine.
As I rise, I realize that I am saying a little prayer. I am praying for luck. I am praying for another dull day.
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
MEHNDI
Music was drifting up from the tent, but I couldn’t find the celebration in it. Instead it sounded haunting and hollow, like a distant echo of happier times. I knew that at any moment the dancing would start. It felt surreal to be trapped up here, all alone, reduced to watching and waiting. I had always loved family weddings, and I loved the dancing most of all. Enthusiastic as I was, I had never been able to resist taking charge of the choreography and hogging the limelight during our little performances.
Sitting in a bedroom in my uncle’s house in Karachi, I peered out the window at my family below. They were gathered under a tent, but the sides were open. I could see their brightly coloured clothes and sparkling jewellery. They were talking and laughing. I watched as my little sisters, Warda, Saira and Bushra, helped themselves to mithai and laddoo and other sweets that lined the enormous platters that were being passed from person to person.
Tonight was my mehndi—the pre-wedding music party a bride’s parents hold to formally present their daughter to her soon-to-be-husband’s family. Earlier in the evening, I had been escorted downstairs to briefly join the festivities. My sisters and cousins had walked with me, holding my yellow dupatta over my head like a canopy. For half an hour or so, I sat on a raised platform, the dupatta draped over my head and my palm outstretched, a large paan leaf in its centre. One by one, all of the adult female guests approached me, putting a dab of henna in the centre of the leaf and a small morsel of mithai in my mouth. I tried to remember to keep my eyes down and not say too much, as for this short while I was the centre of attention. Ahmed’s brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles studied me slyly, making comments about my hair, my height and the paleness of my skin. I felt like a new car or shiny watch that was being assessed by its owner’s friends. Then I was shepherded back upstairs so the celebrations could continue without the presence of the girl whose modesty needed to be protected. In two days’ time, I would no longer be a student, no longer a big sister and beloved daughter, no longer a person with any independence or autonomy. I would be a begum—someone’s wife. I was just seventeen.
Sitting on the bed, in my new yellow-and-green dress, my dupatta abandoned beside me, I was seized by panic. I was supposed to be flattered by the proposal of a man eleven years my senior, a man who had a good job and a Canadian home. I was supposed to be relieved that I had avoided the terrible fate of spinsterhood. Most of all, I was supposed to be overjoyed by my impending marriage and the idea of joining my husband’s family. But everything about the last few months felt like a terrible, twisted dream.
* * *
My family and I had arrived in Pakistan several months before and moved into the apartment my mother had bought a few years earlier as an investment. We had left behind in Ruwais, a small town in the United Arab Emirates, our spacious three-bedroom home and a tranquil suburban neighbourhood filled with succulent trees and fragrant blossoms. No one in my family had been happy about the move. My mother had been forced to quit her job. My three sisters and I had been torn from our friends and our school. My father was left to shuttle back and forth between his work in the oil refinery and his wife and children in Karachi. But there was no other way. It was cheaper for us to live in Karachi. And we needed to cut costs to pay for the wedding.
Our new home in Pakistan was a shock. The sweltering summer heat beat its way through the doors and windows, filling the cramped space with fetid, humid air. Used to air conditioning, my sisters and I spent most of our waking hours huddled in my parents’ tiny bedroom—the only room that had AC. When we did move about the place, we stepped carefully, watching out for the cockroaches and other bugs that crunched under our feet or scuttled across our toes if we weren’t careful. For young girls in Pakistan, there was no playing outdoors or riding our bikes. No tennis or squash or cricket. And when we went outside, we had to leave our jeans and T-shirts tucked in the closet, donning instead the traditional shalwar kameez—a long tunic and flowing pants—our heads and chests covered with a dupatta. The streets, with their emaciated stray dogs, flea-ridden cats and skittering lizards, took us months to get used to.
A week before the wedding, our out-of-town relatives descended upon us. While some stayed with my grandfather and my other relatives, a number wrestled their suitcases into our already impossibly crowded apartment. Once ensconced, they threw themselves into the wedding preparations. My uncles shuttled back and forth to the banquet hall, checking on the arrangements there; my aunts fussed about clothes and bangles and flowers. My sisters and cousins sq
ueezed into the living room to work out the dances they would perform at the two mehndis.
And I stood in the midst of it all, dumbfounded by the activity. It was my wedding, but all the sacrifices people were making, all the expense and exertion they were putting in, seemed to have nothing to do with me. No one sought my input on the flowers or the food we might serve. No one invited me to choose music or even a colour of lipstick. No one asked me if I liked the clothes that they had selected for me to wear at the various dinners and parties. (My actual wedding dress and jewellery were being picked out for me by Ahmed’s family and would be presented to my family at his mehndi.) It was like standing on the bank of a river, watching the water swell and surge and knowing that I would be pulled into it, helpless, at any moment.
And perhaps the most disorienting thing was that all this effort was focused on attaching me to a man I had never met. A man I had exchanged only a few brief emails with.
But then, a few days before my mehndi, Ahmed appeared.
* * *
Our first meeting was almost by accident. My family and I had been summoned to his family’s home. His relatives needed to get my measurements for the wedding clothes they were having made for me. With the fitting finished, I was ushered into the living room.
“Come here, Samra,” called Ahmed’s mother. “Our new daughter must sit with us.” She gestured to a small space on the couch between her and her husband. I sat down, but my obedience was accompanied by uneasiness. These people did not feel at all like parents to me.
Ahmed’s mother’s round face was so unlike my mother’s soft prettiness. It had a swollen stiffness to it, and even when she smiled her thin lips pressed together and drooped at the edges, as if in disapproval. Yet it was the difference between Ahmed’s father and my papa that was the most striking. Ahmed’s abba spoke eloquently, giving the impression that he was knowledgeable and enlightened. But no trace of laughter showed in this man’s face, none of my papa’s teasing or humour dancing in his dark eyes. My mother had been impressed by him, but to me he seemed arrogant. Over the last few weeks I had begun to suspect that the kind words and warm reassurances they both occasionally offered were fabrications. I wasn’t sure they were people I could trust, never mind love.
Wedged between these two strangers, I was glad that my dupatta hid part of my face and that my lowered head suggested only proper modesty to them and not avoidance.
For endless minutes, the conversation rippled around me as I studied the dark green silk of my shalwar kameez. And then Ahmed’s mother’s shrill tone cut through the chatter.
“Ahmed, you’re here!”
I heard a deep voice saying salaam to everyone.
My face was suddenly blazing hot, my heart pounding, the air stuck in my lungs. I felt as if I might faint. I couldn’t believe Ahmed was actually in the same room. In the months since I first heard his name, since my family had received his family’s proposal, Ahmed had been a ghost, a hazy abstraction. I knew almost nothing about him, but everyone told me how wonderful he was. I realized now that I had taken all their vague descriptions and created a tiny cloud of a man out of them, something light and insubstantial that I could carry around in my thoughts. Squeezed between his parents, too frightened to raise my head, I knew how foolish that had been. I couldn’t lift my eyes to take a look at him, but I could feel his presence, large and heavy and casting an enormous shadow over the room.
His sister’s voice reached me. “Samra, stand up,” Fatima said. “Stand up. I want to see the two of you together.”
I got up slowly, moving some distance from the sofa, still keeping my eyes down. I could see his frame coming towards me, turning to stand by my side. His shoulder brushed mine. I froze.
Everyone began to talk at once. “They look so great together.” “They’re both so tall.” “They’re made for each other!”
Then Fatima’s voice broke in. “Look up, Samra,” she ordered. “Why aren’t you smiling?”
I couldn’t make any of the muscles on my face move.
“Oh, sit down,” Fatima finally said.
I returned to my place between Ahmed’s parents. I could see Ahmed moving to sit across from me, but I still hadn’t lifted my head enough to see his face. Now I took a brief glance. Oh my God, I thought. He’s a man, not a boy. He looks like a tall uncle. I dropped my eyes. I couldn’t fathom how this man could be in any sort of relationship with me. He was larger than life, powerful and intimidating. I was just a young girl, tall, yes, but an insignificant whisper next to him. I felt as if the life had been sucked out of me, as if somehow in his presence I had ceased to exist.
* * *
Now, crouched on the bed in my uncle’s house with the noisy mehndi celebration going on below me, hammering anxiety was making it difficult to breathe. I wanted to run away, back to my Ruwais bedroom, back to my friends, back to my old life.
I tried to think of what my father had once told me about fear. I had been about ten years old, with my family at an amusement park. My younger sisters and I were trying to make a beeline to our favourite rides when my father stopped and took my hand.
“No, Samra,” he said. “You come with me.” He marched me over to a towering roller coaster. “I think you are tall enough to ride this now.”
For a few seconds I watched as the tiny cars plummeted down the huge metal tangle, children and adults clutching the seats and screaming. I was shaking my head, terrified. Papa bent down and looked me in the eyes.
“Samra, you need to face your fears in order to overcome them. This is how you will love your life.”
Reluctantly, I let myself be guided to the entrance and into one of the seats. When the ride jerked into motion, to my surprise, the wrenching twists and sudden drops had me shrieking in excitement rather than horror. I fell in love with the roller coaster.
But this was no holiday amusement. This was my entire future. Papa’s words were of no comfort. Tears began to course down my cheeks.
Just then my cousin and his wife walked into the bedroom. “How are you doing?” he asked, although my wet face must have told the story.
I took a deep breath. “I’m scared.”
“Ah now, beta,” he replied, putting his hand on my head. “Everything is going to be fine. This is a woman’s destiny, after all.”
His wife was standing beside him, nodding. “Yes, Samra,” she said. “This is Allah’s will.”
I had heard those words so often over the last few months. And I’d said them to others. But no matter how many times I told myself that I should follow Allah’s direction, that I had avoided the terrible fate of being an old maid, that the marriage would be good for me, the words would not quite work their way into my heart.
It seemed impossible that this was happening to me, that I had gotten to this point. How had I allowed myself to be cajoled into accepting a marriage proposal, and why had I parroted those arguments to others, including my astonished teachers and my reluctant father? After all, I’d never been one of those girls who dreamed about marriage or even thought much about it. When I arrived at school with an engagement ring on my finger all those months ago, the other girls crowded around me to look at my hand. They crowed about how lucky I was, how exciting it must be to be engaged.
But I knew that if this had happened to some other girl, I would not have reacted as they did. I would have tossed my head and told the girl that she was too young. I would have said that she should go to university, should be thinking about her career. And at the very least, I would have said she should marry for love—not because her family wanted her to.
I would have been bold.
This boldness, however, would not only be the sign of an independent mind. I had also been raised this way.
* * *
“I don’t have four daughters,” my father said with a laugh. “I have four sons!”
Papa was joking, but my sisters and I knew exactly what he meant. We were out in the street in front of our house
in Ruwais. I had a cricket bat in my hand, waiting for the little boy who was bowling to send the ball my way. One of the other fathers on the street had just stopped by to watch the impromptu game.
“Tch, tch, Zafar,” he said to my father, “how can you let your girls play like this?”
“Ah yes,” said my dad, smiling at our neighbour. “Something is wrong.” Then he turned to me. “Samra, move your hands closer together on the bat.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. I loved that Papa was teasing this disapproving man. I had no intention of going indoors just because a few neighbours thought that young girls should not play sports. Cricket was my game, after all. I loved to play squash and tennis, too, but ever since my father had started taking me to help out with the local cricket team he managed, I’d wanted to hold a bat in my hand and stand in front of the wicket. And my father encouraged me.
I had always been an energetic child, racing around the house and crashing into furniture. Perhaps that’s why my mother let me take squash lessons and climb trees in the park—as a way to expend excess energy. But my father’s support of my athletic interests seemed born of other ideas.
Around the dinner table, he would encourage us to dream. “Saira, what career are you thinking of today? A scientist? An engineer?” My eight-year-old sister put her fork down to think.
“I want to be a doctor,” I proclaimed. It was a game I adored: hospital. As the eldest, I usually took the role of the physician, dispensing jellied candies to treat the various ailments my three younger sisters cooked up. (I suspect that my sisters preferred hospital to my other favourite game: school. For hours and hours every weekend, I assembled them around the blackboard my father had made for us, teaching them all the things I had learned the week before in class.)
“Ah, you have to work hard to be a doctor,” said my father. “But you can do it.”
My mother sat at the other end of the table, quietly, but she did not disagree.
