by Minal Khan
The strangers looked around the house wonderingly. “You have a beautiful home,” the older woman sang as she appraised our white marble floor, the heavy chandelier on the ceiling, and the winding carpeted staircase. Adornments that had taken my mother years to perfect. The guests gaze fell on a miniature statue of a cherub entwined by golden leaves. “And where is this from? It’s lovely.”
Oh no. I tried to remember. “Quebec.” It suddenly hit me. “We brought it during our summer vacation two years back.” I sounded jittery even though I was sure of its origin. And she seemed convinced.
My mother arrived as soon as I had seated the visitors in the guest room. She was glowing in her soft-yellow sari. “So lovely to see you after this long, Shumaila.” Her face crinkled in delight as she held the woman’s hand in her two hands.
“I have missed you much—nothing like coming to visit an old friend! And of course, there’s the added bonus of getting to meet your daughter,” she raised her eyebrows at me. “Ay-la.” She pronounced my name in two abrupt syllables.
The lady and my mother launched into soft chit-chatter. From the conversation, I gathered that my mother and she had been childhood friends. They had both gone to the same high school and even graduated together. But then Shumaila had suddenly had an arranged marriage, had to leave school—ah, the “conservative lot,” it was all starting to make sense—and both of them had lost touch. Shumaila had had a springing five-year-old son by the time my mother got married. They resumed contact after I was born, two years later. I suppose it felt appropriate. Both of them had babies and motherhood in common. It made me feel a little proud, knowing I had brought these two separated friends together. And that springing five-year-old baby happened to be the young man sitting in front of us. The striking girl next to him was his sister-in-law.
My mother then asked about their families’ health. She racked off a number of names that held no meaning for me. “Oh, did Junaid sack his cook again? Just terrible … How is Asma holding up with her chest disease? It’s so very sad … I heard Saira was thinking about buying a new house. She’s moving to the Defense neighborhood.”
The conversation finally shifted to the younger girl—our third guest. I had noticed that she remained very quiet throughout the conversation. The boy—was it Hassan?—had been talkative throughout, clearly enthusiastic in the chit-chat. But the girl seemed very shy. She hung her head low, and her eyes glanced downward at her lap. When my mom spoke to her and she raised her face, I saw that her pupils were large and so black that the whites of her eyes were mere specks on either corner, like dotted stars against a black sky. She wore no makeup. But her features were wide and bright, no need for kohl or blush to accentuate them.
I racked my brain, wondering where I had seen her before. It pains, it really does, when you see a familiar face and can’t identify the moment that you had first landed your eyes on it. It was like sifting through stacks of office files without knowing exactly what you were looking for.
My mother finally expressed avid interest in the young girl. She did so after the chicken strips had been eaten and before the desert arrived, just so there was no chance the girl would be pre-occupied with her food.
“And how have you been, Tanzeela?” My mom warmly enquired.
The girl slowly raised her heavy lashes in that same unveiling way. She smiled wanly and parted her tiny lips to speak. And that’s when it hit me.
She was the bride! At that wedding. The silent goddess. It was the smile that suddenly jogged my memory. She had smiled at me in that same weak, helpless way at the wedding, when she caught me looking at her. This stranger had silently witnessed my sympathy that night and responded. Maybe it was because I was the only one who hadn’t beamed at her fortune as a bride. Even now, I could sense the unease lurking beneath the beautiful dress and the automatically-programmed smile.
“I’m well,” she said softly.
“We met your husband at the wedding and he was such a pleasure to talk to. How is he?”
“He’s well, too. He’s been away for a few days, traveling for work.”
“Ah—the husband is away and the house is your fort now!” My mother joked. “That must be a nice feeling.”
“It is—”
“Tanzeela has been great around the house.” Shumaila—Tanzeela’s mother-in-law—suddenly interjected. “She cooks better than anyone at home and directs all the staff; the cook and the gardener. In fact, she has just redecorated the living room. She runs the show now. I just step aside and watch.” Her voice was heavy with pride at the domestication of her daughter-in-law. Tanzeela was looking down at her palms as she said this.
“I’m so happy the house feels so full now,” my mother said warmly.
“It feels full, but we would love for it to be even more full.” Shumaila beamed and looked at Tanzeela. Without any hesitation she said, “Now all I hope for is a grandson to complete our family. With the grace of God—Insha’llah—our wish will also come true.”
There was a pause. All of us had picked up on the gender-specific word. Grandson. Tanzeela’s cheeks were red now.
My mother laughed lightly to diffuse the situation. “It is always a pleasure to have children in the family. These newlyweds must want a break from the madness of the wedding, though—hasn’t it been only a month since the wedding?”
“Yes. But you know, it’s never too soon to start thinking of a family.” Shumaila again jumped in before her daughter-in-law could speak. “Within ten months of my own wedding day my son was born. And then a year later, my second son. What parent wouldn’t want the same blessings for their children? A new son, Insha’allah, and many more children to come. And then Tanzeela is already nineteen years old. Time flies by quick, doesn’t it, Ambreen?” She looked at my mother with wide eyes. “One has to begin thinking of a family while one is young.” Shumaila said this lightly, as if this was just the natural course of things, and as if her daughter-in-law was not in the room with us. Tanzeela’s cheeks were still flushed.
Shumaila then turned swiftly to me. The same beaming smile. “How old is Ayla, again?”
My mother said slowly, “Seventeen.”
“Main sochti hoon is ki bhi mangni kara do.” Shumaila said in Urdu. I think it’s time you think about getting her engaged. Again, spoken as if I wasn’t in the room.
“Oh no, no, she’s far too young, now.” My mother laughed, clearing her throat and looking at me. I could see how much my mother was straining to be polite.
This was not a necessarily new conversation. Within our community, our family was considered “liberal,” and our views on education raised eyebrows on more than one occasion. My mom had once told her good friend at a party that she wanted me and my brother to go to college in America, and have a degree and a career. Marriage was nothing to be rushed into, she said. Her friend responded coolly, “That’s nice.” She then said, with pride, “My daughter was engaged before she even applied to college. There were just so many suitors, and all from such good families. My husband and I had no choice but to accept one of the suitors and within no time, there was a wedding to arrange. It goes without saying, college soon left her mind altogether!” An offhanded wave accompanied my mother’s friend’s laughter.
Other supposedly “lenient” parents in our circle were kind enough to let their daughters graduate before accepting a wedding proposal on their behalf. One of our uncles had called up his daughter conveniently when she was in her first year at Cambridge University and asked her to come back to Pakistan immediately because he had a accepted a proposal “that couldn’t be turned down.” He informed her she would be married to a stranger in six months.
“Ayla wants to go to college,” my mom said to Shumaila. “Don’t you?”
“Yes, I just took my SATs and am starting to apply to colleges,” I said.
Shumaila looked nonplussed. “Colleges in America?”
“Yes. I’m applying to schools all over the country. I want to
study liberal arts.” It gave me a little pleasure in challenging her.
“I see.” Her expression conveyed her disapproval. “Tanzeela was also about to go to college.” She waved her chin in Tanzeela’s direction, who was now looking at me with curiosity. “But her parents decided it would be better for her to marry now. Good proposals can’t wait, you know. And as it is, education can always come later,” she said easily.
I could barely contain this anymore. Why wasn’t Tanzeela saying anything, standing up for herself? Her shoulders were slumped and she looked defeated.
“Marriage can always come later, too,” I said. As I said this, I could feel my mother’s eyes on me, disapproving me for challenging our guest, but I went on, “After someone has rounded out themselves and learnt about the world. Don’t you think, Aunty?” My voice was sweet, conversational, belying the indignation within.
“Beti,” Shumaila said this word—child—with emphasis, putting me in my place. “I know women who have spent their whole life on education, and have nothing to show for it now but their books. They are too old to even consider marriage. They are wasting away. That’s not what you want for yourself, hai na, right? Go to America, see the world if you want to. But then come back home. We all have to. I know many girls who go abroad, have some fun and come back to their destiny. After all, you can’t forget your roots, beti.”
I took a few seconds, let what she had said sink in. Finally, I said, “Don’t worry, Aunty. I won’t bury myself in books. I really wouldn’t want to waste away.” I don’t know if she sensed the sarcasm in my voice.
My mother stepped in before I could pipe up again. “We’re very proud of Ayla for doing so well in school, masha’Allah. Only good things will come, I’m sure.”
With that, we went back to discussing other subjects. Finally, Shumaila said it was time to leave. She warmly insisted we return to visit her family at their house. I shook Tanzeela’s hand as she was leaving the front door and exchanged a smile with her. “It was good to see you again,” I said.
“Thank you for having us,” Tanzeela said as she turned away to join her mother-in-law. She said this in an almost an indistinct whisper, a baby nightingale crooning weakly before it was taken from its nest and heaved into a cold, entrapping cage.
7
The next day, on Sunday, I met a boy. At the beach. This boy would eventually become my undoing; he would lead to the unraveling of my life and that of Alia. But I didn’t know this at the time. At the time all I could think about was the beauty of the sunset.
A postcard picture—salty beach, beautiful, fiery sunset. Using paintbrushes chipped with overuse. Sky blotched with candy-floss clouds. Salty. A sketch was made, and then torn. A stranger approached. The sunset melted in agony towards night.
Wasn’t it agitating when some weighty event—the death of a loved one, a heated fight, or even a rollercoaster ride—suddenly broke your mundane routine, and once it had worn off and you were sitting by yourself reflecting on what had just happened, you couldn’t seem to remember a thing? Yes, you knew the basic gist of what had happened because, after all, you were there, but when you tried to recall specifically, the actual trigger of the spark, when you tried to relive the scene in your mind, you were left blank.
It had happened with me in the past. A heated spat with my younger brother, Asad. I tried to tell Alia on the phone how the fight had begun, and what had happened. But I couldn’t recall a thing. Did the rush of adrenaline that seeped through your body when you were angry numb your other senses? Your sense of memory, awareness? Perhaps.
I only recalled snapshots that day. I had gone to the Karachi beach at two in the afternoon to paint the sunset—as my art teacher had demanded. I was wearing ugly sunflower flip flops and walked around with paintbrushes in one hand, green paint dotting my arm.
My mother was fairly lenient about letting me go out in public, alone and unaccompanied, as long as I had my chauffeur with me—“keeping guard,” so to speak. For a fair majority of women in my country, going out unaccompanied was not the norm. It was far too unsafe. Karachi was a big city and crime could occur anywhere, even in the nicer, sheltered neighborhoods, and sometimes it did. Our own house was robbed back in the early nineties, when I was just a toddler. Alia’s parents were mugged in broad daylight sometime back, outside their home.
Crime could truly happen anywhere. Running or jogging out on the street was not an option growing up. It was far too dangerous. Not only was it unsafe, it attracted unwanted attention for a woman. Any demonstration of sexuality, even overt demonstrations of skin—wearing a snug T-shirt with bare arms, or Capri pants that exposed the leg for example, would often invite leering looks and stares from men. Wearing shorts was completely of the question. My mother often said that the best thing for a woman was to go around unsuspected in public.
Here I was though, at the beach. I was by myself but my chauffeur was parked only a quarter a mile away, within close “seeing” distance in case anything happened to me. I wore jeans and a long shirt with a chador—a large shawl draped around my shoulders.
It was bustling hour at the beach. Camels walked around easily on the sand, tethered by turbaned men in flapping outfits. For one hundred rupees—the equivalent of a dollar—you could ride a camel for ten minutes along the ocean shore. Feel like an Arab in the hot dessert.
Men were manning kite stands, candy floss stands, handing out popcorn and pistachios. It was a hot time of day and women were timidly walking in the water. I saw a group of about five women lift their black burqas—complete head to toe coverings—around their ankles and giggle as they made their way through the warm, salty water.
I stood on the sand, lost. The wind flapped against my large, empty drawing paper. I roamed around with my watercolor tools and my water and tried to find an angle from which the sun looked most vivid, cursing my art teacher under my breath for ruining my weekend. Finally, I found a spot and ran to it like a dog to a bone to mark my territory before it got stolen.
Oh no. I stopped to a halt as I realized someone was already there. A boy, about my age. He was sitting cross-legged right before the shore, gripping a camera with a broad zoom lens and squinting his eyes at the sea, as if waiting for something to happen. He caught sight of me with my bright shoes and empty paper and something in him seemed to twitch.
“Are you painting something?” the boy with the camera blurted out. He seemed intensely curious. In that one move the ice had been crushed. We were no longer total strangers.
“Yes,” I said. My head was filled with my ma’s voice now. My mother told me—as most mothers do—that it was never a good idea for a girl to talk to a male stranger, not when you were alone. It did not look nice for a girl to approach a strange boy and make requests of him. What if the boy took her innocent remarks suggestively and harassed her? And what was a young girl like that doing strolling along the beach alone, anyway? Chi chi, tsk tsk, it had to be her bad upbringing.
Before I had a chance to say anything else, the boy said, “You can sit here, I’ll move.” His eyebrows creased, almost apologetically.
I looked around me. The group of women in burqas were in the distance now, still giggling and playing with their veils. The camels were trotting along, and away. All was quiet. Only the lapping waves, the shrill seagulls, and the dusty sand everywhere to judge me.
“No, it’s okay, you don’t need to move,” I finally said, and settled myself a few feet away from him.
Looking back now, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had I never stuck around. Had I shaken my head, tucked my A6 sized paper under my elbow, never met this boy, ignoring his soft voice behind me, would things have turned out completely differently?
“You’re a painter, are you?” The wind carried his voice to my ears.
I was facing away from him so I craned my neck and nodded, “Yes.”
His eyes were still set out to sea, his camera clutched in his hands. Like a lost boy, I thought, as
I sketched the outline of the sea.
He did not speak after that. I plunged into my work completely and fully. Colors stained my blank page. The water made little weak folds on the crisp paper. My mind drifted back to the events that had occurred yesterday. After the guests had left, I had buttonholed my mother and asked her everything I could about the distressed bride. What was her background? How old was she? And what was her husband like? But my mother couldn’t give me much.
“She was brought up in Lahore. I don’t know where she studied but she was given a very good offer by a college, the London School of Economics, I think it was. Her husband … all I know is he works for some multi-national company as a chartered accountant. He’s stationed in Islamabad for the time being so he only manages to come on weekends. They’re very well off, though … Arranged marriage … He’s in his thirties, she just turned nineteen. That’s all I know. I can’t probe any further into their marital affairs!”
“But why is she so … sad?” I asked my mother, as if she’d know the answer.
My mom responded, reasonably, “Marriage can be tough in the first few weeks. It must be a big change for her. She must be really overwhelmed.” And she put it down to that, as simply as reading off a sentence in a book.
I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to talk to this girl myself, however absurd it seemed. But I couldn’t tell my mother that. I’d need to think of a way to—
There was a sudden shuffle behind me. A voice drifted, “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but do you think you could shift to the left for a minute? I’m trying to take a picture of the ocean.” I judged his expression by his voice. It was sincere, earnest. I didn’t even mind that it had derailed my thoughts.
I crept to my feet, and moved two more feet away, giving the boy room to snap his picture. This time I could see him. Really see him. He was bent on his knees, gripping the camera body in his hands. His eye—the eye that I could see—was squinted shut in concentration. I looked at the color of his skin, wondering how I would render it on paper if I had to. I’d need to mix red and orange, no water, with a slight tinge of blue. I’d end up with a chalky brown. I’d finally add a violet-purple—again, no water—to bring out the deep brown of his skin. His hair was long and unruly, tossing about and dancing in the wind.
