by Minal Khan
I held Alia by the shoulders. “Alia, listen to me. This is nuts.” I pleaded, “You just need to talk to your mother. You need to tell her you got into college and that you a are not going to get married to—”
“Just please tell me you’re with me. Because I can run away but I don’t have the guts to run away to another country all alone. I need you there.”
“Why can’t you just convince your mother—”
“Doesn’t it makes sense to you by now, Ayla? My mother is beyond convincing!” Alia rasped. She looked out of the large window behind the sofa. The sun was setting now, casting orange hues on Alia’s face, setting the room aglow. It was a perfect painting for the few seconds that it lasted.
“I guess I got my answer.” Alisa sniffed and then got up, saying, “I have to be home now.” I leapt up and grabbed her by the arm, willing her to stay longer. She slowly raised her gaze to mine, and her stiff face now seemed to look pained. “I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve caused you.” Her expression was genuine. A look passed between us that I couldn’t really describe. It wasn’t a look of anger or love. It was acknowledgement; of each other’s faults, of how we regretted hurting one another when we didn’t mean to.
As each moment passes by, the last moment is reduced to a mere memory. As Alia turned and left, I wondered fearfully if that was what was what had just happened; that the moment had lapsed forever. I didn’t want Alia to be a memory.
~
I had to concentrate on my painting. It was taking far too long to complete. I had kept everyone waiting, denying them any hints or clues. What worth was it if I never managed to complete what I had set out to do?
I fished out my red and gold watercolors. I had started off with a clear vision—a portrait, a close-up on the face. But when I looked at my work now, my vision faltered, like a rickety door on weak hinges.
It had been a portrait of a bride. A young one. Someone that I knew. I had drawn in the gold-sequined red dupatta to frame her face; painted in her slender neck and shoulders. The only thing that was missing was the face. Tanzeela’s face. It was certainly easier when you had the subject sitting in front of you, posing. It was even helpful if you had a picture. I was familiar with the arches and crests of her cheekbones, the angular degree at which her jawbone progressed towards her ear, the supple roundness and the upturn of those lips. The human face was indeed a landscape—of summits, peaks, and lakes of tears.
I had wanted to begin on Tanzeela’s face. But when I looked at the near-complete drawing now, something had changed. Tanzeela was no longer a trapped bride, like I had thought, but a trapped daughter-in-law. But that didn’t change her face. No, but it certainly changed my perception.
I prodded the paper with my HB pencil, sketching in a face that I perhaps knew better than my own. Nutmeg-brown eyes, slight, sloping scar next to the left ear from childhood accident. Triangular jaw, deep-set eyes. No, the two brow bones weren’t symmetrical enough. I rubbed out the pencil lines and re-drew. Thirty minutes later it was done. Alia was the face of the bride. I needed to draw it to envision it; somehow, the picture in my mind wasn’t enough. Once I had sketched in the features, I dabbed my paintbrush in the cup of water and added color to her face. Strokes of blue to emphasize the cheekbones, brown around the lids to bring out the deepness of the eyes. And it was done. A mirror image of her. Even I was surprised at the accuracy. My painting was finally complete, but I loathed it. I couldn’t bear to look at what I had done, as if the image that I had created would come true now that I had drawn it.
If I couldn’t stand to see Alia like this, how could Alia?
~
I went to the neighborhood park the next day. Shahaan was to come and meet me there by noon. We had agreed on the park because it seemed like the safest place to meet—quiet, peaceful, unsuspecting. We had no one to hide from, but every time we met now seemed like a crime.
The park was a large one. The grass was patchy in some areas and yellow in others. Walkers walked and joggers whizzed by. Polished benches gleamed in the afternoon sun, already dirtied with polka-dots of crow-dung.
Shahaan was there before me. He was sitting on a bench underneath a sprawling, ancient tree, with a leather pouch strapped over his shoulder, and a book in his hand. His face lit up when he saw me. I sat down beside him.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I spoke to Alia. Her parents really do want her to get married.”
Shahaan shook his head and looked down. “She’s only seventeen,” he murmured.
“It doesn’t matter to her family. The earlier the better, they would think,” I said.
Shahaan nodded slowly. Silence ensued once more. It was always so easy to talk to Shahaan. There had never been a limit to our flowing conversations. What had happened? I looked at the strap-bag that he had bought with him, lying on the bench. “What’s in that?” I asked, determined to make conversation.
“Oh, just some pictures I took” he said offhandedly.
“Of what?” I asked, interested. “Gardens, rivers, creatures?”
Shahaan shook his head, looking disgruntled. “You know there’s more to life than pretty gardens and flowers. If you weren’t so enclosed in your own life, you would notice.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, taken aback.
“I mean, you’re spoiled rotten, in case you haven’t noticed. All you have to worry about is your next manicure at the spa and what time the tea party will end. Do you have any idea what’s happening around you?” His voice was heated, resentful.
I didn’t say anything. Instead, I picked up his shoulder bag and opened it. I flipped out the first large snapshot and looked at it. It was a picture of a young girl with dirty, matted hair and a razed cheek. She was on her hands and knees in a heap of garbage, looking for food. You could see the flies encompassing her cheek, eating away at her wound.
“You don’t know what it’s like to suffer,” Shahaan’s voice echoed behind me. I flipped to the next snapshot; this time a crippled man bent over, with two stubs on his wrists for hands, and decaying flesh on his chest. He was burnt head to toe. Lying not in a hospital bed in the intensive care unit, but stumbling along the streets. Begging.
“I didn’t have to go far to find them,” I could hear Shahaan saying. His voice seemed so distant. “Just down the street. And they’re there on every street, at each traffic signal. You’re so used to seeing them every day, decapitated and starving, that you don’t hear when they tap on your windows, that you feel relieved when your drivers shoo them away.”
I felt the sensation from my hands and feet escape, until I could feel them no more. I wanted to defend myself, tell Shahaan that I knew a lot more than he thought I did. But I had no fight left in me. I wanted to be there for Alia, focus on her grief instead of mine. I wanted to numb my own pain so that I could feel hers. But it was like trying to put a bandage on a fresh, deep wound; it didn’t stop the blood from flowing.
I had had nightmares for days now. They were all the same; I was young, barely seven, chasing a large beach ball. I was running towards it, trying to catch it, but then I found myself running away from someone. I was being chased. My legs gave way beneath me and I fell to the floor, scraping my knee, as I was closed in on. Trapped.
Shahaan sensed that I was perplexed and turned to me. He shook his head in remorse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so … I don’t know what came over me.” He pressed his forehead and closed his eyes. “I’ve just been in a really horrible mood the whole day—”
I didn’t even hear him. “My mother hired a new cook a few months back,” I said. My voice was trembling like a withered leaf in the wind. I had to grip the seat of the bench firmly to stop my hands shaking. “He … he looks at me strangely.” I knew I wasn’t making sense, neither to him or myself. But Shahaan seemed to understand immediately.
“Oh God, he’s one of those perverted bastards. Why haven’t you kicked him out?”
My throat was sw
elling up; I was getting that same suffocating feeling I got every time Ishaq was in the room; as if all the doors were locked and there was nowhere to escape.
“It’s bringing back all these memories.” The whole park around me heaved and swayed. “When I was small … i-it’s like it’s happening all over again.” I couldn’t let out anymore. Shahaan seemed to sense that I was going to cry; he placed his hand on my back and tried to soothe me as I fell on my lap, heaving with tears.
“Who did it?” Shahaan asked. I was gasping into my hands, my tears seeping in between my fingers. I had tried to forget it but it was clear as ever in my mind. I was six and a half years old. I couldn’t remember my ninth birthday party, or my horse riding accident at ten. But I remembered this—vividly.
My mother had bought me a brand new beach ball on her return from France. It was a large, blue and red one; almost half my size. I had taken it to our front lawn to play with my puppy, Pesky. I had thrown my ball around the garden and watched gleefully as Pesky tried to catch it, tripping over himself. But the third time, I had thrown my ball too far. It had rolled off out of the garden, into the pond. Pesky tried to run after it, but stopped before the pond and whimpered helplessly.
I watched the beach ball bob up and down in the water. I wanted to save it before the water worms that lurked inside the pond engulfed it. I tried to lean over the rocks to grab my beach ball. But I miscalculated and tripped over the rock, plunging into the water. I heard faint sounds as I flailed my arms underwater: Pesky barking wildly; the birds chirping in singsong. And then there was that sound of droning hollowness that everyone hears underwater. As if the world has escaped from you. It was the only thing I could do; listen for sounds. I didn’t know how to swim.
I couldn’t remember exactly when I regained consciousness. When I woke up, I found myself lying flat on the grass, soaked from head to toe. I opened my eyes and saw Rahim, the cleaner, staring down at me, wondering if I was dead. He was trying to revive me. “Are you awake, choti mehm sahib?—little madam?” He asked in Urdu. I didn’t know if I was. I could taste salt in my mouth, and my stomach hurt. But I couldn’t open my eyes.
“Don’t worry, you are fine,” he assured. “I even took out your ball.” I squinted open my eyes and saw him hold my beach ball, dripping with water. I shut my eyes again. Everything was quiet. I could feel grasshoppers inching their way towards me. And then I felt something else; something cold. His hand on my leg. It was clamped around my ankle, like a tight chain. His fingers slowly led their way up my leg. I was barely conscious; my brain was numb but my senses weren’t. I could feel everything but was unable to stop it.
“You’re all right, don’t worry,” he assured again, soothingly. I didn’t believe him. If I was alright why was I feeling this way? Where was Pesky? I shivered in my wet clothes, as the wind hit me fiercely. He was stroking my arm now, and then my hand. I felt him take my own hand into his. What was he doing? This was a strange sort of game. I didn’t want to be controlled like this; I wanted my own hand back. I pulled, resisted, but I wasn’t strong enough. His grip was firm on my wrist. “It’s okay, you’re fine,” he repeated, whispering now. He held my hand tight and placed it on his groin. My heart shuddered at the sudden, unfamiliar hardness. I wanted to be with my mother, lying curled up in front of the TV and watching Sesame Street like we did every Sunday. I could hear Pesky now; he was barking in the distance. Wildly and uncontrollably. A helpless witness. Like me.
“Why didn’t you tell your mother?” Shahaan’s voice loomed somewhere in the background, like the sudden sound of a voice in the dark. I could tell he was trying to hold in his anger. My mother had been away in India at the time. How could I tell her when she had come back? There was no way I could describe what had happened. But even if there was, I was scared. Rahim had told me, after he had put my soaking shirt back on, wagging his finger in my face and crooning, “Now don’t tell your mother, choti mehm sahib. She will get very angry with you if she finds out.” His voice was still low and menacing, but soft. But how could I do that? I thought. I told my mother everything; what I learnt in school each day, which friends I made in class, and what kind of animals I saw in the story books. But I didn’t want her to be angry with me.
“Ishaq has the same voice as him,” I said, more to myself than to Shahaan. “That same low, luring tone. I can’t stand being in the same room with him because it brings all those images back. I can … feel it happening again, to me.”
Shahaan held my arm, firmly now. “Ayla,” he said. “People like this deserve to be in jail. No, they ought to be shot. They don’t deserve to be working in houses, with young girls around. And I know that now, after all these years, you don’t think your mother will be angry with you.”
I shook my head and squinted my eyes shut. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. It’s too late.”
“No, it’s not!” Shahaan looked as if he was ready to get to his feet. “If she doesn’t kick him out, I’ll fix that son of a bitch myself.”
“No,” I was adamant. “You’re not getting involved. This isn’t even important right now. Alia is being forced into marriage! We have to try to help her.” A queasy feeling was emerging at the pit of my stomach. It had sown its seed the minute Alia had told me what had happened, and was now spreading its roots and blooming. I had tried to quell it for days now. Tried to ignore it. But I couldn’t cover up my sins when they were so glaring.
“It’s all my fault,” I said slowly. “This would have never happened to her if it weren’t for me.”
Shahaan looked at me, bemused. “What, did you put the cigarette in her mouth?”
“If I hadn’t convinced her to come to the exhibition, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“But how do you know she wouldn’t have turned to drugs anyway?” Shahaan asked. “It’s pointless to do that, it really is. Trying to retrace your steps, wishing you had done it differently. Don’t do it. Whatever happened had to happen.”
“I’m not a fatalist,” I riposted. “I don’t believe that it was God’s will. It wasn’t fate.”
“That’s interesting,” Shahaan grinned. “The preacher of Islam renounces fate. You’ve adopted the Buddhist view when it comes to destiny then: nothing is determined.”
“What are you trying to imply?”
“Oh nothing, nothing at all.” Shahaan was serious. “I really don’t have any problem with it, picking the best from every religion. You’re not the only one to do it. In fact, you may not know this, but there are over six billion religions in the world.”
“What?” I looked at him in disbelief. “That’s outrageous.”
“No, and it’s rather obvious. I’ll put two Muslims together; they both have the same major beliefs, in Allah, in the Holy Prophet. But one doesn’t regard it important to pay Zakat. The other doesn’t believe in killing goats. Their religion is the same, and yet different to each of them. Your religion is really your own. None of us in this world shares the same one.” I wasn’t sure what to say. My mind was registering what he was saying. But there was another part of me, wondering back to the day at the beach, when I had first met Shahaan. If I had never spoken to him, if I had just taken my paints and found another spot without bothering him, what would things be like? What would have happened if I had chosen a different cell phone shop to fix my phone, and never found him again? There would be no Shahaan. No exhibition … No marriage.
I had done this to Alia. It had all traced back to one simple action of mine. Not letting a stranger be just that: a stranger.
16
That day I met Shahaan in the park, I went home and prayed. I prayed earnestly, on my hands and knees, for Alia’s future, for Tanzeela and her safety, and then, as an afterthought, for myself. I hadn’t taken out the velvet prayer mat from my closet for over a year now. It was supple and soft from under-use. Maybe Shahaan was right. You were quickest to turn to God when you were in misery, and even quicker to turn away from Him when success befell you. Bu
t I needed to turn to God now. Shahaan’s lack of direction where it came to faith had somehow pushed me towards my own.
Allah-ho-Akbar. God is great. I submitted myself in prostration, murmuring the Arabic verses under my breath. The call to prayer sounded faintly from my window. I thought in painful guilt how many times I had ignored the call to prayer; not turning the volume of my music down when it resounded in the air, as if by drowning out the sound I could somehow delay my duty, put it off indefinitely. Then who was I to tell Shahaan proudly, “I know enough about my religion to practice it”? His words resounded in my head. You take on a religion and then seek to understand it. Who was I to judge him for doing it the other way round? In the end, he was no more of a disbeliever than I had been.
~
“She won’t listen to me,” I told Shahaan blankly. We were back in his car, outside a CD shop on Ghizri Road. Hordes of people walked to and fro outside, like intermittent flies. The sound of indiscriminate chatter reached us inside the car. “She won’t try to convince her mother out of it. I can just tell she won’t.”
“And she’s agreed to the marriage?” Shahaan asked.
“She hasn’t resisted.” I gulped, resisting the urge to tell him what I knew about her plans of escape.
Shahaan switched on the car and let down the hand brake. “Where are we going?” I asked. He put the car in gear and stomped the accelerator. “Out of here. Somewhere else.” Passerbys tentatively moved out of the way as we sped past.
I told Shahaan of how I had started praying again. “That’s great,” he remarked, looking at me sideways. “You know, I used to pray when I was little. My mother hired a maulvi sahib—a religious instructor—to come and teach me how to read the Quran, and to pray. Of course I never knew what the Arabic words meant. And I didn’t know the meaning of the verses I was reciting during my prayers. But whenever I reached the dua, the final prayer part, I prayed really earnestly, for ages on end, promising God I wouldn’t watch Power Rangers for a whole week if he answered my wishes.
