by Bapsi Sidhwa
Reassured by her father’s presence, and his words, the girl went back to sleep. Now Pir Khurkain got up and saw that the whole house was incandescent with light and unnaturally bright. He went into the kitchen and saw that the sand that he had thrown into a corner of the kitchen had turned into a dazzling heap of diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires.
‘Yes ji yes.’
The woodcutter gathered the gems in the ragged turban he usually wound round his head, and laying his head on it, drifted back into an exhausted sleep.
‘Yes ji yes.’
The next day the woodcutter selected one ruby from the heap and took it to a gem merchant to sell. The jeweller asked him: ‘What should I give you for this? One million rupees or two million?’
Then the woodcutter cried, ‘You are making fun of me—don’t mock me,’ and went to another jeweller.
The other jeweller said: ‘I don’t have enough money to make you an offer for a ruby such as this.’
Then the woodcutter went to the biggest jewel merchant in town. This jeweller said: ‘I do not know how to place a value on a gem as magnificent as this. But here’s what I can do: I’ll make three mounds of gold sovereigns of different sizes. Throw the jewel into the air and whichever mound it falls on will be yours.’
The woodcutter flicked the gem up into the air and it fell on the largest mound of gold.
The woodcutter collected the gold coins and went to the bazaar streets. He bought the liver, and he bought meat, bread, sugar, butter, pickles and all the produce that pleased his eyes and teased his appetite. Then he hired porters, and after helping the men raise the loaded baskets on to their heads, gave them directions to his house. As he took the road home Pir Khurkain bought a bag full of roasted chickpeas. He evoked the names of Trouble-Easer and Behram-Yazad with gratitude and gave three chickpeas to whoever happened to cross his path.
In the meantime the first lot of porters arrived at the woodcutter’s house. They knocked at his door, and when his wife and daughter saw what they had brought, they cried: ‘You have come to the wrong house … Pir Khurkain is a poor fellow, he can never afford such fancy stuff. You have made a mistake.’ And they sent the men away.
The porters met Pir Khurkain on the road. When they told him what had happened, Pir Khurkain asked them to return to the house with him. As he walked ahead of them he continued to give three chickpeas to whomever he met.
When his wife saw him return with the porters she cried: ‘We are dirt poor … How can you suddenly afford to buy all this stuff? I’m fearful. I think you must have committed a theft.’
Then the woodcutter told his wife and daughter the story of his meeting with the angels Behram-Yazad and Trouble-Easer and the fistful of sand they had given him. When his wife and daughter heard the story, and remembered the brightness that had lit their house, they finally believed him. They told the porters to bring the provisions he had bought into the house. Then they washed and cooked the liver and opened the jars of pickles and broke the bread and ate till they were replete. The woodcutter’s daughter’s enormous hunger was at last satisfied and she was completely happy.
‘Yes ji yes.’
Some days later the woodcutter heard that his neighbours were going to Mecca to perform Hajj. They invited him to accompany them on the pilgrimage, and he decided to go with them.
It dawns on me only now that Pir Khurkain is Muslim. Zoros don’t go for Hajj to Mecca. I have just turned eleven. A touch of unease creeps into my mind. What are Zoroastrian angels doing, messing around with Muslim wood-cutters? I’ve heard this story countless times and never had this thought before—but being on the threshold of adolescence changes one’s perspective somewhat.
‘Before he left he made a necklace out of those diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires,’ intones Mother, and the hypnotic rhythm of her voice, the momentum of the story, again cast their accustomed spell. Mother’s unbounded trust in the efficacy of narrating the woodcutter’s story every Friday, accompanied by the ceremonial and solemn distribution of the prescribed three chickpeas, vanquishes my doubts. I am once again immersed in the story.
‘… and looping the necklace round his daughter’s neck Pir Khurkain said to her: “Daughter, you can build a larger and more splendid mansion than the King’s palace with a single gem from this necklace. But don’t ever forget we owe our happiness to the Trouble-Easer and Behram-Yazad. Remember to invoke their names in your prayers every Friday and distribute three pice worth of chickpeas to whoever you meet that day.”
‘And so the woodcutter goes away to Mecca to perform Haj.’
‘Yes ji yes.’
The woodcutter’s wife and daughter built a mansion that was larger than the King’s palace. They gave lavish parties. The odours of grilling meats mingled with the fragrance of flowers and the house resounded with the sound of laughter and the chatter of new friends. But they did not invoke the names of the angels as promised.
One day it so happened that when the woodcutter’s daughter went to the bath-house she found that someone was already bathing inside and the doors were closed. She asked the maid who was waiting outside, ‘Who’s in there that you won’t allow me in the bath-house? I’ve never been stopped from entering before.’
The maid told her that the Princess was at her bath.
When the Princess overheard their conversation, she called to the woodcutter’s daughter and said, ‘Let us bathe together. After all, you are a woman and I am a woman, so what does it matter?’
When they came out of the bath, the Princess sent for silver platters of pilaf and sweets and invited the wood-cutter’s daughter to eat with her.
Pir Khurkain’s daughter wondered how she could repay the royal hospitality. She removed a diamond from her necklace and gave it to the Princess.
‘Yes ji yes.’
When she returned to the palace the princess showed the diamond to the King and exclaimed: ‘Father, you are a King, and yet you don’t have a single gem among your treasures to compare with the lustre of this diamond given to me by a woodcutter’s daughter.’
The King said, ‘Daughter, God has not made all things equal. Some men wear crowns and sit on thrones, some toil and yet exist in poverty. Some live by honour and some by pride, and some have strength and some ill health. One man’s fate is not the same as another’s.’
Then the Princess and the woodcutter’s daughter became best friends.
‘Yes ji yes.’
At this point Mother interrupts the narrative to say, in that childishly unctuous tone she invariably acquires: ‘Even if the woodcutter’s daughter forgot to invoke you, O Trouble-Easer, I will never forget to remember you.’ She then arranges more sandalwood on the fire, which has almost become ashes, and joining her hands and bowing her head, asks for blessings on her house. When she passes her hands over her face, I sit up. The interval is over, the story will continue.
One afternoon the woodcutter’s daughter and the Princess came upon a lake in the forest. The Princess said, ‘How cool and inviting the water looks. Come, let’s swim.’
‘It is my misfortune that I don’t know how to swim,’ the woodcutter’s daughter replied. ‘But I’ll sit by the lake while you enjoy your swim.’
The Princess removed her clothes and, last of all, the diamond necklace that the King had given her. She placed the necklace carefully in a fork between the lower branches of a mango tree, and telling her friend to mind her belongings, slid into the water.
Then Mushkail-Asaan came in the guise of a crow and slipping through the foliage, carried the diamond necklace away in his beak.
When the Princess came out of the water and put on her clothes, she discovered that her necklace was missing.
‘Yes ji yes.’
They shook the branches of the tree and searched the underbrush and the ground all around them, but they could not find the necklace.
Then the Princess cried: ‘There was no one here but us … I told you to mind the necklace and no
w we cannot find it. You say you don’t have it, but how can that be … You must have stolen it.’
The Princess took her complaint to the King. The King questioned the woodcutter’s daughter and the King’s Vazir questioned her too, but the woodcutter’s daughter wept and cried: ‘I have not stolen the necklace.’
The King then cast the girl into prison.
‘Yes ji yes.’
When she heard that her daughter was in prison, Pir Khurkain’s wife ran to the palace gates, crying, ‘O King! How can I let my unmarried and chaste daughter stay all alone in prison? Put me in with her!’
So the King cast the woodcutter’s wife also into prison. He confiscated their property and all their possessions in lieu of the necklace.
‘Yes ji yes.’
On his way back from the pilgrimage to Mecca, the woodcutter was robbed by bandits.
When he arrived at his house he found it in complete darkness and gloom.
The woodcutter ran to his neighbours’ houses and knocked on their doors to find out what had happened. His neighbours told him that his daughter had stolen the Princess’s necklace, and that the King had cast both his wife and daughter into prison.
Pir Khurkain then ran all the way to the palace and standing before the palace gates, cried: ‘O, King! What manner of justice is this? That I, a man, should sit at home, free, while my wife and daughter are in prison?’
The King told him, ‘Your daughter stole the Princess’s necklace; that is why she’s in prison. Your wife did not want her to stay in jail alone, so I put her in too.’
‘The woodcutter pleaded, ‘O King, I beg you to release them, and to lock me up in their stead.’
The King freed both women and cast Pir Khurkain into prison.
That night Mushkail-Asaan appeared before the woodcutter in a dream: ‘I gave you every happiness that your heart desired,’ he said. ‘Yet you could not remember to pray over a few chickpeas and think of me?’
In his dream the woodcutter wept and cried, ‘O Trouble-Easer, forgive me. My daughter is young and heedless. She and my wife have made a terrible mistake.’
And because Pir Khurkain was a truly good man, Trouble-Easer said, ‘When you awaken you will be free of your chains. You will also find three coins on your pillow to the right hand side of your head. Send for the chickpeas and sugar with the money, and think of us; we will once again ease your troubles.’
Another break in the story. Another pinch of incense added to the fire, a folding of hands and bowing of heads.
Mother says: ‘When you ease other peoples’ troubles, O Mushkail-Asaan, ease ours as well.’
Next morning when Pir Khurkain woke up he found the chains that bound his hands and legs had fallen away from him. He looked to the right of where he had laid his head and found the three coins the Trouble-Easer had spoken of. Then Pir Khurkain sat down by the barred prison window and, saying his prayers, waited for someone to come by.
Presently he saw a man hurry past his window. The woodcutter hastily shouted at him to stop, and pleaded with him to bring him three-pice worth of roasted chickpeas.
The passerby was irritable and brusque: ‘I have no time to spare. My daughter is getting married, and I am too busy in the hustle-bustle of wedding preparations to get you chickpeas.’ Then, saying, ‘I’m on my way to buy clothes for the wedding,’ he rushed away.
The woodcutter was enraged. He muttered: ‘May the news of death replace the hustle and bustle of wedding preparations, and may you need to buy a shroud instead of bridal garments.’
‘The passerby was returning to his house with the new wedding garments when some men rushed up to tell him, ‘Your son-in-law has suddenly taken very ill. He’s unconscious and on the verge of death. You must hurry and buy clothes for the funeral.’
The passerby turned back and went sorrowfully to buy clothes for his son-in-law’s funeral. The woodcutter saw him and again begged him to buy three-pice worth of roasted chickpeas.
Now the grieving passerby went up to the barred window and said, ‘Give me the money brother, and I will get you the chickpeas. Earlier I was on my way to buy wedding clothes; now I have news that my son-in-law is deathly ill, and I’m in no great hurry to get burial clothes.’
The passerby brought the woodcutter the roasted chickpeas.
Then the woodcutter blessed him and said, ‘May your sorrowing house be filled with joy again.’
Once more the men from his house rushed to catch up with the passerby. ‘Your son-in-law has recovered completely,’ they cried. ‘Go quickly and make arrangements for the wedding.’
The woodcutter prayed over his beads, and recalling his meeting with the Trouble-Easer and Behram-Yazad with gratitude thanked them for the help they had given him. At the same time he handed three peeled chickpeas to whoever passed by his window.
‘Yes ji yes.’
The next day the King and the Princess went for a picnic in the forest. They strolled among the trees and after a while sat down on a large rock to rest. Then lo! The diamond necklace fell into the Princess’s lap right out of the sky.
‘Yes ji yes.’
They looked up and saw a gorgeously plumed peacock fly down from a branch and disappear into the forest. Mushkail-Asaan, in the guise of a peacock, had returned the necklace to the Princess.
The King at once turned to his daughter and thumping her on the back scolded her. ‘You have accused an innocent girl of theft! You have committed a very grave injustice.’
The King was distraught; the repentant and distressed Princess was sorry for ever having doubted her friend.
The very next day Pir Khurkain was released from jail with great pomp and celebration. The King took the woodcutter to the palace and said, ‘Can you forgive us, O Pir Khurkain? My daughter was mistaken and we have committed a terrible injustice!’
The woodcutter wept and cried: ‘You have dishonoured my family and disgraced my daughter! Who will marry her now?’
Then the King said: ‘Would it please you if I marry her to my son?’
And so it came about that the daughter of a humble woodcutter was married to the King’s son.
Then the King removed his crown and placed it on the woodcutter’s head.
‘Yes ji yes.’
The story ends.
Mother asks blessings for our family: ‘As Pir Khurkain’s troubles eased, as a woodcutter’s daughter married a Prince, as the passerby recovered his sick son-in-law: so help us ease our troubles too, great Trouble-Easer and Behram-Yazad, and make our wishes also come true. Amen!’
The room is scented with incense and foggy with smoke. Almost all the golden chickpeas are peeled, their dark husks floating in the silver bowl. Mother gives me three chickpeas and a few jagged bits of crystallized sugar, and pops some chickpeas into her own mouth. She will now distribute them, giving no more than the prescribed three to visitors and members of our household.
My bottom hurts from sitting so long on the hard floor. I feel ennobled—God-blessed.
It didn’t occur to me until many years later to question my mother. How did a Muslim woodcutter, who went for Hajj to Mecca, get tangled up with Zoroastrian angels and Zoroastrian prayers? By now I am aware of the bitter memory, dating from the Arab conquest of Zoroastrian Persia in the seventh century, that still burns in the communal memory.
Mother is taken aback by my question. She looks bewildered and a crease forms between her eyebrows. ‘That is how my grandmothers and aunts told the prayer and that is how I tell it … I have faith in Mushkail-Asaan and Pir Khurkain’s story … Invoking him has eased my troubles … the angels have seen me through some very difficult times,’ she muses aloud, and then her face and eyes acquire a beatific glow. ‘But that is what happens when one lives cheek by jowl with people of other faiths—saints jump boundaries and the barriers of animosity fall.’
Their Language of Love
Large eyes darting like startled moths, the slender girl in a red sari emerged nervously from t
he doors at Kennedy Airport. She anxiously scanned the row of waiting faces in the arrivals lounge and, the anticipatory smile on her lips fluttering, felt her eyes begin to smart. The fear that had lurked unacknowledged in her subconscious during the flight now leapt into her mind like a bolting horse: Nav was not there to receive her.
Roshni paused, blinking back tears, and then, yielding to the pressure from behind, self-consciously trundled her heaped cart past the small groups of relatives and friends who were effusively greeting the other passengers arriving from Bombay and Ahmedabad.
Roshni came to a hesitant stop and stood at a short distance from them. She felt intimidated by the vast hall in which she found herself and by the crush of people bustling purposefully on all sides. Nav would expect to find her here: that is, if he turned up at all. An Air India stewardess flashed her a smile of recognition, and checking her brisk passage stopped to ask, ‘Everything all right?’
Roshni nodded, touched by her concern. ‘Yes, thanks.’
The stewardess had been especially kind to her on the flight. She, along with many other people on the plane, had guessed that Roshni was newly married by the Banarasi silk sari and the festive red glass and gold bangles that reached halfway up her forearms.
Roshni leaned against her cart. The stewardess’s concern had comforted her, and despite her anxiety, she began to take in her surroundings. The sheer size of the hall, the illumination from concealed lights that approximated daylight, the glittering expanse of glass, steel and marble soaked into her consciousness. And it suddenly struck her that she was in America, the fabulous country of her fantasies, of Newsweek and rock-stars and MTV, the home of her husband! She was overwhelmed by a glorious surge of excitement: the exhilaration that attends the traveller to faraway lands. Her excitement tempered with worry, she willed her wandering mind to provide her with a next step of action.
As the crowd before her thinned, Roshni noticed a block of chairs ahead of her. People were lounging in weary postures, their hand-luggage strewn about their feet.
