“Whatever are you talking about, my sweet guru?” she asked.
“It is a Sikh tale I heard first as a child. I remember the nights we lay, curled in our mother’s bed. She would read to us from the ‘Guru Gobind Storybook.’ I can still see its drawing of the crowd of eighty thousand people. Each head was a tiny brush stroke on paper. The Guru’s sword flashed high above his head in the yellow sunlight, demanding a sacrifice.
“It both frightened me and thrilled me to hear my mother bellow out: ‘Who will give me his head? Who will give me his head?’ And the Guru craned his neck looking for a man of courage. But people looked away or slipped out of the crowd, fearful that they might be selected as the one to give his head.’”
“‘Would you give him yours?’ my mother asked us lightly. ‘They must have wondered about a guru who would make such a request,’ she said and returned to the book.
“Gobind kept asking for heads. And each time, a person would step forward to answer his call. ‘And from these first five’—I still know this part by heart—‘Gobind created the Khalsa, a new order of extraordinary people who would cultivate in themselves profound qualities of both grace and valor.’
“The final picture in the book was full of lions. ‘Each one equivalent to 125,000 ordinary persons,’ my mother read, closing the book.”
The story made Nafeesa want to cry. She cleared her throat.
“So is it your head on the line, or on the lion?” she asked, tears streaming down her face. He laughed.
“Then it is decided,” he said, reading her tears. “We will have a civil marriage ceremony here. And when we return to Pakistan, I will become a Muslim. You will have all of me—body and soul.” She blushed.
“And where shall we live?” she asked. “Even if you convert, my parents won’t stomach a Sikh in the family, even an ex-Sikh. Which city do you prefer—Karachi or Lahore?”
“As you wish,” he replied, knowing she would say Karachi.
The forbidden wedding was small and simple, held in Najma’s flat, with a local judge officiating. Nafeesa wore a red chiffon gown trimmed in gold, like a traditional Pakistani bride. But she left her head uncovered, as is traditional for a Sikh. Kulraj wore a gold silk shalwar kameez with a crimson sash draped over one shoulder, and a turban, a bracelet, and the kirpan—the sacred knife. He entered the room from the kitchen, and she from the bedroom. They greeted each other in the language of the other’s faith.
“Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh,” she said in Punjabi. The Khalsa belongs to God and to God alone belongs the Victory.
“Assalam Aleikum,” he replied in Arabic. Peace be unto you.
Najma wore her gold and silver rings and bangles, and as the bride’s “mother,” she placed Nafeesa’s hand on the end of Kulraj’s sash. Then Kulraj led their procession around the room, with his bride following, grasping the sash. They circled four times while guests sang sacred songs. After each circling they bowed to one another, their foreheads touching the floor, until at last they sat face to face. When the harmonium stopped, they each read the poetry of Rumi. Nafeesa spoke first.
a handful of earth
cries aloud
I used to be hair or
I used to be bones
and just the moment
when you are all confused
leaps forth a voice
hold me close
I’m love and
I’m always yours
Kulraj Singh wrapped his lanky arms around Nafeesa and lifted her off the floor, reciting.
I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
“What you have done is dangerous,” Najma said after the guests left. “A matter of honor, so risky indeed. The most you can hope is that they leave you alone.”
“Even if I con—”
“Yes, even if you convert. I know how they are, and nothing is as irreplaceable to them as the family’s izzat, its honor. To marry without their permission, in a foreign country, and outside of the religion! Never. You would always be an infidel to them.”
“Would they harm Nafeesa?” he asked.
“My father would never allow anyone to harm me,” Nafeesa said, “but I worry about what he might do to you.”
“I think you both are in trouble if you return to Pakistan,” said Najma. “You should make up some story and stay here. I hate to say this, but better you hear it now.” She cleared her throat. “You know about honor crimes, of course.”
“Of course,” said Nafeesa. She had read about a woman whose ears and fingers were hacked off before her family then hanged her. Her crime had been being seen in public, alone with a male cousin. “I think it happens in Sindh. But I cannot think of a single case in Malakwal.”
“But can you recall any other girl who violated her father’s choice of husband?” Najma asked. Nafeesa was silent.
“Nafeesa, you must tell no one of our marriage,” Kulraj said. “No one.”
“So you are giving me orders already, Mr. Modern Man?”
“Yours are double sins—female impurity and religious infidelity,” said Najma. “But your husband could be in the gravest danger of all. Who hates Sikhs more than the Ahmeds? You know the family history.”
“But Kulraj’s family had nothing to do with that,” she said, rushing to defend her husband. But for the first time, when he looked into her eyes, he saw fear looking back at him. He realized with panic that Nafeesa understood that their marriage would be the ultimate humiliation for her family.
Kulraj agreed. “Your family will consider it their right and obligation to kill both of us for having a love marriage.”
“I agree. We will tell no one,” Nafeesa said simply. “But I want to go back. Pakistan is my home. Don’t you want to go back?” She looked into his eyes.
He nodded.
“And I can’t leave Jameel,” Nafeesa whined.
“Wake up, Nafeesa!” Najma shouted, suddenly standing. She pulled back each of her fingers one by one as her hands became fists whipping the air. “You want your Sikh. You want your family. You want your life. You want Pakistan. You cannot have everything you want. Life has consequences. It’s a trade-off. Jameel is fourteen years old. If you tell him about this marriage, you can bet he will tell everyone else. Now tell me, what do you want to keep and what do you want to lose?”
Nafeesa sighed. She, too, could hear the truth in Najma’s rant.
“That’s my problem,” Nafeesa said. “I am greedy, always asking for too much.” She touched the spot on her face where Kulraj had kissed her during the wedding. “I know what I want,” she finally said to him. “I want you. And I want to say good-bye to Jameel.”
Nafeesa returned to Punjab during the winter harvest of oranges, sugar, and oil. The drive from the airport was slow, as lumbering, long-legged camels caused traffic delays. They pulled wagons overstuffed with green sugarcane, covered with cloth and tied down with ropes. The driver was expert at slipping between the farm wagons and the oncoming trucks, but the closer they got to the refinery, more and more trucks appeared, each one stacked crosswise with cane and tilting under the weight. Children tagged behind the trucks to pull off a stalk, bite it, break it open, strip the bark, and suck out the sweetness inside.
Winter in Pakistan is also the season of harvesting women. Weddings occur between the two Eids, the end of Ramadan and the feast weeks later that commemorates God’s saving Ishmael from Abraham’s knife. By day, girls decorate their hands with henna designs—saffron flowers, peacocks, and the curved geometry of Persia. By night, random gunfire into the sky proclaims wedding celebrations.
For the rest of her life Nafeesa would remember the tap tap tap of rain on the roof on the day she returned to Malakwal. It was difficult to sleep, and she awoke on the first morning still tired from traveling. She spread herself across the chaise on the verandah and draped a woolen blanket over her legs. The air was a cold, thick soup.
Her parents began the
ir prosecution again: “You are the oldest unwed girl in the district. People are gossiping. It brings shame on the family that you have no husband, no babies, nothing. We cannot tolerate it any longer.”
Before London, their words had gnawed at Nafeesa’s insides, but now, she spit them onto the floor. She lay there, more than the insolent virgin she had been when she left them. She had learned well from Najma. She appeared to brood, looking as if she were making an effort to be accepting and dutiful, but imposed upon at the same time. She ignored her mother’s nervous prattle and inhaled her secret deep into her body.
She spent every day planning her escape, marshalling her resources to keep the effort simple and effective. Kulraj had remained in London to finish his examinations, and they planned to meet in Lahore in two weeks.
“Eloping after the wedding. What an idea!” he had chuckled stroking his dark beard. She remembered how his thick eyebrows twitched below his head cloth when he laughed. It was hard to bring details of him to mind, how his voice sounded, how lightly he had touched her. She focused instead on the superficial parts of him—the turban of this Sikh who was now her husband, the beard he had never trimmed.
As promised, her mother had chosen her husband—Mohmar Khaliq, a local power broker whose tire factories provided the only employment in the district. The marriage of the two families would bring to each one the control over the votes they needed to maintain their positions in local politics. Her father planned to run for Parliament.
Khaliq was an old man, well into his forties, with one wife already. She had borne four daughters and no sons.
“Not Khaliq, Ammi! I remember how he used to stare at my breasts,” Nafeesa complained, even though she knew Khaliq would never see her naked nipples. “Now he can’t keep his eyes off my hips.” She had to make some complaints, just to convince them she was still their whining Nafeesa, and not the calm married woman she had become.
“He wants sons, Nafeesa,” Yasmeen said. “He needs sons to pass his land to. When land passes to daughters, it leaves the family.” She sighed. “And with Khaliq, you will not be far away from us.”
“I know, Ammi. I understand,” Nafeesa said compliantly.
Two weeks seemed like forever, so she paced herself, moving through preparations for both the wedding and the escape. The rain was her sole confidante in those days, the girlfriend to whom she could speak the truth and who answered with her unrelenting, friendly chatter.
“We will meet in Lahore at sunset during Mela Chiraghan, the Festival of Lamps,” Kulraj had said weeks earlier in London. “You will have to find me without the dastar turban. I will be a Muslim by then.”
She worried about the sacrifice he was making—to put his head on the line for her.
“Kulraj, are you sure?” she asked him for the hundredth time.
“—as if it were already done,” he replied. “Let’s meet at Shalimar Garden, the perfect place for lovers.”
“Shalimar,” she savored the word. Shalimar—the purest of human pleasures—fifty acres of marble terraces, pools, waterfalls, and fountains. The sixteenth-century Moghul royals built the summer residence in what then had been the countryside. But now Lahore crept over the walls of the old fort that had once enclosed it, and the city spread in every direction, clamoring to the gates of Shalimar Garden, only twelve miles west of the Indian border.
“Let’s meet at the fountain of lights, the Sawan Bhadon,” Kulraj said, referring to the famous pool—the one edged by covered walkways where the Moghul princesses had promenaded on drizzly days. At sunset hundreds of alcoves embedded in the walls were filled with oil lamps and lit by tapers. The glim created multiple rainbows across the cascading water.
“That’s my romantic husband,” she replied. “And a clever idea as well. The family rarely visits Lahore, and never on a holiday. Too much traffic. Too much bother. My father will say that the trip is too costly, and I know Ammi will be too tired.”
“My knees, Feesi. I can’t go to Lahore,” Yasmeen whined. “Take Fatimah with you. Find a nice scarlet brocade.” They were in the women’s quarter where Nafeesa was sewing a traditional undergarment for her wedding day.
“I am going with you!” Jameel announced as he pushed open the door. Nafeesa ignored him, continuing to weave a needle into the pile of fine cotton. Who will ever wear this shirt? she wondered. I’ll leave it with a note for Jameel.
“Baji, please take me with you to Lahore. Please,” Jameel begged, squeezing in beside her in the rosewood chair and draping his arm over her shoulder.
“No, my sweet Jameel, you can’t come this time,” she said. “I am sorry, but I have too much to do to be able to take care of you too.”
“You don’t have to take care of me.” Jameel stood up. “Do not insult me. It is my duty to protect you.” Glowering, he stormed out of the room.
Jameel had become testy while she was away. Sometimes he would order her around like a field boss, and at other times he would be as timid as a kitten. Jameel was a late arrival in her parents’ marriage, and he was Nafeesa’s favorite person in the world, the one she would miss the most when she left the family.
Although she was leaving forever, she packed only one bag. She could hear her mother singing when she returned to her room.
“I’m taking samples of the shoes and trimmings with me, Ammi, so I can match what I buy with what we already have.” Nafeesa tried to speak brightly, as she watched her mother’s wrapped figure moving about, searching for something. When will I ever see you again, Ammi? she wondered and winced. I’ll always remember Ammi, she thought, as though she were speaking from the future. Her heart broke a little and she had to cup her hand over her mouth when Yasmeen disappeared through the door.
Nafeesa recalled the almond scent of her mother’s body oil, the line of her perfect nose, the arch of her perfect brow. When she was a little girl she would watch her mother bathe. Afterward Ammi would press the big powder puff into the box of talc and flap it into her arm pits, reaching over to tickle Nafeesa, getting it up her nose, both of them sneezing, laughing. She would fluff between her legs and Nafeesa could see the powder fill the crack of Ammi’s backside. Little pimples festered on her inner thighs.
“Feesi, just pray that you’re skinny or bowlegged when you grow up,” she recalled her mother’s words.
Nafeesa conjured up the mother of her youth for the last time. She imagined offering a sprig of orange blossom to her. She recalled the touch of the hand that would pet her head when she rested a cheek against her mother’s hip. Then she straightened her back. Something roared inside her, a frightened trapped animal, determined to escape.
Ammi does not need me, she reasoned. Ali and Jameel will take care of her. And as for my father, let him feel shame. He chose Khaliq for my husband, when everyone knows what an old lecher Khaliq is.
Suddenly Nafeesa realized that she felt nothing inside. Oh, but I do, I do feel something, she argued with herself. She looked inside for the old grief and could not find it. Her emotional weather had changed.
“Fatimah will meet me at the bus station,” she lied to Yasmeen. “Her brother will take us to their auntie’s home in Lahore. We’ll visit the shops tomorrow and return by Thursday.”
Nafeesa knew that Fatimah was in Multan. Ammi will never find out that I will be traveling to Lahore alone, she thought. Besides, she is so self-absorbed. She never pays attention to the details of what I do. When the driver drops me at the Malakwal station, she thought, I will wave him off and take the bus to Lahore and then to Shalimar Garden, and to my husband, Kulraj Singh.
She left the shadowed courtyard in the afternoon air, bidding good-bye to the ground of her childhood. The spacious rooms and verandahs of the enclave seemed narrow to her now, and her past as colorless as the life that would be hers if she stayed. She gloried in the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
Yes, she thought, it is time to go. I am glad for it. I am ready for anything.
On the bus Nafeesa pil
ed her suitcase and coat on the seat next to her so that no one else would sit there. She had heard stories of women being accosted on buses. She wore large sunglasses and a common black dupatta, which she drew across her face, hoping to avoid village surveillance.
Someone on the bus might recognize me, she thought, start a conversation, and report in the village that I had been traveling alone. Then my parents will get word of it and send Ali after me.
She shuddered to think what Ali would do to her then. She retreated into her dupatta as she watched women at work across the road from the depot. Gathered around the head pump of a tube well, they rubbed big cakes of white soap back and forth across cloth. They twisted the cloth into a hard wad and slapped it again and again against a slab. The washing stone was smooth and slippery from wear. Some women threw themselves fully into the ritual, the closest they would ever come to public dancing. A snaggletoothed smile spread across the face of one woman who seemed triumphant in her results. Resting for a moment with her hands on her hips, she faced the sky while the soaked edges of her shalwar cooled her hot feet.
My Sisters Made of Light Page 10
