My Sisters Made of Light

by Jacqueline St. Joan

  “Now sit down,” she said.

  The two women scooted the plastic chairs over to the table with the hot water pot. Rahima Mai unwrapped a yellow tag Lipton tea bag while Ujala turned over their teacups.

  * * *

  When I left Nankana Sahib last year for my assignment in the NWFP, it was September, the end of monsoon. For once, I was not traveling alone. With me was Chanda, a fifteen-year-old girl whom Faisah had found in the Lahore women’s shelter. When Faisah heard the girl’s story, she asked me to take her with me.

  Chanda’s family lived in Lahore near the red-light district, and, as a child, she was forbidden to go into the Shahi Mohalla. But to Chanda and her brother, Sadiq, the mohalla was irresistible. They often wandered through the bazaar while their parents were at work or shopping. Buildings there lined streets so narrow that only motor scooters and donkeys could pass. Lines of laundry—bright cloths and striped towels—flapped above the buying and selling. Men in turbans pushed handcarts with mangoes, oranges, and potatoes. In the outdoor kitchens of the street cafés, they cooked samosas, cauliflower, and curried lamb in shallow pans the size of bus tires. The aromas of spices and oil mixed in the air. And, positioned above the shops, as if on pedestals, were sitting rooms with open windows and doors. At night the rooms were lit to attract customers. People meandered through the area, filling their senses.

  Chanda had a friend named Lila, who was teaching her classical dance. For many generations Lila’s family had operated well-established businesses in the district. They entertained male patrons with music, dancing, and, sometimes, sex. At fourteen, Lila’s virginity had been purchased by a tourist for a high price. She was the rising star of her family’s fortune. Her little cousins were next in line.

  Lila’s family gathered during the day to practice music—the tabla, the harmonium, the sitar—and the girls danced and sang, groomed themselves, and prepared for evening. At night, the room became a kotha, a performing room for entertaining guests.

  Chanda adored all the jewelry and bright colors. She imagined ankle bells of her own that would ring out when she moved her body around the room. She wanted to be a movie star like the Lollywood women who towered over the neighborhood in street posters. She dreamed of bangles on her arms and the personal attention of Chanda’s ustad, a famous music teacher in the district. A family would quiet with respect whenever the ustad appeared.

  Sadiq, too, had found friends in the Shahi Mohalla. Lila’s brothers always had extra money, rupees they earned by running errands—getting customers small change or marigold garlands for the dancers. “Coca-Cola?” the boys would ask, and seeing a nodding reply, they raced in their tee shirts and jeans to bring back the worn out bottles with plastic straws bouncing. They extended their palms. “Two rupees, please, thank you very much, thank you very much.”

  Time changes everything for girls, and for Chanda the confinements of womanhood came early. By the time she was ten, she was covered in a dupatta and stayed inside with her mother. While the flesh on her chest plumped up under layers of cloth, her brother continued to run freely. Once Sadiq helped her to dress like a boy so she could go with him. He tucked her hair into a cap and held open his extra pants so that she could step into them. But two aunties saw them on the street and sent Chanda home in tears.

  “A whore, that one will be,” one shouted. The other’s black-clothed head nodded in agreement.

  When she turned twelve, Chanda no longer attended school. Instead she cooked whatever food Sadiq and her father purchased in the bazaar. After awhile Sadiq changed, too. He stopped bringing her news of Lila and her family.

  “Women who sing and dance in public are whores,” he said. “Lila is a whore!”

  The taller he got, the bossier he became, ordering Chanda to bring him a towel or a cup of tea. He would push her down or glower if she refused. No longer did they splash in puddles together. Instead, she became her brother’s servant. But every day, whenever she was alone in the house, without ankle bells or chiffon, Chanda practiced the steps Lila had taught her.

  One day when she was fifteen, Chanda covered herself with her mother’s old burqa and walked to the Shahi Mohalla again. The sun appeared between the lines of laundry on the rooftops. People seemed happy, and the city looked prosperous. The metal gate to Lila’s compound was locked when she arrived. The buzzer was broken, so she made a fist and pounded, rattling the iron fence.

  Lila’s brother called out—“Who is there?”

  “Chanda,” she replied, but her voice was so soft he could not hear her.

  “Who?” he shouted, pulling the gate open fast. He saw the short girl wrapped in a burqa. He looked around for a wali, a guardian, a brother, a father, an uncle. No one.

  “Chanda,” the girl said. “I want to see Lila.”

  She spent the day indoors with Lila, repeating the dances her body had memorized. She could still bend her knee at the proper angle and spread her fingers across her face, to hide, then to expose her dark eyes. The music was familiar and her moves were bold. By midafternoon, she wrapped up again in the burqa and prepared to leave.

  “Come again soon,” Lila said, kissing Chanda’s cheeks.

  “I’ll try.”

  Chanda stepped onto the dirt road. As Lila closed the door, someone grabbed Chanda and dragged her away. In a vacant pile of rubble, Sadiq roughly pulled the burqa up over her head.

  “Stop!” she shouted at him.

  “Whore!” he yelled back, forcing her body against a crumbling wall. At that moment a man approached, holding a scalpel in the folds of his robe.

  “Baba, stop him!” Chanda begged. Her father stepped in front of her, and as Sadiq held her head back into the wall, her father sliced off half of Chanda’s nose and fled before a crowd could gather or the police could be called. Blood dripped through Chanda’s fingers and collected in a cement bowl of construction debris. Chanda screamed until Lila’s brothers came and brought her in.

  In the hospital Chanda was all alone, unlike the other patients who had families to hover over them. When she became terrified that her father and brother would return to finish what they’d started, a nurse told her about the women’s shelter. Chanda stayed in the shelter for several weeks, but everyone knew that she had to get out of Lahore and out of Punjab. Someone told Faisah, who told me, and I agreed to take Chanda to Chitral where she might start a new life.

  Faisah brought her to me at the bus station. Chanda was light-skinned and slender. She covered the bandage on her face with a heavy veil, fastened so that only her frightened hazel eyes showed. She spoke Pashto, a language that I did not know but would have to learn in the Northwest. She knew a little Urdu.

  On the first day of our three-day journey, we rode on the bus in a comfortable silence, as strangers sometimes do when their bodies are committed to being together for a limited time in close quarters. On the way to Peshawar we passed through the suburbs of Lahore, the large apartment buildings, the impoverished mud of Rawalpindi, and the flat roofs of the Afghan refugee camps where the Taliban were growing in numbers. The government hired them to guard the convoys heading west to Central Asia.

  Chanda twisted her head to watch schoolchildren wave from the street—the boys in their navy blue school pants, V-neck sweaters, white shirts, and ties. The girls in their white shalwars with light blue kameezes, red cardigans, and white cotton dupattas—those who had schools nearby and families that wanted their girls to be educated. I watched the sky fill with crows and floating kites. From a distance it was hard to tell which were which.

  The bus crossed the mighty Indus, the river that severs the length of Pakistan. We stopped at the river where a security checkpoint marked the entrance to the Northwest Frontier Province. As the soldier waved the buses through a stone archway, the driver switched off his radio. In the NWFP, Shariah law is strict now and in some places enforced by both religious and government officials. Movies and radios are forbidden. Men’s beards must to be worn at least a fist-le
ngth below the chin, and women and girls are being expelled from schools and are required to observe purdah or to suffer a public beating—or worse.

  In the morning I learned that rain north of Peshawar had caused landslides. One bus went over the side of a mountain, killing everyone onboard. We rode in a Japanese bus that seated twenty people, a new model, but already worn from constant use. Chanda and I were the last to board it, and every seat was taken, except two that were separate. Chanda sat in the back row of the bus, between two other women. I sat across from the side door, next to a woman dressed in brown pants and a khaki shirt. She had a red cotton scarf tied around her neck. She wore sunglasses and held a backpack between her legs. She looked like she might be Chinese.

  “Have you been traveling for a long time?” I asked in English.

  She nodded.

  “I come from Lahore,” I said, trying to make conversation. “And you?”

  “Singapore,” she said, waking from her traveler’s stupor. She reached for my hand. “My name is Lia Chee.” She had an American accent.

  “Ujala Ehtisham,” I said.

  “Ujala?” Lia looked quizzical. “I’ve not heard that name before.”

  “It means light,” I said. “Shining light. And Lia?”

  “Means nothing. We go more by the sound of a name than the meaning, I think.” She paused. “Going all the way to Chitral?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Then we’ll be friends by the time we get there,” she said, as if the matter had been in controversy and now it was settled.

  As we went on, the world became greener, nature became denser, and everything became wetter. By the time we stopped for gas, the air was the color of graphite and enveloped everything. It was as if the mountains were not there at all. The bus wound around the steepness, groaning as the gears shifted. Asphalt became dirt, which became rock, as we rose into a misty world. Dozens of waterfalls spouted from the wall of rock across the river. Water fell into light, and earth blew into water. The world became dreamy, as the elements dissolved into each other.

  “It looks like we may end up drinking the Indus instead of crossing it,” said Lia. She pointed to a bulging escarpment that had collapsed into the riverbed.

  “They say that one who drinks from the Indus becomes as heroic as a lion,” I said, quoting Abbu.

  “Yeah,” Lia said, with a smirk. “And sick as a dog.”

  The locals were trying to shore up the road. They dug up and moved the earth. They packed rocks and sand to divert the runoff. Families divided the work. Men and boys waded into the rushing river to dislodge the rocks and to carry them to the riverbank. They hefted and hugged them and left them at the feet of the women, who sat wrapped in shawls, with boulders between their knees, hammering. Children carried the broken pieces to piles close to the road, according to the size of each fragment.

  Despite their exertions, the humans were powerless when compared to mountains, river, and rain. Eventually landslides spread debris, and the road was impassable. Other buses backed up on the road as people got off to collect their luggage and walk. The driver’s helper climbed onto the bus roof to retrieve the baggage. He would place his hands on a bag and a passenger would shout up, “Mine, mine!” and he would hand it down. Coming from the other direction was a line of passengers from buses parked on the far side of a blanket of scree, walking toward our bus. One woman carried a small child on one hip and a pair of yak horns on the other.

  Our bodies were stiff from hours of sitting. I envied anything that moved—the dogs in their muddy socks, the shrouded figure pushing a cart with oversized wheels, even the blinking signal on Lia’s mobile phone. Perhaps it was the altitude getting to my brain, but I became transfixed by that blinking signal, a blip of a heartbeat, a cry in the wilderness. I realized that the ground beneath us was unstable where we were parked on the cliff’s edge. The inside wheels were on the road, but I wondered if one of the outside wheels was spinning over the edge. I kept my eye on the blinking light to keep from panicking. I could hear the engine and wheels spinning, when, all at once, the bus lurched from air onto rock, and began to creep along a narrow passage.

  Suddenly another bus appeared around a curve from the opposite direction. It tried to back up to let our bus pass, but a large truck blocked it from behind. The two buses were head to head, and ours was on the outside edge, above the river that narrowed into rapids a hundred feet below.

  Our driver backed up as far as he could to give the oncoming bus as much room as possible. Underneath the tires, some rocks were smooth as bone, others were encrusted like scabs, or protruded like decay in a charnel ground. The oncoming bus rocked forward, inching along the inside passage. Through the window I could see anxiety on the driver’s face reflected in the side mirror. I watched him throw his entire weight against the steering wheel. He turned momentarily away from what was ahead and glanced over his shoulder to the far side, where his helper, who stepped off of the bus, called out the conditions from the rear.

  “Stupid driver,” Lia said. “No need for us to risk staying on this bus. He should let us off.”

  I looked around at the other passengers. The ones who sat along the outside edge were not looking out the window, but no one was panicking. Chanda stared calmly ahead. Her feet wiggled. I fingered my prayer beads. How would it be to fall to death with strangers? There was nothing to be done about it.

  The oncoming bus rocked slightly side to side as it squeezed past my window.

  “Can’t we get off this thing?” Lia shouted out in English.

  No one replied.

  Our driver was concentrating on the movement of the inside bus. The front wheels of the oncoming bus were now at our bus’s midpoint. From where Lia sat by the window she was just inches from the driver of the other bus. If the wheels of the passing bus slid the least bit, its weight would coax us over the cliff.

  Lia began to stand, but I pulled her back down on the seat. Her trying to get off the bus could be just the movement to shift the balance and take us over the edge, which she, too, realized as soon as she stood.

  A small group of men on the road examined the situation and offered their opinions on maneuvering the passage. Their whistles pierced the moment, signaling the driver whether to stop or go. River sounds pounded all around. At last the tail of the inside bus passed by. We rejoiced without a move, without a sound, proud of our home team, but not daring to disrupt anything. Then our bus ambled squarely onto the road, and everyone applauded.

  Lia saw the tears of relief in my eyes. I didn’t know what to say. She chucked the palm of her hand into my shoulder.

  “It was nothing,” she said. “I wasn’t worried. Were you?”

  As it turned out, Lia was neither Chinese nor from Singapore, as she preferred that people believe. She was an American of Chinese descent who had been raised in Greenville County, South Carolina, she said—a freelance writer on assignment for Nature and Nurture, an adventure travel magazine. She was their first correspondent to travel the mountains of Central Asia.

  “I do actually live in Singapore now,” she said. “I worked in New York for many years, but I’ve spent the past three in Central Asia—in the “Stans”—Afghani, Paki, Uzbeki.” She counted them out on her fingers. “I prefer not to tell people I am American, so I let my face lead them to believe I am Chinese and I give them an address in Singapore. It works. You know what I mean?”

  I recognized the you know what I mean? question that Americans use, prompting a courtesy that requires concurrence with whatever they say. Where do these women come from? I wondered. More than once I have come upon an English-speaking woman who has introduced herself and begun a conversation like this.

  “It fooled me to see you traveling alone,” Lia said. “I rarely see a woman alone on a bus in Pakistan—except me, of course.” She smiled.

  I told her I was not alone and pointed to Chanda. They waved to each other.

  “Your sister?”

  “Yo
u might say that,” I said. I was careful what I told a stranger, especially a reporter, so I changed the subject and told her I was a teacher. I was surprised to learn that she knew about WASP. She became excited and asked me for an interview. I did not want to be rude, so I said we’d see. She rifled through her file folders and pulled out the one she wanted. I was surprised see a dozen articles she had published about women in Pakistan.

  “Maybe I can visit your school in Chitral? I plan to use the Hilton as a home base. I’m going to try to get to the Kalash Valley, but this isn’t the best season to get there. You know what I mean?”

  I was no longer listening. I just nodded and continued reading her work. Lia’s writing was as much poetry as journalism. It was rich in detail, both geographic and historic, and yet it was also informal and intimate, like an old-fashioned British travel letter. She had published articles on women’s education, an interview with Jabril Kazzaz, another on slavery in the brick factories, and a piece on karo-kari, honor crimes in Sindh.