She explained how she had been conducting research on women in Pakistan for a long time. A reporter friend in New York first talked to her about the problems—a friend from Karachi. I was astonished to hear the next words come out of her mouth.
“Yusuf Salman,” she said. “Maybe you know his work?”
What are the chances that, high in the Hindu Kush, a Pakistani teacher and an American journalist would know the same man who lived halfway around the world?
“Yusuf and I attended university together,” I said. “He was studying journalism then. I heard he left for the U.S. many years ago.”
“Was he gorgeous then, too?” she asked, smiling. I knew then that Lia was playing me. She was a skilled interviewer, intuitive, and she was reading beneath my surface. Maybe she could hear my racing heart.
“Very,” I said and cracked a smile. I tried to relax with her. I could own up to an old attraction. After all, we almost died together on that bus. Lia prattled on about Yusuf.
“He’s a master of the new journalism—and has quite a few Middle Eastern fans in the States, and South Asians.”
But hearing news of Yusuf shocked me. Right away I recalled his still eyes. Before jealousy or regret could arise, I placed my mind on those steady spots. Then I dared to play Lia’s own game to find out what I wanted to know.
“How well do you know Yusuf?” I asked.
“As well as journalists know each other when they are on assignment in different parts of the world,” she said. “But we ran in the same social circle in New York.”
Then she launched into this lengthy description of how she and Yusuf had met when Queen Noor was lobbying Congress over Jordanian support for Iraq during the Kuwait invasion.
“It was springtime in Washington,” she said, “the dogwood was in bloom, and the Shoreham Hotel was white and gleaming. Noor, so elegant in her simple tunic—”
Finally I had to interrupt her.
“Tell me about Yusuf,” I said, knowing that my impatience betrayed me.
“Oh,” said Lia. The tone of our conversation shifted, and Lia jumped to what she guessed I wanted to know. “No, he’s not married. He said there is no one in the U.S. to arrange it for him. And that he’d have to come back to Pakistan someday to be married.”
Lia and I talked off and on all night long in the capsule of that bus. At every turn, it tossed us against its sides and against each other. I practiced a kind of lightness in my body that allowed me to float with the motion, rather than be bruised by gravity. By morning, the views became vaster, each mountain more massive than the one before, each valley wider and longer. From the strip of valley highway, distant villages looked like sesame seeds scattered at the feet of giants.
We joined Chanda and the other women at the back of the bus for meals and for tea. From time to time we switched places. Hearing Chanda’s story, Lia wanted to interview her. I insisted that there be no real names or places in her story, and Lia agreed. She settled in next to Chanda while I translated from Urdu to English.
“In Chitral, she wants to be a dancer,” I said, repeating what Chanda told me. In English I told Lia that dancing was most unlikely since the entire area is Pathan and the vast majority of women observe extreme purdah. “Dancing is completely forbidden . . . But let her dream.”
Then Chanda tugged on my sleeve. She had understood at least some of what I had said to Lia.
“Pathan,” she said, pointing to her heart. “Chanda. Pathan. Purdah,” she said, pulling at the veil that covered her nose and mouth.
“You are Pathan?” Lia asked, and Chanda nodded.
“Balochi . . . Pathan . . . Chanda Khan,” she said again, pointing to herself, sitting up straighter.
“Ah,” said Lia, “the proud Khans.”
The Khans were the kings—Genghis Khan, Lord of the Earth. Kubla Khan of Xanadu, where nothing is forgotten. Aga Khan, the great benefactor, the jet-setter, the playboy. The King, whose proud legacy touched this injured bird of a woman, Chanda Khan, who wanted to dance.
“Maybe she will become a dancer, even in Chitral,” Lia said. “Isn’t anything possible for a Khan?”
The bus took us north into Pathan country, where landlords, warlords, and gun dealers ruled. The men’s hands smelled of meat and gunpowder, smoke and poppies. Many dyed their beards red with henna, as was the fashion. The Pathans, called Pashtuns elsewhere, were blue-blooded and tall, with light skin and angular features. In their culture, blood and land were paramount. Outsiders could buy land to build houses, but only Pathans were allowed to buy land to herd goats or raise horses, or to sow crops in the rain-fed fields. A Pathan would never let his daughter marry a pretender, because he knew the authentic bloodline. Life in the Northwest Frontier had more in common with Afghan and Baloch cultures than it had with Punjab or Sindh. Tribal customs and feudal law ruled, and a woman’s transgression was taken up with her father, brother, or son. Family honor was paramount, encased in the bodies of the women, treasures protected in cloth and hidden away. A man outside the family, no matter how friendly he might be to a Pathan male, was never allowed in the inner chambers. If a woman left the home, she covered in the shuttlecock burqa with only its mesh window through which to view the world.
Lia said she intended to wear a dupatta while in the Northwest Frontier.
“Good idea,” I agreed.
“I have been to the Frontier before,” she said. “I filed a story on the Friendship Highway into China. The people over there were laid-back, but the way things are going with the Taliban, I think I’d better cover my head.”
“And your breasts . . .” I said. Lia bent her neck, pointing her chin toward her flat chest.
“Oh, those . . .”
September in the Hindu Kush.
Our breath clung to the bus windows like whispers of conversations left behind. We stepped into the frosty air of Chitral, a remote town of twenty thousand souls, located deep in Pathan country. I tasted an unfamiliar tang hanging in the air that I later learned was gunpowder. Any excuse—a wedding, a birthday—and gunfire rang through the mountains. The area was notorious for arms dealing, supplying guns and missiles to their cousins fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Everyone wanted automatic rifles stamped Made in the U.S.A. Pistols and Kalashnikovs lay spread across the counters of the open bazaar, with boxes of shells stacked shoulder high behind the men in their long woolen vests and flat hats. A young boy with an AK-47 stood like a guard next to an open stall. Unnecessary security, I assumed. The boy was just showing off. Although I carried one of my own, the idea itself of a gun sickened me. But here they were as basic as bread.
I watched the men of Chitral lay their blankets on the cold ground for prayers. The foreheads of the elderly were bruised from a lifetime of praising Allah in this way. Some bought fruit, flour, and milk to carry in plastic shoppers to their mud-brick homes, where they handed the bags to their women. The men wrapped themselves in woolen shawls and looked up to read the clouds.
Sides of raw mutton hung like curtains in the vendors’ stalls. Apple trees and mulberry bushes wound around, gnarled and brambly. Fertile ground was sacred in this harsh land, where every tree was spoken for, watered, pruned, and harvested with care. Scarecrows stood at attention on the piles of stones that separated small farm plots, though they did not scare the birds. Crows and jays were everywhere.
We agreed that Chanda would stay with Lia for the time being—until I could figure out what the next step should be. They loaded their parcels and backpacks into the trunk of a taxi, and we agreed to meet at the hotel in three days. Sabira and Asma, teachers from the school, met me at the station with their old Toyota and their driver. The family’s modest wealth and the women’s determination had supported the school for the past three years. I would live in a teacher’s suite—one room and an outhouse—in their family compound. They were eager to show me the one room with three walls where they offered classes to boys in the morning and to girls in the afternoon. They did no
t permit boys to attend unless their sisters could as well. When the girls began to observe purdah, they became like puppies tied up in a courtyard, waiting to be taken out. I intended to stay for a year—if I could endure this strict rural life.
The next morning Sabira and I met the other teachers and walked them to the compound. Through the open door of a makeshift madrassah I could see rows of young boys, sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth in their shawls, reciting the Q’ran.
“They used to be our students,” Sabira said. “But the mullahs object to anything except education in the Q’ran.” Sabira opened her arms to the sky as she mimicked the mullahs. “‘Geography, history, literature—these tempt young people away from God. The Q’ran teaches us everything we need to know.’”
At noon we washed and prayed before sitting outside of my room in the sun-baked courtyard. We shared a pot of tea, a bowl of lentils, and roti.
“Everything here starts with the Q’ran,” said Sabira, pulling the bread apart with her fingers and dipping into the warm lentils. “The Prophet—peace be unto him—lived a simple life, and was gentle to women,” Sabira continued, sighing. “Oh, that he would return to remind these men how to treat women!”
Tahira was the youngest of the three sisters, bright-eyed and chubby. She told me about a girl whose father had forbidden her to return to the school.
“She threw herself off the roof of her house and broke her neck,” Tahira recalled, speaking very fast, “—and the next week another girl did exactly the same thing—threw herself off the roof.” Tahira’s voice split as she spoke.
“Easy enough for grown men to criticize a young girl—such an easy target,” said Asma, the oldest sister.
I recognized the burn in her voice. The conversations of women when they are alone are the same everywhere. In all the places I have taught—cities, seashores, and deserts, and in the northern mountains—it’s all the same. Women’s dissatisfaction is the cough that won’t go away.
I saw an old man hobbling through the courtyard gate. He wore a long white coat and lungi and the Pathan hat. He had the orange henna beard of a Haji. He neither looked at us nor walked near us as he padded across the courtyard and disappeared into a mud-brick room. A scraggly red dog slipped in the door behind him.
“Our grandfather, Aga Ji,” Sabira said, nodding in his direction. “He does not speak to women outside of the family, so he won’t come over here as long as you are with us. Nothing personal to you. It’s just his way.”
“But how will that work if we take meals together?” I asked.
“We eat before or after the men, so it is no problem. We will hardly even notice him come or go. He takes care of himself. He waters and prunes a few poplars for one of the landlords, then spends the day at the mosque and the teahouse. He lives in his own world—he and his dog.”
On Monday it was sunny. I pulled on my boots and walked along the muddy road to meet Lia and Chanda. I looked up to face Tirich Mir, the baby toe of the monstrous northern mountains, the twenty-five-thousand-foot wall of sheer rock and ice that stands at the gate of three ranges—the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram, and the Himalayas. It was awesome to behold, an enchanted, impossible place. It was as if the mountains were the only beings who knew the way things are and the way they always have been.
I trembled in their shadows. I knew that Tirich Mir was no protector. Soon it would be October when the mountain would offer no hospitality and the winter winds would blow whiteness around, covering the known world. Twice a week a plane flew to Chitral from Peshawar, the inaccessible city only a thought away from the lost horizon. Suddenly I was startled by the shriek of a falcon that swooped over my head in its endless search for rodents and water.
The Chitral Hilton was surrounded by a brick wall with broken shards of glass embedded along the top. Fiery red bushes framed a shallow pool where hundreds of floating candles were lit at twilight. Sparrows flew cheerily through the open lobby. Groups of businessmen, as well as trekkers and guides, formed small clusters. Embroidered wall hangings depicted local battles—against the Mongols, against the British, even a recent one against the Russians. Elephant blood ran beet red against the untouchable snow of the Khyber Pass.
I saw Lia and Chanda sitting on the terrace. Chanda was wearing a lavender shalwar kameez. Her gold necklaces gleamed in the sunlight. A string of seed pearls was attached to her hair on one side of her head under a gold-trimmed dupatta. The other end of the string of pearls was attached to a small bandage where the side of her nose used to be. I was speechless at her transformation from a wounded spot of a girl into this elegant woman. In the glow of her face and the flash of her bangles, Chanda Khan was the acclaimed Pathan beauty revealed.
I shook my head in disbelief.
“She has finally found out who she is, and she will be nothing else,” said Lia, clearly enjoying my reaction. “I’m pretty brassy, but I wish I had her pluck. I mean, look at that girl.”
Chanda nudged Lia with her elbow, as she gestured toward me.
“She can’t wait for me to tell you,” Lia announced, laughing. “Chanda got a job!”
“Dancer!” Chanda said in English. “No nose!” She pointed to her bandage. Chanda and Lia’s laughter infected me, too, and we giggled like schoolgirls.
“Stop!” Lia pleaded, trying to catch her breath, “I’ll wet my shalwar.” And we laughed some more. When we saw the waiter bringing ice cream, we regained our composure. “It’s too wonderful! And I get to tell the world her story.”
“Tell me first!” I begged. And while Chanda enjoyed the attention she was attracting from the hotel guests, Lia told me about the previous three days.
“First, we did a little shopping,” Lia said. “My magazine, Nature and Nurture, did some extra—‘nurturing,’ shall we say, and bought Chanda several fabulous dance costumes. Classic. Tasteful. Perfect for her audition.”
“Audition?”
“Yes. We took a taxi into the backwaters of Chitral, where the artists hang out—the woodworkers, weavers, and potters. There we found—of all things, and in Chitral, of all places—Farhada’s Daughters.”
Farhada’s Daughters was a traveling theater company, they told me, that was in need of a classical dancer. Mostly young women, and a few men, they performed skits, dances, comedy routines—even puppet shows—all about the relations between men and women—about dowries, street harassment, marriage to the Q’ran, honor killings. Some women were married, and their husbands worked with them. The other men pretended to be brothers of the single women, so that no one bothered them. They planned to stay in Chitral until spring.
“Then Chanda will be safe. She will move with them to Sargodha and on down the valley,” said Lia. “She danced for them like an angel. Her movements were silkier than the clothes she is wearing. No seduction, no rupees in the belt, no razzle-dazzle. Just dancing—lonely, glorious, solemn, proud. Really, it broke my heart to watch her.”
“But what about her—” I said, whispering, tapping my nose, “—you know—”
“They ate it up!” said Lia. “They presented the story of her attack, and her sliced nose, as the truth unveiled: ‘This is what happens behind the veil, behind the metal gates,’ they said. They encouraged Chanda to dance with her nose just as it is.”
Chanda laughed when Lia stopped talking. She pulled on my arm.
“Baji,” she said, adding in English, “now Chanda not too nosey!”
That evening Asma told Aga Ji he must accompany us to Chanda’s performance. Aga Ji sat in front with the driver and never looked at me. The Toyota stopped at a nondescript metal gate across from the ice factory. Inside a tentlike canvas covered the courtyard where twinkling white lights had been strung. In one corner a few musicians assembled—a tamboura, tabla, and tambourines. The audience of twenty or thirty men sat cross-legged on blankets, leaving an open circle in the middle for the performers. They passed around paper bags of walnuts and dried apples.
“Assalam alei
kum,” said the emcee with a wide smile across his face. He wore a striped woolen shawl and bright cap. The crowd mumbled its response, “Waleikum salaam.” We have a very special performance tonight,” he announced, “—the debut of one of Pakistan’s finest interpretive dancers—Chanda Khan.”
The lights dimmed. The emcee disappeared into darkness. Then slowly the stage lights came up, focused on Chanda’s still body, her white silk shalwar kameez, and her outstretched arms. The sparkles on her nose patch caught the light. Her pale eyes, lined with thick kohl, were the only things that moved. They circled the courtyard, stopping ever so briefly to match the gaze of each person. It was not a seductive move, although it drew us in. Her measured glances evoked the feeling of a witness’ oath, with a surprising, powerful effect. It was over in less than a minute, and then the steady rhythm of the drum and the tambourine began. Chanda’s movements were lyrical, like the strings of the tamboura, as she practiced the most basic moves of a beginner. She took small steps to each side of her central spot, always returning modestly to that point. Her glossy, stained lips opened soundlessly as the emcee returned to tell the crowd her tale as she danced.
My Sisters Made of Light Page 15
