I don’t want just to be married, I argued with myself. I want love. I want to see the kind of look on my husband’s face that I can see on Abbu’s when he wants Ammi. And they think we’re not watching!
I began dreaming of Yusuf.
My stomach was jumpy on the day I had ridden on the back of his Vespa, sitting sideways, tucking my clothes to avoid the wheels and wrapping my dupatta around my neck, tucking in the ends. I held the inside of the seat with my right hand and balanced my left on his shoulder. His muscles tightened as the Vespa picked up speed.
I have touched him, I thought, and felt a gush of blood rush through my body.
Respectable women are provided introductions through their families and otherwise do not socialize with young men. But Yusuf and I met, instead, in a literature course at the university. I knew that seeing him apart from my family was not forbidden, but it was new to me. I knew others who went much farther than we did—who dressed like Europeans, dated, and favored the music and customs of Americans. Yusuf considered himself a modern Muslim, educated and egalitarian, but observant of certain rituals. If I looked in his pack, I knew I would find a prayer mat tucked inside.
We approached Clifton Beach, the city’s public playground. It ran parallel to Zamzama Boulevard, across the avenues and modern buildings of Karachi’s Defence area. On the khaki-colored beach, families dined on roasted corn and almonds, curries and ice cream. Two old men led their camels across the littered sand. Children waited in line to straddle the molting hides of the raggedy beasts. It was low tide. One by one each wave kissed the sand, creating a long streak of surf.
As the Vespa slowed, I cupped Yusuf’s back firmly. He parked by an old hotel that had become a hangout for drug dealers. We joined a few college friends—Bilal, Sabah, and others whose names I did not know. They sat at a wooden picnic table by the edge of the sand, near the street, enjoying fruit drinks. This group liked to think of themselves as the New Yorkers in their favorite TV show, Friends. An ice cream cart tinkled a childhood tune.
“It’s entirely off-key,” Yusuf said.
“Could it be any more off-key?” mimicked Bilal in Joey Tribbiani’s singsong rhythm. Bilal sipped coconut milk through a paper straw as we all laughed. He had wrapped his head with Sabah’s dupatta. He was entertaining the others with his impressions of political characters. Benazir Bhutto and General Zia were his favorites.
“I’ve seen this show too often,” Yusuf whispered. “We’re going for a walk,” he announced.
“Ooh. A walk!” Bilal said, lifting his eyebrows. “Want to be alone?”
Yusuf carried my shoes. As my toes felt the chilly surf, I scanned the horizon.
“I’ve always been afraid of the sea,” I said, shuddering.
“Would you rather not go?”
“No. I can do it. It scares me a little, but in a way I like that.”
What also scared me on that day was the vastness of what Yusuf was not saying. Although we had discussed marriage, he had not talked to our parents about it.
I let the wind play with my dupatta. Yusuf would catch one end and return it to my shoulder, and I would let it fly away again, until at last we grabbed its corners and spread it out on the sand, before the wind could grab it again. We sat together, not touching—never touching—but close, squeezing sand between our toes.
“I have something for you,” he said. I watched the way his eyes moved slowly as if they were finding satisfaction wherever they looked. They followed his hand into his pocket and back to my face. Then he lifted his palm to offer me a short, leafy branch on which three pearl-sized lemons were perched.
I remember my reactions to this gesture, like a movie, frame by frame.
Grateful. It was a gift.
Trapped somehow. Did I have to please him in the way I responded to his gift?
Disappointed. Had I expected an engagement ring?
Confused. Could finding love be this hard?
I laughed in order to keep myself from revealing so much.
“Ammi always says that lemons are oranges God created for those whose sweetness is a lie,” I said. He looked pleased.
“Then I’ll have to take these back and get you oranges instead.” My body felt a new and undeniable heat, and slowly I relaxed.
Weeks before he had said that we might wed after he completed his journalism program.
“I’ll present the idea to my father,” he said, but in the intervening time, he said nothing more.
“He won’t approve,” I had predicted. Although I was Muslim, and my father was a converted Muslim, I had to admit, he was not a very convincing Muslim. Yusuf’s family’s approval was unlikely.
“If my father doesn’t approve, then we will leave the country,” Yusuf said. “The world is much larger than Karachi, and I want to see all of it.”
Suddenly, he jumped up and raced to the ice-candy man. “Here,” he said when he returned, panting, handing me an iced orange. It had been sliced open and dipped in coarse sugar. “For one whose sweetness is the truth.”
I took the thawing fruit into my mouth. The crunch of sugar and the bursts of juice could not interrupt my questioning mind. Had he spoken with his parents or hadn’t he? I wondered if he would bring up the subject. He seemed dreamy, more interested in communicating with his eyes than with words.
When we walked back to rejoin our friends, I pushed into the chill.
“How did your parents respond when you discussed our marriage?” Yusuf squinted at the sea.
“I haven’t asked them yet, Uji. I’m waiting for the right moment. Father has been irritable lately, but I will bring up the subject soon.” To me he sounded like a pathetic little boy, apologizing to his mother.
“Of course, Yusuf,” I said. “I don’t mean to rush you.” Finding the right time is important, I thought, or is he putting me off? “I am so eager to plan our future, and without knowing what your parents will say, it is hard to know if we will have a future together.” I thought I sounded whiny, like I wanted him to do something, anything, just to have it done and over with.
“I wish I could kiss you right here, right now,” he said.
“The sooner we get on with our lives,” I said, “the sooner we can get on with the kissing, too.” We both were excited that we had said the word: kiss. But I fretted. What if I never marry? I can’t see myself married, or unmarried, either. Live with my parents for the rest of my life? Would it be worse than being someone’s wife? But women always get married. What else can I do? I was a woman who could not imagine her own future.
From the verandah, I could cast my sight out into the sea and again think of Yusuf. His intensity frightens me. It is like the sea—a vast, blue thing that grabs the limbs and the lives of the young, the careless, and the unlucky like a wild woman who has lost her mind, and I do not know how to swim.
The cranking of the water truck’s gears shifted me out of worrying. I glanced down to the gate. Indus Water Company, the sign read. The words were encased in the company’s oval logo—two lions drinking peacefully from the royal river. I grabbed the two water jugs and headed for the stairs. I wondered if Abbu and Ammi had decided to let Faisah and me visit Karachi Central Prison today.
The previous evening, the family had gathered around the old bamboo table. The armchairs were stuffed with big pillows embroidered with mirrors and beads. Reshma had always sat between our parents. But now she was married and living with her husband, so Amir and Meena sat to Ammi’s right, and Faisah and I sat to Abbu’s left. Meena’s parrot perched above us, squawking.
“Shall we set a place for Mithu?” Amir asked. He cupped a handful of apples and monkey nuts for the bird.
Masood carried in a tray with dal, rice, chicken curry, lamb masala, chutney, sliced cucumbers, carrots, and yogurt. We passed the dishes around the large table.
Our father loved to tell our guests about that grand table. It came from the fire wreckage at the library of the Architectural Institute in Lahore.
He had selected that particular table, he used to say, because its roundness made impossible the dining hierarchy of traditional families, where the parents sat at either end like a king and a queen. Then he would glance at Ammi, as he built the legend of their love. “But I don’t need a queen,” he would say, “and I don’t want to be that far away from my beloved.”
Ammi knew it was a staged glance, and she would shake her head with embarrassment. “Such nonsense!”
We would roll our eyes at our father, but truly we would have been disappointed had he not taken yet another opportunity to praise our mother and proclaim his devotion to her.
“The girl I interviewed is only fourteen,” interrupted Faisah, who was eager to share her experience from that afternoon, when her university seminar visited the prison for the first time. “She has been in Central Prison for eight months. It was crowded, and hard to find a corner to talk privately. So hot and smelly in there.” Faisah wrinkled her nose.
“What are the charges against her?” Abbu asked.
“Prostitution,” Faisah replied. I could see she was embarrassed to speak this word in front of Abbu and Amir, but she had to overcome that shyness if she was going to become a lawyer. “However, she’s not a prostitute,” Faisah said, repeating the word, it seemed to me, as a kind of practice. “It’s much more complicated than that.”
She took a breath and made eye contact with each of us. Her eyes sparkled through her wire-rimmed glasses as she waited for our complete attention.
“The girl comes from Jacobabad,” she said. “She was a nanny for the landlord’s grandson. Last year the landlord asked her mother to allow the girl to accompany his daughter-in-law with the baby on a trip to Bangladesh, where his daughter-in-law’s family lives. The mother trusted the family, since she had worked for them for many years. And the girl wanted to go, thinking she would be back in Sindh within a few weeks.
“Well, weeks became many months. Finally, the girl’s mother went to the landlord and asked when her daughter would be back.”
“Why didn’t the mother just telephone her daughter?” asked Amir. He stuffed his mouth with chapati as he spoke.
“Poor people don’t have telephones,” Abbu said, and placed his hand over Amir’s forearm to prevent him from cramming more bread into his mouth. “And even if they can find a public phone, and even if they have the rupees to use it, the phone may be broken, or they may not be able to get through to the other end. Especially to Bangladesh.” He turned to Faisah. “Go on with the story.” He passed the yogurt and cucumbers to Ammi.
“After we heard the girl’s story, we had a hard time reaching her mother, but finally we contacted her through a family friend in Karachi.” Faisah paused, lifting her head and tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. To make a long story short,” she said, taking a breath, “each time she asked him, the landlord said that her daughter would be returning soon. Eventually, the mother became angry about the delays. ‘You should be glad we are taking care of her,’ the landlord told her. ‘One less stomach for you to feed.’ Then she became furious.”
“He wasn’t being fair to her,” Meena said. There were nods of agreement around the table, supporting the mother’s indignation.
“At last she told him that she insisted he send her daughter back.”
“I imagine her making such a demand was an insult to the landlord,” said Ammi. “A feudal would never allow that!” Faisah nodded and waved her arms as she continued her story.
“So instead of sending the daughter home, the landlord gave the girl to a friend of his—someone connected to organized crime.”
I could tell that Faisah was enjoying telling the dark turn the tale was taking.
“This friend then brought the girl to Karachi, leading her to believe he was taking her back to her mother. Instead he put her in a brothel—”
Meena inhaled sharply. She was still in elementary school. Could she know what a brothel was? I wondered.
“—where the police picked her up eight months ago,” Faisah said, completing her story.
“So what happens to her now?” I asked.
“I’ll learn more when we return to the jail tomorrow. The lawyers say it won’t take long to get her out of jail because she’s being held illegally. But will her family take her back? Now that she is no longer a virgin, who will marry her?”
“It’s outrageous how those girls are treated,” Ammi said. I thought she was hoping her comment would bring the chapter to a close. I could tell she was uncomfortable with this discussion, especially in front of Meena and Amir. But Faisah continued.
“And this is just one of the stories,” she said as if she were ready to tell another one. “The legal aid lawyers really need more students to interview these girls.”
“Perhaps one of our neighbors could take the girl in as a nanny until her mother gets here,” Ammi said to us, but I could read her mind: They might think such a girl too risky to have in their homes. Too tempting to their husbands and sons.
I interrupted.
“I want to go with you to the jail,” I said, touching Faisah’s arm and turning to Ammi. “Can we both go?”
We knew they would let us go. After dinner Faisah and I had talked about it. When have our parents denied us anything? Someone tapped on the door to our room. When I opened it, I saw Abbu’s face, solemn, as I knew it would be.
Here it comes, I thought.
Abbu handed a pile of old clothes to Faisah.
“Your mother and I have discussed the matter,” he said, “and we think that since you two have such good intentions, and will be in a group, and with each other, you should have our permission to go to Central Prison. Your mother collected these clothes for you to take to the women there.”
“Thank you, Abbu,” we said and pulled him into the room to give him a hug.
“Tell Ammi not to worry. I’ll take care of my little sister.”
After Abbu left, Faisah rustled through the plastic bags that covered the floor of our closet.
“I wish I could wear my new Levis,” she said.
“Ever since you bobbed your hair, you certainly pay more attention to fashion.”
“I like the casual look,” she said.
“If you wear Levis, Ammi will never let you leave the house.” Ammi did not want her daughters becoming, as she put it, “all European all the time.”
“I’m just kidding, Ujala. Honestly, sometimes you are so serious! Professor Daniel told us to dress like lawyers, and as chair of the Legal Advocacy Committee, I do have to look the part.” Faisah flaunted her title and the navy blue suit that Anna, our housekeeper, had made for her. “How do I look?”
“Very proper, Madam Attorney.”
I wore a black muslin shalwar kameez and carried a cloth bag over my shoulder. In the mirror we approved of the modern women we saw. Then we clapped our hands three times over our heads and shook our ankles like dancing girls, as we had done many times as children. We were happy to be playing together again.
Karachi Central was notorious. Built in the 1890s to hold one thousand prisoners, the jail’s population then was close to five thousand. Fewer than five hundred prisoners were female, twelve of whom were on death row, ten for killing their husbands.
We met the professor and three law students at the office of the jail matron. I remember it as a hot, humid day. The lady jailer, wrapped entirely in green cloth, peered at us from behind her big, round sunglasses. She moved as little as possible; only her lips had any life in them. As she spoke, they seemed to thicken and inch forward like two slugs. Seated at a metal desk, her body appeared to tower over it, her girth marking her as a lifelong seated functionary.
“You can take those clothes inside. Give them to these girls to carry.” She lifted one shoulder and cast her glance like a fishhook that landed on two women standing by the office door. The women did not look up.
“Could we speak with them, please?” Faisah asked rather boldly, I thought.
>
“As you wish. Ask them anything. Just ask them how they are treated.” The lady jailer’s confidence spread across her face. “We have nothing to hide.”
“How is it for you here in the prison?” Faisah lowered her voice to question them. “Do you have enough to eat? Do they treat you well?”
The women nodded in unison.
“Answer them,” the lady jailer ordered, without looking up from her paperwork. She leaned onto her elbows, her arms hidden in the folds of green.
My Sisters Made of Light Page 18
