My Sisters Made of Light

by Jacqueline St. Joan

  “Bilqis, Khanum, Taslima, and Chanda?” Rahima Mai repeated their names.

  Ujala was surprised she recalled them all. Rahima Mai knew their names, and in chronological order.

  “Yes . . . their mother, but more so, their older sister. Like you have become my baji, I became theirs.”

  Relatives and children swarmed the visiting room, filling it with aromas of curry, biryani, and dal. They spread cloths over concrete and ate with their fingers.

  Rahima Mai signaled Ujala, snapping her finger and pointing to the far wall. It had been weeks since Ujala and Faisah had talked.

  “Over there,” Ujala told Faisah. The sisters sat on their haunches in the corner. Faisah leaned her lower back against the wall.

  “We could have mounted a better defense under civil law than we can under Shariah,” Faisah said. She sounded worried. “We will need major Islamic legal experts to defeat these charges. But we will find them. Don’t worry.”

  But Ujala was not worried.

  “Where are Chanda and Khanum now?” she asked. “Are they OK?”

  “We know where Khanum is, but Chanda has disappeared.”

  Ujala realized that Faisah was not revealing exactly where the other women were. Rule number 1, she thought. Tell no one.

  “Could she be with the dancers?”

  “We don’t know, Baji. We don’t know.” Faisah shook her head. “But we need her testimony. Since Chanda accompanied Amir on the plane out of Chitral, she could testify about her rescue. But Baji, they may make her testify for the prosecution.”

  Ujala did not look surprised.

  “You know, Chanda’s face would be a compelling piece of evidence against them, no matter what words come out of her mouth,” said Ujala.

  “True.” Faisah’s fingertip probed the line of her scar as if searching for an exit. “Amir has people out looking for her. Don’t worry.” Faisah saw loss written on Baji’s face. Prison changes people, she thought. Something is changing with Baji.

  “I have been missing Amir and Meena,” Ujala said, thinking of the shared soul of her baby brother and sister, her son and her daughter, the boy, the girl, the man and woman they had become. She recalled them as toddlers, sitting in front of Ammi’s bookshelf—straight backs topped with thick heads of hair, each with a pudgy knee bent, one foot in the crotch of the diaper, the other foot pointing away. How straight Meena’s back was! She would pull the books down from the shelves and stack the smaller ones all around her until she was entirely encircled. Then she would wail because she couldn’t get out of the trap she had built for herself.

  Amir became studious, pouring over the open books and spending hours in his room at the mail-order computer he had built. And now, he’d become a man so like his father. In the Northwest, away from the habits of home, she thought she had seen in him what young women must see. She knew they would want him, would be jealous of his attention to others, and would wait for his small, telling gestures of affection. She could understand how a young woman would want to lay her head on his chest and inhale the scent of Amir.

  “Amir shouldn’t visit you, Baji,” Faisah said. “They could charge him as a coconspirator.”

  “I know. But ask Meena to come soon.”

  Faisah nodded. Worried that Ujala was sinking into depression, she changed the subject.

  “Baji, reports have been pouring in about honor crimes. We’re finally getting solid local documentation.” Faisah stopped rubbing her scar. It was a compulsive comfort she allowed herself, but it was distracting. She was determined to get it under control before the trial began.

  “At least something good has come of this,” said Ujala.

  “Oh, and protesters will be making an even bigger noise. This afternoon there is a rally outside Faisal Mosque. Jabril Kazzaz has agreed to attend, and a member of the Human Rights Commission will speak, and Yusuf, too.”

  “How are Jabril and Yusuf?” Ujala brightened at the thought of the two different men in her life—the aging saint and the Gen-Xer.

  “Well, Jabril is the same, of course, and Yusuf is angry,” Faisah said. “He may be able to help us gain support from some of the organizations that have been keeping their distance. He has the facts at his fingertips, but he makes no pretense of objectivity when it comes to the topic of honor crimes and you.”

  “What about you, Faisah? Are you speaking at the rally, too? After all, they did name the mosque after you, didn’t they?”

  Faisah forced a laugh at Uji’s bad joke about the landmark erected by Saudi King Faisal.

  “Yes, I will have my say,” Faisah said, and her voice was sad. She met her sister’s eyes. “But should I speak in public, Baji? Or do I look too much like a monster?”

  She blinked to soothe her eyeball—the salt was a bearable sting. Her good eye glistened, wetness clinging to the line of her lower lid. Then a tear formed as the thought of looking like a monster did its dirty work. The tear appeared, whole and guileless, without a consciousness of its own. It was the same tear she would cry if she stubbed her toe, or if she were a young child who wandered away, or if she recalled once losing her first mother, and now faced losing her second. The tear arose, fresh and solitary, until its twin appeared, forcing the first to take the fall. Then the second one slipped into the crevice of her squint and spread across the tiny lines, softening the corners of her eyes.

  “Of course you should show your face,” said Ujala. “A rally would not be a rally without you.” Seeing Faisah’s tears, she slowed her enthusiasm. “What are you afraid of?” she asked, stroking her sister’s cheek.

  “I don’t want to scare people away. They will be afraid that what happened to me might happen to them.” She lowered her voice. “On the other hand, I don’t want those who did this to me to keep me behind closed doors either.”

  “The two horns of a dilemma,” said Ujala, a line she often heard Faisah use. Faisah grinned.

  “I could just keep the bandage on.”

  “Oh, Faisah, forget about it. You’re just not that scary. Think of it like the Girl Guides—the mark on your face is a badge of honor you earned”

  “Honor,” Faisah said. “What does it mean? I’ve come to despise that word,” she said and her mouth began to harden. “OK. OK. I’ll do it. I’ll speak at the damn rally.”

  It was the first time Ujala ever heard her sister curse. Must be spending a lot of time with Lia, she thought.

  Ujala untied the cloth in the baskets Kulraj Singh had sent. Inside were chapati, spiced lentils and tomatoes, a jar of milk tea, and two pieces of dark chocolate. She tore off pieces of flatbread and stuffed each one into her mouth, chewing slowly, deliberately, as Faisah talked.

  “Jabril knows professors at the university who are willing to be our experts—to give an alternative interpretation of the Q’ran to the one the prosecution will present. The religious law on obedience, ta’ah, is untested in this context. But academics are suspect as witnesses—too secular in the eyes of the court. We need someone else.”

  “So our witnesses would say what is Islamic, what is anti-Islamic, and the state’s witnesses would do the same?”

  “I’m afraid so. It is extremely problematic, but that is how it is done.”

  Ujala understood at once. “And it all depends on the judge, of course?”

  “If you have a progressive judge, he’ll interpret the concept progressively; and if not, he won’t. We have law students trying to find the better interpretations from other court cases.”

  “To me, that is not what a court should be,” said Ujala. “Honor crimes are like slavery. Nobody quibbles over Q’ranic interpretations of slavery.”

  But, then again, she thought, ending slavery had been a political decision, hadn’t it? She turned her head to rest it on her hand, sitting cross-legged, her elbow on her knee. Faisah continued to parse their arguments.

  “We can argue that a person either has human rights or does not. The political leaders want it both ways—at the
U.N. the government claims to respect human rights, but at home they act like honor crimes are private matters—especially if the mullahs are involved.”

  Ujala sighed.

  “But how can they prove the assault charge against me when Chanda’s father was the one with the acid?”

  Suddenly Faisah saw her sister as a client—with the plainspoken questions of an intelligent client, but, as with clients, Faisah was becoming impatient.

  “You were the one with the gun, Baji,” she reminded her. “I told you to give it to the police when you first picked it up from that killer.” Faisah wanted to end the conversation. “Never mind. Leave the legal strategies to me.”

  But Ujala would not abandon her questions. “So I led Khanum astray? Is that it?” She squinted. “Isn’t there an exception to every rule, including the rule of wifely obedience—a woman is allowed to visit her own family without a husband’s consent.”

  “That’s right,” said Faisah. “It is arguable. Ta’ah is not a hard-and-fast rule, but one that must be considered in light of the circumstances. We need expert testimony to give the judges a hook to hang their hats on—if they are inclined to rule our way. If that is not what they want to do, then we are out of luck anyway.”

  Ujala saw Rahima Mai lifting her brow and tossing her chin in the direction of the door. It was the end of visiting hour. Faisah gathered her papers and picked up the basket.

  “It seems like whatever we try to discuss, we always end up talking politics,” Ujala said.

  “And it has always been so, Baji,” Faisah smiled, hugging her goodbye.

  “Your brains are beautiful, Faisah. I know you’ll find a way out of this for us.”

  “Inshallah,” Faisah whispered. “God willing.” But she was not so sure.

  13

  Islamabad, 1996

  Dominating the skyline was the Faisal Mosque, with its four minarets pointing with certainty to the promise of heaven. Set against loden pines, cedars, and palm bushes of the rolling Margalla Hills, the modernistic mosque bewilders—as if it were an eight-faceted diamond laid in an emerald, or a heavenly tent for one hundred thousand worshippers. A spaceship preparing for liftoff, or a giant bug trapped on its own back. Its front yard entombs the despised General Zia, who died in an exploding airplane, and people joke that the relics in the grave are not Zia’s at all, but the tailbone of an ass.

  The hundreds who gathered for the rally on the mosque’s lawn that day were only a peep of dissent in the body politic. When Faisah arrived at the demonstration, she hid along the side of the crowd, away from the stage, with her dupatta pulled across one side of her face. Meena introduced the speakers and each ascended the few steps to the platform, spoke for five minutes, and descended again. Jabril Kazzaz finished his comments and handed the microphone to Sister Nasreen Francis from the Peace and Justice Commission. Wearing the white veil made famous by Mother Teresa, the young nun looked up from her papers.

  “Whether legal or illegal, Baji Ujala’s actions to save those girls were just,” she said. “They were destined to live tortured lives. She is a model for all who seek justice. May God have mercy on Pakistan.”

  Sister Nasreen returned to her chair as the crowd politely pumped up and down the signs they had tacked onto sticks. Standing at the microphone with her fist in the air, her pregnant belly high and round, Meena roused the chanting, “Free Baji! Free Baji! No honor in honor crimes! No honor in honor crimes! Free Baji! Free Baji!” The crowd responded, loud and intense, as if the volume of their voices alone might make a difference in the social conditions they protested.

  Mynah birds with white-tipped feathers were feeding on seeds in the lawn. At a distance the gun barrels of a line of Kalashnikovs pointed into the sky. From beneath a cascading orange jacaranda, a group of thirty women in black burqas watched the protest from afar. Bearded men from Islamic University milled around two idling motorcycles. Several wore the green turbans of the Islamist political party. They looked hostile and seemed to be shouting at the protesters in front of the mosque. Yusuf watched them but could not hear exactly what they were saying. In his pocket he fingered the revolver Ujala gave him when he guarded her door at Nankana Sahib.

  Meena lifted her chin to Yusuf, signaling that he would speak next. He climbed the stairs and stood at the podium in a white caftan and skullcap. He riffled his notes and brought Ujala’s face to mind. Adjusting his glasses, he looked out over the crowd.

  “My statement today reflects jihad,” he began, “the struggle I have engaged in, as a Pakistani, as a Muslim, as a man. I come from an old family, from the hills above Karachi, where my grandfathers taught me. My father’s father built the first mosque of this century in his town. My mother’s father was from Lahore, a patron of art, education, and Q’ranic scholarship. From them I inherited a love of God and confidence in the word to express both new truths and old.

  “Eleven years ago I left this country to work in America as a journalist. But today in Pakistan I have found a story I cannot stop telling—one that was invisible to me when I lived here. It is the story of the suffering of women under the harsh rules of our society, an injustice that contrasts with the compassion of the Q’ran I learned at the tables of my grandfathers.

  “It is because I am a Muslim that I will tell these stories. To be a Muslim is to surrender to the will of God by living in such a way that one can always know what the will of God is. Then one can act on that will, even at the risk of losing one’s own freedom, or reputation, or even, one’s life. It is not hard to be a good Muslim when we have models of goodness such as Ujala Ehtisham—a teacher who has followed the path God directed her to. May the light of Allah bring peace to those who are persecuted.”

  Then there was a mysterious event that Faisah would try to describe later, but she would never succeed completely.

  From the sidelines she heard a commotion in the back of the crowd. A migration of crows began—tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of black wings silhouetted against the hazy sky. Magnificent, they raced from the void, fast, and with great intention, as if the kernels of their hearts might pop open. The crows swept by the crowd for many minutes, blackening the day, and the experience carried the people away to something they knew, something they needed to remember, something older and even larger than the courage it took for them to demonstrate their beliefs in public.

  The ground to the south of the mosque became a carpet of crazed, calling crows. Faisah stood under a tree so full of birds that it seemed to blacken and tilt forward from their accumulated weight. Only the sound of overhead jet planes drowned the birds’ complaints. Then, as quickly as the spectacle appeared and darkened the sky, the last bird sped by, and the mystery dissolved like an image on film.

  Faisah waited for the effect of the birds’ drama to subside before she mounted the platform. When she reached the top step, she tugged her veil down onto her shoulder and faced the crowd, leading with her chin. The air emptied of words, as her friends saw the extent of Faisah’s injuries. Over one eye she had placed a hospital-green patch fastened by an elastic cord tied around her head. She wore round, wire-rimmed sunglasses for protection. The scars on her cheek and neck were ribbons of flesh welded to her bones. Someone in the back of the crowd began a slow, rhythmic clapping. Others joined in one by one, but Faisah interrupted their nervous, ambivalent tribute. She could not bear the tentativeness of the crowd’s response. She did not want them to linger on her face.

  “Today in Islamabad,” she began, “in the shadow of God’s house, we are outraged by the crimes of violence committed against women in our country. Last year, here in Punjab alone, nine hundred women were murdered in so-called honor killings. In Sindh, in the first three months of this year, over a hundred were reported—that is one per day. For many women the pain of being female is so great that suicide is their only relief.”

  Faisah lowered her voice.

  “People of conscience must continue the work my Baji has begun—and
we must do it even if we are afraid. We must listen to our conscience, not to our fear. This is what we face.”

  At the mention of the word face, Faisah hesitated. With her good eye, she could see another crowd growing near the wild jacaranda across the park. She inhaled and continued. “And do not be frightened by what you face. This woman you are looking at is yourself. Yes, these scars are not mine alone; they were intended not only for me, but also for you. I was merely selected to receive them. We earn these scars together because we value our consciences more than our faces, our daughters more than our selves, freedom more than security.”

  For the first time, Faisah smiled as she spoke.