“They say that a lion knows danger like an old friend. And a lion with one eye is to be respected—she’s tattered and a little crazy.”
As Faisah grinned and Meena reached for her, the protesters broke into applause. All at once a frightening popping sound split the crowd into pieces, as people ducked and hurried apart.
If God had been watching from the minaret He would have seen one body of people explode into pieces, winging apart, a churning mix of movement and emotion. He would have seen people yelling and running to avoid a spray of bullets.
But there was no spray of bullets. There was only one shot.
Meena! Not Meena!
If it was intended for Faisah, it missed its mark. A single, hot bullet drove into Meena’s chest, and, standing next to her, Faisah felt the impact, too. Meena felt a numbing burn that tunneled in. Faisah pulled her down to the platform. Meena gasped for air as her quiet eyes surveyed the blood pooling beneath her. It was as if her eyes were untouched by the shock wave that rocked her body. Faisah felt the heat of Meena’s blood saturating her clothes, and she knew what it meant.
She and Sister Nasreen curled themselves around and over Meena, covering her with their bodies. They had nowhere to go, nowhere to run.
The rustling and calling of people to each other continued in the lower ranges of sound. The high-pitched war cry of police sirens came closer and closer. The pile of people protecting Meena moved aside so that Yusuf could lift Meena carefully and carry her from the platform.
Armored vehicles circled a patch of grass. Uniformed police streamed out of the vans and lined the street between the protesters and the students. Every other policeman pointed his weapon in the opposite direction, half at the protesters, half at the students. Several officers began a foot-chase around the mosque, searching for the shooter. Others followed on motorcycles, and their sirens split the air. Meena lay on the grass with her head in Faisah’s lap while Yusuf scanned the crowd for an ambulance. Meena groaned as she bled.
“I’m here, Meena,” Faisah spoke through her tears. She could see the entrance wound where Meena’s clothes were ripped apart. Her flesh was seared, a gash, open like a pocket. Meena swooned with pain. “The ambulance is coming. The hospital is nearby. Hold on. Breathe with me. Look at my face.”
Meena’s eyes gripped Faisah’s, who inhaled Meena’s desperation, as if she were drawing out the remaining breath from her sister’s lungs. Meena tried to follow Faisah’s lead, but she could only cough and cough.
“Here,” Faisah said. “Watch me again. Just a little breath, like this.” She pinched Meena’s cheek. Meena rested her eyes on Faisah’s, trying to puff her breath. Her lips stuck together and a teaspoon of air slipped through one corner of her mouth. “Stay with me, Meena. Oh, stay with me.”
“Ammi,” Meena whimpered, staring at the blazing jacaranda.
“Here they come!” shouted Yusuf, waving his arms above the crowd to the hospital truck. Two porters lifted Meena onto a gurney.
“Call Zeshan,” Faisah whispered to Yusuf as she climbed into the truck, “and Abbu and Amir.”
Faisah looked where Meena had been staring. In a flash under the jacaranda, she imagined she saw Nafeesa there—a silver-haired woman in black with a scar at her hairline. Faisah froze in that moment, utter sadness filling every pore for the five motherless children that they were, for all the motherless children everywhere.
“How has the world come to this, Ammi?” she asked.
Nafeesa watched and whispered, “It has always been so.”
Faisah snapped out of it.
“And tell Baji,” she said to Yusuf. “You have to tell Baji.”
The ambulance sped along the brick wall lining Airport Road, past rows of simple signs extended like open hands. Each sign bore one of the ninety-nine names of Allah. Faisah read them to Meena as they flew by: Allah, the Merciful. The Wise One. The Only One. The One Who Brings Good News. The One You Can Expect Something From. God of Our Ancestors. The Giver. The Omnipotent. The Greatest One. The Innocent One. The Righteous One. The Alpha and the Omega. The Inner and the Outer. God of the Orphan. One Who Talks About God. The Friend. The Just. The All-Seeing. The Protector . . .
Meena died at midnight. Minutes later, surgeons separated her baby from her womb. Meena’s final act in this world was to give birth to a daughter.
“You are Nafeesa Zeshan,” Zeshan said to the infant when he first held her. “Welcome to the world and bid goodbye to your mother.” He curled the squalling baby into Meena’s neck, between her cheek and her shoulder. “She has given her life for you, a martyr for all the daughters of Pakistan.”
Then Zeshan placed his face next to his child and wept like a baby. It seemed the room was filled with the pain of birth, the pain of death, and of all of the suffering of life between the two, all the pain of Pakistan.
“Give her to me,” Abida said, placing little Nafeesa into the arms of Kulraj Singh.
Zeshan permitted Meena’s body to be transported from Islamabad to Nankana Sahib for ceremonies and burial, and the family entered the formal mourning period.
“The best thing for you and Yusuf to do,” Faisah told Lia, “is to keep the radio station operating and to keep visiting Baji. I can take care of things here at home. We washed and wrapped Ammi’s body ourselves so long ago. Maybe it will come back to me.”
How odd, Faisah thought, that the house is full of men—this house that has been dominated by women. I’m the only daughter at home now. Meena dead, Ujala in prison, Reshma gone for so long, and so far away in Karachi. I do not want anyone to call Reshma, to tell her what has happened. It is extremists like Reshma and Muhammad who killed Meena. I will rely on Abida and the village women to help me remember the laws on preparing Meena’s body. But we are short of Muslim hands for this work. Zeshan and Abida can shroud her, but, as non-Muslims, Lia and Abbu cannot.
Zeshan laid his wife’s body down on the bed of her childhood. Her chest and abdominal wounds were bandaged to keep the blood inside her body, as required. Abida brought pitchers of water and large washing bowls. They filled the room with fresh-cut eucalyptus leaves and rose petals. Zeshan held his sleeping baby in his arms and stood by while the women worked.
“Bismillah, In the name of Allah,” they prayed. Abida placed a bowl under Meena’s head while Faisah supported her neck and squeezed shampoo onto the black mass of Meena’s hair.
“Everyone shall taste death,” Zeshan prayed aloud, reciting the scriptures. “The life of this world is only the enjoyment of deception. No one knows when and where she will die, or knows how. May God forgive her sins and grant her eternal happiness in paradise.”
The fragrance of lavender tickled Faisah’s nostrils as she divided Meena’s hair into sections and squeezed the lather through. As she worked, she could see her father embracing someone outside the open door. Then Reshma walked into the room. She carried white cloths folded across her arms.
“Baji! You have come,” said Faisah, wrapping her arms around her oldest sister. Relieved of the duty she did not want, she collapsed onto the bed next to Meena. Forgiveness suffused her soul. She cried out loud and lay her head down on Meena’s breasts.
Reshma wailed, too. Meena had been hers, a gift Ammi left behind for her. She looked up from where Faisah lay and confessed to Kulraj Singh.
“I abandoned Meena,” she said. “Ammi left Meena in my care, and I went on with my own life without her. I did not even give my blessing to her on her wedding day.” Her voice was desolate.
“Now you are with us, now you are here. You can bless her baby,” he said.
Reshma felt her father’s wisdom. He always knew that this terrible day might come and had prepared by a lifetime of surrendering his broken heart.
“You are more of a Muslim than I,” she said.
She joined the ritual and dried Meena’s body with pure cloth, all the while quoting the Q’ran. Her voice comforted them. It was a mother’s voice telling a story to a young child.<
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“Little Meena,” she began, “Do you know what the angels say when Death takes the life of a righteous one like you? They say, ‘Enter paradise because of the good deeds that you did during your life.’ Right now, with faces like a thousand suns, the angels are coming for you from heaven with the perfume of paradise. See them there, so far away? See them coming now?”
Kulraj Singh stood outside the open door, listening, watching Reshma move around Meena’s bed. She looks so much like Nafeesa, he thought. Faisah and Abida followed Reshma’s lead. They had had no words for their feelings, and now they were grateful for the poetry of the scriptures.
“Then the Angel of Death comes and sits at your head, Meena. He will coax you, ‘O good soul, come out to forgiveness and acceptance from Allah.’ Your soul will appear as a tear, and the angel will seize it right then. Then the other angels will shroud your soul, as we do your body, but they wrap you, not in cotton, but in the shroud of paradise, perfumed with the sweetness of night jasmine and honeysuckle.
“Then, my baby Meena, then they take your sweet-smelling soul up to paradise, and whenever they pass by a group of other angels who ask, ‘Who is this good soul?’ your angels will reply, ‘This is Meena, Mother of Nafeesa, the Daughter She Bore in Death,’ and ‘This is Meena, Daughter of Nafeesa Who Birthed Only Strong Children and Taught Them Well and Left Life Too Soon,’ and ‘This is Meena, Wife of Zeshan Who Loved Her For a Short Time But Loved Her Well,’ and ‘This is Meena, Daughter of the Dear and Holy Kulraj Singh,’ and ‘This is Meena, the Treasure of Her Sisters, Faisah and Ujala and Reshma, and the Twin Soul of her Brother, Amir,’ and ‘This is Meena, the Voice of Many Women Who Has Given Her Life Like a Martyr Promised Paradise.’
“Meena, when you reach the first heaven, Allah will ask, ‘Who are you?’ and you will reply, ‘I am my own good deeds.’ And Allah will say, ‘Record the book of my daughter in the highest place, spread out carpets for her, clothe her in the splendor of heaven, and open the gates of paradise.’ Rejoice in these garments and perfumes, Meena,” Reshma said, as they finished the third round of cleansing, “for this is the day which you have been promised.”
Meena’s hair was shining, blotted by the soft hands of her sisters. It was damp and parted in three pieces—each one impeccably braided and placed behind her back, as is the custom.
“Meena?” Ujala asked when Yusuf told her. Her voice was almost soundless, less than a whisper. She shook her head and looked into his eyes. Yusuf held her gaze and nodded. Ujala looked down. Yusuf wanted to hold her, to console her, but he could not.
There will never again be a moment like this one, he swore to himself, when I am unable to touch her, to console her. I will make her my wife. Inshallah. God willing.
Ujala sighed.
“Oh no. Not Meena. Not Meena.” Her heartache was doubled by her separation from the family. They were all in Nankana Sahib, and she was behind prison walls.
Rahima Mai, too, was at a loss to comfort Ujala. She could put in a requistion for her temporary release for the funeral, but she knew that the central office was watching her. Dare she risk making such an unprecedented request?
“Thank God for Kazzaz,” she whispered when word came over the phone that, with Jabril Kazzaz’s intervention, the Court permitted Ujala twenty-four hours to offer dua, supplication prayers for Meena.
“You can go for one day,” Rahima Mai told Ujala, standing at the door of her cell. She looked through the bars into Ujala’s eyes, wanting some recognition, some contact, some light. But Ujala’s eyes only looked inward, as her soul swam in the dark.
Jabril met Ujala at the prison and they rode the bus to Nankana Sahib with a female guard, as required by the Court and arranged by Rahima Mai.
The eyes of Ujala and of Jabril Kazzaz held one unspeakable pain.
“I don’t understand how it can be such a glorious day,” Jabril said. They sat on the backseat of the bus, careful to keep an empty space between them.
“Yes,” said Ujala.
“It is hard to understand Allah’s will,” Jabril said. “—perhaps He is telling us that now Meena is in a heaven as beautiful as this day.”
Ujala’s voice was bitter.
“I take no solace that she may be in heaven, Jabril. You are a spiritual person. I am not.”
“Oh, no,” said Jabril. “It is the nearness of angels like you, like Meena, or your mother, that raises the spark of God on earth.” He dared to look at the starkness in Ujala’s face. He sighed. “My words sound hollow,” he admitted. “I am not such a spiritual person. I am more like a cave, echoing the sounds of someone else’s thunder.”
Ujala smiled at her friend in his long robe and trimmed beard. It comforted her to be with him and to be going home.
“I am eager to see the baby. And Reshma,” said Ujala.
“And I am eager to get you out of Adaila and out of Pakistan,” Jabril whispered. Ujala looked at him in surprise, and did not lower her voice.
“And where would I go? And who am I without my family and my country?”
Ujala’s questions dangled between them. She thought of the untouched dessert on the table that evening she had shared with Jabril Kazzaz beneath the neem tree. It seemed so long ago now, that day when she thought she and Jabril might have a future together. He seemed not to mind that their romance had become instead an uncomplicated friendship. They rode the rest of the way to Nankana Sahib in silence.
The guard with her pistol sat in the seat next to the bus door.
“We will follow Zeshan’s wishes,” Ujala said, resuming her role as mother of the family. They assembled under the neem tree in the courtyard. Kulraj Singh passed the tea and a plate of chapati to the others. He was fasting.
“But I want to go to the cemetery with Meena,” Faisah said. She looked at Reshma and whined. “Reshma says I cannot.”
“And I cannot either,” said Reshma. “Women are not permitted at a funeral. Only male relatives may carry her body.”
“Yes, only Muslim men may attend,” Kulraj Singh said in a neutral tone.
“Even in death, men control women,” said Faisah. “So who will carry her? We are just women and infidels.”
“I’ll go,” Amir said. “Zeshan and I are her relatives. We can go.”
“And, Jabril, you are like family to us,” said Ujala. “Will you carry Meena, too?” Jabril nodded. “What is most important is a peaceful burial for Meena,” said Ujala.
“The men will go for everyone. Yes, Baji?” Amir asked.
“Yes,” she said.
At sunrise Ujala and Faisah covered Meena’s shroud with rose petals. Then Zeshan, Amir, and Jabril lifted her from the bed onto a pallet. From beneath the neem tree, where Reshma fed Baby Nafeesa a bottle of boiled milk, Kulraj Singh and the women of his family watched the procession move down the tractor path and through the sunflower fields toward the peeling walls of the cemetery at the edge of Nankana Sahib. The people carried strings of tinsel to spread over her grave. The tinsel glinted in the light.
14
Nankana Sahib, 1996
The family’s grief did not stand at the door and close off the world. It was like water that seeped through the ceiling when it rained, or an apparition reflected in a mirror, or an insistent backbeat driving an unfamiliar tune.
In the shrine room, Kulraj Singh’s chanting would stop, as his hand froze on the harmonium. Instead, a memory of Meena glowed in his mind. There she was, running her fingers along the edge of her dupatta, moving it out of her way like a curtain of beads, as she squatted to light the stove. A moment later the music would start up again, and his voice hummed a tune.
Amir slipped into the driver’s seat and reached for the gearshift. Intending to push it from neutral to first gear, instead he saw his twin in the windshield, and threw the engine into reverse.
Faisah’s grief flashed like heat lightning and struck without thunder. At times it would dull her mind; at other times it shocked life back into her.
The pages of Reshma’s texts crinkled when she turned them, so coated were they with dried tears.
But the way that grief and Ujala met one another was like two old women stooped over by the grudges they had carried through the years. Grief would crow in the dark before dawn.
“Assalam aleikum,” Ujala said, “you stubborn old rooster. You always have to be the first to have your say. No wonder you never let anyone rest.”
Work became the mortar between the stepping-stones of their heartache. Around the family, a barrage of activity was raging. Pakistan was in an uproar.
Lia brought news into the kitchen at Nankana Sahib.
My Sisters Made of Light Page 27
