Gulbahar was enjoying the sensual fingering of the chenille’s softness when the door was aggressively thrown open.
‘What do you think of this, Laila?’ She held up the roll, her head still leaning over the trunk.
Stony silence greeted her question. Raising her head, Gulbahar’s smile fled at the tight mask of her husband’s face.
‘Haider-ji?’ she stammered, immediately sensing that something was terribly wrong.
‘You have failed me, Gulbahar!’ The granite-laden words pelted her from across the room.
Her heart plummeting, Gulbahar dully croaked, ‘I don’t understand, Haider-ji?’
‘Where’s Laila?’
‘Laila?’ She winced at the cutting tone, frowning. ‘I … I think she’s in her room. Why?’
With a bitter male grunt he strode out of the room.
Gulbahar dropped the roll in the steel case and slamming the lid down ran after her husband. He had already crossed the courtyard; she followed him to the first floor and then went straight to her daughter’s room, staring in puzzlement at the empty bedroom. When she returned downstairs, she found Laila standing by the fountain spring hurriedly winding her hair up into a knot. A long linen scarf was draped over her shoulders.
‘Where were you, Laila?’
‘I … I …’ Laila’s lowered head added to Gulbahar’s confusion.
‘Laila?’ she demanded, voice rising. ‘Your father just asked if I knew where you were?’
To Gulbahar’s dismay, Laila paled and a frightened, childlike look scuttled across her face.
‘Laila, what’s going on?’ Gulbahar asked, fear clutching hold of her. ‘What did your father mean when he said that I have failed him?’
Under the moonlight Laila stared at the two little brown sparrows lightly hopping on the necks of the earthenware plant pots. Gulbahar shook her by the arm. Mother and daughter warily eyed each other, their heartbeats quickening as they heard Haider’s steps thudding down the stairs.
Both froze.
Haider’s eyes lightly skimmed over their heads and then he looked beyond into space, icily addressing his daughter.
‘Laila, kindly inform your mother where you were and with whom this evening?’
In reply Laila’s head hung in shame. Haider hastened away in the direction of his office, unable to look at his daughter.
‘Laila!’ Gulbahar asked, bewildered, her eyes on her husband’s departing figure. Laila escaped, snatching her hand from her mother’s grasp. In her room upstairs, she locked herself in, cheeks throbbing with shame. Her father had seen her with Jubail! If only the ground would open up and gulp her down whole.
Panting, Gulbahar stood outside her daughter’s room, her small fist thudding on the wooden door. Then she drew back, the mist clearing in her head and eyes widening in horror. Her heart squeezed. What had her daughter done that merited her locking herself away in shame? And what was it that made it impossible for her Haider-ji to look at his daughter or to utter the words, as if they would soil his mouth?
Resigned to her fate, Gulbahar waited in her room for her husband. She didn’t know what time he returned, but he was up before her and studiously avoided her eyes.
‘Gulbahar, prepare for your daughter’s wedding!’ was his morning greeting. ‘Forget six months, now it’s in six weeks’ time,’ he coldly instructed, leaving his wife breathless and panicking.
*
Ali was summoned to Haider’s office. His master didn’t honour his trusted male companion with eye contact, questions or a smile this morning. Instead his gaze remained fixed on the leather top of his desk. In two minutes he had scrawled a note in perfect Nastaliq Urdu. Nervously, Ali waited.
‘This is for the potter.’ Haider held out the note, his face averted.
Clutching the folded, crispy bond paper, Ali hurried to exit.
Away from the hevali, and with a pounding heart, Ali couldn’t resist sneaking a look at the content of the note. The three cursive lines merely informed the potter that his eldest son’s services were no longer required at the hevali and that he should present himself in the office to meet the landlord.
With only two living rooms cum bedrooms, a tiny kitchen annexed to a small corner of the veranda, and the top half of the outside wall knocked down by a camel and its load of Afghan rugs and Balochi dhurries, the potter’s small courtyard was cluttered with stacks of clay cooking pots and dough basins. The glazed ones were left to dry on the sunny rooftop terrace.
The potter’s clay-encrusted wheel, the central feature of the house, took up a large portion of the courtyard. His wiry body stooped over the wheel, the potter had spent decades in that spot, moulding the clay dough into various kitchen items; from water pitchers and round-bellied milk churning pots to dainty glazed tea bowls. His wife, after hurriedly dispensing with the early-morning household chores, started on the painting, glazing and the selling of the pots. Most fellow villagers applauded the pair for their hard, honest work and rewarded them by buying all their everyday crockery from them rather than from the shops in the nearest town.
The potter painstakingly worked at the wheel to pay for his two sons’ city education. Jubail, with his university fees had required the most financial support. Master Haider had lately taken over paying for Jubail’s fees. Proud of his young protégé, he was happy to support someone from a humble background, who would one day enjoy a better life than his parents. What had pot-making done for the poor potter, his wife silently mourned? Simply destroyed his posture, prematurely aging him – at 47 he looked 75.
Jubail was taking his morning shower under the water pump when Ali entered with his head stiffly held at an angle. As Haider Sahib’s munshi, he enjoyed a significantly higher social standing than the potter in the village hierarchy.
Grim-faced, he handed the note to the potter’s youngest son and quickly withdrew, ignoring the potter’s wife’s eager call of salaam from the kitchen area. He was in no mood for a pleasant chit-chat with the family that had caused his master a terrible baesti, a loss of face.
The potter, baffled by the content of the letter from Master-ji, meekly handed it to Jubail. His wet hair dripping over his bare brown muscular shoulders, Jubail quickly scanned the three lines.
‘The master knows about us.’ The words tapped in his head, but outwardly he remained calm, loathing his father’s obsequious expression.
‘I don’t know why the master wants to see me, but I’ll go. And why does he say that they don’t need your services at the hevali, Jubail? Have they got a new stable boy?’
‘I guess you’ll find out soon enough when you see him,’ Jubail replied cryptically, nonchalantly running a comb through his wet hair. Nothing would stop fate, he shrugged, a smile tugging at his mouth.
*
Fifteen minutes later, the baffled potter stood timidly outside Master Haider’s office and was stiffly ushered inside by Ali. Master Haider’s gaze remained averted. The three lines of the note matched the brevity of his spoken words.
‘Your son has wounded us where it hurts the most – our izzat! He’s no longer welcome in our hevali or this village.’
‘Master-ji, why?’ the shocked potter squeaked.
But ‘Master-ji’ didn’t deign to reply; instead, he rose from his chair and signalled with his hand for the potter to leave. The potter sidled out of the room, his bent body sloped further under the weight of humiliation, and his gaunt brown face now a shade darker. Across the courtyard he caught Gulbahar’s hostile glance, her graceful body held tall.
Only that morning she had learned about Laila’s rendezvous with the potter’s son, having pulled it out of a guilt-ridden Begum. Seeing Hafiz, the potter, on their premises, was just too much for poor Gulbahar. Angrily, she climbed up the marble stairs to her daughter’s room. Laila sat on her bed listlessly staring at the floor, a woman’s magazine with Madonna’s face on the cover lying on her lap.
Gulbahar emulated her husband’s style. Like him, she was a
woman of few words and had clamped down the wild urge to strike her daughter. Instead, she flung three, short, clipped sentences at Laila.
‘I failed you as a mother! You failed me as a daughter! Let us both not fail your father!’ Laila sighed with relief; her mother wasn’t going to make a scene. It was not in her mother’s nature to throw tantrums like her Aunt Mehreen.
‘You were getting engaged to Master Zohaib,’ Gulbahar continued in her cool, enigmatic manner. ‘Your father and I have decided that we’ll opt for one ceremony – a wedding in six weeks’ time. That’s best all round under the circumstances. So a lot of work has to be done, and I need your help, Laila!’
Throat dry, Laila merely gaped at her mother.
‘Mother, no!’
Gulbahar was already at the door; her icy grey eyes lancing her daughter, colour flagged red in her cheekbones. ‘There’s no room for “no” after what you’ve done! The disgrace you’ve heaped upon our heads. A potter’s son! Meeting him in the dark? Have you no shame – no sharm? Has he touched you or defiled you?’ Laila vigorously shook her head. ‘Count yourself lucky that your father hasn’t blistered you with his tongue! You have escaped lightly, my shameless girl!’ Then she was gone, the door firmly shut.
Speechless, and recoiling from her mother’s harsh words, Laila curled her body into a ball of misery. Was she to obey her heart or her parents?
CHAPTER 4
Jubail
‘He has no right to tell us what to do! Who the hell does he think he is? Does he own everyone in this village?’ Jubail fumed, snarling at his father. The stricken potter blinked in disbelief at his son. Had their Jubail totally lost it, challenging the master – the laird of the village?
‘Yes, in truth … he does own the village – more than half of its land belongs to him! Half the villagers are his tenants,’ his mother bitterly reminded him, taken aback by her son’s revolt and arrogance. Mouth dry and round eyes eagerly scanning her son’s face for any telltale signs, she asked, ‘What did Master mean when he said that you have hurt us where it wounds the most?’
Her son’s answer was his lowered gaze.
‘Jubail!’ she screeched, wiping her sweat-beaded cheeks with her chador.
‘I’ve been out horse riding with Mistress Laila at night. That’s all!’ he defiantly threw back at her.
‘What!’ they both shouted.
‘So what!’ he taunted, body aggressively poised, angered by their gaping mouths.
Brazen-faced, he announced, grinning, ‘I want to marry Laila!’ shrivelling his parents on the spot.
‘My God!’ His mother cried shrilly, the first to clear her head and find her tongue. ‘Marry Mistress Laila? What heaven are you floating in? Are you insane, my lad!’ she shook her clay-coated fist at him, matching her husband’s incredulous stare.
Jubail’s artificial smile slipped away. Spirit dipping, he leaned heavily against the flaking plaster wall. If his parents reacted like this, then how would the master ever condone this marriage?
Moments later, hot rage ripping through him, he aggressively rounded on his parents.
‘Who says? And why can’t I marry Laila, Mother?’ A rebellious and rhetorical question, which his mother answered with her eloquent, piteous eyes.
‘Because, my arrogant son, look around you!’ his father stated simply, pointing to his potter’s wheel. ‘This is our humble world and Mistress Laila … Well, she belongs to another dunya – another planet!’
Hating them, their words and preconceptions, Jubail stormed out. Why did his humble roots threaten to stand between him and his personal happiness? Laila loved him. He was capable of offering her a better world than a potter’s wheel now that he had completed his university education. Did he as a human being not have a right to marry the person he wanted?
He ran to Begum’s quarters – probably their only ally. He recalled that in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet there was the nurse, Juliet’s confidante, who helped the lovers. He had mentally assigned Begum a similar role. Surely, loving Laila as she did, she would help them.
*
Begum was hosing down a thick layer of stubborn dust and dried leaves from her brick-lined courtyard when she caught sight of the potter’s ‘brat’. Resentment flaring through her body, Begum shot to her feet.
‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage already… Now you have the gall to show your face to us, you scoundrel?’
Face tightening, Jubail held his ground. ‘I want to see Laila, please!’ he pleaded with a determined look in his eyes.
‘Are you mad?’ Begum shrieked, throwing aside the gushing water hose and nearly wetting him with it. Striding up to him, she gave him a good telling-off. ‘Listen to me, you lovesick brat! Mistress Laila is getting married to Master Zohaib, not to you – a potter’s son! Master Zohaib is a landlord and from the same class. Can you not see that you’ve caused enough damage already! Leave my master’s family alone – you scoundrel!’
‘Don’t abuse me, Begum – please pass on this message.’ Hating her, Jubail persisted. ‘Just this once, please? The master has forbidden me from seeing her.’
‘Good, and so he should! You both made fools of me, and it’s all my fault!’
‘No, Begum, we did not! But do this – just once, Begum!’ Jubail beseeched, wooing her with his liquid, coal-dark eyes. Begum snatched her gaze away, knowing she was a glutton for people’s eyes, especially for her young mistress’s magical sapphires.
‘You are mad!’
Jubail turned to leave. ‘I know you’ll tell her. Six o’clock … behind the jamuni tree, please,’ he boldly instructed, leaving an outraged Begum standing with her mouth open, but convinced nevertheless.
*
Later in the afternoon, Begum tried to comfort her young mistress, as Laila wailed her heart out on her shoulder.
‘Begum, I can’t marry Master Zohaib; it’s Jubail I love!’
‘Oh, Mistress Laila! Shush!’ Begum paled. ‘What a terrible thing to say!’
‘But, Begum!’
‘Do you know how much you’ve hurt your parents already? If they hear you talking like this, what will they think?’ she hastened to advise her young mistress.
Begum would bitterly remember the next few moments for eternity, as her beautiful young mistress inched her way around and straight into her big, soft, melting heart. For Laila was Begum’s Achilles heel. And she invariably won and Begum invariably lost. This was no different from any other occasion.
That evening, Laila went to meet Jubail, smuggled out of the hevali by a loyal and loving Begum.
*
Begum was petrified; the courtyard clock had already struck ten and the night sky was forbiddingly dark, but no young mistress.
‘Are you still here, Begum?’ enquired a surprised Gulbahar coming down to the kitchen to check if the yoghurt mixture had set in the clay basin. Arslan loved his mother’s homemade yoghurt with its thick, pinkish, creamy skin on top. ‘Go home, my dear, your Ali will be waiting! You can finish cleaning the dal tomorrow,’ she kindly advised her housekeeper, blissfully unaware of the typhoon sweeping through Begum’s head.
Begum peered out of the courtyard. Any minute now her young mistress’s head should have popped in behind the kitchen door, winked at her and then disappeared.
And Mistress Gulbahar imagined her daughter fast asleep in her room.
Rage suffocated Begum. How could her young mistress betray her like this? Did she have no shame or sense? Staying out all night with a strange man and especially after what had happened. For the first time in her life anger and resentment clawed. Above all, she hated herself, the gullible old Begum who was exploited by her spoilt young mistress!
By midnight the hevali was in total silence. Mistress Gulbahar and Haider Sahib were in bed. Arslan had gone to stay at his Aunt Rani’s home to spend time with his cousin Saher. A stiff figure of misery, Begum stood in the middle of the courtyard, leaning on the cool marble basin of the fountain
.
Gently, she let herself out of the side door, but made sure that it was left slightly ajar so that her young mistress could sneak in without waking her parents.
Away from the hevali and under the moonlit sky, Begum’s desperate eyes sought two figures. But the landscape remained dismally flat. Listlessly waiting under the shadow of the large jamuni tree, Begum tucked her night shawl around her head, protecting herself against the cool breeze.
‘Please, Allah Pak, return our Laila safely to us and with her izzat intact!’ Begum begged of her almighty Allah Pak.
Finally, afraid of the dark shadows and the scuttling movement of a rattlesnake in the undergrowth around the tangles of brushwood, Begum gave up her vigil and hurried home.
As soon as she bolted the door, her husband leapt off his portable bed on the veranda, rushing across the courtyard, hand raised to strike her. Begum fearfully crouched against the wall as he gripped her arm.
‘I’ve been worried sick, Begum! I was about to go to the hevali to look for you! What time do you call this?’ He shook her hard, her shawl falling off.
‘Ali, please! Don’t shout,’ Begum cried, in tears. ‘Please, just go to the potter’s house and find out if his devil is at home? These children will kill us!’
‘What are you saying?’ Ali stiffened, eyes fearful.
‘Mistress Laila is not at home!’ she whimpered, looking up at the starry sky. Surely those stars were privy to the couple’s whereabouts, Begum wondered.
‘Where is she, then?’ he thundered, voice threaded with steel. Begum’s heart plummeted.
‘With Jubail … somewhere! I don’t know where!’
‘What?’ The look on his face would stay with her for life.
‘And do you know who’s to blame for this?’
Hysteria gripped Begum. ‘Yes, blame me. Ali, I am a stupid, gullible woman, who falls into Laila’s trap every time. I gave her the message from Jubail! I sneaked her out! Ali, if I am not stupid, I don’t know who is …?’ Begum wailed, recoiling from the horror smeared across her husband’s face.
Revolt Page 5
