Revolt

by Shahraz, Qaisra

  ‘Such modesty, our Saher!’ he cajoled, eyes shining with affection. ‘Choose at least fifteen. Otherwise I’ll be very offended – I mean it, Saher!’

  ‘I can’t!’ Saher shook her head, horrified at the thought of all that gold touching her body.

  ‘Half of these sets I’m giving you in my role as a surrogate father, my dearest Saher. You know that your aunt and I absolutely adore you, and what better way to demonstrate our affection than with these sets.’ Saher gently sidled away from the table.

  ‘Please remember our pride, Saher. Everyone expects you to have a lot of gold jewellery as the daughter-in-law of a wealthy zemindar,’ he good-humouredly reminded her. ‘One set is unthinkable!’

  Saher cast an appealing glance at her mother, bringing Rani to her aid.

  ‘You are very generous, Brother Liaquat. Fifteen is too much! Please remember, there will be future occasions,’ she added.

  ‘OK! I’ll leave you women to it! I need to phone Ismail to confirm what time his plane is arriving on Wednesday.’

  CHAPTER 9

  The Surprise

  In her primary school, Daniela glanced at the wall clock, waiting for the morning break.

  ‘Sharon, can you manage here for the next fifteen minutes, please? I need to pop into Mrs Dixon’s room.’

  ‘Sure!’ The 22-year-old assistant teacher was listening to young Mandy reading from the picture book about the naughty dinosaur.

  ‘Thanks.’ Daniela swept her gaze over her class of 30 five-year-olds. Jonathan and Eric were still enjoying a good bout of giggles, dumping more jugs of water into the playing sand and making little wet craters. Rebecca’s dear little face, fringed by heavy, overgrown, brown curls was screwed up in deep concentration as she charcoaled a picture of her nana with a large red party hat. Jaswinder was thumbs and fingers, totally engrossed in working out her sums on the abacus. Ahmad and Chen were still excitedly tapping away at the computer keyboard, watching the different icons popping up on the monitor.

  Emily Dixon, the headmistress of the Church of England primary school, was on the phone when Daniela entered and smiling signalled her to sit in front of the desk.

  ‘Could I discuss something with you?’

  ‘What, now?’ Emily’s eyebrows arched. The morning teaching session had not ended.

  ‘Please. It’s urgent, Emily,’ Daniela earnestly appealed, as she perched on the edge of the leather armchair. The headmistress watched the young woman nervously pushing her hand through her short-cropped fair hair. ‘I need to take about three weeks off work – beginning literally from tomorrow!’

  ‘What!’ The headmistress’s mouth dropped open at this strange request – and right in the middle of a very hectic school term; they had just received notice of their Ofsted monitoring inspection.

  ‘Daniela, you can’t be serious, my dear. We’ve just had our half-term holidays.’ A thought struck her. ‘It’s not the inspection that you want to escape from?’

  ‘Of course not!’ A very conscientious teacher, Daniela was deeply offended. ‘I know it’s at a bad time, but I really do need to take time off.’

  ‘Why?’ Emily Dixon asked, now completely mystified.

  ‘For personal reasons – I’m sorry, I can’t discuss the details.’

  ‘But this is most irregular! Our school play, Daniela? You play the piano! And as the teacher governor you were going to report on the key stage literacy! On Friday you are booked for the IT training in Birmingham. There’s so much going on, Daniela.’

  ‘Please, it’s urgent … I need to save my marriage!’

  The headmistress was nonplussed. ‘I see! In that case, I’d better ring immediately for supply cover. Shall we try Sally?’

  ‘Oh, thank you! I would not have asked for leave if it was not urgent. Yes, Sally is excellent … The kids loved her story-telling.’

  A few hours later she was home, sorting out her clothes and hiding her suitcase carefully under the stairs.

  *

  Saher stood with the wardrobe door wide open, hand poised on the sleeveless cherry chiffon outfit. Sporting naked arms in front of her future father-in-law was out of the question. The warmth in her face made her slam the wardrobe door shut. That outfit was for her own private moments with Ismail. Arslan had called her gorgeous, but what would Ismail say?

  She smiled, pulling out her fiancé’s photograph from her diary to have a quick glance before leaving. She was late for work and her client, a feudal landlord she was representing today in court, expected the whole world to play to his tune. What was worse, he had begun crudely wooing her, unashamedly harping on about his single status in life, in front of his two male companions. Saher had abruptly dismissed his overtures with a cold smile. He was her client and she wasn’t cut out to be the wife of a feudal landlord. No, she was destined for a life abroad, fervently hoping that her Ismail would quickly find her a partnership with a law firm in Liverpool.

  In the bright beautifully landscaped central courtyard, eyes shaded by her sunglasses, Saher breathed in the scent of the rose bushes and the foliage on the tall potted plants soaking up the sun.

  ‘Come home early, Saher, there’s a lot to be done before Ismail’s arrival!’ her mother urged, calling from the dining room.

  ‘I will! Khuda Hafiz!’ Saher crossed the courtyard, letting the manservant respectfully escort her to her car through the hevali gates. Within a few yards the village road, winding through the fields of wheat and orange groves, had brutalised the car’s shiny body with a thick layer of dust. In a buoyant mood, Saher turned on the radio, listening to her favourite love song ‘Aja Soynaya’, a woman calling out to her lover to come home. The song also sadly reminded her that her days in Pakistan were numbered, leading her to speculate on what life in England had to offer her. Would she fit in or learn to adjust both to the icy cold climate and the British culture? Ismail had never properly talked about his city. She knew that she would really miss her village, especially her mother and car. How she longed to take all three with her.

  *

  Daniela stood patiently in the standby queue at Manchester Airport, her straw hat propped at an angle that hid almost two thirds of her face. From beneath the wide brim, her eyes urgently skimmed the faces of the people around her.

  Once checked in and clutching her boarding pass, Daniela excitedly headed for the departure lounge. Her heart stopped thumping only when she was in her seat and the plane was high up in the sky, her face buried in a glossy magazine, biding her time.

  The flight attendant was wheeling the food trolley down the aisle when she saw him rise from his seat. Adrenalin gushed through Daniela.

  ‘Hello, Ismail!’ she whispered, raising her face as he was about to pass. The man swivelled round, as if shot in the stomach. Daniela stared back, her throat, all of a sudden, parched. Eyes tightly closed, his hand clawed at the headrest of the seat in front of her.

  ‘You silly woman!’ he ground out under his breath, finding his tongue.

  Daniela’s head shot up in indignation.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ she croaked.

  ‘Pleased?’ he stammered, moving his head from side to side in disbelief. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done!’ he glared down into her face.

  Daniela blushed scarlet, embarrassed by the glance of the elderly Pakistani woman sitting beside her. The flight attendant, too, had heard everything.

  ‘The lady needs to pass, Ismail, please move aside!’ she coldly instructed in her best public school tone, ready to demolish him, colour flooding into her cheeks.

  The toilet was forgotten as Ismail’s world swayed before him. Returning to his seat, he told himself it had to be a nightmare. Daniela couldn’t possibly be on the plane! He looked back down the aisle, just to check that he was not dreaming! Daniela’s cold stare, ten rows back, sent the shivers through him.

  ‘What’s wrong, Ismail?’ she accused, her green eyes bright with condemnation, now standing in the aisle beside
him.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he mimicked, livid. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done, you fool!’

  ‘Ismail!’ Colour drained from Daniela’s cheeks.

  ‘Go and sit down! And don’t make a scene!’ he hissed under his breath, eyes averted from the man coming down the aisle.

  Seething, Daniela returned to her seat. It was an overnight journey and she had anticipated the sharing of laughter and jokes, enthusiastic discussions about Pakistan, but this? What had she done? All she had wanted to do was to surprise him – to go to Pakistan.

  Her heart sank, cheeks burning. What was the matter with him? She had managed to get leave, granted under such difficult circumstances, so that she could meet his parents. And he, the beast, wasn’t even pleased that she was going with him.

  Daniela was attacked by insecurity again. She knew for sure that Ismail loved her passionately, yet he always shied away from talking about his family in Pakistan, not even letting her say ‘hello’ to them on the telephone. When she had once suggested meeting them in Pakistan he had laughed away the idea, offering her platitudes that she would be totally out of place in that society, as a goorie, a white woman in a different culture. To prove him wrong had thus become her mission.

  She felt she owed it to him and especially to their future children, wanting them to be proud of their two different heritages. She could tell intuitively that he came from a wealthy background. She was always asking her young Pakistani pupils and their parents about Pakistan, wistfully listening to their enthusiastic stories and letting her imagination wander away to the world of her husband’s homeland. She loved wearing shalwar kameez suits and envied the women who had received them as presents from Pakistan – she had received none.

  As she imagined her mother-in-law refurbishing her wardrobe in the local Pakistani style, as befitting the daughter-in-law of a wealthy landlord, it didn’t occur to her that they might not even know of her existence.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Evil Shadow

  On the same day in Gulistan, there was chaos in the sweetmaker’s household; unexpected guests had turned up late in the afternoon. Two separate families, in fact, and neither had planned to arrive on the same day, nor informed their unsuspecting hosts. Now, both the hosts and the guests ardently wished that they had. Everyone’s embarrassment was clumsily apparent for all to see. As hosts, Jennat Bibi and her daughter-in-law Faiza nervously battled to stitch on brave faces. With steely smiles they scurried around offering hospitality, starting off with carting in a crate of bottled soft drinks. Indeed it turned out to be a hectic time for the women and their housemaid, as they shopped, cooked and entertained the guests including preparing the smoking hookah pipes for the two elder male relatives with small twists of fresh tobacco.

  Faiza’s nightmare started in the kitchen whilst making a stack of chappatis. She froze, leaning against the worktop, tightening her pelvic floor muscles to stop the uterine fluid gushing out, her eye on the eighteenth chappati burning on the flat-topped pan.

  ‘Oh, Allah Pak,’ she groaned as a sudden spasm hit her abdomen. Panic gripped her. She was four months’ pregnant, therefore she shouldn’t be menstruating.

  Nobody else was in the kitchen; her mother-in-law was animatedly entertaining the guests after preparing the pudding of semolina halwa, whilst the maid had been despatched to sort out all the bedding for the guests in the back storeroom. Switching off the stove burner and plucking the charred chappati from the tava pan, Faiza sidled out of the kitchen to get to the ghusl khanah. Unfortunately, the bathroom was on the other side of the house and so she had to pass the two lively elderly men under the veranda, happily taking turns at the hookah pipe and sharing jokes with her father-in-law, Javaid.

  Her soaking shalwar was now sticking uncomfortably to the inside of her thighs with the amniotic fluid trickling down to her ankles. She nearly fainted at the thought: ‘What if the two men see my blood-stained garments?’ Head lowered, she nimbly crossed the courtyard, passing the two middle-aged women guests and their three grandchildren, with Jennat Bibi sitting on a cane chair happily entertaining them with village stories about Master Haider’s son’s homecoming and of poor Laila, the landlord’s daughter, who had eloped and was now back in the village.

  ‘Has she no pride – to keep coming back to be treated like that? Imagine having a door slammed shut in your face by your family and in front of everyone. The poor girl, how she must have felt!’ commiserated the younger of the two women guests. Her own daughter had married for love, so she felt an obligation to show some sympathy with that poor woman’s fate.

  ‘And guess what – there’s a big wedding coming up. Mistress Mehreen’s son, Ismail, is coming back from England to marry Saher – the lawyer – Mistress Rani’s daughter.’

  The two men were still heatedly discussing Pakistani politics and the recent elections. ‘Will the Karachi situation get better? Will this new government be at the beck and call of America? Let’s see who leads our country, Obama or our new politicians? Will the “load shedding” matter be urgently dealt with by the new party? My poor son’s shoe factory has come to a standstill with all the electric cuts!’ ranted the younger of the two men.

  Faiza hurried passed them, draping her long shawl around her down to her ankles. In the bathroom, her hand feverishly prised open the trouser’s nallah string, nervously peering down at her navel area. Feeling faint, she closed her eyes, leaning against the tiled wall. It was what she had feared – she was losing her baby!

  ‘Oh, God help me!’ she cried, squatting down on the toilet bowl, letting nature take over. After five years – Allah Pak couldn’t be so unjust!

  Remembering the guests, she hurriedly sluiced her legs and changed into a pair of old trousers hanging on the door hook. Head lowered, Faiza returned to the kitchen. After making the last two chappatis, she whispered into her mother-in-law’s ear that she wanted to rest.

  ‘Of course, my dear, go and lie down.’ Jennat Bibi affectionately ushered her out of the kitchen, her tender caring look cutting Faiza to her soul. ‘Oh, God, she doesn’t know and she wants the baby so badly!’

  Unobtrusively Faiza sneaked to her bedroom at the back of the house. Laying an extra layer of quilt padding in the middle of the bed and a sanitary towel wedged between her thighs, Faiza waited; she was still bleeding. An hour later her husband, Anwar, returned from their sweet shop – Faiza pretended to be asleep.

  *

  When Faiza next woke up, she saw the stars in the dark night winking down at them through the steel bars of the window overlooking the veranda. As it was summer three of the guests had wanted to sleep in the open courtyard on portable charpoys to enjoy the cool night breeze. The eldest male guest leaning over the side of the portable bed was still puffing away on his hookah pipe, the water in the steel base making a gurgling noise in the silence of the night. The other man, on his charpoy, was happily snoring away.

  At about three o’clock in the night, her abdomen somersaulted into a strong contraction. Her high-pitched scream shattered the silence of the night, startling everyone in the house awake. The older of the male guests, who had only just dozed off, sat bolt upright, spluttering and coughing, knocking down the hookah pipe.

  Faiza clamped her hand on her mouth, but too late. Lights were hurriedly switched on and the running of feet could be heard throughout the house. Her husband, lying beside her, leapt up in alarm.

  The first person to appear at her bedside was Jennat Bibi, concern etched across her features. Her father-in-law, Javaid, peered into the semi-dark room over his wife’s shoulder. He switched on the light and everyone stared at Faiza’s sweat-beaded face and stooped body.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ Jennat Bibi’s voice trembled with fear. Faiza shook her head, discreetly pointing to her lower abdomen.

  Jennat Bibi’s mouth dropped open, eyes widening in horror. Then collecting her wits about her, she signalled for her son and husband to leave the room. Jennat Bibi�
�s pointed gaze fell on Faiza’s pain-racked face as she gingerly lifted the quilt off Faiza’s body and immediately dropped it, stumbling away from the bed, one hand clasping the back of her head and the other at her throat. Faiza, doubling over in pain, howled out another piercing scream.

  Through clenched teeth, Jennat Bibi called her son, anxiously waiting in the adjoining dressing room, to hurry and get the village dhai. Jennat Bibi, perched on one corner of the bed, first rocked herself backwards and forwards as if in a trance, then reaching out to Faiza gently began to massage her shoulders and wept as the reality of the situation hit her. Hopes dashed; there would be no grandchild. As her pain subsided, Faiza, too, sobbed – for her mother-in-law’s personal loss.

  When Birkat Bibi, the midwife arrived, Faiza was lying in Jennat Bibi’s arms, eyes closed and body weakened by the uterine contractions. Birkat Bibi began to work quickly, discreetly expressing her sorrow at this misfortune. Normally she found her role as the local midwife and nurse very rewarding, particularly when she delivered healthy, bouncing baby boys resulting in her payment being amply topped up by lots of other presents. On sad occasions like this, however, she kept a very low profile, and felt guilty at receiving any payment for her services to the woman miscarrying or delivering a stillborn child. Like everybody else in the village, Birkat Bibi knew how important the arrival of this baby had been for the sweetmaker’s family.

  With Faiza refreshed and resting in clean clothes in another bed, Birkat Bibi accepted some tea and halwa. It was then that she ventured to ask Jennat Bibi as to why Faiza had lost her baby? Hovering listlessly in the room, Jennat Bibi’s head shot up at Birkat Bibi’s words, struck by sudden pain.

  ‘Salma! That charail, that witch! It’s her evil shadow! She’s been after my Faiza since the day she learned of her pregnancy.’