Revolt

by Shahraz, Qaisra

  ‘Liaquat-ji! Wake up! Our son is coming!’ Her husband stirred.

  ‘Mehreen! The Imam hasn’t even opened the mosque gates for the morning azan,’ Liaquat gruffly reminded her, peeping at the clock on the wall with one eye open, and turning on his side.

  ‘But you’ve to be at the airport in two hours’ time. Can I come with you?’ she appealed, excitement running through her voice.

  ‘Mehreen, you know very well that there will be no space in the car!’

  ‘No space for a mother?’ Mehreen exploded.

  ‘He’s coming home, Mehreen! Be reasonable!’ His voice hardened, fearful of a full-blown tantrum at this time of the morning. ‘Just think, you’ll see him in a few hours’ time. Your sister, Gulbahar, never goes to the airport.’

  ‘Stop comparing me to Gulbahar! I hate it when you do that. She doesn’t like aeroplanes! Well, I love them. And I want to watch the one with my son in it land!’

  ‘Now you are being childish, Mehreen. Remember that Arslan and his father are going, too.’

  ‘OK!’ Mehreen’s high-pitched voice didn’t bother her husband. Frustrated, a few minutes later, she poked him in the arm, but he simply ignored her, a smile on his face. Gulbahar was in his dream again.

  *

  Daniela savoured the adrenalin surging through her on hearing the pilot’s authoritative voice informing the passengers that the plane was due to land in half an hour’s time.

  ‘At last!’

  For so long, she had fantasised about visiting this land. A whole new world lay before her; meeting new people, hearing another language and learning about different customs. Over the bent head of the sleeping elderly fellow-passenger, she caught her first glimpse of the landscape below rapidly changing to a rich green carpet. Just then, her husband’s head turned – his look lanced her. She mutely stared back. What had she done to transform her husband into a beastly stranger?

  The plane shuddered and the wing flaps lowered in preparation for landing. As soon as it came to an abrupt stop, some over-zealous passengers scrambled to their feet to retrieve their luggage from the overhead compartments. Daniela panicked. Grabbing her handbag and box of duty-free chocolates, she reached her husband’s side.

  ‘Ismail. All I wanted was to give you a surprise!’

  ‘Yes, you’ve done that all right, you mad woman!’ Daniela paled. Ismail had never uttered an unkind word to her before.

  He had pushed ahead. Daniela did the same, smiling apologetically at two of the passengers letting her pass. Clutching tightly onto her hand luggage, she ran down the metal steps of the plane, ignoring the sudden blast of May heat attacking her bare legs as she attempted to keep up with her husband. Breathlessly, she hopped on the waiting bus, gripping the arm of an older gentleman. Seeing that it was an Englishwoman his expression was all sweet and saintly. Ismail’s eyes spat fire, as he stood behind her, urgently whispering in her ear.

  ‘Daniela, please,’ he pleaded, desperation now written all over his face. ‘I can’t take you home. Please forgive me – I will explain everything later. Just get on the very next plane back to England. You can’t meet my family yet.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Ismail!’ Daniela choked back her tears before being jostled against a bearded man as the bus came to a sudden halt outside the arrival hall. Her husband had already leapt off the bus. Horror-stricken, Daniela saw him disappear amidst a crowd of people.

  She merely nodded when the smiling immigration officer checked her passport, finding everything so surreal. Listlessly, she joined the large crowd of passengers in the baggage reclaim hall. Their prying, speculative gazes didn’t matter to her, knowing that she looked out of place with her white skin and bare legs, amidst the group of brown, newly-arrived Pakistanis, and wishing that she had either worn a long skirt or a pair of trousers.

  ‘Daniela!’ Ismail was by her side again. ‘It’s the wrong time, I tell you!’ He raised her chin.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ Daniela hissed. Tears were threatening to stream down her cheeks.

  ‘I’ll bring you myself next time – I promise. Just check into a hotel, my darling. Speak to the people at the information desk, they’ll guide you further … Have you got enough cash? I must go. They are waiting for me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My family!’

  ‘But I want to meet your family!’ Daniela wailed aloud, uncaring that people were looking at her with sharp interest. A goorie crying aloud at the airport! Why?

  ‘You can’t – not now!’ he stepped back, panicking.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because they don’t know you exist! Oh, God! There’s my cousin, Arslan, I must go!’

  And he was gone.

  ‘I don’t exist!’ Swaying, Daniela watched her luggage go round on the carousel. She pushed aside the eager porter expecting a fat tip. His jaw dropped. The woman had hauled her suitcase onto a trolley and was now wheeling it out of the hall.

  ‘Wow! What a woman!’ he announced to his fellow porter, his forehead shining with beaded sweat.

  ‘Well, she’s a goorie!’ was the other’s dismissive reply. ‘They are supposed to be sturdy women – not like some of “our” frail ones.’

  In the arrival lounge, Daniela spotted her husband with a young man. Rage stormed through her.

  ‘Ismail,’ she called. Other passengers stared at her. The man Ismail was hugging also turned.

  Hearing his wife, Ismail started to steer away his luggage trolley. ‘Come, Arslan, let’s go!’

  ‘But, Ismail, that woman is calling you!’ Arslan’s eyes were on the attractive Englishwoman, with her straw hat and a skirt that just reached above her knees, standing looking lost and out of place amidst the native Pakistanis.

  ‘What woman?’ Desperation paralysed Ismail.

  Arslan sprinted to Daniela’s side. She was whimpering her husband’s name. ‘Ismail!’

  Ismail felt faint, mouth drying as his father entered the arrival lounge. Pushing his trolley and summoning a smile to his face, Ismail reached his father.

  Liaquat was looking at Arslan and Daniela, a frown creasing his forehead as he hugged his son.

  ‘Who is Arslan speaking to?’

  ‘She’s only a woman tourist,’ Ismail jabbered. ‘Arslan is helping her in English. Let’s go and meet the others.’ He steered his trolley in the other direction, diverting his father’s attention.

  *

  Arslan stood in front of Daniela. ‘Can I help you, madam?’ Her streaming eyes were fixed on her beloved husband – deserting her in a foreign place amongst strangers.

  ‘I don’t know!’ Animal-like noises tore at her throat.

  ‘You called my cousin “Ismail”. Do you know him?’

  ‘He’s my husband,’ she cried. ‘And he’s abandoning me here!’

  Arslan’s mouth dropped open, face paling.

  ‘Am I so ugly or something?’

  ‘No, no!’ Arslan hastened to add, trying to regain his bearings. Ismail’s strange behaviour and his haste to be off now all made sense. ‘You don’t understand, madam,’ he coldly informed the Englishwoman.

  ‘Try me!’ she stammered, choking on her tears.

  Even though Arslan’s own head was spinning, he felt sorry for her. The full implication of his cousin’s actions hit him then. It was important that this woman was acquainted with the truth at once.

  ‘The problem is far worse,’ he began, realising that he was going to hurt her, but she had to understand the gravity of the situation. ‘Your husband has a fiancée waiting for him here in Pakistan. Our cousin, Saher! They are supposed to be getting married in three weeks’ time!’

  ‘What!’ Daniela’s body swayed against the trolley, her breathing shallow and the colour draining from her face.

  ‘What shall I do?’ Arslan debated fast, now also panicstricken. They were all waiting for him, but he couldn’t abandon this poor woman, especially as she happened to be Ismail’s wife.

  A volcano bu
rst through Daniela.

  ‘I’m his wife and expecting our first child! He told me to go to a hotel and catch the earliest flight back to Manchester. I only wanted to meet his family.’

  Arslan saw his father coming over, a speculative look gleaming in his eyes. He snatched the trolley from Daniela and began to steer it towards the exit. Decisions had to be made and fast.

  ‘Let’s move. My father is coming,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going to pretend that you are my guest,’ he quickly explained. ‘You must not tell anyone that you are Ismail’s wife. Understand?’

  Expecting the worst, Daniela nodded. Disconcerted, she stared back at the older man whose eyes coolly slid over her body, down to her bare calves.

  Haider had watched Arslan’s intimate exchange with the white woman; his head dipped close to the woman’s face had sent alarm bells ringing in Haider’s head.

  Striding to his son’s side, he demanded, ‘Who’s this woman, Arslan?’ the words coming out more harshly than he had intended, his eyes fixed on the woman’s tear-smeared face.

  ‘She’s a tourist, Father, from England. I know what you are thinking but she’s not from America – she has lost the address of the people she’s supposed to be visiting. I’m taking her to our home,’ Arslan explained, face taut.

  ‘What! Why?’

  Daniela looked on helplessly, unable to understand what was being decided about her.

  ‘Because I speak her language and she’s afraid of being on her own.’

  ‘And why should you be responsible for her?’ Haider ground out, angry with the stance his son was taking. Fear was fast clutching at his heart. Had Arslan brought home an American mistress?

  Ignoring the last comment, Arslan turned to the English guest, ‘Come!’

  Daniela gratefully followed, nervously glancing at the older man and intimidated by the hostility darting from his eyes. It dawned on her that perhaps the older man thought that she was with his son. With mounting hysteria, Daniela wanted to giggle aloud.

  ‘Father, you go with Ismail. We’ll follow in another taxi.’

  Angrily Haider walked off. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw them get into a taxi together and, still in a daze, he joined his brother-in-law.

  ‘Where’s Arslan going and who’s that white woman with him?’ Liaquat enquired.

  ‘My son has gone mad. He’s taking a goorie to our home!’ Haider replied.

  ‘Did that woman come from England, Ismail?’ Liaquat asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea!’ Ismail promptly lied, flushing and looking out of the window. ‘Can we just get home please, Father?’

  The car sped away from Islamabad’s airport. The scenery held no nostalgic appeal for Ismail; instead, he kept looking back, cursing his cousin for being such a gentleman. ‘She would have gone back and nobody would have been any the wiser if Arslan had not seen her!’ he thought.

  Now he had lost all control over his life; a puppet in a puppet theatre in which the master puppeteer was unknown.

  ‘You silly woman! What have you done?’ Ismail inwardly cursed his wife whilst beaming at his father.

  *

  The passing scenery, the shops, the people and the sunshine held no interest for Daniela. Everything was a blur. The words ‘his family doesn’t know about you’ and ‘there’s a fiancée waiting to marry him in three weeks’ time’ zoomed through her head.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, but you had better believe it! Your appearance is going to turn Ismail’s family’s world upside down – especially that of his fiancée, patiently waiting for him to take her back to England as his bride!’ Arslan bitterly reminded her, the polite smile slipping from his face.

  ‘God help me!’

  The intrigued, Pushto-speaking driver kept peeping at the ‘special’ passenger in his rear-view mirror, the first white woman ever to sit in his taxi – who was she? And more interestingly did these two people have a sexual relationship?

  ‘Yes, God help us all!’ Arslan echoed in his own head, recalling the face of the woman he adored. ‘I’ll kill you, Ismail, for doing this to our Saher.’

  He turned to the woman beside him. ‘What’s your name?’ he coldly asked.

  ‘Daniela.’ Wetting her dry lips, Daniela raised her face to him. The two green orbs of misery melted Arslan’s heart.

  ‘Don’t worry, Daniela,’ he reassured her, touching her hand. ‘I’ll take care of everything. You shall stay in my father’s house as my guest until your husband comes clean and claims you as his wife. He’ll not be marrying Saher. You have my word on it, Daniela!’

  Glad to see her visibly relaxed he had to remind her nevertheless: ‘You must understand, Daniela, that you have unleashed a storm upon my clan. Many people’s dreams, including those of my two aunties and Saher, are going to be shattered. It would be cruel to foist you on them straight away … a bombshell. For they have no inkling about you, Daniela. We’ll have to try the softly-softly approach. I think that’s how you say it in English, isn’t it? This will buy your husband time to reflect on the situation and to prepare his family. From what I could see at the airport he was going out of his mind already. Sorry to have to warn you, but be prepared to become an object of hate!’

  ‘Oh!’ Daniela was thoroughly shaken.

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s the reality! And you must remember you are my guest. I really don’t know what else to do under these circumstances’.

  ‘Thank you,’ Daniela accepted in a broken voice. ‘That lousy husband of mine would have abandoned me at the airport. How could any man do this to his wife?’

  ‘A cowardly one, Daniela, and one who doesn’t know what to do, other than to scamper!’ Arslan angrily shot back, his fist was itching to thrust into his cousin’s face. ‘I’m going to kill him!’

  ‘Yes, do,’ Daniela smiled at her companion for the first time. ‘Let him meet his mother first in one piece – then we’ll both finish him off together!’ Daniela giggled, making the driver look up sharply into the mirror.

  Arslan settled in his seat for the two-hour journey back to the village; eyes closed, thoughts on Saher, vowing to spare her the pain.

  Sympathy welling up for their unwanted guest, he generously offered, ‘Daniela, I’ll show you my country – some very beautiful sights, I promise you. I’ll look after you. Don’t worry about anything.’

  *

  ‘There’s a goorie with our prince!’ Begum’s awed voice reached Gulbahar who was stirring the kheer rice pudding in the big silver pot.

  ‘A white woman!’ Gulbahar’s heartbeat plummeted. A vision of a goorie arriving from America with her son had haunted her many a night. Today, when her fearful eyes fell upon the European woman with the golden, boyish haircut and bare white legs stepping into their courtyard, Gulbahar bitterly resigned herself to her fate; she was not destined to witness her children’s wedding ceremonies.

  In despair, she inwardly wailed, ‘He has brought home a goorie!’ Many a mother’s dreaded fear of their migrant sons marrying a foreign woman had come true for her, too. Gulbahar recalled the heartache of a city friend, whose son had brought back a lovely Korean woman.

  Arslan accurately read his mother’s face. ‘So quick to jump to conclusions – how right and yet how wrong you are, Mother!’ he silently taunted.

  His ‘unwanted’ guest stood awkwardly beside him in the middle of the courtyard, the hot sun scorching her head, her freckled cheeks reddening, eyes marvelling at the seashell-shaped sculpture of the central fountain, wanting to dip her face in the flowing water.

  The gazes of the two middle-aged women draped in shawls signalled to Daniela that they had never come face to face with a European woman before. Nor did it appear that they relished the idea of coming across one, from their startled, hostile looks. Their body language boldly cried out for them. This foreign woman was a threat to their world.

  Arslan burst out laughing, startling the three women. ‘Daniela, pardon me,
but they are probably thinking something else. It’s so embarrassing … Let me introduce you properly before they faint or eat both of us alive with their eyes,’ he chuckled, ignoring his mother’s disconcerted look as she heard him speak in English and was unable to understand.

  ‘This is my mother, Daniela. I have yet to find a convincing explanation as to why you are here, without betraying Ismail. As you can see from their expressions, they’ve both got this crazy idea in their heads that you are my lover and have now followed me here.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Cheeks crimsoning, Daniela shyly gazed back at the two women.

  ‘Yes! I must quickly reassure my mother – she suffers from angina!’ He smiled explaining in Urdu, ‘Mother, this is a tourist from England … she has lost her ticket and needs to stay for a few days.’

  ‘Stay? Here?’ Gulbahar’s heart thudded. Losing ticket? Couldn’t he come up with a better excuse?

  ‘Begum! Prepare the large guest room for our special guest!’ Arslan loftily instructed their housekeeper. ‘We need to offer her excellent hospitality as befits our family, handan! So that when she returns to England she’ll tell everyone how well we look after our guests here!’

  Gripping his arm, his mother’s icy voice accosted Arslan, ‘Is she married?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’ Arslan’s answer was equally icy, his face rigid as he looked at her fingers pressing into his flesh. ‘She’s somebody else’s legal wife, not mine – if that’s what you want to hear? Allah Pak is my witness. I can say it with my hand on our Holy Quran if you like … I only met this woman three hours ago, at the airport, and that’s the truth, Mother!’ he ended, relieved to see his mother’s face relax. He reached forward to gently caress her right cheek, looking deep into her eyes.

  ‘I’ll never hurt or cause you any personal pain or embarrassment, Mother. And I’ll marry with your blessing, and someone from our clan – my countrywoman. That I can tell you now!’

  ‘What? Who?’ Gulbahar excitedly prompted, intrigued, her body suddenly light, wanting to fly into his arms.