Revolt

by Shahraz, Qaisra

  Gulbahar sighed, holding her hands up in defeat. ‘Mehreen, do what you think is best. I need to get back. The goorie has to be fed. I don’t know if Arslan is at home or not.’

  *

  Instead of returning home Gulbahar ended up on Rani’s doorstep – shamefaced. Whereas Mehreen actively engaged her sister’s attention with tears, Rani merely buttoned up into a sullen silence – a silence that with time had shrunk her two beautiful full lips. Her mouth rarely curved, but became a forbidding messenger of her miserable life of widowhood.

  It was as if, with the disappearance of her mother to an early grave, someone had banged the door shut on Rani’s vocal cords. She never made any sounds, never wailed or ranted like her impetuous younger sister. Nor would pride let her sink her head into her elder sister’s lap and weep. Whereas the other two sisters as children had hugged themselves to sleep in each other’s arms, seeking human solace as they wept for their beloved mother, Rani slept alone, choking on her silent, painful sobs.

  Gulbahar timidly stepped into her sister’s home, feeling like an interloper, unable to recall ever having spent a night at Rani’s.

  On seeing the forbidding straight line of her sister’s mouth, Gulbahar’s heart sank. In silence, they settled on the wooden hammock under the shade of the veranda. Intimidated by Rani’s body language, and afraid of being rebuffed, the only physical contact Gulbahar permitted herself was to place her palm on her sister’s back.

  After ten minutes of awkward silence, Gulbahar lightly pecked the side of her sister’s cheek with a kiss, for something still needed to be said.

  ‘Rani, our kismet and children are cruel … I never wanted you to go through the pain I experienced with Laila’s elopement. Our suffering, like our happiness, is the will of God. Human beings are destined to suffer in many ways. Imagine yourself in my or in Mehreen’s shoes, for at least Saher has done nothing wrong. She’s a beautiful and talented woman; so believe me when I tell you that hundreds of suitors will flock to your door for her rishta. At least you can now keep her in Pakistan as you’ve always wanted to.

  ‘But imagine poor Mehreen’s situation – no wedding to look forward to, no Pakistani daughter-in-law to welcome into her home. She has no dreams, no hopes, just a dead end. Both husband and wife are battling with these cruel facts of life. But they will survive, for nobody truly dies. I thought that I was dead for a long time, but there’s still part of me that is alive – a beautiful fairy made that happen. There’s always hope, my sister, but you’ll need to be strong … Saher needs your support, Rani dear. Don’t let this eat into your soul. Laila’s actions ravaged our lives for ten years, and my husband and I lived as “shadows”. Why did we punish ourselves? Who suffered? We did! And we are still suffering. Rani, you know I have a heart condition. One day, my heart will just stop beating, but I’ll still have two wishes left.’

  ‘What?’ Rani asked quietly, breaking her ominous silence at last.

  ‘To see the beautiful fairy again with my own eyes and see my Arslan wed the woman he loves.’

  ‘Who does he want to marry?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he has promised me that she will be from our clan.’

  ‘Well, every time I see him, he’s with Saher,’ Rani retorted.

  A light flared and then immediately dimmed in Gulbahar’s eyes and she turned her face to hide the look from her sister.

  ‘I must go, Rani, I would like to take you to my home, but …’

  ‘Yes – that English bitch is there!’

  Gulbahar baulked at her sister’s venom.

  ‘Saher has met her,’ she said softly.

  Rani turned to her sister, her hand tugging at her chador on her head. ‘Oh, God! My poor darling.’

  She ran in the direction of her daughter’s room, dismissing her sister. Gulbahar rose heavily to her feet. Outside, she informed the chauffeur to take her back home.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Goldsmith’s Wife

  Rukhsar’s nimble fingers carefully embedded the ruby gems into the appropriate tiny grooves of the necklace and earring set. The goldsmith left it to his wife and daughters to check the minutiae – including whether all the little machlis, the dangling bits, were strung in the correct sequence on the earrings.

  Rukhsar had just counted ten rubies in one ear stud and eleven in the other. Feverishly, her fingers began to count again: loudly reciting ‘ek, do, teen’. Each ruby cost extra rupees and they couldn’t afford to make generous mistakes, particularly with three daughters to wed and with inflation on the rise. The atta, flour, was so expensive and there was sugar rationing, too; it was back to gurh tea for many villagers. Rukhsar wondered how the poor coped, especially those with large families.

  ‘Massi Fiza is here!’ her youngest daughter crisply announced, obeying the house rule to first warn their mother and then to help her quickly shield the gold jewellery from the visitors’ prying eyes. Rukhsar either tucked them under a cushion or covered them discreetly with a newspaper if a tablecloth was not available. This time, however, Rukhsar didn’t rush. It was only Massi Fiza, a good and trusted neighbour, whose eyes had been fully corrupted by hundreds of tholas of gold, but she had no knowledge as to where the goldsmith family stored their cash or gold at night.

  The sturdy wooden door leading to the rooftop was forever bolted with three large, clumsy bolts. Only the master goldsmith’s solid masculine fingers could prise them open. So Rukhsar and her daughters were deprived of the luxury of sleeping on the open terraces, under the gleaming, heavenly stars in the summer. They had to make do with the ceiling fans and air conditioning that their loving father had generously provided for his nazak, his delicate, ‘boarding school educated’ daughters as he proudly liked to describe them. Daughters aside, security was the number one priority for all. And no female in the household complained, especially since the trauma of an overnight robbery via the rooftop door, when thieves who had climbed over from the neighbouring terrace had made off with half a pillowcase of gold items. Poor Master-ji never forgot or quite recovered from that tragic incident. Rukhsar was adamant that it was then that her husband’s hair had started to go grey, almost overnight. Insurance was unheard of in the village; loss was loss and had to be philosophically borne.

  So from that day on, somebody from the family always had to guard their goods. ‘Business was business after all,’ Master Goldsmith had briskly drilled into his wife. No customer was ever left alone with the gold, irrespective of their status or their relationship with the goldsmith’s family. Today, Massi Fiza-ji could not help gawping at the gleaming gold and emerald choker set lying on a bed of velvet. The counting finished, Rukhsar snapped the velvet box shut and peered up at their neighbour through her large blue bifocals.

  ‘Welcome, Massi Fiza.’

  ‘Oh, what a lovely necklace! Whose is it?’ Massi Fiza squinted to take a closer look. Unlike her friend, she hated wearing her glasses, loathing the weight of them on her nose, and was therefore content to remain semi-blind when it came to examining minute details.

  Not bothering to answer, Rukhsar passed the box to her hovering daughter. Massi Fiza-ji was just as persistent this morning.

  ‘Was that necklace ten tholas in weight? Is it meant for that lawyer woman, Saher?’

  ‘Actually, yes,’ Rukhsar reluctantly divulged. Her head shot up as her friend’s body had doubled in laughter. ‘What’s so funny, Massi Fiza-ji?’

  ‘Well, I can tell you one thing – that necklace you have been working on, Rukhsar-ji, won’t go on Saher’s pretty neck.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rukhsar looked up, aghast.

  ‘I mean that she’ll not be wearing it. If anybody – it will be a lady with a very white neck indeed.’

  ‘What are you insinuating, Massi Fiza-ji?’ the goldmistress asked sharply, not caring for Massi Fiza’s tendency to embroider events this morning. They had worked tirelessly on this set for the last few days and she had the arthritis in her finger joints to prove
it. They were still glowing with the honour that the landlord had chosen them, the village jewellers, rather than the sophisticated urban ones, with their posh display cabinets and a team of workers to design and sell the goods.

  ‘Well, I might as well tell it to you straight, as half of the village probably already knows by now.’

  ‘What? Please don’t exaggerate!’ Rukhsar urged, already irked by what she had learned.

  ‘That goorie, the white woman staying at Mistress Gulbahar’s house, is Ismail’s wife!’ Massi Fiza triumphantly blurted out and eagerly waited for her friend’s reaction.

  Result.

  Rukhsar was shocked into silence, mouth pursed into a tight line, a glazed look behind the designer frames.

  ‘Well, what do you think of that?’ Massi Fiza prompted, scanning Rukhsar’s face with interest.

  Her neighbour merely nodded, struck dumb at the thought of all that money possibly lost. Landlord Liaquat had kept her poor Sharif-ji busy for days, working tirelessly on scores of jewellery items of all shapes, styles and sizes. And now this! Would the landlord buy all these sets if the wedding was not even going to take place?

  ‘Oh, no!’ she cried out aloud. The cost of her eldest daughter’s trousseau was partly invested in the landlord’s commissioned jewellery items. The lavish engagement party had already put them in arrears by thousands of rupees and there were the college costs for their youngest daughter, Farah. Rukhsar turned a pained gaze on her friend.

  ‘Have you heard what I’ve been saying, Rukhsar-ji? Are you OK?’ Massi Fiza was now genuinely alarmed.

  ‘Massi Fiza-ji, what cruel news you’ve given us! I knew something like this would happen. When you send your sons abroad and they bring back strange parcels – including foreign wives. Just as well my daughters aren’t getting married abroad. My daughter is only going to the nearby town.’

  It was Massi Fiza’s turn to first stare and then button her mouth into a straight line.

  ‘Who’s getting married?’

  Rukhsar blushed, her eyes falling. ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you that my Shabnum is engaged?’

  Massi Fiza-ji was most aggrieved on two accounts. Firstly, that her friend hadn’t told her anything, and she visited them every day, and secondly, that she had planned to ask for the girl’s hand for her eldest son. Rukhsar glimpsed the disappointment in her friend’s eyes and just as slyly and skilfully ignored it, knowing exactly what Massi Fiza was thinking. Inside she was churning with fury. Did the laundrywoman actually have the audacity to think that she, the goldsmith’s wife, would stoop down to wed her town-educated, Murree boarding school daughter to a village lout, and to have her live in a village home stacked with other people’s dirty laundry!

  ‘Poor Saher, being jilted like that,’ Rukhsar forcefully dragged her thoughts back to the matter in discussion, ‘and by a woman from another race! Please, Allah Pak, save all our daughters from such a tragic fate as being jilted! I can’t imagine what it must be like in those three mighty zemindar sisters’ households. They are probably all going crazy. All are affected by this in some way or other – aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, they are, Rukhsar-ji. Do you know that Mehreen sacked her housekeeper, Rasoola? Apparently Rasoola is going around everywhere, telling tales about her mistress and the white bride. Can you imagine having such a housekeeper? It’s disgraceful – that woman hasn’t one ounce of loyalty in her!’

  ‘You’re right!’ Rukhsar agreed. ‘What a thing to do – to betray the very hand that feeds you.’

  ‘Talking about betrayal, the children of those landowners have done a fair share of that – letting their parents down, I mean. First the daughter of one sister marries a potter’s son, and then the only son of the third sister brings home a foreign woman; the daughter of the second sister to be jilted in the process. I feel so, so sorry for that poor woman. Haughty though she is! I’ve once or twice tried to speak to her when she is visiting her aunt’s home, but she looks right through you. It’s so humiliating. Why are we treated with such contempt? Do we … people of the lower classes not matter?’

  ‘Poor you, but to those people you are just the servant – your detergent-stained clothes – that probably puts her off … And why should she, a famous lawyer, enter into discussion with you? You two have nothing in common.’

  ‘I’m human, too! Allah Pak made me, too!’ Massi Fiza heatedly reminded her friend, hating her for the remarks and feeling demeaned by them.

  ‘Of course!’ Rukhsar hastened to mollify her neighbour. ‘By the way, I’ve heard about Jennat Bibi’s daughter-in-law, Faiza, miscarrying and she blamed it on that poor girl – Salma!’

  ‘Yes, I forgot to tell you, that poor girl is in a real state according to her mother, Zeinab. In fact, I’ve heard she has locked herself in her room and says that she’ll not leave!’

  ‘What?’

  Massi Fiza energetically shrugged her shoulders. ‘She’s daft! When Jennat Bibi told her not to visit their house, why did the silly girl bother going there? Who knows, it might be her perchanvah that has caused it!’

  ‘Oh, come on, Massi Fiza-ji. This is silly!’

  ‘Well, Jennat Bibi’s pir can’t be wrong, can he?’ Massi Fiza bristled, a true follower of Jennat Bibi’s school of thought, wearing one of the amulets that the sweetmaker’s wife had ‘kindly’ bought from the pir for her. Every time she visited Jennat Bibi’s home for the laundry, Massi Fiza was supplied with a good dose of the pir’s teaching. And Massi Fiza was an extremely avid listener and a faithful follower, intent on pleasing Jennat Bibi, a good customer for the laundry and supplier of sweets and snacks. Massi Fiza hated washing the sweetmaker’s syrup-stained overcoat, but the added bonus was that she always ended up picking the leftover sweets from the shop. So in Massi Fiza’s house, her steel plate of ladoos, gulab jamuns and patesas, her three favourite sweets, was never empty. And, unfortunately, she had three missing back molars to prove it!

  ‘Oh, well, if the pir says so,’ Rukhsar drily acquiesced, not bothering to debate the matter on superstitions further.

  ‘By the way, I spotted Ismail entering the potter’s house right now, as I was leaving my house. I wonder what those two are getting up to,’ she winked, eyes sparkling in mischief.

  ‘Well, your guess is as good as mine – both have made their parents suffer. They are probably commiserating with each other. And he’s made my family suffer, too – for making those wretched necklace sets for his wedding!’

  CHAPTER 19

  The Kidnapping

  Zeinab stood under the veranda outside her daughter Salma’s bedroom, her knuckles hurting from banging on the old mahogany door, which dated to the period preceding the partition of India and Pakistan. Her father-in-law had gone back to their village house near Delhi and carted their special wooden door back to Pakistan.

  ‘Open the door, you silly girl! Come out and eat. If you carry on like this people will believe that there is something seriously wrong with you … with your silly habit of hiding in the sugarcane fields and now locking yourself in. I’ve called your husband to take you away from the village.’

  ‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to eat anything.’

  ‘Will you not help your poor mother? I’ve three quilts to darn for Gujjar’s daughter’s trousseau.’

  ‘Leave me, Mother!’

  ‘Stubborn girl!’ Zeinab angrily muttered, despairing at the thought of the stitching yet to be done. The quilt needed to be fully stitched in the next hour and she could not afford to lose her next order. Gujjar, the village milk supplier, was a good customer, as his wife was devoted to annual spring cleaning and also tended to order new bedding every year. For Gujjar’s wife, airing quilts on rooftop terraces was not enough; she insisted on new ones, just before the Bakra Eid festival.

  Daughter or no daughter to lend a hand, the quilt had to be finished; this was her livelihood. The basket of thick darning needles tucked in the crook of her elbow, Zeinab climbed up the mud-baked steps to the
rooftop terrace to continue her work under the sun. The raw, lumpy bits of cotton buds for the deep blue velvet quilts had to be flattened out first before being stiched by hand. With her long, thick darning needle, Zeinab’s dexterous fingers dug in and out of the thick quilt border.

  Down below, Salma peeped out of her door, listening for some sounds. Guessing that her mother was up on the terrace with her work, she sneaked into the small, dimly lit kitchen, annexed to one side of the veranda, with a small hole for a window. The clay tandoor shared with their poor widowed neighbour who had three young children to feed was still warm from her afternoon chappati-making. Salma poured herself a cool glass of lassi from the round-bellied clay pot and gulped it all down.

  Then, veiling herself carefully in her long blue chador, she tied the item she had picked from the kitchen in one corner of it. With her face half hidden, she scurried out of her home and through the village lanes.

  *

  Shirin was playing alone, as usual, for the village children had been schooled by their parents to keep away from the girl. Though none of their mothers or fathers had ever explained the reason why to their children, it was out of respect for their landlord. If he ignored the potter’s child then they should follow suit. Like him, they averted their eyes from Shirin’s longing looks; she wished so much to play hopscotch with Chanda, the little girl who lived next door. From the age of six, Shirin got used to spending time on her own. Laila let her play out in the lane, expecting the village to be a safe place. In the city, Shirin would never be allowed to step out of the home without her parents.

  What Laila had not realised was that the girl was wandering further and further away from the village on her exploratory jaunts. Today, Shirin had already climbed her favourite tree, snagging the hemline of her frock on one of the branches. Now, she was excitedly hopping to her second favourite place – the termite mound – to play with the little creatures again.