by Ali Sethi
He puffed at his cigarette and smiled at the curling smoke.
His parents said they were encouraging his ideas but also hoped that he could be persuaded to join their line of work.
And he said, “Shoes. They want me to make shoes,” and tapped his foot on the floor and laughed, the folds around his mouth not forming.
His family proposed on his behalf. But he said he wanted to set a date for the end of the year because he wanted to obtain his degree first, a master’s in philosophy that was going to take a few more months to complete.
In the afternoons Chhoti went out. She had befriended a European woman who had arrived to make paintings of the countryside but had then met a poet in the city and stayed on. They were living at that time in a rented apartment behind the Dyal Singh Mansion, and living, it was said, without the proper documents to show for their arrangement. Chhoti went to their apartment, went with them to the bookshops in Anarkali and to the coffee houses that lay in the shadows behind Mall Road. She came home in the evening and named other friends, and said that she had gone to the bazaar and looked at clothes and shoes and beauty potions. She laughed in those days without a hand to cover her mouth, and in their neighborhood, where sounds were rarely heard outside the rooms of houses, it was a thing to keep in mind and report to others.
On a dull winter’s day the news was delivered to their house. The boy’s father himself had come to say it, and was led into the baithak room. He drew the curtains, sat on the floor, held his head and said that he was ruined.
His son was suffering and had always suffered, but it was now beyond their control. The boy wasn’t right in the head; they had nothing to say for themselves; they were ordinary people, and their luck was bad; they could offer an apology but that would amount to an insult.
The engagement was off. No announcement was made; it was already known to the people of their neighborhood, and none of them could claim to have been surprised. Only Chhoti was impossible to persuade and went to stand by the gate and said that she was going to his house. They had to hold her back, had to take her into her room and keep her there. Her mother went in with things to eat but Chhoti threw them aside. Her mother brought a rag, knelt to clean up the mess, then beat Chhoti with the heel of her shoe. Chhoti howled in her room and broke things. But they didn’t let her out.
She passed her matriculation exams in the summer but refused to enroll at the university. Daadi had graduated from university, was married and had a child, and she knew that a bachelor’s degree, while it was a thing for a girl to have, was not a requirement. It was enough that she was young, that she could read and write and had a family behind her and nothing significant or unusual in her past to explain. That was what they told the matchmaker, who came on a horse-drawn taanga from Begumpura, saw the house, appraised the things in it and said that she had some families in mind. But she wanted to see the girl. And they were relieved when Chhoti came into the room and sat on a silken, cylindrical cushion on the floor and didn’t say or do an untoward thing. The matchmaker went away with what they thought was a good impression, and reported back to them within the month and said that she had found a Khatri family of jewelers: they had a well-known shop in the city and a son who was working with his father and uncles.
The women of the Khatri family came to their house in a car, and it was grand, like wheels attached to a polished desk; the children of the neighboring houses came outside and touched it, and were scolded by the matchmaker, who was escorting the family and wore earrings and held a purse. She lifted curtains and opened doors and led the women into the house, made introductions and asked for tea, then went herself into the kitchen. There she encountered Daadi and told her that she had a very good feeling. And Daadi said, “Allah-willing, Allah-willing.”
At first Chhoti’s silence was assumed to be a shyness, natural and becoming in a girl. The chatter around her continued, and she didn’t contribute to it and didn’t look up. Her silence became conspicuous, then odd and unnerving. The boy’s mother asked her with a laugh if she was the kind of girl who stayed in rooms and read books. Chhoti said she wasn’t. Then her own mother asked her to fetch the platter of sweets, and Chhoti got up and went into the kitchen and returned with the platter, and took it from person to person like a child being made to carry out the particulars of a punishment.
The women sat with them for more than an hour. And then the wait came to an end: the boy’s mother rose, the girl’s mother rose, the boy’s mother smiled at the girl’s mother and was led outside by the matchmaker, who walked ahead of the Khatri family and said that she was going in their car. At the gate she looked at Daadi and said, “Allah will help you.”
And Daadi said, “He will,” and watched them get inside their car, one after the other, until they were all inside and the doors were shut, and the car was roused and went away, and she was able to shut the gate and bolt it from inside.
The matchmaker came back to collect her fee. And after that she wasn’t summoned. In the house a feeling of defeat had settled, and they had decided and said to one another that it was best to give the girl some time.
In spring Daadi had her third child, a son, and was able to move out of the home she shared with her husband’s family—a cramped and unpainted house in Mughalpura, a house in which seven people lived out of three thinly partitioned rooms—and was able to move into a house that she had built for herself on a bigger plot of land, in an area where dark mango trees had once ranged, and where now, in the clearings, more and more houses were getting built. She brought Chhoti to this house and took her from there to the bazaars: they went to the sabzi mandi and bought fruits and vegetables from stalls, to the meat market on Mondays and to Anarkali and the Tota Bazaar on good days, when the weather and the mood matched. Sometimes they went into shops and bought things for the children, and Chhoti made suggestions and showed her tastes and inclinations. It was at her urging that they went to the Regal Cinema and saw a film called Qaidi with Shamim Ara in the main role; afterward Chhoti sang the song with her chin raised, her voice quavering, her hand held out like a professional singer’s and turning at the turns. There is more to life, she sang, than romance, and there are pleasures other than those of love. So, my love, don’t ask me to give you that first kind of love.
She sang it well. And that made her more tragic, more painful to behold. She was showing a spirit and a willingness that was ultimately addressed to no one, and was settling into spinsterhood, a life of futility and dependence.
Daadi had a friend in those days, a girl called Seema who had been with her at university. It was Seema who told Daadi about a landowning family from a small village in the Okara district. Seema said that the boy, or man, considering his age, had divorced his first wife, who had borne him no children and with whom there had been a property dispute; the wife had been his cousin and that had complicated the divorce. But it was done now and they were looking for a girl, and were willing to consider a girl from the city as long as she was ready to live in the village and observe purdah. Seema said they were old in their ways, and their holdings, though they seemed unremarkable when compared to those of other landowning families, had been gradually acquired and were safe.
Daadi encouraged Seema, and Seema arranged a meeting between the women of the two families. And it was decided then that Chhoti would wed Uncle Fazal in a small nikah ceremony, with just the families and the qari present, and would go away to live with him and his family in the village.
“Then what happened?”
Daadi said, “Then buss. She went to live in the village and is living there still.” She had placed the lid on the oval box of photographs and was holding it in her lap.
I said, “The End?” It was the sign that appeared in large white letters on the TV screen when the story had run out and the last action or gesture of the actors was held in a trembling stillness.
Daadi thought about it and said, “Yes.”
I said, “Happy ever after?”
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And Daadi said, “That was our intention. But who knows what tomorrow will bring? Good things happen and they go bad from neglect, and bad things happen and sometimes they lead to good things. There is no ever after in these things. One can only do one’s work. And one can pray. One must always pray.”
I told my mother.
She said, “Who told you?”
“No one.”
“Tell me, Zaki.”
I gave no answer.
“You are seven years old,” she said. “You will behave like a seven-year-old.
I will not have you snooping around.”
“Sorry.”
“And she has no business,” said my mother, “putting these things in your head, because she is an old woman and you are a child. There is a difference. And she bloody well ought to know it.”
When Chhoti next came to the house she was taken to my mother’s room and engaged there in tones of cheery indignation. In the course of their meeting Chhoti’s language grew coarse and her jokes became bestial, and the laughs these drew from my mother were appalled and also joyful, since for her a sharp tongue in an older woman of that background was a sure sign of victory. They stayed in these roles until Chhoti began to speak of her daughter. She said that she worried because hers was an only child, a girl, and was being raised so far away from her. It was necessary to keep her away from the village but no less troubling.
“There is no need,” said my mother, “for you to worry. We are here. And you have done the right thing by sending her to the city. She goes to a good school, she has exposure, and these are good things. You are opening up her future. You must look at it like that.”
It was an afternoon in October. My mother was sitting cross-legged on her bed and was writing on typed sheets of paper that were piled in her lap. She was editing: the articles were due at the office before the end of the week, which had almost ended, and the notes she was making now were hurried and illegible.
“Do your work,” she said.
I was writing My name is Zaki Shirazi along parallel dotted lines in the school notebook.
“I don’t want to anymore.”
“You have to.”
The windows in the room were open, and the smell of burning rot from somewhere in the neighborhood was sweet and distinct.
“I want to go outside.”
She frowned at a long sentence in her lap and crossed it out, and made a note beside it. She said, “You can’t.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer.
Then she said, “What’s happened?”
Samar Api was standing before her with her arms stiff by her sides.
“What’s happened?” said my mother, and put away the papers.
Samar Api said, “I went to the bathroom.” She closed her mouth and looked at me.
My mother said, “What happened?”
“There was blood.”
“Come with me.”
They went into the bathroom.
And they returned.
“It’s nothing,” said my mother. “It’s normal.”
Samar Api stood near the bathroom door and kept her hand on the doorknob.
“It’s not normal,” I said. “I’ve never had blood in the bathroom.”
Samar Api was crying.
“Zaki!” said my mother.
Samar Api sat on the edge of the bed and cried now with her face in her hands.
My mother said, “It’s normal for women!” She went across the bed to Samar Api and stroked her scalp. Samar Api’s crying became emotional, an act of release. My mother hugged her and swayed her and made a steady shushing sound. Samar Api sniffed, snorted, pulled away from my mother and rubbed her eyes, then ran the back of her hand across her cheeks.
Her eyes were swollen but the tears had stopped. She looked up and sighed. And then she stood up and began to move away from the bed.
“You’re an idiot,” she said, going away. “It’s normal for women.”
Soon after that she had her first waxing, which happened at the end of every month and was performed by a woman called Parveen, a Christian who lived in the small employees’ colony behind FC College and came to the house on the back of her husband’s motorcycle. Her implements were contained in a shiny brown bag, and were taken out after doors had been locked and the curtains of windows drawn. Parveen talked while she performed the waxing, describing the bodies of her other clients, the singers and actresses and wives and mistresses she claimed to know intimately, outlining their proportions with her hands and divulging the locations of their moles. Sometimes, while she talked, there were other sounds from the room, the sound of tearing cloth and screams of pain. But Parveen went on talking, and talked afterward in the kitchen as well, where she smoked a single Gold Leaf cigarette and was given food and drink on a special plastic plate and in a steel glass that were kept separate from the others, even from the already separated utensils used by Barkat and Naseem, who said they had to maintain the separation because Parveen was a Christian and had a flat nose and very dark skin, which made her an untouchable. So later, when Parveen had gone, the plate and the glass were taken outside and washed under the tap that was used for washing clothes, and were then carried back into the kitchen and placed in an isolated corner on the shelf above the stove.
Samar Api’s first waxing was anticipated for days; on the day itself her door was locked. There were sounds: Parveen talking, Parveen waxing, then a rip and a scream, and Parveen saying it would hurt less the next time. The waxing was slow and took up the afternoon. And, when the door opened in the evening, it revealed a room that had been cleared of evidence: Samar Api was sitting on her bed in a long cotton T-shirt and short shorts, and the legs were long and smooth and drawn up like hills.
“Look,” she said, and trailed a fingertip along a calf. “It’s soft and smooth.”
She began to exercise and stood on Friday mornings behind my mother, who had set up the TV and the VCR in her room. They wore tracksuits and stood in poses of attention, waiting for the woman to appear on the TV screen.
“Come on, everybody,” said Jane Fonda, and bent. “Can you feel it?”
“Feel it,” said my mother.
“Feel it,” said Samar Api.
And she began to walk, and went to Race Course Park with my mother in the evenings. The broad dusty track went around a hill and a lake, where people went boating, and was lined with old trees that gave gnawed shadows at dusk, shadows that deepened as the walk progressed.
“Tell a story,” said Samar Api.
“Which one?” said my mother.
“A love story.”
It is a memory of walking under trees in the dark, of hearing the names of lovers whose love was doomed from the beginning; and of watching—a girl, a shadow, walking with a woman’s shadow, and repeating after.
3
My mother was friendly with unusual women. Most drove their own cars and went to offices, and dressed in ways that were not conducive to improvement, since there had been no initial attempt at decoration: the fabrics were often frayed and threadbare, the colors faded, the shoes plain and heel-less. The sandals were of an inexpensive local variety and were everywhere displayed on wooden racks outside shoe shops. And the jewelry was sooty and dull, and irregularly shaped, like the jewelry worn by primitives, and clanked clumsily when a head was turned or an arm lifted and waved. Most of them worked for nonprofit organizations and institutes, entities with names such as APNA and SAPNA and SURAT and SUCH, and went to conferences and seminars and presented papers and made proposals for the increased funding of their projects. Others were lawyers and journalists and were not invited to conferences, and maintained a friendly rivalry with the researchers, whose work they praised for its complexity and fineness. The women shouted when they agreed and shouted when they disagreed and came to the house in droves or not at all: they required situations and discussions, and they came to the house when these were available. Then the driv
eway filled quickly with cars and the veranda resounded with noises, women talking and walking and shouting and pulling chairs, sandals squinging and the door repeatedly opening and banging.
“I am not paying,” said Daadi, “for the repair of that door with my money.” She was lying in bed with her feet crossed at the ankles and her arms crossed over her chest.
Suri stared at the carpet and said nothing.
“It’s too much,” said Hukmi, and held her temples.
Daadi said, “There is a limit.”
Suri shook her head and smiled faintly.
“Too much,” repeated Hukmi, and widened her eyes in genuine wonderment. “It is just too much.”
In another part of the house the noise was crowding, the voices all speaking at once and the glasses clinking with the ashtrays and the air souring with smoke, the sour joviality that had descended now on the gathering. Someone was listening to someone else who was making points on her fingers and saying, “There are three strategies for getting out of the provincial quagmire . . .”
It was on a day in the summer holidays that the cars began to arrive. I was sitting with Barkat on the bench outside the gate and playing cards with his friends. They often gathered in the afternoons to play game after game of Chaar-Chaar, a variant of Bluff that gave quick results and had the added thrill of gambling. But there was no money to bet; the players were gardeners and drivers and chowkidaars, men who worked in the houses of the neighborhood and earned small salaries, and were free to make outlandish claims—cars they didn’t own, wives they didn’t love—that brought extreme consequences: there were cries of jubilation and excited handshakes and silent slides into depression when the results were declared. And there was magnanimity in a winner’s voluntary surrender of his acquisitions, as well as a perverse joy in losing, which came when a player’s wealth of possessions had been exhausted. The present game had progressed to the sixth round, and the stakes, though imagined once again, were rising.
