by Ali Sethi
She thought of an absence, and saw dark windows where the laundry had been, silence where there had been songs, a hollow house instead of a home. She would live to see the adjustments: how the shutters came down on an abandoned laundry and opened the next week on a bookshop; how Noor Jehan gave life to the microphones of Radio Pakistan; and how quickly that house, once Amrita’s, came to belong to strangers. She would live to see it go into the blur of elapsed time. And she would learn difficult lessons: that ruins become relics; that a blankness is also a whitening, an opportunity for new inscriptions; that older losses become obscured by newer ones. And still the will to act remains.
It got worse. A Muslim shop in Mozang was burned by a mob of angry Sikhs. (Previously it was a hardware shop, because it sold locks and keys and hinges for doors, but now shops too were known by their religions.) There was a rumor in the neighborhood: Amrita’s brother Ajit had been in the Sikh mob. A woman said she had seen him that evening, sweaty and panicked in his damp shirt and trousers, hurrying in the darkness to the safety of his house.
Daadi’s mother said, “Lock your windows. Lock your doors and windows. You don’t know who is going to do what.” She was going around with the rolling pin.
Daadi’s father didn’t tell her to broaden her mind.
Late at night they were woken by a banging at the door.
Daadi stepped out of her bed.
“Who is it?” said Chhoti, her younger sister.
“Stay here,” said Daadi. She opened the door and went outside.
“Go in,” said her mother, who was going herself to the gate. Daadi’s father was walking ahead of her. He was holding something.
“Go in!” said her mother, showing the lower row of her teeth.
Daadi saw that it was a gun.
She went back into her room but stood at the door.
“What is it?” said Chhoti.
“Nothing,” said Daadi.
She thought of a wide-eyed man with a gun and saw him open the gate. It shocked her to see that his face was her father’s.
She opened the door a little and breathed slowly.
People were coming in.
“She will sleep here,” Daadi’s mother was saying.
They knocked.
Daadi opened the door and found Amrita.
Daadi’s mother said, “They are staying with us for the night. Let her come in.”
Daadi stepped aside.
Amrita stepped into the room.
Daadi saw that Amrita’s mother was crying but without the contortions of pain or sorrow on her face.
“Close your door,” said Daadi’s mother. “And don’t open it for anyone.”
They went away.
Amrita was breathing like an asthmatic.
Daadi closed the door and said, “What happened?”
“Nothing,” said Amrita between her deep, heavy breaths, her shoulders going up and down.
They went to lie down on Daadi’s bed.
Chhoti’s voice said, “It’s too dark.”
Daadi said, “Go to sleep now.”
They lay together in the silence, two girls with their hands on their hearts.
In a whisper Daadi said, “What happened?”
Amrita said they were fleeing. Some Muslim men had tried to enter their house in the evening. But their Muslim bearer had taken an oath on the Quran and said that the owners weren’t at home. The men said they knew it was a lie; and they said they would return in the morning, and would not accept another oath, even if it came from a Muslim.
Daadi said, “It is all politics.”
Amrita said nothing.
Then Daadi said, “Don’t worry about anything.”
And Amrita said, “I won’t.”
They left before it was morning, when the world outside was still blue. A black car came to collect them. Daadi’s mother had prepared a breakfast but they didn’t want to eat; Amrita’s father said they had to cross the border before the sun was out.
Daadi walked with Amrita to the car. Her sullen lips looked more sullen than ever. Daadi could tell it was because Amrita was feeling afraid and not sullen. She hoped no one would make the mistake and think otherwise.
Amrita’s father was wearing his turban and his glasses and his black lawyer’s coat. He said to the driver, “Do we have oil?”
The driver said there were two spare boxes at the back of the car.
“Then we will be fine,” said Amrita’s father, and knocked his knuckles on the shiny black bonnet of the car. He put his hands in his pockets, looked at his shoes, looked at the door of his house, looked at the sky.
“Inshallah,” said Daadi’s father, who was frowning.
They embraced.
Amrita began to wave.
Daadi watched her recede with the jeep, which soon became an insect on the road, then a dot, and then nothing.
She went back inside.
The rains were fierce. Roads cracked by rioting and torching and the frantic movements of people were filled with water. The canal flooded; heavy trees came down and floated in the streets. By September the water had dried, and the shining sun revealed a new city. Shops reopened with the schools and colleges. At night the windows were yellow with light. It looked like any other summer, but it felt different: the shops had new owners, the schools and colleges new students. Evacuated houses had new residents. Some were demolished, their rubbled foundations sold for small amounts. The house next to Daadi’s was repainted. A Muslim merchant moved in. He was alone—his wife and children were still in Amritsar—and he didn’t have the money to buy furniture. He didn’t own a telephone. In the evenings his veranda was silent.
Daadi finished school and was persuaded by her teachers to stay on for two years and obtain a bachelor’s degree. But it was an uncertain time. The Hindu teachers had left, and the new ones had to learn the subjects in the syllabus as they went along. In that time Daadi made a new friend, a girl called Seema who belonged to the Ahmadi sect—her mother was a convert—and was related through her father’s sister to people who now had land and were selling that land and building factories.
“Wajid Ali Shah,” said Seema one morning. She climbed into the taanga and placed her hand on the arm rail. She was tall and slim, had rounded, bony shoulders and wore glasses with elongated rims. “He is the son of Maratib Ali Shah. Their family is coming up.” She meant that they were growing in importance.
Then she said, “They are having a concert and Roshanara Begum is going to sing. She is like a big black cow. But when she starts to sing she becomes a beauty.” Briefly Seema closed her eyes, as if recalling the transformation, though it was evident that she had made it up and was now repeating for authority. “Once she starts singing she cannot stop it. She says it is no longer in her control!” Seema touched her collarbones and laughed.
Daadi was quiet.
The taanga was going toward Rattigan Road. The men walking on the footpath saw the taanga, and saw the two young women at the back of it, both wearing burqas with their faces uncovered.
Seema said, “The concert will be in Lawrence Gardens. The gentry of Lahore is coming. We will have to wear saris.”
Daadi said, “I am not going.”
Seema said, “It is your decision. But I will be going.”
Daadi was unaffected.
And Seema sighed, looking out at the world and blinking from behind her glasses, her fingers continuing to clutch the bumping arm rail.
They went to Lawrence Gardens on a Saturday night. And it was chilly, the first intimation of winter; people came in shawls and were carrying cushions.
“To sit on,” said Seema, who had brought two embroidered velvet cushions and held them under each of her arms. She was going up the steps that led from the base of the small hill and into the amphitheater. “Keep following me,” she said.
Daadi lifted her sari from her ankles and went up the steps, one at a time.
A man and woman were behind them, the man i
n a stiff sherwani jacket and the woman wearing a blue sari.
Seema paused at the landing, smiling at the couple, allowing them to go first.
The couple went up quickly.
Seema said, “They are Chiniotis. The wife is from here. Now she is one of the Chiniotis, so she is dressing and behaving like them. We know their whole family.”
She tripped.
She said, “Sorry, sorry.”
People continued to go up the steps.
“Give them to me,” said Daadi, and took the cushions from Seema.
The amphitheater had bare brick steps that led down to a moatlike partition, which contained no water, and behind which was the stage. The elevation of the hill, the shade of the trees, the glow of the lights and the movement of bodies gave the place a rich, removed feel. Seema and Daadi were sitting on the upper steps with Seema’s father and mother on each side. Seema was naming the people in the audience, and her parents were listening attentively. “Yes,” her father was saying. “Yes, you are right, you are right.”
“And that is Chughtai,” said Seema.
“Where?” said her mother.
“Over there,” said Seema, and indicated the steps below with her eyebrows. She looked at Daadi and said, “He is the painter.”
Seema’s father said, “He is the very best.”
Seema said, “He is friendly with my father. He offered to give him a painting but my father declined.”
Seema’s mother opened her purse, brought out a small embroidered pouch, opened the string and poured a powdery substance into the palm of her hand. She tossed it into her mouth, closed her eyes and chewed consideringly. She said, “He is always declining offers.”
Seema said to her father in an urging, childlike way, “Go to him and shake his hand.”
He said, “I will, I will.”
Seema’s mother laughed, crunching the mix in her mouth, and said, “He won’t do it. Just wait and see.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a voice.
They looked at the stage. A man was standing before the microphone. He wore a cement-gray suit, tight at the waist and flaring below like a frock, and stood with his shoes joined at the heels. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said again, “I have the honor tonight, of inviting to this stage, the Malika-e-Mauseeqi, the Queen of Music, in whose praise one can only say the following.” He held out the palm of his hand and, with lurching repetitions, recited a couplet in Farsi. Then he raised his voice and said, “Please join me, in welcoming to this stage, the esteemed personage, of Roshan! Ara! Begum!”
The audience was clapping. The man was blinking and smiling. The Queen of Music was walking onto the stage with her musicians.
“Cow,” said Seema to Daadi.
The woman was short, dark, round, wrapped in yellow silk and glinting with diamonds. She could have been a washerwoman in someone else’s clothing.
“Wait and see,” said Seema.
Daadi joined the tips of her forefingers and prepared herself.
The singer held out her hand. Her eyebrows went up, and her mouth released a single note. Her voice was nasal, importunate and quavered uncertainly. The yawning strings of the taanpura floated with her. She went up and touched a place, fled from it and came back up. Now around that place she wove, higher and lower, and the place where she was heading, the place at the heart of it, the same as before, became a destination. But she touched it and went past it. And she was too high now, and fell; but she fell on the same place in a lower scale, so that her flight became a recovery she herself had predicted.
The audience clapped.
She opened her eyes and looked at her musicians, sniffed and dabbed her mouth with her shiny veil.
The tabla stumbled. The sarangi wept.
She was listening.
The sarangi gave a summary of what she had done.
She summarized it back.
The sarangi mimicked her and then took it higher, a challenge.
She copied it but brought it down.
They wrestled, and merged upon the moment when the tabla struck.
The audience clapped again.
And she smiled at the audience and nodded agreeingly.
Daadi’s fingers, joined previously at the tips, had joined fully now, and to someone watching she may have had the appearance of a devotee.
She inclined her head and said, “What is she doing?”
Seema’s father said, “It is Shankara. It is the melody of Lord Shiva.” His hands enacted a flowering.
His wife said, “People are listening.”
So they heard the rest of the song in silence. And it was the same after a while: the singer sought a ceiling, and sometimes she was able to touch it; but she always fell back and hung on the note that came before the last one. After the song had ended, when the Queen of Music was talking to her musicians and the people in the audience were talking to one another, Seema’s father removed his glasses, wiped them with his shirt and said, “It is a difficult melody, you see. She must bring out the quality of Shiva, who is both the creator and the destroyer.” His eyes were bright with emphasis, and his lips were smiling. “There is a place between the two, you see. And she must bring it out. That is why she stays on that second-last note: it is where the yearning is the highest, the highest, but also the closest to ending.”
Seema’s mother crunched disdainfully on her powders and said, “He is always saying big-big things.”
At the end of the year Daadi was married, and moved with her husband into his three-bedroom house in Mughalpura. She was living there in one room with him; in another room lived his mother, a widow; and in the third room lived his younger brother. Within a year of their marriage Daadi’s husband sold his shop (they made oil-based perfumes and sold them to retailers in the city) and became the manager of a rubber factory in Lyallpur. The factory was in debt; the rubber it produced was inferior. But the owners offered to make the manager a shareholder in the company, and the new manager, encouraged by his new wife, agreed to take the job.
He went away. Four months later he sent for his younger brother, who was to work with him in the factory. Daadi was alone in the new house with her mother-in-law. The woman awoke at dawn, said her prayers in her own room, then wandered out to the bathroom, washed her face in the sink, spat and gargled noisily and cleansed herself in other ways, and went to sit outside with her gramophone in the baithak room. She sat there in the light of the window, ate paans and listened to the gramophone, swaying to heartbreaking songs by K. L. Saigal and C. H. Atma. She expected her daughter-in-law to take her dirty clothes out to the washerman, dice the onions and tomatoes in the small kitchen, put the pot of water on the hob and go into the bathroom with rags and a bucket and clean it up.
Daadi said, “Anything else?”
“Not for now,” said the woman, swaying to the music.
Daadi went in and found a mound of soft, black shit in the squat-toilet with flies encircling its peak.
She came out and fainted.
Her mother-in-law said, “She has insulted me!”
Her husband was gloomy.
Daadi said, “I am not staying here,” and put her clothes in a bundle and went back to her parents’ house.
It became a way of living. She fought with her mother-in-law, fought with her husband, fought with his brother’s new wife, and came away always to her parents’ house. She was likely to stay there a week. Then her husband was expected to appear with an apology, and she was expected to accept it; and they were expected to go back to Mughalpura in a hired taanga.
The same taanga brought her husband back to her parents’ house. He said, “She must come with me.” He was wearing a gray safari suit and pacing the veranda with his hands clasped importantly behind his back. His salary had increased, and was the source of his current confidence. In the safari suit his stomach hung like a sack.
She said, “I will not take my daughter back to that little hole.”
The daug
hter was two years old. Her name was Musarrat. In the house they called her Suri.
Suri acquired a sister.
Seema came to see Daadi at her parents’ house and said, “She looks like a doll!”
Daadi told Seema that the child weighed nine and a half pounds.
Seema said, “You must give her a strong name.”
They settled on Hikmat.
“Suri and Hukmi!” cried Daadi. “Come here at once! We are going away from here!”
They were playing with the girls of the neighborhood in the street. Daadi saw the stained faces of the children, their torn clothes and wild, lice-infested hair, and shouted, “From now on you will not play with these urchins! You are from a good family! And they are from the streets!”
Offended mothers appeared, and came forward to claim their offspring.
In the taanga Suri said, “They will never play with us now.”
Hukmi was crying.
Daadi said, “And I am glad that they won’t. I am very glad.”
Seema came to see her and said, “You must build a house of your own.” She herself was living now in Rawalpindi with her husband, who was in the army. Seema had said that her house had six rooms, a garden, a driveway for keeping the car and a terrace with wicker chairs and a plastic table. “All white,” said Seema, closing her eyes with satisfaction. “Everything is white.”
Daadi said, “We can’t afford it.”
Seema leaned forward in her chair and said, “Your husband is supporting his mother and his brother. The day he stops filling up their pockets you will have the money for your own house.”
Daadi smiled and said, “It is not like that at all.”
And later, to her husband, she said, “When will you stop filling up the pockets of your mother and brother? When will you do something for us?” She was standing in their shadowy room between the two beds, one for her husband and herself and the other for her daughters. She said, “How long can we live here? How long?” She stretched out her arms on either side, and they almost touched the walls. “Do you think I can bring up another child in this room?”
