by Dar, Azma;
Tanya’s sons were still in the street, playing cricket in the light of an oil lantern. Farzana told them not to announce her arrival if their father was inside, but to quietly tell their mother that she was waiting by the door.
Tanya came out moments later, and Farzana guessed that her husband was there.
‘It’s pretty quiet most of the time, but it has its moments,’ said Tanya, handing over a black sack that was occasionally shaking and vibrating. Farzana took the bag and went back in the direction of the main street, slowing her pace considerably to keep the contents of the bag as calm as she could.
Her destination was only a ten minute walk away, but at her new speed it took her twice as long. She stopped when the bag squawked and flapped, and considered knocking it out with a pole, but realised she probably wouldn’t do a good enough job and would only succeed in worsening its temper.
She knew she was almost there when she saw the bakery. Snatches of the tattered, remaining scents of the day wafted towards her, overly-sweet pastry and bread, before quickly dissipating and giving way to the less appetizing smell of the squashed buffalo pat in the middle of the road.
A café was open on the other side of the street, a shack selling pakoras and tea, lit by a string of bulbs dangling between two wooden poles. A group of men were huddled around a carom board, one of them posing with the striker, trying to induce fear in the hearts of his opponents while he waited for one of them to sprinkle the surface with more bicarbonate of soda so the pieces would slide across it better. His companions jeered at him, daring him to put his boasts into action, and he stood up and began dancing to the music from the cassette player, a song about love on a bicycle. Enveloped inside her burkha, Farzana knew she was almost certainly immune from becoming the target of lewd or derogotary comments, and walked past them without fear of this – not that she would have cared if they had said anything. She was more than happy to tell them what she thought of them, arrogant, preening idiots that they were, but tonight she needed to be silent and anonymous, so she had also worn a veil for the occasion.
The only real light came from passing cars, the diminishing glow of the slowly vanishing tea shop, or the odd window or open door. There were no street lamps. As she turned into the labyrinth of alleys where the house was, she moved into a deeper, more complete darkness, iced with mist.
Eventually she found her way to heavy black metal gate set in a sandy coloured wall, a little higher than her. The main, two-room building was in the middle of the courtyard that the wall circled. She pushed the door but it was locked, so holding the now rather frantic sack firmly, she rang the bell, and it chirped like a bird.
Although Baba knew that there was no blood relationship between Rabia and Farzana, they looked uncannily similar, with their wide faces, trembling nostrils and darting black eyes. As Farzana sat before him preparing to make her demands, Baba thought of Arshad, the frail filling between this sandwich of feuding hefties.
‘I’ve had enough, Babaji,’ said Farzana. They were sitting on the string beds in the dusty courtyard. The branches of an apricot tree swayed above them, its fruit dispersed over the floor, and a gang of mosquitoes fuzzed in the glow of the lamp. Farzana’s sack had expelled its passenger, and the black cockerel was strutting around Baba’s bemused-looking goat.
‘My mother said never to get involved in the accursed arts but it’s too much,’ said Farzana. ‘The tension is giving me gallstones.’
‘Is that what you want the cure for?’ asked Baba. ‘The stomach pains?’
‘No, no, they are being treated. I go for an injection on Tuesdays and I’m thinking of buying myself a drip. Anyway, I want you to help me with something else. I know you’ve cut down on the preparations you give now, but this is an emergency. I’m alone there. They’re all against me.’
‘Arshad is a good man.’
‘Yes, too good for his own good!’ said Farzana. ‘He wants to be fair to everyone even if it means his wife and children suffer for it. I’ve told him we must move out.’
‘Well then, your problems will be solved.’
‘Yes, but it will take time. I need some immediate relief.’
‘I make no guarantees for instant success.’
‘I can wait a week or two. It’s nothing compared to the twelve years of mental torture that I’ve endured.’
Baba refrained from commenting that Rabia had come in earlier for a concoction to teach her acid-tongued daughter-in-law a lesson.
‘I really don’t work much now,’ said Baba.
‘I’ll pay you well. I know you don’t take fees, but please help me. I want to give you a gift to express my gratitude.’
‘The gift is irrelevant but as you seem so desperate…’
‘Let me give it to you now, before I get too absorbed in the treatment.’
He pocketed the notes with more discretion than she had shown in removing them from the inside of her top.
‘What is it you need exactly?’ he asked her.
‘Pervez,’ she hissed. ‘He’s the root of all the trouble. Give me something for him. A piece of evil luck to dent his pride.’
Baba motioned her inside. The room was simply furnished with a bed and a three seater sofa made of dark wood and cane-effect plastic, the walls painted a garish glossy pink. Turning off the light, Baba lit a single candle and a stick of incense, pushing it into a small bowl of sand.
‘Are we going to pray?’ asked Farzana, thinking of the musk scented family gatherings during which the Quran was recited.
‘The smoke is for the Jinn to feed on. It will summon him.’
Farzana began to feel uneasy.
‘He won’t take my interview, will he?’ she asked.
‘Sit.’
‘Shall I go and get the chicken?’
‘We don’t need the chicken.’
Farzana felt a twinge of regret. Her friend Tanya had told her the fowl was a necessary ingredient for a certain type of curse – to be slaughtered in the demon’s name and flung into a ruined site. Farzana hoped that by skimping on this detail Baba wasn’t giving her a second-rate service.
The old man left the room and she sat in the darkness, the plumes of scented smoke drifting around her. She wanted to follow him out, but willed herself to stay. If the Jinn saw her weaken he might not do as they asked him to. She stared across the room, looking for anything that moved, but all was still except for the flickering candle, and the ashen moth that danced around it, its wings thudding together softly. Then she heard another sound, a rasping, with the suggestion of a creak in it. Her eyes ran to the door, searching both for Baba, and a way to escape. The sound quickened, and she felt riveted to the chair, her hand moving to her neck as the fumes of the incense began to clog up her throat, filling her with their sickly sweetness. As she started to choke she realised she had been listening to her own breathing – her nose had been blocked since last night, making her inhale noisily through her mouth.
Baba reappeared with a bowl and folded piece of leather.
‘Are you all right?’
Farzana thumped her chest, hoping for some assistance from Baba, but he merely watched until the coughing fit subsided.
‘You must hide this taveez in Pervez’s bedroom,’ he said, as she continued panting rather more decorously. ‘Somewhere deep is best for the asr to be strong.’ He gave her the packet.
‘And this you must swallow. Whole if you can.’
Farzana collected herself and strained her eyes to look at the contents of the bowl, steeling herself for something horrendous. To her relief and, perhaps more so, disappointment, she saw the smooth surface of a peeled boiled egg.
‘I can’t eat it whole!’
‘Try,’ said Baba. ‘Or chew as little as you can. The less you break its potency the better.’
‘Aren’t you going to make a model of him?’ Farzana did little to hide her feeling of anti-climax. Baba closed the door, blocking out the little light from the courtyard.
‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘Techniques have advanced. This will work much better.’ He blew out the candle.
CHAPTER 3
In the days immediately after the wedding Saika was required to do nothing except be on display, sparkling with silk and diamonds, and charm the visitors who were eager to see the new mistress of the haveli. Most newly-wed girls were dressed and made up by their husband’s female relatives but there were unusually few in Anwar’s family. He had no siblings and his four aunts were all dead, so there had been no such assistant for Saika, and she had much preferred it that way.
She spent the morning with Anwar, entertaining a group of his colleagues and their wives, sipping tea and having polite chatter about children, gardens and the forthcoming valima party. After lunch Anwar drove into town for a meeting, and Gago persuaded Saika to go and ‘make her back horizontal’. Saika usually hated afternoon siestas, but sitting with stiff formality in another of her heavy pearl-laden outfits had been tiring and she went upstairs to her room.
Saika lay awkwardly on her side, trying not to think of anything. The whole situation of being so suddenly married and, it felt, dispatched, then examined, admired and embraced, made it impossible for her to relax her mind, and control the scattered images within: the critical stare of the Begum in her lifeless attic, this new bed that came complete with a strange, snoring man and rose petals, the woods that skirted the grounds of the haveli, glimpsed with lowered eyes as they drove home on the wedding night.
Saika sat up and fixed her hair, squirted on a little scent. She picked up the empty evening bag that she’d been carrying around all day for amusement, and wandered down the corridor. Anwar had shown her most of the house, but there were still a few rooms on this floor that she hadn’t seen. Apart from her bedroom, another room had been emptied and painted for her. For now her two suitcases sat in the middle of it, like a pair of lost children. She tried one of the other doors, and it pushed open easily, revealing a disused bathroom. A vacant, marbled space with a tap in the middle of one wall, an upturned aluminium bucket and a squat wooden stool next to it. The toilet was a large square step with a hole in the middle, fitted with a bowl and with foot rests on either side. A pair of broken metal chairs and a step ladder stood in the corner.
The next two rooms contained nothing but huge green trunks and old furniture, but the last one was another bedroom. The curtains were drawn so she turned on the light and went in, finding the place a little odd, alone in having evidence of a life, sometime, amongst the maze of dilapidation. She knew it probably wasn’t where Anwar had slept before moving into their new bedroom, as she’d been told several times by Rabia on her frequent recent visits that he was preparing for her arrival by having his current bedroom decorated in a more lady-like fashion. This place was already feminine enough. The bed was huge with a polished, cream-coloured headboard, with bunches of tulips moulded on to the corners, and gold plastic piping around the edge. There was a vast, matching wardrobe and a curved dressing table, displaying a vase of fabric flowers, a trinket box and a collection of miniature perfume bottles. Saika hesitated and then pulled at one of the drawers, and it exhaled a swirl of blue dust as it opened. It was stuffed full of make-up, and smelt of ancient lipstick. The powders were unspoilt, but the lipsticks looked as though they had melted and solidified over and over many times, and a few of the eyeshadow pots were spattered with specks of mildew. The other drawers contained creams and ointments, underwear, small satiny bags with diamante clasps. Guessing now the identity of the boudoir’s owner, Saika went over to the wardrobe. It was crammed with suits, silk and chiffon, georgette and chenille, beautiful, indulgent materials, unlike her own clothes, many of which were created from polyester mixes. The styles and shades, too, were unlike her own taste, bold and vivid, without subtlety. She recognised designs she had longed to emulate in her own clothes as a child in the nineties, but now seemed comic – huge padded shoulders, balloon-like sleeves, excessively pleated, lurex patiala shalwars, wide patent belts.
She knew she should go, but the place seemed to hold her there, tempting her with secrets and whispers about the woman it had belonged to. Saika went back to the dressing table and sat on the stool, in front of a white cheval mirror. Slightly irritated by her own reflection, the hair not perfectly in place, and the face not flawlessly polished, she tilted the image away. She glided her fingers along the inviting surface of the table, then, unable to resist, opened the bottom drawer again and taking out a quilted silk purse, unzipped it. A ragged red paper napkin fell out, and a few coins rattled at the bottom, along with a couple of shrivelled almonds and dried apricots, remnants from a wedding guest’s pickings. She closed it quickly to shut away the acrid smell. Saika wanted to throw the bag in the bin, but put it back in the drawer. Telling herself she would have a look at just one more then leave, she pulled out a white leather effect clutch bag with a plastic frame. There was a small object inside it, wrapped in a black cloth. Knowing she shouldn’t, she unwrapped it. It was a doll, a crude little object make of rough sack-like material, with a basic face sewn on, eyes, nose, grinning mouth, and clothes that resembled trousers and a jumper, giving it a manly appearance. Stitched on to the head were a few real hairs, and what looked like a human tooth was held on to the horrible smile with bits of thread.
She drew her fingers away, not wanting to touch it, but at the same time unable to take her eyes off it as she thought about what it meant. She’d heard the stories of people thought to have become ill because of curses, had their fortunes changed, been made to fall in love, through the arcane work of the occult. And those that had the spells woven- neglected wives wanting to bewitch their husbands, to be desired and to control their actions, or other lonely lovers wishing their passions to stop being quite so unrequited.
The doll stared, its eyes just loops of cotton, but somehow intent and unwavering, a silent challenge. Was there a malignant force inside it, waiting to unleash itself upon her?
Absurd. But as Saika replaced the doll inside the bag and into the drawer, she couldn’t help wondering who it was Zareena had wanted to master. The door creaked behind her and Gago came in.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Saika. ‘I was just having a quick look around the house…’
‘Please Memsahib, don’t shame me by apologising. It’s your house. You do as you please. I came to call you for dinner.’
‘Yes, of course… is this… whose clothes are in there?’
‘They belong to the first mistress.’ Gago paused as though deliberating how much to say.
‘You… er… never cleared them out?’
‘We tried, once,’ said Gago. ‘Her mother and sisters came to pack it all up. But Saabji got very angry. He told them it was none of their business. It wasn’t like him but he was upset. We thought he would do it himself, when he felt better, but he never did. We come in and keep it tidy, sweep the floor and open the window some times, but we don’t touch her things.’ Gago suddenly shut her mouth tight. Sensing she wouldn’t say any more for now, Saika gathered up her skirt and stood up. Inside the dressing table drawer, the doll smirked in the dark.
As twilight approached, Nathoo walked the perimeter of the house, checking that the doors and windows as well as the outdoor gates were locked, as he did every night at this hour. Satisfied all was as it should be, he sat on one of the garden chairs to finish his cigarette before he went in, gazing at the woods, half hidden beneath the soft, wafting wall of fog. He remembered a time from long ago, that exquisite woman emerging from the mist, fair skin and limpid green eyes, perfect, laughing lips, dark curls clouded over her shoulders, the pale aqua sari. His mistress. He would have done whatever she asked, and she had known it.
Like the time she’d told him to procure her that tiny bottle. She’d said it was for the rats, but in the end it had been another creature who’d suffered…Sometimes he thought he could still hear her, muttering his name from under the earth… instructing him on what he must do…
&n
bsp; This new woman was pretty, friendly enough, but she couldn’t compare. Her face didn’t strike you like hers had done, grab your breath and hold you still, amazed. He wondered if she would be able to keep the master happy.
Prussian, ceruleum, ultramarine, pthalo, Wedgewood. Saika laid out the tubes of blue in an arch and looked at the sky. It was pale today – Saika loved it when it was intense with heat, a deep simmering cobalt, the sun imparting a warmth even to this, the coolest of colours. She squirted a blob of Wedgewood on to the palette. It was the right tone but she didn’t like it. There was too much white in it. She chose the ultramarine instead, adding a little ivory and a little more water, and washed it over the canvas. She would have to work fast. The drifting mist was whitening the sky and descending on the trees rapidly.
Anwar came out on to the balcony and sat down on a woven cane chair. ‘I’m not disturbing you, am I?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Saika, her eyes still on the scene below her. It felt strange looking down on the town. Her own home was situated much lower, somewhere in the small disparate clusters of lights visible within the expanse of forested hills. While the bazaars lay at the foot of the slopes, the bungalows, holiday villas, grand houses and churches, were situated in the higher areas. Many of them were remnants from the Colonial era, when the many of the ridge top villages were turned into hill stations, cool summer escapes for British army officers and bureaucrats, away from the scorching cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
‘No,’ she repeated and put the brush down. The awkward perspective of the angle was too difficult to capture. ‘I can’t do it. I mean I can. I will, but not now.’ She sat down opposite him. He smiled.
‘What?’ she said. ‘I will.’
‘I’m sure you will. You seem very determined.’
‘Ah. What did you imagine I was going to be like?’
‘Well yes, I suppose knowing about your profession, and your background one would expect you to be… strong-willed. But still, you know us men. It’s so ingrained into our heads that we’re in charge that it’s always a shock to be challenged by the ladies. That’s coming from a man who lives with Gago and my mother.’
