Haveli

by Suzanne Fisher Staples

  “Rahim, I’ve never seen you so disturbed,” she said. “Surely it’s not just Nazir’s demands over the wedding …”

  But he pushed past her and dressed without another word, not even about breakfast, and was gone by the time the servant came to the door with a bed tea tray for both of them.

  Shabanu had grown so accustomed to the cool, quiet world inside the haveli that leaving it was a shock. She felt like a jackal coming out of its lair after the winter and finding the world inhospitable—bright, hot, dusty, and noisy. She pulled her chadr over her face, and Zabo did the same as they left by a heavy wooden door that usually remained closed to a small and particularly filthy side lane outside the mud walls.

  The tonga-wallah was waiting with his horse and cart where Ibne had said they’d be, outside the gate and down the lane toward the small tiled shrine at the corner.

  Shabanu watched her feet, for the lane was littered with fruit and vegetable peels, goat droppings, and filthy gray water splashed up from the slimed gutters on either side of the mud paving.

  The tonga was worn and dusty, as was the pony, which stood with its head down like a flower wilted in the merciless sun. The tonga-wallah clucked, and the poor gray pony reluctantly raised his head and, in a shuffling trot under cracks of the whip, made his dusty way from Bhatti Gate to Lohari Gate, where Zabo took out a small map drawn by Ibne to guide them on foot through the maze of lanes to the Anarkali Bazaar.

  The map led them under canopies; past shops selling wedding garlands strung with tinsel, rupee notes, and flowers; past posters with pictures of sinister-looking politicians plastered on the walls beyond Bhatti Gate; past the icicle-shaped stone Hindu temple, long since abandoned and fallen into disrepair; past the bustling Bannu Bazaar, where they had bought Zabo’s real gold jewelry; and into the Anarkali Bazaar, where counters overflowed with audiotapes and plastic buckets, and Western-style rock music blared over loudspeakers.

  As they picked their way down ever narrower lanes, Shabanu thought of Anarkali, the young harem girl in the court of the Mogul Emperor Akbar.

  The emperor’s son, Prince Salim, fell in love with Anarkali, who was named for the delicate beauty of the pomegranate blossom. One day Anarkali returned Salim’s smile, sending Akbar into a jealous rage. The emperor ordered Anarkali buried alive. When Salim became the Emperor Jahangir, he built a magnificent tomb in her memory.

  I have been like Anarkali, thought Shabanu, buried alive all these years. And I never knew it until I fell in love.

  Passersby and shopkeepers stared at the two young women, some of the tradesmen leaning over their counters to watch them walk past. Dozens of pairs of eyes followed their shrouded forms as they floated through the chaotic lanes. For although their bodies were covered, their gold bangles clinked on their slender arms as they gestured, a cloud of floral scent trailed after them, and their high, soft voices sounded like bells on the hot summer air.

  chapter 14

  It was just less than a month before Omar’s wedding, and still he had not come to the pavilion. Shabanu refused to think of him. She had prepared a small speech to deliver to him—if ever he should appear—about the risks she faced by meeting him, and how it just wasn’t possible …

  Still his face appeared unbidden before her as she sat, late into the summer nights, embroidering clothes for Mumtaz, Zabo, and herself, and coverlets and bolsters for the pavilion.

  A soft breeze blew through the stone screens, and Shabanu knew with certainty that here, high above the stench of the gutters and dusty alleys, blew the only cool breeze in all of Lahore. But the thin wicks of the lamps burned straight and true behind their crystal chimneys, and the pavilion glowed like her old Auntie’s brass water pots in Cholistan’s winter sun.

  She reached into her sewing basket, which she’d used to carry up her belongings, the things she’d brought as a child from the desert and carried to Lahore, then over the last two weeks, one or two at a time, to the summer pavilion. She took from it a pile of rupee notes, wrapped in white cloth and stitched at the edges in a thick oblong bundle. She placed it on the table.

  Zabo had handed it to her with her eyes closed.

  “I don’t know how much there is, and I don’t want to know,” she’d said. “I don’t want to know where you keep it. Just keep it safe.”

  Three intermediate Urdu readers were stacked on Shabanu’s desk beside a newly sharpened green pencil and a tablet of rough white paper with gray lines. Beside that lay another bundle of handmade paper upon which Shabanu intended to write her father.

  On the low lacquered table lay her most prized possession—the small wooden flute carved by her grandfather, a warrior in the army of the last of the Abbasid princes. She could see him clearly, his large white turban nodding as he worked beside a fire of khar twigs, its acrid smoke twisting like a blue ribbon toward the stars.

  In the corner of the room stood a large red clay milk jar, an important part of a Cholistani girl’s dowry. It had stood empty all these years at Okurabad, and she’d had Ibne bring it back when he took Rahim home for one of his tribal meetings.

  Shabanu took her scissors from the sewing basket and snipped slowly and deliberately at the threads that bound the money. She unwrapped the muslin. Inside were not one but two stacks of notes—not ten-rupee notes but five-hundred-rupee notes, all blue and crisp from the bank, still stapled at one end. A lakh—one hundred thousand rupees—enough for them to live on for years!

  Zabo had never said how much Nazir had given her to spend on the dowry. But she had already spent tens of thousands, and this was only part of what he’d sent to pay her bills. Shabanu remembered Rahim’s bribe of hundreds of acres of land and knew he had made Nazir promise to be generous with Zabo, who was his only daughter.

  She rewrapped the notes and restitched them carefully into two bundles that would fit into the milk jar. She was about to cross to the corner of the room where it stood when she heard a quiet footstep outside. Her heart flew into her mouth, and she moved quickly to the tall jar. She laid the bundle in the bottom and was just replacing the lid when a shadow fell over the doorway.

  “Who is it?” she asked. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was calm, but she felt tense and strong, ready to defend her aerie.

  “It’s me. Omar. May I come in?”

  Shabanu’s heart hammered, and the back of her throat was so dry she was unable to say anything.

  “Forgive me,” he said, looking through the doorway to see her standing with her hands crossed over her chest. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “You frightened me!” she said. She sounded angry but relieved. She ran her hands through her hair and then clasped them in front of her.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  “No … no,” she said. “It’s just …”

  “I understand you don’t want anyone to know about this place,” he said. “I didn’t want to intrude on you, but I had to see you.”

  “No, I was going to say I’d expected you—but …”

  “I meant to come sooner, but I thought …”

  “Selma’s been telling us about the parties and hunts and dinners.” The speech she’d prepared fled from her mind, and she couldn’t remember anything she’d meant to say to him.

  “I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since the day we first came here. I’ve had to fight myself not to come looking for you. The risk is enormous, especially with Uncle Nazir’s guards following every move you and Zabo make.”

  He watched her intently while he talked, as if to see whether she understood what he was saying.

  Shabanu felt weak and trembly as a newborn camel. She didn’t trust her voice, and so she nodded. She was grateful that he understood the seriousness of their meeting. Again she thought of Anarkali, of Akbar’s rage, and of the horrible price Anarkali had paid for love.

  Omar looked past her shoulder and into the room.

  “Would you like to come in?” she asked then.

  H
e looked at the old-fashioned furnishings and the mirrored embroideries that cast light from the oil lamps in little fairy dots all over the room.

  “It’s a room only you could have made,” he said.

  They crossed the golden pools of light that the oil lamps made on the stone floor to the Swati chairs and the low lacquered table. Omar reached out and picked up her bamboo flute.

  “Can you play?”

  “I used to,” she replied. “That’s how we called our animals in the desert. But it’s too sad to play and not hear their bells as they move among the dunes … I haven’t played since I left Cholistan.”

  Shabanu adjusted her chadr around her shoulders and looked across the table at Omar. Now, she told herself. Tell him now that he can’t come here anymore, that he can’t meet you anywhere, or speak to you. The lamp on the desk lit the fine straight line of his cheek from behind, like a halo.

  “I have loved being back in the Punjab,” he said. “Until now I haven’t thought about America at all.”

  “And what makes you think of it now?” she asked.

  “I’ve told you anything is possible there,” he said. “It makes people think differently. Here so much is not possible, and people learn not to think of what cannot be. I know I should think that way about you. But I can’t.”

  His words were accompanied by the graceful gestures of his large, smooth hands. She remembered the feel of them on her hands. His hair was glossy, his skin smooth, his voice deep, the planes of his cheek and chin and shoulder straight—all of his textures were clean and strong. They made her ache with longing and sadness.

  Stop it! she said to herself. Stop it now!

  As she sat watching his lean figure folded gracefully into the small Swati chair, a warning came to her from her Auntie Sharma: “Don’t ever fall in love,” Sharma had said. “It will ruin your judgment.”

  Now she knew what Sharma meant. Here she was with everything at stake, and all she could think of was how it felt when Omar touched her. She’d never expected her heart to be so stubborn about having its way. She prayed to Allah to give her the strength to discipline her feelings.

  For the sake of Mumtaz, she said to herself. And that time it caught hold, and there was no turning back.

  “I have learned to live with what is possible,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  She couldn’t look at him for fear she’d tell him what was in her heart.

  “You are the girl who could never obey. You are too direct to hide your feelings from me. You can’t tell me you don’t care for me.”

  She could not let him know how she felt. He would try to persuade her to give in to her feelings, and she couldn’t do that. She had to lie.

  Allah, give me strength, she prayed. For the sake of Mumtaz, for the sake of Mumtaz.

  “You are wrong,” she said, looking directly at him. “In America do men respect the wishes of women?”

  He looked at her with disbelief.

  “Do they?”

  He nodded.

  “Then take the best of what you learned of duty in Pakistan and of respect in America, and leave me in peace.” Her voice was firm and steady, and she knew she was convincing.

  Without speaking, Omar stood and left. She didn’t look up until he was gone. She saw him pass the outside wall of the pavilion and heard his footsteps recede into the stairwell.

  When he had gone, she bowed her head and let the grief engulf her. Her heart crumpled and shrank, like a ball of paper set on fire.

  chapter 15

  Shabanu didn’t see Omar the rest of that week or the next, as the social whirl surrounding the weddings increased to what seemed to her a maddening crescendo.

  She had been right, she told herself again and again. Omar would have jeopardized all her plans—for Zabo, Mumtaz’s education, her marriage to Rahim, their very lives. And there was no possibility of a future. But there was no comfort in being right.

  She tried to keep busy, but each afternoon she was drawn into the courtyard or up into the pavilion, where she sat still as a pool of water. It was as if she feared she’d fly into a million pieces if she moved.

  Late each afternoon the women of the Cantonment, still dressed in their finest shalwar kameez from lunch or early tea, piled into the air-conditioned limousines to be driven to watch matches at the Lahore Polo Club.

  One day Selma insisted that Zabo and Shabanu join her.

  “I won’t have you two moping about,” she said.

  They sat at the end of a row in the section reserved for Omar’s team. The field was green and cool-looking in the late-afternoon sun. A breeze played over them, ruffling their hair and clothing, refreshing them.

  Amina and Leyla sat in the middle of the row of women like two large roses in sunglasses. They were surrounded by their relatives and friends, eating chicken on gray paper napkins and sipping lemonade.

  The men sat separately, most of them dressed in riding clothes, their handmade leather boots gleaming in the late sun.

  On the playing field, Omar sat tall and straight on his bay mare, his green shirt matching the mare’s leg wraps. The horses thundered up and down the field. When the bell sounded to end the chukker, he rode with his mallet on his shoulder at a trot past the women and tipped his cap. When he got to the end where Shabanu sat, his eyes went straight to hers.

  Her heart leaped into her mouth. She loved him totally, without hope. The rest of the afternoon she sat still as a stone.

  After the match, Omar returned to the end of the field where his team celebrated their victory over the very best army team. He did not play in the next match. He came to sit in his boots and his green shirt and white jodhpurs, looking painfully handsome and at ease amid the giant roses of Okurabad.

  Not once did Shabanu look in their direction. But she heard peals of feminine laughter as Omar teased and joked with his cousins, among them his bride-to-be.

  It was a very modern notion, almost scandalous, a betrothed pair socializing together so close to the wedding. They spoke in Punjabi, and Shabanu understood little of what was said. But it sounded very sophisticated, very foreign to Shabanu. She imagined this was how young people in America socialized.

  She felt like a bird with clipped wings. She felt thoroughly excluded from their camaraderie—like an outcast. Omar’s voice sounded as if it were the voice of another person, one totally unknown to her. While it sounded relaxed, it also sounded formal; where it expressed humor, it lacked the warmth and gentleness that she associated with him. It sounded somewhat cruel. Suddenly she sensed the enormous distance between herself and Omar, and the gulf felt like a physical illness.

  “Are you unwell?” Selma asked. “Your face is pale.”

  Shabanu managed a nod.

  “I must get out of the sun,” she replied.

  Shabanu left with Zabo and Selma before the next match. Amina and Leyla leaned forward in their seats to watch as they walked down the long row of spectators.

  “Shabanu is ill?” someone asked. “Why doesn’t she cast a spell and cure herself?” And a small titter of wicked laughter followed them the length of the stands.

  Had she heard Omar’s laugh among them? She thought perhaps it was her imagination.

  In the days that followed at the haveli, darkness tortured Shabanu’s heart. She had hoped to find comfort in the small motions of everyday life: Samiya’s arrival for lessons, trips to the bazaars with Zabo, naps with Mumtaz in the oppressive afternoon heat, tea with Selma, and evenings spent writing in the summer pavilion. But every move required the utmost concentration of effort.

  She tried to find hope everywhere, but it eluded her until she fell into an almost paralyzing torpor. This was how Anarkali must have felt, Shabanu thought, suffocating in her tomb.

  When Mumtaz asked a question, she had to force herself to concentrate on every word, and then to think hard to find an answer.

  During their morning lessons Samiya would ask Shaba
nu to read aloud. Often Shabanu did not hear and was unable to find her place in the book. Samiya cocked her little head and looked at Shabanu quizzically.

  Selma clucked over her at meals, and Shabanu forced herself to eat. Zabo seemed not to notice.

  Shabanu felt she’d been caught up in a rush of time that ran for someone else, most certainly not for herself. She felt life was passing by without her. And yet the hours crawled past so slowly she thought she would never reach the end of each day. She felt better when she was alone in the pavilion in the evenings. At least there she didn’t have to pretend to anyone.

  Then she decided she must do something to shake herself out of this state of paralysis. She began to keep a diary about everything except Omar in the hope that the appearance of normalcy would gradually become reality.

  “Zabo’s stash of money has grown enormous,” she wrote. “This week two more bundles of rupees lie in the bottom of my milk jar. We now have more than two lakhs—enough, if we live modestly, to keep us for more than ten years.”

  Still she told no one about the pavilion. And as time passed she grew more confident that no one would ever invade the roof and see her haven. Zabo slept early each night, tired by the heat and the fervor with which she pursued her plan to purchase clothing and jewelry that made it appear she had spent the entire fortune her father had given her on an elaborate dowry.

  Every time Shabanu heard a whistle outside in the courtyard, she would steel her heart and think, I won’t die if I see him. Each time she heard a footstep in the hall she pretended she’d heard nothing at all. She saw him once from Zabo’s window, which looked out over the courtyard. She felt as if she were on fire, but he didn’t look up. She barely survived, utterly without hope.

  Then one day Rahim came unannounced into the parlor at the haveli after Samiya’s lessons were finished, and said they would return to Okurabad the next morning.

  “You should be packed and ready to leave by seven,” he said brusquely, then turned to leave. It was the first time Shabanu had seen him in more than a week.