by Bapsi Sidhwa
Chapter 23
Beadon Road, bereft of the colorful turbans, hairy bodies, yellow shorts, tight pajamas, and glittering religious arsenal of the Sikhs, looks like any other populous street. Lahore is suddenly emptied of yet another hoary dimension: there are no Brahmins with castemarks—or Hindus in dhoties with bodhis. Only hordes of Muslim refugees.
Every bit of scrap that can be used has been salvaged from the gutted shops and tenements of Shalmi and Gowalmandi. The palatial bungalows of Hindus in Model Town and the other affluent neighborhoods have been thoroughly scavenged. The first wave of looters, in mobs and processions, has carried away furniture, carpets, utensils, mattresses, clothes. Succeeding waves of marauders, riding in rickety carts, have systematically stripped the houses of doors, windows, bathroom fittings, ceiling fans and rafters. Casual passersby, urchins and dogs now stray into the houses to scavenge amidst spiders’ webs and deep layers of dust, hoping to pick up old newspapers and cardboard boxes, or any other leavings that have escaped the eye and desire of the preceding wave of goondas.
In Rosy-Peter’s compound, and in the gaunt looted houses opposite ours, untended gardenia hedges sprawl grotesquely and the lawns and flower beds are overrun with weeds. There are patches of parched cracked clay in which nothing grows. Even the mango and banyan trees look monstrous, stalking the unkempt premises with their shadows.
We still wander through the Singhs’ annex but the main bungalow, the Hindu doctor’s abandoned house behind theirs, and parallel to ours, shows surreptitious signs of occupation. A window boarded with newspaper, a tattered curtain, a shadow of someone passing and the murmur of strangers’ voices keep us away.
Months pass before we see our new neighbors. Frightened, dispossessed, they are coping with grief over dead kin and kidnapped womenfolk. Grateful for the roof over their heads and the shelter of walls, our neighbors dwell in shadowed interiors, quietly going about the business of surviving, terrified of being again evicted.
Rosy-Peter’s house and the house opposite still remain unoccupied. These are to be allotted to refugees who can prove they have left equally valuable properties behind.
It is astonishing how rapidly an uninhabited house decays. There are cracks in the cement floor of the Singhs’ annex and big patches of damp on the walls. Clouds of mosquitoes rise in dark comers and lizards cleave to the ceilings. It looks like a house pining for its departed—haunted—like Ayah’s eyes are by memories of Masseur. She secretly cries. Often I catch her wiping tears.
The glossy chocolate bloom in her skin is losing its sheen.
Ayah has stopped receiving visitors. Her closest friends have fled Lahore. She trusts no one. And Masseur’s death has left in her the great empty ache I know sometimes when the muscles of my stomach retract around hungry spaces within me ... but I know there is an added dimension to her loss I cannot comprehend. I know at least that my lover lives somewhere in the distant and possible future: I have hope.
She haunts the cypresses and marble terraces of the Shalimar Gardens. She climbs the slender minarets of Jehangir’s tomb. We wander past the zoo lion’s cage and past the chattering monkeys and stand before the peacock’s feathery spread. We sit among the rushes on the banks of the Ravi and float in the flat boats on its muddy waters ... And as Masseur’s song, lingering in the rarefied air around the minarets and in the fragrance of gardens, drifts to us in the rustle of the pampas grass, Ayah shivers and whispering croons:“The bumble-bee came—
Strutting among the flowers, strumming love ... ”
And holding the end of her sari in her hands like a supplicant, she buries her unbearable ache in her hands. I stroke her hair. I kiss her ears, feeling my inadequacy.
While Masseur’s voice haunts Ayah, it impels Ice-candy-man to climb the steep steps of the minarets after us. He prowls the hills behind the zoo lion’s cage and lurks in the tall pampas grass. He follows us everywhere as we walk, hand in hand, two hungry wombs ... Impotent mothers under the skin.
Mother’s jaunts in the Morris are becoming less frequent, and fires all over Lahore are subsiding. Or having become so much a part of the smoking skyline they no longer claim our attention.
Does one get used to everything? Anything?
Processions still chant from various distances and varying directions, but they have lost their urgency: sounding more like the cries of merchants hawking wares. Closer, we hear the rumble of carts as horses canter down Queens Road to Mozang Chungi, accompanied by receding cries of “Allah-o-Akbar!” and “Pakistan Zindabad!”
We shrug. They probably have wind of some abandoned house that has not been properly ransacked. These merchant-looters have bypassed our street for some time.
And then one morning we again hear the rumble of carts and the roar of men shouting slogans on Warris Road.
From the very first instant I sense danger: we all do. Perhaps it is the speed of their approach, perhaps the aim of their intent buffeting us in threatening waves. There is a heightening in the noise and a shift in the clatter of horseshoes on the tarmac: a slowing that defines their target. It is either the house in front of ours, or ours. The house opposite, with gaping holes where once there were doors and windows, has nothing left to loot.
Mother comes out and joins Ayah, Adi and me on the veranda. The inhabitants of the servants’ quarters run to the front and gather before the kitchen and in the vacant portico. Father has taken the Morris to work. Apparently unperturbed, Imam Din beats eggs in the kitchen.
Mother, voluptuous in a beige chiffon sari, is alert. In charge. A lioness with her cubs. Ayah, with her haunted, nervous eyes, is lioness number two. Our pride on the veranda swells as Moti’s wife and five children join us.
There is a stamping and snorting of horses and scraping of wooden wheels on the road as the cart-cavalry comes to a disorderly halt outside our gate. We see the carts milling about in the dust they have raised, the men standing in them. We hear them asking questions; debating; shouting to be heard above the noise.
And, suddenly, the men roar again: “Allah-o-Akbar!” And ride into the house opposite ours.
Ayah is not on the veranda. She has disappeared.
“Where’s Ayah?” I ask. I’m hushed by a hiss of whispers. Mother communicates a quick, secret warning that is reflected on all faces. Ayah is Hindu. The situation with all its implications is clear. She must hide. We all have a part to play. My intelligence and complicity are taken for granted.
Then they are roaring and charging up our drive, wheels creaking, hooves clattering as the whipped horses stretch their scabby necks and knotted hocks to haul the load for the short gallop. Up the drive come the charioteers, feet planted firmly in shallow carts, in singlets and clinging linen lungis, shoulders gleaming in the bright sun. Calculating men, whose ideals and passions have cooled to ice.
They pour into our drive in an endless cavalry and the looters jump off in front of the kitchen as the carts make room for more carts and the portico and drive are filled with men and horses; some of the horses’ noses already in the feed bags around their necks. The men in front are quiet—tike merchants going about their business—but those stalled in the choked drive and on the road chant perfunctorily.
The men’s eyes, lined with black antimony, rake us. Note the doors behind us and assess the well-tended premises with its surfeit of pots holding ferns and palm fronds. A hesitancy sparks in their brash eyes when they look at our mother. Flanked by her cubs, her hands resting on our heads, she is the noble embodiment of theatrical motherhood. Undaunted. Endearing. Her cut-crystal lips set in a defiant pucker beneath her tinted glasses and her cropped, waved hair.
Men gather round Yousaf and Hari asking questions, peering here and there. Papoo and I, holding hands, step down into the porch. Mother doesn’t stop us.
Still beating eggs, aluminum bowl in hand, Imam Din suddenly fills the open kitchen doorway. He bellows: “What d’you haramzadas think you’re up to?” There is a lull in the processionists’
clamor. Even the men on the road hear him and suspend their desultory chanting. The door snaps shut and Imam Din stands on the kitchen steps looking bomb-bellied and magnificently goondaish—the grandfather of all the goondas milling about us—with his shaven head, hennaed beard and grimy lungi.
“Where are the Hindus?” a man shouts.
“There are no Hindus here! You nimak-haram dogs’ penises ... There are no Hindus here!”
“There are Hindu nameplates on the gates ... Shankar and Sethi!”
“The Shankars took off long ago ... They were Hindu. The Sethis are Parsee. I serve them. Sethi is a Parsee name too, you ignorant bastards!”
The men look disappointed and shedding a little of their surety and arrogance look at Imam Din as at an elder. Imam Din’s manner changes. He descends among them, bowl and fork in hand, a Mussulman among Muslims. Imam Din’s voice is low, conversational. He goes into the kitchen and brings out a large pan of water with ice cubes floating in it. He and Yousaf hand out the water in frosted aluminum glasses.
“Where’s Hari, the gardener?” someone from the back shouts.
“Hari-the-gardener has become Himat Ali!” says Imam Din, roaring genially and glancing at the gardener.
Himat Ali’s resigned, dusky face begins to twitch nervously as some men move towards him.
“Let’s make sure,” a man says, hitching up his lungi, his swaggering gait bent on mischief. “Undo your shalwar, Himat Ali. Let’s see if you’re a proper Muslim.” He is young and very handsome.
“He’s Ramzana-the-butcher’s brother,” says Papoo, nudging me excitedly.
I notice the resemblance to the butcher. And then the men are no longer just fragmented parts of a procession: they become individual personalities whose faces I study, seeking friends.
Imam Din is standing in front of the gardener, his arms outstretched. “Get away! I vouch for him. Why don’t you ask the barber ? He circumcised him.”
Someone yells in loud Punjabi: “O yay, nai! Did you circumcise the gardener here?”
From out on the road, transmitted by a chain of raucous voices, comes the reply: “I did a good job on him ... I’ll vouch for Himat Ali!”
The handsome youth, cheated out of his bit of fun, tries to lunge past Imam Din.
“Tell him to recite the Kalma,” someone shouts.
“Oye! You! Recite the Kalma,” says the youth.
“La Ilaha Illallah, Mohammad ur Rasulullah.” (There is no God but God, and Mohammad is His prophet.) Astonishingly, Himat Ali injects into the Arabic verse the cadence and intonation of Hindu chants.
The men let it pass.
“Where is the sweeper? Where’s Moti?” shouts a hoarse Punjabi voice. It sounds familiar but I can’t place it.
“He’s here,” says Yousaf, putting an arm round Moti. “He’s become a believer... A Christian. Behold... Mister David Masih!”
The men smile and joke: “O ho! He’s become a black-faced gen-tle-man! Mister sweeper David Masih! Next he’ll be sailing off to Eng-a-land and marrying a memsahib!”
And then someone asks, “Where’s the Hindu woman? The ayah!”
There is a split second’s silence before Imam Din’s reassuring voice calmly says: “She’s gone.”
“She’s gone nowhere! Where is she?”
“I told you. She left Lahore.”
“When? ”
“Yesterday.”
“He’s lying,” says the familiar voice again. “Oye, Imam Din, why are you lying?”
I recognize the voice. It is Butcher.
“Oye, Baray Mian! Don’t disgrace your venerable beard!”
“For shame, old man! And you so close to meeting your Maker!”
“Lying does not become your years, you old goat.”
The raucous voices are turning ugly.
“Call upon Allah to witness your oath,” someone says.
“Oye! Badmash! Don’t take Allah’s name! You defile it with your tongue!” says Imam Din, losing his geniality.
“Ha! So you won’t take an oath before Allah! You’re a black-faced liar!”
“Mind your tongue, you dog!” shouts Imam Din.
Other voices join in the attack and, suddenly, very clearly, I hear him say: “Allah-ki-kasam, she’s gone.”
I study the men’s faces in the silence that follows. Some of them still don’t believe him. Some turn away, or look at the ground. It is an oath a Muslim will not take lightly.
Something strange happened then. The whole disorderly melee dissolved and consolidated into a single face. The face, amber-eyed, spread before me: hypnotic, reassuring, blotting out the ugly frightening crowd. Ice-candy-man’s versatile face transformed into a savior’s in our hour of need.
Ice-candy-man is crouched before me. “Don’t be scared, Lenny baby,” he says. “I’m here.” And putting his arms around me he whispers, so that only I can hear: “I’ll protect Ayah with my life! You know I will... I know she’s here. Where is she?”
And dredging from some foul truthful depth in me a fragment of overheard conversation that I had not registered at the time, I say: “On the roof—or in one of the godowns ... ”
Ice-candy-man’s face undergoes a subtle change before my eyes, and as he slowly uncoils his lank frame into an upright position, I know I have betrayed Ayah.
The news is swiftly transmitted. In a daze I see Mother approach, her face stricken. Adi and Papoo look at me out of stunned faces. There is no judgment in their eyes—no reproach—only stone-faced incredulity.
Imam Din and Yousaf are taking small steps back, their arms spread, as three men try to push past. “Where’re you going? You can’t go to the back! Our women are there, they observe purdah!” says Imam Din, again futilely lying. The men are not aggressive, their game is at hand. It is only a matter of minutes. And while the three men insouciantly confront Imam Din and Yousaf, other men, eyes averted, slip past them.
I cannot see Butcher. Ice-candy-man too has disappeared.
“No!” I scream. “She’s gone to Amritsar!”
I try to run after them but Mother holds me. I butt my head into her, bouncing it off her stomach, and every time I throw my head back, I see Adi and Papoo’s stunned faces.
The three men shove past Imam Din and something about their insolent and determined movements affects the proprieties that have restrained the mob so far.
They move forward from all points. They swarm into our bedrooms, search the servants’ quarters, climb to the roofs, break locks and enter our godowns and the small storerooms near the bathrooms.
They drag Ayah out. They drag her by her arms stretched taut, and her bare feet—that want to move backwards—are forced forward instead. Her lips are drawn away from her teeth, and the resisting curve of her throat opens her mouth like the dead child’s screamless mouth. Her violet sari slips off her shoulder, and her breasts strain at her sari-blouse stretching the cloth so that the white stitching at the seams shows. A sleeve tears under her arm.
The men drag her in grotesque strides to the cart and their harsh hands, supporting her with careless intimacy, lift her into it. Four men stand pressed against her, propping her body upright, their lips stretched in triumphant grimaces.
I am the monkey-man’s performing monkey, the trained circus elephant, the snake-man’s charmed cobra, an animal with conditioned reflexes that cannot lie ...
The last thing I noticed was Ayah, her mouth slack and piteously gaping, her disheveled hair flying into her kidnappers’ faces, staring at us as if she wanted to leave behind her wide-open and terrified eyes.
Chapter 24
The evenings resound to the beat of drums. Papoo is getting married. In the wake of my guilt-driven and flagellating grief and pining for Ayah the drums sound mournful, and the preparations for the wedding joyless.
For three days I stand in front of the bathroom mirror staring at my tongue. I hold the vile, truth-infected thing between my fingers and try to wrench it out: but slippery and slick a
s a fish it slips from my fingers and mocks me with its sharp rapier tip darting as poisonous as a snake. I punish it with rigorous scourings from my prickling toothbrush until it is sore and bleeding. I’m so conscious of its unwelcome presence at all times that it swells uncomfortably in my mouth and gags and chokes me.
I throw up. Constantly.
For three days, as I scour my tongue, families of sweepers, huddled in bunches, in gaudy satins and brocades, drift up our drive, and past the bathroom window. The women shade their dusky faces beneath diaphanous shawls with silver fringes, their glass bangles and silver anklets jingling as they shuffle their feet, the men strutting amidst them like cocks in tall, crisply crested turbans.
At the back, on the servants’ verandas, two old crones with missing teeth take turns beating a sausage-shaped drum with both hands and droning ribald ditties. Papoo, cowed by all the unwonted attention, sits glowering in a comer of their quarters like a punished child, her skin glowing from mustard-oil massages and applications of turmeric and Multani mud packs. Sometimes, when I sit listlessly by her holding her hand, smiling politely at the remarks and wisecracks of the women, drawing courage from my fingers Papoo’s eyes regain their roguish sparkle and she snaps and lunges at the women, and flinging herself on the dirt floor enacts tempestuous tantrums of protestation. Infuriated by her daughter’s intractable behavior before her kinswomen Muccho lashes out and is withdrawn cursing, while the remaining women, wheedling, cajoling and bribing Papoo with sweets, restore her to a precarious semblance of docility.
Ayahless and sore-tongued I drift through the forlorn rooms of my house, and back and forth from the festive quarters. The kitchen has become a depressing hellhole filled with sighs as Imam Din goes about his work spiritlessly. Even Yousaf cracks his smiles less frequently. Mother is out all day. And when she is home she has such a forbidding expression on her exhausted face that Adi and I elect to keep out of her way.
