by Bapsi Sidhwa
Much later, Qasim and Zaitoon were led to the jagged entrance of a cave. They crawled to enter, but once inside they could move around freely.
They spread their bedding on the floor and lay down for the night. It was bitterly cold and the exhausted girl snuggled close to her father for warmth. She fell asleep almost at once.
A few hours later, she awoke, unaccountably restless. She had a vague recollection of an unpleasant dream: she had been standing by the river, admiring its vivid colors, when a hand had come out of the ice-blue depths and dragged her in, pulling her down, down . . . Now her experiences of the previous day crowded confusedly into her mind. A new wakeful fear crystallized. With the shrewd instinct of the damned, she sensed the savagery of the people she had just met. She knew poverty and the harshness of their fight for survival made them the way they were, and her mind revolted at the certainty that to share their lives she would have to become like them.
The frightened girl began to cry, her muffled sobs absorbed by the ancient walls of the cave. Her father beside her slept undisturbed.
The piercing wail of a jackal rent the night, and the village dogs started barking. Terrified, Zaitoon flung herself upon Qasim.
“What is it, child?” he asked. “That’s only a jackal. It won’t harm you.”
The girl sobbed aloud. Qasim, not accustomed to hear her cry, was perturbed. “What is the matter, Zaitoon?” he asked again.
“Abba, take me to the plains when you go. Please, don’t leave me here. Take me with you.”
“Hush, Munni, be quiet,” he said, gently holding her close.
“Abba,” she sobbed, “I don’t want to marry. Look how poorly they live; how they eat! Dirty maize bread and water! My stomach hurts.”
Qasim tried to laugh. “I ate the same bread, and I have no bellyache.” Then he spoke seriously, stroking her head, “My child, they are not as poor as they appear to you. It’s only their way of life. You will get used to it soon. Then you will like your husband and my people. Why, we’ve only just come here.”
The girl clung to him desperately, digging her fingers into his shirt, her legs grasping him in a vice. He felt her body quiver against him.
“Abba,” she begged in a fierce whisper, “take me back. I’ll look after you always. How will you manage without me—and the food? If I must marry, marry me to someone from the plains. That jawan at the camp, Abba, I think he likes me. I will die rather than live here.”
Qasim was furious. He was shocked by her brazen choice of words and the boldness of her contempt for his people. A sudden dread that perhaps he had not directed the course of the girl’s life correctly upset him and kindled his wrath. He wrenched at her slender, clinging fingers and pushed her away.
“Hush, Zaitoon, that’s no way to speak to your father. It is not seemly. A decent girl doesn’t tell her father to whom he should marry her.”
“But father . . .”
“Now understand this . . .” Qasim’s tone was icily incisive. “I’ve given my word. Your marriage is to be a week from today. Tomorrow your betrothed goes to invite guests from the neighboring villages. I’ve given my word. On it depends my honor. It is dearer to me than life. If you besmirch it, I will kill you with my bare hands.”
He sat up, heedless of the cold that needled his uncovered body. Zaitoon cringed at his unexpected fury. He groped for her and his hand closed round her throat.
“You make me break my word, girl, and you cover my name with dung! Do you understand that? Do you?”
She lay quite still, her eyes large with fright and comprehension.
“Yes,” she croaked, her will utterly defeated.
The pressure on her throat lessened. Qasim unlaced his fingers and let go.
But his nagging fear for the girl, his misgivings, would not be stilled. The feel of her soft, vulnerable neck persisted in his fingers. A moment later, torn by remorse, he kissed her. He stroked her head and whispered brokenly, “I have given my word, child, my word . . .”
The girl reached for Qasim and in her dread clasped him comfortingly close to herself.
Chapter 18
Tawny hills vibrated to the sharp, quick beat of drums. A group of young men danced in a circle. Waving their arms, whirling at a dizzy pace, they leapt into the air. Occasionally, a joyous volley of gunfire heightened the revels.
The marriage had been solemnized, the feast served, and amidst laughter and cheering the groom was led to the room where his bride awaited him.
A man atop the valley rim let out a fierce, wild cry and the sound echoed down the valley. Catching it the men flung it back, until the carefree ululation spread, reverberating among the mountains. The clean cold air was filled with a noise as natural to the wilderness as moaning winds. Then like a wind dying, the sound diminished, until quiet settled once more upon the valley.
They were alone now. Diaphanous and tinsel-dusted, her bridal ghoongat formed a tantalizing veil over her face and form. The groom awkwardly, wordlessly, lifted the veil to see his bride’s face. She must have been almost as curious, for her eyes, which he had expected to be demurely lowered, met his own in dizzying appraisal. Sakhi moved back a trifle, smiling self-consciously. And now the girl lowered her eyes. He appeared tall to her and incredibly strong. The hair beneath his turban and on his moustache glistened gold, and in the shadowy lamplight his sun-gilded face gleamed, as did his vivid blue eyes. Her heart beat faster, and a warm glow suffused her body.
Sakhi surveyed his diffident bride with mounting excitement. Here was a woman all his own, he thought with proprietorial lust and pride, a woman with strangely thick lashes and large black eyes that had flashed in one look her entire sensuality. But, even as he thought this, the corroding jealousy of the past few days suddenly surged up in him in a murderous fusion of hate and fever. He tore the ghoongat from her head and holding her arms in a cruel grip he panted inarticulate hatred into her face.
Zaitoon looked at him wildly, terrified as he dragged her up and roughly yanked her red satin shirt over her head. Her arms flew to cover her breasts. He tugged at the cord of her shalwar and the silk fell to her ankles. Before she could raise her trousers Sakhi flung her back. He crouched, lifting her legs free of the silk. Fiercely kicking out, Zaitoon leapt over the charpoy. She screamed. She backed towards the straw and mud-plastered wall, and screamed. Leaning against it, covering her chest and crotch with her hands, she screamed. Sakhi stood across the room, incapacitated by the shrill animal noise, and she screamed and screamed. “Abba, save me,” she shrieked. Why didn’t Qasim come? Or any of the others?
Sakhi stood still. She knew as long as she screamed she could hold him off. She stopped. Sakhi moved hesitantly and again she shrieked. He froze against the wall. He didn’t move. After a while she grew quiet. He looked defeated and abashed.
Panting and trembling she glared at him. Sakhi slid down to his haunches and squatted. The slope of his shoulders, the way he removed his pagri from his head and placed his arms on his knees conveyed his utter capitulation. Even more in the way he turned his eyes from her mortified nudity, he tried to show his respect. In a moment he restored to her dignity.
Her breathing quietened. She took in the white satin waistcoat, gold embroidered, embellishing his shirt. Gathered above his waist the shirt hung in deep folds to his calves; and beneath it the arrogant convolutions in his shalwar. The pomegranate blossom tucked behind his ear, his teeth gleaming between stained lips, the dark smudge of antimony, bespoke an appealing vanity.
Sakhi looked up again. He had never seen a wholly naked woman before. He registered her astonishing female desirability, the strand of her hair undone, falling on skin lighter where the breasts swell, and the round, out-thrusting breasts. He admired her lean, strong thighs, and his eyes were drawn to the curling jet hair that peeped rebelliously through protective fingers. Sakhi lowered his face to his knees.
Zaitoon’s fear slowly left her. She darted forward and picking up her clothes, quickly put
them on. She perched on the charpoy. When Sakhi raised his head she grew fearful, and then calm. His features were drawn and nervous, subservient with desire and a desire to make amends. They looked at each other, Zaitoon hurt and questioning, Sakhi mutely contrite. Sakhi eased down further and sat on the dirt floor. He looked away but his eyes already had spoken of love.
The sap that had risen in her since puberty and tormented her with indefinable cravings for so long surged to a feverish pitch. Brought up in Muslim seclusion she had not understood the impulse that had caused her often to bury her face in Qasim’s clothes hanging from a nail. Breathing in their maleness she had glowed with happiness, taking her impulse to be a sign of her deep affection. Knowing only Qasim and Nikka she had loved them with a mixture of filial devotion and vague unacknowledged sexual stirrings. She had had romantic fantasies in which tribal lovers, bold and tender, wafted her to remote mountain hideouts and adored her forever. She felt at the furious center of her tumult a deep calm, a certainty that at last her needs would be fulfilled.
“Get into bed. It’s cold,” Sakhi said.
Zaitoon snuggled beneath the quilt at the far side of the bed. Sakhi got up, and lay beside her. She went completely rigid. When his leg gingerly touched hers she did not move. He ran his toe down her calf. Slowly he turned, the sag in the narrow charpoy molding them together.
Sakhi’s hand tenderly pressed her breast. Zaitoon craved the touch.
In dreams Zaitoon had accepted her lover’s hands on her breasts not as a preliminary caress but as the final surrender to carnal intimacy. Brought up in a sexual vacuum she did not think of sex as good or bad—it merely did not exist. Neither Miriam, nor Qasim, nor any of the women she visited ever mentioned it. She floundered unenlightened in a morass of sexual yearning. Once, snuggled up to Miriam she had rocked her hips and Miriam had snapped, “Stop it!” Zaitoon had been surprised, and hurt by the rebuke that put an end to her innocent pleasure. She had felt rejected.
Sakhi’s fingers slid lower, probing the curling hair. For the first time she became aware of a wet, burning sensation, almost a painful inflammation, between her thighs. She had been discomfited by it before and had hugged her chest to ease her ache. Taboos, unconsciously absorbed, had prevented her from exploring lower and she had not really known any relief. His fingers were rough but it was a roughness she hankered after—she discovered now the natural center of her love. Sakhi’s breath was infinitely sweet in her ears and her own breath weaved carefully in and out, intent on listening to the new notes pulsing in her body. She was dimly aware of Sakhi removing her shalwar and her nakedness was suddenly the most natural thing in the world.
Sakhi had touched too intimately. It hurt. In a prim reflex movement Zaitoon pushed away his hand. “No!”
“Why not? It’s my cunt!” he breathed, holding her crotch in a warm squeeze, and yes, Zaitoon thought, his fever was her own. She wanted to dissolve into his blood and be flesh of his flesh.
Sakhi was above her. She lusted to graft herself to him, and not knowing even how to hold him to herself, lay stiff beneath him. Sakhi tried to penetrate her. Obstructed by her straight stiff legs, he sat back on his heels. His heart welled with tenderness and pride at his bride’s obvious innocence.
“Like this,” he whispered, gently teaching her legs to separate.
Holding himself, his fingers groping, he pushed. She felt her own palpitating softness yield a bit, and then there was pain. It snapped her senses back to her surroundings. Her body, after all, had not been prepared for pain. His action was shockingly strange and her abandon in their preceding intimacies suddenly seemed to her indecent. “What are you doing?” she gasped. “Stop it!” Her body twisted and convulsed. Hardly reeling her hands pushing at his chest Sakhi pressed harder and Zaitoon screamed.
Zaitoon became aware of the extraordinary motion of his body. She squirmed, helpless beneath the animal retraction and thrust. Not knowing the intricacies of the male organ she did not know that an extension of Sakhi was inside her. She never felt it. She felt only the rhythm of a suction and press against her crotch and gradually, penetrating her pain and her screams, the rhythm beat within her too. With each impact she felt an astonishing sweetness radiate from her loins, a deep stirring within her that churned her senses and turned her blood to honey. Straining towards him, her nails digging into his back, she sobbed in anguished but releasing moans.
At dawn, pillowing her head on her arms, Zaitoon scrutinized the man sleeping by her. Her eyes misted with love in tracing the sensual, clearly defined curves of a mouth that was stern and firm-lipped even in repose, the slight hook on his narrow nose and the bronze, ear-length hair that lay tousled in thick disorder. She saw masculinity in each line and feature, in the width of his broad shoulders and wrists. The suggestion of something primitive, a trace of cruelty felt rather than seen, enhanced his appeal. Though he was asleep, her smile was shy and tremulous in alternating waves of tenderness and passion. She wanted to touch not his face but his feet, to rub her lashes on the soles of his feet and kiss them; to hold his legs to her bosom in an ecstasy of devotion.
Her adoring eyes slid from his thighs and chest to his face—and she suddenly realized that Sakhi was watching her. The arrogance and vanity of his temper was reflected in the cool appraisal that met her startled look.
Her heart jumped. Dazzled by the blue animation of his eyes, Zaitoon’s pupils narrowed to fine points, as though she had looked on waters mirroring sunlight, the incandescent river of her dream.
Rising from the bed and keeping her face averted, she slipped from the room. Leaning against the mud wall of their hut, bathed in the cold light of the sun rising behind cloud-obscured summits, she took deep breaths to calm the confused excitement she felt. A few moments later Sakhi called to her and she went in. Her head was bowed in remembrance of the night before, and her lips trembled like moth’s wings. Sakhi pulled her to him. Hiding her face on his chest, she felt filled with life.
The morning meal, on the second day of their marriage, lay half-eaten on the charpoy. The clay platter contained sweetened yellow rice and spitted lamb left over from the wedding feast. Sakhi and Zaitoon sat in constrained silence. Zaitoon wished she had not spoken. Sakhi’s profile was grim with anger.
“So! The mighty Major wants to see me, does he? He might dole me out some work?”
Zaitoon, scared by his sudden malice, sat mute.
Sakhi was seething with jealousy . . . the jawan’s grip on the girl’s arm, her laughter and ease in his company—the persistent vision inflamed him.
“Why did you let him touch you?” he hissed, turning dangerously.
Zaitoon stared at him in blank amazement.
“I saw you,” he shouted. “I saw the jawan hold your arm all the way down to the river.” Sakhi’s face was contorted with fury.
Zaitoon, unable to fathom his accusation, felt stricken. She bowed her head, her lips quivering in subdued weeping.
“You laughed together as if you were lovers. I could hear you all the way across the river,” cried Sakhi, burying his face in his hands.
After a while he removed the platter to the floor and lay back on the charpoy, studying the girl who sat hunched by the edge of the bed.
“You think your Major’s quite something, don’t you? A few days back I surprised the bastard crawling on all fours, sniffing at an Angraze woman like a dog! We threw stones at them—laughed at them. Coming to our territory as if it belonged to them: to their bastard forefathers!” He spat contemptuously. “And that filthy dog spoke to you, offered your husband work! Listen, I don’t work for anyone—ever,” he blazed in wrath. “If I see any of those swine again I’ll kill them!”
Zaitoon sat frozen. The sound of people gathered outside filtered through the tense stillness of their room.
“I think your father is leaving. Don’t you wish to bid him farewell?”
Something in his tone made Zaitoon search his face. It did not matter that he mocked her, b
ut she resented his unmistakable contempt of Qasim. He looked down on her father for having consorted with the ludicrous Major. Nor should he have allowed the girl such lax proximity to the jawan.
Qasim waited for Zaitoon. He had seen her only once since her marriage and she had been deeply reticent. He had blessed her and looked into her face with tender probing. It grieved him to leave her, but it had to be. Her marriage to Sakhi would consummate an old, fervent longing. Through their children she would be one with his blood! He planned to visit the village each year, and he had exacted a promise from Misri Khan that Zaitoon was to be brought to Lahore for the delivery of her first child. Miriam, he knew, would be reassured to hear of this and so would Nikka.
Qasim glanced anxiously at the hut allotted to the newlyweds. Forty odd, the inhabitants of the village were gathered near him. The women stood bunched at a little distance from the men. Having blessed the women and their children, he again joined the men.
The door of the hut swung open and Sakhi came out. Zaitoon followed close behind, her flushed face framed by the green chaddar presented by the Memsahib. The bunch of ragged women sniffled in anticipation of a scene reminiscent of their own marriage farewells as Zaitoon’s forlorn figure approached her father. They noted with satisfaction that she was weeping.
Qasim had an unreasoning impulse to take her back with him on some pretext or other. Miriam after all might have been right. He should have listened to the child’s violent plea the night they arrived. His departure imminent, he felt he had acted in undue haste. Too late, he tried to fight this wave of sentimentality and fear. It had been brought on by the parting, he reasoned; she was bound to be happy. “Allah,” he thought, “if anything should happen to her I will not be able to bear it!” Filled with misgiving he went to her.
Zaitoon felt piteously vulnerable and slender in his arms. Now that the moment was near Qasim did not know what to say. “Hush, Munni,” he murmured, holding her close to him. “You will be coming to Lahore soon—to have your first-born. I’ll visit you often, I promise. I’ll bring Miriam and Nikka to see you . . .” Valiantly submerging his own grief he tried to soothe her.
