The Pakistani Bride

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  “Oh, if you stopped loving me, I’d kill myself!”

  Mushtaq stared. Carol, despite her egotism, must realize he was having a fling, merely killing time. She knew he had a wife and four children to whom he belonged irrevocably.

  “What about Farukh?” he asked lamely.

  “I don’t love him, you know that! Even if you don’t marry me, I shall leave him,” she declared. “Oh, darling, please get me away from him or I’ll die,” she sobbed.

  Her tears aroused in Mushtaq a bewildering desire to discard everything and marry this woman; possess forever her eager childless body. Inflamed by the sleek configuration of creases he could see through the filmy nylon, by the malleable curve of her breasts so rich to his touch, he knelt before her. Nuzzling his face between her thighs, he cried, “Of course I will marry you, sweetheart, if that’s what you want.”

  They lay on the carpet near the fire. Carol was covering Mushtaq’s face with rapturous, moist kisses. “I love you,” she sighed.

  “Let’s see to the fire,” he said.

  Pushing her aside gently, he rose.

  “You’ll have to break the news to Farukh. Oh dear, I wonder how he’ll take it,” Carol mused aloud.

  A dour, self-pitying anger welled up in Mushtaq. He had been coerced. His capitulation to her proposal was born of his long separation from his family, his need for a woman in the loneliness of his remote posting. The quicker he set things straight, the better. All this talk of dying and demented passion! She would get over it in time.

  “Talking of marriages,” he said, “I was invited to a wedding feast. Remember the girl, the one with the old watchman from Lahore? Her father sent the invitation. I was to take as many guests as I liked.”

  Carol sat up. “I’d have loved to go. Why didn’t you take me?” she cried excitedly.

  “Certainly not, young lady!”

  “I’ve often thought of the girl, you know. I felt I understood her . . . No . . . it’s more as if she’d explained something to me. I’d like to know her better: how she grew up, what she did after she stopped going to school. How she laughs and talks with her friends. Her life is so different from mine, and yet I feel a real bond, an understanding on some deep level. She was so self-conscious with us, I wonder what she dreams about . . .”

  But Carol, a child of the bright Californian sun and surf, could no more understand the beguiling twilight world of veils and women’s quarters than Zaitoon could comprehend her independent life in America.

  Reflecting on this Mushtaq said, “It wouldn’t be easy for you really to understand her. You’d find her life in the zenanna with the other women pitifully limited and claustrophobic—she’d probably find yours—if she could ever glimpse it—terrifyingly insecure and needlessly competitive.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. All the same I wish you’d taken me to the wedding.”

  “You know I wouldn’t take you across the river again. For all we know, those ruffians from the ledge would most likely have been there. You wouldn’t have liked that.”

  Carol frowned. “You are getting abominably like Farukh; with your caution and sermons.”

  “Yes, and soon you will loathe me as much.”

  “Never, never!” protested Carol vehemently.

  “Yes, you will,” he said, “and then you’ll find yourself a dashing brigadier.”

  “Not if we were married.”

  Mushtaq tapped her forehead playfully. “Knock those silly ideas out of your head, will you? However much I’d like to you know I can’t. Nor for that matter can you.”

  “You could get a divorce.”

  “No. It’s not so easy.”

  “It’s easy for you Muslim men. All you have to do is tell your wife “talak” three times and wait three months. I know it.”

  “You don’t understand at all. In spite of what you hear about our being able to have four wives, we take marriage and divorce very seriously. It involves more than just emotions. It’s a social responsibility . . . For one thing, at the very least, my wife’s life would become unbearably confined, drab, and unhappy. And we’re cousins, you know. Our families would make my life—and yours—miserable. We’d be ostracized.”

  He knelt above Carol and, holding her crestfallen face between his hands, shook it affectionately. “Don’t be silly, darling. You know I love you, but Farukh is my friend—and there are so many obligations—you have them too, you know. Come on, give me a smile?”

  Carol’s eyes were closed. Mushtaq kissed her. “You’ll realize it’s better this way. Come on, smile.”

  “Why not?” she said, “but first . . .”

  Her furious eyes blazed open. Swinging her hand deliberately, she slapped Mushtaq full in the face. She laughed when anger blotched his skin.

  “All right, now you smile!” she said quietly.

  Chapter 21

  Zaitoon wandered far from the village one morning in her search for kindling. Her feet were now somewhat used to the uneven land and she set herself to climb a steep hill. While she caught her breath, her eyes scanned the barren place for brushwood.

  One-by-one, hacked by ancient settlers, the fir trees that once stood here had been destroyed. Later, whole hills, purchased by wealthy merchants, were stripped. Logs floated down the Indus to the plains until no tree was left. Barely distinguishable from the slate rocks near Zaitoon, humped an ancient, withered, sawn-off trunk.

  Abstractedly lifting her glance, Zaitoon noticed a faint, incongruous line stretched across a distant mountain as if someone with a brush-stroke had tried to mark the center of the hill. Zaitoon’s pulse quickened. It had to be the road on which she and Qasim had traveled. She could not see the river, but by tracing the sinking line of worn-away granite she sensed the passage of the river gorge. Desperately she wanted to see again the turbulent waters of the magnificent river. Looking about, and satisfied no one was watching her, she hurried down the hill.

  It was rough going. She skirted the base of a towering peak through a maze of defiles and ridges. Finally she came upon a path that led to the river.

  Soon she was able to make out the unmistakable roar of the waters.

  The track went all the way down the gorge to the river-beach and into the soft white sand.

  Prepared for the shock of icy cold, Zaitoon leaned to touch the water. Something seemed to float towards her from the depths, a shadow about to break the surface. Reliving her bad dream, she imagined the blurred movement of a hand about to reach out . . .

  A thick bundle of entwined flotsam churned up to be dragged under again almost at once. She looked about her and was stricken by a sense of her isolation.

  Scampering frantically up the cliff face, Zaitoon climbed to a high ledge. A wide view here lifted the pall of loneliness. Right across the broad span of the river, level with her, was the road; a line of winding gray—cleaving to the gorge as though afraid of losing its way in the wilderness.

  A heavily loaded truck rumbled into view, changed by distance to a mechanical toy. Zaitoon followed its passage, and the world resumed its rational perspective: the river once again was a gorgeous mass of water, widening at times into flat blue lagoons, and cascading into a froth where it was forced down a tortuous incline.

  Zaitoon settled comfortably on the ledge. She had not felt carefree in a long while. A jeep passed, bumping and bobbing: Two men sat in front. Eagerly trying to decipher the khaki uniforms, she fancied Ashiq at the wheel and next to him the Major. Recalling the Major’s concern for her and the tender eyes of the dark jawan, she wished she had waved to them. She knew she belonged with them.

  A small pebble clattered down the vertical stone massif behind her. Striking a rock a few paces away, it leapt outward and she watched its jerky fall all the way to the sand. Glancing up to scan the impassive cliff, she saw no movement, heard no untoward sound, but just the same an uneasiness slowly gripped her heart.

  Keeping to the shelter of the rocks, she quickly retraced her steps to the tra
ck. The sun was low and the trail cold with wind and dark. It wound like a tunnel between the hills.

  Yunus Khan observed the girl’s fearful retreat. He had witnessed her scramble up to the ledge, and the elation that lit her face at seeing the jeep. Naturally quiet, with no apparent effort at stealth, he shadowed her with an easy tread. A few paces ahead he heard her slip and stumble. Waiting a moment, he caught her gasping breath.

  Circling wide of Zaitoon’s route, Yunus Khan idly made his way to the hamlet, arriving almost fifteen minutes ahead of her.

  Sakhi that day had gone to a neighboring village. They wanted a goat for a marriage feast and Sakhi, who had one to barter, drove a hard bargain. When he approached his village late in the evening, Yunus met him. They embraced and sat on a rock talking late into the freezing night.

  Zaitoon was asleep when Sakhi snuggled roughly up to her under their common quilt. Disturbed, she muttered heavily.

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “You’re late.” Her tongue was thick with sleep.

  “Yes,” Sakhi lay still for a while. “You went to the river?”

  Zaitoon’s mind leapt awake. She paused a second before replying: “U-hum . . .” She feigned a drowsy nonchalance.

  “Don’t go there again.”

  His peremptory tone was charged with malice.

  Zaitoon lay awake long after Sakhi had fallen asleep.

  Early the next morning Sakhi left, shooing the bartered goat before him with a small stick.

  Zaitoon rushed through her chores. Sakhi’s cryptic injunction of the night before weighed down her spirits with the dull despondency of a half-remembered nightmare. She longed with all her heart to be by the river, to look upon the road that hushed her misery. Certain that Sakhi would not return until much later, she scurried circumspectly down the track. She slid between a clump of rocks, concealed from view by an overhang of the cliff. Reasonably confident of her privacy, she muttered a silent prayer.

  Traffic on the road was desultory. A convoy of three trucks finally lumbered by, and thereafter nothing. Zaitoon feasted her eyes on the river, on the dust so slow to settle back on the road. She had a momentary twinge of guilt, instantly drowned in the roar of the water. She tarried. Compromising with caution, she swore to start on her way back the moment another vehicle passed.

  It was an hour before the jeep droned into view. The solitary figure at the wheel was barely perceptible. Zaitoon sat up. On an impulse she smiled and merrily waved her hands.

  Even if the driver had scanned the view it is doubtful he would have seen the flutter of the slender brown arms in a jungle of granite.

  A stone hit Zaitoon hard on her spine. She whirled, her eyes frantically searching the boulders. Another stone hit her head and bounced on, clattering down the rocks. She looked up in terror. To one side of the overhang, almost vertically above her, stood Sakhi. Impassive and intent, the sapphire fire of his eyes did not shift. In the strange Himalayan luminosity that intensifies angles and colors, he towered, inhuman. His gaze held the cool power of an avenging god.

  Sakhi’s hand flicked again, and the stone grazed her forehead. With her eyes riveted on him in bewilderment and terror, hurriedly Zaitoon scrambled for safety. He jumped, landing as lightly as a cat on a small flat rock. Another leap and he was level with her. Zaitoon tried to scramble backwards, blindly scraping her knuckles on the rock wall.

  Skimming the boulders in vast strides, Sakhi seized her. He dragged her along the crag. “You whore,” he hissed. His fury was so intense she thought he would kill her. He cleared his throat and spat full in her face. “You dirty, black little bitch, waving at those pigs . . .” Gripping her with one hand he waved the other in a lewd caricature of the girl’s brief gesture. “Waving at that shit-eating swine. You wanted him to stop and fuck you, didn’t you!”

  Zaitoon stood in a cataleptic trance. Sakhi shook her like a rattle, and at last she cried, “Forgive me, forgive me, I won’t do it again . . . Forgive me,” she kept repeating the words to quell his murderous rage.

  Sakhi’s face was bestial with anger. “I will kill you, you lying slut!”

  He slapped her hard, and swinging her pitilessly by the arm, as a child swings a doll, he flung her from him. A sharp flint cut into her breast, and in a wild lunge she blindly butted her head between the man’s legs. In the brief scuffle, the cord of Sakhi’s trousers came undone and the baggy gathers at the waist of his shalwar flopped to his ankles. Sakhi froze. Transfixed on the ledge, he blanched. What if someone had witnessed his ultimate humiliation?

  Zaitoon knelt in misgiving and suspense. There was no viler insult a woman could inflict on a man.

  Sakhi quickly secured the cord of his shalwar round his waist, glowering with thunderous hatred. Zaitoon flinched. He aimed a swift kick between her legs, and she fell back. Sakhi kicked her again and again and pain stabbed through her. She heard herself screaming.

  At last he lifted her inert body across his shoulders and carried her home.

  That night Zaitoon resolved to run away. Her sleepless eyes bright with shock, her body racked by pain, she knew that in flight lay her only hope of survival. She waited two days, giving herself a chance to heal.

  The following morning when she set out with the empty water container, Hamida’s weak voice trilled behind her. “Zaitoon . . . Why are you taking the blanket? Here, you can have my chaddar.”

  Zaitoon felt the bundle of maize bread she had collected press painfully against her fluttering stomach as she turned to face the old woman who was leaning against the decayed doorpost.

  “I don’t feel well,” she called, “and it’s cold by the stream.”

  Zaitoon and Hamida stood a moment facing each other. The older woman felt an emptiness she could not identify.

  “All right. But be back soon, my child,” she pleaded.

  Zaitoon nodded. The dark blanket around her head bobbed reassuringly. Turning away, she walked slowly up the slope and over the valley rim.

  At the stream Zaitoon scooped the clear liquid in her palms and drank until the icy water numbed the fear in the pit of her stomach. She filled the container and sat awhile by the happy little rock-strewn watercourse.

  Then, carefully she ventured into the unfamiliar hills.

  Chapter 22

  Sakhi slouched on the overhang. His ears were alert for the slightest sound and his deceptively somnolent eyes were ready to pick any movement at all in the familiar, convoluted landscape. Here he had caught Zaitoon waving at the army jeep.

  Sakhi knew each crest and hidden gully for miles around.

  An eagle forayed into the gorge and, sweeping up the cliff-face, perched just beneath him, pecking at some unrecognizable prey.

  The man and the eagle caught the sound simultaneously. Closing his talons on the carrion, the bird stiffened. He pecked tentatively once more and decided to take to the air.

  Sakhi wondered if the swoosh of wings would deter her, but then he heard a distinct crunch on the gravel. She wouldn’t dare, he thought. With morbid elation, his lips set in a thin smile; he waited.

  The footsteps down the track grew definite and Sakhi now saw the sheepskin cap of a man on his way to the river. He let go his breath and lay back.

  Late in the afternoon he lazily threaded his way to the village.

  His mother stood at a small distance from the mud rampart surrounding the settlement, as if waiting for him. Anxiety stiffened his spine.

  The grimace on Hamida’s face widened alarmingly when she spied him. She appeared frightened and her old clawing hands fluttered.

  “What is it?” he rasped. The old woman wiped her eyes. “Zaitoon has gone,” she squeaked.

  “Where?” he asked harshly.

  “She went to the stream this morning,” Hamida pleaded. “I wonder what’s happened to the child.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” he snarled, his face ashen.

  “I’ve been waiting . . . I didn’t know where you’
d gone. I went looking all over.”

  “Have you told the others?”

  “No,” she reassured him gravely.

  The old woman suddenly beat her breasts.

  “Hai,” she moaned. “Hai, what has happened to her? Go and look for her . . .” she added needlessly.

  Sakhi was already on his way.

  He ran. He leapt nimbly across the boulders traversing the undulating distance at a speed that quickened the breeze against him. His heart was a furnace of anger. “My God. If she has run away . . .” The thought sickened him. No. Most likely, she had slipped and hurt herself. Possibly even now a mountain leopard was at her. He prayed it might be so. She couldn’t have run away. She wouldn’t dare . . .

  At the brook Sakhi scanned the surrounding hills. There was no trace of her. Then he saw the container placed upright on a stone. It was full to the brim. In desperation he searched for pugmarks or any sign of struggle or accident in the soft sand by the bubbling water.

  He swore aloud, and in impotent rage beat his fists on his forehead. “I knew that bitch would run away.” He had known it, and he had taken no measures to prevent it. He had invited the disgrace that now affected his entire clan. “I should have killed her by the river!” Sakhi lifted a large rock and heaved it angrily into the shallows. He sat on the gritty earth and dashed his fists against the gravel. Later he climbed to some height to search the landscape minutely.

  His eyes smarting with shame, he finally lumbered home. The dusky air was pungent with smoke from cooking fires.

  A huddle of men met him at his door. Yunus Khan’s glacial, lantern-jawed face swam forward. The expectant faces of his cousins and clansmen swayed and parted to yield his shame and sorrow a silent passage into the hut.

  A moment later, Yunus slipped in and closed the door. Sakhi was strapping a bandolier round his chest. He picked up his ancient Lee-Enfield, its woodwork decorated with silver studs. “I’m going after her,” he said, raising his eyes to meet his brother’s in a haze of distraction.