Secrets of the Henna Girl

by Sufiya Ahmed

  ‘What will your parents say?’ I asked tentatively, thinking of my own situation.

  ‘Who throws their own daughter into the lion’s den?’ she raged. ‘When I get back to England, I’m getting on with my own life, without them! And I won’t forget you, Zeba. As soon as I’m back I’ll send the cavalry for you too.’

  We bonded quickly because of our common circumstances, and then spent many an afternoon lazing in the shade of the giant tree on the riverbank, imagining our great escape. There was no denying that it was the thought of England, of home – of freedom – that kept us both going. We just had to hold on a little while longer. In the meantime we were waited on hand and foot by another young girl.

  Farhat was Sehar’s maid and shadow – a tiny little thing, but nevertheless a determined ball and chain. She was dark-skinned with jet-black hair that was immaculately oiled and braided into a plait, which began at the nape of her neck and ended as a swinging tail by her hips. Every day a different brightly coloured ribbon was woven into the thick, long braid. Farhat always made sure her ribbons matched the colour of her shawl, and I was sure that the strips of fabric were her pride and joy.

  Farhat’s mother was one of the many servants in Sher Shah’s household, and at sixteen Farhat had been the natural choice for Sehar’s maid, having worked in the haveli since she was ten. She was a sweet girl and insisted on speaking to us in broken English with the amusing singing lilt accent of the South Asians. The peasant girl had picked up the English language from the cable channels that were religiously watched in Sher Shah’s haveli. As a result she said ‘naa’ and ‘yaah’ a lot, both of which were just sounds to demonstrate her mood rather than words to communicate yes or no.

  Sometimes when Sehar and I were in full conversation, she would stare at us, her mouth wide open as her mind grappled to catch the words. Sehar’s Brummie accent and my Yorkshire vowels were too much for her and she would grumble that we did not know how to speak the Queen’s English and the Pakistanis pronounced the words better. Sehar and I would laugh at her, but in different ways. I grew quite affectionate towards Farhat, but Sehar treated her like she was the plague.

  ‘She’s not my mate,’ Sehar once insisted when I’d invited Farhat inside Nannyma’s house. ‘She is a maid in the employment of Sher Shah. Her loyalty is with him. She can wait outside your nan’s house.’

  It was noon and the sun unrelenting in its scorching heat, but Sehar was insistent, justifying her action by naming Farhat as the one who had raised the alarm when Sehar had once tried to escape.

  Everything about Farhat seemed to annoy Sehar – from the maid’s fascination with her baby bump to her chatter about her own upcoming nuptials. Farhat’s wedding to her second cousin Abdullah had been arranged by her father. Abdullah was one of the younger men who was always in the background guarding Sehar. He was a tall boy, a year older than Farhat, who watched over the haveli’s daughter-in-law like a hawk.

  Farhat was very excited about marrying Abdullah and giggled uncontrollably whenever he was within five yards of her. I also noticed how she would sometimes loudly rattle on in broken English in a bid to impress her fiancé. And she did – Abdullah would gaze at his clever girl and marvel as she demonstrated her ability to speak another language.

  Farhat never seemed to take offence at Sehar’s rudeness. I guess it never occurred to her that she was allowed to be offended. In fact, people of Farhat’s status took it as an honour to be addressed by the haveli dwellers at all, and I was reminded of Nannyma’s words: power and control. I didn’t think I would ever get used to this way of life, which made me even more determined that Sehar’s future would not be mine.

  Chapter 8

  Sehar invited me to the haveli a few days after we met. It was raining and, resigned to a quiet afternoon, I was planning to fill the time waiting until it was time to go by listening to Nusrat-kala’s old music collection. Nannyma had kept her daughter’s ancient record player on display in the living room and I fiddled with it, unsure how to work it. Where was the play button?

  Standing by the doorway, an amused Ambreen-bhaji watched me for a few minutes before offering to help. She placed my chosen Bollywood record on the turntable, set it spinning and dragged the needle on to it. A high-pitched gabbling sound filled the room and I instinctively covered my ears with my hands.

  ‘It’s just at the wrong speed,’ Ambreen-bhaji said dismissively, flicking a switch next to the turntable. Now a normal voice blared out and as I listened to the beat of the music I was struck by its similarity to the music Susan’s mum played. Mrs Taworth still loved the sounds of ancient groups like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, and every time she blasted out their songs Susan and I would make a hasty exit.

  Looking at the big hairstyles and shoulder pads of the men and woman on the record covers, it was obvious that the same type of music had been globally popular, even if the accompanying singing had been in different languages. It was funny that Nusrat-kala and Mrs Taworth had similar taste in music despite the thousands of miles between them.

  Enjoying the infectious beat of the music, I grabbed Ambreen-bhaji’s hands and urged her to dance with me. Laughing, she shooed me away and I whirled round and round until I banged head-on into a smiling Farhat, who had come to collect me. I hurriedly yanked the needle off the record and yelled a goodbye.

  Farhat and I huddled under a big, black umbrella to set out on the muddy path towards the haveli. The umbrella was doing little to protect us from the fat drops falling from the murky grey clouds above, and we were half drenched within minutes. Suddenly I was reminded of the times when Susan and I had danced in the rain back home. If ever we were caught in a downpour on our way home from school, we would laugh, twirling and skipping about, and raise our faces to soak up the fresh water. I wondered if I would feel the same sense of liberation here if I gave in to the skies. I could only try. I ran out from under the umbrella and whirled around and around, just like I had moments ago to the beat of the Bollywood tune. For those few moments I forgot that I was a prisoner in this village. The rain made me feel free … for a moment anyway.

  Farhat stared at me with bewildered eyes, her confusion at the antics of the foreign girl evident on her face. ‘You will be getting sick,’ she scolded like a mother hen.

  ‘The rain makes me feel good,’ I breathed, running back to her. ‘It reminds me of home.’

  Farhat nodded vaguely and increased her pace to get us inside as quickly as possible. By the time we walked through the heavy mahogany doors of the haveli, our salwars were splattered with mud and our kameezes were soaked through.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ A woman ran forward, her hands held up to stop us. She was thin with wrinkled skin, but her eyes shone brightly, expressing her warmth.

  ‘This is Zeba-ji from England,’ Farhat said in Sindhi. ‘Zeba-ji, this is my mother, Rachida-bhaji.’

  I smiled at Rachida-bhaji and she responded shyly before turning her attention to her daughter, tutting at Farhat’s drenched appearance.

  ‘Memsahib will get angry,’ Rachida-bhaji warned. ‘You will mark her clean floor. The other maids and I have already wiped it twice today.’

  I leaned a little to my left to peer at the white marble floor. Pillars rose from it to form a circle within which plush creamy leather sofas formed a sitting area. High above, an enormous crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. It was easily large enough to crush anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves beneath if it fell. At the far end stood a majestic staircase. Outside the circle of pillars, shiny white doors with gold knobs hid other parts of the house, and on two of the walls hung huge portraits of a middle-aged man with a gravity-defying moustache. He was wearing a purple ajrak turban on his head. I guessed he must be Sher Shah, the landlord. His haveli reminded me of the mansion homes of American celebrities that were featured in the MTV show Cribs.

  ‘Rachida!’

  A shrill, high voice startled
me out of out of my daydream and I looked up to stare into the eyes of a tall, statuesque woman in her mid fifties. She was draped in an expensive silk sari, the colour of sunflowers, and her face was heavily made up in bright colours that had been applied far too harshly. Green eye-shadow stained the lids above eyes that were completely circled in black kohl, and her thin lips were a hot bubblegum colour, which I thought only succeeded in making her mouth appear like a pink slash across her face.

  Was this Sehar’s mother-in-law, the woman fearfully known as Memsahib? Sehar had told me that the landlady preferred to be addressed as ‘memsahib’, like the English women of the British Raj, rather than the accepted Urdu term, ‘sahiba’. This was the one who ordered her son to carry on beating his wife?

  ‘Memsahib,’ Rachida-bhaji gasped, confirming my suspicions.

  ‘What is happening here?’ Memsahib snapped. ‘Why are your family all coming to my house?’

  Rachida-bhaji and her daughter giggled nervously and then Farhat said, ‘This is Zeba-ji from England. She is Mustaq Khan Sahib’s niece.’

  Memsahib’s eyes travelled from my flattened wet hair, down my clinging kameez and all the way to my feet, which were hidden from view under a cake of mud. Her disdainful expression revealed her thoughts: she was not impressed with me at all.

  ‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘So you are Sehar’s new friend. Well, Farhat, perhaps you should take her to Sehar’s room and give her a towel.’

  Farhat nodded.

  ‘But first please remove your shoes, Zeba; my maids have more important tasks than to constantly wipe up after all who pop in and out.’

  Farhat and I removed our footwear, hoisted up our salwars and trod carefully over the marble floor to the stairs. We reached a door at the end of the first-floor landing and Farhat knocked.

  ‘Come in.’

  We walked in to the sight of Sehar sprawled on a king-size bed watching MTV.

  ‘Look at you two,’ she remarked, eyeing us both up and down. ‘What did you do? Dance in the rain?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I answered, standing by the door awkwardly as I looked around the luxurious bedroom with its wall-to-wall wardrobes, plush cream carpet and expensive furniture.

  ‘So you want a bath?’ Sehar asked.

  I nodded and minutes later I found myself in a bathroom bigger than many of the village huts that housed whole families. Sitting in the giant tub I was reminded of home and wondered when I would be able to return.

  Sehar supplied me with an outfit she could no longer fit into. It was a lavender colour and the salwar trailed on the floor no matter how high I raised it on my waist. The kameez too ended below my knees. Sehar burst out laughing when I emerged, scrubbed and clean, smelling of her delicious bath foam.

  ‘Where’s Farhat?’ I asked, looking around.

  ‘She has gone to clean up in the servants’ bathroom downstairs,’ Sehar explained. ‘She’ll be back. Don’t worry. That one is never far away.’

  I settled down on the bed and Sehar put on a Bollywood DVD. ‘We haven’t got any Hollywood stuff,’ Sehar explained. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I reassured her. ‘I like them.’

  The film was a typical love story – a boy and a girl forbidden to be together by family differences eventually overcoming the odds to live happily ever after. We spent the three hours of the film supplied with savoury snacks brought up by Farhat; samosas and onion bhajis washed down with masala tea. The film’s happy ending left me in a much better mood.

  Somebody knocked on the door just as Sehar began to flick through the satellite channels.

  ‘Come in,’ she called.

  A pretty, petite woman in her late twenties walked in. Dressed in an expensive salwar kameez with gold jewellery sparkling at her throat and ears, she greeted us, ‘As salaam alaikum.’

  ‘Wa alaikum salaam,’ Farhat and I replied together. Sehar ignored her.

  ‘I heard you were here,’ the woman said to me in English, and in an accent much like Sehar’s. ‘I wanted to come and greet you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, wondering who she was.

  The woman gave a small tinkling laugh. ‘My name is Shabana,’ she explained. ‘I am married to the eldest of Sher Shah’s sons.’

  ‘You’re from England as well?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I’ve lived here for nearly seven years, and as you can hear I still haven’t lost my Brummie accent.’ She turned to Sehar. ‘Perhaps you’d like to join the rest of us in the lounge with your friend? It’s always nice for us women to get together.’

  Sehar refused to avert her eyes from the Michael Jackson video playing on MTV. ‘No,’ she said rudely.

  Shabana sighed heavily. ‘Sehar, you can’t stay cooped up in here all the time. You must learn to mingle. It will make things so much easier for you!’

  Sehar pretended not to hear.

  ‘Very well,’ Shabana said and turned to me. ‘It was very nice to meet you, Zeba. Please come again.’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that,’ I said awkwardly, and watched Shabana leave before turning to Sehar. ‘You never told me about her,’ I almost accused.

  ‘What’s to tell?’ Sehar said flippantly. ‘She’s just a busybody. Just because she’s happily married to her husband doesn’t give her the right to tell me what to do.’

  ‘She’s from home,’ I said. ‘Was she forced to marry her husband too?’

  Sehar snorted. ‘As if! That one couldn’t wait to be the eldest daughter-in-law of Sher Shah. She loves it here; no housework to do, no money worries. Life of Riley for her.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Yeah,’ Sehar continued. ‘She actually wanted to marry and live here. She returns to Birmingham once a year to visit her parents and then she’s back lording it over everyone here.’

  ‘But she seems nice,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, well appearances can be deceptive,’ Sehar declared with an air of finality. ‘Now let’s watch another DVD.’

  Chapter 9

  Afternoons spent lazing in the haveli became the norm if it rained, or if it was too hot to even sit in the shade of a tree. We also spent time on Nannyma’s veranda; Farhat would sit on the floor by the steps, Sehar on a deckchair and I on the swing.

  Farhat always had Sehar and me in stitches of laughter. It was not that she was even trying to be amusing – only voicing her views and questions, which were limited by her experience of the world. Once Sehar and I were staring at a jet in the distance, dreaming that we were on board on our way home. Farhat, too, was gazing at the speck in the sky, but her face was a picture of puzzlement.

  ‘Zeba-ji,’ Farhat began, ‘how can you fitting into plane? I mean the plane is so small. Look, it could be fitting in palm of my hand; it is so tiny in the sky. How then can you be sitting in it?’

  Sehar and I stared at Farhat in bewilderment and then burst out laughing.

  ‘Fatty, you are so silly,’ Sehar howled.

  Farhat looked at us wide-eyed, unable to understand the reason for our laughter. As far as she was concerned, fully grown people on a tiny plane in the sky was one of the great mysteries of the world. In between the laughter, Sehar and I explained that distance made an object look smaller, and I even demonstrated it by running out into a field so that she could fathom it. Finally, the penny dropped and Farhat clapped her hands in glee.

  ‘You are both so clever,’ she gushed. ‘I wishing I was more like you.’

  ‘You know all you had to do was go to school,’ Sehar said sarcastically. I shot Sehar a sharp look. There was no need to put the maid down. It wasn’t exactly her fault that she had been denied an education. I immediately felt ashamed of my own laughter.

  ‘No, no,’ Farhat said happily, oblivious to the put-down. ‘I am girl. Girls not going to school.’

  Nannyma would sometimes join us after a short siesta,
claiming that she was too old now to need much sleep. Our afternoons were spent musing about the world and to an observer it would have seemed that a gentle old lady was subtly teaching the values of equality and justice to her three students. Of course, it had to be said that although Sehar and I lapped up whatever came out of Nannyma’s mouth Farhat always looked a little doubtful. She just could not get past the village patriarchy, which dictated that men always knew best and that women were put on this earth to serve them.

  One of Sehar’s favourite topics of conversation was Bollywood films featuring Muslim courtesans. Her favourite was the 1972 film Pakeezah, a tale of forbidden love between a rich man and a dancer. After much strife, tears and murder, the besotted pair get their happy ending. Her second favourite was Umrao Jaan, a 1981 film whose ending she insisted she would change.

  It was about a courtesan, Umrao, who was kidnapped and sold as a child to a dance house, known as a kota. In the story she grew up to be a very famous singer and lost her heart to a man she could not marry because of her profession. Tired and disillusioned with her life, she tried to escape, but tragedy forced her to return to the kota she had abandoned. The moral of the story was that the world would not accept a courtesan in their midst; she could exist, but only within the four walls of her kota.

  I was always amused at Sehar’s obsession with the heroine’s fate. She would always insist that Umrao, played by the beautiful Bollywood star Rekha, should have had a happy ending. I did try to point out that the film was set over a hundred and fifty years ago, but that did not change her mind. That was one of Sehar’s basic beliefs: everybody deserved a happy ending.

  It was also in one of these conversations that Sehar let slip that she would love to be a Bollywood actress, and in time, when she got her life back, she would head for Mumbai.