The End of Innocence

by Moni Mohsin

  ‘I’ve brought you some rice,’ declared Sardar Begum, collapsing into an armchair. ‘I didn’t know whether you had enough to last out the war.’

  Fareeda blushed. Just the day before, she had instructed Rehmat to buy in twice their usual monthly ration of flour and sugar. If Tariq found out, he’d rebuke her for panicking. ‘Are we preparing for a siege?’ he’d ask. She, too, had suffered a pang of conscience, but then she’d told herself firmly that a single sack of flour and three bags of sugar hardly amounted to stock-piling.

  Sardar Begum was dressed in her ‘visiting’ clothes – a shalwar kurta in sage green teamed with a man’s sleeveless cardigan buttoned all the way up and, as always, her white muslin dupatta. She wore flat black slip-ons and white socks on her size-three feet. Once, Fareeda had bought her court shoes in oxblood leather with a sensible stacked heel. Having examined them from all sides – she was searching for the price ticket – Sardar Begum returned them with a cool comment about the heel being unbecomingly high for a widow. Thereafter, Fareeda restricted her presents to woollen shawls in sober shades of dust, rust and sludge.

  Sardar Begum folded her hands in her lap and gave the room a quick once-over to check whether her son’s hard-earned money had been squandered on yet more expensive gewgaws from Lahore. Her hawk eyes scoured the room, taking in the familiar Persian rug underfoot; a cluster of Kangra miniatures on the far wall; the gilt mirror above the fireplace; the rows of silver-framed photographs; and the shelves of leather-bound books Tariq had inherited from his father. Satisfied that no new acquisitions had appeared since her last visit, she enquired after Tariq and Laila.

  ‘Tariq is in Colewallah town,’ said Fareeda. ‘Laila is in the garden with a friend from the servants’ quarters. I’ll send for her.’

  ‘Shall I go?’ asked Rani.

  ‘No, you stay,’ Sardar Begum ordered. ‘If I send you, that’ll be the last I see of her or you.’

  ‘You’re looking better since I last saw you.’ Fareeda smiled at Rani as she rose to ring the bell to summon Fazal.

  ‘She was moping around like a chicken whose neck was about to be wrung, so I thought I’d bring her here. She likes coming here.’ Sardar Begum often spoke of servants in their presence as if they were absent. Or, perhaps, inanimate.

  The door was thrown open, and Laila stood at the threshold, her face flushed and her chest heaving.

  ‘Fazal told me you were here,’ she panted, addressing herself to Rani. ‘I was playing on the swing, but as soon as I heard, I jumped off and ran here as fast as I could.’

  Fareeda coughed softly. When Laila glanced at her, she frowned and nodded imperceptibly towards Sardar Begum.

  ‘Oh, Dadi, I’m so glad you’ve come,’ exclaimed Laila, adroitly changing direction mid-stride and heading towards Sardar Begum instead of Rani. She threw her arms around her grandmother and pressed her cheek to her chest.

  Having missed the exchange between mother and daughter, Sardar Begum was charmed by her granddaughter’s reception. She grasped Laila’s head in her hands and pressed her lips to each of her eyelids.

  ‘God bless you, my child,’ she cooed, drawing her on to her lap. ‘May you live for a thousand years.’

  Laila squirmed in her grandmother’s lap. She was desperate to get away with Rani so she could tell her all about Sister Clementine’s visit, but she knew it would be impolitic to wriggle away so soon.

  Sardar Begum stroked Laila’s hair. ‘I say a hundred prayers in thanksgiving every day that the fever has lifted from my child,’ she murmured. ‘How thin you’d become. How weak! Thank goodness you are looking better now. Still, a little on the dark side, of course. But my prayers will make you milk-white. Shut your eyes and let me pray over you.’

  Laila closed her eyes and pictured the Arabic words of her grandmother’s prayer. She saw the words lift off the page of the book and flow towards her. A jaunty parade of letters circled her head – the upright aliph pranced past her eyes, the fat-bellied laam rolled beneath her nose and the gay, heart-shaped hay skipped into one ear and out the other. Sardar Begum reached the end of the prayer and sent it flying into Laila’s face on a puff of breath. The procession scattered, the letters blown like grains of rice in a gale. Laila opened her eyes and saw her mother’s approving nod.

  ‘Good girl,’ Fareeda mouthed.

  Laila slid off Sardar Begum’s lap and went over to Rani. Rani glanced at Sardar Begum for clearance. She received a brief nod. Placing her mistress’s handbag and shawl on a stool, Rani followed Laila decorously out of the room.

  ‘Don’t be more than half an hour. I won’t wait a minute longer,’ Sardar Begum called out after them. ‘I have a hundred things to do when I get back. And Laila, put on a sweater. Cold wind will go up your nose and seize your brain.’

  ‘Let’s go out to the swing,’ whispered Rani.

  The swing hung from a thick branch of the silk cotton tree that spread over half the house like a hand of benediction. Whenever there was a storm, and the tree swayed and creaked overhead like an imperilled galleon, Fareeda would resolve to have it cut down. But as soon as the thunder receded and the rain ceased, the old survivor would emerge with leaves freshly laundered and enormous trunk glistening in the sunlight. And Fareeda’s resolve would weaken.

  For Sara and Laila, the tree was not so much a tree as a community. Its branches were home to a colony of grey-and-white-striped squirrels and an army of mynahs, hoopoes, warblers and parrots. There were beehives, too, velvety dewlaps suspended from the higher boughs. Once a year, a man with a very tall ladder and a net over his face came to remove the honey. The girls watched from a distance as the enraged bees swarmed around his head.

  Laila loved the scarlet flowers the tree sprouted in spring. They were bulbous, robust blooms, which fell to the ground with a satisfying thud. Their thick red petals were like ox tongues. And at the beginning of summer the tree produced the very substance after which it was named. As soft as down, as delicate as cobwebs, the silk cotton drifted down from the tree all month long and draped itself around the garden like candyfloss. The girls gathered the cotton and stuffed their pillows with it. Sara had two silk cotton pillows and Laila one.

  Two swings hung side by side from the same branch. Laila offered Rani Sara’s swing and hopped on to her own.

  ‘I’ve got news for you,’ Laila announced.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sister Clementine came to see Ammi yesterday.’

  Rani stiffened. ‘What, here?’ Even she, who did not live in Sabzbagh, had heard of the frosty relations between the nuns and Fareeda. That was why she had chosen to go to the convent. The nuns, she had thought, would not speak to Fareeda of her visit.

  ‘Yes, here. In the dining room.’

  ‘Were you there?’

  ‘No. Bua wouldn’t let me go.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘First, I asked Sister Clementine why she had come. But she wouldn’t say. She might have if Bua hadn’t been there, but Bua kept giving her funny, frowny looks.’ Laila stopped to see whether her account had met with satisfaction.

  ‘Go on,’ encouraged Rani.

  ‘So then I asked Ammi. This morning.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘I did!’ Laila grinned, pleased at Rani’s reaction to her courage.

  ‘Did she tell you anything?’

  ‘Not a lot. But only because Sister Clementine didn’t say anything.’

  ‘What do you mean, she didn’t say anything?’ Rani frowned. ‘Why did she come then?’

  ‘Ammi said Sister Clementine was so muddled that she couldn’t understand anything. Also, she didn’t mention any names. Not yours, not Bua’s, not mine, nobody’s.’ Laila felt a small twinge of guilt about this last claim. When she had asked Fareeda if Sister Clementine had mentioned any names, her mother had neither confirmed nor denied it. Which meant, probably, that no names were mentioned.

  ‘Your mother didn’t seem angry?’

  ‘Er, no.
Not about Sister Clementine’s visit.’

  Rani took the news in silence.

  ‘Rani? Are you all right?’ asked Laila, worried that she might have said something inappropriate. It was hard to gauge Rani’s moods these days.

  ‘I’m fine, fine, fine,’ she laughed. She jumped up, lifted Laila bodily from her swing and twirled her around. ‘You are the best partner I could ever have.’

  Dizzy from the twirl and Rani’s praise, Laila flushed with delight.

  ‘I’ve been a good detective, haven’t I?’

  ‘The best ever.’ Rani thumped Laila on the back. But then she paused, and after a bit she asked, ‘And Bua? Did she see Sister Clementine when she came out after speaking to your mother?’

  Laila shook her head. ‘No. We’d gone indoors by then. I have my glass of milk at that time.’

  ‘Very good!’ Rani beamed.

  Emboldened by Rani’s praise, Laila asked, ‘Why were you so worried about Sister Clementine coming here and speaking to Ammi? Was it to do with your visit to the church?’

  ‘In a way,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I’ll explain later. Now hop back on your swing and let me push you till your toes tickle the sky.’

  Laila realized she was being rebuffed, but she was so relieved to see the return of the old, light-hearted Rani that she went along with it gamely. She tucked away her unanswered queries into a deep drawer of her mind and climbed back on to the swing.

  Soon the swing was slicing through the air, climbing higher and higher. Laila shut her eyes and savoured the wind on her face. She was a good detective. She had solved the case of the nun’s visit. She had done so without the benefit of any clues, disguises or dogs. She’d done it all on her own.

  ‘On the way here, big Begum Sahiba was saying that Barkat’s son is probably dead,’ yelled Rani.

  ‘Why?’ Laila strained to hear above the rush of the wind.

  ‘Because lots of soldiers have died already.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Everyone knows.’

  ‘But Shareef isn’t dead,’ Laila insisted. ‘I saw a letter from him with my own eyes.’

  ‘Maybe he wrote it just before he died.’

  Perhaps Shareef had died since writing the letter. But Laila couldn’t imagine him dead. She had seen him less than six months ago, when he’d come to say goodbye to his parents before leaving for East Pakistan.

  His hair was short and spiky and, instead of his usual shalwar kurta, he wore a stiff khaki uniform. Otherwise, he was unchanged. His large red ears stuck out from his head like car doors left open. The big potato in his scrawny neck bobbed up and down when he swallowed. Sara had nicknamed him Goofy after Goofy Goat in the Disney cartoon.

  Unlike his elder brother, who was a stenographer in a government office in Lahore, Shareef was not bright. After he’d failed his Matric exams three years in a row, Barkat had reluctantly accepted his son’s academic limitations and pulled him out of school. A few days later, Barkat had him enlisted in the army. Several young men from Simbal had enlisted and done well out of it. Though Barkat accepted that Shareef was never going to distinguish himself as a soldier, at least he’d receive a steady salary. Shareef hadn’t had the courage to tell his father that he did not want to join the army. He dreamt, instead, of running his own poultry farm.

  The first time Shareef came back to Sabzbagh after enlisting, a visibly proud Barkat had brought him to meet Tariq and Fareeda. Laila remembered how Shareef had stood beside his father, wordless, leaden-footed in his heavy new boots, a gawky grin plastered to his face. When Tariq had congratulated him and shaken him by the hand, Shareef’s ears had turned such a deep crimson that Laila had thought they’d burst into flames. Laila couldn’t imagine Goofy fighting, let alone killing. Or dying.

  ‘Shareef can’t be dead,’ Laila murmured.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Rani.

  ‘Dadi did say that there was going to be a big war with India,’ shouted Laila. ‘And because we are so close to the milk factory, the Indians are going to come for us first.’

  ‘But Nazeer says we’re going to beat the Hindus because our soldiers eat meat and fight like lions, while theirs eat cabbage and run like rabbits.’

  ‘But what if they win?’ asked Laila anxiously.

  ‘They won’t. And even if they do, I’m ready for them,’ Rani said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve hidden a bag of extra hot chilli powder by the door. If Indian soldiers come into our house, I’ll hurl fistfuls of chilli into their eyes until they run away screaming.’

  Laila wondered if her parents had any such defensive contingencies. There was always her father’s shotgun, with which he sometimes shot partridge. But suppose the Indians came when her parents were out walking, or at Hester’s or something? Then what? Laila mentally ran through the things in her bedroom, rejecting most of them as possible weapons. If it came to the worst, she could always slam her wooden carom board on a soldier’s head. She’d seen heroes in films do that with tables and chairs, to villains who always passed out with a loud crash. Yes, she could do that.

  ‘Push me higher,’ she shouted at Rani. ‘I haven’t touched the sky yet.’

  9

  Mist draped the orange trees in the distance like a mosquito net. The sky was swollen with slate-coloured clouds. The last few leaves of the shisham trees shivered in a chilly breeze. A single stork perched on the canal bank, its snowy feathers standing out starkly against the milky brown of the water. It was a raw morning, and Tariq was thankful for his thick sweater and quilted jacket. But the dreary day did not lower his spirits, for, as a farmer, he knew winter showers were invaluable for his crops. As a child, he had often heard his mother refer to winter rains as ‘gold from the sky’.

  He touched his heel to the mare’s side and, ever responsive to his smallest signal, she sprang forward. The cold wind stung Tariq’s face and numbed his hands, but with the rhythmic drum of the mare’s hooves in his ears and the scent of frosted grass in his nose, he did not mind. He gave the mare her head, relishing her effortless speed on the packed earth.

  To his right, the canal gleamed dully between the trees, and on his left, stretched his land – mango and citrus orchards, fields of sugar cane and wheat and acid-green mustard. His heart lifted at the sight of those neat rectangular fields, punctuated here and there with the dwellings of his employees. Smoke spiralled from their chimneys and lights glimmered in the windows. He was proud of those houses. Though small, they were built of solid bricks and mortar. They were all connected to electricity and had the use of running water. Soon, he hoped to lay down sewage pipes.

  When he had first moved to Sabzbagh, nearly all the villagers lived in mud huts. They fetched water from communal taps and lit their huts at night with hurricane lamps. Driving out in the evening, he could go for miles without seeing an electric light. It was picturesque but archaic. Now, he believed, one or two houses even had televisions.

  He had been right not to have become a civil servant or a box wallah. His efforts in those labyrinthine bureaucracies would have made not a jot of difference to anyone, but here, he could see at first hand what a change he had wrought. No other village in the district could hold a candle to Sabzbagh.

  But in his zeal to forge on, was he becoming a little overbearing, perhaps? What had his mother called him at the picnic that day? A school master? She’d accused him of lecturing her. As if he were some pompous, sanctimonious bore. Was she also implying that he was authoritarian? God knew, he did his best to be democratic, consensual. But was it a crime to put his superior education at the disposal of his villagers? Besides, his mother was a fine one to talk. She who didn’t allow a chick to cheep in her house without her permission.

  She just couldn’t stand opposition, that was the truth of it. Just because he had chosen to follow a different path, she was determined to undermine his efforts. Well, she would just have to lump it. He knew he was on the right track. He had only to look around
him to see that. All this prosperity, this progress, it was his doing. And the villagers’, of course. And also Fareeda’s. He mustn’t forget Fareeda. In fact, it could be said that hers had been the greatest contribution. After all, he belonged here. This was his home, his place. The same went for the villagers. Whatever their achievement, it was for themselves. But Fareeda was an outsider. She didn’t have to live in this alien place, amongst an alien people. She’d had to make a huge adjustment to fit into this milieu. And she had fitted in – by and large.

  True, she could be a little punctilious at times. It was a quality that perplexed the villagers. What was the need for all that hair-splitting? They were also baffled by her polite reserve and her halting, city Punjabi. Tariq knew she tried her best to sympathize. She didn’t shout at them for not vaccinating their babies or marrying off their adolescent girls to old men. Instead, she expressed her disapproval in prolonged, chilly silences, which the villagers found discomfiting. In fact, they were far more comfortable with Sardar Begum’s rants and forthright rudeness. They were accustomed to such outbursts from their superiors and bore them with the same stoicism as they did thunderstorms, certain in the knowledge that they would soon roll away and, with some luck, leave behind a windfall. Tariq knew if Fareeda were ever to discover this, she would be hurt. She thought of herself as the evolved patron, the kinder, gentler face of old martinets like Sardar Begum. What she lacked in instinctive understanding, she made up for in reformist zeal.

  On the whole, though, Tariq did not dwell too much on Fareeda’s compulsions. It was enough for him that she lived in Sabzbagh gracefully. She was a good, if sometimes unnecessarily firm mother, a loving, supportive wife and a great organizer. Her clockwork home was very comfortable indeed.

  When he rode into his backyard, Tariq saw Fazal emerge from the pantry. Dressed in his customary fez, white shalwar kameez and black wool Nehru jacket, the bearer cut an imposing figure. Of all Tariq’s staff, Sardar Begum disliked Fazal the most, even more than the heathen Bua and the profligate Rehmat. Fazal, to her mind, had airs that ill became a servant. It was a view that was shared to some extent by Rehmat and Barkat.