I draped my body with the sari. Its patterns were so intricate, threads that were seamlessly interwoven. It had lace and sequins, too. The cloth settled on my hips and draped across my breasts, free-falling down my back with the gentle push of gravity. Wearing it usually brought about a certain sensuality, an inexplicable wildness, but it now felt like a trap.
When I entered the living room wearing it, I saw the handful of guests strolling in: some ladies and some men, all middle-aged or older, none my age. They smiled at me from afar, as I shuffled back into the bedroom, dreading the small talk expected of me, which I didn’t feel competent to deliver considering the state of things.
Soon after, Sweety Khala and Gollapi Khala, who was the eldest of Ammu and her sisters, traipsed in with Ammu and handed me a floral-patterned tray. Nimkis, nut mix, samosas, pitas, with doodh cha.
Ammu pulled up the sari anchal that fell from my chest. “Be mindful of your lajja, haya, and your humility, especially around guests,” she said.
As I made my way into the living room, I got a closer look at the men and women on the sofa. There was a man with a blunt brown moustache and scrawny arms. There was another man who had a white beard, petite frame, and kind eyes. I also saw a woman with a chestnut bob, and another with her hair in a small bun and a cotton sari with wrinkles. I speculated what the lives of these people were beyond their demeanour and physical characteristics.
I saw the ladies on the sofa were, in comparison to the men that sat next to them, very quiet. I was in awe when they finally spoke, how they shaped their sentences, about topics that ranged from domestic duties to politics to history.
I brought the floral tray with snacks to the men and women; my eyes were weary. I almost tripped over my hem. As I got closer, I considered asking these people for help. What would I say? Hello, I’m hiding in a storage closet because my uncle doesn’t like my handsome Toronto boyfriend, my future husband — who also happens to be Sikh, but we’re going to find a way. Would they help me? Who was I to them? They answered to Boro Mama. Instead, I said my salams and put down the tray, just as I had been instructed.
Boro Mama stood up to greet me. He held a lit cigarette in his left hand that he brought periodically to his purple-tinted lips. He went for daily jogs, and got frequent checkups. He watched what he ate, and made sure he meditated. However, smoking was something that was hard for him to give up. I thought he would at least understand then that habits die hard, whether it be cigarettes or a lover’s presence.
Just the other day he had Bilkis bring me a plate of yellow turmeric-coated kabuli chana. He had bent down so we were eye level, picked up my hand, and said, “These are not normal circumstances, but you have to eat. You have to take care of your health.” He had said this to me with eyes that looked like hibiscus China rose flowers, ferocious yellow petals with a tender pink in the middle; a little off, kind of sick. I speculated whether he himself had been deteriorating the way I felt myself to be.
Boro Mama gave me a weak nod and I stood there in the living room staring at his guests. He sat down. The sunlight burst in from the surrounding windows.
“Sit down, sit down,” said the man with the blunt brown moustache and scrawny arms stretched across the back fold of the sofa.
The man with the white beard looked at me as if he had known me forever.
I accidentally sat down on my anchal, shifted my body side to side to move it, and then brought its tail end to my lap.
I heard then one of the men say, “Essentially, they’re scapegoating Muslims.” I heard the tapping of feet on the floor. “But you have to admit that Saudi Arabia doesn’t help.”
“This is more about resources than anything else,” I heard the woman sitting next to me remark. Her chestnut curls grazed the top of her silky white sari. The maroon shade on her lips matched the pashmina wrapped around her slender arms.
She smiled at me, revealing perfect ivory teeth. Her elegance attracted me. Slowly, memories of my teenage life began to rise with the smoke above my head. I watched the conversation.
I learned that Boro Mama had requested my passport from Ammu. I heard it from Shahzad one day. He said he saw his father open their bedroom almari and store it there, in some kind of case with a lock.
“Do you know why?” I asked him.
“Well, obviously,” he whispered. He was in the storage closet with me, looking around as he spoke. “I think he is serious. I don’t think he will let you leave. I have to go.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said.
Shahzad was in his early teens and preparing for exams. He hoped to move to London or maybe Australia, anywhere that would allow for him to pursue his father’s aspirations. He didn’t express much, but I could tell by the way he studied my face that he was genuinely concerned. He left to continue working on his assignment.
I thought about my own siblings, too, who were also quite young and who followed Ammu around without getting much involved. And I, as the elder sister, didn’t talk to them much either about any of what was happening, for a number for reasons, although I was sure they already knew. One being that I could easily be seen as influencing them, and it was important to me that they make their own judgments and decisions. If I did have the Shayṭān in me, like what was thought, then it would be better for me to stay away. It was a distance I harboured out of a desire to protect, although this in itself had its own consequences. If they were to somehow support me, I knew they would also be subject to criticism. I hoped and prayed that they’d not let any of it cloud their hearts.
I sat down and started free writing whatever came, an exercise that allows me to see my thoughts as they appear on paper and examine them with greater clarity. This time, however, I could only muster a single thought that circled again and again and again like a neurotic messenger bird. I wrote find me. Then, it came to me: I would need to figure out a way to get Bhav to find me. He was the only one who would listen. He could come and get me out of this place. How could it happen? I gripped my pen and started to jot down the logical steps.
Step one: I inform him of the plan and give him the address using Shahzad’s phone.
Step two: He books a flight to Dhaka. Takes a rickshaw to get here.
Step three: He somehow distracts the gate guard or waits for him to fall asleep, which would be highly likely during late afternoon. Then he would enter the veranda from the outside and wait behind one of the rose bushes.
Step four: I find a way to the same veranda from the inside of the house when everyone is napping.
Step five: We reunite …
I erased step five. I would have to enlist the help of either Shahzad or Bilkis to retrieve my passport. That step would need to be completed before I could meet Bhav outside on the veranda. The time between my retrieval of the passport and our reunion would be critical.
Yes, I thought, this is the solution. If I were to escape a different way, the chances of a broad public announcement about my character, my family, or Islam would go out. An escape without commotion would break fewer hearts.
I gripped my pen tightly and pushed it into the paper. I decided I would write Bhav a letter that could become an email. In it, I pleaded for him to come to Dhaka and get me out. I told him it was the only way to prevent any kind of public shame. I told him that everyone’s intentions were good. They were just trying to fulfill their duty as elders, but struggling to find the right way. They were only trying to impart the knowledge they had, things about the world they had deduced. That being said, it wasn’t right, what was happening. I carried the note in my bra, for the moment to share it could be almost anytime.
I smiled at my plan, at my letter, and then I burst out laughing, remembering all the conversations Bhav and I had about eloping. Perhaps we would live in a small town after all, milking cows and sewing clothes.
It was then in my reminiscing that I heard a muffled voice that sounded strangely familiar. I looked around the storage closet, wondering if someone was ther
e, but no. I stood up and opened the door, walked into the empty bedroom, and peeked through the crack between the sliding door that led to the living room. Manshoor was standing near the front door, his face half covered by a tall living-room plant. Ammu was talking to him. I saw her fully, her hands swivelling in the air as if she was trying to explain something. I listened in.
“I just want to say hello to her,” Manshoor stated.
“She is busy right now. It is best you come another time,” I heard Ammu say, trying to get him to leave.
I felt my heart pump with vigour. Had Bhav replied to his message? What did Bhav say?
I also remembered the message that was in my bra. I had to give it to him so I could again communicate with Bhav.
“Well, at least give her this,” Manshoor said, handing Ammu a book.
I almost tripped running out of the bedroom, across the living room, and toward the front door to get Manshoor to stay. But by the time I got there, he was gone.
Ammu turned from the front door to me and handed me the book. I am not sure, but if my memory serves me right, it was a translation of Tagore’s Nastanirh, or The Broken Nest, which is about a woman coming to use her own voice during a time when women were encouraged to pursue intellectual and artistic freedom but only within the domestic sphere.
“You don’t have time for this. Always buried under books. It’s time for you to consider becoming someone’s wife, or a mother to children,” she told me.
All of what she said I desired, just not like this. I took the book and walked away. It was true that I was not in the right mind to read. Why would Manshoor give me this in my current state? I plunked myself on the floor in the storage closet and flipped through the book’s pages. There it was, a small slip of paper, so seemingly insignificant that I didn’t even realize I’d been expecting it until I received it. I unfolded the note hastily. Inside it said, I told him. He loves you. Stay strong. Say no.
Comfort billowed over me. “Alhumdulillah,” I cried. It was the first time in a few days I had felt more inclined than not to pray, and so I did.
On the jai-namaz I put my two palms up to the sky. I didn’t, however, ask for anything other than the right thing to happen. What was meant to be. And for Allah to know our love is now and will forever be, Inshallah, pure.
A couple of days had passed. I had not seen Manshoor again. I waited patiently, staring at the white walls, sometimes imagining on them grand scenes of reunion, Bhav and I. I hummed to the tune of Daniel Bedingfield’s “If You’re Not the One,” which was our song.
How would it feel to not only be reunited with Bhav, but the sun, sky, soil, all my books, my friends? Would I ever get to enjoy all those pleasures I took for granted before?
I also thought a lot of Abbu and the suffering he was enduring, all alone.
In the storage closet, as I stared at my now protruding veins, I pondered mortality.
Manshoor arrived without warning. Ammu was out with Sweety Khala, and Nani and Mami were home. Mami wasn’t one to confront, reject, or debate, so she let him in. He sat on the claret cloth sofa. As I walked out to greet him, Nani followed me. When Mami saw Nani take a seat, she left to get everyone some doodh cha.
The conversation began with the usual pleasantries.
“You should come back another time when everyone else is home,” Nani told him. “This is not a good time.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Manshoor said. “I was just in the area and wanted to say my salams.”
Nani asked him about his mother, his sister, and his two brothers. She asked him about his studies, and covered all the other formalities. I sat there quietly, looking at my feet, for I didn’t want to give any kind of sign that Manshoor had been helping me.
When Nani got up, as if to take her leave and therefore imply Manshoor should take his, I broke my stillness and said, “I have that book you lent me. I don’t think I will be able to read it, but thank you. I will get it, one second.”
With that I scurried into the storage closet where I pulled Nastanirh from my suitcase, and then my letter — or email-to-be — for Bhav from my bra. I folded the piece of paper to the smallest size and stuffed it in between pages of the book just as Manshoor had.
When I came out of the storage closet, I saw Nani was on the bed praying. I passed her, avoiding the top of the mat, and made my way through the sliding doors. Mami was now saying her goodbyes to Manshoor. I handed Manshoor my book with the note.
“As-salam alaykum, see you again, Inshallah. Khuda hafiz,” Manshoor said to both Mami and I and then left.
When Mami looked at me, my eyes were lowered. When I turned my back to her, I let out a deep breath. I hoped the message would reach Bhav soon.
I would find out later that when Bhav received my message from Manshoor, he thought the idea of coming to Bangladesh to take me away from my family was absurd. At the same time, he considered it as a last resort. He spent nights awake, distraught, pacing back and forth. Bhav, who often let his thought threads overlap, twist, and tangle when stressed, was also being asked to make critical decisions and take action.
Not being able to rescue and protect the woman he loved was a humiliation of the highest order, cauterized to the point where there would be no pain left to bear, just the omnipresent truth that she could never genuinely be his if there was nothing left that he could do.
The helplessness would be an unspeakable shame, never leaving his psyche and growing instead like a slowly spreading disease, a tender haunting that would travel to the bones of his being. It would be something for which he could possibly consider death by his own hands. Which he did.
He would then do whatever he could, but at the same time allow the choice to be hers — mine — with whatever clarity I had.
I didn’t see Manshoor again for a while. One day Ammu entered the storage closet with a reddened face.
“Your Boro Chachi keeps calling to ask about you. Did you tell her or Manshoor or Nusrat something?” she questioned.
I shook my head. Yes, I was lying, but I had to.
“Well, they won’t be visiting anymore. The doors are closed until we figure things out.”
One day Sweety Khala told me that I’d get to stay at her place for a night. She wanted to give Mami a break from constantly looking over me as if I were a child. I nodded, as I wanted very much to leave Boro Mama’s home, even if it was for a short while. At the same time, I knew not much would be different. If anything, it could actually be worse. I went, anyway.
The driver took me to her flat late in the afternoon. I spent most of the time lying on a bed and staring at the ceiling with her daughters, Nabila and Maryam, who had been ordered to monitor me. They were to keep track of when I entered the balcony or how long I stayed in the bathroom. If they didn’t report any mysterious behaviour, they would meet the end of Sweety Khala’s broomstick and no phone privileges. At least, that is what Maryam told me.
“Let’s play a game,” Maryam said. She jumped up from the bed, ran out of the room, then came back with a piece of neon-pink paper and a pen in her hand.
Both Nabila and I pulled our bodies up from the bed and sat upright.
“What is it? What is it?” Nabila shouted with her thumb still in her mouth.
Maryam plopped next to us and began folding the piece of paper in her lap. She handled it like origami, smoothening and caressing with undivided attention. Nabila and I watched her, curious. She folded the pink paper into triangular petals. She had created a fortune teller. She took the pen and began writing on the petals, single letters of the alphabet, but she wouldn’t let me see which. She turned her back to Nabila and I as she did this, and we tried to peer over her shoulder.
Sweety Khala’s maid, who had two pigtails and wore a seafoam-coloured dress, walked in with a pile of salwar kameezes, pillowcases, and dresses in her hands. She dropped them on the chair and hobbled over to us.
Finally, after about five minutes, Maryam turned to us three, presenting
her fortune teller and saying, “Aha!”
I had seen a similar contraption before, in elementary school, and wondered if Maryam would be playing the game I had played, where we could ask questions and receive answers.
I placed a strand of my hair behind my ear and fixed my orna. I shuffled closer to her. “What are we going to try and predict?”
“Well,” Maryam began, “we’re going to find out the first letter of the name of the person you are going to marry. Will it be B or something else?”
As ridiculous I thought the notion, I was also desperate. Anything, anyone, whatever it took to give me some hope. “Okay, let’s do it,” I said.
Maryam got on her knees on the bed, as if to tower over us a little bit. “Oh, Allah, tell us, what is the first letter of the name of the man Sumaiya will marry?” She leaned in close to me and asked for a number. I told her three, as that was my favourite.
We all held our breaths as Maryam opened and sealed the petal lips. Finally, she opened one of the flaps to reveal the answer.
I closed my eyes, holding an image of the letter B somewhere between my temples and the middle of my forehead, where futures are shown.
Maryam cleared her throat, “Oh, an S!”
Nabila and Maryam jumped up and down on the bed, and the maid squinted, then went back to her pile of clothes on the nearby chair.
This isn’t a joke! I wanted to shout to my two cousins, but I didn’t. I wondered then how they, despite being so young, could react like this, at this moment, as if it were all normal. And then I heard procession music and lots of mirth. The rickshaws were louder than usual. I hauled myself off the bed and crept to the balcony, almost toppling over on the way. From the balcony I saw a bosti, a row of slum shelters.
The rooftops of the shelters were covered in blue, orange, and red lights, and there were rows of women carrying large pots on their hips. There were a few men and little boys and girls twirling around in circles. It looked like a celebration of some sort; I looked on until this was confirmed. It was a wedding. A bride with a red Kumkum bindi in the middle of her forehead and smaller white bindis around it. The Kumkum bindi is worn by Hindu brides and signifies not only that a woman is married, but also Shakti, the feminine aspect of the divine in Hinduism — the creative force that moves the universe but which can also destroy. The bride had altha on the tips of her fingers and the base of her feet, the way Muslim brides also wore altha, as well as Odissi classical dancers. She beamed, losing reservation and swaying her hips to the procession beat. Such joy, I thought, and as I did, an idea came to me.
The Shaytan Bride Page 15