As Raziya walked away towards the basti, she knew that Humayun and she were alone in the world, and that nothing but her quick mind could save him from being falsely accused of rape, and that the next visit she had to make was far more humiliating even than the fruitless one she had just paid to the Professor. She had to beg for help from her late husband’s brothers.
They lived altogether in a joint family house behind the shrine, a portion of which technically belonged to Humayun. They had done well for themselves – one brother owned a small shop, another was an autorickshaw mechanic, and the house, though small, with whole families sharing tiny rooms, had a large, electricity-guzzling fridge, and a toilet for their exclusive use. They hadn’t, however, done as well for themselves as Raziya had, with her tiled kitchen and bathroom with a tap. She had done the best of all, and her brothers-in-law knew it and found the insult difficult to take.
The brothers – who in their pious old age had abandoned the spit-slick hairstyles and Western-collared shirts that had helped them get on in their chosen professions, and were wearing instead the spotless, pressed, white salwar kameez that identified them as respected and senior members of the community; who played with prayer beads and dropped Arabic phrases into their speech like a sprinkling of almonds on a fine white kheer – had to contend with her anger. They could see it in the way her eyes flickered between them, in the colour of her cheeks, in the movements of her head and hands, and most of all in the words she spoke about Aisha and her mother. ‘But, Raziya,’ they began, once she had explained that Aisha’s accusations of rape marked her out as a whore like her mother, ‘these women are from our own family.’
‘My son has been slandered. I demand retribution.’
Raziya paused, restraining herself from speaking too much. During the silence that followed her speech, she could hear the clink of beads, the clearing of a throat, the steady swish of the overhead fan, the whine of the neighbour’s television. She felt irritated with their ponderousness; it was as if, somehow by virtue of being men, they had accumulated wisdom and worthiness. It irritated her, too, that although she had managed her own affairs ever since she became a widow – had taken nothing from her husband’s useless brothers – now that the police were involved, being a woman and a mother was no longer enough, and so she had to come to these people and beg.
From the mosque came the first notes of the call to prayer, and looking around her at the men assembled in this crowded basti room, with its glossily painted walls and line of trunks on the shelf, where every breath of air carried with it the sweet fetid scent of too many humans living together, Raziya thought again of her tailor’s shop, with its living quarters that overlooked Lodhi Road, its three sewing machines and newly painted sign, its terracotta plant pots with tulsi and mint and coriander, its roof terrace, its simple but clean living space: one bathroom, one bedroom, one kitchen. It was luxury, and nobody could comprehend how a woman, a widow, could have done it alone. When she heard these doubting words, Raziya would mention Khadija, the businesswoman and widow who had married the young Prophet of Islam and supported his mission. That shut people up. How could they know, how could they guess, all the hard work that had got her this far? She would do anything for Humayun.
Suddenly, somebody spoke. Without turning her head, Raziya knew who it was: Iqbal, Humayun’s best friend, the weakling youngest son of one of Raziya’s husband’s younger brothers – a boy who had not yet learnt the value of parroting his elders.
‘Chacchi,’ he began, ‘Cousin Humayun wants to marry Aisha. So it is impossible that Aisha accused him of this crime. That is not the reason why Humayun has been arrested. Police prejudice must be to blame for that. The truth is that both these young people are in trouble and we should be doing our best to help them.’
Since learning of the arrest, Raziya had been told several things that she didn’t want to hear about the relationship between Humayun and Aisha. When she walked back through the basti, the fruitseller on the shrine road murmured something to her concerning it; at her shop even one of her own tailors referred to it. None of these people had ever spoken to her on personal matters before; and yet now that she was in crisis, everybody wished to impart their knowledge concerning her affairs. She understood that she was partly to blame, for of course she would have known these rumours about her son as a matter of course had she not moved away to the outer edge of the basti; she would have been able to stifle this gossip had she not set herself apart from the family she married into. This was why families stuck together with suffocating closeness – it was for crises such as this. And so, listening to Iqbal, she felt the old anger rise into her throat. Aisha’s mother – that witch – with her claims of blood kinship to Raziya’s husband’s family, whose own husband had abandoned her and gone to some other part of the country. She hated to remember how her husband had mentioned Aisha’s mother just before he died – he had known her since childhood, had grown up in the same village in Bihar, and he had always nurtured an affection, who knew how deep, for that stick-thin woman with her hungry-looking face and squinting eyes. Even more, she hated how this woman had got her hands on Humayun by using her daughter to tempt him. Raziya knew also that she should have arranged for his marriage before now. She thought of all the mothers who had come to her door with proposals for her son, offering him their pure, fair-skinned daughters, pious beauties, Qur’an hafiz, undefiled. Every one of them she had proudly turned away, for her son was to aim still higher.
‘She has created this story to trap Humayun,’ Raziya said at last. ‘How will he prosper if he has bound himself in marriage to the child of that whore?’
But Iqbal answered back before any of the elders had time to stop him. ‘The police arrested Humayun last night when he went to report Aisha missing from the Professor’s house.’ He raised his eyes to Raziya’s. ‘It is the laziness of the police that has put your son inside that cell. Humayun feels strongly and with great respect towards this girl, Aisha, whom you so distrust.’
Raziya stared at him. Who was he to talk about her child? She could hear the plaintive voice of animals outside, being brought to the butcher; the calling of hawkers selling dinner tickets to pilgrims. She had seen the blackened mess left by the fire last night and all this unimproved disorder made her throat tighten as a kind of involuntary animosity coursed through her. How right she was to have taken her son away from this chaos, to their own house on the edge of the basti; she would do it again – she would go through that hard, lonely work three times over for Humayun. She did not want her precious son to end up in the clutches of skinny Tabasum’s daughter. She wasn’t even able to say why she hated that woman so much – it didn’t matter why; it was a woman’s instinct. She straightened her back and folded her hands tightly in her lap. ‘You must send Aisha and her mother away from Delhi,’ she said.
‘No,’ said one of the younger brothers – it was Iqbal’s father. ‘We won’t do that. The marriage should take place at once. Then the police will have to drop the charges.’
Raziya shook her head. It was a ploy; she saw it clearly now. They wanted to bring her son, with his driving job and excellent prospects, down a notch, to below their level.
‘You are condemning my son,’ she said. ‘I turned away many better daughters and you know it. I wanted something more for Humayun. Because that girl has got herself in trouble she wants to drag Humayun in after her, and you are all going to abet her.’
There was another uncomfortable shifting in the air, and finally, the eldest brother cleared his throat with a great phlegmy rattle, and said, ‘We won’t let any harm come to Humayun, Raziya. He is part of our family, our dear brother’s only child. We will speak to the elders in the shrine after prayers, and they will advise us. They know how best to manage police procedure. This work, at least, is best left to men.’
‘No!’ Raziya interrupted shrilly. ‘Don’t do this to my son, don’t—’
But the man raised his voice over hers. ‘You w
ill do nothing,’ he continued. ‘We are all agreed on that. Please leave it to us. We will sort the matter out. Now it is prayer time.’
And Raziya’s brothers-in-law got to their feet and ushered her out of the room.
Aisha saw her mother waiting by the gate when Mrs Ahmed brought her home from the police station. ‘How thin your mother is!’ Mrs Ahmed said, waggling a finger backwards and forwards in disapproval. They looked through the car window at her frail parent, hunched over with her permanent cough, dressed in a faded sari. Then Aisha got out of the car and put her arms around her mother. She breathed in her warm familiar odour. The two of them wept.
Mrs Ahmed, meanwhile, had unlocked the front door. She led Aisha and her mother inside, and briskly disregarding Aisha’s tears, took her into the kitchen to help heat some food for her starved-looking mother. ‘I need to talk with your mother alone,’ Mrs Ahmed said to Aisha sternly, as she took out the leftover daal and subzi from the fridge. ‘You understand?’ Aisha nodded. She watched Mrs Ahmed put the food in the microwave, and then, when it was ready, carry it through to Aisha’s mother, beckoning her into the study, and sending Aisha off to sit in the guest room and wait.
Aisha sat on the bed looking out of the window into the garden. Until now, she had done exactly what she had been told. She had stayed in the Ahmeds’ house, picking at the food set before her, wearing the clothes Urvashi handed to her, and all the time going over the events of the past twenty-four hours, remembering good moments from the last six months. She worried that Humayun had heard what had happened and wanted nothing more to do with her; she would wipe her eyes and tell herself that this wasn’t true. Then an image would come to her of the old Hindu man’s face as he lay on top of her – frozen, as if in agony – and after that she would sit for a very long time, hunched up, immobile, staring out of the window, until Mrs Ahmed came to find her.
Last night, after the Hindu man had left her in the Professor’s house, Aisha waited until she was sure he had gone, and only then did she get to her feet, feeling giddy and ill, pulling the dupatta so far down that it completely covered her face, and made her way slowly down the Professor’s garden path and along the quiet road that ran between the Chaturvedis’ and the Ahmeds’. Humayun had warned her not to leave the Chaturvedi house until Mrs Ahmed came to collect her, but now that the Hindu man knew where she worked, she couldn’t wait there. She approached the Ahmeds’ house slowly, reassured by the familiar sight of its long glassy windows and large wrought-iron gate. The house was in darkness and she opened the front gate and curled up there under the plants, in her familiar place where she waited for Humayun in the time between swabbing the floors at Mrs Ahmed’s and beginning at Professor Chaturvedi’s. Late in the afternoon, on the days he hadn’t picked up the milk in the morning, Humayun would hurry to Mother Dairy with the pails she had cleaned, to queue for milk, and Aisha would water the plants in the front garden, looking out through the leaves at passers-by, at their shoes, their saris, their necklaces and blouses, watching the goings-on of the neighbourhood – waiting especially for the girls of her age in their blue school dresses who came home across the bridge, punctually every day at half past two – and eventually she would see Humayun coming down the road, swinging his milk pail as he walked, and smiling, because he knew that she could see him. She had closed her eyes as she lay there and the next thing she knew, Mrs Ahmed had arrived and was carrying her across the threshold of her house and into the guest room.
Aisha got to her feet and opened the bedroom door. She wanted to know, now, what it was that Mrs Ahmed and her mother were talking about in the study. She moved silently across the front room in her bare feet and put her head against the study door. Her mother was speaking in a low voice, and Aisha could only make out a few words: Bihar, she heard, and Mamu, uncle, and then that word, Shaadi, marriage. She wondered why her mother wanted to take her to Bihar for a wedding; they never went there any more. The last time had been when Aisha was very small. She remembered her Mamu, a fat, kind-faced old man, whose wife had died long ago and whose children had grown up and made families of their own. But the village – she didn’t like the village – it had very bad electricity connections and no running water.
Her mother raised her voice slightly, interrupting something that Mrs Ahmed was saying: ‘But it is the only way to save her honour.’ She sounded both sad and indignant, and Aisha stepped back from the door as if she had been hit. So it wasn’t a cousin’s wedding they were going to. Her mother meant for her to be married – to her Mamu. She stared around her wildly, trying to find something familiar in Mrs Ahmed’s front room to focus on, but her eyes roamed over the polished furniture and ornamental objects that she had dusted so often, without finding any solace. She knew that this was what women always warned of, in sharp but hushed voices: the advantage men would take of young girls. She thought of Humayun’s promise to marry her – and how he had immediately taken her into his quarters and laid her on his bed. She was stupid to have gone with him; everybody would say she had only herself to blame. But he had promised to marry her, and maybe the promise would have been honoured if she had not opened the door of the Professor’s house to the old Hindu man. Nobody would forgive her for that. And now this third man – this aged village uncle. She hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. There was nobody to trust, nobody. Even Humayun was to blame. He should have married her first, in front of their whole community, and then taken her into his room and forced his children upon her. That was the proper way in which things were done.
Her mother was speaking again, louder now, sounding frustrated and tired. ‘I have been told that his family is against us,’ she was saying. ‘They think the reason the police have locked Humayun up is because Aisha accused him of the crime.’
‘But why would they think that?’ Mrs Ahmed asked, sounding shocked, and when Aisha’s mother uttered a wordless sound of exasperation, Aisha knew that nothing she could say would make her employer understand. She walked silently back into the guest room and sat down on the bed. So Humayun was in the police station, that was the reason he hadn’t come to see her.
Aisha’s mother had always told her that life was difficult, that life was unfair. She knew that Humayun’s opinion was different: with hard work, he thought, you made your own luck. Now it was Aisha’s turn to see her choices laid out before her. She could do as her mother said, and go to the village, and never see Humayun again. Or she could tell the police they had taken the wrong man. Then Humayun would owe her something. If she freed him from the police, he would have to save her from shame and marriage to her uncle.
But if she went to the police station now, who knew what the police might do to them both. Today at the police station, the tall, angry constable had mentioned doctor’s tests, and Aisha did not want to be tested again. The doctor whom Mrs Ahmed had called to the house last night had made her lie on her back on the bed as he pulled up various parts of her clothing and removed items from her skin – and even from deep inside her. He had touched her here and there, asking about scratches and bruising. ‘What are you doing?’ Aisha pleaded at last, chilled and scared by being semi-naked in front of yet another strange man. The doctor had sighed and apologised: ‘I am sorry, my little one, I have to collect these samples, just in case.’
Aisha couldn’t confide in Mrs Ahmed, who was a Hindu and didn’t understand some things that everybody else seemed to know. She couldn’t tell her mother about the promises Humayun had made. It was too late for that. If he had announced his plan to marry her just one day earlier, everything would have been different – his mother may have objected and made difficulties, but Humayun could have persuaded her. Now it was impossible.
There was only one other person Aisha could speak to, and that was Iqbal, Humayun’s cousin. He lived in the basti in a small brick-built house, not far from the shrine. Humayun had shown her the house once, when he went to collect his cousin on Eid. But she bit her lip in worry: how would she get out of
the house without Mrs Ahmed hearing, and how to get to the basti without being recognised by Humayun’s family?
Then she remembered. Yesterday, Mrs Ahmed had come home from the market with a paper-covered package from the Islamic bookshop. ‘Look at this,’ she had told Aisha, and opened it up. The silky black material had spilled out into the air as if Mrs Ahmed was a djinn controlling a stormcloud. ‘Do you know what it is?’ she asked, and Aisha had nodded. It was an Arab-style burqa, such as some women in the basti now wore. Mrs Ahmed pulled the layers of georgette over her face and tied the string around her chin. Then she laughed. ‘I’m not going to tell my husband just yet,’ she said. ‘He may disapprove. I’ll have to hide it.’ She pulled it off, and pushed the burqa back into the paper bag. ‘I’ll put it in the rice store.’
That evening, after she had said goodbye to her mother, Aisha ate dinner sitting alone in her bedroom, a plate of food on the low table near the window. She dragged the roti round the plate until it was clean. Then she waited for Mrs Ahmed and her husband to go upstairs, and once the lights had gone off and everything was quiet, she crept out of the guest room, across the marble entrance hall, and into the kitchen. First, she took a stool and reached up to the crockery cupboard. There, right at the back, hidden under the piece of paper lining the shelf was a slim envelope with this month’s salary from Mrs Ahmed in large denomination notes. She pulled it out and put it in her pocket.
Leela's Book Page 26