by Sabyn Javeri
‘Saima! Tooba!’ the baji screamed as if her very self was under attack. ‘Cook! Houseboy!’ All the servants came running. Only, Tooba could not be found. A thorough inspection led to the girl being found on the formal dining table, under the driver. The cellphone lay guiltily next to them.
Phone, phony, phonier.
The perils of a big city are also its plus points. Both the girl and the driver found new jobs with new names shortly thereafter. However, they say, the baji has still not gotten over the loss. She could no longer bear to eat at the table, knowing what had been served on it. The grief of replacing the table had caused her much agony, for as she was often heard saying, ‘Good dining tables are so hard to find.’ Her soft brown eyes would fill with tears at this, causing her coloured contacts to itch. Another thing that she found so hard to bear about life in Karachi – amidst the dust, the breaking of trust and, of course, the loss of valuables.
‘Why is life so hard?’ the woman was often heard saying.
Hard, harder, hardly.
The Adulteress
She thought of him as she folded the clothes. She thought of him as she put them away. She thought of him as she walked on autopilot to the kitchen. She thought of him as she opened the fridge and pulled out the okra. Without washing the vegetables, she began to chop mechanically, the sharp green needle-like tips reminding her of his beak-shaped nose.
That was today.
Halfway through the chopping, she put down the knife. She seemed to be straining to hear something. Abruptly, she got up and walked towards the open door of the balcony.
‘Purday mein rehne do, purdah na uthao…’
The words from an old film song drifted up towards her. And she inhaled them slowly, as if they were the aroma of a rich home brew. She found her heart slowing down. Her palms felt cold and she had to lean against the metal railings to steady herself. She remembered watching the film with her parents when she was a little girl. VCRs were a new thing in those days, obsolete as they are now. And she smiled at the thought of trying to explain to her children what they were. For a moment, and just a moment, the thought distracted her.
The shrill ringing of the phone broke into her thoughts and she looked guiltily at her mobile writhing on the table. For some inexplicable reason, its vibration reminded her of the dancers in the films of that era. ‘Helen,’ she whispered softly, smiling and shaking her head at the memory of the cabaret dancer, jerking her body in impossibly swift movements at breakneck speed. Everything was so black-and-white in those days, she thought. The roles of the good girl and the bad girl clearly defined. The heroine and the vamp, never mixed.
That was then.
The phone stopped ringing and the stillness of the silence pressed upon her now. The radio downstairs had been switched off and she heard the banging of a door, as if someone had left the house. She was alone now. Alone with her thoughts. A tangible panic gripped her throat, as if trying to trap her. A thousand fingers clutching her neck and jaw. The sun seemed brighter, the wind harsher. She closed her eyes and a face appeared behind the closed lids. It doubled into faces. Faces which were looking at her with great trust. You are not Helen, they assured her. And she opened her eyes and started to laugh. But the laughter provided little relief. The restlessness within her was growing with as much thrust and power as that of a magical beanstalk. She wanted to do something, but what? As if to curb some mysterious urge, she pushed a flowerpot off the balcony’s edge. Immediately, she took a step back, waiting for the sound of a crash. She waited for a loud thud, perhaps a scream, a yelp, a reproach. When none came, she leaned forward and saw that the plant had fallen on the clean white sheets of her ground-floor neighbour, which she had hung out to dry. The now-soiled sheets had cushioned the fall and fluttered up at her as if to say a half-hearted hello. She stepped back again, placing a hand on her forehead as if to check her own temperature. This was unlike her. Since when had she become so destructive? And with a deep frown, she wondered, so wasteful?
This was now.
She waited for her neighbour to shout, but no sound travelled up and she exhaled – slowly, deeply. It was a slippery feeling, she thought, the relief of getting away with something. She looked up at the white-hot sun which looked like a hole burned in a blue cloth by some careless god, and touched her throat. Her neck. Finally, her fingers rested on the space between her breasts. She pressed the hard bit. The bone or the cage or whatever it was that kept her heart from escaping. Assured by the beating drums inside her, she allowed herself to think back. To him. It came to her in little flashes, like swatches of colour, like sudden sparks from dying embers. The memory of being with another man was something her mind seemed to block and obsess over at the same time. For a moment, she was reminded of the coloured-chalk drawings she would draw on the sidewalk when she was a little girl and how each morning the sweeper would come and wash them away with a bucket of water. What surprised her was how nothing had changed. Her daily routine, her children’s demands, her husband’s indifference … Everything around her remained the same.
Except her.
She turned away. Away from the light and the wide open sky before her, and headed back to her dark, airless kitchen. It was a space she knew well.
In the familiar arena of her domain, she inhaled the scents of peeled garlic, the nauseating stench of chopped onions and the suffocating smell of raw ginger. She allowed herself to wonder, if only for a second, how it had happened.
Neither had expected it to happen. She a mother of three and he a divorcee rebuilding the foundations of his life, cherishing his new-found freedom, wearing his heart on his sleeve. Perhaps that is what they both had in common, these two completely unlikely beings. A few moments of escape. Neither felt they were ready to let go of this precious free-floating state they found themselves in. Perhaps they wanted to hold on, just a little bit longer.
Now back in the kitchen as she chopped the okra, she felt certain that it was the man who had made the first move. She put the knife aside for a second and leaned back against the counter. Had she given him any sign at all? No, she decided. She hadn’t even imagined the possibility. Never thought of herself as someone who cheated. But could this be called infidelity?
‘Infidelity,’ she tried out the word on her tongue. ‘Infidel,’ she said, looking guiltily out of the door towards the Arabic verses embroidered into the wall hanging. Was she an infidel, she wondered, pulling her dupatta close to her skin. But try as she might, she couldn’t feel the guilt. Instead, all she felt was a strange kind of bewilderment. Surprised that something so extraordinary could happen to someone as ordinary as her. All she knew was that night, she had felt like a jug being emptied, a vessel that had poured out everything that was inside. But afterwards, she didn’t feel hollowed out. Instead, she felt fulfilled. Content. As if she had gained something. Or perhaps … she frowned, perhaps it was the weight of the secret she carried within her body. For a second she wondered what would happen if her husband or her children found out. She traced the outline of the garlic on her chopping board. Adulteress, she wrote, arranging the pods in a trail of letters … Adultery, adult, idol, idolatry, adulatory…
Except there was no betrayal. She had made it all up. Yes, she nodded. It was best to think this a product of her imagination. To pen it down and preserve it in her memory forever as fiction.
A cry escaped her lips as she realized she had cut herself with the knife’s edge. A strange feeling of foreboding washed over her – a shudder, as if she had seen death’s angel. She felt herself shiver violently as a fat drop of blood landed on the cutting board, its scarlet hue disappearing into the wood almost immediately. A few seconds later, it was as if it had never happened.
Her skin, she noticed, was already beginning to heal.
It was then she realized that it didn’t matter what stories they told other people, it was the stories we tell our own selves that mattered. Addressing the limp okra that lay split open like ancient soldiers
defeated on a battlefield, she said, ‘We are all made up of stories. The stories we tell others, the stories we tell ourselves and, most importantly, the stories we hide. Deep inside.’
Cocking her head to one side, she waited for the lifeless vegetables to respond. It occurred to her that there was a reason why invalids were addressed as vegetables. Enough, she said to herself as she willed her thoughts to focus. Her husband was a good man, she told herself, as she went back to the ‘thak thak’ of the chopping board, bashing the garlic this time. She lifted one pale crescent and held it close to her nose. The strong odour wafted to her nostrils and she thought back to the other man’s scent. She had sniffed his armpits like a dog. Like a small bitch sniffing her master, trying to memorize his smell. Encapsulate it. Perhaps to enhance her senses when once again the monotony of life got too much.
A wave of nausea washed over her. How could she? Her jaw tightened and she felt her limbs stiffen. Why shouldn’t she?
Now, as she chopped the onions – always the last, as they made her cry – she let the anger flow through her. The rage when it had come had surprised her, for she was a gentle woman. Not easily irked, though there was much that moved her. She’d always cherished that delusional quality of hers, for she lived life as if it were some dream sequence. Nothing mattered much in her scheme of things. A beautiful jewel that she couldn’t have, a perfect home, or even the love she expected from her husband … long ago, she had learnt not to expect. For expectations were like promises – made to be broken. Early in her marriage, she had learnt that beauty was a thing to be cherished and love was fleeting. Her highs were her emotions, but there were no great storms in her teacup to stir them. She led a mundane life. An ordinary housewife married to an ordinary man. A life of rationing, measuring, saving and counting. But like the heroines of the books she had read, like Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, she longed to escape that mundane life. And so she had taken to writing.
And it was her words that had provided her an escape. Not just metaphorically but physically too. She wrote many stories. Mostly love stories about stormy romances between fiery heroines and gentle heroes. Stories through which she lived her life. Sometimes she would show them to her friends, who encouraged her to submit them to women’s magazines. One day, a cheque arrived for her along with an acceptance. Holding that little piece of paper in her hand gave her more joy than the birth of all three of her children.
Soon she began writing with a seriousness she did not know she was capable of. In the morning, as soon as she had sent off her husband and children and finished the morning chores, she would sit down in the balcony and begin to write. Words came naturally to her. She could take a thought and make it come alive, her friends would tell her. And as she honed her craft, she became stronger emotionally too. Soon, she was publishing two to three stories a month and getting a steady, if small, income that made her feel more powerful than she had ever felt in her life. At first, she kept it from her husband; but as her fame began to grow, she showed him the magazines with her name inside. She remembered how he had patted her head, as if indulging her. She remembered that indignant feeling that had overcome her whole body. His reaction was similar to her presenting him with a new recipe, his patronizing expression the same as when she stood back in anticipation while he raised a spoonful to his lips.
She wondered now if it was this exasperation that made her do what she did.
Adding the oil into the pan, she watched as hot drops hissed at her. Something was bubbling inside her too. Was it anger, resentment or just regret? Perhaps all three, she thought as she recalled with wonder how she had let him enter the boundaries she had so carefully built around herself. He had entered unopposed.
First her body. And later, her mind.
The man had called her out of the blue. He introduced himself first as an admirer of her work and then as a journalist, and much later as a poet. They were launching a women’s magazine. Would she attend the opening ceremony? The first thoughts that had run through her mind – like a ticker at the bottom of a news channel – were, who would mind the kids, what would her husband say, how would she get there, how would she find her way to the venue … And then in a moment which surprised even her, she heard her voice say ‘yes’.
‘Wonderful,’ the man had said, ‘we’ll send a car for you.’ And so she had found herself giving out her address to him.
And on the day, everything had worked like clockwork. Her neighbour had offered to look after the children, her husband had said he was working late. No explanations were needed, none given.
And so the opening night of the magazine became her opening night too, for she felt she was exploring a world of possibilities. Outside her home, she was not just a mother or a wife, but a writer. A person of her own.
And why shouldn’t she be?
He was a poet by passion and a journalist by profession. He told her that he liked her craft. And that he liked her even more. Perhaps he didn’t even say that. Perhaps she had made it all up…
She was no longer sure what she had heard or what he had said. All she remembered was that she had listened to him talk and, when it was time to go, he offered to drop her back. On the way home, he had leaned towards her. She was not sure why she allowed it, but she did. On that secluded Karachi street, under the veil of darkness, she let down a closely guarded boundary, till a sudden flash of headlights made her realize she was not in one of her stories but in a stranger’s car, with a strange man who was not her husband.
The thought thrilled her even more.
Now back in her small, airless kitchen, she turned away from the stove and poured herself a glass of cold water. The chilling sensation as the water made its way down her throat made her pause. She wanted to remember it. Like a prisoner who doesn’t let go of the pain, she too wanted to hold on. It reminded her of her enslavement. For she made sure she never saw him again.
But that didn’t stop her thinking about him.
She held the glass to her lips, pressed hard against the flesh, then on an impulse threw the remaining water into the pan. Steam rose and she thought to herself, fire takes time to cool down.
Had it really been a year?
He had kissed her softly at first, like a lamb grazing a field. Then, sensing no resistance, hungrily, almost savagely. So harshly that she felt consumed by him. She felt the weight of his body as he leaned into her, its heaviness as alarming as it was exciting. Pressed under his warm body, she was surprised to find that she did not feel suffocated. Instead she felt as if she had been drifting and finally her hands had grabbed an anchor. It was unlike any other feeling she had imagined. And it was only when the sadness began to lift that she realized she had been sad. So very sad. Unfeeling, numb and blank. Like one of her pages. Before she decorated them with words, projecting her feelings on the pages, blending her emotions into a barrage of stories. Exchanging loneliness for imagination. Concealing, erasing, hiding, behind words.
And then a sudden flash of light had erased it all. She had felt as if she had been found out. When the headlights of a passing car had flashed upon them, the man had his hand on her breast. The word ‘trespass’ sounded in her head like an alarm. A sudden revulsion filled her at the sight of this stranger who only a moment ago had excited her. His praise of her writing talent had made her shiver with pleasure. He had made her feel genuine, worthy, as if she mattered. As if her only role in life was not to be just a wife or a mother. Her calling in life was not just to serve others.
Or to be served.
But when the harsh light lit up his face, she realized that once again she was being used. In that moment, it didn’t matter what face the man took on. She was just a feast he was preparing to swallow. A rage surged through her. She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t up for grabs. And in the passing glare of the lights, she felt cheap. She shook her head. She told him to stop.
What took her by surprise was that he stopped. No one had ever really listened to what she wan
ted. Perhaps that was why she spoke through her characters. And now, as she felt the power of her own voice, through some strange intuitiveness, she felt as if this man, trying to calm her down and assuring her that he would not touch her unless she wanted him to, was listening.
Something inside her shifted. She had been heard. And in that moment, she had understood that her life was hers to live. Her voice was hers to use. And for that, she was grateful to him.
But would she ever have the courage to be herself again? To raise her voice, to say aloud what she was thinking, to express what she felt, to do what she really wanted?
She realized then that it wasn’t her husband she had been unfaithful to. The real betrayal was to herself. It was her own true self that she had been cheating. She knew that she was more than what her home life allowed her to be. She knew she had talent. She could be someone. But she could not even admit this to herself. Every time she tried to introduce herself as a writer, she felt like an imposter. Yet as a wife and a mother, too, she felt as if she was playing a part. What then was her true self?
‘Ding dong! Ding dong!’ The incessant chiming of the doorbell made her look around with the surprised daze of someone who had just woken up from a deep slumber.
‘Coming,’ she shouted. A violent sneeze shook her as she realized that much more time had passed than she had anticipated.
‘Thak, thak!’ Multiple fists knocked at the door.
A quick glance at the wall clock told her that the children were back home.
‘Ammi, open the door,’ their voices echoed from outside.
‘The children,’ she sighed, as she wiped her hands on her dupatta. Smoke itched her nose and stung her eyes. Just as she was about to leave the kitchen, her glance fell on the stove. She stopped even as their voices outside rose and dropped like the waves in an ocean. She stared in wonder, for an acrid smoke rose from the pan. The okra was charred. Black. She removed the pan from the stove, only to realize a low flame was still on.