by Bapsi Sidhwa
David remained silent and grimly unenthusiastic.
But marriages were the high point in Zareen’s community life—and she was talking about her daughter’s wedding. ‘We’ll have the madasara ceremony first. You will plant a mango; it’s to ensure fertility: “May you have as many children as the tree bears mangoes.” In all ceremonies we mark your foreheads with vermilion, hang garlands round your necks and give you sugar and coconuts—symbols of blessings and good luck.’
David, if anything, looked more wary. Zareen had expected him to at least smile, but his sense of humour had vanished with his courtesy and sensibility. She felt she was seeing him in his true colours; and she remembered her initial reaction to his photograph.
‘After that is done, we break a coconut on your head,’ she said with acid relish.
Feroza laughed. David blinked his eyes and looked profoundly hurt.
‘She’s kidding,’ Feroza said.
‘Then we have the adarnee and engagement. Your family will fill Feroza’s lap with seven saris. Whatever jewellery they plan to give her must be given then. We give our daughters-in-law at least one diamond set. I will give her the diamond and emerald necklace my mother gave me at my wedding.
‘Look, don’t look so worried,’ Zareen said, remarking David’s ghastly pallor and compressed lips. ‘And tell your mother not to worry either—we’ll be like sisters. I’ll help her to choose the saris. We get a good selection in Lahore.’
The more defensive and confused David appeared, the more Zareen felt compelled to talk. Feroza signalled her with her eyes, and when that did not deter her, with gestures of her hands and small amusing protests: ‘Mum, you’ll scare him witless …’ To David: ‘It’s a lot of fun really!’
‘Of course it’s fun. We’ll give your family clothes: suit-lengths for the men, saris for the women. A gold chain for your mother, a pocket-watch for your father. Look here: If your parents don’t want to do the same, we’ll understand … But we will fulfil our traditional obligations.’
David was angry. He sat there exuding stubbornness: not mulish balking, but the resistance of an instinct that grasped the significance of the attack. He realized Zareen’s offensive was not personal but communal.
‘We have Jewish customs too; I also belong to an old tradition. My parents are not too happy about the wedding either.’
‘All the better,’ Zareen said promptly. ‘We’ll honour your traditions.’
Zareen felt an exhilarating strength within her, as if something very subtle was directing her brain: a power she could trust but not control.
David felt the subtle force in Zareen undermining everything he stood for: his entire worth as a person. He wasn’t sure what it was—perhaps a craftiness older people achieved. His mother would be a better match: he had seen her perform the cultivated rituals of a closed society fending for itself in covert and subliminal ways that were effective, but difficult to pinpoint.
‘Next, we come to the wedding … If there is a wedding,’ Zareen said solemnly. ‘You’ll sit on thrones like royalty, under a canopy of white jasmine. The priests will chant prayers for an hour, and shower you with rice and coconut slivers.’
‘I thought you said the priests refused to perform such weddings.’ David was sarcastic; a canny prosecutor.
‘I know of cases where such marriages have been performed,’ Zareen said, as if confessing to knowledge better left concealed. ‘That won’t make you a Parsee, or solve Feroza’s problems with the community, but we’ll feel better for it.’
David glanced at Feroza. She looked bewildered, mortified.
‘You’ll have a wonderful time,’ continued Zareen compulsively. ‘Every day we’ll sing wedding songs, smother you in garlands, and stuff you with sweets.’ She talked on and on. ‘I can just imagine Feroza in a white Chantilly lace sari with pearls and sequins …’
David folded his arms on the back of the chair and let his chin rest on them. His eyes glazed over and became glassy.
Laura came into the kitchen in a boyish nightshirt, apologized for interrupting, and withdrew with her cup of coffee.
Zareen said: ‘Such decent girls. They don’t have boyfriends to distract them from studies … They seem to know there is a time and place for everything.’
‘They don’t need boyfriends,’ Feroza said complacently. ‘They’re lesbians.’
Zareen did not immediately register what she heard. She had read the word once or twice in magazines but never heard it pronounced. She became acutely uncomfortable.
‘They’re lovers,’ Feroza said, helpfully.
‘But why? They’re pretty enough … They can get droves of boyfriends.’
‘They’re fed-up. The American boys change their girlfriends every two or three months. Everybody is not like my David. The girls want stable relationships—they can’t stand the emotional strain. It takes them months to get over it. As Laura says: “If Shirley gets my juices flowing why should I mess around with boys?” At least they get on with their lives.’
Zareen wanted to throw up. She couldn’t tell if Feroza was trying to impress her with her new worldly wisdom or deliberately insulting her. Feroza had been properly brought up to be respectful, sexually innocent and modest. That she could mention such things in her presence shocked Zareen.
Above all Zareen was dismayed at her own innocence: in all the time she had stayed with them she hadn’t suspected the truth. What goings-on! Feroza was living with a boy and a couple of lesbians. She wouldn’t dare mention it to Cyrus—or anyone. How could she face the disgrace of nurturing a brat who looked her in the eye and brazenly talked about women’s juices? She tried not to show how hurt she was.
But Feroza gauged the measure of her pain. Not able to do anything about her mother’s attitude the past two days Feroza had helplessly watched David’s slowly mounting perplexity, disillusion and anger. And suspecting that Zareen had just destroyed their happiness by her talk about diamonds and saris and superior Parsee ways, Feroza had instinctively hit back. The assaults were too vicious, the hurt too deeply felt, for either to acknowledge her wounds.
Zareen talked abstractedly for a while and then stood up. ‘I’ve kept you long enough, David, you’re almost asleep. Well, good night.’
David nodded without looking at her or attempting to sit up. Feroza glanced at him, surprised and reproachful. When Zareen left, David swung himself off the chair and avoiding her anxious and wistful eyes, stretching his back and rubbing his neck, went into his room. Feroza sat at the kitchen table for a long time, her face red and frozen. The tears came slowly.
Zareen placed her purse, a packed canvas carry-all and three bulging shopping bags on the conveyor belt at the airport. After it passed through the screening she collected the hand luggage and turned to look at David and Feroza one last time. David stood in his faded and torn denim shorts, his arms folded, his muscular legs planted like sturdy trees. Standing forlornly by him Feroza looked insecure and uprooted. As Zareen waved and smiled, an ache caught her heart and the stiff muscles in her face trembled. Covering her head with her sari pallu to hide her crumpling face, she quickly turned away.
Once she was airborne Zareen opened her crocodile-skin handbag. Its three sections had three thick wads of tissues. She picked one of each colour and daubed her eyes. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, and gathering fresh tissues held their fragrant softness against her face. Her daughter was resilient—courageous in a way she could never understand … She would bounce back, just like she always did …
And so would she, once she was with her family and friends. She needed desperately to be with them—to be assured she had done the right thing.
Ruth and the Hijackers
The pots of ferns Ruth had picked out earlier that morning had just arrived from the nursery. Holding a pot in each hand, the gardener and the cart driver carried the ferns to the rockery. Stepping carefully between the cacti and zinnia plants, Ruth pointed out where each new shrub should go.
It was noon, a time of day that stretched languidly with its promise of lunch served on a trolley outdoors. Afterwards she might lounge in the sun, reading and breathing in the fragrance of mown grass and the profusion of flowers.
Or she might call Shahnaz. If the Brazilian polo team was playing they’d go to the racecourse to watch the semi-finals. Her pulse quickened. Raj Roy might be there. Ruth knew that Parliament was in session and it was a long shot; more a wish than a possibility.
When Bangladesh gained its independence and annexed the Chakma kingdom nestled in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the young Buddhist king had moved to Pakistan. Celebrated and lionized in Pakistan, the charismatic Raja was appointed Ambassador to Brazil. Later, he won a seat in Parliament and was appointed as a Federal Minister for Minorities.
Ruth lost her breath when she first met him. It was at a State banquet in Islamabad. He had looked straight at her, an amber glint of admiration in his slightly tilted eyes and Ruth had felt her legs buckle. Broad-shouldered, regal in his high-necked jacket decorated with royal insignia, Ruth’s helpless gaze absorbed an aquiline nose, cleanly etched lips and a firm jaw framed by trim side-burns.
Later that evening he sought her out. Flustered by his attention and the disorientation caused by her rapidly beating heart, Ruth, not knowing how to address him, began by calling him ‘Your Highness’.
‘My dear, please call me TR—it’s short for Raj Tribhuvan Roy.’ His British accent and courtly syntax were pleasing. Ruth knew Pakistanis had a penchant for calling people by their initials; but she felt using his initials would pretend to a familiarity she had no right to. She preferred to call him by his name but she kept tripping up on the first name and, to her embarrassment, twice called him Mr Raj Roy. She stammered an apology. ‘My dear, you can call me what you like—so long as you keep talking to me.’
Ruth ran into him at other events and soon, taking him at his word, she began calling him Raj. Raj gave Ruth a handsome book in which he traced the historical beginnings of the Chakma kingdom and the circumstances that brought about its demise and his exile. This also ended his glorious year at Brasenose in Oxford. Photographs of splendidly attired, turbaned and bejewelled ancestors and their rambling castles snuggled between hills gave his story ballast and made it vivid. He also traced the advent of Buddhism in his kingdom, and how it was interpreted and practised in Chakma, and explained his personal beliefs.
Ruth was moved by his story. She was touched by the patience with which he answered the naive questions she had about his kingdom and his religion, patiently explaining his views as a practising Buddhist.
Ruth fell in love with him.
Since coming to Lahore Ruth had unexpectedly found herself a bit in love with other men as well, and the discovery of this proclivity in her early forties, disconcerted her. She attributed it to the surfeit of attention she got as a woman and the sexually charged atmosphere a somewhat segregated community created. She had never seen herself as frivolous, let alone promiscuous. Nor had Rick, who accepted her loyalty and love as his due and depended on her level-headed Protestant New England steadfastness. She hadn’t expected him to travel as much as he did when they were posted to Pakistan; as head of the South-Asian division of a fertilizer and chemical company he had to travel frequently to India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other countries in the region. He would return bearing gifts and would be gone in a few days.
The luminous winter sun was directly overhead. The roar of scooter-rickshaws and buses from Airport Road was muted by the flaming thicket of gulmohur and jacaranda trees crowding the compounds of intervening bungalows.
Ruth vaguely registered the far-off drone of an airplane that drifted in and out of her consciousness before it melted into the other noises of the blue day. Chikoo, the dachshund–beagle mix they had inherited from the Altmans, the previous American occupants of the bungalow, decided to shift his attention from the cart-horse parked in the drive to the cart’s driver. He dashed forward on his stubby legs and, in a frenzied orgy of growls, attacked the man’s muddied, sockless shoes. The cart driver aimed a smart backward kick when Ruth’s attention was diverted and Chikoo yelped.
Ruth scowled her displeasure. ‘Come here baby … Come to mama,’ she cooed, attempting by her manner to transmit a lesson in compassion towards animals, a quality she found woefully lacking in the general population of Pakistan.
But after licking his kicked rump, baby trotted off to once again minister to the rickety ankles of the skeletal mare. The nervous animal shook her head and, snorting into the burlap feedbag hanging from her neck, dispersed a halo of chaff and straw. Then she arched her ragged tail, splayed her feet and let loose an acrid yellow stream.
Chikoo gave a startled yelp and backed off. The gardener swore at the cart driver as if the mare’s disgraceful conduct was his fault. The cart driver loosed a stream of Punjabi invective documenting the beast’s incestuous liaisons and, waving his ragged shawl, strode across the lawn. He lunged at the mare’s bridle but, jerking her neck up in protest, she continued peeing until the swelling rivulet flowed halfway down the cement drive and into the gardenia hedge.
The fur on his neck bristling, Chikoo gingerly sniffed the vapour rising from the liquid. The sweeper, Grace, who had already worked her way up the drive with her spiky reed broom and was languidly raising a small cloud of dust outside the gate, eyed the soiled drive stoically. Grace had four children. Like most poor people in Pakistan she did not know her own age, but Ruth guessed she was around thirty. She had shyly permitted Ruth to drive her to the family-planning clinic where the lady doctor had inserted an IUD in her uterus. That was almost two years ago.
By now the neighbouring servants, attracted by the colourful choice of words and the alarmed cries, were peering over the walls. The bearded cook and Ruth’s maid Billo, her frizzy hair and corpulent bosom hastily covered by a shawl, had also emerged to investigate the commotion and add their raised voices to the salvo of reproaches and suggestions. Yanking at the bridle and cursing, the driver turned his creaking cart around. He climbed onto the cart and whipping the animal into a slow, awkward canter, clattered down the drive to park his cart outside the gateway.
Taking care to avoid the rosebushes and pots of chrysanthemums skirting the lawn, the gardener dragged the hose-pipe over the grass and, from a prudent distance, washed the offending liquid into the hedge-trough.
The gardener laid the nozzle in the grass—and in the moment of quiet that followed, Ruth became conscious of the airplane’s drone that till then had lurked only on the periphery of her awareness.
The others heard it too. It was suddenly quite loud. Their postures frozen, shading their eyes with their hands, they all looked up into the cloudless sky.
The airplane, appearing lost and rudderless in the blue brilliance of the day, was drifting in an arc that included their house. It melted from view to circle the makeshift airport and moments later it roared up from behind some trees. It was flying lower. It no longer looked so toy-like.
‘Hijack!’ the cook shouted. ‘Ruth Memsahib, Indian jet is hijack!’
Ruth had thought as much.
There was excited chatter in Punjabi and Urdu. Shouts were exchanged with neighbours across the walls. The gardener, cook and cart driver, who had to contend with Chikoo snipping at his heels, ran to the back of the house. Protecting their clothes from the glass shards encrusted on top, they clambered over the wall and jumped into the Air Force Camp premises. The back of the Camp edged the airport and Ruth guessed that the commandos, jeeps, fire-brigades and ambulances had already scrambled into position along the runways.
Billo and Grace, their swarthy faces lifted to the sky, ambled over to Ruth.
‘Airplane very low, Memsahib,’ observed Billo, shaking her head ominously.
‘Han,’ agreed Ruth. ‘Jehaz bohut neechay hai.’
They honed their language skills in this way. Ruth still took Urdu lessons from the elderly tutor she had inherited—to
gether with the servants and the dog—from the Altmans.
Ruth stealthily observed Grace through her sunglasses. Her expression softened. The sweeper, standing a little apart, was absorbed in the events with her customary quiet. Sensing her mistress’s regard she became uncomfortable and Ruth slid her eyes away. At unexpected moments like this, Grace’s loveliness caught at Ruth’s heart. It astonished her that none of her Pakistani friends noticed the exquisite cast of her face unless Ruth pointed it out. She was a sweeper, and as such largely invisible in other respects—her beauty of little consequence except to other sweepers and, if they could lay their hands on her, pimps.
They heard the engine’s snarling wail and seconds later the airplane thundered past over their heads in a low, tightening arc. There was no mistaking it; the way the airplane was circling the airport meant that it was desperately seeking permission to land.
It was the late 1980s. In India the Sikh demand for Khalistan, a separate state in East Punjab, was at its most fervent. Air India planes on domestic flights between Delhi and Amritsar were almost routinely hijacked by Sikh dissidents and the pilots forced to veer off course to fly the short distance—a couple of miles as the crow flies—across the border into Pakistan. This would be the fourth or fifth hijacking and people living close to the airport could at once make out when an Air India flight was in trouble. In the past, the Pakistani authorities, nervous of being implicated in the hijacking, would not allow the plane to land until it was almost out of fuel and the appeals from their Indian counterparts became frantic.
Once one of the planes landed the Sikh dissidents would readily surrender to the Pakistani commandos. They were handcuffed, chained to each other and shunted off to jail to await trial. The Pakistani authorities were at first profusely thanked and then charged with the hijacking. Because of this, the Pakistanis were determined not to allow a hijacked plane to land on any account. ‘Next time we will let it crash,’ they had warned.