The children were paid less than a rupee for each brick, but they preferred making bricks to lugging loads of onions from the field. Their families owed the company store, not only their own debt, but also the debt of their grandparents that they had inherited, plus interest, plus fines, plus, plus, plus. There was no end to the debt, so the people became virtual slaves. They had to get permission to leave the work site or else they’d be beaten or jailed. The headman would yell, “Bend over. Let your children witness your beating.”
Only the headman could afford a brick house for himself. The villagers, on the other hand, collected dung, shaped it into patties, and slapped them onto the sides of rocks. The dung pies baked all day to be used for constructing homes or for fuel. The grandmothers would spend their days scavenging and, if they were lucky, they would find a few sticks of wood. Sometimes a home would have a small kerosene cook stove . . . kerosene . . . the smell of it, the cold tin cans sloshing. Ugh! It makes my stomach sting just thinking of what kerosene can do.
You know, in Sindh carnivals still travel from town to town, the way ancient caravans journeyed with poets, musicians, and clowns. Two years ago—was it only two years ago?—when the carnival arrived in Matli from Karachi, I recognized one of the girls. It was Bilqis—a Christian girl—whose father had been a teacher in Clifton. Bilqis had been just five years old when I left Karachi ten years earlier. I remembered her well because her father left her in my care one time when her mother was ill.
Bilqis had been a skinny thing, but strong, and she loved to climb.
“See, Baji?” she smiled up at me with bright eyes. Her arms were suspended like vines from the branch of a young neem tree. “I am part monkey.”
I had to laugh. “Which part?” I asked.
“The lively part,” she replied without hesitation.
“The banana part,” I said, playing with her.
“The curling tail part,” she continued swinging, trying to touch the top leaves of the tree.
“The long arms part,” I said, smiling. She liked that. I wondered if she could keep up with me.
“The monkey sounds part,” she said. “Woo. Woo.” I tried to think of what to say next.
“The funny face part,” I said, and Bilqis stopped swinging. Tears formed in the inner corners of her eyes. I had hurt her feelings.
“My face is not funny!” she said.
“Did I say funny?” I asked her. “I meant the sunny face part.” A wide smile spread over her face. “Sunny face.”
“Oh,” she replied, not quite sure what had just happened. “Sunny face!”
Early one evening, Bilqis and I hastened to the local school so she could climb on the jungle gym there. It was the hour when women are supposed to be at home. So I wrapped her in a blanket and carried her like she was my baby. We hurried along the street to avoid anyone questioning our being unescorted. When we turned the corner into the wide-open field, Bilqis peered out of the blanket. The silent streets were deserted.
“Are we in a story?” she asked. I looked around at the dry ground, the empty windows, and perfect light. She was right—the scene looked like a picture from a storybook. It was eerie.
“What do you think?” I asked, putting her down. I wanted a glimpse of what she was thinking—how a child tries to distinguish what is real from what is imagined.
“I don’t know,” she said. Bilqis handed me the blanket, grabbed hold of the sliding board, and clambered to the top. Her bare feet squeaked against the metal surface. “But I think I know how the story ends,” she said.
“How?” I asked. “How does it end?”
“Nobody knows,” she laughed. “Nobody ever knows how the story ends.” She reached the top, twisted her torso and slid down, landing by my feet.
“Not even a monkey like you?” I asked. “Tell me how the story ends,” I pleaded. I bent over and looked her in the eye. She turned away. I had ruined the moment with my probing. I wanted to know too much, more than she could tell me.
“I told you, Baji, I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
A policeman passed the schoolyard, and the light changed.
So I remembered Bilqis well ten years later when she visited her grandmother in Matli, where I was teaching in interior Sindh. She was turning fifteen, and the teachers wanted to give her a birthday party.
“Bilqis!” I said when I opened the door to her and her auntie. But when she felt my enthusiasm, she lowered her eyes and withdrew into her dupatta.
“Salaam, Madam,” she said formally. She did not remember me.
“Salaam,” I replied, “Not Madam. Call me Baji Ujala.” I put my hands on her head, and she stretched up to kiss my cheeks.
“How beautifully she carries herself,” one of the teachers remarked. You know, Sindh is not like Karachi or Lahore. A Sindhi girl rarely leaves the house, so on the rare occasions when she does, she doesn’t know how to interact naturally. But Bilqis knew the social graces—how to introduce herself to others, how to sit comfortably and engage in small talk, and even how to tell a few jokes. With a tambourine and bells, she performed traditional folk dances for the teachers. Then, the next day, while I was overseeing spelling exercises in the courtyard, the carnival manager drove in, blasting the horn of his old truck. It was quite a noise and drew me to the gate.
“Is the world on fire or something, Shams?” I called to him, not hiding my annoyance that he was interrupting the girls’ lessons.
“Yes, Madam,” he said, “The world is on fire. It is Bilqis. She has been burned. She needs you at the hospital. You know the nurses there.”
“Burned? She’s been burned?”
I left at once and climbed into his truck. I brought along the young boy sweeper to sit between us. Shams hesitated and drew a breath before he ground the truck’s gears into their rightful places.
“They say the stove burst,” he said, squeezing the corners of his mouth to let me know he doubted the stove had actually burst.
Someone had set Bilqis alight!
Outside the clinic, I inhaled the stink of burned flesh. Inside, Bilqis lay wincing. Her whole body was an open wound. The outside edges of her arms were blackened and peeling. Her torso was covered with one thin layer of gauze, its slight weight keeping her skin attached to her organs. Her eyes, and many of her teeth, had been entirely burned out.
I had to lean into the wall to keep from fainting. The nurses took scissors to the loose flesh on Bilqis’ leg, where the skin hung in defeat, like a torn flag. They snipped close to the raw pulp of her blood vessels and bones.
I pulled a folding chair up next to the bed. I wanted to comfort her, but how?
“Who did this to you?” I whispered, and an awful sound erupted from her mouth. I could not understand what she said. Her upper lip was missing. Then she called out again with what must have been all of her strength.
“Allah!” she cried, but she was looking at me. A sound cracked from deep inside her, “K-k-kill-e-eee.”
She was begging me to kill her. In her eyes I was the merciful God who could stop her suffering. Even now, recalling that scene, I feel nauseous. The moment shines in my memory, as if from a great distance. My soul was plummeting and groundless. Eventually, when Bilqis fell into unconsciousness, the nurse spoke to me.
“This is not a burn unit, Baji Ujala. The child’s blood cannot move the drugs efficiently. If an infection sets in—and it will—she will not live more than a few days.”
I prayed her agony would not last that long.
“How did this happen?” I demanded.
The nurse shook her head. “They say a kerosene stove blew up while she was making tea,” she said. I wanted her to tell me what she knew. I caught her glance and held it. We stood in that clean moment until finally she said, “Ask someone else. I have to live here.”
I went looking for Shams. It was time for Zuhr, midday prayers. He was with a small group of men, prostrating on their rugs. I felt a fire smoldering in my brain as I watche
d them lined up like that. How can they pray five times a day and be indifferent to this girl? When I saw Shams folding his prayer cloth, my mind’s embers caught fire and I shouted out.
“Shams, Shams, why do stoves burst only on women? Do men not also light stoves?” I asked the question to all of them, to the crows on the wires, and to the glare of the sun. I did not care who heard me. I was on fire.
“Don’t say it out loud, Madam,” Shams said, pulling me aside.
“I knew Bilqis’ family,” I said, my voice as loud as ever. “Her oldest sister was in my class—among the few Christians who could afford the convent school.” I lowered my voice. “I know the grandmother, too, and I know this was no accident. I have been inside that house. They have no kerosene stove there.”
“You are right, Madam,” Shams said. “The elders say her uncle heard a rumor that she is pregnant. He tied her to a bed, poured kerosene from a can, lit a match and locked the door.” Shams choked. He could hardly speak and neither could I. Finally he said, “It was an honor crime. No one could rescue her. No one even tried.”
“No one even tried!” I was horrified. “Do they not love their daughters, Shams? Do they not worry when they are sick? Are they not happy when their daughters are happy?” I still shiver when I recall his reply.
“Yes,” he said. “They love their girls, but who does not love his honor more?” Shams turned his back to me. I was naive in those days. I argued with him.
“Not everyone loves their honor more,” I said. “My father is not like that. He loves his children more than anything.” Shams looked at me over his shoulder.
“But did you ever break any of your father’s rules?” he asked, and doubt tore into me with its probe. Who knows what would happen if I did break his rules? I had never tried.
I could see that Shams was eager to leave, but I begged him to go to the police.
“Police are no friends of women, especially Christian women,” he said. “They look the other way, or attack women who complain.”
“But we have to do something. You’re a man. Come with me. We’ll make them listen to us.”
The long look on Shams’ face told me that we would not be able to make them listen. It was hopeless. A woman’s word would never match that of a man. Shams was only an itinerant entertainer who came to this village once a year. He was unknown both to the civil authorities and to the bradari, the local council whose word was law. I watched Shams’ dry lips split with his final words.
“We will stay in our camp until Bilqis’ parents arrive from Karachi,” he said. “Or until she dies. Then we have to move on. I have others I am also responsible for. And this could mean trouble.”
How heavy my body felt as we stood there in the heat of midday, abandoned by any benevolent power whatsoever.
“Then I’ll go to the police alone,” I said, as if I were threatening him. He kept sifting through the belongings in the bed of his truck. “And, Shams,” I said. “What do I tell the other women about the men who pray five times a day? What do I say about that? Where are they when we need them? What can we do?”
The whites of his eyes reddened and their corners creased. When he spoke, his voice was angry.
“How should I know?” he bellowed. “Tell them we pray because we don’t know what to do either. Because the men on the prayer mats are afraid, too.”
I returned to the infirmary where the sharp odors of death were baking. Bilqis faded in and out of consciousness, moaning. Her grandmother stood by the window blocking the blinding sunlight. With a straight back, wrapped and veiled entirely in black, she shaded Bilqis. I closed my eyes to the sounds of whimpering and the clicking of the grandmother’s beads. The old woman hummed a missionary’s lullaby:
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra
Too-ra-loo-ra-li
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra
Hush now, don’t you cry
Minutes after Bilqis died, the ground shook. Officials said the earthquake registered 6.0 on the Richter scale. Poets would have said that fire itself rebelled against its use in destroying beautiful Bilqis. People gathered first at one house, and then at the next, to rebuild their mud huts that had collapsed in the upheaval. They soon forgot the gossip about Bilqis. But I was unable to forget. When I smelled breakfast steaming, the spices stung my nostrils like needles. When I heard the rooster crowing, I held the palm of my hand over one ear and turned the other to the pillow. I was haunted by the demand that I speak, but I was afraid—afraid of backfire at me, the school, the other teachers and students. If I registered a formal complaint, what proof did I have? If the police arrested Bilqis’ uncle, would the women in his family be jailed along with him? Would they have money for a bribe? There was just no telling how the sands might shift in such a storm.
Finally, I decided not to involve anyone else from the school. I would go for condolences and talk with Bilqis’ grandmother about filing a complaint herself. I would assure her that I could arrange funds for a bribe, if necessary. I would get money from my father.
I walked into the village completely veiled. I recognized Bilqis’ brother, Daniel, and her older sister, Nahida. When I touched Nahida’s hand, she smiled.
“Salaam,” I said, “May her soul rest with God. May God bring peace to you.”
“Salaam,” she whispered and hugged me.
Daniel nodded and walked away. I could see through the gate that people had gathered with Bilqis’ family. Women were repairing fallen bricks around the water pump. They worked in a sad silence.
“We are grateful for the comfort you gave her at the clinic,” Nahida said. “Such a horrible way to die.” She shivered.
“She never deserved what your uncle did,” I said, and Nahida faced me at once.
“But my uncle had nothing to do with it,” she insisted. “In fact, he tried to save her. The stove exploded. It was an accident, or didn’t you know?”
“No one in the village believes it was an accident,” I said. I didn’t want to argue, but Nahida and I had been friends once, and I wanted her to know the truth. Her jaw fell open with disbelief. “Ask your grandmother,” I said. “She was there. Better for you to hear it from her.”
“Grandmother? Why are you saying this? Our grandmother is the one who described the accident to us. She said my uncle tried to help. Why would he do such a thing to Bilqis?”
“They say he thought she was pregnant. A matter of family honor,” I whispered, immediately regretting that my words sounded as if I were blaming both Bilqis and her family.
“That is impossible, shameful, ridiculous,” Nahida said. Now she was angry with me. “The Lord came early and unexpected for Bilqis. It is the will of God. If what you say were true, the police would be involved. Where are they? Do not make trouble for my family. What are you doing here anyway?”
She paused.
“Perhaps you should leave.”
The carnival left the next day. For three days Bilqis’ family mourned, and in the end, her uncle was one of the men who carried her coffin behind the priest to the tiny graveyard. Her father was the first to throw dirt onto the slab that weighed down her crisp ribs and fixed her bones into the soil. On the fourth day, the family drove out of the village and returned to Karachi.
After Bilqis’ death, I had trouble sleeping. More than once I awakened from nightmares of fire. In one dream her uncle burst into flame in an open field. In another, her grandmother and I patted the uncle’s face of clay into identical brick molds. We loaded them into the cart, and our donkey hauled them to the kiln.
I would approach the door of the police station, determined to make a report, but then I would keep walking, pretending I was shopping. At the fruit stall I would turn over a melon and see Bilqis’ face on the other side. I was haunted by the stench of flesh, so I stopped cooking meat.
Oh, how I longed to be with my family! Travel was long, expensive, and difficult, and required being away from the school for many days. But are there any secrets in a small village?
My friends had noticed the change in me. They could read my thoughts.
“Baji, go home,” the other teachers begged. “Get some relief, then come back to us.”
On the day I left Matli, the wind was arriving from the sea. The radio reported that a cyclone had upended palm trees along the beach before sending its blistering sand northward, invading from all directions, filling holes and cracks in mud houses. The people covered every centimeter of themselves and their windows with red-and-black printed Sindhi cloth. Then they retreated inside until the storm passed.
Except for the farmers, who endured the assaulting sand and the directionless wind. They laid plastic sheets over their frayed crops. When the wind whipped the sheets out of the men’s control, the boys chased the plastic around the fields. Once caught, they folded it against their bodies, locked arms with each other and pushed back into the fury. Then the boys laid their bodies down along the edges of the plastic while the men dropped heavy stones.
My Sisters Made of Light Page 2