by Chatura Rao
Zahyan looked idly through the booklets while the talk around him continued. Pictures of people suffering, fires burning, rioting mobs, were on the covers. He froze when his gaze fell on a booklet that had on its cover the pixellated close-up of Mahnoor’s bowed head with him in the background watching her. He hid it under the rest, his heart beating hard and breath growing short. Would the image haunt them for the rest of their lives? When he glanced up, Nawaz was watching him. Zahyan looked away, refusing his sympathy.
As evening wore into night, the men’s talk resounded with surety and purpose. They went to the neighbouring mosque to offer evening namaaz, after which each of them embraced Zahyan.
‘You’re with your family now. You’ll never be unsafe again.’
***
Zahyan began to find solace in the company of these men. There were further meetings in darkened rooms, even as children played in the lanes outside and Mahnoor took her afternoon siesta untroubled by all but the rising heat of summer. For most of the men religious metaphors and sayings were truth incontestable, sharp swords to live by and to die for. Zahyan hadn’t had a religious upbringing and his education had been at either Catholic or lay institutions, so he often did not understand nor fully subscribe to what was being said. But he felt that these men understood his purpose, his obsession with justice, and in that they were his brothers.
Zahyan began to look for a job for Mahnoor. ‘Our daughter-in-law must stay indoors,’ his father had directed, but after a few meetings with the brotherhood it seemed to Zahyan as if his path might lead away from providing steadily for Mahnoor, at least for some time. She would have to be strong and take care of herself, should he go away.
She didn’t know this yet. He watched her spend her days with her mother and sisters, enthusiastically preparing clothes and matching bangles for a family wedding that was coming up.
30
N
awazuddin invited the group over to his home for lunch on his son Afzal’s eighteenth birthday. In the concrete two-room house not far from Zahyan’s own father’s home, Nawazuddin’s sister served up the best daal gosht that Zahyan had ever tasted. He wished he could have brought Mahnoor along to the feast, but was wary of introducing her to this circle. She would worry, so not just yet, he thought.
Nawaz’s younger child Salma who was fourteen years old had Down Syndrome. Others had brought their children along and they all played together. Everyone went down to the local playground at 4 pm for a game of cricket, the fathers forming one team and the sons, another. Zahyan joined the fathers, although he was a good ten years younger than most of them.
Afzal and his friends were robust young men. Their fathers were out of breath quite soon and began to rib each other for not having the stamina to field the ball.
‘If this is your state after just two overs, Rashid mia, what is your young wife going to do in the years to come!’
There was a great deal of banter between the two generations: ‘Fetch the ball yourself!’ a father roared at his son who was bowling. ‘Expect me to pick up after you? Disrespectful pup!’
Zahyan silently enjoyed it all.
When he’d finished his batting innings, he went back to Nawaz who was seated on a plastic chair at the boundary of the ground under a tree. He had his younger child next to him. The girl was trying to prise open her father’s hand that held a candy, tongue showing through her open, laughing mouth.
‘Does she go to school?’ Zahyan asked Nawaz.
‘She attends a special school run by a Jain Trust here in Subhanpura,’ Nawaz explained. ‘They have been taking good care of our Salma.’ He kissed her moonface and she pressed her lips into his beard.
She grabbed and yanked at Zahyan’s sleeve. He smiled at her. The children he taught Science to were a couple of years older than Salma. He was immensely fond of children.
‘My sister was very upset when we realised she was . . . not normal,’ Nawaz said. ‘But the teachers at the Jain school comforted us and said she will be taught to become independent by and by.’
‘Inshallah,’ Zahyan affirmed.
‘God keep them ever in His grace,’ Nawaz said. He often murmured a blessing in conversation. Zahyan was reminded of his own gratitude towards Suveer and understood Nawaz’s feeling towards his daughter’s caregivers.
Zahyan was aware that Nawazuddin was a lower middle-class man like himself. How had he turned away from the material aspirations of the middle-class to lead a fringe Islamic group?
As if reading his thoughts, Nawaz waited till Salma had wandered off to pick flowers from the bushes close by. He took a wallet out of his kurta pocket and removed the passport-size photograph of a woman who might have been in her mid-twenties when the picture was taken.
‘This is Salma’s mother, my wife Khadija. In 2002 we lived in Naroda Gam in Ahmedabad. I had taken Afzal to visit my mother in Gandhinagar when the riots began. Leaving him with his grandmother I rushed back to Khadija. But it was too late. Our home was burnt down and she was missing. A day later she was found in our Hindu neighbour’s yard. Her throat was slit. She was eight months pregnant with Salma,’ he spoke so low, Zahyan had to lean close to hear him.
Zahyan was horrified. Although he had been fifteen years old during the Gujarat riots, Daman where he’d lived with his family had seen little or none of what had befallen Muslims across the adjoining state of Gujarat. He’d heard the stories of arson and attacks on his relatives, but had been too preoccupied with his mother’s ill health, and his sisters’ and his own studies to pay much attention.
‘The police said she had gone to the trader Shyambhai’s place of her own free will,’ Nawaz was saying, ‘probably for immoral reasons. “During a riot?’’ I asked them. “In her late pregnancy?’’ The Inspector insisted that the possibility could not be ruled out. He asked me if I had proof of her virtue. I wanted to rip his guts out …
‘It turned out that Shyambhai had already filed an FIR saying Khadija had entered his house and he had caught her in the act of stealing money, but then he ran away to save himself from the marauding mobs. He claimed that he did not know what happened to her after he left the house.’
Nawaz wiped his watery eyes with his handkerchief. His daughter had come back with a fistful of lantana buds.
‘Where is that man now?’ Zahyan asked.
‘Shyambhai and his wife are no more,’ said Nawaz. ‘There was an accident when they were returning from a trip to Surat a few years ago. The vehicle caught fire on a lonely stretch of road. It was destiny,’ Nawaz added when he saw the question on Zahyan’s face. ‘But how I wish I had had a hand in it.’ He smiled and spat.
Nawaz’s jaw was set hard and his eyes seemed intent on the cricket game, whereas he was probably recalling the sight of Khadija’s swollen corpse. Zahyan remembered Wajidbhai’s words, that there is no justification for the evil we heap on each other and no way to reconcile to it.
The sons won against the fathers and cheering loudly, lifted first their team captain, Afzal, and then the captain of the older team, on their shoulders. Zahyan felt like a ghost among the living. The evening breeze had turned pleasant and the last rays of light bathed the players in pale gold; turned the trampled earth of the playground a deep rust like blood gone stale. The brotherhood had been right to ask him to think beyond justice only for Mahnoor.
As the call to prayer began, Zahyan embraced Nawaz and thanked him for the party and left without speaking with anyone else.
A few days later Nawaz called him to his house again, this time alone. His daughter was rocking her doll in a dupatta tied between two adjacent door handles. Her mouth opened in a smile when she saw Zahyan. A picture of her mother carrying little Afzal was on the wall above her head.
‘Will you open your heart and lend a hand to all who have suffered like you have?’ Nawaz asked.
‘What can I do?’ Zahyan asked, aware that he was standing on the threshold of a new life.
‘You will be told,’ N
awaz said, placing an affectionate hand on his arm. ‘But before that you must attend a course in basic fitness and religious instruction at a town in Kashmir. It is in a beautiful part of the Valley. You will wish your wife was with you. I certainly did,’ he smiled wistfully. He opened a drawer in his desk and removed an envelope.
‘This contains money to travel to New Delhi. A friend will call you on this cell phone–it is a basic phone with a prepaid SIM–he’ll instruct you. You must reach Delhi ten days from today, can you? Needless to say, do not speak of this to anyone.’
‘How long is the course?’ Zahyan asked.
‘Three months.’
‘But my new job . . .’ Zahyan hesitated. ‘I’ll resign immediately.’
‘Don’t worry about the loss of income,’ Nawaz reassured him. ‘Those who serve the cause are compensated on Earth as well as in Heaven. Twenty five thousand rupees will be given to your Begum each month you’re away. If you’re sent on an assignment, two lakh rupees will compensate you for your time.’
Taking a long breath Zahyan allowed Nawaz to place the envelope and the phone in his hand. Salma, who’d been watching them, motioned awkwardly to him to rock her makeshift cradle. He bent and patted her head affectionately. ‘I’ll have to tell Mahnoor,’ he murmured.
‘She will understand and accept your decision,’ Nawaz smiled. Zahyan was not as certain.
31
B
ut why?’ Mahnoor burst out when he told her he was not taking up the teaching job.
Zahyan silently handed her the booklet that had a close-up of her face from the picture that Suveer had taken at Puneet Nagar. Mahnoor took it in her hands and looked at it.
‘Ya Allah!’ She swayed on her feet as horror dawned on her: her own face was that of a victim for hundreds of people. Supporting her by her elbows, Zahyan made her sit down on the bed. She opened the booklet and read a few pages. He tilted her chin up so she looked at him and said clearly, ‘I must go away for some months. To serve the cause.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked fearfully. ‘Isn’t this,’ she fingered the rough paper of the booklet, ‘enough for me to have to bear?’
‘I have sworn that I will bring you and others justice. For this certain sacrifices will have to be made . . .’
‘Please stay here. Forget what happened in Gandhinagar,’ she said desperately. ‘We can begin anew.’
‘I cannot forget,’ he said stiffly. ‘But I’ll come back, jaan.’ He was not sure of anything but his wish to return to his beloved. He knelt before her, took her face between his palms and kissed her forehead. But she’d begun to cry at the realisation that she had known all along which path Zahyan was veering towards, and had done nothing to stop him.
He’d always liked his branded jeans and T-shirts but in the past months he’d often wear the traditional kurta-pyjama and skull cap. He had begun to offer namaaz five times a day, at least twice at the mosque, and often did not return home for hours after.
Her mother had not thought much of her curiosity about Zahyan’s new attachment to the local mosque.
‘Your Abbu is a religious man too. What’s the problem anyway? You’re fretting about it as if, God forbid, Zahyan has taken to drinking alcohol!’ she had laughed.
Mahnoor spotted Zahyan once when she was going shopping with her cousin at Teen Darwaza. They were seated in a rickshaw when she recognised, with a start, her husband on a bike with two heavily bearded men. Sandwiched between strangers he’d appeared remote and most unlike her Zahyan. She hadn’t known he was going to be in this part of the city; he hadn’t said anything to her earlier that day. She tried to call his name, crying it out until Fabeha sharply jogged her knee.
‘Noora, stop shrieking like a baby crow! He can’t hear you.’
When his bike, weaving its way through the crowd of vehicles and pedestrians, disappeared, she tried desperately to phone him. A sense of foreboding came over her when he did not receive her call and did not call back.
‘It’s only for three months,’ Zahyan said now, trying to make light of it. ‘Smile, so I know you’re my brave wife.’
‘The wife of a soldier of God?’ she asked brokenly, quoting a phrase from the booklet.
A mix of bitterness and glory appeared in his eyes when she mouthed the phrase ‘soldier of God’. Mahnoor was so frightened by it that she stopped crying and went altogether quiet. It was night and he led her to bed, meaning to make love to her while he could. They had only ten days to the day he had to report for his instructions at New Delhi.
But when he kissed her lips and cheeks tenderly, stiff with the shock of what she’d learnt, she would not respond. They slept apart.
Mahnoor fell into an exhausted slumber around 4 am. Not two hours later, Zahyan woke her up.
‘Would you like to visit Suveer’s village and meet his mother?’ He asked anxiously, needing to know if this would make her feel happy. She looked dazedly back at him.
‘If Suveer agrees, we could leave tomorrow and spend a week there,’ he said. ‘Then from New Delhi on our return I will seat you in the train back to Baroda.’
‘And you will go on,’ she said disconsolately.
Zahyan put a hand to her cheek, appealing silently to her to understand or at least accept his decision. She relented and drew him down to her. If he was resolved, she wished at least that he go free from the shadow of her anger.
Zahyan burrowed close and she held him as tightly as she could. He would return from his journeys changed; already she hardly recognised him. The home she’d hoped for was taking the shape of a bleak gravestone, their dreams buried beneath it.
32
T
he night Reva left their apartment Tarun uploaded pictures from their honeymoon–selfies he’d taken of them in bed–on his Facebook page. Back then Reva had found it odd yet endearing that Tarun would want to take photos–not nude pictures, but revealing in their own way. Taken right after they’d made love, the languor in Reva’s eyes and Tarun’s mischievous smile exposed their private moments. He’d captioned the Facebook album Lover, come back.
She saw the pictures on her phone the next morning lying in bed in the hotel she’d checked into. She called Tarun.
‘Take them down,’ she said, almost incoherent with anger.
‘Only if my lover comes back,’ he said with an unsure laugh.
‘Not funny. Just take them down. And never post anything about me again.’
‘Come home, Reva,’ he said impatiently, trying to cover up his hurt at her response to what he’d thought of as a romantic gesture. She cut the call without saying goodbye. He deleted the album and didn’t post anything more about her.
‘We did try to make it work,’ she reasoned when they faced each other three days later in Nina’s living room. She wanted Tarun to calm down so they could discuss things without fighting.
‘No Reva, I tried, you didn’t. You’ve never really bothered. My struggle to make a life for us has been a solo effort.’
‘That’s not true,’ she protested.
‘Where were you when I got promoted to Senior Associate? You went off to Pune to help your aunt move home. So I threw a party which my own wife didn’t attend!’
‘Our family home was about to be demolished. I went to help my aunt pack and move into a flat. How could I stay here when she needed me? With Sharada abroad and Aboli gone . . .’ she said, quite overcome.
‘I always put you first,’ he blazed, ‘but you? For you it’s always been Sharada, Aboli, alana-falana, and now the ex-fiancé!’
‘Stop it, Tarun! I didn’t intend to . . . compromise our marriage.’
‘I don’t know what your expectations from marriage were, but you never really accepted me as yours. What did you want from our relationship? Who are you anyway? I thought when I married you that I knew you, but I can’t put a fix on you at all!’
Reva, retreating into introspection that night, understood his consternation. It was in her nature to ques
tion and to explore. She’d long been seeking sound beliefs to root herself in, a place to put her feet down. Her sister Aboli had tried to answer her questions as a child and as an adolescent.
Once as a fourteen-year-old when Reva had seen a classmate being roughed up by others, she had wondered about the nature of power. Aboli had sought Suveer’s opinion and the three had discussed it over chai and vada pav under the trees at the Pune University campus. Suveer had narrated his experiences at the boarding school he’d attended in distant Uttarakhand. Power corrupts, Aboli had concluded with a sigh.
‘Powerlessness, on the other hand,’ Suveer had reasoned, ‘can make you so insecure that you’d become the bully in a situation where you might get away with it.
‘But why so serious?’ he’d added comically when he saw the discussion had made Aboli’s smile disappear.
‘Chal, climb that tree! What, scared? Go on, climb, see how being closer to the sky restores your faith in all mankind!’
Aboli, who could never resist a challenge, had made her way quite high up the mango tree he’d pointed her to. She couldn’t climb down again. Suveer teased her mercilessly.
‘Uh oh, the cat of the court is stuck up a tree!’
Reva, ever sensitive to her sister, had climbed up to help her. Once they were both firmly stuck, they’d thrown raw green fruit at the boy standing underneath, laughing at them. They’d finally made it down, knees, elbows and egos scraped.
Suveer had jumped onto his cycle and pedaled off. Aboli had got on her scooter and with Reva on the seat behind her, chased him along the tree-lined lanes of the University campus, threatening to bump him off the cycle for his insults. Reva had laughed till she’d almost fallen off the scooter herself. Recalling those times still brought a lump to her throat.
After she lost Aboli and the home that had held her memories of her, she’d made her philosophical forays alone. Tarun was too practical to understand her ruminations. She had tried a couple of times to communicate beyond the mundane sharing and discuss her deeper angst, but he was perplexed or dismissive. Or seemed so to her. They drifted apart. Perhaps he’d been driven to other women for the intimacy their relationship lacked. And Suveer’s abiding love for Aboli, his understanding of Reva’s history and her questions and yearnings . . . perhaps these were what had drawn her to him.