We argued back and forth for what seemed like hours, Mum crying, Dad shouting, and my voice becoming more and more shrill as I tried to explain to them that I didn’t want to get married, that I loved England, that I didn’t want to go to Pakistan and marry someone I didn’t know.
“They’re family,” said Dad doggedly. “You have to do it, I’ve given my word now.”
“Well, you’ll have to drug me to get me over there. I don’t care what you think. I’m not doing this.” I flung aside the towels and the Dettol that Mum offered to me on the end of a cotton swab. The blood dripped from my hand as I went up the stairs, leaving a trail of red protest across the hall and all the way to my room.
But the power of Pakistani parental persuasion is far stronger than any drug they could come up with in a lab. Guilt, guilt, guilt, day in and day out. Nagging by day, sobbing by night. “Please, beta, try to understand this is the best thing for you. We wouldn’t lead you wrong. We’re your parents. We love you. We want the best for you.”
And that was just my mother. My father threatened to lock me up, to force me to quit my job if I didn’t listen to him. I shouted that sending me to Pakistan would be worse than any torture or house arrest they could devise for me. “It’s like Ethiopia out there! They don’t even have proper bathrooms! They’ll make me wear hijab, for God’s sake, and they’ll never let me work!”
“But why should you work? Adnan is doing so well for himself. He is a partner in the travel agency. You can get tickets to come visit us any time you want. Don’t throw this chance away, Raheela, or you’ll regret it later when you’re thirty and no one wants to marry you.”
I didn’t care. If I could have converted to Catholicism and become a nun, I would have. I refused to have anything to do with him, I wouldn’t answer his emails or open his letters. I threw away any pictures my mother brought for me to see. I didn’t want to know. Even if I saw his horrible face, his pathetic weak smile, his ridiculous clothes, it would only convince me further that I wanted nothing to do with him. His letters were like jokes to me. I opened one once, when my mother wasn’t looking. He had horrible, careful, girlish handwriting.
My dearest Raheela, I know that we don’t know each other very well, but that’s something I’m hoping to change. I suppose I should begin by telling you something about myself. My birthday is July 25th, so I’m a Leo, the sign of the Lion. That means I’m an optimist by nature.
The saccharine stickiness nearly made me puke. This guy was twenty-seven years old, why the hell was he telling me about his star sign? I’d stopped reading the horoscopes in the paper when I was seventeen. Did he really think it would make a difference if we were astrologically compatible? Pakistanis, especially Pakistani men, are not exactly the epitome of charm and intelligence. They’re so thick you could make a dining table out of all the wood that’s between their ears. Not only that, they’re chauvinistic and they live their lives according to their mothers’ commands. This whole bollocks about getting married was probably his mother’s little idea, come to think of it.
I couldn’t take it anymore, so I started going out. A lot. I wouldn’t bother coming home from work, I’d just go straight to my friend Nina’s place where we’d smoke spliffs and then go out to a club. Before, I used to go just to have a good time and a few dances. Now I was looking for more: escape from a fate that was looming in front of me, bigger and bigger with each passing day. One night I picked up an English guy, took him back to Nina’s place, woke up the next morning to find his jeans already gone from the chair he’d hung them up on the night before. It was the first time I’d ever done anything like that. It hurt like hell, but I looked down at the blood on the sheets and thought viciously to myself that they weren’t going to get the little virgin they were expecting. That would show them.
My behavior got back to them through the grapevine, as it always does: “That Raheela, she’s gone off the rails. She’s gone completely mad. Her parents must be so ashamed.” I didn’t care how ashamed they were, they had to know that I was a grown British woman with rights and freedom, not a Pakistani village girl. My mother cried every night and begged me to listen to her. I kept my distance and my silence until the day that I came home on a Sunday morning and found Nahid, red eyed at the kitchen table, waiting for me.
“Dad’s already at the hospital.” She sniffled, wiped her hand across her nose. She refused the tissue I offered her, staring furiously at me. “Mum’s had a heart attack. For God’s sake, Raheela, you’re going to kill her like this.”
I kept the terror off my face, turning it into a smooth hard stone as we rode on the bus to Glenfield Hospital, while Nahid sobbed brokenheartedly all the way and made the nice old biddies on the bus turn around and stare at us and whisper to each other. I knew exactly what they were saying. Poor, poor things and Asian families, and Tragedy, isn’t it? All the things they always say when they see us stupid Pakis making fools of ourselves in public.
Two months later I was on a plane to Pakistan with the rest of my family to become my cousin Adnan’s unwilling bride. My mother had recovered enough from her ailment to accompany us on the flight, and even had enough energy to laugh and smile with my father and sister, while eight hours passed by and I didn’t say a single word to anyone. I kept a magazine in front of me but the words blurred before my eyes and nothing I read registered in my brain.
ADNAN
Raheela didn’t let me touch her on our wedding night. “That’s your bed over there,” she said, pointing at the couch. She must have seen the naked disappointment on my face, because she laughed at me in a way that seemed totally at odds with the beauty of her clothes and jewelry, which she hadn’t even bothered to remove yet.
“Did you actually think I’d have sex with you?” She threw off one golden sandal, then the other, revealing feet painted in the swirls and whorls of red mehndi that I found so irresistible. I wanted to clasp her feet in my hands and run my fingers up her legs. “If it weren’t for my mother, I’d make you get another room. So don’t get any stupid ideas or else you’ll have to sleep outside in the hall.”
I flinched at the shards of glass in her voice. “Raheela . . .” My throat was too dry to form any sensible words. I coughed and tried again. “Raheela, I love you.” I was sweating openly now despite the air conditioning which she’d turned up to full blast.
She laughed again. “More fool you, then.”
Instead of begging her I busied myself with going into the bathroom and changed into my pajamas, splashing cold water on my face. I stayed there for a good fifteen minutes, smoking a cigarette. If I gave her time she might change her mind and let me into her bed. I’d be gentle, I wouldn’t rush her or hurt her for the world. But when I came out she was already asleep, or at least pretending to be, the light turned out, her breathing heavy and regular.
I stumbled my way across the room, stubbing my toe on the end of the heavy glass table, and lay down on the couch. She hadn’t even left me a blanket to cover myself with and I shivered all night in the air conditioning. In the morning I awoke with a heavy cold, while Raheela laughed and talked at my parents’ house and ate the parathas and eggs that my mother had prepared for our wedding breakfast. I drank tea and nursed my broken heart with two aspirins and a bottle of cough syrup.
In the week I’d taken off work we spent the days in a haze of dinners, lunches, visits with her family who were due to go back to England at the end of the week. During the day Raheela was everything I had fantasized her to be: talkative, charming, vivacious. She was beautiful in her pictures but looked even better in real life. I still couldn’t believe my luck that this creature had agreed to marry me, and I tried so hard to show her how much I appreciated it with chocolates, flowers, teddy bears, not to mention the silk suits and heavy sets of jewelry my mother had had made for her before the wedding. She wore the jewelry and the clothes, and hid the bears on a high shelf inside the hotel cupboard.
The second and third nights after our
wedding the couch was still my wedding bed, but on the fourth night Raheela was sitting on the bed dressed in a gown of some silken material that made my heart pound when I saw her limbs move beneath it. She glanced at me from time to time when she thought I wasn’t looking.
“Adnan,” she said, in a voice slightly less hostile than the one she’d used before. “Could you give me that box of chocolates on the table there, please?”
I sprang to the table, overjoyed to find a way to please her. She let me sit at the end of the bed and I opened the box for her. I chose one and held it out. To take it from me she had to touch my fingers with her hand. She reached out, and when she touched me I felt a jolt in the pit of my stomach. The chocolate fell from my fingers into her hands; she put it in her mouth and chewed it slowly.
“Give me another,” she said in a husky voice. I gave it to her. “One more.” This time she took my hand in hers and brought my fingers to her lips. She paused before allowing my fingers to rest on her lips for a moment. I thought I felt the touch of her tongue on my fingertips and I nearly died.
That was the night she took me into her arms and let me make love to her. And the next night, and the next. I knew what it meant to be in ecstasy. She was soft and tender and so brave, even that first night she didn’t cry or make any noise that indicated I had hurt her, even though I’ve heard that most girls make a terrible fuss about their first time.
But even when I told her I loved her, holding on to her tightly and whispering urgently into her ear, she never said it back to me. Even though she wrapped her arms around me and let me stroke her hair and push my face into it as much as I liked, she wouldn’t say those three words. Never mind, I told myself, it will come.
At the end of the week her family was ready to return to England. Raheela and I drove to the airport to drop them off. Uncle Farook was tense, Nahid seemed bored, and Raheela’s mother was sobbing loudly in the back of the car. Raheela’s eyes were bright, though, and she seemed strangely happy as we made our way to the terminal.
Her hand in mine was cool and firm as I squeezed it and held it tight. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she whispered to me. “Let’s hurry, we don’t want to miss the flight.”
I parked the car at the side of the road, in front of Departures, with the lights flashing so that they wouldn’t tow it away. I helped to unload the luggage and my new in-laws were soon settled with three baggage trolleys, tickets and passports in hand.
“Do you mind waiting in the car?” Raheela asked me quietly, underneath the din of the jet planes landing and taking off, the noise of the departure area and the confusion of passengers saying goodbye to their loved ones. “I just need a moment alone with them.”
“Of course.” Inside the car I closed the windows and turned up the music to give them some privacy. I could see her dark head as Raheela hugged first her sister and then her parents hard, her delicate wrists locked around her mother and father’s neck. An arrow of masculine pride pierced me, knowing that she was my wife and I was going to be the one to take care of her from now on. My mind slipped ahead to later that night when I would kiss those wrists, hold her hands in mine and tell her again how much I loved her.
Five minutes passed, then ten. The loud chime that announced the departure of the Emirates flight to Dubai and London woke me up from my daydreaming and I sat bolt upright with a jerk. Where had she gone? They wouldn’t have let her go inside to see off her parents; that wasn’t allowed anymore. Maybe she’d gone to find something to eat. When she got back I would take her upstairs to the top floor of the airport, where you could get McDonald’s and see the passengers in the departure hall below through the fiberglass bridge.
Twenty minutes passed and my stomach began to sink. Beads of perspiration were running down my face. I began to imagine the worst: a kidnapping, an accident, perhaps she’d fainted and they had taken her to the airport infirmary. They’d page, any minute, I’d have to go running to find her and bring her home with me, put her to bed and let her rest.
When thirty minutes passed, I knew what she had done.
I couldn’t bear to go back home. I parked the car in the car park, then walked back to Departures and slowly climbed up the stairs to the observation deck. It was a blisteringly hot day, the kind of day that burns your face and turns your skin into a living, crawling mess of sweat and dirt. The Emirates plane squatted on the runway in the distance, ready to take off. Within a few minutes it rumbled down the tarmac and swooped into the sky like a smooth giant albatross. I could feel my heart leaving my body and going away with it, back to England, across all those miles of desert and ocean.
But I don’t believe in bad luck. In fact, if I do everything right, all of this could easily turn around. I could go to England, find her, not get angry with her for running away, promise to love her all my life. I’ll tell her that I’ll give up the travel agency here, move to Leicester to be with her, and start again there, even if I have to drive a taxi or work in a petrol pump. My parents won’t understand, but I don’t need them to. When she sees how much I love her, she’ll accept me. Maybe then she’ll tell me she loves me, and my life will be complete.
SURFACE OF GLASS
Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie (1973– ) is a novelist who was born and brought up in Pakistan and educated at The Karachi Grammar School. She earned creative-writing degrees in the United States from Hamilton College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has taught at both.
Shamsie is the author of five novels: In the City by the Sea (Granta, 1998), Salt and Saffron (Bloomsbury, 2000), Kartography (Bloomsbury, 2002; Harcourt, 2002), Broken Verses (Bloomsbury, 2005; Harcourt, 2005), and Burnt Shadows (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2009; Doubleday, forthcoming 2009). Her books have been translated into several languages. She has won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature and the Patras Bokhari Award in Pakistan and has been short-listed for the Liberaturpreis in Germany and twice for the John Rhys Llewellyn Award in Britain. She has also received the British Council’s 70th Anniversary Cultural Relations Award. She has written for many publications, including the New York Times, The Guardian (UK), Dawn (Pakistan), and The Daily Star (Bangladesh). After many years of living between upstate New York, London, and Karachi, Shamsie is now based in London.
“The Surface of Glass” tells of a maidservant in a rich household and draws attention to both the uncertainties and limited possibilities that life has to offer people disadvantaged by poverty. This portrayal of psychological trauma illuminates the harsh lives of the poor in Pakistan, but also says much about the human imagination, the power of belief, and the desperate reliance on holy men and superstition for cures when there are no other options.
• • •
The nights when the moon was full were when Razia felt closest to Allah. She wondered sometimes if He, too, felt closest to her on those nights, but then she felt it was wrong to wonder such a thing though she didn’t know why. She also didn’t know why the new cook hated her so much. But among all the not knowing there was this piece of knowing: that he did hate her.
However that had come to pass, she knew she wasn’t to blame. She had given no cause for offense, and in the beginning she was actually glad he was there because he replaced the cook who was a drug addict and always sneezed into the food. Razia’s feelings about eating someone else’s sneeze were strong, stronger even than her gratitude to the drugged cook—Kamal, his name was Kamal—for always saving the biggest tomatoes for her.
When the new cook arrived he did not sneeze into the food. But he also did not save the biggest tomatoes for Razia. She determined right away that she would like him because it seemed too petty to hate a man for failing to give you the biggest tomatoes. When Razia decided something it was hard for her to undecide it. Many months went by like this, until the new cook was not the new cook any longer, he was merely the cook and he hated her. Why should he hate her? some might ask. It is not a bad question, unless a bad quest
ion is one that has no answer. It is obvious that he had nothing to fear from her, and she never turned the burner on high so that his korma burned—so that eliminates the two most obvious possibilities.
The first time Razia thought of turning the burner on high was when the elder daughter of the family said to her mother, “Why do I need an ayah now, at this age, when I am old enough for lipstick and even a little rouge.” She did not, no would not, would not ever say, and why do I need a cook now? Razia knew this and the cook knew it, too—so why did the daughter have to say it when he was listening?
But she said it and what is said is said. So the cook knew—and Razia knew he knew—that cooks are for always and ayahs are for children. That same day—or maybe not, maybe some days after but at any rate soon enough—the thing happened that made Razia undecide what she had earlier decided about liking the cook. The thing that happened was this: Razia was praying and the mother was calling. Razia was trying to pray faster but the mother was calling louder so Razia left the prayer unfinished and went to answer the call. First, though, she turned down one corner of the prayer mat because of the devil. When Razia came back to the prayer mat it was flat—not a wrinkle, not a tassel turned. There was no one in the house except the mother and Razia and the cook. It could only have been him—that hoarder of large tomatoes—who smoothened the mat and let the devil sit on it. The devil was not lazy and he was not tired. He did not sit in order to rest his knees, no, he did not. He sat so that he could suck up the prayers from the mat before they went up to heaven. If Razia had only been praying for larger tomatoes that would have been one thing, but she had been praying for her son’s promotion and that was another thing entirely.
Her son was not promoted.
Razia told the devil’s helpmate that her son had not been promoted. He said, oh really, well, Allah’s will, here have some keema. She took the keema and started to eat it, but then she stopped. There was another taste in there: not chilli, not cumin, not coriander, not clove, but something else. The elder daughter came into the kitchen and took a spoonful of keema straight out of the pan—she was wearing her new clothes that cost as much as Razia’s son made in a month in his job without the promotion. Razia saw her put the keema into her mouth and thought of that taste—not cumin, not coriander, not clove, not chilli, but something else. Perhaps that something was poison.
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