Rahim said nothing for a moment, and she kept stitching, her fingers sure and strong with the steady rhythm of the needle.
“If you’d like, you may come with me,” he said, and she knew at once it hadn’t occurred to him that she might like to help Zabo prepare for the wedding, despite Zabo’s having neither mother nor sisters to help her arrange the most significant event of her life. Perhaps he had put Zabo’s marriage from his mind, so carefully was it hidden amid the excitement of the wedding preparations for Leyla and Omar.
Even the lowliest tenant farmer’s wife understood that Leyla and Omar’s marriage would secure the future of the tribe and their land for another sixty years, and the joy it inspired was no different than that which accompanied each such union over the centuries since the clan had settled in the Punjab.
The cruel pairing of Zabo and Ahmed would go unnoticed, although it was only three months away, following Leyla’s by just a few days. People could talk about the marriage of Omar and Leyla and pretend the other would not happen at all.
“Wonderful!” Shabanu said, and she dropped her stitching to her lap. “I’ve never been there before, and—”
“But I never knew you wanted to go!” said Rahim. He took off his glasses and set them on the desk before him. She had his full attention.
“I’ve dreamed of you and me eating oranges together on the roof of the haveli and watching the sunset.”
She knew well that over the years Rahim had begged his other wives to stay with him in his beloved haveli. But they all preferred their modern bungalows in the Cantonment. They hated the pungent smells in the streets outside the ancient courtyard walls – smells of frying bits of meat, cooking fires and open sewers. He had failed to persuade them to leave their silent, air-conditioned parlours for the clatter of pony carts, the screech of children playing on the roofs and in the lanes, the colours of clothes drying on swaying lines on the rooftops and balconies.
Rahim loved to share with Shabanu the memories the haveli held, of himself and his brothers in navy wool school uniforms leaping from the parapet of the flat tiled roof of the haveli to the roof of the next house and up to the next roof, flying kites every day after school; of learning to ride bicycles in the narrow lanes, wobbling among the goats, chickens and small children; of stealing juicy kinnu oranges from the stall on the corner and hiding to eat them in the roof niches above the brightly tiled shrines of saints scattered throughout the neighbourhood.
But he was never able to extricate his elder wives and their daughters from their tea parties and masseuses, their darzis and hairdressers.
He had never asked Shabanu to go with him. She suspected that since the other women in his life had hated the haveli and refused to go there, he thought she also would.
She thought, too, that Rahim would not take her out among Lahore’s sophisticated socialites. She wouldn’t fit in; she didn’t even speak Punjabi properly. Her own clothes were too rustic, and he wouldn’t want her to wear the things he’d bought for her to use only in his company. While her social unsuitability was a matter of pride to her, she didn’t want it to keep her from going to Lahore.
Shabanu had saved asking him to take her to the haveli for the right time.
“You’d make me the happiest woman alive if you’d let me go with you when the assembly is next in session. We could hire a tutor for Mumtaz and me—”
“Wait, wait!” he said, putting his hand in the air. “We’re talking about shopping with Zabo, not changing residences!” His brow was creased, and he chewed on the end of his spectacles. “Why do you want a tutor?”
“I want Mumtaz to grow up knowing how to read, and to learn a vocation. And I want to learn to read properly, and I want to study music. We can’t do that in just a few days’ time. But if we went with you for the assembly session…”
“Why do you need to know how to read?” he asked.
“I spent my childhood learning about the desert. I know things about Cholistan that you or anyone else would never guess were worth knowing. But that’s not my world now. If I can’t return to the world I know, then I want to learn about the world I’m in.”
He remained silent, and she thought carefully before speaking again. “Things have been difficult for Mumtaz and me since the incident with Ibne. You dismissed him because you were afraid he’d acted improperly. I know Amina laid a trap, but I was her target, not Ibne!”
Rahim did not answer, but he tightened his lips. Shabanu knew he would not tolerate the women speaking against each other. She took a breath and went on.
“They’re saying terrible things about us: that Mumtaz is not your child, and that I’ve … misbehaved. I’m telling you this because you deliberately refuse to see things sometimes.”
“Why do you think they say such things?” he asked, his voice so quiet it chilled her.
“Because they feel superior,” she said. “You never acknowledge it, but it’s true. They look down on me.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“In part because I’m so much younger; in part because I come from desert people. But most important, because I’m uneducated. I don’t know how to read or to speak proper Punjabi, much less English!”
She felt her face grow warm, and lowered her eyes. English was spoken in the parlours of Lahore by the best-educated ladies. Even their Punjabi was punctuated liberally with English words. The fashionable ladies did it for effect. Most of them had never been – nor would they ever go – to England.
“Their families educated them,” Rahim said, leaning back in his chair and reaching again for his glasses. “It’s part of who they are.”
“If you think I feel inferior to them, you’re mistaken!” she said. “I don’t care what they think. I’m afraid for Mumtaz and me … if we should lose you. What will happen when you’re not here to look after us?”
“Both of you will be looked after,” he said curtly. “Soon a husband will be chosen for Mumtaz, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
“Who will look after us?” He was startled by the anger in her voice. “I don’t question you, Rahim. You have been generous beyond even my father’s wildest hopes. But you are forty-two years older than me. When you are gone, Leyla and Omar will be in charge of all the clansmen. Amina and Leyla hate me. They tell the others things so they’ll hate me too.”
“What things?” he asked.
“They say I steal money from you. That’s why I don’t want you to give things to Mumtaz and me. They hate every moment of my happiness and every evidence of your generosity. Amina and Leyla will throw us out the second they have the power to do it. The wolves could eat us, and they’d be very happy.” She was afraid she’d gone too far, but he listened to her thoughtfully.
“I’ve always tried to be fair, Shabanu,” he said. “What I can’t leave you and Mumtaz in my will, I try to make up for with attention. I do love you beyond life itself, and want you to be happy and safe.”
“Then let me stay with you in Lahore. Let me try it for a year.”
Rahim stood and turned towards the window, gazing out at the garden, where the early summer’s dust had begun to settle like pale powder on the mango leaves and rose bushes. It was difficult for him to hear about conflicts among the women. If he kept Shabanu and Mumtaz in a special, safe compartment in his mind, he did the same for the others.
“I thought you would want to be here with Zabo.”
“You know perfectly well that Zabo spends the season in Lahore!” He would try everything to dissuade her.
“I thought you enjoyed being here with the others away. If you want to spend the season in Lahore, it will be arranged.”
“Rahim,” Shabanu said, struggling to be patient. “It’s not the season I’m interested in. I want an education for Mumtaz and for myself.”
“I don’t want to be here without you,” he said, interrupting. She could barely see his face. The lights had grown dim as the electricity was diverted to the fields. The dimness helped he
r to ignore the petulance in his voice.
But her heart sang that he hadn’t taken more serious issue with her wanting to be in Lahore!
“Oh, I wouldn’t want you to be here without me! I’d only want to be in Lahore when you’re there. We’d stay in the women’s quarters and not bother you. That’s why we would want a tutor for Mumtaz, so she wouldn’t have to keep a regular school schedule. And we could return here with you at the end of each session of the assembly.”
“We’ll see,” he said, putting on his glasses again and sitting down behind the desk.
Her heart quivered with a mixture of triumph and despair. This was Rahim’s first concession on the subject of her leaving the farm. But she knew he was only giving in to her whim – without a shred of understanding that she desperately wanted a life beyond Okurabad.
8
As spring turned to summer in Okurabad the courtyard was disturbed with increasing frequency by the excitement of deliveries. One morning a dozen ox carts clattered through the main gates on wooden wheels that raised showers of thick grey dust. While the large, gentle-eyed oxen drank water brought in brass buckets from the stable yard, tall men in grey turbans – the kind worn by Pathans in the North-West Frontier, where furniture was made – unloaded rosewood tables, chairs and chests that were carved delicately with Mogul patterns, inlaid with brass, and polished to a warm red finish.
From first light to near dark, the air vibrated with hammering, sawing and clattering as workers swarmed over the new bungalow that Rahim had ordered to be built for Leyla and Omar at the opposite end of the courtyard from his own house. The wall at that end of the compound divided the ancestral property into what was owned by Rahim and what belonged to his brother, Mahsood, who was Omar’s father.
It was said that when the two brothers were dead the two-hundred-year-old wall between the two properties would be demolished. For the first time since the tribe had settled the Punjab their ancestral lands would be joined. Every landowner and official in the district, every widow and beggar on the streets of the villages of the tribal lands, would celebrate the marriage of Omar and Leyla.
In its own way, the marriage of Ahmed and Zabo was also of utmost importance and added to the general air of festivity. Although Nazir’s holdings were the least substantial of the three brothers, and despite his having settled in Mehrabpur at the opposite end of the clan’s territory, his lands adjoined those of Mahsood and Rahim. Yet the union of Ahmed and Zabo would be less celebrated than the wedding of Omar and Leyla. It was one of those odd facts of life – a gentle-eyed girl marrying an idiot boy for the sake of reuniting all the ancestral lands for the first time in two centuries. That was all anyone was likely to think of it. And anyone with any sensitivity at all would never mention it to a member of Rahim’s family, much less to Zabo herself.
Teams of darzis came to Okurabad to outfit Leyla, bringing with them yard upon yard of shimmering silks in turquoise and purple and lime green, and pale georgettes embroidered with sequins and semi-precious stones. The darzis took their places each morning on the veranda of Rahim’s house. The sun shone through the branches of the neem trees, dappling the clean white cloths upon which the darzis sat cross-legged, their small black sewing machines whirring before them. Servants in white turbans and lungis came with trays of steaming tea, pink and rich with buffalo milk.
Meanwhile, out behind the stable, Shabanu sat on her charpoy, which she’d dragged into the doorway to catch the green air cooled by the canal, embroidering shalwar kameez for Zabo in delicate pastel cottons handwoven in India and smuggled across the border through the Cholistan Desert.
Amid the comings and goings in the courtyard, Zabo arrived virtually unnoticed to spend the night with Shabanu before their departure for Lahore. She came in her father’s car, barely visible in the back seat between two bodyguards. A third sat in front beside the driver.
Six small boys – all children of servants of the household – stopped their cricket match outside the heavy wooden gates to watch, fascinated by the ugly black snouts of the automatic weapons sticking from the tops of the grey-tinted windows of the air-conditioned vehicle.
Shabanu ran to greet Zabo, who stepped out from between the gunmen. Shabanu took her hands and looked her up and down.
Zabo was pale and thin, but her eyes shone with pleasure at seeing her friend.
“I’m so happy to see you,” Zabo said.
As the servants lifted her bags from the car, Mumtaz came running, her shiny black braid bouncing out behind her. Zabo bent her long slender frame and lifted the child to near shoulder height before dropping her to rest on her hip.
“I won’t be able to pick you up this way any more!” she said, and Mumtaz beamed. “You’re too big.”
“Auntie Zabo, come and see my fawn!” she said, wriggling to be put down again. “She’s not growing.”
“Where did you get a fawn?”
“Papa brought her from the desert so I would stand still when Uma brushes my hair. Come see!”
Mumtaz rushed away again, and Shabanu and Zabo followed.
“She lives for the little beast,” said Shabanu. “It was so frail when it arrived. It’s still small, but it’s grown fat and healthy. It’s completely taken over our lives.”
In the courtyard, Choti was stealing maize from the bin where the mali kept the birds’ food.
“Take her away before the mali scolds both of you,” said Shabanu. “We’ll be out in the garden.” She called to Zenat and asked her to bring lemonade.
“You’re thin,” said Shabanu. Zabo didn’t reply. Shabanu took her arm and led her into the shade of the arbour at the end of the veranda. They sat in the covered swing, and still Zabo didn’t speak. They listened to the birds calling to each other from their cages, while the flower-scented breeze played around them.
“Tell me,” said Shabanu after a while.
“I think of Ahmed often,” Zabo said. She looked around to see if any of her cousins were near by.
“Don’t worry,” said Shabanu. “They’re so engrossed with wedding plans they don’t have time to eavesdrop.”
“I try to think of how sweet he is,” Zabo said. “I try to concentrate on how happy I’ll be here with you. But no matter how I try to see his smile, I see him as he really is, with his senseless laugh, hiding his wet chin behind his hand…”
Shabanu squeezed Zabo’s fingers, but her own mind carried the picture still further: Zabo lying dutifully on her wedding night beside a quivering Ahmed. The bed would have been prepared with fine white linen, and Ahmed would have been schooled in impregnating her. A shiver of revulsion skipped across Shabanu’s shoulders, and she could think no further.
“From now on we will be together,” she said. “I pledge it on my life.”
The servants lifted Zabo’s leather bags into the farm van, which already was half full of luggage that contained Shabanu’s and Mumtaz’s belongings. Shabanu meant to leave enough in Lahore that they would not have to pack each time they went.
They left early the next morning, their sandals wet from a heavy dew. Their departure went un-noticed but for a pair of green eyes peering from behind the mosquito net of a hand-carved bed that stood beside the window in the top storey of the house. Amina sighed and laid her heavy form back against the cushions.
Two of Nazir’s gunmen crowded into the front beside the driver. Mumtaz, Shabanu and Zabo rode behind, and the fawn lay quietly in the back of the van behind the suitcases. She had assumed a proprietary air over every place Mumtaz chose to keep her. Beside the child’s charpoy at night the little doe slept, her delicate legs folded under her like a bed of twigs. When Zenat came to wake Mumtaz, the deer would stand and lower her head to ward off the old ayah, sending Mumtaz into fits of helpless laughter.
Choti lay now on a fine old kilim that Mumtaz had folded to make a cushion. The driver had made room for the fawn when Mumtaz had stamped her foot and refused to go to Lahore without her. Choti was unperturbed by the
increasing blare of the traffic. She blinked slowly and imperiously atop her cushion.
Zabo talked little during the trip, and Shabanu tried to draw her out by talking about shopping plans. Where would they go? She’d never been to Lahore, and she wanted to know if Zabo knew the shops where the beautiful silks were sold, and where the stones and sequins would be sewn on.
Zabo answered politely a few times, and then her attention drifted away again, seeming to draw her out into the heat-hazed sky over the outskirts of Lahore.
Shabanu turned her attention to the traffic. Enormous trucks hurtled by, loaded so full of cotton that their burlap sides threatened to burst, and small white tufts stuck to the thorns of the acacia branches overhanging the road. The van passed the swaying traffic of wooden-wheeled carts drawn by donkeys, camels and oxen. These were fewer as the van came closer to the city. Horse-drawn tongas crammed with women in city burkas, which covered heads and shoulders, and schoolchildren in uniforms – all riding backwards – gave way to brightly painted Bedford buses, parting the peace of small villages with blaring horns. Herds of goats driven by small ragged boys with long sticks gave way to minibuses and motor scooters.
Once in the city, they followed the canal, its fecund smell cloaked in the sweetness of early summer flowers and clipped grass. Shabanu and Mumtaz were mesmerized by the smells and the traffic, and more activity than they’d ever seen before. Deeper into the city, wide boulevards lined with splendid old bungalows and manicured gardens turned to ever more crowded and disorderly streets lined with modern public buildings. Shabanu marvelled at how perfectly square they were, how white, and how many windows they had!
The streets seemed to grow ever wider until they drew close to Badshahi Mosque, with its red sandstone walls and white marble domes glistening in the sun like enormous translucent onions. Passing through the ancient gates where the modern city ended and the city of the Mogul princes began, Shabanu’s excitement turned to quiet anticipation – almost a feeling of familiarity and affection. She felt more as if she were returning to the Cholistan Desert to see her family than making her first visit to Pakistan’s grandest city.
Under the Same Stars Page 7