The Truth About Peacock Blue

by Rosanne Hawke

  As I lay there thinking, I realised something horrifying: I couldn’t feel God. Was my faith only something I believed in my happy life in the village? Then I heard Abba in my head: Khuda is always with us whether we feel He is or not, just believe.

  I sighed and thought about the village – Gudiya and her soft brown eyes, the goats, the land and wheatfields, sunrise, sunset, singing in church, the laughing of children – there was so much colour, brightness and light. Except for the chipped green bars, there were no colours here; it was like looking out a window and seeing nothing, just blankness. This prison was every shade of grey.

  How did it come to this? Had the Colonel reported Mrs Abdul after all? Was that why she never let up on me?

  I told myself that regardless of squashed dreams I had to think beyond these barred walls. Yet still I wept until little Jani woke and used the hole. Then she curled up beside me.

  ‘We must sit on the mats soon for breakfast,’ she whispered.

  ‘Teik hai.’ I wiped my face with my dupatta, I had nothing else.

  The women woke. Narjis, the one who had jumped like a monkey when I was pushed into the cell the day before, crawled over to us. She sat on her haunches watching me, her head on the side. Then she called me ‘daughter’.

  ‘Beti, can you see the forest, the trees?’ She indicated the cell. ‘We are in a forest – see the monkey up there on the branch?’

  I looked up at a qameez hanging on the rope to dry. So did Jani.

  ‘See it?’

  I nodded to humour her. ‘Ji.’

  ‘Ji,’ Jani said as if she really could see it.

  ‘It’s laughing at you.’

  I glanced at her quickly. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you know how to laugh and sing and you don’t do it now. It doesn’t matter if we are in the forest or on a dangerous mountain path, we can laugh.’

  Narjis took my hands and clapped them as I’d done to babies many times. She sang a funny song about a monkey and a jackal fighting over a bone. Jani quickly joined in, Kamilah too. Jani even smiled as she clapped.

  I thought Muneerah would jump down and slap us but she watched from her bed as if she were bemused. That was when I realised the other women tolerated Narjis as people tolerate mad holy people, as if God’s favour is on them.

  When the song was finished, Narjis leaned in closer and pinched my cheek. ‘You mustn’t forget the good things.’

  She moved away and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to imagine the cell as my home. My charpai was over there, where I slept and did my homework, the computer on the low table, the rug Dadi-ji wove from rags on the floor in the middle. The trunk with my folded clothes. I imagined taking out the shalwar qameez Juli Rafique gave me, laying it on a sheet on the rug and ironing out the creases. Was Narjis only imagining like this, or did she really believe she was in a happier place, the jungle of her childhood? I looked up to find her watching me. Her smile was too wild but she nodded at me as if I’d been a good girl.

  After the food came and we’d eaten – me last again – Jani asked for a story. My dream was still playing in my head so I began telling her about Yusef and his dreams. I’d told it to Sammy’s siblings many times. I swallowed down the memories and began, ‘Yusef had a gift from Khuda, he could interpret dreams. One day the king had a dream about seven skinny cows and seven fat ones, and he wanted to know what it meant.

  ‘The cup-bearer finally remembered Yusef, who was in prison, and brought him before the king.

  ‘“I hear you can interpret dreams,” the king asked, but Yusef said, “Only Khuda can do this but if you tell me the dream, I will ask Him what it means.”’

  Suddenly my head was jerked backwards – Muneerah had me by the hair.

  ‘Tell a different story,’ she hissed. ‘I know what you’re doing, you’re telling about your religion, little blasphemer.’

  ‘Many Bible stories are also in the Qur’an.’

  But I got a slap for answering back. Muneerah probably didn’t even know what was in the Qur’an. I ducked my head to shield my glasses.

  ‘Tell a different one, a story about jinns and animals.’

  I fell quiet and Muneerah left me alone. Mrs Rafique had given Ijaz and me a storybook of folktales and finally I remembered one to tell Jani. Sammy had thought it so funny. ‘This is about a jackal who outwitted a hungry tiger by luring him to walk into a cage.’

  I’d barely started when a guard I hadn’t seen before appeared outside the cell. He swaggered as though he was the most important guard in the prison. He scrutinised us in the cell until his gaze fell on me.

  ‘You, 753!’ He lifted his chin at me. ‘Out!’

  ‘Oooh, you have Green Eyes to escort you, lucky girl.’ Gazaalah’s voice dripped with sarcasm as some of the women laughed, not very kindly.

  The man was middle-aged and his stomach hung over his belt like a sack of flour. His only redeeming feature was his eyes – when he chose to open them wide enough – for they were indeed green. He unlocked the cell but I didn’t move fast enough for him. He reached in and yanked me out. Kamilah held Jani close to her as she watched him drag me out the door and slam it shut. She didn’t smirk like Muneerah.

  ‘Karam will pull you in line, blasphemer,’ Muneerah called after me.

  Karam was another person ill-named, for Karam means kindness. His whole body stank, his breath too. He shackled me to his belt but he took too long over it and his hand caressed the side of my waist. There was nothing I could say or do. I was at his mercy while I was chained to him. He marched down the corridor while I tried to keep up, worried sick that I was to be interrogated. Would they interrogate a schoolgirl? And my biggest fear: would I become Muslim because I couldn’t stand the pain?

  All the way Karam leered at me, past the cells of women, through a double door, then another corridor of men prisoners who called out, ‘Hey gudyia, doll,’ or ‘Hoori, angel,’ as if I were a Bollywood actress. Karam’s swagger grew and his leg kept brushing my thigh. I was sure it was on purpose. The prisoner in the police station was right: there would be someone else like Ikram.

  We finally reached a room. Karam opened the door and pushed me in with his hand on my backside. I wished I could have said, ‘Sharam, shame on you.’ If I had been in a street in town I would have taken off my shoe and hit him with it. He’d be so ashamed, he’d never touch me again. But I couldn’t do that here. He’d retaliate for sure and I had no recourse. Besides, who would believe me or care? Even the women in the cell had watched with glee when he took me away, happy it wasn’t them. Except Kamilah – she’d looked worried.

  Karam unlocked the chain, without touching me this time, and stood against the wall.

  I looked up to see who my visitor was and felt glad he hadn’t seen my shame as Karam pushed me in. It was Dr Amal. The relief almost made me fall. He had his back to me, looking through his bag.

  Karam cleared his throat. ‘The prisoner 753 is delivered.’

  Dr Amal swung around, pulling an ear bud from his ear. ‘Aster, are you okay?’

  I nodded, flabbergasted in his presence as I always was when he visited the village.

  ‘I came to see how you are. Please, sit.’ He indicated a chair on the other side of a table. I glanced at Karam but he didn’t shake his head. I saw a stamp like a tattoo that said ‘Visitor’ on Dr Amal’s forearm.

  ‘They don’t seem to want you to have visitors,’ he said at first.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘I said I was your family doctor.’

  I dropped my gaze under his and wondered if they believed him – girls my age didn’t go to male doctors.

  ‘So, how are you?’

  He didn’t mean if I was sick; I knew he wanted to know how I was coping.

  My eyes stung. ‘I wish I was home.’

  Dr Amal glanced at Karam and lowered his voice. ‘I know where your parents are. I’ve seen them—’

  I cut in, ‘How are they? They haven’t been hur
t?’ The noise of the mob at the police station replayed often in my mind.

  ‘They are well and send their love and blessings. They are on their way to your cousin Hadassah.’ He paused, then added, ‘They are distressed of course, we all are, but it is too dangerous for them to come.’

  His eyes watered but he controlled himself and handed me a parcel. ‘This is from your parents.’

  It had been opened, probably by the guards, and I could see a shalwar qameez and my mother’s warm shawl. I forced myself to be polite and not to touch it yet but it took my breath away to have something of hers so close.

  ‘And this is from my family.’ It wasn’t wrapped and I gasped in relief. It was a lightweight cotton shawl for summer and although it was a gift I couldn’t help myself; I put it on immediately, over my head and tucked under my chin. It was a large one used for purdah and when I stood I knew it would be as long as my qameez. ‘How did they know I’d need this?’

  ‘My mother visits our local jail. You can use the warmer one in your parents’ parcel as a blanket.’

  My eyes filled from the kindness and perception of both family and strangers. ‘A shawl is what I need the most. There was no time—’ I stopped as his hand hovered over mine but he shifted it to take something from his pocket.

  He took out a scarf. ‘I also have brought a gift. I remember how you like to sing. It’s in here.’ He indicated the scarf in his hand. ‘It’s the old CD Walkman I had before my iPod. Sorry, there’s only one CD. I didn’t want to push it. Keep it hidden from your cellmates.’ His voice was low as he slipped it into the parcel of clothes with some spare batteries. I hoped Karam didn’t notice.

  I managed to get the Walkman safely to the cell and didn’t take it out until the light went off that night. Having the Walkman was the first bit of excitement other than seeing Dr Amal since my arrest. My fingers were shaking as I put the ear buds in and pressed a button.

  Suddenly my head was flooded with sound. Dr Amal’s songs. ‘Umeed’ was the first one. ‘You are my hope,’ he sang. I lay on my mat, imagining I was back in the village, in my room after the talks Dr Amal had given, after Sammy and I had led the singing.

  When I felt sleepy I turned it off. I’d have to listen sparingly, for the batteries wouldn’t last forever. What would I do then? I squeezed it halfway into my qameez pocket, wrapped the cotton shawl around me and fell asleep on my mother’s shawl. It smelt of her jasmine oil.

  CHAPTER

  16

  Ijaz is outside in the field. He’s laughing, and not using the scythe correctly. Sammy shows him how. A jeep burns up the lane and men in black shirts and khaki trousers with AK47 Kalashnikovs jump out. They take Ijaz; the scythe falls and cuts his leg. He is bleeding yet still they drag him away.

  ‘We’ll be back for you,’ one says to me.

  I run after them, screaming for them to bring him back, ‘He’s innocent!’

  I woke to Kamilah patting my face. ‘Shhh,’ she said. ‘You’ll wake the others, and they’ll beat you.’

  It was almost light in the cell. I sat up and tried to slow my breathing.

  ‘You were dreaming,’ she whispered. ‘Jani does that too. Muneerah slapped both of us last time. No one likes being woken.’

  When she felt satisfied I wouldn’t make another noise she said, ‘Come up to our bed, but be careful, don’t wake Gazaalah.’

  I followed her up to the top bunk, missing Gazaalah’s hands on the way. Kamilah lay down, her arm around Jani, and whispered for me to lie down beside them.

  Her eyes were open, watching me. ‘It takes a long time to settle. I still miss my home, my family, my animals. I was going to be married, but he will have married someone else now. I carried his photo from when I was thirteen.’

  She smiled but it was a sad one. ‘When I get out of here I will be old.’

  ‘When will you be released?’

  She made a face. ‘I don’t know. There has been no hearing of my case. No one would pay bail either. What will be the point of getting out anyway? My family won’t want me. At least Jani is fed in here.’

  ‘But you can’t give up.’

  Kamilah raised her head. ‘See if you can say that to me when you’ve been in here five years.’

  I took her meaning and shut my mouth. I needed prison guidelines. Knowing what to say to cellmates is not something you learn at school or home. I closed my eyes, praying I wouldn’t have another nightmare. When I opened them again, an hour must have passed. It was light.

  Jani was pulling my plait. ‘Asti, wake up.’

  The nickname still hurt – when would I see Sammy’s little sisters and brother again?

  ‘Asti? We eat now.’ Her speech was harder to understand than my young cousins’. She probably didn’t get much practice. I could imagine the other women telling her to shut up if she spoke too much.

  I rolled over and stared at her. She pulled on my hands. ‘Up, up.’

  Kamilah whispered, ‘Get up now. The guard will come.’ She sounded worried.

  All the women were sitting on their mats on the floor, waiting. Then I heard the sound of a trolley. Doors were opened and shut until it was our turn. The genie unlocked the door. She dropped a tray on the floor with cups and an aluminium pot of chai. Then she threw in a cane tray with chapattis and a pot of what looked like leftover curry from the night before. I thought of the food we had at home, of vegetable curries that were rich in flavour and hot with chilli.

  The genie unlocked Hafsah’s door and there was an exclamation, ‘You lazy slut, get up!’

  She walked in with a tin plate of food and yanked Hafsah out of the bed, then slapped her across the face. Hafsah’s head hit the bars of our cell and everyone watched, our food untouched. Kamilah tried to hide Jani’s face against her chest.

  ‘You think you’re a queen to be waited on in your special bedroom?’ She slapped Hafsah again.

  Finally Hafsah said, ‘Sorry, so tired.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be tired if you ate food. Now eat!’ The genie waited until Hafsah had taken a mouthful. She choked but the genie seemed satisfied and locked the cell. Now I understood Jani’s worry that I wasn’t sitting on my mat for breakfast.

  ‘She gets what she deserves,’ Mumeerah muttered and the women began eating. I still had to wait until last.

  Kamilah whispered to me, ‘When I was new, they used to make me eat after everyone else too.’

  ‘But you’re Muslim.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with religion, but who is the boss. This cell is a farmyard.’

  When it was my turn to eat there was more left this time. Did it help not to retaliate? It was difficult to know how to behave.

  Kamilah put the trays in the corner by the door. I was dying to go to the toilet by now, but still embarrassed about doing it in full view of the women in the cell. What did they do? I hadn’t seen anyone except Jani use that hole in the daytime.

  The trolley edged its way up the corridor, picking up the trays. I was just building up the nerve to use the hole when the genie unlocked our door again. The women all stood. She chained us all together by threading a chain through the ones on our wrists. Kamilah held Jani. First was Gazaalah, who was chained to the genie and we all followed.

  No one seemed worried, so our destination couldn’t be a torture room.

  We reached a washroom at the end of the corridor. The chain was yanked from our arms. Someone called and the genie stepped outside, leaving the door ajar. The room stank but we could go to the squat toilet, have a shower and wash our clothes in troughs. If I’d known, I could have brought the shalwar qameez my parents sent to me and changed out of my school clothes, but I soon got over the disappointment of no fresh clothes, for squatting over a proper toilet in the floor with a cubicle around felt good even with the toilet overflowing with excrement. It looked as if the cleaner hadn’t been in yet.

  The shower was cold – which didn’t matter in summer – but there were no spare towels. The one on a hoo
k stank of mildew and unimaginable filth. After removing my underwear I showered in my shalwar qameez and let myself dry. I couldn’t bring myself to use that vile towel.

  At the troughs Kamilah had some of Jani’s clothes and a shalwar qameez of her own to wash. She showed me what to do. ‘This is the detergent that we wash clothes in. Here’s the soap.’

  She lifted Jani into a trough and washed her and the clothes at the same time.

  ‘We may be in prison,’ she said, ‘but my child will be clean.’ She rubbed soap into Jani’s hair while she protested.

  Durrah pushed me away from Kamilah just as I was about to turn the water on in the next trough. ‘I always use this one.’

  I wondered if she did, but how could I know what to do? Sammy was in my head suddenly and said, Challenge her back. It’s just a test.

  Gazaalah was observing me. I walked to the trough on the other side of Kamilah. Muneerah was suddenly there as if she had been waiting for my next move. Like a cobra strike, she belted me across the head. The force of it put me flat on my back on the cement and I heard the shattering of glass. For a moment I couldn’t move.

  Winded, Sammy said.

  I’d never been beaten like this. I managed to sit up to check my head. Had it hit the floor? I couldn’t remember. I found my glasses but one lens was broken. At least I could still see with my left eye. There wasn’t any blood on the floor, but I could taste it in my mouth.

  I wanted to shout, Why did you do this? Then I remembered: I was just a blasphemer to them.

  I had to be careful. We were in a room without a guard, even though I could hear voices outside the door. Whatever happened wouldn’t be seen.

  The man in the police station had said to keep my head down. I thought he was only talking about men but maybe it would work on Muneerah too. This was the kind of bullying Sammy must have endured at high school. Until he showed them how he could play soccer.

  No soccer here.

  How could I wash my clothes if the women wouldn’t let me? Kamilah, Gazaalah and Narjis had kept out of it and all the other troughs were being used now.