Typhoon

by Shahraz, Qaisra

  ‘What am I going to do with this pot of tea? Will you drink some, Kulsoom Jee?’ Her friend shook her head, a first, for Kulsoom loved drinking tea, not only in cups but bowlfuls. Day and night. But, not this morning. She placed the small parcel beside Naimat Bibi’s footstool and left.

  Naimat Bibi emptied the whole pot of tea in her small wash area and watched a pint of milk drain away. Her tea was very costly. She placed the pot to be scoured later in the morning. Gently picking up the silk parcel in her large hand from under the stool, she entered her kothri, her dark rear storeroom. Switching on the light, she tiptoed to the pile of steel trunks. The top trunk was the place where she kept her valuables, including money. Lifting the cold steel lid, she peered at its contents and then stuffed the small parcel in one corner. Then she closed the lid tightly shut, praying that the moths wouldn’t get to it.

  Part Four

  My heart is like a scroll

  that extends without end to eternity

  Inscribed from first to last

  ‘Do not leave me!’

  Jalal al-Din Rumi, Turkey c. 13th century

  From Rumi: A Spiritual Journey

  DIVAN – I SHAMS 23494

  Compiled by Juliet Mabey

  THIRTY ONE

  Wednesday, May 2002

  NAGHMANA WAS GAZING down at the long eyelashes of the man sleeping beside her.

  ‘Professor Jee! Professor Jee! Wake up!’ She caressed his arm, pinching it gently.

  Her ‘Professor Jee’, however, didn’t respond. Smiling tenderly she decided that another technique was in order. Bending over she placed her mouth against his. Pressing it firmly, she coaxed his lips apart with her own.

  Professor Jahanghir’s eyelids with their long curly eyelashes flicked open. Lazily his arm snaked out from beneath the cotton quilt. Cradling her neck with his hand, he pulled her on top of him.

  Giggling against his mouth, Naghmana persisted in a noble gesture of drawing back, but his arm imprisoned her firmly in place. Raising her face she smiled down into his brown eyes, warm with laughter and kissed his straight nose.

  ‘That was just a morning call to wake you up, my Professor Jee,’ she teased, now seriously trying to withdraw from his grasp.

  ‘I could get used to such calls, Naghmana,’ His arm tightened possessively around her.

  She laughed, a rich natural sound embracing them both.

  ‘You have been getting them. Come on, my love. Remember, you have an important Examination Board meeting at the University. And as you well know, I have the Belgian delegates coming over to negotiate on the enfranchisement of my company.’

  While he mused over what she had said, she skilfully slid out of his arms and out of the bed.

  ‘OK, Madam Executive!’ His eyes travelled over her semi-naked body, lit with sensuous approval and male pride caressing her female curves. His wife was still a very attractive woman. ‘You must learn to delegate, Naghmana. Come back to bed. Your assistant can deputise for you today.’

  Naghmana laughed again, watching the desire leap into life in her husband’s eyes. Sobering, she informed him, ‘You and this bed will still be here tonight, but those people have come a long way. I must be there.’

  Her laughter rippled through the large bedroom in their apartment. She drew back, seeing his arm reach out for her again. He managed to grab hold of her hair and gently pulled her back.

  ‘Why don’t you keep it long?’ He asked. ‘It was long once, wasn’t it? I saw an old photograph of you with it.’

  Naghmana’s body went stiff. ‘I like to keep it short. It is much more manageable,’ she replied at last.

  ‘There are times when you suddenly desert me,’ her husband said, a frown knitting his high forehead.

  ‘Desert you? I don’t understand.’ Voice wary, her back still to him.

  ‘Just now, when I mentioned your hair, you seemed to withdraw into yourself. It is as if you live in another world sometimes. Naghmana – what is it?’

  Panicking, she forced herself to laugh. It came out as an unnatural, brittle sound jarring upon their previous intimacy.

  ‘You are imagining it.’ She was hastily pulling on her night kurta, her back to him.

  ‘Am I?’ Sitting up in bed he waited for her to answer and to face him. She did. She walked back to the bed and sat by his side.

  ‘I have been married to you for nineteen years. You have borne me two handsome sons. Yet there are times, Naghmana, when I feel as if I don’t know you at all.’

  A well-practised smile held firmly in place, Naghmana teased, ‘You have always buried yourself in your books, my Professor Jee. You never seem to notice or have time to see what stares you in the face.’ Was there a trace of bitterness in her voice? He couldn’t help but ask himself.

  ‘You are right,’ he laughed nervously, drawing her once more into his embrace. ‘But what I do know is that what is now staring back at me is a very beautiful, desirable woman, who just happens to be my wife, and with whom I am still madly in love.’ His eyes fixed on the slim column of her throat, he pressed her closer against his body.

  ‘And I am wild about you!’ she whispered, her voice sincere again, and resting in the warm cradle of his arms.

  The front door bell of their apartment shrilled at that moment, freezing them both. Who could it be? The postman had already been.

  Jahanghir reluctantly opened his arms. ‘I’d better go and see who it is. With you half-naked, looking like that, you will give any man palpitations. Pass me my dressing-gown.’

  Naghmana handed him his gown and then reached over to the bedside table for a cashmere shawl to drape around her bare shoulders. She listened for the conversation, but could hear nothing. Then her husband returned with a telegram in his hand.

  ‘Who is it from?’ She snuggled down against the pillow. ‘What does it say?’ He was reading it.

  ‘It’s from a village, called Chiragpur. It says an old man called Siraj Din is dying and he wants to see you very much,’ Jahanghir ended. He saw his wife go deathly pale.

  ‘Naghmana?’ Concerned, he lifted her face to his. ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘I can’t go there. It is an evil place – an evil village. There are snakes there, Jahanghir,’ she whispered, her eyes closed.

  ‘Naghmana!’ He shook her hard. Aghast. ‘Snakes? Evil? What are you talking about?’

  Naghmana shook her head, her eyes lowered in a desperate bid to hide herself and her inner world from him.

  ‘I didn’t know my wife was so superstitious. I am surprised to hear you speak thus. You are a modern, well-educated, professional woman. What nonsense you just uttered. An old man is dying, that is all. He just wishes to see you. Who is he, anyway?’

  Naghmana raised her horror-struck eyes at him. ‘I can’t go there!’ she whispered. ‘I can never go back there!’

  ‘Why?’ Jahanghir stood up, now totally alarmed by his wife’s strange behaviour and odd words. ‘How can you be so callous, as to deny a dying man his wish?’

  Naghmana’s quivering lower lip parted. She let her husband’s words wash over her, desperate to gain her bearings. To remember where she was and what she had said and to whom. The two worlds had now miraculously clashed.

  ‘My first husband lived there – I have memories,’ The agony was out. Her eyes tightly closed, she pulled herself together, shuddering. Too much revealed! Carefully she schooled her face and assembled the mask she had faithfully worn for the last nineteen years and behind which she had sheltered, hid and withered.

  ‘I see,’ came his tight response. He had missed nothing, and heard everything. ‘So you are afraid of your husband’s memories. Are they still so powerful, Naghmana that you go into a panic?’

  Naghmana made a huge effort to sound normal. ‘Of course, Professor Jee. You are right! We women sometimes act in such a silly fashion.’ She tittered. Afraid of the look in his eyes.

  ‘So you will go to the village?’ he asked, not quite sure of either he
r mood or thoughts. ‘I will go with you,’ he softly informed her, watching her closely. Learning fast. Wondering what inner forces plagued his wife.

  Dumbly she nodded. Her mask had deserted her. Was there a reason to reassemble it? He had seen it all.

  ‘Right, I am taking a shower and then we’ll set off. How long will it take to get there?’ her Professor coolly asked her, before leaving for the shower room.

  ‘What about your board meeting?’ Naghmana cried, making a last weak bid for her survival. She was spiralling into darkness. The typhoon was back. And with a vengeance.

  ‘I’ll phone and postpone it. You get ready. Now where is this place, Chiragpur?’ came the firm question from the shower room. There was no tenderness in the voice. It sounded like a stranger addressing her.

  Half an hour later she stood under the showerhead. She heard her husband opening his wardrobe to take his suit out. Behind her closed eyelids she saw them – the snakes. Poised. Watching. Waiting to strike.

  Then someone shouted, ‘Whore!’

  Naghmana’s body slumped against the wet tiled wall of the shower cubicle.

  THIRTY TWO

  ‘NEESA!’ CHAUDHARANI KANIZ shouted, running in a panic out of her daughter-in-law’s room. Standing at the top of the marble staircase of her hawaili, with her hand held against her heaving chest, she waited for her woman servant to quickly materialise before her.

  ‘It is too early!’ Kaniz kept reminding herself. ‘Surely Firdaus won’t give birth today.’ Pulling up the long chiffon dupatta, she tried to twist her thick wavy hair into a knot, but it was still too wet from her bath. She dropped it, letting it tumble around her shoulders.

  ‘Neesa!’ Kaniz shrieked down, fuming. ‘Just when I need her! Where has she disappeared to? I bet she is undoing the quilts in the bedding storeroom as usual, today of all days. Won’t she ever leave those damned quilts alone?’

  Just then, Kaniz saw her housekeeper dutifully appear at the bottom of the stairs. Neesa’s timid eyes lifted up at the tall, majestic figure of her mistress, standing at the top. With her long hair framing her face, her sak-stained reddish lips and a matching rosy hue in her cheeks, to Neesa’s partial eyes her mistress appeared twenty years younger. She forgot her timidity and instead stood lost in admiration. This was the face of the woman she had seen on her first day as she came to work in this house thirty-two years ago. It was still almost the same. Today there was a certain youthfulness about her mistress that she had somehow let go to waste since her nervous breakdown, two years ago, before her son Khawar’s wedding.

  ‘Yes, Chaudharani Jee?’ Neesa quietly asked, wondering what had caused her mistress to get into such a state this time.

  ‘Neesa, Firdaus has just started her labour pains. You must phone my son and tell him to get here quickly. She needs to go to the hospital immediately. Meanwhile call Mary, our old village dhai. She’ll take care of the situation until the doctor arrives.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Pulling her shawl tightly around her head, Neesa quickly headed for the home of Mary, their Christian midwife.

  Lifting her damp hair from behind her neck, Kaniz returned to her daughter-in-law’s room. Firdaus, at the age of thirty, was expecting her first child. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she was clutching her side and wanted to move closer to the portable fan. She held the thin lawn material of her dress away from her swollen abdomen, heaving with contractions. Her short hair was getting into her eyes.

  Kaniz went up to Firdaus and said kindly, ‘Here, let me tie your hair back, Firdaus, if it is making you too hot. Mine is still wet.’

  ‘Thank you. I am sorry I disturbed you.’ Firdaus smiled shakily and handed her mother-in-law a hair-tie.

  Kaniz perched herself on the large bed. Bunching up the young woman’s hair away from her face, she combed it into a ponytail at the back.

  Just then, Firdaus’s body was seized by another spasm. Fascinated Kaniz watched the rippling movement of the baby beneath the surface of the thin muslin kurtha that Firdaus wore. She had only experienced one pregnancy, and that had been such a long time ago and was so hazy in her mind.

  Firdaus’s face creased in pain and she groaned aloud, ‘Allah pak, help me.’

  Panicking, Kaniz jumped off the bed. ‘Hold on, Firdaus. They will be here soon. I have sent Neesa for our local dhai and I have just phoned Khawar. He is on his way home. My son should be here with you, not fighting elections in Karachi. That boy has no sense of timing whatsoever!’

  ‘I know, Auntie, but this baby is early,’ Firdaus gasped. ‘It is not due for another two weeks, don’t forget.’

  ‘You are a good wife, my dear. You always stick up for your husband, but he should be here. No matter what you say, if he was here, he could have driven you to the nearest hospital. As it is, there are only three women in the hawaili. Just when we need him, the chauffeur has gone on holiday to see his mother. Is he blind to your pregnancy too?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Auntie – everything will be all right. The poor man doesn’t know when I am expecting, or perhaps I did too good a job at covering myself,’ Firdaus joked, then pulled a face as another contraction began to build.

  ‘Of course, with Allah’s blessing this hawaili will soon be gifted with a beautiful baby boy – another Khawar, I know.’ Kaniz’s face was pink with wonder.

  ‘And if it is another Firdaus – a girl, Auntie Jee?’ Firdaus doggedly cut in, a challenging look in her eyes.

  The smile slipped from Kaniz’s face for a moment, then she deftly switched on an even brighter one. ‘If it is a girl, then all the better, my darling Firdaus. She’ll be the daughter I never had myself,’ she ended sincerely.

  At the back of her mind, she was still, however, fervently praying for a boy and keeping her fingers crossed. Oh, Allah pak had to bless them with a boy. All those trays of ludoos! What was she going to do with them? The sweetmeats were traditionally distributed on the birth of sons. The sweet chef, the village halvie, had his special order for tons of ludoos to be freshly baked, on the auspicious occasion of the birth of her grandson. They were going to be distributed ceremonially and with all the pomp and razzmatazz of a major village celebration, to all the local households. Kaniz had special, little baskets woven for them. The village would not easily forget the birth of her grandson. Khawar’s wedding had been talked about for months, reckoned by most of the villagers to be a wedding of a lifetime. Well, this birth was going to be special too. The only thing she dreaded was – what if she ended up delivering the baby herself, without any medical help? The thought terrified her. She didn’t know a thing about childbirth. What did one need? Hot water – old rags? Old sheets? Which bed should Firdaus lie on?

  Zarri Bano, the eldest daughter of Chaudharani Shahzada had only in recent months been blessed with the birth of a beautiful son. ‘Wouldn’t it therefore be wonderful that my Khawar too has a son,’ Kaniz sighed. Then wistfully she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Everything is in God’s hands. What can we mortals do?’

  Aloud she voiced, ‘Whatever Allah pak blesses us with, Firdaus, this house is thirsty for the cries of a young baby and the runak of a child.’

  In a generous mood, she then leaned forward and kissed her daughter-in-law on the cheek. This was the same woman whose hand she had begged for on her knees years ago, and who had caused her nervous breakdown. Life was indeed strange. It made you do crazy things. Learn bitter lessons in humility.

  The hawaili bell crackled into the room, startling both women.

  ‘Neesa has gone to get Mary. I’ll have to go and answer the door myself, Firdaus. Will you be all right?’ Kaniz looked nervously over her shoulder.

  ‘Of course, Auntie. Don’t worry, I will be fine,’ Firdaus hastened to reassure her, trying to keep her face straight as another contraction seized her body.

  Not entirely happy about leaving her daughter-in-law alone, Kaniz headed for the main gates, wondering irritably who it could be. Bending down, she pulled open the entrance door, fram
ed and set within one of the two gates. On catching a glimpse of her guest she got up in surprise, blushingly pushing her hair back from her face.

  Sheikh Younus Raees, the landlord from the neighbouring village stood tall on the marble step. His blue jeep was parked outside in the hawaili driveway.

  ‘Assalam Alaikum,’ Kaniz greeted him coolly, curious as to what had brought the zemindar to her doorstep. Nervously she tugged at one end of her chiffon dupatta and tried to pull it over her head and to drape it in place around her shoulders and in front of her chest. Neither its length, nor its texture covered her properly.

  The last time she had caught a glimpse of him was at her son’s wedding and he had sent her panicking. Earlier she had gone to his hawaili to offer condolences on the death of his wife. Very rarely did their paths cross. Nor were they expected to, for single men and women interacted mainly in communal gatherings like weddings or funerals. Her son Khawar on the other hand visited Sheikh Younus Raees fairly regularly. Business land contracts was their particular connection.

  ‘Walaikum Salam!’ The confident ring of authority behind the greeting of the fifty-five year old tall man was not lost on Kaniz, nor his starched, laundered summer suit topped with a black waistcoat. He swept a long look at her and then tactfully looked away as he noted her nervous effort to cover herself and get the dupatta to stay decently in place around her shoulders. ‘Is it all right if I have a few minutes of your time, Chaudharani Kaniz?’ he politely requested.

  Kaniz looked up in surprise. She found his eyes on her hair, half of which lay bare over one shoulder.

  Kaniz hardened. No man had a right to look at her like this! She had no wish to see him. Her daughter-in-law was in agony of labour pains, waiting for her upstairs, while this man had the audacity to turn up and want to speak to her! More to the point, about what? Furthermore, he had caught her in an indecent state. Her hair needed to be braided and wound in a coronet around her head. Her lips were shamefully stained a becoming shade of red with sak and her dupatta barely covered her head, let alone her waist-length hair. She had just lined kajol in her eyes, and knew how it accentuated their large almond shape and showed off the fairness of her skin.