Naghmana took the silk parcel from Kulsoom Bibi. Holding it in the palm of her hand she looked down at the discoloured creamy square of silk. There was a lock of hair nestling inside it. Naghmana glanced up, seeking explanation.
‘It’s your hair. We have kept it for you! Treasured it! We all have – Jamila – Sardara!’ Kulsoom whispered, in a voice tinged with sadness.
Her fingers visibly trembling before her husband’s gaze and her heart sunk in the deep well of heartache, Naghmana picked up her large lock of hair. Then her body betrayed her. The mask slipping away. Nature took its course. She let out a loud animal-like groan, dropping the lock on the floor, her face twisted in pain. Baba Siraj Din stirred on his bed.
Shocked, Kulsoom and Naimat Bibi quickly stepped back.
‘Naghmana!’ Professor Jahanghir leapt up from his chair in concern. ‘Naghmana!’
A wild look in her eye, she ignored his arm and rushed past the two women, out of the room. Naimat Bibi’s and Kulsoom Bibi’s hearts were now urgently thudding away. They were sure the whole hawaili could hear the sound of their heartbeats. What had they done wrong?
‘What have you done to my wife?’ the Professor demanded of the two ‘lowly’ women, who had somehow dared to upset Naghmana. ‘Who are you anyway?’ he thundered.
‘We are sorry, Master Jee,’ Kulsoom mumbled, backing away, suddenly very eager to be gone.
Professor Jahanghir watched the two women hastily retreat from the room. The old man was moving his head on the pillow. Jahanghir’s eyes went down to the long lock of hair lying near his feet. Squatting on the floor he picked it up. They had said it was his wife’s. From the bed the revered village Buzurgh mumbled in his sleep, ‘Forgive me, Naghmana, my daughter. May Allah pak forgive me for my sin!’
Jahanghir glanced up from the lock of hair in his hand and looked at the old man’s face on the bed. His nostrils flared. He had heard the words very clearly. What had his wife done with the old man? All this business about ‘forgiveness’. First those two women, now the old man from his deathbed. Naghmana had a lot of explaining to do. He went looking for his wife.
Her head leaning over the edge, he found her lying on the bed in the guestroom. His hard, male tread on the shining marble floor didn’t disturb her. Standing next to her, anger deserted Jahanghir’s body, as he looked at his wife.
‘Naghmana?’ he softly enquired, bending down and peering into her face. She didn’t see him. Only the spot on the whitewashed wall in the far corner of the room.
‘Naghmana, please tell me why you screamed in that room? And why did those strange women and even the old man, ask for your forgiveness? What is going on? What is your relationship with these people? What have you done?’
Naghmana didn’t answer. She had left him behind. Instead she suddenly let out another ragged, animal-like sound, startling her husband into hurriedly placing a hand across her mouth. ‘Shush!’ Squatting down on the floor beside the bed, he tried to maintain eye-contact with her – but couldn’t. Her eyes just looked right through him.
‘What is the matter with you, my beautiful wife? Why are you screaming? Don’t you know that we are in someone else’s home? We are guests here. What will they think if they should hear your noises?’
Before his eyes, he saw his wife’s face contort in anguish as she burst into tears, brushing aside his hand from her mouth. Jahanghir watched helplessly. ‘Naghmana! Naghmana! Please tell me!’ he begged, drawing her limp body into his arms and hugging her tightly.
‘My first husband. The snakes! The snakes! They are here. The kacheri!’ Naghmana moaned aloud on his shoulder.
‘Snakes?’ Jahanghir asked, turning her body round and holding her face in his hands. ‘Look at me, Naghmana. What snakes? Your husband – is he here?’
‘Yes, Haroon is here in this building! Snakes! Those two women!’ Her trembling lips moved. ‘The cobra on the bed!’
Wide-eyed and aghast, Jahanghir stared into the fathomless pool of his wife’s eyes. Had his Naghmana toppled over into the world of insanity? Placing a gentle hand on her head and holding her body against his chest he rocked her to and fro in his arms. He was too afraid now to probe further into his wife’s state of mind – afraid of what he would find there. And what exactly would it be? He recalled her nightmares. ‘Snakes! Snakes!’ she had always cried aloud in her sleep for the last nineteen years. The snakes were here. Real people. His heart sank at the thought of his wife being mentally ill and he had never suspected. He detested himself for his ignorance. Hadn’t she taunted him earlier for not looking beyond his books? Bile rose in his throat. Who were these people who kept asking for his wife’s forgiveness? Why did they treasure locks of her hair? What had she done? The thought suddenly lashed at him: ‘I don’t know my wife at all! And her husband! Why is he here? Where has he come from? Was he not dead? That is what he had assumed?’ He had enquired and she hadn’t enlightened him.
For some unknown reason he now regretted bringing his wife to the village. He recalled the look in her eyes and her frightened appeal. ‘It is an evil place!’ she had cried out to him, shrinking against the wall.
He placed Naghmana gently back on the bed, as he heard the door open. It was the granddaughter of the old man, Zarri Bano. Dressed in her black veil, the burqa, she looked forlornly at the man standing beside the bed.
‘I am sorry to have to tell you that my grandfather is dead! I was there by his side. Strangely he died with your wife’s name on his lips. I think he is at peace now.’ Then Zarri Bano quietly left the room. She didn’t wait for him to speak. She had to go from room to room and personally tell everyone about her beloved grandfather’s death.
She brushed the tears from her eyes. The village would never be the same again, without her grandfather’s presence. ‘I am going to miss you so much,’ she cried. The unexpected had happened. The village landlord and Buzurgh, Baba Siraj Din, was actually dead.
THIRTY FOUR
FIRDAUS AND HER baby daughter were resting on their beds. Mary, the old village midwife had performed all the relevant rituals after the birth, including giving Firdaus a hearty oil body massage, to tease out the muscle tension after a hard labour. The little girl, a bundle of pink flesh and a mop of curly hair, had dozed off after her first bath and a gentle oil massage. It was time to open the hawaili doors to the well-wishers. The latter had queued and eagerly climbed the marble stairs to Firdaus’s bedroom. By the late evening Kaniz had the baby brought down in the courtyard. Having streams of visitors in her bedroom made Firdaus feel as if she was in a zoo. ‘Please take the baby downstairs somewhere – she is what they have come to see. I am not having all their panting breaths polluting my room,’ she had complained to her mother-in-law, and Kaniz had acted immediately.
It was late evening. Sabra and Kaniz had bade farewell to the last of the village well-wishers. It was an auspicious occasion, for with the birth of Chaudharani Kaniz’s first granddaughter, the village woman had all taken advantage of the opportunity of visiting her beautiful home. They had been counting the days and hours for this honour. Chaudharani Kaniz had borne their greetings, congratulations, humble gifts of a few rupees, plucked out of their purses or from the tied ends of their dupattas, and noisy presence with good grace. Apart from being offered a drink, everyone was despatched with a tokri, a small basket of sweet meats, as well as dozens of sugar patasas for them to munch on their way home and for their children.
Sabra too had arrived on the first flight. Now she entered her sister’s room to find Kaniz sitting on her bed, apparently in deep thought. ‘Is she still trying to hide her disappointment that she now has a granddaughter instead of a grandson?’ Sabra thought to herself, amused. She was the first to glimpse Kaniz’s reaction to the baby. Luckily, when Firdaus had looked up, Kaniz was her usual beaming self – fooling her daughter-in-law. Sabra climbed on to the other end of her sister’s bed, snuggling her legs under the quilt cover. They had done this since their teenage years. Snuggling tog
ether in one bed, one each end and having an intimate conversation was something they both enjoyed immensely.
‘I have come in such a hurry, Kaniz. You sounded so desperate last night on the telephone. You wanted me to be here for the birth, but you also mentioned something about Younus Raees.’ Sabra paused. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
Kaniz looked up, her face colouring, startling her younger sister by bursting into hysterical laughter.
‘What is it, Sister Kaniz?’ Sabra leant towards her sister across the bed.
‘He … he is a madman!’ Kaniz whispered, her eyes looking anywhere but at her sister. A pink flush rapidly seeped through her cheeks, making them throbbingly hot. She had already suffered one of her hot flushes.
Sabra stared at her sister’s reddened cheeks with interest and took her time in phrasing the next question. ‘Why is he a mad man, sister Kaniz?’
‘He … He …’ Kaniz stammered, neither unable to continue, nor to look her sister in the eye.
‘Yes?’ Sabra’s deliberately monotone voice gently prompted her.
Her shoulders stiffening, Kaniz threw a challenging look at her sister. ‘Younus Raees came to our hawaili yesterday and had the audacity to ask me to marry him!’ She defied her sister to show any other emotion except outrage.
No outrage from Sabra. Only the shadow of a smile flickering across her features. ‘I see,’ was all she said.
‘Is that all you can say, Sabra?’ Kaniz was disappointed by her sister’s response.
‘What can I say? Apparently it is not over between you and Younus.’ Sabra’s eyes evasively focused on the quilted pattern of Kaniz’s pillowcase.
‘Between me and Younus! Have you gone mad, Sabra? There has never been anything between that man and myself, nor with any man for that matter! How dare you insult me so?’ Her body trembled with rage, her hand held to her throbbing cheek.
Sabra calmly met her sister’s murderous gaze. ‘Maybe not from your point of view, but he did ask for your hand in marriage some twenty years ago – remember? When you cruelly and vulgarly turned him out of your home. I gather he is now a widower. You yourself told me this last year. Am I right that he has two teenage children? Apparently he is seeking a new partner in life. You are obviously his first choice. A widow, the same age as him and he probably still desires you. He is a very eligible man, Kaniz, even at his age. He could marry a woman twenty years younger than him …’
Sabra’s eyes followed her sister as Kaniz leapt out of her bed and strode to the far corner of the room, as if by physically distancing herself from her sister and her words, ‘he probably still desires you,’ she could also mentally distance herself from them. The long chiffon dupatta had fallen off her shoulders and lay on the marble floor. Her fiery, almond-shaped eyes, her heaving chest and throbbing red cheeks only spelt out one loud message to her younger sister, still sitting in bed across the room, watching her, waiting for the storm.
Kaniz was utterly scandalised. ‘You are mad, my sister! Just like him!’ The words, at last, spluttered out of her beautiful mouth. ‘And you are trying to make me mad too! Look at me! I am turned fifty!’
‘You don’t look it,’ her sister impishly teased, now also sliding off the bed. ‘In fact, you look far younger than me, and I am supposed to be four years younger than you …’
‘Stop this farce at once, Sabra!’ Kaniz shrieked. ‘I have just become a grandmother! I have a son of thirty years old and you expect me to marry?’ Her ragged breathing didn’t alarm her sister. Sabra was used to her histrionics. This was just another bout to be confronted and got over with.
‘Why not?’ Smiling, Sabra calmly walked up to her sister.
‘Why not?’ Kaniz repeated blindly, wondering whether her sister really had gone insane. ‘Tell me Sabra, in which well have you drowned your commonsense? I thought you were the sensible one out of us. Do you want me to become a laughing stock here? Imagine the gossip and scandal – “Chaudharani Kaniz weds at fifty!” What would my son and daughter-in-law say? Even if I wanted to marry, which you know I don’t!’
Sabra drew her elder sister gently back to the bed. They sat on its edge, side by side. Kaniz sidled away from her sister, finding her company unbearable.
‘That man has insulted me beyond belief!’ she almost wept.
‘No, Kaniz, he hasn’t insulted you. On the contrary, he has honoured you by asking you to be his wife. As for people – let them talk! You have never cared about their opinion before! And Khawar has no right to object. Why should he? You sacrificed your whole life to him. And how has he paid you back? He has moved to Karachi! In a week or two, he will be taking his wife and daughter away too. What will you be left with? This sad, lonely old building. You and Neesa! Please take this chance, my sister. Sheikh Younus needs you as a companion, but you need him too. He will free you from your tortured past – your demons! Don’t you see?’
Kaniz pulled her arm from her sister’s firm grip. She stood up. ‘You are going to make me have my second nervous breakdown. Stop, Sabra! Firdaus caused the first one. Now you!’
‘You wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown just by talking to him. Did he come himself?’
‘Yes, yes, he came to see me; to talk to me – but I didn’t want to. Instead he left me a letter of proposal.’
‘What did he say? Can I see it?’
‘No, you can’t. It is scattered to the winds and only they know what was in it.’ Kaniz laughed at the curiosity in her sister’s eyes. ‘He asked me to either write him a letter or to personally see him. Of course I have no intention of doing either.’
‘Don’t make any more excuses, Kaniz. Our faith encourages women to remarry. Why do men remarry and women never do? Why do women have to suffer the pangs of loneliness, just because of female modesty and their children’s sake. You have your faith and me to support you. Forget everyone else and look at yourself in the mirror. You are not old. You are still a very attractive woman, at the prime of your life. Do not debase yourself in your own eyes. I request of you: just meet him once – to talk to him. Do not dismiss him or his proposal. Chances like this do not walk to one’s door. Take this opportunity, my sister. It is your last bid for marital happiness. If you don’t …’
Sabra stopped, staring eloquently at her sister. ‘If you don’t at least meet him in person, then I promise you that I will never step into your home again!’ Both Sabra’s words and her steady voice dumbfounded her elder sister.
‘I will not be blackmailed by you!’ Kaniz objected.
‘I mean it, Kaniz!’ The quiet determination in her sister’s voice arrested Kaniz.
They were suddenly interrupted by a knock on the door. Kulsoom Bibi, with her glass bangles merrily singing on her brown bony arms, majestically walked in. Kaniz gave the woman a disdainful glance. That ‘bag of bones’ had the temerity to march into her bedroom unannounced. The look in the matchmaker’s eyes, however, signalled to Kaniz that something must be afoot; otherwise Kulsoom would never have dared to climb to the second floor of her home, unaccompanied and uninvited. And to stand tall and straight.
‘How can we help you, Kulsoom Jee?’ Kaniz asked frostily. Why did this woman always turn up when she was having a high-powered chat with her sister?
‘I have come to tell you that the old man, Baba Siraj Din, is dead and …’ Kulsoom now looked up, excitement seeping through her body again. Savouring the effect that her next words would have on the two almighty sisters. ‘And that she is here in the village again,’ she whispered in awe. ‘We have just seen her.’
The two sisters stared blankly at Kulsoom as she breathed out the magical word: ‘Naghmana!’
Kulsoom’s height reached to her full five feet and half an inch. Her tanned, line-creased face blossomed before the shocked gazes of the two sisters. Her weak panting heart now retreated to a gentle, happy beat – content at last. For good measure she added as she walked out. ‘And with a husband! Her second!’
THIRTY FIVE
Shahzada had delegated judiciously the bedpost-carrying honour. She had remained at home and left the burial to the men.
Younus Raees was amongst the four men honoured with the privilege of bearing one corner of the old man’s funeral bed on his shoulder. The other three bedposts were propped on the shoulders of Khawar, Kaniz’s son, Sikander, his granddaughter Zarri Bano’s husband, and one of his grandsons. All of his four sons had, unfortunately, died before him. Hence, the honour of bedpost-carrying was bequeathed to other near and dear ones.
Wrapped in the traditional white shroud, which had once been generously dipped and bathed in the holy waters of Zam Zam in Makkah Sharif in Saudi Arabia, Baba Siraj Din with his henna dyed hair and thick moustache still appeared an imposing man even in death. No one could spot a single white hair either on his face or on the full crop of hair on his head. He had always had his roots regularly retouched with henna. His former protégé, now the qazi of the village, had given him his farewell ghusl, his ceremonial bath and dressed him in the white coffin shroud before his burial. As soon as the funeral preparations were completed, the old man was laid on his special palang, in the middle of the courtyard of his hawaili, amongst the women phoorie – the gathering of women mourners. They had two hours to pay their respects and say their farewells.
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