Naimat Bibi ruled the kitchen and the dining area, with authority and ease. Scouring pots, wiping tables, hosing the marble floors, carrying and stacking piles of china and cutlery around the two dining rooms – her body ached, but she didn’t complain aloud, only in her friend’s ear. ‘A good worker is one who gets on with most tasks with very little noise or tantrums,’ she had stoically commented to her friend.
Kulsoom Bibi perched, with as much dignity as she could manage, on her small stool in the corner of the kitchen, where she cheerfully played with Zarri Bano’s son, Adam, without letting him bounce out of her aching arms onto the marble floor, or pulling his arms out of his joints as she struggled to hold onto him.
As the beautiful young granddaughter moved gracefully around her grandfather’s home in her black veil, Kulsoom Bibi had sung some ancient lullabies to her young son.
‘What are you singing those silly lullabies for?’ Naimat Bibi had teased her friend. ‘No modern mothers sing those songs these days!’
Kulsoom Bibi’s eyes kept hopping to the verandah clock, through the kitchen window. It was already well past eleven o’clock and she was desperate to get home and rest her aching arms and legs on her own charpoy. She had declined the offer of sleeping in the hawaili, fearing that Mistress Zarri Bano would pass her the baby as soon as he was awake. At least in her own home she could control what time she went in and not be lumbered with the young baby as soon as her eyes opened.
She rued the moment when she had innocently picked up Zarri Bano’s little boy and started to play with him. He had happily gurgled away against her chest and in her arms as she tickled him all over. His grandmother, Shahzada, who happened to be watching, smiled with delight. Soon afterwards, prefaced with a generous payment, Shahzada had delegated her grandson’s care not to one of the ‘flighty’ girls working in the hawaili but to their worthy village matchmaker.
The mistress had brightened her request with the sweet pill, ‘Oh, you are so good with our prince, Adam! You don’t mind, do you? As you can see, my poor Zarri Bano has barely a moment to spare for her child with all the guests to look after. And, I personally don’t want anyone else to go near our precious boy! If my friend Fatima had been here, she would have loved to look after him. I wish she would come back from Dubai.’
Put like that, poor Kulsoom was in no position to refuse. After all, she had progressed to the honourable status of the big hawaili’s ‘babyminder’, whether she personally relished this little honour or not and that was it. Kulsoom’s whole day rotated around the young chap. The only time Zarri Bano took her son was to breast-feed him. Then, having fed and changed him, she would promptly return him to Kulsoom’s aching arms. The funeral day was endless. She had carried the little boy for something like ten hours that day. She had propped him around her body in different positions and trundled around the hawaili at the funeral, mingling with the guests, hoping to ingratiate herself to some of them – to boost her matchmaking business. She graciously ignored the teasing glances of the other guests, as they saw her physically struggle to try and hold on to the baby.
Zarri Bano had only just taken her son away from Kulsoom when Sikander came looking for both. ‘Have you seen Zarri Bano, Auntie Jee?’ he politely requested, beaming at the two elderly ladies.
‘Yes, Master Sikander. Mistress Zarri Bano has just taken her son. I think she has gone to her room.’
‘Thank you, Auntie Kulsoom!’ Sikander flashed his most attractive smile, making the humble matchmaker’s heart flutter in a crazy way.
‘Mistress Zarri Bano is a very lucky woman to have a man like him,’ Kulsoom murmured to herself, watching him stride out of the courtyard. She had observed him with his first wife, Ruby, and now she had seen him with Zarri Bano. No one could doubt the passion that Sikander harboured for his beautiful new wife. ‘Ah, to have a man like that in one’s life!’ Kulsoom sighed, feeling very lonely all of a sudden. All her life she had lived alone and, apart from two years, husbandless. Very rarely had she ached for male companionship. Tonight, for some reason, she felt empty inside. Independence and self-sufficiency were poor substitutes for emotional fulfilment, Kulsoom was discovering this late in her life. ‘I am nearly an old woman! A plain old woman! What shameless thoughts are crossing my mind? Allah pak – forgive me,’ Kulsoom chided herself, as she let herself out of the hawaili and hobbled down the cobbled lane leading to her house. As she went past Chaudharani Kaniz’s hawaili she heard the two mighty gates open. By the time she had walked a few yards further up she glimpsed two dark-cloaked female figures coming out of the hawaili gates. They didn’t see her. Their faces were turned the other way and apparently they were making their way out of the village. ‘That must be Kaniz and her sister Sabra. Where on earth are they going in the middle of the night? What are they up to?’ Kulsoom was most intrigued.
Back home she made herself comfortable on her bed, pulling the crisp cotton sheet over her aching body. Another very long day awaited her tomorrow. Village intrigues could wait. ‘Thank goodness most of the guests would be leaving. Maybe by tomorrow, Mistress Zarri Bano could look after her own son.’ She wondered if Naimat Bibi had finished her nightly chores.
‘Oh God, poor Naimat has got that pot of hot milk to dispense!’ Kulsoom gasped aloud as she suddenly recalled the huge pot of boiling milk on the stove. ‘All those tall glasses to fill to the brim and then to rinse and scour again before the night is ended. Why did all those guests need to have milk before they went to sleep? Did they all have milk at home or was it one of the perks of being a guest they couldn’t resist?’
When Sikander entered his wife’s bedroom, the sight that met his eyes had his mouth widening into a broad smile and a tender look sweeping across his features. His beautiful wife had discarded her burqa. Her hair lay in an abundance of rich auburn curls around her face and neck. She was only wearing her cotton nightrobe. The round neckline was unbuttoned as she fed her young son. She nestled him closer against her body. The look of desire in Sikander’s eyes, had her smiling; then blushing she became shy once again. Even after eighteen months of having him as her husband there were still moments when she panicked and felt shy. Now all of a sudden she wanted to flee from him. Her pink cheeks warm, she pulled the fabric of her night-dress over her breast. They hadn’t seen each other like this for two months. Back to square one again – two strangers meeting and needing to rediscover one another.
Sikander strode across the room. His son wasn’t the only hungry one. Zarri Bano saw the look, her heart spiralling away.
‘I haven’t had a moment alone with you, Zarri Bano, all afternoon!’ Sikander huskily whispered, standing beside her and his hand reaching for her hair. Just then there was a knock at the door, causing Sikander to immediately step back. He walked over to the door and opened it.
Shahzada swept inside, taking in the scene at one go: her daughter’s pink cheeks and evasive eyes. She sighed with pleasure. Zarri Bano was at peace with herself – a normal woman, like millions of others; no longer a traumatised Holy Woman. There was a beautiful child at her breast and a loving husband by her side. This was the dream her mother had dreamt and longed for her to have for so many years. It was now a reality and Shahzada thanked Allah pak for this blessing.
‘Zarri Bano, I’ll take the little prince and keep him with me tonight. You have both worked very hard today with the funeral arrangements and you need a rest; it’s going to be another hard day tomorrow,’ Shahzada generously volunteered.
‘Thank you, Mother. But you, too, are tired,’ Zarri Bano quickly returned.
‘I think it would be very helpful if you were to take the prince with you tonight,’ Sikander intervened smoothly, ignoring Zarri Bano’s flushed face.
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Shahzada ignored her daughter’s reaction and moved to take her grandson into her arms.
‘Mother!’ Zarri Bano said, stopping her.
‘Yes?’ Shahzada responded, cradling the sleeping child on her shoulder.<
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‘We were wondering …’ Zarri Bano paused to cast a quick glance at her husband, hoping that he would endorse what she was about to say. ‘We were wondering whether you’d like to come and live with us in Karachi? I don’t want to leave you alone here.’
‘I … I don’t know if I can’ Shahzada replied, sitting down on the bed, lost in her thoughts.
‘Mother, you came to live in the village for Grandfather’s sake. When Father died, I never stopped you, did I? Our home in town has lain empty. Now Grandfather is no longer alive, you cannot possibly live here alone. We are already a very small family – Father, Ruby and Jafar are all dead. All we have now is each other, and Haris, and now our beautiful Adam. Please spend some time with us?’
‘Oh dear, please don’t pressurise me. I … I don’t know. I have grown to love this village and this house. My friends are here, the villagers are my daily companions – they are such wonderful people.’
‘But they are only companions, Mother – not family! I have stayed here with you for two months. As much as I’d like to, I can’t come regularly. While I’m away, my publishing business is at a standstill. I have had to do all the administration by e-mail in the last few days. I won’t be able to come again for a long time. Sikander misses us and I want to be with him – and I also want you with me! So the only solution is that you come and live with us. Don’t you want the company of your two grandsons?’
Shahzada was hedged in by her daughter’s plausibility and love. Her son-in-law, Sikander, too genuinely meant it as well. She could tell by the look in his eyes. He was always happy to see her and delighted in the love she showered on his two sons.
‘Yes, it’s not been the same since Brother Fiaz died and my best friend, Fatima, left to join her son in Dubai after marrying off all her daughters.’ Shahzada sighed. ‘I do miss her so much. She hasn’t been able to come back, even for her first grandchild. Only two days ago Firdaus gave birth to a beautiful daughter and already Kaniz has been busy handing out baskets of ludoos. You are right that there is nothing to keep me here, when the rest of my family is elsewhere.’
‘Yes, yes, Mother!’ Zarri Bano couldn’t contain her joy.
‘Oh, my children, if you two genuinely believe that I will not be a burden to you, then I will indeed come with you. This hawaili will remain everyone’s holiday home. We seem to have more homes than people to live in them!’
‘I am so pleased that you will come with us, Mother. Thank you!’
‘Yes, Auntie, thank you!’ Sikander added his own appreciation.’
‘Right, I must go. And you had better get to bed. As I said, it is going to be a long day ahead of us tomorrow. We have some strange moody guests to attend to and see some of them off safely.’
‘Yes, Mother. That Auntie Gulshan – I haven’t seen her say a single word to her husband in all four days. Are they really married? He is sleeping in the room downstairs and she is upstairs on the rooftop!’
Shahzada silently nodded. She knew the couple’s set-up and her heart ached for all four of them. A long time ago, her mother-in-law Zulaikha had confided to her what had actually happened at the kacheri and to whom. Her father-in-law also, later in life, had told her about the nightmare he lived every day. Every night, before he went to sleep, he always said goodbye to the woman’s eyes as she looked up at him whispering, ‘I forgive you. I forgive you all.’ Always shuddering, he would pray to Allah pak for forgiveness before he closed his own eyes.
Shahzada had caught him at one such moment last year. It was then that he had confided fully in her, explained his inner misery and torture – for he had sinned, and sinned in a mighty big way. ‘I have had a young woman divorced who did not want to be divorced from a husband who didn’t want to divorce her. I pressurised him to give her the three thalaks, all at once. I forced him later to sign the papers. Tell me, Shahzada, how can I put the clock back? I don’t know what evil or madness entered into my brain that day and made me do such a crazy and inhuman thing. How can I find this woman and beg her forgiveness? How can I bring those two people together again? I sometimes wonder if they are truly divorced. Is their divorce valid? Listen to me my dearest Shahzada. Find her for me before I die – I’ve got to see her.’
So when he was on his deathbed and her father-in-law had said ‘Call her, please!’ she knew exactly who he meant. He had also asked her to contact the other pair, Haroon and Gulshan. It proved to be a very stressful time for everyone concerned. Shahzada had to play a diplomatic game with the two couples as they settled in the same villa. She kept them apart, making sure that they had bedrooms on different floors, and she failed to introduce them to each other. They had dinner at different times and at different sittings. The poor woman, Naghmana, locked herself in her room on the first afternoon and after that rarely came out. Her bespectacled husband knew no one in the hawaili, and was more concerned in spending time with his wife away from the guests. Haroon remained a silent figure amongst the men, with no knowledge of Naghmana’s new husband. Gulshan apparently never went near her husband at all. Shahzada left them all to it for she had enough to do with arranging the funeral without analysing her guests’ strange behaviour.
‘Why did Grandfather want to meet that woman?’ asked her daughter. ‘She’s very strange, mother, spending all day in bed by herself. She has hardly eaten anything. Twice poor Naimat Bibi took a tray up for her, and both times the food was barely touched. If you ask her anything she looks vague and hardly answers, and yet she is supposed to be an executive in a large firm. Who is she, Mother? Tell me please.’
‘I don’t know!’ Shahzada lied glibly. Her father-in-law’s secret and that of the villagers’ involvement and guilt in the kacheri would die with her. She would not divulge it to anyone, even her own daughter, who, with her brother and sister, had been packed off to the town because of that fateful afternoon, little guessing how the kacheri had caused a permanent rift in her grandmother’s home. How her grandparents lost each other that day.
Shahzada saw, felt and lived Baba Siraj Din and Mistress Zulaikha’s estrangement. Why it had happened, she had never had the courage to find out. Her mother-in-law died a troubled death only months later on a hospital bed. Her last action was to hand her small silk parcel to her curious daughter-in-law.
‘Keep it safe. It is a precious gift.’ Shahzada took Naghmana’s lock of hair and put it away somewhere, but never found it again.
‘Right, my children, get some sleep. Allah hafiz!’ Shahzada abruptly cut herself off from her thoughts. Enough misery and guilt soaked this house, she wasn’t going to let a little discoloured silk parcel spoil her night.
Shahzada, with her grandson held lovingly in her arms, pressed a kiss on her daughter’s forehead and left the room.
Sikander’s eyes circled his wife in pleasure. Zarri Bano shyly looked away, then boldly met his gaze. ‘I have missed you so much!’ she murmured against his lips.
His arms became a tight band, as he whispered the words: ‘My beautiful bride – my Holy Woman.’
THIRTY EIGHT
YOUNUS RAEES LEANED stiffly against the tree trunk near the village well, looking up at the stars in the night sky, waiting. He was debating with himself about the wisdom of agreeing to meet Chaudharani Kaniz in the middle of the night. She was a woman of an unusual temperament. One never knew where one stood with her.
After a while he spotted two heavily cloaked female figures coming down the path from the village. His heartbeat hastened. Standing up straight he drew away from the shadows of the tree branches, watching and waiting.
One figure stalled, disappearing into the shadows beside a tree near the village path. The other, tall one, was steadily moving in his direction. One end of a chador was held straight across the woman’s face, concealing the lower half, giving her total anonymity in the darkness. Younus Raees stepped back into the shadows, not quite sure now whether it was Kaniz who was coming towards him. She had never put a cloth to her face before.
‘Kaniz!’ Younus Raees’s firm but reassuring voice froze the cloaked woman. He knew then that it was her. Slowly she turned round and, letting the chador fold fall slowly from her face, revealed her identity to him.
‘Don’t go!’ he urged, taking a few tentative paces towards her.
Unsure, Kaniz stood poised on the edge of the path, hugging the black chador around her – sheltering in it. Then her old pride came rushing to her rescue. I am not going to run away from him, she thought. It was me who requested this meeting, after all.
Bravely she turned fully to face this man who had somehow persisted in remaining on the periphery of her very existence for the last thirty years. Never visible to her gaze, but somehow always there. Threatening her peace. Beckoning.
Their eyes met, then drifted awkwardly apart. The silence stretching between them was like a humid blanket in the summer evening. Both were painfully aware of the shadowy figure of Sabra, chaperoning them at a discreet distance.
Kaniz boldly took the initiative. Her eyes carefully averted from his, she began in her clear, steady voice. ‘Younus Raees Sahib, three days ago you came with a letter to my home. In that letter you honoured me with a certain request. You said that I could give you my answer to that request in person. And thus I am here.’ Her voice dipped to a low whisper, as she suddenly came over shy.
‘What happened to my letter?’ he enquired.
Kaniz looked up, laughter bubbling and spilling out of her mouth as she recalled her action on her rooftop, with her sharp nails, shredding the note to tiny bits of paper.
‘Raees Sahib, the letter followed you that day, the tiny shredded messengers whispering my answer to you in the wind.’
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