Haroon stared back, harbouring no inkling of what was in her head and as to what she was doing in his room. Perhaps she felt cold on the rooftop.
‘Can you not sleep upstairs? Here, you take the bed and I’ll go and find another room.’ He offered politely. It was the longest stumbling exchange between them in the last four days since they had arrived back in the village. Before she could open her mouth, Haroon was striding away.
Panicking, she rose from the bed. ‘Please don’t go! Don’t leave me!’ Her low cry halted him at the door.
He turned around and stared back at her. What was Gulshan up to? He waited patiently. What next?
‘Help me, Allah pak!’ Gulshan murmured in her head. Jealousy came to her aid, ripping her apart. ‘She is here, your wife!’ she cried, startling them both. ‘You have seen her, haven’t you? She is sleeping with her new husband! Do you still love her and want her? Please tell me!’ Thus Gulshan broke the silent anguish of the past – the first reference between them to Naghmana in twenty years.
Haroon both heard and felt the raw agony and the jealousy behind her cry. He didn’t know what to say. Would it be worthwhile for him to say anything at all? They were strangers after all. Would it be wasting his time and breath? But her eyes were pleading and something had to be said.
‘I know she is here!’ he returned dully. ‘I am not blind, I have seen her. What do you want me to say?’
Crushed, Gulshan fell silent, her head bowed low. The dark room suffocated her. Why had she come? He stood waiting, the door still held ajar, letting the moonlight stream in from the outside courtyard. Gulshan just sat. Tears of self-pity threatened and soon her, bitter sobs echoed around the room.
Agitated, Haroon pressed the door shut with his back. Unable to understand her, yet afraid to go near, afraid of being rebuffed. They had senselessly done it so many times, taking it in turns. Each time cutting themselves masochistically further adrift – hurting themselves and each other from afar.
He stood helplessly by the door as Gulshan wept her heart out. Waste! Waste! All those years wasted. For what? What fools they had been! She raised her accusing eyes at Haroon. How could she ever narrow this physical and emotional gap between them? What words could she possibly utter to pull him close? He wasn’t even asking her what the matter was. He just stood and waited – an unhappy and uncomforting stranger. What had they between them? Nothing but empty, hollow living. Two married strangers with separate lives, sleeping in separate rooms and eating in separate places, thinking separate thoughts. The only words exchanged: ‘What to cook?’ ‘There is a phone call!’ and ‘There is the bill!’.
Their son, Moeen, the troubled child wedged between them since the age of four, had had his life torn apart by his parents and their strange behaviour. Over a decade he lived this bizarre existence. Eventually he escaped by going to university far away. When he found work in another town the contact with his parents became minimal. He never really forgave them for what they had done to him. His young mind had struggled to make sense of his parents’ alienation. Communication and warmth had simply deserted their home. Outside, other people smiled, but his family’s mouths were etched into firm, stiff lines – never curved. He was passed from one arm to another, but those arms never touched. He saw his mother often cry and sometimes argue with his grandmother; he never asked why. He knew that the suffocating silence and misery had sunk into his mind and bones too. He retreated into his own world, playing with kites. His father never talked to anyone, spending most of his time outside. When Haroon was home, he was cold and uncommunicative. He and Gulshan never went out shopping together. In fact, they never went anywhere together. The young Moeen didn’t know what was going on? He had hated the departure from the village and he loathed his new school in the town. He was the only child at the new school who had no siblings. Bewildered, he had wondered whether he would ever have a brother or sister. No other child ever entered their house – no baby brother, no sister, nothing. His parents were two dead souls tied together, who never parted. He wondered what and who had hijacked their happiness.
‘Mother, what have you done to your lives?’ He broke the blistering silence one day when he was nearly nine. His mother’s stricken face was his answer. She had done nothing! Fate had dealt her the fatal blow, robbing her of everything she had loved. Misery was now her nightly and daily companion.
Hajra lived weighed down by guilt. She died a troubled woman on the prayer-mat uttering her appeal to Allah pak to forgive her. Her heart had wept. She was utterly broken by Fatima’s curses. She could neither forgive herself nor forget what had happened at the kacheri.
Baba Siraj Din was right: Hajra and he ultimately bore the responsibility. Her daughter was released from the presence of that woman, but her shadow lay as a heavy mantle, smothering them.
Her beloved Gulshan’s world was swept away before her very eyes. Her anguished cry ‘meh loothi ghi – I have been robbed, Mother,’ rang in their hearts for two decades. She had indeed been robbed of everything. She lived with her husband who was not a real husband. She lived as a wife but wasn’t able to be the wife. Only living a life of guilt for having taken the other woman’s place. On her mother’s orders, three times she had visited her husband’s bed. Three times she had returned humiliated. It was as if she too had received the three thalaks; one each time.
After that one month, she never entered her husband’s room again. It became his domain only. He never asked and she never went. They crept into their separate beds hugging their separate lives and miseries. The pattern was mutually established and accepted.
Hajra stood by helplessly watching, unable to intervene.
‘Mother, you destroyed my home!’ her daughter often accused her. ‘If you hadn’t demanded the kacheri …’ she cried out, unable to continue.
‘Are you mad? Did you want another woman to enter your home, to be your husband’s bedfellow?’ her mother had screeched back.
‘It would have been better than this! That woman was his first wife, don’t you remember? She had a prior right to him. Don’t you understand that she sacrificed him for me? She left him! She loved him too. Women have lived together for centuries – I would have coped.’
‘No, my naïve, innocent daughter. You don’t you know the misery, the hellish existence of having to share your life and husband with another.’
‘Anything would have been better than this living hell!’ her daughter had screamed out her own misery. ‘I have no husband in this existence – no life. He hates me! I have lost him!’
Her mother could not argue with that and wept out her own agony. True, this was no existence.
‘I wish you had never lived!’ Hajra’s hatred erupted against that woman. Soon afterwards, she repeated in guilt: ‘Allah pak, what am I saying? The poor, wretched woman, left empty-handed – how can I possibly still hate her? God forgive me!’ she bewailed after her special Nafl prayers. One day she never rose from her prayer-mat. Her last words were: ‘Allah pak, forgive me the sin I have committed.’
With her mother’s death, Gulshan faced total isolation. There were no friends or close relatives. Haroon lived as a shadow, passing through her life. Life just ticked along. There was no escape, each one blaming themselves, afraid to reach out to the other – afraid of being rebuffed again! The couple lived an unnatural existence, acutely aware of the other’s movements yet never letting the other know. Waiting! Waiting for what? They knew that only a dead end faced them – a brick wall. However, Gulshan’s weeping was now slicing through that solid wall – reaching out. But it had been so long that neither knew how to cope with it.
Haroon’s arms hung helplessly by his side; he was unable to obey his instinct to reach out to her, to comfort his wife.
Twenty years had simply frozen him into inaction. Gulshan looked into his face. It wasn’t blank, only bore a confused look. He didn’t know what to do. Gulshan’s heart tripped a beat. A tiny ray of hope was peeping through the minute cr
ack in the wall. ‘He is unsure!’ her heart sang. She had to feel her way and pull him with her through the wall. She didn’t mind hurting and debasing herself in the process.
‘Your first wife is in the next room, Haroon!’ She repeated and waited. Then when he made no reply ‘What do you feel?’ She cried.
‘She is not my wife!’ He bit out. ‘Remember? I divorced her!’
Gulshan see-sawed again, edging back, buried under the guilt and the accusing tone. Was he blaming her?
‘She is happy in her new life.’ She retaliated. He heard the bitter tone. ‘She has married a professor and has two sons and we …’ Her voice petered away into pathos and regret.
She didn’t hear him move softly to the bedside. Only his shadow blocked her vision. She raised her face. They stared at each other, questioning and unsure. Wanting to know more yet afraid to make the first move – afraid of rejection.
‘And we?’ He softly prompted, entering into the tentative dialogue to meet her halfway.
She raised her hands up in despair. ‘And we …’ She let them and her tears say it all.
‘And we wasted twenty years of our lives!’ He completed for her. ‘That is what we want to say isn’t it?’ He entered into full dialogue. ‘And whose fault is that?’
‘You never reached out to me!’
‘Because I knew you hated me!’
‘What?’ Gulshan gasped. ‘I never hated you! It was you who hated me for separating you from your beloved Naghmana!’
‘No! No, Gulshan!’ He was striding away, his body trembling in rage. ‘Oh God help us. What crossroads we chose. I never hated you, you foolish woman. I thought you hated me for betraying you with another woman.’
Gulshan’s head slumped on the pillow as she cried out her rage and misery.
‘Stupid, stupid misunderstanding.’ She had lost her youth. ‘I have been robbed of twenty years of my life, Haroon.’
‘Who robbed whom?’ His hand had reached out to pat her on the head but then withdrew. ‘Gulshan, we’ve robbed ourselves. We were too stupid and too proud.’
‘I know!’ Gulshan cried. ‘For the last twenty years I have wept in guilt for that woman. But she has enjoyed a happy life and has two sons. While I … I have lost my fertile years in barrenness. My mother died a troubled death. She never forgave herself!’
She stopped, staring at him. It was time …
‘I don’t know if you can forgive me, Haroon, for what happened twenty years ago – but I beg of you, forgive me, for that kacheri!’ She saw a shadow of pain cross his face. ‘It should never have happened. You should never have divorced Naghmana – your wife. I still think of her as your wife. She will always be your wife in my eyes. We could have managed to live together. If only my mother … We …’
Haroon turned and walked to the door. The wall was up again. She watched, accepting with resignation. ‘I forgive you, Haroon. If you walk out of that door and never face me again, I’ll understand, for I know what you feel.’ She offered no bitterness, only quiet acceptance. She then turned her face towards the wall and curled up her body on his bed.
As if in a dream, he stopped, turned and walked back to the bed. Sitting down on the edge he looked at her. She felt his weight on the bed and held her breath. His hand touched her head, lay on it for a few seconds and then withdrew. She sighed. It was enough. A diamond she had plucked out of the coal of abyss.
Much, much later she heard him lie down. A foot-wide space separated them. But she didn’t mind. It was much, much narrower than the ocean before.
FORTY
‘STOP HERE!’ NAGHMANA’S hoarse whisper had Jahanghir braking and bringing the car to an abrupt halt.
‘Where are you going?’ he said irritably, watching his wife climb out of the car and slamming its door. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Unused to raw afternoon heat, he wanted to get back to the comfort of his own home and the city life.
Her eyes glittering, she shouted back, ‘You wanted to know what is going on, and what my relationship is with all these people and this village – well, this place is your answer, Jahanghir. Come!’ she commanded, pointing to the large building of the village madrasah, and determinedly walking towards it.
Her feet traced the steps up to the two large wrought-iron gates and pulling the rusty chain latch down, with her two hands she flung them wide open. They noisily heaved apart.
Her eyes closed. Then opened. The madrasah courtyard lay before her. A desolate place, with its concrete floor caked with inches of dust and rotting dead leaves. The guava tree, by contrast, had matured into a majestic presence in one corner, its branches forlornly remembering and greeting her, swaying in the warm afternoon sun. Three green parrots and parakeets hopped and skipped from branch to branch.
The white plaster of the verandah pillars had long since fallen off in places, leaving behind large bare patches, showing the naked red brickwork beneath. Three old wooden chairs, were stacked clumsily against one wall of the verandah.
Naghmana stepped down into the courtyard, recalling how she had sought refuge behind her Auntie Fatima’s body, twenty years earlier. As if in a dream, her feet floated to the middle of the courtyard. Haunting images danced behind her closed eyelids.
‘Naghmana, what are you doing here?’ Jahanghir’s troubled voice sliced eerily across the courtyard. Even when she felt him grip her arm and shake her roughly, she didn’t open her eyes. Her head swerved from side to side, as she swayed in time.
‘They are everywhere, Jahanghir! Save me!’ Real terror marked her voice; her breath hissing out of her mouth in short erratic jerks, confounding her husband.
‘What?’ Jahanghir’s grip tightened.
Her eyes flickered open, a delirious look in them. ‘The snakes!’ she whimpered. ‘They’re reaching out to me! Can’t you see them?’
‘What nonsense is this, Naghmana? Look, where are they?’ he asked, lifting her chin, losing patience with his wife. His body hot and uncomfortable.
She just looked right through him. Dumbfounded he walked around her, his arm held out, brusquely pointing to the empty courtyard. ‘There are no snakes here – just you and me and those stupid parrots!’ Jahanghir wasn’t at all amused. Until now he had always dismissed his wife’s nightmares about snakes, with a laugh. But this was no laughing matter. In the hot afternoon sunshine his body went utterly cold. His wife was losing her mind before his very eyes.
Naghmana edged away from him, stumbling against a pillar, holding her hand protectively against her chest. The Buzurgh was watching her. They were all watching her, hating her, waiting to punish her.
‘Thalak! Thalak! Thalak! I divorce you! I divorce you! I divorce you!’ the words thudded against her body like heavy rocks.
‘Naghmana!’ Her husband’s pained voice finally dug into her brain. He cupped her face in his hands and raised it up. Beads of sweat shone on her forehead. Her eyes gently fluttered open and then stared up at him, her mouth half-open. He couldn’t look away. Her eyes were the bleakest he had ever seen. His heart sinking, he had to numbly remind himself that they were his wife’s eyes. It was as if he was looking into the very soul of a stranger. He saw her pink tongue slip out and moisten her dry lips. Then the words, carefully guarded for years, simply rolled away from her mouth – uncaring, defeated.
‘My husband divorced me here – on this very spot!’
He heard her, but the words didn’t sink straight away into Jahanghir’s head. And when they did, Naghmana saw a strange gleam of hard light leap across his eyes. ‘Husband!’ they seemed to accuse.
‘You wanted to know why I have brought you here?’ Heartbeat faint, she tried to explain. ‘This … This is the place of evil. I … I …’ She stumbled over the words, her trembling hand raised across her eyes. ‘I was shamed here! In front of all the villagers – the snakes of my nightmares, with their poison fangs.’
A highly intelligent man, Jahanghir now desperately struggled to make sense of what was hap
pening before him. The sight of his elegant, modern wife, reduced to a gibbering madwoman was ripping him apart. Then he recalled her words.
‘Why were you divorced here? Why were you shamed?’ he demanded.
‘They called me a whore!’ The dam cracked and burst. Twenty years of festered poison, now spluttered out of her mouth. ‘A whore, Jahanghir!’ The agonising cry hung between them. Behind her closed eyes Naghmana didn’t see her husband’s ashen face. It was Hajra’s. Eyes burning coals of loathing. Two chipped front teeth, spitting out the venom: ‘A home-wrecker! A man-eater! A whore!’
‘I forgave them all!’ Naghmana’s voice sank in the desolate madrasah courtyard. Her husband could only just hear it. She murmured, ‘Just as I forgave the old dying man.’
‘I came here on a holiday,’ she continued, unaware of her husband’s wooden presence beside the pillar. ‘My aunt slapped me! One woman from the rooftop hit me with her shoe. The old man, who summoned us here to ask me for forgiveness, he … he hated me! He had me divorced from my Haroon. It was there I sat.’ Naghmana pointed to the place. ‘Haroon sat there! And she, his second wife, sat there with her son – gaping at me! They were all gaping at me! All hating me. The old man forced my husband to divorce me – three times. Not once, not twice, but three times! The cobra demanded three thalaks! He took my beloved Haroon from me!’
‘Why?’ Jahanghir asked quietly. His head was reeling at the words ‘my beloved Haroon’. Naghmana didn’t hear him, she was looking at the space where the cobra had sat and pounced.
‘You have never told me anything about your past or your “beloved Haroon”.’ Her husband’s jeering tone lashed out at her, battering through the fog in her head. ‘I am beginning to think I am married to a stranger. I don’t know you at all! Tell me, Naghmana, why did they call you a whore?’
Bewildered, her mouth fell open, eyes scanning her husband’s face. Instead of warmth and understanding, reproach and jealousy danced in her professor’s eyes, marking the hard lines of his face.
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