Sikander and his father Raja Din were sitting and talking to Zarri Bano’s parents. Tea had been served by Fatima, their housekeeper. It was the first time that they had all met. Jafar and Sikander had got to know each other in Karachi on business. On one occasion Sikander had invited Jafar to his home.
A friendship had quickly blossomed between the two men. On one such occasion Sikander’s mother mentioned to Jafar the subject of finding a suitable bride for her son. At that time all Jafar could think of was his own two sisters. The elder one, he had informed them, had declined so many suitors that they had lost count and were embarrassed on behalf of the people who had come to ask for her hand. ‘You are welcome to try, however,’ he had informed Sikander. ‘If not, there is always my younger sister, Ruby,’ he chuckled.
After meeting Sikander and getting to know him better, Jafar knew instinctively that his eldest sister, Zarri Bano, was the woman for his friend. In age, education, looks and temperament, they were well matched on all accounts.
On his return, Jafar had informed his parents and Zarri Bano about Sikander. She, for her part, had dismissed the matter from her mind straight away – she wasn’t interested! Although for a moment or two it did occur to her that it would be handy to be married to someone settled in Karachi, when she set up her publishing company. Jafar’s father, Habib, and mother, Shahzada were, however, very interested. They asked Jafar to invite his friend and his parents to their home.
Yet in their hearts they despaired. It had almost become routine, turning suitors away. It wasn’t only Zarri Bano who rejected the men who came to see her and ask for her hand; her father, too, was every bit as fastidious. Somehow, none of the callers ever seemed to measure up to his very intelligent and very beautiful eldest daughter. He always ended up by declaring arrogantly: ‘The man has to be the best.’ When Zarri Bano declined, Habib secretly applauded and was grateful for her decision.
His wife, on the other hand, saw things from a mother’s point of view. She was on the point of sheer desperation. Zarri Bano was in her late twenties and still there was no marriage in sight. ‘When will she settle down and raise a family?’ she kept asking her husband, and Habib was wont to reply flippantly that there was plenty of time.
‘Do you want to saddle our beautiful daughter to any nathu pethu?’ he asked her. ‘I’ll only let her marry a man of the highest pedigree from a land-owning family at that, with a good name and social standing.’
His wife was then duty-bound to scold him. ‘Don’t say that, Habib Sahib. All children are precious in their parents’ eyes, including those suitors. It is not good to keep dismissing them. You and your daughter will gain a bad reputation. They will think that she is too grand, proud and opinionated, when in fact, she’s just been unable to make her choice. You haven’t helped either. You have been colluding with her in rejecting the suitors, haven’t you?’
‘Don’t be silly! I am just very possessive of my daughter and want the best for her.’
‘That is just it – you are too possessive! That’s the problem. It is not healthy, Habib Sahib.’ Shahzada’s gaze had pinned his accusingly.
‘Now you are being melodramatic.’ Habib turned away from his wife, laughing, bringing the conversation to an end.
Here were the guests, come to meet and get to know their daughter. If all went well there would be a follow-up meeting two weeks later. If it came to some sort of rapport developing between Sikander and Zarri Bano, as well as between their two sets of parents, then Zarri Bano could visit them in Sikander’s home in Karachi.
On seeing Sikander and exchanging a few pleasantries, Shahzada was highly pleased, her heart warming immediately to him. Her eyes often strayed to his handsome face. Habib, however, held himself in reserve. In looks and manner Sikander was most appealing – he couldn’t fault him, but he was going to wait and see his daughter’s reaction and then decide.
A knock at the door made them all look up.
Zarri Bano entered. She stood before them: tall, majestic in bearing and stunning in her smart pink outfit. Sikander swiftly took in her appearance, satisfied himself that it was the same woman of the mela, then bent forward, seemingly preoccupied in the act of breaking a biscuit on a plate. It was at that moment that Habib glanced across at him, to assess his reaction to his beloved daughter. His mouth tightened as he saw the time Sikander took in looking up.
His father, on the other hand, setting eyes on Zarri Bano for the first time, was totally captivated. A wide grin on his face, he followed her every movement as she walked towards them.
She bade them Salam. Sikander heard her and still didn’t bother to look up. The voice was pleasing, he noted. It matched her looks.
Zarri Bano allowed her gaze to pass over everybody, catching their eyes individually and smiling. Coming further into the room, she sat down next to her mother, on a sofa opposite Sikander and his father. Now she willed him to look up, piqued that he had not met her gaze, but had been more concerned with his stupid biscuit than with her!
She didn’t know where the impulse came from but it was totally in character, in her case, to go against normal etiquette. She decided to address him personally, so that he would have to turn to her and look up. She wasn’t going to be ignored by this arrogant, handsome stranger who had stolen into her peaceful world and had dared to violate her earlier with his gaze – suitor or otherwise!
‘Sikander Sahib,’ she began sweetly. She had learnt his name from Ruby on the stairs. ‘Did you have a pleasant journey? Was our mela to your liking? We are a bit gauche in the country compared to the sophisticated world of Karachi, you see.’
He looked up then!
His eyebrows shot up; he was surprised at her audacity in speaking directly to him in the very presence of their parents, and without any formal introduction as such. Then, for her to remind him of that scene at the mela! It was most improper. A disapproving expression entered his eyes. She is too unconventional for my liking! darted the thought at the back of his mind.
Now he gave her the benefit of his full gaze. Smoky grey in colour, his eyes seemed to have plunged directly into her open soul again. Yet they remained cool and there was no answering smile on his lips.
‘Yes, Sahiba, we had a lovely journey,’ he said politely. ‘And yes, too, your mela was a nice interlude on our way. It was a pleasant surprise – a preview of what to expect here in your home.’
Zarri Bano’s cheeks delicately coloured. Only he noticed it, because he knew the cause of it. He had reminded her of their earlier encounter and was pleased to note that there was a dent in her poise after all.
Zarri Bano turned to Raja Din, dismissing Sikander neatly, and began to talk animatedly about Karachi and the university course she had studied there. Raja Din beamed at her, her incredible beauty swimming before his eyes. He envisaged beautiful grandchildren with the face of this woman. It was those eyes verging between blue and green, sparkling at him: to have a grandson with those eyes! He responded to her questions enthusiastically.
While they talked, Sikander covertly watched and listened, amused that his father was so smitten with her. Hadn’t the same thing happened to him, Sikander, at the mela? One glance had him hooked!
After half an hour Zarri Bano left them. That was how far it reached with this first meeting.
Sikander and his father stayed for dinner. This time Ruby joined them, while Zarri Bano remained in her room. ‘Even if I was interested, which I am not,’ she said haughtily, ‘Why should I go back to that room? I have never done so before, so why should I start now? Especially to please a man who has not even bothered to smile at me.’
She couldn’t, however, stop herself from listening to the sounds downstairs and waiting to see when they would leave. At the end, she saw them go while hovering behind the curtain. ‘You will return for me, Sikander, you conceited fellow,’ she murmered. ‘It will then give me great pleasure – to turn you down!’ And Zarri Bano whisked away from the window, dismissing him total
ly from her mind.
When Ruby came up later and told her that they wanted to come again, Zarri Bano made no comment. Downstairs, she passed their housekeeper, Fatima, in the hall. A smile lit the older woman’s face.
‘This one is good-looking, isn’t he?’ Fatima teased. Very fond of Zarri Bano, Fatima was prone to talk honestly with her.
‘Oh, he is all right, I suppose. We will see what happens,’ Zarri Bano replied, her cheek dimpling playfully.
‘But you do like him, don’t you?’ Fatima persisted, wanting to make sure.
Zarri Bano merely laughed aloud, as she turned to go into the dining room. Fatima stared after her young mistress. She wished for nothing more than to have their Zarri Bano, and her own daughter, Firdaus, married off happily. She prayed for their health and their futures. Above all, for her to have Khawar for a son-in-law – that was Fatima’s own true dream.
Later, alone with her husband in their bedroom, Shahzada scanned Habib’s face with trepidation. He sat on the sofa, a business account ledger spread out on his lap.
‘I am not happy with the munshi’s land account. There is something not quite right here.’ Habib glanced up briefly at his wife from across the room.
‘But are you happy with Sikander?’ Shahzada softly ventured.
Habib’s head jerked up, but he looked quickly down again and crisply turned the page of the ledger, marking it in one corner with his gold pen.
‘I think that our daughter has, at last, found her match,’ Shahzada tried again. She experienced the urgent need to pursue the subject, for she had glimpsed a strange look in her husband’s eyes. She knew that he was hiding his thoughts behind the business ledger.
‘You think so?’ Habib queried, turning to his wife and throwing the gold pen on to the table in front of him.
‘Yes,’ Shahzada answered bravely. ‘Did you not see, Habib Sahib, the look in your daughter’s eyes when she returned from the mela, and her reaction as she met him? She has never looked like that before.’ Disregarding the chilled look in her husband’s eyes – they were as cold as the Kashmiri Mountains – Shahzada boldly persisted, ‘I think this handsome tycoon will be our daughter’s destiny …’
She abruptly stopped as her husband knocked the heavy wooden coffee table aside with his foot and stood up, a towering figure glaring down at her, letting the ledger fall to the marble floor with a loud clatter.
‘I haven’t decided yet.’ He spoke implacably. ‘It is obvious that you are besotted with him. That conceited bastard was more concerned with biscuits than giving my daughter the respect and attention she deserves. He barely glanced at my Zarri Bano, Shahzada! Men have been falling in love with my daughter since she was a teenager, whereas he could not even be bothered to look at her properly. That I find very offensive!’
‘But what about your daughter? Didn’t you see the look in her eyes?’ Shahzada begged.
‘Yes, I did,’ he ground out. ‘All the more reason for me to be cautious. I am the head of the family and I will decide what is good for my Zarri Bano. I don’t like this man, Shahzada.’
‘Habib, you are being too protective. I tell you, our Zarri Bano is keen on him. You must have seen how she reacted in his presence? Did you not see how she—’
‘This man has the power to hurt my beloved daughter. I feel it in my very bones!’ Habib replied angrily, cutting his wife short. ‘I will not let anyone do anything to cause her any pain or insult her in any way. You forget, Shahzada, in our clan, destinies are made and dictated by us. I will decide if this man is to be my daughter’s destiny or not.’
‘No, Habib, no!’ Shahzada appealed, her words echoing in the empty room, as Habib strode out of it banging the heavy walnut door behind him.
Shahzada stared at the intricate carvings on the back of the door with a sense of foreboding.
Chapter 2
CHAUDHARANI KANIZ WAS being driven back from a two-week holiday in the resort of Murri on the Kashmir border. She had also, on her way, visited two of her sisters, who were married and settled in Lahore, in the province of Punjab.
Despite the stifling summer heat of Sind she was glad to be nearly home. She hoped that her son, Khawar, was well and that everything was running smoothly in her household, left in the capable hands of her servant, Neesa.
In Chaudharani Kaniz’s mind, the rishta or eligible bride to whom her youngest sister Sabra had introduced her in Lahore, would be an excellent wife for Khawar. The young woman was attractive and well-educated, but more to the point she came from a wealthy family of good repute and background.
The only snag, however, was whether the young woman and her family would find their proposal acceptable. The thought was firmly lodged in Kaniz’s mind like a thorn: would a middle-class, educated and citified Lahori woman relish coming to the quiet backwaters of a rural village in scorching Sind?
That was the problem and a big problem at that! For it was an understood fact boasted by Lahori women that very few of them favoured the rural life, no matter what facilities they were offered. Even electricity, video recorders and air conditioning were no compensation for the teeming nightlife, entertainment and shopping facilities offered by the old capital of Pakistan.
Born and bred in the rural world, Kaniz herself didn’t care a paisa for city ways. When she had been given the option of either marrying into an ‘ordinary’ but very much an urban family, or staying on in the village and marrying a very wealthy landlord, Kaniz without a moment’s hesitation had plummeted for the honour of becoming a zemindar’s wife. Blessed with a generous store of commonsense and shrewdness from an early age, coupled with an innate avarice, Kaniz thought she would have to be deranged to turn down an offer like that!
Becoming a chaudharani and reigning supreme as the headwoman in a close-knit village hierarchy was an opportunity which didn’t walk up to one’s doorstep every day. She had offered seventy thanksgiving nafl prayers to Allah for bringing such good kismet her way. Kaniz thus had no qualms at all about settling permanently in the village.
The shallow allure and glitter of the city life failed to beckon to her. ‘With acres of land to his name and plenty of revenue coming from it, you and your husband Sarwar will never be short of anything,’ her mother had drummed into her excitedly. She didn’t have to be told that her wildest materialistic dreams would be realised – and so they were.
The only thing that had spoilt it all, and continued to rankle unto this day, was the fact that her husband had been jilted by another village woman before Kaniz came on the scene. She had been his second choice. This was the thorn, the serpent in her rose garden, whose cancerous effect on her life she could neither dig out nor dislodge.
In the early years, too, she had chafed miserably from being labelled as the ‘Second Chaudharani’. For everyone knew and it was an undisputed fact that Shahzada was the first and most important local landowner. When Habib Khan and his Chaudharani Shahzada had moved to the nearest town, Tanda Adam, ten years ago, Kaniz had simply been elated. Only the old man, Siraj Din, remained in his large hawaili, in the village. Up till then Shahzada, as Siraj Din’s eldest daughter-in-law, had unwittingly and innocently robbed all the limelight from poor Kaniz.
Now she, Kaniz, was the only chaudharani in the village and she never let a single soul forget it! With her snooty manner and imperious ways, she kept most of the villagers at arm’s length. For she had imbibed very early on the ancient wisdom that says it never pays to be too familiar with one’s servants and neighbours. How else was she to maintain her special position and authority over everybody, Kaniz thought, if she rubbed shoulders with every Tom, Dick and Harry? Without her authority, she was nothing!
Kaniz winced as the car slid off the main road onto the bumpy track leading towards Chiragpur. She happily speculated as to how many people would note her arrival. By tonight the whole village would know that Chaudharani Kaniz was back, for there were only four cars in the village: theirs, Siraj Din’s and the two belonging to the n
ouveaux riche families who had recently begun to accumulate wealth thanks to their sons going abroad to work in the Middle East. First it was a giant fridge, then a VCR and finally they had ostentatiously progressed to brand new Jeeps!
Kaniz turned her head with a sniff, a sneer twisting her beautiful mouth. Jeeps and VCRs didn’t change the lineage. She and her family had both background and wealth. Rows of shiny cars could not put their shan in the shade!
The dusty road wound through green vegetable fields for a mile. Kaniz peered out of the window, sniffing the fresh country air with pleasure. It was good to be back!
Squinting, her eyes latched on to the figure of a man on a white horse. Was that her Khawar? He was the only one with a white horse in the district. Without her glasses, she couldn’t quite make him out at such a distance. Frowning, she tried to identify the other figure with him. It was a young woman, walking a few yards ahead of Khawar. Kaniz saw the woman trip and then fall to the ground, into the cauliflower field.
Her son jumped off his horse and helped the woman up. Khawar was now speaking to her and she was replying before turning to walk away. Taking hold of the horse’s bridal, Khawar began to walk back with the woman, towards the village.
Who is that silly chit? Kaniz wondered waspishly. Why did her son have to behave so idiotically? It wasn’t right for a young single man to be alone in the fields having a cosy tête-á-tête with a young woman, even if it was by accident. It was a most improper thing to do, compromising both his and, more particularly, the woman’s reputation. Kaniz must remind him about village proprieties and social etiquette when she got home. Chiragpur was a small place, and a woman’s izzat, her honour, was the most treasured commodity of all.
The Holy Woman Page 2