The Holy Woman

by Shahraz, Qaisra

  Zarri Bano suddenly stopped and a humourless laugh escaped her lips. ‘Professor Nighat, you can devise a new title for your research and fieldwork for your post-graduate students – based on me … “A feminist turned Holy Woman”.’

  ‘You will be in seclusion, won’t you – almost like a semi-purdah. These are the things we have campaigned against, Zarri Bano. We are still recovering from Zia AlHaq’s policies and their negative influence on women’s lives. We have worked to get women out of their homes and to stand on their own two feet and have careers. And what have you done? Gone into seclusion yourself.’

  Zarri Bano listened patiently to Nighat. ‘No, Sister Nighat, you are mistaken. There will be no seclusion for me in that sense. It is true I won’t have much to do with men, but I will be very much a public figure. I will be out there and everywhere. In fact I am hoping that I will have gained greater freedom than I had hitherto.’

  ‘In this garb?’ Nighat’s stare was incredulous.

  ‘Yes, in this garb, Sister.’

  ‘Zarri Bano, I couldn’t wear a burqa or cover myself like that. I would be suffocated.’

  ‘Yes, Sister Nighat. I too have been suffocated by it. It’s like a black shroud around my body. I had wanted to tear it into shreds, and to burn it on the first day. I learnt to respect it by the third day. I got used to it by the fifth day. Today I am just about comfortable in it. This is not an ordinary veil or burqa, but a symbol of my role. As I am getting used to the role, little by little I am getting used to the burqa too. I cannot, however, look at myself in a mirror yet. Nor am I used to the speculative glances I receive from people wherever I go. I have learnt one thing, Sister Nighat. People physically and psychologically distance themselves from me now, whenever they see me. Especially the ones I know. My father …’ Her voice died away.

  ‘My father, the one who was so proud of me becoming the Shahzadi Ibadat has not been able to look me directly in the eye for the last week. My sister and mother both find my appearance painful and have taken to avoiding me. I have not even had a chat with either of them on this subject. The only companion I have is Sakina, the other Holy Woman.’

  ‘That woman who came in with you?’

  ‘Yes, that is Sakina. I have kept my sanity, partly through her support. She is always taking me here and there. She has remained with me since the ceremony. Do you know, Sister Nighat, through her a new world is opening out to me. Today I went to a darbar and I loved every minute of it. How long is it since you have been to a local mosque or a darbar, Sister Nighat? I am reading and reciting the Holy Quran quite extensively. I have found that I was such an ignorant soul, when it came to our faith. So you see, I will not live shut away. I shall be a bird with wings that let her fly into a new world. In truth, I am flying next week to Cairo for a year, to study Islam at Cairo University.’

  Nighat didn’t respond immediately. It was all too much for her to take in. ‘I see, Zarri Bano, you have been well and truly brainwashed,’ she said heavily.

  ‘No, not brainwashed, my friend.’ Zarri Bano softly and sadly added. ‘I remember someone else saying the same thing to me a few weeks ago. I am trying to make the most out of my situation, learning to adapt to my new role and status in life and to forget my past life as well as coming to terms with my present life. You are a psychologist. I have, as you would say, become a person of circumstances, moulded by her environment.’

  Nighat couldn’t argue further. She had come, full of anger and self-righteousness, but now all the wind had gone out of her sails. Here she was, come all this way to support Zarri Bano and offer her refuge; instead she found a woman who didn’t need any one’s support or help. A woman, in short, who was bravely tackling her new life and not hiding from the world outside. Nighat admired her tenacity. She didn’t know what to say next, or what to do. In the end Zarri Bano came to her aid once again.

  ‘Sister Nighat, I respect you very much. Please do not worry on my account. I am sorry if I have let you down, and if I have betrayed our cause – please forgive me. One thing you can all learn from my scenario is, and I have cried for millions of other women, that in the end, we women are just small beads in the tapestries of our clans, cleverly woven by our fathers and other male members.’

  ‘I suppose there is nothing further that I can say, Zarri Bano?’

  ‘No. Just wish me luck and pray for me that I learn to forget the old life and adapt well to my new one. Insha’allah!’

  ‘You want to forget us? A huge chunk of your life in exchange for a life of total religious devotion?’

  ‘Yes. That is the only way for me to keep my sanity. At the moment I don’t know who I am. I am hanging perilously by a fragile thread between the two worlds, almost like a fish out of water. Zarri Bano, the university campus woman, the feminist, fighting with the recluse, the Holy Woman, who is seeking to immerse herself totally in religious devotion.’

  ‘I wish you luck, my friend. You mustn’t forget me – even if you forget everything else. You must visit me sometimes and write to me from Cairo.’

  ‘Of course I won’t forget you!’ Zarri Bano laughed. ‘Won’t you stay for some dinner?’ she asked as Nighat stood up, ready to leave.

  ‘No. I must go. It is almost two hours’ drive to my home. Goodbye, my dear.’

  ‘Khudah Hafiz. May God be with you.’

  ‘You too, my dear,’ Nighat replied. She smiled uncertainly at Zarri Bano as she climbed into her car, and drove away from the house. ‘May God be with you’ were strange words on Zarri Bano’s lips, and the sound of those words throbbed in the Professor’s brain as she picked up speed for the long journey home.

  Chapter 23

  AT KARACHI AIRPORT it was a low-key affair, as Zarri Bano boarded the Egypt Air flight destined for Cairo. Ruby, Shahzada, Habib and the chauffeur had accompanied her to the airport. Her eyes filling with tears, Shahzada kept discreetly wiping them away. Habib managed to stay dry-eyed, concentrating more on seeing his daughter safely off, than letting his emotions get the better of him in a public place.

  ‘Thank you, Sakina, for accompanying my daughter. I leave her in yours and Allah’s capable hands. Please look after one another,’ were his last words to Sakina as they were ready to disappear into the departure lounge. After embracing Shahzada and Ruby, the two women in their long flowing burqas moved away and were gone.

  In the departure lounge, Zarri Bano was acutely aware of eyes roaming over her body – her first experience of being at an airport in a burqa. She didn’t flinch from the stares, however, even those from the men. Her body remained straight and her stance poised. Opening a novel by her favourite author, she settled down to read on the comfortable sofa in the lounge, waiting to board the plane.

  For her family it was a silent journey home in the car. Once there, they all dispersed in different directions. Habib instructed his driver to take him to visit his father in their home village of Chiragpur. Ruby went up to her bedroom and switched on a cassette. Shahzada entered her kitchen area, looking for her housekeeper.

  Fatima was busy making a karaila ghost dish, and frying the karailas on the stove. On seeing her mistress, she turned the burner off and looked expectantly at Shahzada.

  ‘Did the plane leave on time, Chaudharani Sahiba?’

  ‘Yes, Fatima, my daughter flew away,’ Shahzada replied sadly, walking out of the kitchen. Fatima put the wooden spoon down on the work top and followed her mistress out into the rear courtyard, and onto the lawn. Shahzada sat down on one of the chairs and Fatima on the other, her eyes on her mistress’s face.

  ‘Can I get you something to eat or drink, Chaudharani Sahiba?’ she asked gently.

  ‘No, thank you, Fatima. All I need is my daughter. Here, against my chest. She has gone, Fatima. I still don’t understand why she has gone. This heart of mine has been daily bruised since Jafar’s death. It can’t take any more battering.’ In anguish, her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I am sorry, mistress. It is all for the be
st.’

  ‘Best for whom, Fatima? Why has my daughter gone to a strange country and all alone?’

  ‘Well, mistress, you know she has gone to become a scholar, to learn about Islam. That is why!’ Fatima offered brightly, attempting to cheer her up.

  ‘I know, that’s what Habib keeps saying. But think, my daughter is very well-educated. She is nearly twenty-eight years old. Why does she need to become a scholar again, Fatima? Women of her age … her friends … most of them are now married and have children. And what is my daughter doing? What has happened to us?’ Shahzada turned an agonised stare at her woman helper.

  ‘I cannot keep up with anything any more, Fatima. I am drowning in my sorrow and sinking further and further into oblivion, this nightmare seems to have no end. Have I done something wrong, Fatima? Am I a sinner, a ghunagar? Is this Allah’s way of punishing me? I have lost a beloved only son, my baby. He lies six foot deep in the family graveyard. I have lost an older daughter – she, who has never entered a mosque and hardly ever stepped onto a prayer-mat, has become wedded to her faith. I have lost her and now she has literally disappeared out of our lives.’

  ‘Oh, come on, mistress. She has only gone for a few months. Many people nowadays go abroad for education.’

  ‘But it is all wrong, Fatima! We have done something terrible, in changing the course of Zarri Bano’s life. What right had we? She wanted to marry Sikander, set up a publishing company and settle in Karachi. She loved social life and fashion. We have thrust an alien lifestyle onto her. Allah doesn’t expect such total religious devotion from us. He wants us to live our everyday lives as well as remembering him. Think, there are no nuns in our faith, Fatima.’

  ‘But this is good, Chaudharani Sahiba, isn’t it? She will be a better person and a good Muslim,’ Fatima tried.

  ‘I am going out of my mind with the thought that there will be no grandchildren from my Zarri Bano. I loathe that black thing she wears all the time. My beautiful daughter is buried inside it. Since the day of the ceremony she has changed, yet not a single word of reproach has left her mouth. I have lost her, Fatima!’

  Noting the trace of panic in her mistress’s voice Fatima stood up and squatted on the grass in front of Shahzada. Taking the other woman’s hands in her own, she began to gently massage them.

  ‘Dearie me, mistress, we have not lost Zarri Bano. She has only gone to do a course. Come on, if she had married, you would have lost her too.’

  ‘No, no! It is not the same! I could have coped with that loss,’ Shahzada grieved.

  ‘I had a big heart once, Fatima, as big as this courtyard. Now I carry a small hard stone in its place. I have lost my family, my peace of mind and my sense of marital duty. I feel nothing but hatred for Habib Sahib, almost as if I have never loved him in all my life. Hot rage floods my body every time I see him. I shrink inside and my tongue just clamps up. I don’t want to share his room, let alone his bed. He looks at me with condemnation. I have closed the doors to myself to him, for ever. I will never let him inside. He might as well have given me the three thalaks that he threatened me with, for we live together as strangers. I think he only talks to his father and to his acres of land, that he rides up and down in the evenings.’

  ‘He is the real loser, mistress, not you. And so he should be, as the perpetrator of everything.’ Fatima’s voice had hardened.

  ‘Ruby is the only one left,’ Shahzada continued drearily, ‘but I have lost her too. She is so bereft without her sister and feels resentful that Zarri Bano was allowed to go and study in Cairo, and she wasn’t. Can you imagine it, Fatima? Ruby has a degree. Why does she want more? In our day we only had the basic primary-school education. These days there is no end to education.’

  ‘Don’t I know it, mistress. I have been paying for it for the past fifteen years, for my four children. For us poor folks, it is a very useful commodity, especially in the marriage market. The more educated a woman is, the more eligible she becomes. Not everyone is always blessed with your daughters’ beauty, wealth and land to bargain with. Education is a good bartering qualification for most people nowadays, as you well know, Shahzada Jee. Men want educated women. Women want education.’ Fatima chuckled suddenly. ‘The karailas will turn into rubber if I don’t hurry inside and see to them.’

  ‘I’ll come and give you a hand.’ Shahzada sighed. She was feeling a little better after her outburst. ‘You are a good friend, Fatima. What would I do without you?’

  ‘Nobody is indispensable, mistress,’ Fatima said lightly as they went into the kitchen together. ‘But I will have to leave you soon, when my Firdaus gets married.’

  Chapter 24

  DRIVEN BY HIS chauffeur, Habib Khan was on his way to Chiragpur. Just as they turned off the main road to Hyderabad, a milk buffalo ran across the lane, almost careering into the car. With its large head swinging heavily from side to side, and the bell and the chain around its neck ringing merrily, the buffalo panicked and sprang off the road straight into the vegetable field on the other side, trundling its heavy steel chain behind.

  ‘God forbid!’ Habib shouted as his car screeched to a halt. ‘Where did that beast come from?’ He peered through the front windscreen. ‘Whose buffalo is it, Riaz? Did you recognise it? Is it one of ours from my father’s farm?’ Habib climbed out of the car.

  ‘I don’t know, Sahib Jee,’ the forty-year-old driver answered, also glancing through the front window to have a good look at the black milk buffalo, with its hide still caked in mud.

  Habib wondered where the cowherd was. Surely the animal couldn’t be roaming around willy-nilly. He saw two women, some 200 yards away, washing clothes near the head pump of the tube well which distributed water into the man-made irrigation channels that wound their way through the fields.

  It happened to be Naimat Bibi’s wash day. She had managed to enlist the help of her best friend, Kulsoom. Busy with the rigorous task of washing linen and bedding, when Naimat Bibi looked up and saw Habib Khan walk towards them, her mouth fell open. Her hand remained poised in the air holding the bat-like danda, to beat the clothes with. She quickly swung it around and slapped it with a bang on the soapy wet cotton quilt cover on the worn wooden washing slab. She turned to her friend in panic. Kulsoom was rinsing a sheet in the water, leaning over the water pump.

  ‘Quick, Kulsoom Jee, where’s my dupatta? Khan Sahib is coming this way,’ Naimat Bibi twittered.

  Kulsoom started in surprise and turned to gawp, holding on with a tight grip to the heavy wet quilt cover in her two small hands. Her fragile wrists were definitely not designed to handle heavy washing; they ached terribly. ‘I don’t know where your dupatta is,’ she panted, ‘but here, use this, it will do the job.’ With one hand she threw a dry pillowcase cover over Naimat Bibi’s head, while she struggled to hold onto the dripping wet article of clothing.

  Naimat Bibi planted the pillow cover firmly on her head, just as Habib Khan came to stand only a few feet away. He looked at them both with mild amusement, Naimat Bibi looked comical with a pillowcase propped on her head and tiny Kulsoom holding on precariously to the dripping bedding in her two hands, trying to keep it away from her own clothes. He glanced at the mound of washing still to be got through. The rest, soaped and rinsed, was draped over the nearby bushes to dry. There was a large earthenware basin of soap placed close to the wooden slab, on which the clothes were beaten with the danda as an efficient method of getting rid of the dirt.

  ‘Sahib Jee, Assalam-Alaikum,’ Kulsoom greeted him respectfully, blushing nevertheless. The last thing she wanted was to be caught washing by someone like Habib Khan. And the washing was not even her own! Her friend dutifully mimicked the same greeting.

  ‘Wa Laikum-Salam, sisters. Is it your wash day, Kulsoom Jee and Naimat Jee? Don’t you use the washing machine you bought last year, Naimat Jee?’ Habib teased, wondering at the logic and the sense in these two women carting all that washing, nearly one mile away from the village and then, presumably, lugging it al
l back.

  ‘Those machines are useless, Sahib Jee!’ Naimat Bibi quickly answered. ‘Mine went bust with the power cut one day. How many repair men will actually come to the village? And as I have no means of transporting it to the nearest town, it’s just too expensive and too much bother. Here, on the other hand, we have gallons of clean fresh water, pumping away, and of course, plenty of open air and sunshine will do the rest.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell my father? He would have had it repaired for you. Anyway, I will send one of our repairmen to have a look at yours. And of course you won’t have to pay,’ Habib reassured her.

  Naimat Bibi blushed with pleasure. ‘That is very generous of you, Sahib Jee. Here my friend is helping me.’

  Kulsoom Bibi allowed herself the luxury of a polite nervous smile, as she maintained her aching grip on the sopping linen. Convinced that her bony wrists were going to snap any minute now, she vowed to herself that this was definitely the last time she was going to help Naimat with her washing.

  She suddenly wondered why Naimat Bibi didn’t do her laundry at home, like everyone else. And why, oh why, did she gather so much bedding to wash at one go? Did she have no sense? This matter perplexed Kulsoom. Naimat Bibi lived all alone, but Kulsoom was sure she had gathered the linen of ten people’s bedding. Did she not remember her friend’s poor wrists and have mercy on her?

  A sudden thought galloped through Kulsoom’s tired head. Had Naimat Bibi secretly taken up a new business – that of washing other people’s bedding? And she had got roped into it. She, Kulsoom Jee, the respectable village matchmaker who hadn’t done any washing for a long time and now wouldn’t stoop to it. For the past fifteen years she had delegated the horrid, backbreaking task to the Doban, the village washerwoman.