Yet here she was, wringing the dirt out of other people’s dirty linen!
Kulsoom suddenly let go of the quilt cover in the irrigation channel and watched it float away from her. As Naimat Bibi saw Sardara the milkwoman’s special quilt cover disappear, she screeched and leapt to her feet. Throwing the danda aside she stooped over the brick ledge and, in the process, accidentally dropped the pillow case on her head into the water. She gasped out loud as that too was disappearing before her horrified eyes.
‘Here, sisters, don’t panic,’ Habib volunteered. ‘I’ll get them for you.’ His eyes danced with laughter as he saw the wicked smile on Kulsoom’s face. Habib leaned over the wall and managed to skilfully pull out the two linen articles with the danda.
Highly embarrassed and with her cheeks plum red, Naimat Bibi gratefully took the dripping-wet washing from their Sahib Jee.
‘Well, you cannot complain that your linen hadn’t a thorough rinse, Naimat Bibi,’ Habib teased, his cheeks bulging with laughter.
‘Thank you, Sahib Jee,’ Naimat Bibi mumbled, as her eyes focused nervously on the wet marks on Habib’s long black coat. The lower half was soaked.
Kulsoom decided to address their influential village landlord, son of Siraj Din, the village elder. She had learnt at an early age of the wisdom and worth of cultivating the wadairas, the big people’s company, and had for some time enjoyed the material benefits of ingratiating herself in their favour and remaining under their patronage. So Kulsoom now boldly allowed herself the luxury of asking a very personal question.
‘Sahib Jee, how is Zarri Bano?’ She knew, like everyone in the village, that Habib Khan doted on his eldest daughter.
Seeing the laughter disappear and a shadow cross his face, Kulsoom chided herself, wondering if she had asked both the wrong question and at the wrong time.
‘She has gone, Kulsoom. She is, at this very moment, in an aeroplane on her way to Misr, in Egypt.’ Kulsoom knew intuitively, that the landlord was missing his daughter terribly.
‘To become a scholar of Islam, Habib Sahib?’ she cleverly ventured to ask. This much she knew, having heard it from one of Siraj Din’s servants.
‘Yes, Kulsoom,’ he replied heavily, and then wanting to change the subject. ‘Can you tell me exactly whose buffalo that was, running wild around the fields? It almost crashed into my car.’ Habib was remembering the reason why he was there in the first place.
‘I think it is Khawar Sahib’s. He has got a new young man helping on his farm, and this naughty buffalo is leading him quite a dance, I am afraid. This is the second time it has jumped over the low wall and snapped its chain and escaped, running out of the village. Luckily it didn’t come this way, otherwise it wouldn’t be our washing floating in the tube channel, but us poor old women. There he is!’ Kulsoom pointed to the running figure of a young man chasing after the buffalo.
‘Well, I hope this stops. Milk buffaloes are normally very gentle creatures, and quite tame. I wonder why this one is turning out to be so wild? If she runs around the fields like this, we’ll have no crops left to harvest,’ Habib said irritably, watching the man grasp the chain around the animal’s neck, at last, and lead it back to the village.
‘Allah Hafiz, Sahib Jee,’ they both piped at once and stood up as a sign of respect. While Kulsoom had kept Habib Sahib busy with her talking, Naimat Bibi had found her shawl and wound it firmly on her head and around her shoulders. It was a most unseemly thing to do, to be seen bareheaded by such an important elder man.
Habib walked away, back to his car. Nostalgically Kulsoom watched the vehicle disappear towards the village, leaving a cloud of dust behind. She looked down at the washing in distaste. Wouldn’t it have been just wonderful to have abandoned her friend and her washing and climbed into Habib’s car for a lift? She’d have been home by now.
Sighing and resigned to spending at least another hour getting through the second mound of bedlinen, Kulsoom reluctantly got down to work. Squatting on her haunches beside the brick ledge of the tube well, she began to swipe the wet sheet in the soap, before passing it to her friend.
‘Isn’t Habib Sahib generous, Kulsoom Jee? Did you hear about him sending a man to look at my washing machine?’
‘Yes I did, Naimat Jee. But then we shouldn’t be surprised. You know all the three landlords, Siraj Din, his son Habib Khan and young Khawar Sahib, are all kind and gentle zemindars. There are, however, still a lot of feudal landlords in our province who suck everything out of their fellow villagers and have had their families bonded as labourers to work their land for generations. Nobody is bonded to any of them or even owes them money in our village. Khawar Sahib and Siraj Din really do care about the welfare of us humble poor people,’ Kulsoom told her friend knowledgeably.
‘Where is Misr, Kulsoom Jee?’ Naimat Bibi asked as she began the beating of the sheet on the wooden slab again. ‘Is it really saat sumundar par?’
‘I don’t know about seven oceans away, but at least I know this much: there is one sea at least between Pakistan and Egypt. It is supposed to be near Saudi Arabia and in the olden days, people went on pilgrimages by ships, so there must be some seas and oceans on the way. Having said all this, you know very well, Naimat Bibi, I am not the best person to answer your question. I haven’t been through any school doors. I am just as illiterate as you are. It is so unfortunate that there were no girls’ schools in the village in our childhood days. It is so unfair. If I could read and write it would help me enormously with names for my business. I wouldn’t have to keep memorising things – especially the names of all the boys and girls I have to remember, and also of their families. But never mind, my friend, we are managing quite well even though we are barely numerate and totally illiterate.’
‘Speak for yourself! You definitely are managing quite well, Kulsoom Jee, with your matchmaking business!’ Naimat Bibi replied tartly, unable to disguise the envy in her voice.
Taken aback by this sarcasm, Kulsoom suddenly remembered the mound of bedlinen they were washing and turned squarely on her friend, her eyes shining meaningfully in her face.
‘Naimat Bibi, whose dirty linen exactly am I helping you to wash?’ She asked just as tartly. ‘This can’t all be yours, surely? What do you do? Change your bedlinen every night?’
There was a long pause.
‘Well, half of it is Sardara Jee’s,’ Naimat Bibi replied, looking sheepishly at her friend. ‘You know that she is wheelchair-bound and I wanted to help her.’
‘I see,’ Kulsoom commented, nodding her head knowledgeably. ‘I suppose she is paying you for this?’
‘Not exactly, but she won’t charge me for my milk, for one full week.’ Naimat Bibi was now studiously looking down at the washing slab.
Her brown cheeks flushed red, Kulsoom asked, ‘So all this washing, breaking my poor wrists, is to get you three jugs of milk.’ She turned away in disgust. ‘If you wanted milk, for heaven’s sake, Naimat Bibi, I would have bought it for you myself, rather than have to do this gruelling work. Have you thought how we are going to carry it all back? It is now late afternoon. You are supposed to be cooking at this very moment at Siraj Din’s house. His son has just arrived. There is no one to prepare the meal there. We aren’t going to sit here and wait for it to dry, are we? And now that it is wet, it is going to be twice as heavy. If my wrists give way today, I’ll know who to blame it on!’
‘Oh don’t worry, Kulsoom Jee,’ Naimat said airily. ‘You won’t have to carry it. I am sure some boy or man will pass by and they can’t refuse our request to help us carry it back.’
‘OK, whatever you say,’ Kulsoom Bibi tiredly offered, dumping another sheet to rinse in the clean water gushing out from the pump. She wished with all her heart that she could dump the whole lot in the water and let it float away. And then she, herself, could go home and leave her friend to it.
She knew, however, that she couldn’t be so mean. For it was Naimat Bibi who was always there to nurse her when she was sick. She
was the one who stayed glued to her side, when she had malaria last year. Resignedly, Kulsoom, lugged the clean sheet up towards her and began to wring it out, soaking her kameze dress, and breaking two of her beloved green-glass bangles in the process.
Chapter 25
LEAVING NAIMAT BIBI and Kulsoom doing the washing, Habib headed towards his father’s home. The car hooted a tractor and a bullock cart out of its way on the dusty journey down the narrow road, pulling up in the centre of the village where a large white-washed villa, with attractive white wrought-iron balconies on all four sides, and rows of potted plants cascading down the white-washed walls, stood imperiously amongst the more humble buildings.
Habib’s father now lived here with his three menservants and the estate manager who oversaw the business side and collected the revenue from the land. Siraj Din was a true countryman, a zemindar to his very bones. Nothing would have induced him to depart from Chiragpur the ‘village of light’, to join his sons in the town. He tolerated their move with fortitude and sadness, but he wouldn’t be persuaded to do so himself.
‘How can a zemindar be a zemindar if he lives away from his fields? Land is my life. My eyes need to gaze over and to feast on the smell of fresh green vegetables growing in the fields, ready to be plucked and harvested. I’ll never leave it!’ Siraj Din had firmly remonstrated to his sons, when they had pressed him to move to their homes after their mother, Zulaikha, had died.
At the end they let him be. An independent and proud sort of a man, he didn’t need any close members of his family seeing to his daily needs – his servants could do all that sufficiently well. Naimat Bibi was their regular cook. Siraj Din was still a healthy man at the sprightly age of eighty years. Daily walks in his fields had kept his heart and lungs in good condition. Unlike his sons, he had not piled on surplus fat but had kept a sharp eye on his trim waistline. His sons and grandchildren visited him on a rota basis two or three times a week.
Entering his old home, a familiar scene met Habib’s eyes. There was a large central courtyard with rows of rooms flanked on all four sides. In the middle of the courtyard, with its four red rose beds and three trees, his father sat on a chaise-longue-style palang, half-reclining on a high bolster. One male servant sat nearby, ready to hand him a hookah. Another stood over him, massaging his shoulders gently but firmly.
Siraj Din didn’t bother to get up, but inclined his head to acknowledge his son’s arrival. A ghost of a smile was allowed to touch his face. Habib came up to his father and, after greeting him, bent down. With a gesture inherited from his childhood days, Habib lifted his father’s hand and kissed it. Accepting the greeting, Siraj Din signalled his son to sit down on the other charpoy.
‘Bring food and drink for your master!’ he ordered the young man massaging his shoulder-blades, and sent him scurrying inside, seeking out Naimat Bibi, unaware that she was out in the fields still doing her washing.
‘So, she has gone,’ Siraj Din began, bending over and drawing a powerful puff on his hookah pipe, letting the water gurgle in the steel base for a few seconds.
‘Yes, Father. In about six hours’ time she should have reached Misr.’
‘I see,’ Siraj Din commented, his eyes on his son while taking another long puff. ‘But I don’t know what the world is coming to, my son, for young, unmarried women to be sent off, all alone, to foreign countries to live on their own. I find it totally unacceptable. I sincerely hope that you know what you are doing. I would have thought twice about sending my young daughter alone to another city in Pakistan, let alone to another country.’
‘Zarri Bano has lived alone in Karachi, while she was studying at university, Father. If it had been your daughter, she would have been living in another era. Things have changed in many ways. We have to learn to move with the times. You have benefited from modern machinery like tractors to work your land haven’t you, instead of the bullock plough? Women are more independent, educated, assertive and freer to do things now. We cannot keep them locked inside our houses any more. This is not the age of purdah, Father.’
‘But she is now a devout woman – a Bibi, Habib!’ Siraj Din snorted in disgust. ‘In my days, a Bibi would barely have set foot outside her home, for that was part of her modesty and devoutness. Her inaccessibility and seclusion from men gave her the devout rank of a Bibi. Such a woman was hardly likely to have gone gadding halfway across the world alone, and Allah knows who she’ll encounter there.’
‘My daughter is not a Bibi, as you well know,’ Habib retorted, his lips curling in distaste. ‘You are talking about old, ignorant Bibis, Father! Zarri Bano is a university graduate, remember. She is going to be a scholar, who needs to learn in order to teach others about Islam. How can she do that at home, amidst such ignorance? How much knowledge is there about our faith here in Chiragpur in this village of yours? Very little, I tell you. Especially amongst the women, who are barely literate. The place Zarri Bano has gone to is the best place for her to study. She is a mature woman, Father, not a child. You must try to understand. She can look after herself. In any event, I have sent Sakina with her, to chaperone her and keep her company, until she settles in. I will visit her myself in a few months’ time.’
‘Where is she going to stay?’ Siraj Din asked quietly. This was the subject that had lain on his mind all day, as he imagined his beautiful granddaughter in a foreign country, being ogled by strange Egyptian men. Even in her burqa, she was bound to draw attention to herself. Her beauty was their pride, but also posed a threat to them when it came to men.
‘She is going to stay with an Egyptian family that I met on pilgrimage in Jeddah, five years ago. We have kept in touch, and I have visited them once. The man has a daughter who is studying at the university Zarri Bano will be attending, and a son who teaches there. It is he who has also arranged the admission for her.’
Shaking his head, ‘I don’t know, my son,’ Siraj Din replied, not satisfied. ‘You have still not convinced me of the merit and wisdom of what you have done.’
‘Father, I do know what I am doing. Just as I am beginning to learn and regret what it is going to cost me.’ Habib did not bother disguising the note of sadness in his voice.
‘What do you mean?’ Siraj Din asked sharply – pushing the hookah away from him. The male servant politely moved it back.
‘I thought I had done the right thing, but I am so unhappy. I have lost my family. I walk all alone in my home, a solitary figure, Father.’ Habib’s eyes focused on the grapevine in the far corner of the courtyard, now heavily swollen with branches hanging down and laden with ripe green grapes.
‘Don’t be silly, son,’ Siraj Din grunted, his green eyes glittering with laughter. ‘You are getting soft in the head.’
‘No, Father, I am not getting soft in the head, as you say. I am plagued by guilt, wondering whether we’ve done the right thing.’
‘Of course we have!’ Siraj Din returned immediately, the laughter whipped away from his eyes, his body tense.
‘Would Selim have done it to his Gulshan?’ Habib stared squarely into his father’s eyes, daring him to disagree.
‘Of course.’
‘No, he wouldn’t.’ Habib wryly shook his head looking away from his father’s gaze. ‘You see, his wife wouldn’t have let her. I forced my daughter: she obeyed me. Shahzada desperately appealed to me not to do it, but in the end, she gave in and stood by me like a strong pillar of support.’
‘Well, so she should!’ Siraj Din snorted indignantly. ‘That’s her duty.’
‘Yes, she has done her duty. But the payment is going to be very dear, as I have learnt to my cost. She will never forgive me, Father. Nor has she spoken to me since the night when I told her about Zarri Bano’s fate. I have lost her.’ Habib’s eyes again focused on the other tree he used to climb as a boy.
Siraj Din sat upright, drawing his legs and feet down onto the marble floor. Pushing the hookah away from him, he leaned forward to look straight at his son.
‘
Now listen to me carefully, my Habib, I don’t like what I am hearing. Are you losing your masculine touch? Who is the master in your house? I am very disappointed in you.’ Siraj Din’s eyes, exactly like his son’s and which Zarri Bano had inherited, flashed with disdain. ‘If you give into your weakness, you will find yourself tied to your wife’s perandah, her plait. She will rule you and not just your household. She sent Zarri Bano to Karachi to Sikander’s home against your wish, didn’t she? Well! You will be a woman in your house!’ Siraj Din concluded, with a look of disgust on his face.
‘There is no chance of that happening,’ Habib replied bitterly. ‘My marriage, my relationship with Shahzada, is not like yours was to our mother. We have shared harmony in our household. There was no power struggle between us. Shahzada knows her place and her duties, as she has always done. I have not dominated her in the way you taught us to do and the way you dominated our mother. I didn’t break Shahzada’s spirit – a thing you spent all your life endeavouring to do with our mother, but never quite succeeded. Mother stood up to you even on her deathbed. Shahzada is not a high-spirited woman as Mother was. That is the problem! I wish she was, for then we could argue and fight, but she has shut me out.’ He paused, then said almost inaudibly, ‘I stupidly threatened her with divorce. I think I killed something inside her that day. Her eyes, like Ruby’s, were always warm with love and laughter, now they stare at me with hatred. I have cruelly hurt her, Father. She has lost two children in one go!’
Siraj Din settled back comfortably on his bolster and thoughtfully twirled his hennaed moustache into shape. He stretched his legs out fully on the palang. Drawing the hookah pipe back to his mouth, and wanting privacy with his son, he waved the approaching servant away, ordering, ‘Go and find Naimat Bibi, wherever she has drowned herself. My son is here and she needs to prepare the dinner.’
The Holy Woman Page 19