The Holy Woman

by Shahraz, Qaisra

  Colour sweeping high in her cheeks, Zarri Bano eventually came to her senses. Her arms rose and crossed over her chest, shielding herself from him and his gaze. She turned her back to him, and looked down at the Nile.

  ‘Wa Laikum-Salam, Brother Musa.’ She returned his greeting in a shaky voice. ‘I thought you were in Alexandria visiting your eldest sister.’

  Ibrahim Musa had instinctively looked away as he saw her gestures of female modesty. He felt both ashamed and embarrassed, in causing her to be caught in such a compromising situation. And it was all his fault. He had just walked in, while she had thought she was all alone in the house and had thus availed herself of the comfort of moving around without the veil. He, Musa, had robbed her of that comfort, by invading her privacy.

  ‘Forgive me, Sister Zarri Bano. I must sincerely apologise. I just hadn’t realised you were here …’ His voice trailed away, waiting for her to say something. His eyes focused on her slim back and shoulder-blades highlighted by the cut of her dress. He was still finding it difficult to come to terms with the image of the vulnerable-looking woman standing in front of him, to the strong woman constantly enveloped in a long baggy veil.

  ‘It is all right, Brother Musa. It is your home,’ Zarri Bano answered quietly, still unable to recover her poise after having been seen by this young unmarried man; without her burqa, she felt naked under his gaze. Her back throbbed, imagining his male eyes roaming on it. ‘I thought you had gone to Alexandria and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow night,’ she said again still with her back to him.

  ‘I decided to come back early, as I had a meeting with my colleagues at University. I am sorry to disturb you, sister. Please forgive me if I have upset you in any way. And please feel free to move at your leisure in this home. I assure you, you will not be disturbed again. I am going to visit my second sister, here in Cairo, later, and I will stay with her for the night. I will see you tomorrow evening when the rest of the family return. I apologise once again, sister. Assalam-Alaikum.’

  ‘It is all right. Wa Laikum-Salam, Brother Musa.’

  He left, closing the door firmly behind him. Zarri Bano remained standing by the window until she heard the outside door close and the sound of a car driving away. Only then did she let her arms fall to her side and turned to sit again at the desk.

  She looked at her open book on the desk, but it was no use! Ibrahim Musa had spoilt it all. She was angry with herself for being caught like this. ‘I should always be in my burqa!’ she scolded herself. What if she had had an accident, and there was nobody around to help her except Musa. Could she stand him touching her body without the veil, while helping her?

  An hour later she returned to her room and ritually pulled the burqa over her body. It was only then, sitting behind the protection of the veil, that she was able to concentrate on the book she was reading. She knew in her heart though, that she would never feel the same in Musa’s presence again. She wished to Allah, over and over again, that he had either not come, or that she had been wearing her burqa at that time.

  Ibrahim Musa drove through the late-afternoon traffic of the densely populated city centre to his sister’s home. As he passed the central souk market and saw one of the traditional Egyptian dresses hanging on the stall amidst the rest of the wares, he recalled Zarri Bano in her red dress. Ashamed though he was to voice the thought to himself, it couldn’t be denied that Zarri Bano was a very attractive woman. He had suspected it, from her face, hands and eyes. Now having seen her without the veil, his eyes had sinfully learnt to appreciate what lay behind the black garment. At the same time he was angry with himself. He had done wrong. He had no right to look at a woman without her veil. That was a privilege only available to her family or her husband to enjoy – and he was neither. In this way he had shamed both her and himself. He just hoped that she would forgive him, and learn to trust him again and not build up any barriers in the light of that incident. He wanted nothing to mar the warm relationship which they already shared.

  With dismay he recalled how she had kept her back to him all the time while he was in the room. Perhaps she would always be on her guard now and would maintain her distance from him. If she did, he had no choice but to accept it, and respect her for it.

  The image of Zarri Bano in her red dress and her crown of curls around her face flashed a number of times in front of his eyes that evening, as he played with his sister’s children.

  Chapter 28

  MADAME, THE FORMER Headmistress of the village girls’ high school, had now retired and Firdaus, to everyone’s delight, was unanimously elected by the school management committee as the new Headmistress.

  Firdaus sat in her office preparing important documents for a presentation for the special guests she was expecting later in the afternoon. A principal from a women’s college in a nearby town was interested in building links with girls’ high schools in the villages. Firdaus flicked through the last page, satisfied with the paper she had prepared, when she heard footsteps in the veranda outside. ‘Are they here already?’ She rose from her seat. Without the customary knock, the door was pushed abruptly open. Firdaus blinked at the person standing in front of her and sat down in her armchair.

  Kaniz’s tall frame dominated the room. For the next electrifying few seconds, both women stared at one another, speechless. Kaniz’s cold dark eyes were insulting in their appraisal.

  ‘Assalam-Alaikum, Chaudharani Kaniz Sahiba,’ Firdaus managed to offer, having recovered her poise and remembering her social graces. ‘How can I help you? Please do sit down.’ Firdaus nodded towards the chair.

  Kaniz darted a look of utter disdain at the chair, then back to Firdaus’s face. The ‘chit’ was ordering her about!

  Firdaus glanced at the wall clock. Any minute now the guests were due to arrive. She had no desire whatsoever for either Kaniz’s company or a confrontation with her. It was only too apparent that Kaniz was itching for the latter. Firdaus thus quickly debated with herself as to how she could get rid of her without any unpleasantness. Why was she here anyway?

  ‘Is there anything I can help you with? I have some guests arriving soon, Auntie, you see.’ Firdaus explained politely, calmly looking Kaniz in the eye.

  ‘Yes, you can definitely help.’ As frosty as the icicles on the Kashmiri mountains, the words ricocheted around the room. ‘Why did you and your mother target me and my son to wrap your evil web around?’

  Taken aback, Firdaus closed her eyes behind her reading glasses and mentally counted to three – an effective habit she had adopted a long time ago, in an effort to contain herself and her temper, which was foul when it erupted.

  ‘I don’t understand. We have set no evil trap or web around you, your son or family. It must be that wild imagination of yours that makes you think that, Madam Kaniz,’ Firdaus replied coldly.

  ‘Don’t you “madam” me,’ Kaniz hissed, her dark, almond-shaped eyes narrowing with fury. ‘You and your mother have destroyed me and my family.’

  Firdaus’s heart was now thumping away uncomfortably in her chest. The conversation was getting more and more out of hand and she didn’t know how best to deal with the situation.

  ‘I repeat, Auntie, I don’t know what you mean. I have nothing to do with your son,’ Firdaus tried, fearing that she was fast being sucked into the eye of the hurricane of Kaniz’s twisted imagination.

  ‘You have nothing to do with my son, you say! You wicked, conniving women. You and your mother have been after him for years. God knows how many glasses of milk with tweez you and she have toppled down his throat. He has left home because of you, you bitch!’

  ‘That is enough!’ Firdaus shot up from her chair, thoroughly shaken by the woman’s venom. Her brown cheeks now a shade of bright red and her hands spread flat on the desk, Firdaus leaned all of her slender five-feet body towards Kaniz and through gritted teeth ground out in her most authoritative voice – the one she used on her pupils.

  ‘If you please, Madam, out of my o
ffice and out of my life. You have no manners, but I will not sink to your debased level, by matching abuse with your abuse. However, let me tell you that I wouldn’t touch your son, or any other member of your family with a barge pole, let alone marry him. You can keep your precious Khawar. Make jam out of him, for all I care,’ she ended viciously, surprising even herself. Kaniz had apparently brought out the worst in her.

  ‘How dare you say that! Keep your evil mouth shut, you slut. He has left home because of you. I don’t know what he sees in you. You are such a plain creature!’ The look of insulting disgust on her face and the way in which her lips curled down in contempt at the corners made Firdaus’s hands tremble on the desk.

  ‘He has not left your home because of us, but because of you. He couldn’t bear to be near a viper of a mother like you!’ Firdaus had now dispensed with social proprieties, having decided that this woman deserved no respect. ‘I have not plied him with any evil amulets – I do not believe in them. It is only ignorant, superstitious and evil women like yourself, who believe in them. I never had designs on your son and never will. I am ashamed to admit that my mother would have liked such a match, but she is foolish, like you. No, Chaudharani Kaniz, I would never marry your son, even if you crawled on your hands and knees and begged me to.’

  ‘That will be the day!’ Kaniz shouted, scandalised. ‘Me – crawl to ask for a washerwoman’s daughter’s hand in marriage.’ Her eyes almost rolled in their sockets.

  She was abruptly cut short by Firdaus’s hand stamping down three times on the bell on her desk. Itching to strike the woman, Firdaus was shocked by her own feelings of violence towards Kaniz.

  The school caretaker, the chaprassi, came running into the room.

  ‘What is it, Madam Headmistress?’ Respectfully addressing Firdaus, he fearfully looked from one angry woman to another.

  ‘Please, Baba Jee, show this unwanted visitor out of our school. In future make sure that you are on duty at the door. We don’t want any nathu pethu, any unwanted guests, to crawl into our school.’

  Shocked by her own stream of venom, Firdaus nevertheless felt better for it. Kaniz gulped back a retort. Bursting to give Firdaus another mouthful, she found herself almost blindly and mutely following the chaprassi out of the room.

  Leaving the room a dazed, humiliated woman, Kaniz felt as if she had lost a full three inches from her height. ‘Thrown out by a chaprassi! I, Kaniz, chaudharani of the village! And by whose orders? A mere washerwoman’s daughter!’ she screamed in her head, wanting to run away and hide somewhere.

  As she crossed the school courtyard, she saw a group of women, smartly dressed in designer shalwar kameze suits, enter through the gates. Firdaus, having followed Kaniz out of the office, moved eagerly forward to welcome and greet her guests. Kaniz looked, with bitterness, at Firdaus’s outstretched hands and arms. Now totally ignoring her, Firdaus led her guests to her room.

  Feeling defeated, Kaniz slinked away, pulling her shawl further over her forehead, hiding her face.

  There were two shiny cars standing outside in the school’s small car park. Those important-looking people had evidently come to visit the washerwoman’s daughter! Kaniz’s mouth tightened again in disgust and rage.

  Her head was still reeling. By the time she was a few yards away, Kaniz wasn’t sure who she was any more. It was as if Firdaus had somehow stripped her of her identity as the chaudharani. The sickening image of Firdaus being hugged one by one by those women, with smiles of pleasure on their faces would stay with Kaniz till the day she died. Firdaus had really turned the tables on her. She had succeeded in making her, Kaniz, feel like a washerwoman while she preened herself as the chaudharani of the school.

  Chapter 29

  AS HE WALKED by himself in one of his vegetable fields, Siraj Din bent down and prodded the dry earth with his walking stick to check how moist it was underneath. The irrigation system was definitely working. A tractor, driven by one of his workers, Faisal, passed him by. Siraj Din continued with his leisurely walk, heading back towards the village.

  Passing the girls’ high school, he didn’t notice the woman sitting on a large boulder on the edge of the path, until he was only a few yards away from her. With her head bent and her dupatta partially concealing her face from his sight, he couldn’t make out who she was. Was she a visitor from the city or from another village? But there was no luggage in sight.

  As he approached, the woman heard the tapping sound of his walking stick and looked up. Siraj Din was very surprised.

  ‘Kaniz, my dear, what are you doing here sitting in the middle of the path?’ he asked, stopping in front of her. It was so unlike her; she always travelled about in her car. The village path and a dusty boulder were the last place anyone would think to find Chaudharani Kaniz.

  Kaniz stared back blankly. Siraj Din’s shrewd old eyes recognised the pinched look about her mouth. Her normal poise was missing; the expression on her face was an unfamiliar one. Lost for words, she continued to stare up at him. Her lips struggled to say something, but failed to move apart, as if sealed with cement. Siraj Din was now mildly alarmed on her behalf. He saw that there were two other women passing by, one with a large bundle of sugar cane on her head. They inclined their heads in respect as they met his eyes and bade him ‘Salam’. He bent his head slightly in acknowledgement and leaned forward to pat the shoulders of the women. He knew both of them by name, and their family backgrounds.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear daughter?’ he prompted gently as he turned once more to Kaniz. Siraj Din addressed all the women in the village with the term ‘daughter’, with the exception of those three who, because of their age, he addressed as ‘sisters’.

  Kaniz was never ever known to be at a loss for words. If anything, Siraj Din chuckled to himself, she was a great mistress of speech, adept at keeping it flowing and putting people in their place.

  ‘She had me thrown out, Baba Jee,’ she whispered, so quietly that he almost didn’t hear. Turning her face away from his gaze she looked down to the ground.

  ‘Who had you thrown out, my dear?’ Siraj Din coaxed.

  Kaniz glanced up sharply, anger dancing in her eyes, indignant that he hadn’t understood who she had meant by ‘she’.

  ‘She! She! That witch! That charail, who has got my son wound round her little magic finger. That washerwoman’s daughter!’ The stream of words had now jetted out with all the innate vehemence and hatred she bore in her mind and heart for Firdaus.

  ‘You mean Firdaus?’ Siraj Din guessed astutely.

  ‘Yes! While she welcomed with open arms, hugged and kissed her “elevated” guests from the city, she ordered the chaprassi to throw me out like a beggar. Can you believe it, Baba Jee? Me, the chaudharani of the village, being shown the door by that chit of a woman who isn’t worthy enough to clean my shoes.’

  ‘My dear Kaniz, don’t get carried away now.’ Siraj Din tapped his stick gently on the ground, a discreet smile crossing his face.

  ‘Baba Jee, I felt as if I had been robbed of my identity, when I walked out of the school gates,’ Kaniz confided as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘I have sat on this spot since the afternoon. My head reels in disbelief. Who am I? I keep asking myself. Tell me, Baba Jee, aren’t I the village chaudharani any more? Is this the way to treat a respectable older woman? She has done it deliberately, to humiliate me and rub my face in the mud. She has turned my son against me. He has left his home. Now she had me evicted from the school. Who is she, Baba Jee? She is nothing but an upstart. Her mother’s hands are still greased with the grime of the dishes she scours in your son’s home!’

  ‘Kaniz, my daughter, take it easy. I think you have got carried away with your imagination. I am sure Firdaus would never have you thrown out.’

  ‘But she has, Baba Jee. Why are you taking her side? I am sure I am going to have a heart attack from this.’ Kaniz’s cheeks flamed red in pique.

  ‘I think I know what you mean,’ he said thoughtfully ‘what yo
u must have gone through. I experienced something similar once in my life. I have learnt that we are kings and queens in our small, self-centred domains. What is hard for us to believe and accept is that outside the perimeters of those domains, we are nothing, Kaniz. I, too, had a rude awakening myself, when I was treated shabbily at Makkah by someone. I, too, reeled back in shock, my ego totally bruised. Like you, I began to doubt my own identity and sanity. At the end I realised, and it was brutally brought home to me that it was a good experience for me, to look outside my self-created, self-centred world. Here in the village I am the master of all things. In the city, I am just a senile old man.’

  ‘You are not a senile old man! And I am not getting carried away, Baba Jee. She did have me thrown out,’ she asserted impatiently.

  ‘Never mind. Don’t upset yourself further. Why don’t you come to terms with everything? I do know what has been going on. Why won’t you let your son marry Firdaus?’

  ‘Never!’ Kaniz shot up, thoroughly outraged, her eyes glowing red with anger.

  Siraj Din’s mouth curved into a ghost of a smile, his brown bushy eyebrows well arched in amazement. This was the Kaniz he knew: loud, volatile, always sure of herself and infinitely domineering. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, judiciously remaining silent – letting her calm down. Kaniz remained standing, her body stiff.

  Siraj Din began to walk using his stick. Kaniz joined him and silently they walked side by side towards the village. Siraj Din knew he hadn’t endeared himself to her by his words, but he persisted, nevertheless.

  ‘You never forgave Fatima, did you?’ Siraj Din stated softly.

  Kaniz froze, stopping in her tracks. Her face turned accusingly towards him eyes wide and mouth slightly open. Siraj Din stopped too.