The Holy Woman

by Shahraz, Qaisra

  ‘Enough about me and Jajmeir Sharif. I still have so much to tell you about Egypt and Cairo, but later. How is Ruby and everybody else?’ Zarri Bano asked innocently, missing the look in her parents’ eyes, as they exchanged surreptitious glances in the car mirror.

  ‘Ruby is fine and so is everybody else, my daughter. We missed you so much, Zarri Bano,’ Shahzada replied, putting her arm around her daughter to clasp her in a semi-embrace.

  ‘And now tell us about Cairo!’ Thus Shahzada steered Zarri Bano away from the dangerous topic of Ruby.

  Chapter 33

  ‘ZARRI BANO IS due any minute now!’ Ruby anxiously watched Fatima putting frantic finishing touches to the vase of flowers on the dining table. Her eyes fixed on the clock on the wall, she was feeling more and more like a traitor by the minute.

  Just as Ruby had anticipated, Zarri Bano swept into the room in her flowing black burqa, and embraced her younger sister in a tight hug. She did not notice that Ruby had avoided any eye contact with her.

  During their evening meal, after she had showered and refreshed herself, Zarri Bano asked innocently if anything of importance had happened while she was abroad.

  ‘I feel that I have been away not just for one year but for a decade. What have you been doing in my absence, Ruby?’ Zarri Bano turned innocently to her sister. Ruby dropped her gaze.

  ‘We have got some good news for you, my dear,’ Shahzada answered smoothly, feeling the scalding warmth of both Ruby’s and Habib’s eyes on her face.

  ‘What has happened? Tell me, Mother,’ Zarri Bano enquired pleasantly.

  ‘We have set a date for Ruby’s wedding.’ Ruby and Habib now held their breath, waiting anxiously for Shahzada to continue.

  ‘What a wonderful news! When and with whom? You never said anything to me on the phone.’ Zarri Bano looked at them both with surprise.

  ‘I will tell you all about it later, after you have rested,’ Ruby intervened before her mother or father could say anything – her heart going out to her sister, wanting to give her privacy.

  ‘Is it somebody I know?’ Zarri Bano asked softly, unaware of the charged atmosphere in the room.

  ‘As Ruby said, she’ll tell you later.’ Licking her dry lips, Shahzada stopped her husband with a look. ‘It is Ruby’s privilege, Habib Sahib, to tell her sister. You must be feeling tired, my daughter, why don’t you go to bed?’

  ‘It is true that I am tired, Mother, but I am dying to know who my sister is going to marry. It must be Khawar, am I right? Chaudharani Kaniz must surely have succeeded by now. Well, you all kept it very quiet. You make me feel like an outsider now. What a secretive goose you are, Ruby!’ Zarri Bano teased, laughing at the warm blush spreading over her sister’s face. She stood up to leave the table. Habib and Shahzada exchanged a glance, both breathing more freely.

  ‘Ruby, come up to my room and tell me all about it!’ Zarri Bano beckoned to her sister before closing the door behind her.

  Ruby sat frozen on her seat. The moment of reckoning had come. On legs that felt as if they were suddenly shackled to lead weights, she stood up, darting an appealing look at her mother to come to her aid. Shahzada, however, shook her head sadly at her daughter, deeming the matter deserved privacy between the two sisters.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear,’ Shahzada urged gently, as Ruby looked at her before leaving the room.

  In her bedroom, Zarri Bano glanced around with enormous pleasure. It was so good to be back. She looked out of the window at the lawn and the rose beds in full bloom in the courtyard.

  ‘It is Sikander!’

  Zarri Bano didn’t hear Ruby enter, but the three, softly spoken words sliced across the room, freezing her on the spot. A paralysis of some sort attacked her body, depriving her of all feeling and sensation; her eyes grew wide.

  Ruby waited for Zarri Bano to face her. The seconds ticked away on the wall clock. Sitting awkwardly on the corner of Zarri Bano’s bed, she wondered bleakly what to do.

  ‘I wasn’t the one who desired this match,’ she pleaded, feeling as if she had just sunk a machete into her sister’s back. ‘Zarri Bano, it wasn’t me! Please forgive me. I know how you must be feeling.’ Hiding her face in her hands, she began to cry.

  Her sister’s weeping echoing around her, Zarri Bano forgot about herself and moved towards the huddled figure.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ she whispered against her sister’s hair, gathering her in her arms. ‘There is nothing to forgive, my princess. I am so pleased for you.’ And yet the quivering voice belied the words drawn out from the depths of her being.

  ‘But he was your fiancé. I do feel guilty, Zarri Bano,’ Ruby countered, raising her tearstained face up to her sister’s.

  ‘Yes he was.’ Zarri Bano managed to keep her expression neutral. ‘That was the past, my dearest sister. You have nothing to apologise for. Never feel guilty on my account. It was my kismet, my destiny. I gave up Sikander, remember, when I decided to become a Holy Woman. I forfeited all rights to him. It doesn’t matter to me or, more to the point, shouldn’t matter to me who he marries: you or any other woman.’

  ‘Oh my dearest sister, you are so generous. Thank you, Zarri Bano, for being so understanding.’ Tears shone out of Ruby’s eyes.

  It was at that very moment that Shahzada entered the room and saw her two daughters locked in an embrace. Zarri Bano was taller than Ruby, and saw her mother first over her sister’s shoulders.

  Shahzada immediately glimpsed the naked pain in Zarri Bano’s eyes; she had hidden it from her sister behind her words of assurance, but she was unable to conceal it from her mother.

  How did one deal with a pain of this kind? Shahzada wondered wretchedly, her heart leaping out in sympathy to her eldest daughter. There were no solutions to this situation. The only avenue open was total negation of oneself and one’s longings.

  ‘Ruby, you have told your sister?’ Shahzada asked in a dull voice.

  ‘Yes, Mother, she has.’ Zarri Bano let her sister out of her embrace. Ruby decided that it was an appropriate time to retire for the night and thankfully left.

  Alone, mother and daughter stared across the room at each other. Zarri Bano moved to stand near the window. Lifting the net curtains she looked down at the courtyard and the lawns below, through a blurred vision. Her beautiful home had suddenly become a fortress of pain. Silence stretched between the two women.

  ‘I am sorry, Zarri Bano.’ Shahzada went to stand next to her daughter. ‘It wasn’t us – you must believe me. It was Bilkis’s suggestion. I was against it, Zarri Bano. Before we knew what had happened, the engagement took place.’ She prayed that her daughter understood.

  ‘Mother, you don’t have to explain to me how it happened. Nor do you have to apologise.’

  ‘Zarri Bano, why are you holding yourself back? You don’t have to pretend to me, or safeguard my feelings. Why don’t you just say what you feel? Remember, I am not Ruby, I am your mother. I know it was both insensitive and wrong of us to allow the engagement to go ahead. I told your father so.’

  ‘Mother, please leave me alone. What is done is done. I can never marry, so what does it matter to me who Sikander marries? He was bound to marry someone one day. I am a Shahzadi Ibadat, I am not supposed to care.’ But she was unable to hide the despair in her eyes.

  ‘You are not only a Holy Woman. You are a woman first, with feelings.’ Shahzada reached out and shook her arm.

  ‘Then as a woman tell me how I can fight this, Mother!’ Zarri Bano cried in anguish. ‘Show me how I can come to terms with this, the greatest emotional hurdle in my life – to triumph over my female feelings. It is a God-sent task, Mother, but I will triumph. I tell you – I will! But first tell me how. Show me how I can stop this knife spearing through me and ripping me apart inside.’

  The anguish in her daughter’s voice brought tears springing to Shahzada’s eyes.

  Holding her arm tightly against her chest, Zarri Bano doubled over and leaned down on the armchair, hiding her
ravaged face from her mother in shame.

  ‘Hush, my darling. Cry, if that’s what you want to do. You can trust me with your feelings, my daughter.’ Shahzada’s own voice broke with tears.

  ‘Cry, Mother?’ Zarri Bano accused, with tears of agony glimmering like green mysterious gems in her eyes. ‘Please, Allah pak, help me!’ she beseeched.

  She let herself be drawn into her mother’s arms, leaning on her shoulders. ‘He said … He said …’ Her voice broke, tripping and choking over the words. ‘He said that I will remember him till the day I die, Mother. Now I’ll never get away from him. How I fooled myself! I thought that I had killed and buried the old Zarri Bano behind the folds of this burqa, this black shroud – but she lives, Mother. She lives! Oh, Allah pak have mercy! I never knew my parents could be so cruel. Tell me, Mother, how I can kill this woman inside me, still passionately in love with this man.’

  Moving out of Shahzada’s arms, Zarri Bano tried desperately to retrieve the tatters of her self-control. She stood up tall, angrily brushing away the tears from her cheeks.

  ‘I should like to rest now. Forgive me, Mother, for this outburst of a weak woman. I am so ashamed. You never thought to see the day when your proud Zarri Bano wept for a man. I never knew love could be so painful. This is Allah’s way of punishing me for turning away all those poor suitors. I should be congratulating you, Mother. I am so sorry.’ Her body wracked once more, Zarri Bano turned her face away and closed her eyes.

  Helpless, Shahzada stared at her daughter’s back for a long time. Afraid to touch. Afraid to say anything that might break Zarri Bano’s fragile control and push her over the precipice of mental breakdown.

  At the end she quietly left the room – her eyes brimming with tears. She went straight down to the kitchen, where Fatima was scrubbing a large silver pot at the sink.

  ‘She knows, Fatima. She said, “I never knew my parents could be so cruel”,’ Shahzada murmured quietly behind her housekeeper’s back.

  Fatima’s body went still. Her soap-sudded hand remained poised in mid-air. ‘How did she react?’ she half whispered, without turning.

  ‘As can be expected – she is totally devastated. It is a wicked thing we have done, Fatima. I never thought to see the day when my daughter would lose complete control of herself. She has always been so strong. But she went to pieces, Fatima. Allah help us and my daughter. She hasn’t yet got over him.’

  ‘It is both unkind and unethical for her sister to marry the man that Zarri Bano loved and wanted to marry,’ Fatima said forthrightly. ‘It is going to be a very painful experience for her, Shahzada Jee.’

  ‘Please, Fatima, don’t say any more. As she says, we must remember that she is a Holy Woman. She cannot marry anybody, so must learn to trample on those feelings.’

  ‘Even if it kills her emotionally in the process?’ Fatima questioned.

  ‘Hush, Fatima! That we already did, the day we made her into a Holy Woman. Don’t say any more. If your master hears you …’

  ‘So what if he does? What more can he do than he’s done already?’

  Fatima returned to scouring the pot, with a long hard sweep, venting both her grief and rage on it. The pot was thus assured of an extra layer of shine. Tears swam in her eyes, which Shahzada would have seen, if she hadn’t left the kitchen. Fatima sighed.

  ‘Habib and Kaniz are two of the same kind. They both know how to destroy their children’s happiness.’ Fatima’s mouth curled bitterly. Feeling hot she shrugged the heavy Kashmiri shawl angrily off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor in a heap.

  Chapter 34

  HER ROOM SOAKED in darkness, Zarri Bano sat on an armchair, her hands folded in front of her on her lap. Eyes squeezed shut, she rocked herself to and fro, desperate to block out images that threatened to topple the wall of her inner world, the wall she had constructed after the veiling ceremony.

  The past, however, in all its colour and radiant glory came thundering back with a vengeance, as if the last year of her life had never taken place. Sikander and his face flitted everywhere in her mind. She capitulated, letting the scenes roll lovingly before her closed eyes, ending with the one of her fingertips tracing the shape of his mouth. As her body grew warm with longing, Zarri Bano recoiled, shaking her head in a desperate attempt to dislodge the thoughts and images that plagued and ensnared her.

  ‘I hate you, Sikander!’ she cried aloud. Then:

  ‘Oh Allah pak, please help me. This is the worst test You could have devised. You are testing my willpower and purity of mind and heart. In this test I can never hope to win! How can I be pure of mind when the thought of Sikander with my sister slices through me like a knife? I bleed from the shattering pain. Also I hate and despise myself for what I have been reduced to. For my female weaknesses.’

  An hour later, still in her burqa, she crept into bed. How she had longed for this bed, after the uncomfortable nights she had spent in Ajmeir Sharif. Tossing and turning she smothered her face in the pillow, attempting to block everything from her mind.

  She had known that Sikander would marry one day. Thus she had been mentally prepared for that eventuality. So why was she feeling as if the last breath was being snuffed out of her body? The answer came in an agonising moan.

  ‘It is because she is my sister. I will have to witness her life, and imagine what it might have been if I had married him.’ Was it sheer envy she felt? ‘Yes!’ the inner voice cried out, loud and clear. She didn’t want her sister to marry him. Any other man, yes, but not Sikander! It was the cruellest of all blows.

  ‘He will share his life and raise a family with my sister.’ The knife twisted inside her again as she thought of the marital intimacies they would enjoy. Had he swapped one sister, one body, for another? ‘Sikander, is this the revenge you promised? How could you do this to me?’ she wept, sinking her face once more in the damp hollow of her pillow.

  Some time later she sat bolt upright in her bed. She looked at the clock on the wall: it was nearly 2 a.m. How could her family sleep peacefully when they had thrown a thunderbolt like this at her and snatched her very sanity from her?

  ‘Allah pak, help me!’ she beseeched again through dry, quivering lips.

  She stood up resolutely to say her late-night prayers. She believed in her Allah pak and in Him she would seek peace and solace. She knew she would get it.

  As she stood on the prayer mat, she had to concentrate hard, making sure that she had recited the correct verses and number of cycles in prayers. In her concentration she forgot all about Ruby and Sikander. When it came to offering her personal prayers, her du’ah, Zarri Bano raised her hands high in front of her and appealed with all her heart.

  ‘Allah pak, please heed the prayers of a weak woman, a sinner. Guide me back onto Your path of peace and religious devotion. Tear out this ugly human emotion that is renting me apart and torturing my soul. Douse this longing, this fire that is engulfing my body. I am supposed to be a pure woman. How can I be that, while I harbour such base feelings? Enfold me in Your holy mantle of female modesty. Rid my mind and heart of this man who haunts me at this moment. Show me Your path; for that is the path I seek.

  ‘I thought I was on that path, the road of peace and female innocence. I thought I had happily parted company from the old Zarri Bano. Today I have not only lost my identity, but also my way. I have been thrown asunder. I do not know which way to turn – where my destination lies. I don’t want to neglect my Shahzadi Ibadat duties and role. Help me to keep these ugly thoughts and feelings at bay, to purify myself and exorcise all traces of my past life, so that I can begin again, in a new state of utter purity. Rinse out of my heart the passionate feelings I still harbour for Sikander! Give me strength so that I can rapturously rejoice in my sister’s marriage. Instil in me a sense of indifference, so that when I look at him, I will feel nothing for myself, or for him but only joy for my sister. Please help me to reach this state of mind! Otherwise I am a lost soul. I will not be able to bear this
torment or face my sister.’

  Depleted of energy and ending her fervent prayers, Zarri Bano stepped off the prayer-mat and sat in her bed. Leafing through the pages she read two chapters from the Holy Quran and a few pages from the Hadith. Rolling her rosary beads five times mechanically between her fingers gave her a distinct purpose, and took her away from the havoc of her inner world.

  Finally at peace with herself, Zarri Bano fell asleep and woke up at about eleven o’clock in the morning, thus missing her early morning prayers. As she washed and dressed, she mused over her present state of mind, for now she felt indeed calm and peaceful.

  When she beheld her sister downstairs, in the lounge, the smile Zarri Bano gave to Ruby was warm and genuine. Zarri Bano glowed inside, in the knowledge that now she could meet her sister and share her joy with no reserve on her part. Faced with her sister’s smile, Ruby basked in the warmth of it and let the cobwebs of worry blow away. She hadn’t slept either, dreading this meeting with her this morning.

  It was only Shahzada who saw the haunted look in her elder daughter’s eyes. Apart from that, there was no sign to show that Zarri Bano had clawed her way up a mountain in the night and had claimed victory, triumphing over herself, and her longings.

  To prove this to herself, Zarri Bano immersed herself in her religious devotions as never before. At the same time, she also took a keen interest in the preparations for her sister’s wedding.

  As yet Zarri Bano had not come across Sikander. He didn’t visit. On the day he was expected, Zarri Bano took herself off on a religious errand, leading a prayer meeting in a nearby darbar.