To her joy he heard her. A look of sheer relief flashed across his face, as he saw her standing in safety against the tall marble pillar of the corridor. She had not realised how dear that handsome face was, until this moment.
‘Stay there!’ he bellowed, over the head of an elderly woman in a black chador.
Sikander knew where to go now. He pushed his way urgently between the packed bodies, ignoring the cries of protest, very much afraid for Zarri Bano’s safety. She was standing against the pillar. One little shove and she could be crushed against it. To Zarri Bano it seemed like an eternity before he inched his hand slowly towards her, reaching over the shaven head of an old Bedouin. Their fingers touched. He then grabbed her whole hand in a tight grasp. The next minute he was standing directly in front of her.
His breathing ragged, Sikander looked into her eyes. ‘Zarri Bano! Zarri Bano!’ he whispered. ‘I thought I had lost you for good!’
With rivulets of tears trickling down her face she whispered back, ‘I thought when that big Nigerian woman fell on top of me, that was my last moment, Sikander.’
‘I know,’ he answered gravely, realising how close they had both been to death.
‘Do you know where Father and Ruby are?’ she asked fearfully. ‘I can’t see them anywhere. Please find them.’
He scanned the crowd of pilgrims swarming around the Al-Kaba building.
‘Of course I will. But come – let’s get you out of here first.’ He towed her behind him into the relative safety of the large corridor. Other pilgrims too were swarming towards the sanctuary of the upper corridor.
Turning to Zarri Bano he advised, ‘Stay here. I’ll go and look.’
The fear of separation evident in her face and voice, Zarri Bano objected. ‘No, Sikander, I want to go with you!’
He smiled tenderly down at her. ‘OK,’ he breathed, his hand aching to caress her cheek. His face sobered as he glanced up. ‘Look, the police are going in. Where is Ruby? I must go and find her and your father.’
He couldn’t mask the fear in his voice as he saw the police supervising the proceedings in the holy mosque, hurriedly pushing their way towards the scene of the tragedy. Waving their batons menacingly in front of the crowd they made pathways to the Al-Kaba building. With Zarri Bano by his side, Sikander went along the corridor, peering over the shoulders of the pilgrims, looking for Ruby and Habib.
As he looked at the large square-shaped central courtyard, Sikander’s heart turned to stone. The policemen were carrying out the dead and the injured.
‘Just stay here, Zarri Bano!’ Sikander ordered her roughly, before hurrying away to see what the police were doing.
The bodies of the dead had been laid out in one section of the corridor, on the carpeted floor. Shocked pilgrims with fearful glances peered over them, unable to take in the tragedy.
On reaching the spot, Sikander looked down in dread; his gaze skipping over the faces of the victims. His heart stood perfectly still as his eyes fell on a body lying beside that of a Chinese pilgrim. He squatted down on his haunches over Habib, the man he had once hated.
Zarri Bano reached his side, peering over his bent shoulders.
‘Father,’ she uttered in horror. Her hand pressed to her mouth to stop the scream, she fell to her knees beside the corpse. ‘Oh Allah Pak, no! Surely it can’t be!’
With dread in his heart Sikander searched for his wife, hoping that she wouldn’t be among the dead. Then before his stricken gaze, he saw two policemen carrying Ruby out to the corridor.
‘Ruby! Ruby!’ he cried. His wife’s eyes opened and she stared vacantly at him.
Upon hearing her sister’s name, Zarri Bano looked up in hope. Leaving her father, for whom she could do nothing, she rushed to her sister’s side. But Ruby’s breathing was ragged. Her white headscarf had fallen off. Bending down over her, Sikander felt her chest and began to press, desperate to revive her.
‘Ruby! Ruby! My darling.’
Ruby just softly uttered her son’s name: ‘Haris!’ It was the last word on her lips. Then her head rolled backwards, her mouth and eyes open.
‘No-o-o-o!’ Sikander’s agonised roar reached through to Zarri Bano’s numbed state. Tears blinded her gaze.
‘Brother Sikander, what has happened to us?’ she sobbed, glancing at the lifeless bodies of her beloved father and sister on the carpeted floor of the mosque corridor. Pilgrims crowded around, staring down at them in horror, before moving away.
Squatting on her knees Zarri Bano held her sister’s beloved face in her hands.
‘My darling sister, you cannot die. We haven’t finished our umrah yet. What about Haris? He is waiting for you in Karachi. Oh Allah Pak, why wasn’t it me, instead of you? You have a son, Ruby! You cannot die!’
The policemen returned with a medical team and lifted Ruby, Habib and other victims onto the stretchers. Sikander clamped down on his personal anguish, knowing he had to think and act fast. There were the funerals to arrange. As was the custom, pilgrims who died on the premises of the Holy Mosque were buried in the holy city of Mecca. It was a secret dream cherished by many pilgrims, who prayed: ‘Let it be there, in the Holy Mosque.’
‘Zarri Bano, I must go with these men,’ he told her compassionately. ‘They cannot leave your father and sister here. You will need to tell your mother. Go and find her, but let her finish her Tawaf-e-Ziarat first. Take her to the hotel and I will meet you there later. I will also have to phone Pakistan. The funeral arrangements will take place here. You must finish your umrah.’
‘What has happened to our loved ones, Brother Sikander?’ she asked again, and turned a horror-stricken face to him. Sharing her pain and wanting to comfort her, Sikander didn’t know what to say or what to do. He could barely control his own grief.
He followed the policeman out of the Holy Mosque and into an ambulance, where they had placed Ruby and Habib next to each other. Once the doors had closed, he put his head in his hands and wept.
As if in a dream, Zarri Bano watched them go. The silence after the pandemonium was deafening. Her head throbbing with the words, ‘Oh my God. What am I going to tell Haris and Mother?’ she quietly left the scene, remembering Sikander’s instructions, telling her that she must finish her umrah.
Chanting the words, ‘Labbaika Allahumma Labbaik,’ through chattering teeth, Zarri Bano stepped once more into the human circle going around the Al-Kaba building. ‘How is it possible that my father and sister have already reached Allah?’ she queried, brushing the tears from her cheeks.
When it was over, she climbed the steps leading to the top corridor with a heavy heart, to search for her mother. Was it all a nightmare? she asked herself again, feeling dazed. If so, when would she wake up?
The air hostess removed the untouched trays of food from the three passengers. Zarri Bano looked out of the plane window and watched the white fleecy clouds below. Shahzada sat next to her, silent with grief. It was left to Sikander to comfort both mother and daughter, and to see to everything in the last two days. He had telephoned his own family and Siraj Din in the village – gently breaking the news to them all.
Exhausted, Shahzada finally fell asleep. Zarri Bano, sitting beside Sikander, turned a tearful glance at him. ‘I am so sorry, Brother Sikander. I wish we had never come to do hajj.’
‘No, dear sister, it was fated to happen. Get to sleep now. You haven’t slept for two nights. Here, let me clean your face,’ he offered, and, taking a napkin, he gently wiped her tears away, almost like a father touching a child’s face.
She let him.
Then closing her eyes she slid down into her seat, unable to accept that she would never see her father or her sister ever again. Sikander dabbed at his own wet eyes with the napkin, crying inside, ‘What am I going to tell poor Haris?’
He watched Zarri Bano fall asleep. Some time later, her head fell against his shoulder. Gently he moved her back onto her seat. A lock of her hair had escaped from her burqa, and he tucked it back int
o place. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured in her sleep. The tragedy had in a strange way drawn them into a closer bond. She trusted him with her life.
Sikander moved to an empty seat on the other aisle. Tears of anguish for his motherless son blinded his eyes again. ‘Oh Ruby! My dear wife!’ he wept, closing his eyes tightly. Never to see her lovely, smiling face again! It was too much to endure.
Chapter 45
SIRAJ DIN RECEIVED the news of the death of his loved ones with a stony silence, betraying hardly a flicker of emotion on his age-creased face. Inside, however, his world fell apart. It was so unfair to have a young granddaughter and a beloved son die – all gone before him.
He immediately sent a message to Fatima, asking her to come and organise everything for the hajjis’ arrival from Saudi Arabia, and for the guests who would be coming from all over Pakistan to mourn and pay their respects. He also summoned Naimat Bibi and Kulsoom Bibi to install themselves full-time in his home for the entire mourning period of forty days.
His thin lips issued crisp orders to his servants, but inside he was a lost man. Only years of breeding and built-in stoicism prevented him from giving in to the luxury of displaying his emotions in public and wailing out aloud, which was what he yearned to do. As a role model for the younger men in the village to emulate, Siraj Din had no choice but to cling to the tough façade he had adopted and act the part that was expected of him.
The news had travelled like wildfire across the village and the town where Habib had lived. Within an hour the household was swollen with people come to offer their condolences. Siraj Din received them with a simple nod of his head as he remained sitting on the woollen mat in his courtyard. He had ceremoniously abandoned the luxury of his palang.
While the men sat quietly on jute rugs in the large courtyard, the women chanted and mourned amongst themselves inside the rooms. Chaudharani Kaniz was one of the first to arrive. She took it upon herself to receive and preside over the women guests.
Annoyed with the racket coming from the women’s rooms, Siraj Din had sent word by his servants that he didn’t want any chanting in his home. ‘They should read the Holy Quran and offer prayers for my loved ones’ souls. Chanting and wailing will not help them, but the prayers will,’ he angrily instructed Fatima.
Siraj Din managed not to shed a single tear for a whole day. That is, until later in the night when Sikander’s parents arrived with Haris in the village. It was when he saw Haris skip in lightly through the tall gates, pushing them wide open with childish force as he always did with his two small hands, and then turn to stare interestedly at all the men assembled in the courtyard, his small mind unable to fathom what was going on, that Siraj Din lost his grip.
Tears flooded his weather-beaten cheeks as he embraced Raja Din.
‘You have lost a daughter-in-law, my friend. I have lost a son and a granddaughter, mother of my great-grandchild, our precious Haris,’ Siraj Din wept aloud. ‘What sort of welcome are we going to offer them when they return from their holy pilgrimage? Tell me, my friend!’ Wiping his face with a cloth, he led them to the gathering of men sitting on the rugs in the courtyard.
Bilkis was ceremoniously led weeping by Fatima into the large guest room where Chaudharani Kaniz made space for her by her side on the floor rug. She was trying her best to read a chapter from the Holy Quran, but her eyes flickered up every time Fatima entered the room. ‘She is in her rightful place now, performing menial duties in this household,’ Kaniz snorted bitchily to herself as she saw Fatima bring in a jug of water to serve to the woman who had fallen in a semi-faint while crying. That ‘chit’ – the so-called headmistress with her arrogant airs – had come in for a short time to offer condolences to Siraj Din’s other daughter-in-law and then had left. ‘Who does she think she is?’ Kaniz sniffed, remembering Firdaus’s appearance earlier in the day.
In exasperation Kaniz looked down again at the page of the Holy Quran. The words were beginning to swim in front of her. ‘I must concentrate,’ she told herself irritably. This was the third time she had lost the thread of her reading because of that woman and her daughter.
Later that evening, Zarri Bano, Shahzada and Sikander were picked up from Karachi Airport by Khawar. The whole village was now in mourning and waited for their arrival, with all the relevant rituals. No open fires or gas stoves were lit that day. Naimat Bibi’s village tandoor remained cold and forgotten, as she supervised the cooking for the guests.
As soon as they got out of the car in Chiragpur, Shahzada and Zarri Bano ritually embraced and wept over the shoulders of the queues of women waiting to pay their respects. Outside the gates of his hawaili stood the bereft lone figure of Siraj Din.
‘We meet you not with garlands of flowers to place around your neck, to welcome you back from the pilgrimage, but with arms held out in mourning for our beloved ones, my children,’ Siraj Din cried over Shahzada’s shoulder. She was drawn away by a weeping Bilkis.
Followed closely by the entourage of mourners, they all went inside. It was when Haris looked at his father and then beyond, seeking his mother everywhere and asking, ‘Where is Mama?’ that the walls exploded with cries and mourning chants as never heard before in the entire village. Even Kaniz’s dry eyes were moist. Zarri Bano gently led her nephew away, cradling him to her body and sobbing bitterly over his head. The child simply looked up at her, unable to understand what was happening around him.
When she saw Sikander watching them, Zarri Bano’s heart leapt to his in sympathy. Reaching his side she handed Haris over to him and then cried in the open arms of her Cousin Gulshan.
Inside Siraj Din’s household, a large crowd of women mourners were gathered, waiting expectantly for Chaudharani Shahzada to arrive. Accompanied by Fatima, Shahzada stood uncertainly outside the house under the verandah.
‘Come on, Sahiba Jee, they are all waiting to pay their condolences. You have to meet them, I am afraid,’ Fatima said gently, pitying her, knowing fully well that her mistress was in no state to cope with the chanting and the wailing.
Shahzada nodded and entered the large room, emptied of all its furniture. As if her legs were shackled to heavy weights, she hovered awkwardly on the threshold. Her eyes dreamily fanned over the white shawled heads of the women sitting around the room on the floor.
Dressed mainly in white, some were reciting surahs from the Holy Quran. Others were counting some holy Arabic words over the date stones and then collecting them into large basins.
On spotting Shahzada, most leapt to their feet, to offer their condolences and to pay their respects to her, as the widow of Habib Khan and Siraj Din’s most respected eldest daughter in-law. Unanimously as a sign of respect, they accorded Chaudharani Kaniz the honour of rising and being the first to embrace Shahzada.
Exhausted from the plane journey, Shahzada stood woodenly in their arms, accepting their hugs, embraces, chants and tears shed on her head shawl. Finally, when the last woman had drawn away from her, Shahzada moved forward into the middle of the room. The village women looked up expectantly, wondering what Shahzada was going to do.
With a glazed look in her bloodshot eyes, Shadzada suddenly burst out with a chant of her own. There was no need to devise it. It simply erupted from her trembling lips and heart.
‘Tell me, my sisters in mourning, what crime have I committed? Am I such a sinner, that Allah Pak had to punish me like this? I have lost all of my family. My beloved son Jafar, my gentle sweet Ruby and my noble husband. All gone! I must have done something bad to be punished like this – to have my beloved grandson Haris orphaned. Tell me, my sisters in mourning, how have I sinned?’ Shahzada’s wild gaze fixed intently on her best friend. ‘I know why I am being punished, Fatima. It is because I am such a bad wife. I didn’t forgive my husband!’
‘Hush! Mistress, please sit down.’ Afraid of Shadzada embarrassing herself further, Fatima gently urged her to sit down on a pile of cushions, next to Chaudharani Kaniz. Fatima had not missed the sparkle of interest th
at appeared in Kaniz and Kulsoom’s eyes, as Shahzada berated herself as a ‘bad wife’.
‘You have been a wonderful wife and mother, Chaudharani Shahzada,’ Kaniz offered generously, giving a comforting hug to her fellow Chaudharani and rival, thus surprising all the women in the room.
‘Yes, I should know. I have lived with you for nearly twenty years, Chaudharani Jee.’ Fatima joined in her praise, sitting protectively on the other side of her mistress.
Shahzada turned a bewildered look at her woman helper.
‘Fatima, some evil force entered my home the day Sikander and his father came here five years ago. Nothing has been the same since. I became alienated from my husband that day. My son died that very month. What happened, Fatima? I tell you, I am suffering from someone’s evil eye. I was so proud of my family and my husband. Now I have no one except one daughter and she is lost to me.’ Shahzada automatically reached for the comfort of Fatima’s shoulder, and sobbed contritely, ‘I didn’t even forgive him, and Habib Sahib touched my feet.’
‘Hush! Hush, Mistress,’ Fatima whispered anxiously, knowing full well that her mistress was beyond caring about appearances or village gossip. It was too late anyway. Fatima shrugged cynically, seeing Kulsoom get up. By the time the village matchmaker reached her bed that night, almost all the village homes were sure to be fully acquainted with the fact that the proud Habib Khan had touched his wife’s feet! Now that was an incredible event, even to her ears, and she was part of that household.
‘Allah Pak will never forgive me.’ Shahzada continued her broken chant on Fatima’s shoulder. Fatima saw the look on Kaniz’s face and knew that the other woman resented Shahzada turning to Fatima instead of her. After all, she had so uncharacteristically reached out physically to her.
‘I didn’t even tell him I loved him!’ Shahzada wailed, blissfully unaware of the gathering tension between the two women sitting on either side of her.
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