In Salma’s house, her mother, Zeinab, was clearing away the dishes in the bavarchkhana, the kitchen, while she was sweeping the veranda floor with a boker, a broomstick. They were suddenly disturbed by the thudding sound of the outside door. Mother and daughter exchanged surprised glances, thinking who could it be at this time of the morning. The postman had already been.
Zeinab went to open the door, with the words of greeting “Bismillah” on her lips, as she let the two visitors in. She was taken aback by Kaniz’s whole manner and the expression on her face, as she stood tall and erect in the middle of the courtyard, her whole body seemed tense, as if ready to spring.
“Khair Hey, Sister Kaniz? Is everything alright?” She asked.
“No, everything is not alright!” Kaniz exploded, taking advantage of the cue offered by Zeinab’s question. “Our Faiza miscarried last night”, she said, pinning her full gaze on Salma.
“Oh, I am sorry, Sister Kaniz. Oh I am!” Like everyone else, she knew how precious the baby was for Kaniz’s family.
“So you should be, Zeinab.” She deliberately omitted to say the complementary word: Sister. The omission was not lost on the others. “Your daughter has been after my Faiza since the day she conceived. Just because she keeps miscarrying herself - she made sure that Faiza couldn’t have a healthy baby too.”
“Hang on, Sister Kaniz. This is utter nonsense. What has my Salma got to do with Faiza’s miscarriage? Miscarriages are a medical, physiological matter. In Faiza’s case to do with her body and not my daughter. I have tolerated your superstitious ways and whims about perchanvah and chillah, but this is ridiculous. It goes beyond the pale of reasoning and rationality.” Zeinab ended, with her cheeks red with anger.
“Huh, Sister Neelum, listen to this woman. She thinks it is nothing to do with her daughter. Don’t you think that it is a great coincidence that I saw Salma in my own home, embracing the life out of Faiza, and the very next day my daughter-in-law loses her baby? I suppose you think that I imagined all that? Didn’t you go to our house yesterday, Salma?” Kaniz turned once again to Salma, who was standing awkwardly near one of the pillars supporting the veranda, her mouth dry.
“Did you, Salma?” Her mother asked, her voice coming out in a screech.
“Yes, Mother.” Salma’s voice came out low; she was utterly distressed by the whole affair.
“You see! If I were you I would keep your namoush daughter under lock and key, until the right amount of time has expired. Rather than letting her go gadding about and spreading her perchanvah, shadow on healthy pregnant women.” And so saying, she swished her chador shawl over her head and shoulders and made a dramatic departure, with her friend, Neelum, following in embarrassed silence.
For a few seconds, mother and daughter stood on the spot as if turned to stone; overcome by the cruelty of Kaniz’s remarks and accusations. At last, Zeinab sat down on the charpoy and looked at her daughter, who seemed to have shrunk against the pillar. Zeinab was angry with her daughter, but also distressed on her behalf, knowing what she must be feeling.
“Salma, Salma, how many times have I told you not to have anything to do with your friend until she’s had the baby? I know that we don’t believe this perchanvah rubbish, but some of these village women do. They have imbibed the concepts and beliefs right to their souls. No amount of argument or reasoning will persuade them otherwise – least of all Kaniz. Why did you go yesterday? And why, of all things, did you have to go and embrace Faiza? You have just played into Kaniz’s hands.”
“It wasn’t me, Mother, it was Faiza. She embraced me, when I told her about me seeing the doctor and that everything was now going to be alright. It had nothing to do with me, Mother. She fell yesterday, right before my very eyes.
“What? Why didn’t you tell Kaniz?”
“I was too shocked and horrified to tell her. I am sure that Faiza hasn’t told her.”
“But this is an outrage!” Zeinab shot up from the charpoy. “Allah Pak, that woman is going around spreading rumours that you have caused her daughter-in-law to miscarry, when it was her fall that did it. I’ll not let her get away with it. Come on Salma, get your chador. She will not victimise you any more, or make you a scapegoat. I’ll see to it.”
“Where are we going, Mother?” Salma’s eyes mirrored her horror, her lips quivering in distress. She didn’t want to be drawn into the unsavoury limelight any further.
“We are going to Kaniz’s house to sort out this matter once and for all.”
A few minutes later, the mother and daughter left for Kaniz’s home. Zeinab’s wiry body was erect in anger, whereas Salma, since learning of the miscarriage, had lost all confidence in herself. She recalled Kaniz’s vindictive word namous, evil, as she had called her. Perhaps she was. Perhaps if she hadn’t gone to see Faiza, she might not have slipped and thus lost the baby. Perhaps there was something after all in the concept of perchanvah. Perhaps it did affect women. How could her mother persuade the woman to believe otherwise?
When Zeinab and Salma entered Kaniz’s courtyard, all the people assembled there turned to survey them. Salma’s cheeks grew hot with embarrassment, and she drew further behind her mother.
On seeing them, Kaniz’s eyes had widened in disbelief. Zeinab calmly and with an unwavering focus, glanced over all the people in the courtyard. There were men and women, both old and young. All of them looked in their direction. A hushed silence had descended in the courtyard. Four of the women, who also knew Zeinab and Salma, now speculated as to what was going to happen next. They had noticed in surprise that Kaniz didn’t issue a welcoming greeting as was the custom or stand up to receive the two women.
Zeinab, too, for her part, had dispensed with the customary greetings and gestures of social etiquette. She just stood there, tall, in the middle of the courtyard, the exact stance that she remembered that Kaniz had took a short time earlier in her courtyard. Now it was her turn.
It was Javed, Kaniz’s husband who broke the silence, irked by his wife’s rudeness.
“Welcome, Sister Zeinab. Come and sit down.” He drew out a high-backed chair for her under the tree. “If you’ve come to see Faiza, she is resting in her room.”
“Thank you, Brother Javed. It is not Faiza who I have come to see. For you see, Kaniz has forbidden us to see her.” She enjoyed watching the fleeting expression of irritation pass over his face. “I have come to see you, Kaniz, and these women assembled here, and Kaniz’s spiritual guide, pir.”
“Oh! About anything in particular?” He asked.
His wife interrupted him, as she ejaculated: “Why do you want to see my pir? What has he done to affect you?”
“Oh he has done a lot. He is the one who has stuffed silly and gullible women like you with sheer nonsense and made my daughter into your scapegoat for Faiza’s miscarriage.”
For the first time in her life, Zeinab didn’t care about mincing her words. After all Kaniz hadn’t minced hers. She had almost accused her daughter of murder. She felt no shame in talking about miscarriages, a taboo subject like sex and pregnancy, while in the presence of men. Today wasn’t a normal day, however, and she didn’t feel normal. Everything had been taken out of proportion.
Javed had been irked and bemused for years by the influence that the pir had on his wife and some other women, and welcomed this speech, even though it was a baesti, an insult, to have his wife called silly in front of all these people. He was very angry now and he suspected that his wife had done Zeinab and Salma a great wrong, to have brought this normally, most gentle, pleasant and dignified woman to speak in a manner in which she had done.
“Kaniz, what have you done? Have you been blaming the loss of our grandchild on that masoum, innocent child? This is ridiculous. You cannot go around doing that.”
“Trust you, Javed, to delight in me being insulted!” Kaniz could hardly speak - her own anger was choking her, “And in ridiculing me.”
“It is not a matter of ridicule”, Zeinab continued. “It
is a matter of religious and social debate. Where does it say in the Quran or Hadith about perchanvah? For those are the books and sources of our faith? Anything else is shirk. Where has the pir got his ideas from? Is he a woman? Is he a doctor? Is he an authority on all female health matters?”
“We all know that you do not believe in pirs. That doesn’t give you the license to ridicule ours.” She stressed the word ‘ours’, hoping that her husband would support her. However from Javed’s facial expression, it seemed that the contrary was true and he appeared to be gloating, as this was his chance to discredit her pir. Kaniz felt very bitter and very much alone.
“No. It doesn’t. You are right, Kaniz. I respect holy men, pirs. They are very intelligent religious men. People like us do need them, to guide us in all religious and spiritual matters. It is their lack of knowledge in some female matters and meddling with superstitions passed throughout the centuries that I abhor. You have yourself told all of us that your pir said that a woman who was expecting should avoid contact, or even the presence of such a woman into the same room as someone who had miscarried. With some of you women, that has meant that you not only insensitively shun but also offend women like my daughter, who have had the misfortune to miscarry on more than one occasion. It is not a disease that you can catch. Some of you have even refused to eat food that Salma had cooked and put in front of you. All this I have observed and tolerated, but what has been the outcome of your superstitious ways? You have harmed and hurt young minds, and sensibilities of women like my daughter. You have belittled her and, in fact, insulted the whole essence of humanity and womanhood.”
“I will not listen to any more of your nonsense!” Kaniz said as she stood up to face Zeinab, her body quivering with rage.
“But I haven’t finished yet, Kaniz. I suppose it is alright for you to come storming into my house and accuse my daughter of witchcraft and virtual murder. You said that my Salma caused Faiza’s miscarriage. Well, has your Faiza told you that she fell?” Zeinab stopped and waited for the words to register in Kaniz’s mind.
Kaniz’s lips dried up as stared at Zeinab. “What? I didn’t know anything about her falling!”
“Well, why don’t you go and ask her?”
Kaniz got up to go. Zeinab, Salma, Neelum and Javed followed her.
In her room, Faiza lay awake. She had overheard everything in the courtyard. As she heard the footsteps coming towards her room, her heart started to thud wildly. She had dreaded this moment.
They all came in and stood around her bed. She spied her friend, Salma, standing behind her mother. She studiously avoided looking her in the eye.
Kaniz looked down at her daughter-in-law. There was a message in her eyes that she desperately wanted Faiza to interpret correctly.
“Faiza, your friend, Salma, said that you fell yesterday. Did you fall?”
Faiza looked her mother-in-law calmly in the eye.
“No.” As she said it, she caught the surprised crushed look in Salma’s eyes. She quickly averted her gaze. She had just faced the moral choice of either betraying her friend or allowing her mother-in-law to lose face. She knew how much the baby had meant to her parents-in-law. She had lost the baby through her own fault. She had been warned about wet floors. She couldn’t have capped her mother-in-law’s baesti in losing face in public too.
Zeinab glanced inquiringly at her daughter. She, with her eyes brimming with bitter tears, had left the room in distress. She couldn’t believe it. Her friend had lied and had thus sealed her fate with perchanvah, and made her the scapegoat.
“Well, apparently, your daughter-in-law is not only a liar but also a coward.” Zeinab spoke bitterly, as she left the room and came into the courtyard. She turned to look back at Kaniz, who had followed her out.
“Don’t think that the matter is now closed, Kaniz. I am going to invite your pir to come to our village and give his version of the ideas you have perpetuated in the village.” Then with a dramatic gesture of her hand, pointing around the courtyard and the house, she continued. “Moreover, perchanvah is now in your house. Now that your daughter-in-law has miscarried, according to your rules and ressmeh, no household with a pregnant woman should welcome her or nor will they visit your house. Now, it is your Faiza who will be the one to be shunned. As you seem to think, that if anyone miscarried in the next two or three months, it will be due to your Faiza’s perchanvah. As you have made the rules, you must now live by them. You cannot have it both ways!”
So saying, Zeinab made a dignified departure. Her daughter having already run ahead, mortified and wounded to her very soul at her friend’s betrayal.
Kaniz stood in the middle of the courtyard, amidst the amazed glances of her women friends and guests, her mouth opening and closing. For once in her lifetime, she was lost for words.
THE ESCAPE
In the packed prayer hall of Darul Uloom mosque in Longsight, the Imam concluded the Eid prayers with a passionate plea for world peace and terrorist activities in Pakistan to stop. Seventy three years old Samir, perched on a plastic chair because of his bad leg, kept his hands raised, quietly mouthing his own personal prayer.
“Please Allah Pak, bless her soul! And let me escape!”
Rows of seated men had arisen from their prayer mats and reached out to energetically hug others and offer the festive greeting, “Eid Mubarak!” Samir took his time. There was no-one in particular he was seeking to greet or hug at this mosque. Most of the men around him were strangers and of the younger generation, several sported beards – a marked shift between the two generations. His face remained clean shaven. Nowadays he prayed at the Cheadle mosque, joining the congregation of Arabs and other nationalities for the Taraveeh prayers during Ramadhan. Nostalgia tugging at him, on a whim, Samir had asked his son to drop him off in Longsight to offer his Eid prayers at his old community mosque.
Painfully rising to his feet Samir began the hugging ritual, smiling cordially. Unlike the others leaving the hall, he loitered; in no hurry to get out. At the door he dutifully dropped a five pound note in the collection fund box.
Whilst looking for his shoes he bumped into his old friend, Manzoor – they greeted, smiled broadly and warmly hugged. Outside, in the chilly autumn day, his friend, who lived a street away from the mosque, invited him to his house for the Eid hospitality of Vermicelles, sewayian and chana chaat.
The smile slid off Samir’s face; he was reluctant to visit his friend’s house – afraid of the old memories, shying away from the normality, the marital bliss of his friend’s home. In particular he was loath to witness the little intimacies between husband and wife. The look. The laugh. The teasing banter.
Instead he waved goodbye to his friend and stood waiting for his son. “I’m being picked up,” he informed a young man kindly offering him a lift home, before sauntering on his bad leg down the street.
“I have all the time in the world!” He wryly muttered to himself, savouring the walk down streets he had cycled and scooted along for over three decades. A lot had changed, the area now thriving with different migrant communities; the Pakistanis and the Bengalis living side by side with the Irish and the Somalis. Many Asian stores and shops had sprung up. The Bengali Sari and travel agent shops jostled happily alongside the Pakistani ones and the Chinese takeaway. Mosques catering to the needs of Muslim community had sprung up, from the small Duncan Road mosque in a semi-detached corner house to the purpose built Darul Uloom centre on Stamford Road. The Bengali mosque for the Bengali community on one corner of Buller Road was only a few feet away from the Pakistani and Arab Makki Masjid on the other corner. Not surprisingly on Fridays, for the Juma prayers, the street was gridlocked, with an occasional police car monitoring the situation.
He noted that the Roman Catholic Church and its primary school on Montgomery Road had disappeared, joining the quaint little National Westminster Bank branch that had been in the middle of Beresford Road with a communal vegetable plot at the back. That had been pulled down twenty
odd years ago. St Agnes church was still there, however, at the junction of West Point and Hamilton Road and it still enjoyed healthy Sunday morning congregations.
Samir stopped outside a shop on Beresford Road that had been called Joy Town twenty one years earlier. It had been his children’s favourite toyshop, especially on Eid day, when they ran to it with their Eidhi money, eager to buy cars, skipping ropes and doll’s china crockery sets. In its place there now stood a grocery superstore with stalls of vegetables and fruits hogging the pavement area. On Fridays and Saturdays families, like Samir’s, who had moved out of the area still returned to do their shopping, visiting their favourite halal meat and grocery stores; carting boxes of fresh mangoes, bags of basmati rice and chapatti flour back to their cars. The hustle and bustle of these shops always bought out a smile in him.
His son, Maqbool, a well-to-do sportswear manager, dutifully returned to pick him up half an hour later. By that time, Samir was shivering with the autumn chill in his shalwar kameez and shervani and gladly got into the warm car. He had wanted to go to Sanam Sweet Centre to buy a few boxes of Asian sweets to distribute to friends but he hesitated, suddenly overcome by trepidation.
“Do you want to go somewhere else, Father?” his son asked, as if reading his mind.
Samir shook his head; loath to inconvenience his son further, feeling guilty for already taking up enough of his time.
“No. Let’s go home.” he murmured, eyes closed.
He had a large five bedroom detached house but with his wife and family gone all the joy of living had fled. He kept himself in the master bedroom, hating to enter the other rooms in the house, especially the one with his wife’s clothes. Only when the grandchildren visited did he unlock some of the doors. He spent his time in his new favourite spot, the chair at the dining table next to the window and radiator. He sat there leafing through The Times, the Daily Jang and The Nation, watching the traffic go past on the busy road.
A Pair of Jeans and other stories Page 9