Jamil was still staring at the ceiling, he couldn’t tell for how long, when he heard the front door open. That was her. He didn’t move a muscle. Normally he would have raced down the stairs to greet her, to hug her. Not today. He heard her call him. Then again. No sound escaped his lips. Then she was clambering up the stairs. And was now in the bedroom. He needed time to think, to decide. He didn’t want to see her face.
“Oh, here you are”, Rubiya spoke over her shoulder, as she peeled off her outdoor coat, ‘Because you didn’t answer, I thought you had gone outside.’
Wordlessly, Jamil got off the bed and went outside onto the landing, his hand balled inside his pocket, fingering the piece of paper. His hand clenched it. His wife was speaking again. “Did you clean the small room then, Jamil?” she called. He was unable to prevent the retort that came out. “Yes. Guess what I found there?” The words sounded rough and alien to his ears. They were laced with anger and bitterness. He pushed the door open and went inside the room.
Rubiya was lying languidly on the bed, flicking off her high stiletto court shoes. He looked down at her close cropped hair with brown highlights, her well-made face accentuating her regular well-formed features. She looked very attractive in the sleek maroon jump-suit hugging her body. Normally he would have been by her side on the bed by now. At the moment he was seeing her through the eyes of other men. The vision sickened him. God knew, how many men she had attracted with her looks, looks which nauseated him at the moment. Wasn’t he himself allured by them? But whereas before he’d thought he was the only one entitled to admire her looks, now he wasn’t so sure. There was definitely someone lurking about from her past, whom Rubiya had tantalised. Unable to bear the picture it conjured up in his mind he wanted to hit out.
Instead he drew out the piece of paper and flicked it down onto her chest. He wanted to erase that confident, self-possessed smile from her face. Shaking a curl from her eyes, Rubiya got up on her elbows and picked up the paper. As she recognised the paper and her eyes traced the words on it, the smile was whipped away, as Jamil had anticipated. The words, written by herself five years ago, stared back at her. She froze. She was living a nightmare. She’d always imagined her husband confronting her with her past deed, but never for the world imagined that her own hand would betray her. She looked again at the piece, the hateful words swimming before her eyes.
‘My darling. Rashid, I am ready to do what you suggest. I will leave home and my family in order to be with you. I will contrive a way in order to go away with you. I will meet you in the afternoon at 2.00 p.m. near the post office at the end of the road.’
Her heart was beating erratically. The self-assurance which was earlier etched on her features was there no more. She stared back at her husband. Jamil looked pointedly into her eyes. He didn’t trust himself. He certainly didn’t trust his tongue. He wanted to lash out at her, call her the horrible things that she was. He wanted to even do physical damage to her. He looked at her body again. It was soiled for him. He was the only one with whom she had a physical relationship, but the thought of the other man, Rashid, being near her, was driving him insane. She was ugly, she was tainted.
He lashed her with his eyes. She felt hedged in. Between them stood another world — a world of Rubiya’s past. Her past had caught up with her. She saw the hate and loathing imprinted on his face. She must make an effort to defend herself. She couldn’t bear the look on his face. She got off the bed and flicked the paper in the basket. Her mind was still dizzy from this outcome.
“Oh, that letter was written while I was still at school. All girls were writing such letters in those days. And I did the same” She finished lamely.
Jamil, however, had already left the room, banging the door behind him. The next minute she heard him go outside, and the car started to purr into action and away it was gone.
Rubiya sank onto the bed and covered her eyes with her hand. From a happy evening she was looking forward to it had turned into a nightmare. Oh, God, he knew. For two years she’d made every effort to hide that stupid, lousy secret of hers. And here it was, now in the open. She’d always imagined Jamil’s feeling of horror and revulsion, but somehow now that he knew it seemed much worse. She remembered the look in his eyes. He had looked at her as if she were something hideous. She hated that look. She’d never seen it before. Always he had looked at her if not with reverence, at least something near to it. Now she knew that look would never return.
He was a good husband. Unlike so many couples, they had an equal relationship. They’d had lovely times together, and she knew he adored her good looks. She caught sight of the broken picture frame. Somehow the action was symbolic. It meant he couldn’t bear the sight of her. The broken pieces mirrored the tainted image that Jamil had of her now in his heart and mind. Her mind still reeled from the shock. To think, a small action could have such disastrous results. All she had done was to go away with a man for a day, whom she later detested. Nothing had come out of it and she’d returned. She hadn’t even let him get within an arm’s length of her. Who would ever believe her?
She braced her shoulders. She was going to make an effort to redeem herself in Jamil’s mind and to save her marriage. She was certainly going to try. She would explain to him everything. She looked at the clock. She didn’t know whether the dinner was made or not. But if it was not she would make it. She went downstairs into the kitchen and found it wasn’t.
The next evening Rubiya was making dinner again. Jamil was out. He had not told her where he was going. Nor had she asked, fearing his earlier sarcastic remark. “What is it to you where I am going? Unlike you I am not likely to go off with anybody.” Rubiya had flinched from his remark, hurt to her very soul. Normally if he made any sarcastic remarks she’d never let him get away with it. She would lash out immediately and lace her own remark with as much sarcasm as she could muster. Not this time, however. It was not her right, her priority. If she did, he would only taunt her as he had done last night.
She remembered the previous evening. She told him everything when he returned home. She might as well not have bothered. He was deaf to any pleas, her explanation. He was not affected in any way. The new spectacles through which he was viewing her weren’t to be removed. They were well and truly stuck. When she mentioned ‘dinner’ he’d barked at her that he’d already had it elsewhere, but she needn’t ask where. Again she had fumed inwardly, unable to retaliate. She didn’t know how to react. She’d never been in such a situation with him before. That horrible deed was making her more and more vulnerable. If she called him, he didn’t bother answering her. The table wasn’t set for the breakfast. Nor was hers made. He had eaten and then departed for work, without even saying goodbye. At night he’d lain by her side, but made no effort to touch her. On the contrary, she had the impression that if she touched him accidentally he would have flinched.
Did he hate her that much? She was still the same person. Surely he couldn’t change that much towards her. Where was his love, his gentle, considerate ways? He hadn’t changed! What was changed was the image of her in his mind and he had changed to suit that image. She hated the image he created of her in his mind, as a soiled wife, an image in which he had lost both respect and trust.
Her day at work was clouded by what had happened the previous evening. All day her mind dwelt on Jamil, on what he was thinking and how he was going to behave tonight. To say that she had not liked his mood last night was the understatement of the year. Her mind buzzed over remarks she could make in order to defend herself, if the situation arose. The situation didn’t arise. He wasn’t in when she got home. She waited patiently, prepared the dinner and then ate it by herself. Three hours ticked away. He still hadn’t returned. Nor had he phoned her to let her know where he was. If he had done that at any other time, she would have been in a blazing temper by now, and would have flared at him the moment he entered the door. Now, however, she feared the repercussions, if she approached him about it. She was shaking
with anger. In her mind she saw a picture of Jamil gradually turning into a tyrant and she herself gradually becoming more and more obsequious because of his discovery.
Rubiya shoved the plate away from her. She might as well have been eating sawdust. No! It couldn’t be. It was a psychological blackmail. No person had the right to dominate another in such a way. The situation revolted her. If Jamil stayed in this mood and taunted her whenever it suited him, she would he a silent sufferer always, taking the brunt of his anger, and unable to air her own.
No! She wasn’t going to go through that again. She had too much pride. She wasn’t made to be smothered under someone else’s feet. She’d already been smothered enough. She wasn’t going to relive the nightmare of three previous years spent at her parents. There she was made to suffer for her deed daily. Her mother, who never forgave her for what she had done or what she made them go through during those two fatal days made her a perpetual scapegoat for her anger. She was not to be trusted any more. Unless accompanied by either of her two sisters she was not allowed to go anywhere. Her mother feared that she might elope again and bring disaster upon them all.
Over the three years she saw her normal buoyant self being smothered under her mother’s tyranny and the obsequious mantle she was forced to wear. In her mind there flashed a vision of her reliving those three years but this time for life, and with her husband. A shudder escaped from her spine. She loved her husband, and wanted to save her marriage; there was no doubt about that, but not at the expense of her sanity, of her emotional survival. She was not born to receive her husband’s taunts for the rest of her life, for a supposed crime. Life could not be so unfair. She tasted gall in her mouth.
With shaking hands, Rubiya pushed her plate aside and got up from the table. She turned away from the kitchen, without giving the dishes another glance. The pretty china plate perched on the edge of the table had no place in her mind. It could fall and break for all she cared. She banged the door behind her and went up to her room. She too could bang doors as much as she liked. In a strange way she felt better for it. She wasn’t born to be locked up in a marriage where she danced to her husband’s tune.
Almost mechanically she put on her coat and got her handbag. She left everything as it was and went downstairs. She was not sure what she was going to do, but she knew one thing — she was not going to spend this night in this house. She wasn’t going to go through yesterday evening again. Opening the door she stepped outside. A blast of cold air attacked her face, the street lamps shining in the dark. She pulled the collar of her coat closer to her face and slammed the door behind her. Strangely, the fogginess she earlier experienced disappeared. Her mind was clear. She was back to her normal self; the self of her teenage years. She purposefully walked towards the garden gate. She had suffered enough for her crime. Tonight she would go to her parents’, but later she would set up her own home, by herself if need be. Thoughts of her forthcoming baby didn’t affect her. Setting up a home by herself would create another murmur in her community. She’d already lost everything, this action of hers in leaving her home and living by herself wouldn’t cost her much. She braced herself for her parents’ reaction when they found out she was abandoning her home, her husband and her marriage. Bitterness seeped through her. She didn’t care a dime for what they thought. Nora Helmer’s slamming of her house’s door in Ibsen’s The Doll’s House came to her mind. She recalled the twittering of Claire Bloom in the screen version of the play. Her mind revolted from the picture of herself twittering around Jamil, dancing to his tune. She was a twentieth century Muslim Nora. A Nora who was slamming the door not only on her husband but also on her past.
Once on the road she hailed a taxi. When asked where she was bound, “A turn round the whole city”, she replied. The night, and its accompanying darkness did not bother her. A hysterical giggle rose in her throat. She imagined her parents’ look of horror when they confronted her on their doorstep at 2 o’clock in the morning. The cord of convention was truly severed.
About the Author
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Qaisra Shahraz, is a prize-winning and critically acclaimed novelist and scriptwriter. Her two novels, Typhoon and the Holy Woman have been translated into several languages. Born in Pakistan, she has lived in Manchester (UK) since childhood. Qaisra was nominated for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards and for The Muslim News Awards for Excellence. In 2012 she was named one of the 100 influential women on the Pakistan Women Power 100 list.
Novels by the same author
- Typhoon
- The Holy Woman
Copyright
First published as an e-book in 2013
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© Qaisra Shahraz 2013
The right of Qaisra Shahraz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–908446–17–6
A Pair of Jeans and other stories Page 14