by Thalassa Ali
“Whichever it is,” put in the second guard, jerking his chin toward the interior of the haveli, “you should take him to Shaikh Waliullah at once, but you will not find the Shaikh in his courtyard in this heat. On days like this he sits indoors among his companions. After you cross the inner courtyard, you will see a doorway facing you. Call out, and someone will show you the way.”
While the guards studied the injured man, the silent hunched figure rose to her feet and stole past them and into the entranceway, and then, without pausing, entered the first courtyard.
The girl had felt weak for days. Throughout the morning as she squatted near a festering pile of mango skins and rotting vegetables, her illness had clutched nauseatingly at her middle, threatening to overcome her. Now, as she crept past Shaikh Waliullah's horse and elephant stables and pushed open the gate leading to his quiet family courtyard, faintness gathered in the corners of her brain.
She had taken a great risk in coming this far. Long before the predawn call to prayer had awakened her farrier husband and his harsh-faced mother, Akhtar Jahan had raised herself in cautious stages from the floor where she and her husband slept. Once on her feet, avoiding her mother-in-law, who snored on the hovel's only string bed, she had groped along the wall until she found the older woman's chador hanging from its nail, then felt her way out of the crumbling quarter that had been her prison for three long years.
Following her instincts, she had stumbled along the lightless alleyway outside the door, powered only by a chance remark she had overheard the week before from a passerby outside: that in a house near Wazir Khan's Mosque there lived a woman who knew how to cast spells.
What spells they were did not matter to Akhtar as she braced herself, a hand to her head, against the inner courtyard wall. What mattered instead was the hope she had felt at hearing those careless words, spoken by a stranger whose face she had not even glimpsed.
Spells. The word suggested mysterious happenings and sudden, miraculous cures. It suggested something darker, too: wicked spells, wasting away, even death. From the moment she heard it, Akhtar had known that this magician lady possessed what she urgently needed: a remedy for the agony she had endured since her marriage—brutalized by her husband, reviled by her mother-in-law, worked to exhaustion, trapped in their tiny, airless quarter with no means of escape.
The mosque was not far from her own, miserable home. As the fiery sun rose, and people appeared in the stifling lanes and alleys, she had tried to ask the women among them where the lady she sought might live, but had been too ashamed to explain herself properly. Misunderstood, terrified her husband would find her before she reached her goal, she had wandered fruitlessly until a sad-eyed hunchback who guarded visitors’ shoes outside the mosque had asked who or what she sought.
“Ah,” he had said when she tried to explain, “you seek Begum Safiya Sultana, the sister of the great Shaikh Waliullah. She is no magician, my dear child, but her name is well-known. She will help you.” He had pointed across the square to a wide brick haveli. “Wait outside the Shaikh's house,” he had told her. “In time, they will let you in.”
No magician. Unwilling to believe him, Akhtar had crouched down near the carved doorway, telling herself that the hunchback could not know the truth, for he was not a normal man.
She did not know how long she had waited in the heat without food or drink, but for all her discomfort, and as ill as she felt now, her fright was gone, for the doors of this grand house had closed safely and decisively behind her, shutting out her husband, her mother-in-law, and everything else that might harm her.
For now, however, she could walk no farther. She sank to the courtyard floor beneath a carved balcony, rested her forehead on her upraised knees, and closed her eyes.
Moments later, the injured man and his two friends passed hurriedly through the gate. Nearly invisible in her dust-colored cloak, Akhtar lifted her head in time to see the three men rush by, the injured man now sobbing aloud as his two friends half-dragged him through the courtyard, past closed doors and shuttered windows, past the courtyard's lone, dusty tree, until they halted beside an open doorway.
The heap of discarded shoes outside the entrance told Akhtar that a number of men were inside. The leader of the trio called out a greeting. After an interval, he left his friends and vanished through the doorway, then reappeared, followed by two men, one of them an elderly gentleman with a very wrinkled face and a tall starched headdress.
The girl held her breath. This old man must be Shaikh Waliullah himself, for he radiated power. Even in her illness, she recognized the force of his presence, which seemed to reach all the way across the courtyard to the patch of shade where she huddled.
The injured man's friends lowered him to the ground, where he rocked, keening, from side to side, one ankle clutched in both his hands. The old man glanced briefly at the wound. “Yes, it is a scorpion sting,” he announced in a light, pleasant voice, then turned to his companion and held out a hand, asking for something. “A stick, Javed,” he ordered. “Yes, that one will do.”
The stick in hand, the old man bent over, his headdress tipping dangerously forward, and made several marks in the dust of the courtyard floor. Then, apparently satisfied with what he had written, he threw down the stick and searched through the pile of discarded shoes, poking at them with one foot, while the injured man's wails rose behind him.
At last, the old man picked up a leather slipper. His back to the victim, he began to strike the marks he had made in the dust, gesturing impatiently for silence when the victim's friend tried to speak. The loud cracking of the shoe against the ground attracted other men from inside. They stood in the doorway, craning to see. Shadowy figures of women appeared in an upstairs window behind filigreed shutters.
Within moments it was over. The old man straightened and dropped the slipper among the other shoes. “Well?” he inquired in his light voice, dusting his hands together and turning his attention once again to the victim.
The injured man had ceased keening. “It was here,” he said in a wondering tone, rubbing a hand over his anklebone, “but now it's gone.”
Akhtar pushed herself to her feet, trying to see more. What strange event had she witnessed? This house must be filled with sorcerers and magicians.
The old man nodded several times. “Well, that's that,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “You should drink something.” He nodded toward the guarded entrance. “You'll find water and sherbet over there. And now, Javed,” he added, turning to his companion, as the three men backed away, saluting deferentially, “let us return to our conversation. It is not every day that I meet someone who is acquainted with Ghalib. My sister finds his poetry quite exceptional. She will be very pleased to hear that he is to visit Lahore. …”
His voice faded as he stepped over the threshold and disappeared from view.
Akhtar stared after the two men. She wished she could follow the old magician into his sitting room and pour out all her troubles, but how could she speak in front of all the other men whose shoes lay heaped beside the door? No, she must go to his sister instead, for perhaps she was the lady who knew how to cast spells.
Supporting herself with one hand, Akhtar groped her way toward a promising-looking canvas screen that stretched along the wall ahead of her, supported by thick bamboo poles. Such screens, she knew, were designed to shield ladies from the eyes of men. Women must have gathered somewhere behind that screen, perhaps even the lady she sought.
She crept around its edge. After negotiating a wide fold in the canvas, she found a doorway, then a brick staircase leading downward into darkness, as if to a subterranean room. Women's shoes lay beside this door.
Akhtar scuffed off her own shabby sandals and crept down the staircase.
The courtyard had been bright and fiery hot. As she stepped downward into the cool darkness, dizziness bloomed in her head and her knees buckled. Shocked, tangled hopelessly in her dirt-colored chador, she plunged downward, twi
sting an ankle, banging her knees and elbows as she fell, cracking her head, until she landed at last in a pained heap on the brick floor at the bottom of the stairs.
Dizzy and stunned, she heard female voices raised in surprise. Bare feet approached, then stopped beside her. A deep, authoritative voice penetrated the fog in her brain. “Tell Khadija to bring a sheet,” it commanded. “This girl is hurt, whoever she is.”
Was it a eunuch who spoke? Or a woman? “Please,” Akhtar managed to say, without opening her eyes, “I don't want anything. I only want to meet the lady who casts spells.”
“Don't move her yet,” the voice continued, as hands laid hold of her. “I want to see her in the light.”
Too weak to resist, Akhtar let someone remove her chador and push back the dirty sleeves of her kameez. Too ill for shame, her eyes squeezed shut, she did not care what they saw.
Above her, someone gasped. “As if this ill-treatment were not enough,” the voice announced, “her liver has been affected. Look at the color of her skin.”
Someone shooed children away. Akhtar forced her eyes open. Women stared down at her, their mouths open. Some of them were young. One was fair, with a high-bridged nose. One or two, including a white-haired serving woman who clucked loudly with dismay, looked very old.
The powerful-sounding voice, Akhtar discovered, belonged to a stout, elderly woman with iron-gray hair, who studied Akhtar with an experienced eye, nodding to herself much as the old man in the courtyard had nodded over his scorpion-sting victim. But unlike the old man, this woman gave off no magical power, only the authority of one accustomed to being obeyed.
Disappointed, Akhtar searched among the crowd for the sorceress she had come to find.
“Let her lie there.” The gray-haired woman gestured toward a dark corner of the cool corridor where Akhtar now lay. Through a wide doorway that let in the light from the top of the stairs, Akhtar could see more ladies of various sizes and ages. Amazed at the kindness of the hands that lifted her, she allowed herself to be led to a sheet-covered mat that someone had spread on the floor. “Drink this,” the stout lady told her gruffly. “It will help your nausea.”
Akhtar tried to raise her head. “But I want to find—”
“Not now, child. Whatever is troubling you, it will, Inshallah, be resolved. But first you must recover your strength.”
Akhtar Bibi drank, and as she did, the pure, lovely taste of roses filled her mouth, driving away the rottenness and filth she had breathed in the street. Later, while she slept, she dreamed that she lay in a cool garden, breathing in beautiful scents, while women's voices murmured pleasantly in the distance.
A deep voice penetrated her dream, speaking rhythmically in a singsong tone, drawing some vowels out, shortening others, reciting poetry in a language Akhtar did not understand. A different voice offered an Urdu translation whose words echoed in her half-sleeping imagination:
With treasure, whose treasurer is the faithful spirit,
We have come as beggars to the King's door.
Akhtar slept, imagining a pair of ragged beggars crouching by a tall ornate door, their hands extended for alms, while beside them, a heap of gold and jewels gleamed and shone.
SEVERAL HOURS later, a heavyset man fidgeted impatiently as he watched a dust-covered laborer enter the Shaikh's sitting room and approach his padded platform. Yusuf Bhatti, a fighter and a man of action, hated to sit still. It was only by ill luck that he had arrived at the haveli looking for his childhood friend Hassan Ali Khan in time to be waved inside to sit among the Shaikh's followers.
The laborer wiped dirty hands nervously on his long, unclean shirt. “I have never beaten my wife, Shaikh Sahib,” he declared loudly. “Never, I swear it.”
Behind the platform, water rippled down a carved marble cascade and poured into a trough in the floor, filling the air with a cool, restful sound.
The Shaikh seemed to grow taller as he sat. “And you never burn her with brands from the fire?” he asked. “Do not tell lies, Abdul Ghaffar. Your wife's screams have disturbed your neighbors for months. Two of them came to us only yesterday. This morning, unable to bear your ill treatment any longer, your wife ran away from your house.”
The laborer took a step backward. Yusuf stopped fidgeting. This might be interesting.
“She lies in our family quarters at this very moment,” the Shaikh added, “covered with the evidence of your beatings and your burnings.”
“She would not obey me, Huzoor. She—”
“Obey you?” the Shaikh rasped. “Her duty is to serve and obey God. Your duty is the same. Do you think I beat my wife when she was alive? Do you think these men beat their wives?” He gestured toward his assembled followers, who watched silently, strings of prayer beads motionless in their hands.
“Her family has land. I need it. They would not—”
“Then it was greed that led you to torture the wife whom you are enjoined to protect.”
The man dropped his eyes from the Shaikh's fierce gaze. “A mistake, Huzoor. Forgive me.”
“It is not the Shaikh who should forgive you,” a pockmarked follower offered from the crowd, “it is your wife.”
The Shaikh nodded. “Nasir Sahib is correct. Now then, shall we send for her so you may apologize?”
“No, Huzoor,” the laborer replied. “She has brought disgrace upon my family by running away. I will starve before I apologize to her.”
“Then she is lost to you.” The Shaikh turned away from the man, flicking his fingers in dismissal. “Go then, Abdul Ghaffar. And do not attempt to marry a second time. If you try, you will be stopped.”
Yusuf nodded his approval as Abdul Ghaffar backed from the doorway. The man was clearly a violent fool. Yusuf thought of his own plain, hardworking wife, who had already given him four sons. When he shouted irritably at her, she ignored him.
He smiled to himself. Sensible woman.
A gray-bearded man spoke up. “Shaikh Sahib,” he said, “people in the bazaar are talking about your daughter-in-law.”
The other men dropped their eyes. Yusuf sat up, scowling. How dare this man mention one of the Shaikh's family women in public, especially Hassan's wife? It was bad enough that the woman was noisy, ill behaved, foreign—
“They say,” the bearded man persisted, “that she will be the downfall of your family.”
The Shaikh smiled. “And how has the bazaar arrived at this conclusion, Malik Sahib? What have your fellow diamond merchants to say?”
“They say things have changed since mad Maharajah Kharrak Singh's son imprisoned him and took power. They say the Prince hates the British, that after he has killed his father with poison, the Prince will punish you and your family because your son has an English wife.”
“Ah, my dear Hassan!” The Shaikh's face lit with pleasure as a tall man with an open face stepped into the room.
“Peace, Father,” replied the newcomer, whose light, pleasant voice matched the Shaikh's. He crossed the room with quick steps and greeted each of his father's followers in turn, embracing some and saluting others politely, his right hand to his forehead, before seating himself beside his friend Yusuf.
“The Prince has favorites of his own,” the bearded diamond merchant went on. “To please them, he may, God forbid, confiscate your lands, even this haveli. This has happened to other families for smaller cause.” He pointed an upturned hand toward the doorway. “You have a large household, Shaikh Sahib. How will you support them all? Without this haveli, where will they live? Who will help you?”
The Shaikh's embroidered headdress had begun to droop in the heat. He poked a finger under it, and scratched his scalp. “And what, Malik Sahib,” he inquired mildly, “do you propose we should do?”
“I suggest that your son distance himself from the British before it is too late. I propose that he divorce his foreign wife.”
The assembled followers drew in a collective breath. Yusuf wiped his hot face with the tail of his turban. He coul
d not help but agree with the man. The faster Hassan escaped from that odd woman, the better. He glanced sideways to gauge Hassan's reaction, but could not guess what his friend was thinking.
“Divorce?” protested a small man with large, watery eyes. “But that is unthinkable!”
“He need not divorce her, then,” the merchant answered, “but he should keep her far away. And he should marry again—some nice Punjabi girl. Dozens of families would be honored to receive a proposal from your side. Why, my own brother has a lovely daughter who would be—”
“Malik Sahib,” interrupted the Shaikh, “you think like a diamond merchant. You should spend more time in this house. And now we will ask my son for his response.”
All eyes turned to Hassan, whose warm smile resembled that of his father, although his face was not wizened and dark, but fair and broad. “Malik Sahib,” he replied, spreading his hands, “in this world, family matters are one thing and politics are another. A man cannot change his wives with each change in the political wind. In any case, the Prince will have greater concerns than my family alliances after he ascends the throne.”
“There,” observed the Shaikh. “You have your answer, Malik Sahib. And now, Hassan, what news of the court?”
“No good news, Lalaji.” Hassan reached for a string of prayer beads from a pile on the sheet-covered floor. “The Maharajah is still imprisoned. He and his son still quarrel. Meanwhile, he continues to decline. His stomach pains increase. I fear the end is approaching.”
“His food is poisoned,” offered someone.
Hassan shook his head as the beads moved through his fingers. “The food tasters have not fallen ill yet, but there is one thing the Maharajah eats constantly that is never tasted.”
The Shaikh nodded. “Opium.”
Hassan sighed. “This hatred will cease after the Maharajah dies, but things will not be easy for the Prince. He will face real dangers in the future. He must keep the Punjab united, while appeasing the other contenders for the throne, especially his uncle Sher Singh. And he must deal with the British.”