Haveli

by Suzanne Fisher Staples

  But Shabanu was not one of those helpless women who wrung their hands and walked about moaning “What to do? What to do?”

  At the moment there was only one thing to do, and she set about doing it. The rest she would trust to Allah.

  Shabanu was Zabo’s only attendant for the wedding. The rain had stopped, but the sense of foreboding and gloom that had engulfed the house earlier remained. Zenat dressed Mumtaz while Shabanu dressed. No one spoke.

  Shabanu chose a plain shalwar kameez in a deep blue that reminded her of the desert night sky. She knew her dress was hardly suitable for a wedding; instead it suited her mood. She wore no jewelry except for a pair of silver nomad’s earrings and her heavy silver bangles that she had worn to a burnished mellow glow. She and Mumtaz went together to the main house, where Zabo was to dress.

  They met in the parlor. Servants bearing trays and last-minute flowers and dishes scurried through the room.

  Zabo looked pale, and her eyes had deep dishes beneath them, as if she hadn’t slept in days. But she was calm. She wore a plain cotton tunic. She smiled and bent to hug Mumtaz.

  “Did you sleep?” Shabanu asked in a whisper.

  “A bit.”

  Shabanu longed for the friend to whom she’d once told everything—who understood and comforted her and offered advice. But these days, with Zabo so preoccupied with her own troubles, Shabanu felt from time to time that she’d never been more alone. In these moments her sense of solitude deepened.

  Selma came to announce that she had laid out Zabo’s dress in Rahim’s bedroom. She looked at Shabanu’s plain dark shalwar kameez but said nothing.

  Selma held out her arms to them. Both of the women went to her and bent forward to accept kisses on their foreheads. Shabanu held Mumtaz up to be kissed. They climbed the stairs together slowly, waiting for Selma, who wheezed on the landing.

  “The others wanted to come,” Selma said. She sat heavily in the chair inside the door and waited for her breathing to return to normal. “What you did not need was a gaggle of women in here gossiping and worrying you about omens.” Zabo stepped out of her clothes.

  “Who could expect good omens for such a match under the best of circumstances?” Zabo asked with a small, thin laugh.

  “You have been courageous, child,” said Selma. “I hope Allah has given you the wisdom to know how to deal with your father as well as your husband.”

  Selma looked around, found her purse, and, to Shabanu’s immense relief, moved toward the door again.

  “I’ll leave you to dress. But I have a special gift for you,” she said. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

  When she had gone, Shabanu untied the knot in the end of her dupatta and pressed the darkly curled piece of vine into Zabo’s hand. She explained what it was for and how to insert it to keep from being impregnated. Tears filled Zabo’s eyes, but she breathed deeply and wiped them away.

  “You will be all right for two weeks.” It was partly a question and partly a statement. “Selma says Leyla’s wedding should be around then, though the imams have not yet fixed the exact day.”

  Zabo nodded. She stood still for a moment, as if gathering her composure. She pulled the red satin slip over her head, and her hands paused for just a second as she smoothed the silk over her waist, where it curved in to fit snugly.

  “As long as I know Sharma will come without fail,” she said. But there was a quaver in her voice as she reached for the beautiful wedding skirt with pigeon-blood rubies sewn into its Moguli pattern.

  “The plan is very simple. She’ll meet us in Lahore. With the wedding, there will be much confusion. And in case something goes wrong, the assembly will be back in session the following week, so we are sure to be there. I’m to tell Sharma through Aab-pa if we must suddenly return to Okurabad. We’ll work out the final details then.”

  She looked at Zabo in the red satin slip, the straps draping against her slender shoulders, the silk molding her lovely round breasts. What a tragedy to waste her beauty, her loyalty, her wonderful gifts for love and laughter on an idiot boy!

  Again Shabanu was overcome by anger: at Rahim for making this happen; and at Nazir for being greedy, cruel, and unreasonable. Even Selma in the end had acquiesced. But Shabanu knew she should harness her rage—save its energy for when she needed it. So she ignored the sharp prickles that ran up and down her spine.

  Zabo raised her arms, and Shabanu slipped the gold-embroidered red silk tunic over her head.

  Zabo crossed to the dressing table and sat before the mirror, her eyes level on her reflection. Shabanu fastened the enameled pendant’s red silk cord at the back of Zabo’s neck and pinned the ruby and emerald tikka so that it hung low on her forehead, the tiny fake diamonds sparking for ten times all they were worth just above her eyebrows. Zabo attached the end of the ornament’s chain to the slender gold nose ring, the nath—which means “caught”—and the single real ruby glittered against the rim of her nostril. Selma’s gold-domed earrings with ruby and emerald drops did not diminish the sparkle of the less-than-real stones, and Zabo examined the effect with satisfaction.

  She then set about applying gold powder and kohl to her eyes, and rouge to her cheeks and lips.

  “How do I look?” Zabo asked, turning her shimmering eyes to meet Shabanu’s in the mirror.

  “Like you paid a crore of rupees for your trousseau,” said Shabanu. “And you look very beautiful,” she added, bending over to hug Zabo’s shoulders.

  Zabo busied herself for a few more seconds, adding more powdered gold to the creases of her eyelids. Then she snapped her makeup and jewelry cases shut deliberately and slowly, inspected herself a final time, and stood.

  Shabanu took her hands, and they stood facing each other for a moment until Zabo turned to unfold the red silk and fake gold-embroidered chadr. She handed it to Shabanu to arrange over her head.

  Selma met them at the foot of the stairway. She had in her hands a velvet box. She opened it, and inside was a ruby-and-diamond bracelet that glittered on its gold satin cushion. Zabo looked up into Selma’s face.

  But Shabanu’s anger swelled in her chest and throat. She wanted to throw the bracelet to the marble floor and smash it with a hammer and tell them how unfair this was to Zabo.

  “Daoud gave it to me on our wedding day,” Selma said softly. “May it bring you peace.”

  Shabanu realized then how fully Selma had understood all along what Zabo was going through, and what she and Zabo had been up to with their endless days of shopping in Lahore. As suddenly as it had come upon her, her anger toward Selma evaporated. Her deep affection for the older woman returned, and the knowledge that she could be trusted settled over Shabanu for once and forever.

  She took one of Zabo’s arms, and Selma took the other. Samiya brought Mumtaz, whose thick hair flowed down her back. Her face was composed and solemn. She looked very grown-up in the cobalt blue silk tunic and long skirt that matched her mother’s. She trailed along behind Zabo, holding her auntie’s skirt and tunic up so that they didn’t drag on the carpets that had been laid over the muddy grass.

  Zabo walked slowly and deliberately, her head bent, making the traditional, hesitant, fearful bride’s march to the dais where Ahmed was to join her.

  The wedding guests—only a couple of dozen relatives and nearby neighbors had braved the floods—sat under the shamiyana, its brightly quilted walls billowing in the stiff breeze.

  The rain had stopped about an hour before, but the sky boiled and menaced. The air was cool and damp.

  In another chamber of the tent, the men were exchanging the marriage documents and congratulating Ahmed.

  The female guests talked quietly of the rain and the unhappy marriage it portended.

  “It’s uncivilized to have a wedding in such weather! It’s going to pour again at any second,” said a sister of Amina, leaning across a half-occupied chair to speak to a woman whose ample bottom spilled over to fill part of the chairs on either side of her. “My brother-in
-law has taken leave of his senses.”

  “Hush,” said Amina, leaning her elaborately coiffed head back from the row ahead. My husband has his reasons.… ” Her voice trailed off in a tragic sigh. Her eyes were lined with sparkling powder, which glittered from the corners like a rivulet of tears.

  Most of the women wore georgette shalwar kameez sewn with iridescent beads and sequins. The younger ones, whose bodies had not yet expanded, wore the magnificent clothing of their own weddings—unpacked from trunks and unwrapped from tissue paper each year, as long as they fit, for the wedding season.

  Many wore jewels brought all the way from Damascus and Baghdad at the time the ancient caliphs left to spread Islam throughout the world. One wore jade disks the size of rupee coins, which had been carved in China by the emperor’s jeweler; another wore a diamond pendant that looked like a paperweight. All wore strings of gems in their hair, diamonds sewn into the folds of their clothing, and gems in their noses and on their fingers.

  They moved slowly and languidly, fanning themselves with bored movements despite the coolness of the evening, and gossiped furtively behind their fans. The breeze blew oppressive clouds of mingled expensive European colognes about the shamiyana.

  “What would you expect?” asked one cousin. “Marriage to the daughter of Nazir cannot bode well for anyone.”

  It struck Shabanu as ludicrous that they should be more concerned for Ahmed’s happiness than Zabo’s! Zabo’s face was completely covered, and her shoulders trembled slightly under the weight of her tunic and skirt. She looked like a proper Punjabi bride, all tremulous and lovely.

  Shabanu and Zabo made their way to the dais through the women, who hushed their gossip briefly as they passed. The dais was draped with garlands of jasmine and marigolds. The tuberoses never did arrive.

  In the front near the center aisle sat Leyla, her hair swept up dramatically and caught high above one ear in a comb set with diamonds. Her eyes were heavily made up, and her mouth and fingers flashed a brilliant wet crimson.

  When Zabo was seated on silken cushions piled on a carved chair, Ahmed entered through the rear of the tent from the men’s chamber, and the women hushed as he walked down the center aisle to take his place beside Zabo on the dais, where he sat still for a few minutes and then began to squirm. He looked frail in his knee-length sherwani, with its fitted waist and high collar, which made his neck look vulnerable and childish.

  Amina made her cumbersome way down the aisle to the flower-festooned dais. Leyla helped her as she climbed the steps to the wedding party. When she turned to sit, Amina’s face was florid, nearly matching the brilliant pink of her sequined shalwar kameez. She and Leyla sat on either side of Ahmed, amid heavily embroidered bolsters. Amina handed Ahmed a glass of sweetened milk. When he had drunk from it, his mother urged him to give it to Zabo. She took a small sip, in an act of ceremonial obedience to her husband.

  From within the folds of her dupatta, Amina produced a gilt mirror. Shabanu watched quietly as Amina slipped the mirror into Zabo’s lap, under her downcast eyes. Amina said something to Zabo, who hesitated a moment, then curled her fingers around the edge of the mirror. Amina took Ahmed gently by the back of his thin neck and steered his gaze toward the mirror.

  As the bride looked at the reflection of the groom, at the reflection of her husband that was to become the very essence of herself, the mirror clattered to the floor. Zabo’s hands went up under the chadr to her face.

  Shabanu put her arms around Zabo’s shoulders. At the same instant, Leyla grabbed Zabo’s hands to pull them from her face. Shabanu leaned forward, inserting her body between Leyla and Zabo. After an absurd moment of resistance like a silent shoving spree, Leyla moved aside and allowed Shabanu to comfort her friend.

  All this happened in the space of a minute, amid the chaos of relatives fluttering to get a closer glimpse of the bride and groom and gossiping among themselves, and the male relatives drifting in from the tent area where the formal wedding documents had been exchanged.

  And before anything could be made of the incident, the wedding party was whisked away to reassemble for the banquet.

  Shabanu and Mumtaz stayed with Zabo as the guests gathered on the lawn, under the shamiyana and cascades of tiny white lights. People stood in clumps, the ladies twinkling with jewels, and watched servants in white jackets and white turbans heap the long tables with silver platters of lamb on skewers, steaming tureens of curries, baskets of fresh steaming roti, and a sweet biryani rice with raisins and nuts.

  Shabanu kept a firm hold on Mumtaz’s hand. She caught sight of Omar several times, but she pretended she didn’t see that he was looking at her. Her heart felt as if it were encased in glass.

  The thought of giving up Mumtaz to her family had opened her heart wide again to the pain of loss. It made Omar’s loss seem very far away, as if it had happened years ago. She kept pushing away panic at the thought of living without Mumtaz, telling herself it was only temporary. She’d be able to join Mumtaz and Zabo and Sharma and Fatima one day. They were the people she loved and trusted most on this earth. The thought of all of them living and working together should have comforted her. But all of her plans for Mumtaz’s education, for the two of them to live in Lahore at the haveli, were shattered.

  Mumtaz was caught up in her own loss, and she willingly clung to her mother’s hand. Since Choti had disappeared she’d taken to carrying Bundr with her, and she had him hugged to her chest with her free hand. The other children her age drank Coca-Cola and ate fistfuls of sweets, and while the adults stood around talking after the dinner was served, the youngsters chased one another pell-mell, like rabbits, through the rows of chairs and under the tables.

  Mumtaz and Shabanu floated among the other guests, congratulations and wisps of gossip and the shrieks of the other children parting around them as they passed like bits of cloud.

  chapter 19

  Shabanu and Mumtaz went to see Zabo in the big house the day after the wedding and found the apartment she and Ahmed had occupied only the night before in chaos. Servants ran from room to room gathering pieces of clothing and wrapping them in tissue paper, hauling trunks from storage and filling them to the brim.

  Zabo had chosen simple furniture, and she’d moved many of her hand-embroidered bolsters and cushions from her father’s house. Strewn over them was more evidence of planning for a long journey: shawls and scarves and a bag of biscuits; silk pouches filled with jewelry; a box of writing paper; and a bottle of water. And Zabo stood prettily in the center of it all, looking rested and pleased.

  “Where are you going?” Shabanu asked. Zabo came to her and hugged her cheerfully.

  “My father is taking Ahmed on a hunting trip,” she said. “I’m going to Mehrabpur.”

  “But why don’t you stay here?”

  “Because my father wants me at Mehrabpur. Afterward we’re going to Lahore. And soon you’ll be there with me!”

  Shabanu linked her arm through Zabo’s and walked her out to the garden, a thousand questions threatening to burst from her lips before they were in a private place.

  The garden had been cleared. The shamiyana had been rolled and carried away, the carpets lifted, and there was no sign a wedding had taken place except for the compressed, muddy grass.

  It had rained earlier, and now steam rose from every surface in the hot sunlight. Crows hopped across the ruined lawn, their heads cocked, looking for earthworms that had emerged the night before under the carpets.

  Zabo looked behind them.

  “Where’s Choti?” she asked. Mumtaz looked stricken. Zabo glanced from Mumtaz to Shabanu and back.

  “She’s gone away,” said Mumtaz. “She’s not coming back.”

  “Oh!” said Zabo. She bent and hugged Mumtaz, who stood still and clutched Bundr tightly against her. “I’m sorry.”

  She stood and took Shabanu’s arm again.

  “What happened?” she asked softly. Shabanu shook her head.

  “She’s not co
ming back,” Mumtaz said again, and Shabanu could have cried for her.

  They walked along arm in arm, not talking for a while. Then Shabanu could wait no longer.

  “You look well for the day after the worst night of your life,” she said, and Zabo laughed her old tinkling laugh. It lifted Shabanu’s heart.

  “Last night,” she began, “Father gave Ahmed some whiskey.”

  “Oh!” said Shabanu.

  “Ahmed fell sound asleep. And today they leave for the hunt as soon as we arrive at Mehrabpur.”

  “We mustn’t tell Rahim!” said Shabanu. Her husband was a devout Muslim who disapproved of liquor.

  “Certainly not!” said Zabo, her old spark returned for the first time in months. “Listen! This is a reprieve! Uncle Rahim would not only disapprove of the liquor. He would want the marriage consummated as soon as possible. The sooner he has a grandson, the sooner the rest of the family lands are consolidated.”

  “But what an odd thing for your father to do!” Shabanu said. “Why shouldn’t he want you to become pregnant too? He benefits most of all, because it gives him an equal claim to the family holdings.”

  “I don’t care what the reason is!” Zabo said, tossing her head. “If it means Ahmed stays away from my bed until I can get away with Sharma, I want it that way.

  “But if your father is up to something, it could be dangerous for you!” Shabanu said.

  “You think I care about danger!” Zabo’s eyes flashed. “Promise you won’t tell Rahim.” It was a demand more than a request.

  Shabanu hesitated. If she promised not to tell Rahim, she would be violating her oath of loyalty to him for the first time. And she had a strong sense of some terrible impending danger.

  “Promise!” Zabo insisted. “Promise!”

  “When will you return from Lahore?” Shabanu asked.

  “Promise!” said Zabo, refusing to yield.

  “All right, I promise!” said Shabanu. “But Sharma will be ready for you in two weeks.”

  “Father is going to Lahore early to please me,” Zabo said. “We’ll still be there for Leyla’s wedding.”