by Bapsi Sidhwa
Zaitoon’s closest friend was the Mullah’s stepdaughter, Nusrat. Though Zaitoon’s friendships had all the intensity young girls bring to friendship, there was always something that kept her the slightest bit apart: a dimension in her life that was not in theirs—of Qasim’s faraway background and of his dreams.
Years slipped by. Qasim, nostalgic for the cool mountains, wove such fascination into reminiscences of his life among them that Zaitoon longed to see what she considered her native land. Her young, romantic imagination flowered into fantasies of a region where men were heroic, proud, and incorruptible, ruled by a code of honor that banned all injustice and evil. These men, tall and light-skinned, were gods—free to roam the mountains as their fancies led. Their women, beautiful as houris, and their bright, rosy-cheeked children, lived beside crystal torrents of melted snow.
Often she asked, “Father, when can we visit home?”
“Soon, bibi, soon,” he murmured.
At last even Nusrat got married. Zaitoon danced and sang until she was ready to drop. She sat with Nusrat, sharing her desolation at leaving her family, and teased her with speculations about the charms of the unseen groom.
For a whole week the bride sits, her body and hair greasy with oil massages, in old clothes; the better to bloom, bathed and perfumed, swathed in red silks, hair, throat and arms aglow with jewels, on the day of the marriage.
The day before the wedding, at the Henna ceremony, Zaitoon helped to hold the canopy of flowers over Nusrat’s huddled, yellow-robed form. When the henna platters were ceremoniously placed before the bride Zaitoon drew intricate floral designs on the soles of Nusrat’s feet and the palms of her hands, fashioning rings round her toes and staining her fingertips with the orange-red paste.
At the brief Nikah ceremony, the actual wedding, the Maulvi asked Nusrat if she would accept the groom; and the groom was asked separately. They first saw each other in a mirror. The weeping bride, supported by weeping women, at last climbed into the tonga to be driven to the station. Zaitoon sobbed her heart out. All that night she wept.
She was sixteen years old.
Zaitoon gazed down from the tenement balcony. She was curious. Sitting on the charpoy, Qasim was talking to a stranger, a fine-looking tribal. Nikka sat by listening. He frowned, apparently keeping his opinion to himself until the stranger had left.
Qasim had several Kohistani friends, who, like himself, lived in Lahore; but this man was distinctive, somehow more authentic. Voluminous gathers, like a dancer’s skirt, circled his baggy pantaloons. His turban, too, was different. Its careless swirls partially covered hair that fell to the tips of his ears in a straight red bob. His black velvet, gold-threaded waistcoat slid back to reveal a double row of cartridges. As Zaitoon watched, his expansive, robust gestures conjured up the world of the wilderness, of tall, jubilant men pirouetting on the balls of their feet, heads thrown back, hypnotized by the guns turning in their strong arms—the mountain world of Qasim’s memories, of Zaitoon’s fantasies.
Every little while, the two tribals clasped each other close, their hennaed beards mingling in an uproarious exchange of pleasantries. Nikka, who sat scowling to one side, shifted his sullen bulk when they fell against him.
“Bring the pehelwan along. He shall be our guest,” declared the stranger, affably resting his palm on Nikka’s shoulder. “What do you say, pehelwan? Will you honor us with your presence?” Nikka gave him a noncommittal look. Slowly he turned away.
“Of course he will. I’ll see to it,” interposed Qasim quickly.
Reverting to their tribal dialect, they ignored the taciturn pehelwan.
Finally, Zaitoon saw them get up from the charpoy for a parting embrace. Qasim, conspicuous as a mountain-man anywhere in Lahore, looked curiously unlike one when facing the stranger. At least so Zaitoon thought as she hurried in to warm his tea. He would be coming up any minute and she would soon find out who the visitor had been. Twenty minutes went by, and she leaned over the balcony to see what was delaying him.
The stranger had gone. Nikka was talking to Qasim and Qasim, looking at the pavement, kept trying to force the toe of his shoe into it. They seemed to be arguing, and Qasim looked hard and cold as he did only in rare moments of obstinacy. Zaitoon had seldom seen the two friends in such solemn disagreement. She grew uneasy.
Then a strange thing happened. Nikka beckoned towards the house and Miriam, with only a chaddar over her head instead of the burkha, came out and sat down with the men, out on the busy pavement. This was without precedent. Miriam sat stooped, shading her face from Qasim with her chaddar as she listened to Nikka. Zaitoon saw the chaddar slip off her hair and lie unheeded on her shoulders. She appeared agitated and glanced frequently at Qasim. Then turning to him, she addressed him as boldly as she might a woman in the privacy of her own rooms.
Qasim, not lifting his studied gaze from the pavement, spoke but little. Miriam, her agitation mounting, talked faster, gesticulating, and pushing back strands of gray hair that fell forward into her eyes. People passing by looked at her inquisitively.
Miriam brushed her cheeks with her fingers and Zaitoon guessed she was weeping. Should she go down? She desperately wanted to discover what this was all about, but a young girl added to the scene might attract too much curiosity. She fidgeted, but stayed upstairs, waiting.
It was almost six years since Nikka’s release from prison. As he listened to his wife expostulate with Qasim, he showed a weariness, a reluctance to impose his will as forcefully as of old.
Miriam blew her nose into her shawl. She wiped the damp left on her fingers on the strings of the charpoy. She had no control over the tears that slipped down her face.
“Sister, I gave him my word,” Qasim spoke gently.
“Your word! Your word! Your word! What has your word to do with the child’s life? What? Tell me!”
Qasim did not reply.
Miriam glanced up and noticed Zaitoon’s intent face at the balustrade.
“Brother Qasim,” she coaxed, “how can a girl, brought up in Lahore, educated—how can she be happy in the mountains? Tribal ways are different, you don’t know how changed you are . . .” And as rancor settled on Qasim’s compressed lips, she continued in a rising passion, “They are savages. Brutish, uncouth, and ignorant! She will be miserable among them. Don’t you see?”
Qasim stiffened. A beggar, his limbs grotesquely awry, manipulated his platform to Qasim’s feet. He grimaced defiantly. “Paisa,” he demanded in a hoarse inhuman whisper. “Babooji from the hills, paisa.” Attuned to the whims of almsgivers, he sensed the futility of his plea and wheeled himself away before he was kicked.
Qasim tried to control his fury. “Sister, you forget I am from those hills. It’s my people you’re talking of.”
“But you’ve been with us so long, you’re changed. Why, most of them are bandits, they don’t know how to treat women! I tell you, she’ll be a slave, you watch, and she’ll have no one to turn to. No one!”
Qasim flushed. He glared at Nikka while directing his icy remarks at Miriam.
“How dare you,” he said. “You’ve never been there! You don’t understand a thing. I have given my word! I know Zaitoon will be happy. The matter should end.”
“I know she won’t! Oh dear, how I love her. She’s like my daughter . . . I’ve reared her . . .”
“But she is my daughter!” Qasim cut in with biting finality.
Miriam flushed into hysteria.
“Is it because that Pathan offered you five hundred rupees—some measly maize and a few goats? Is that why you are selling her like a greedy merchant? I will give you that, and more,” she said with contempt. “Nikka will! How much more do you want? We will buy her!”
Qasim now looked at her directly, his face white with anger, his eyes malevolent.
Miriam felt the chill impact of his fury and an anguished stab of futility broke her voice. She continued in a crazed whisper, “Why not marry her to my husband here? Yes, I’ll welcome
her, look after her. We have no children and she’ll be my daughter. She’ll bear Nikka daughters and sons.” Nikka vainly tried to cut in. “Look!” she said, “I have gray hair. I’m getting old. She will comfort our old age.”
The men were struck silent.
“Miriam, Miriam, you don’t know what you are saying! You are overwrought,” Nikka soothed her.
Qasim was in an angry sweat, ashamed, and touched.
“Sister Miriam, it is not for the goats and maize, please believe me. It is my word—the word of a Kohistani!”
Nikka was dazed by the trend the conversation had taken.
“It’s the suddenness of the news that is upsetting us so much. I’m sure it’s not as bad as we imagine. After all, Zaitoon is Qasim’s daughter, and he will do his best by her . . . look, bibi, why don’t you ask the girl yourself . . . see what she has to say? That is, if Bhai Qasim agrees . . .?”
Qasim remained silent. Heedless of the impatient honk of a truck, a horsecart rumbled by. The warning jangle of tonga bells, shrill cries of tea-stall urchins taking orders, all the clamor of the dense place, combined to spin a cocoon of privacy around the charpoi.
“Come bibi, let’s go in,” Nikka said finally.
Qasim watched them go indoors. After a while, deep in thought, he got up and went into his own room.
Setting his hookah by the bed, Zaitoon handed Qasim his cup of tea. Lowering her lids, tipping her head back, she eyed him with melting consideration. All the screen heroines she admired practiced this trick, and Zaitoon frequently peered at the world tipsily through her thick lashes. Once, mimicking her, Qasim had teased, “What’s the idea of this . . . ? You look like a freshly slaughtered goat.”
Recalling the remark, she widened her eyes artlessly, and began to massage his legs. “Stretch out, Abba, you look tired.”
Qasim lay down and the girl expertly kneaded his legs.
“Abba,” she asked at length, “is something troubling you?”
Qasim didn’t answer.
“Why was Aunt Miriam crying? She sat outside without her burkha . . .”
Qasim studied her lithe body as it rocked to and fro. The pressure of her supple fingers felt curiously dainty and childlike.
“Bibi, we talked of your marriage.”
Zaitoon felt her body tremble. She froze, digging painfully into Qasim’s legs.
“Sit down, child,” he said, “What do you think of it?” Zaitoon pulled her chaddar forward over her face. Her voice was barely audible. “Anything you say, Abba.”
She waited. The hookah gurgled soothingly whenever Qasim drew on it.
“You saw the stranger I was talking to?”
She nodded.
“That was Misri Khan, my cousin. I’ve promised you in marriage to his son Sakhi.”
Zaitoon sat still. A blind excitement surged through her.
“I think you’ll be happy,” he said at last. “We will set off for the hills before the month is over. I’ll ask for leave from the warehouse.”
Zaitoon sat, unable to move.
Qasim’s eyes wandered about the room assessing their luggage.
Beneath a cotton rug stiff with years of grease and dust was the tin trunk. It served as a shelf for an assortment of cans containing condiments and tobacco, bottles of oil, tonics, and aphrodisiacs. He noticed a china bowl filled with dark red henna paste and his eyes lit up. Zaitoon had ground the henna leaves on a stone mortar that morning. Qasim was nearing fifty and he dyed his beard not to disguise the gray, but to accentuate it. White hair, a sign of wisdom and age, entitled him to respect. His head, hidden by his turban, he kept clean-shaven because of the great heat in the plains.
Qasim’s glance lingered on the only decoration along the flaky walls: his pistol and his rifle. They hung by their holsters from rusty nails, and above the pistol, on a crude rack, wrapped in a square of frayed red silk, the Holy Quran.
“Bibi, read me some verses.”
Zaitoon’s prowess with the holy scriptures never failed to awe Qasim, and he followed the somber movement of her lips with pride.
Their bodies rocked to the lilting Arabic cadences.
Miriam held Zaitoon’s arm in the bustle at the station. Neighborhood women who had come to see Zaitoon off moved in a black, burkha-clad bunch behind them. Carrying bundles, Qasim and Nikka walked ahead. In front of them, leading the way with the tin trunk on his head, stalked the coolie.
“Buch key! Take care!” the coolie warned, and the people parted to make way.
Zaitoon’s eyes flashed at the excitement of travel. Families, gathered with their luggage, waited like untidy mounds of rubbish. Bangled arms reached out of burkhas when mothers chased after straying children.
An old man was awaiting the Khyber Mail train. Garlands of roses and crisp paper money encircled his shoulders, and pressing about him in a clamorous throng were his children, grandchildren, relatives, and neighbors. Disentangling his beard, the old man beamed at them. Impatient to start, he had arrived at the station four hours before his train was due.
“Bring us water and a talisman from the Holy City,” shrilled the older women from behind their veils.
“Bring us wristwatches, and cameras,” shrieked the young.
Coolies trotted past, trunk upon trunk of luggage towering on their heads. Enormous holdalls swayed from their arms, “Buch key! Take care!” they cautioned.
Then, at some esoteric signal, the coolies squatted in a red row along the platform. Within seconds the engine steamed in.
Qasim and Nikka pushed their way into a crowded compartment. The women remained on the platform while the men arranged the luggage.
Miriam had tried her best to dissuade Zaitoon from going. “You are ours. We’ll marry you to a decent Punjabi who will understand your ways. Tell your father you don’t want to marry a tribal. We’ll help you.”
But Zaitoon, swung high on Qasim’s reminiscences, beckoned by visions of the glorious home of her father’s forefathers and of the lover her fancies envisaged, merely lowered her head and said shyly, “I cannot cross my father.”
Then Miriam, knowing Zaitoon’s mind was made up, stroked her head and said “Bismillah”—“God bless you.” She gave her a gold necklace embedded with colored glass, a dozen gold bangles, and her red wedding outfit.
Miriam stroked Zaitoon’s arm as if she were a blind woman leading a loved one. She could feel the girl quiver with excitement. “Are you happy, child?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Zaitoon, and at once felt embarrassed.
“God give you a long life, keep you always happy and smiling.” Miriam caressed her head. She, too, had married at sixteen. “Bless you,” she said, and Zaitoon, suddenly tearful, hugged her close.
They clung together weeping, the girl lost in the folds of Miriam’s burkha. Zaitoon did not need to say, “Thank you for everything,” or, “I’ll miss you.” She sobbed, whimpering, “I’m leaving my mother . . .”
A whistle shrieked. Qasim and Nikka embraced hurriedly.
“Come on, Zaitoon,” Qasim urged, and Nikka gently pulled the girl away from his wife. Qasim saluted Miriam.
Nikka blessed the girl. “God be with you, child,” he said tenderly. “Remember you are our child as well. If you’re not happy, come straight back to us. God be with you.”
Ever so slowly the train began to move.
Chapter 11
The three-tonner wound along the dirt road with an easy, powerful drone. It was going to Dubair with the routine supply of vegetables and stores that included the Major’s beer.
“See that?” The driver glanced at Ashiq Hussain but the young mechanic slumped by his side, his army cap over his face, was fast asleep.
The road rose and swerved sharply round a projecting cliff and the driver saw a fallen bulldozer, strewn on the rocks far below. A week ago, it had plunged two thousand feet down the river canyon. Two men had died.
Instinctively, the driver steered another arm’s length clear of
the edge of the gorge. They were in the region described by the ancient Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hsien as the Black Mountains.
A shot rent the still air and the bang of a bursting tire echoed through the mountains. The three-tonner lurched crazily. Its heavy back wheels skidded and wrenched it in a wide arc across the road.
“Damn! Some bloody fool fired at us!” the driver said to the dazed mechanic.
The truck had its nose to the sliced mountain wall, its back wheels barely clearing the treacherous edge. Both men ducked and knelt crouching on the floorboard. Ashiq Hussain loosened the safety catch on his gun. He bobbed up swiftly but saw nothing. “Stay low, you idiot,” cautioned the driver.
“Oh God! Why did you do that, Abba?” gasped Zaitoon, her voice faint with shock.
“Hush . . . keep your head down,” Qasim whispered. The gun shook in his hand. Crouching low, he held her down.
After years of longing, Qasim was returning to his people at last; to the house of his ancestors and the beloved land of his youth. The vigorous air and the sight of the stark mountains elated him. They stirred in him a long dormant pride. His mood was expansive as they trudged along the road. A bedding-roll and the tin trunk were strapped to his back, and Zaitoon carried an assortment of bags and bundles. Qasim talked incessantly.
“Bibi, you will like my village. Across the river, beyond those mountains, we are a free and manly lot.”
He searched the girl’s face wistfully. Zaitoon, ecstatic with the wonder and beauty of all she saw, paid him flattering attention.