by Sufiya Ahmed
‘Are you sure you will not come to the airport?’ Dad asked in a cracked voice.
I gazed up at him. He looked terrible. Pouches that had never been there before hung under his eyes and his cheeks had sunk into his face, giving him a haunted look. Suddenly I wanted to run up to him and fling my arms around his neck, beg him to make this nightmare stop. I knew in my heart that Dad did not want this marriage for me, that he did not want to leave me behind. Why else would he look so tortured? What kind of a hold did Taya-ji have on him? How was any of this honourable?
‘Your dad asked you a question,’ Mum said with a detached expression.
I fixed my eyes on her and wondered if she regretted the hurtful words she had shouted at me. Somehow, I doubted it.
‘No, I’m not coming,’ I answered quietly.
‘Very well,’ Dad nodded. ‘We will see you in a month.’
He took a step towards me, hesitant, unsure. I willed him to take the remaining three so that he could pull me to him in one of his bear hugs. He didn’t. Instead, he chose to turn round and walk off the veranda towards the waiting Land Rover.
At any other time in my life I would have been shocked by this goodbye from my dad – but I wasn’t today. I didn’t think anything could shock me any more. I stood stiffly as Mum stepped forward to place her arms awkwardly around me. I think she expected me to return her cold embrace, but I didn’t bother and kept my own arms by my sides. I was making a point and wanted her to object, to say something, but she refused to acknowledge my rudeness and merely stepped back, murmured a goodbye and left.
I watched the procession of Land Rovers spray the dust in the air as they powered out of sight.
‘Zeba.’
I turned with a fixed smile to Nannyma, determined not to cry. I didn’t see the point. It’s not like it made an ounce of difference anyway.
‘Why don’t you go and visit Sehar at the haveli?’ she suggested.
I flopped down on the swing to stare moodily ahead. I could still see the tyre tracks the vehicles had left behind.
‘Maybe later,’ I replied. ‘I’m not really in the mood for company.’
‘As you wish,’ Nannyma said, taking her place on the swing.
Burning up with inner frustration, I got up and retreated into the house. Picking up one of Nannyma’s Urdu magazines, I stared at the front cover. It was a horrific picture of the aftermath of some sort of explosion. A handful of charred bodies lay on a road with the burnt shell of a truck in the background. I turned to the inside pages and came across a small column in English. I read the piece, which was about the spiralling violence in the North-West Frontier Province. Five suicide bombs had been detonated last week killing hundreds of soldiers near an army barrack. I thought of Asif and the everyday danger he faced along with the rest of the country’s armed forces. Then I thought of my dad’s uncle, Imran-chacha, the retired army officer who had talked about facing a Muslim enemy on the other side of the country’s border. It was his belief that common faith did not matter when facing an enemy. Did he still believe that now that his great-nephew was in combat with his own people?
I wondered what Asif was like. Was he an honourable soldier, full of bravery and compassion, or was he a thug in uniform? I decided not to examine those thoughts; I didn’t want to think about Asif. Discarding the magazine, I stood up and flipped through Nusrat-kala’s old records, searching for something to match my depressed mood. Among the sounds of the 80s were some classic Bollywood tunes, including Sehar’s favourite, Umrao Jaan. I placed it on the turntable and music filled the room. Violins and the sitar combined to produce a melancholy tune, and then the unmistakable voice of Bollywood’s most famous female artist, Asha Bhosle, sang the lyrics of a broken heart. Settling into an armchair, I let the sounds wash over me.
‘Hey, you!’ Half an hour later the words jostled me out of my daze. I opened my eyes to find Sehar grinning down at me.
‘Hi,’ I responded half-heartedly. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Why? Do I need an invite to see my favourite friend?’ Sehar asked, depositing her pregnant body heavily on the sofa.
I shot Sehar a dirty look. I wasn’t in the mood for her bolshiness today.
‘We thinking we coming to cheering you up,’ Farhat announced from the doorway.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ I invited.
She smiled and sat, cross-legged, on the floor.
‘Why don’t you sit on the chair instead of the floor?’ I said irritably, knowing full well she wouldn’t.
Farhat looked at me blankly, not moving.
‘Why don’t you –’
‘Oh, for crying out loud, Zee, enough of your class warfare!’ Sehar erupted. ‘She’s going to stay on the floor. Making her sit on a chair isn’t going to end your situation.’
I clenched my jaw. Yes, granted, affording Farhat some dignity was not going to make things better for me, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t treat the girl with some respect. I opened my mouth to make that point but Sehar was having none of it.
‘I ain’t arguing, girl,’ she stated. ‘We came here to have a laugh. Now get out of your mood because we are going to have some fun.’
I glared at Sehar and she stared right back, one eyebrow arched. Her expression said it all: You haven’t got it half as bad as I have, so snap out of it. I gave in then. What was the point of sulking? These girls were my friends, and they had come to make me feel better.
It turned out that Sehar’s plans for ‘fun’ involved painting Farhat’s face with heavy make-up.
‘It wasn’t hard to convince her. She needs a rehearsal before her wedding day,’ Sehar informed me, opening a big bag filled with cosmetics. ‘Come here, Fatty.’
Excited beyond words, Farhat ran up to her mistress and offered up the blank canvas of her face. From my armchair I watched Sehar paint as the record played itself to a finish and then I got up and turned it over so we could hear the songs on the other side.
‘There we go,’ Sehar announced, sitting back.
Farhat turned her face in my direction and I inhaled sharply in shock. The maid looked like a transvestite. Her skin was a grey mask because Sehar’s foundation was much too light and her eyebrows, shaded with a dark pencil, looked gruesome. The only saving grace of Sehar’s work was Farhat’s lips, painted a deep, luscious red.
‘Sehar, I really don’t think you should go near Farhat’s face on her wedding day,’ I advised, struggling to contain a gurgle of laughter.
‘Hmm,’ Sehar replied, frowning slightly. ‘You might be right.’
‘How is I looking?’ Farhat asked eagerly.
‘Uhh …’ I was lost for words.
‘You look like a geisha,’ Sehar offered confidently.
‘Geisha?’
‘Yes, you know the book I have in my room? The cover with that Japanese girl?’
‘Oh,’ was Farhat’s response. She didn’t look so excited any more. Perhaps our expressions were a giveaway.
‘Can I looking in mirror now?’
‘You might die of shock,’ Sehar muttered.
‘What?’ Farhat asked, looking around for a mirror. She spotted one on the far wall.
‘Actually I don’t want you to see my work yet,’ Sehar announced.
Farhat gazed up at her mistress and frowned. ‘As you wish.’
Sehar sat back on the sofa. ‘Yes, go and wash your face and remember no peeking. I forbid it.’
Farhat nodded and stood up. I watched her walk around the sofa, but instead of heading for the door, she jumped over a small table and ran for the mirror. Sehar’s head shot up and she yelled, ‘I said no!’
It was too late. Seeing her reflection, the maid let out a gasp of horror. ‘I looking awful,’ she squeaked in a shocked voice.
Sehar, who was still stuck on the sofa with her baby weight, wagged her finger at Farhat. ‘That was
just practice. I will do better next time.’
Farhat turned indignantly towards Sehar. ‘No thank you.’
The sight of the overly made-up girl trying to stand her ground was too funny and Sehar and I burst into laughter. Farhat gazed at us with hurt in her eyes and I tried to compose myself, but with little success.
‘You is very mean,’ Farhat said quietly. ‘If I go looking like this to my Abdullah, he not marrying me. He will call me names. That fat man in circus who making everybody laughing. What is it?’
‘Clown?’ I offered.
‘Yes.’
‘You are right,’ Sehar hiccupped. ‘I did a bad job. Look, here, you liked this lipstick, didn’t you?’
Farhat eyed the product in Sehar’s hand.
‘You can have it,’ Sehar offered. ‘You will be wearing red, right? Well, it will match your outfit. Perhaps on the day you can just wear lipstick, a bit of kohl and mascara. That should be enough to make you a glowing bride. Here, take it.’
Farhat remained on the spot but her eyes looked hungrily at the Western manufactured tube.
‘For crying out loud!’ Sehar erupted. ‘Just take it.’
Farhat moved forward to claim her gift. ‘Thanking you,’ she said shyly.
Sehar held out her hands and the maid pulled her up with surprising strength.
‘Let’s put some groovy tunes on,’ Sehar enthused, waddling over to the stack of records. ‘I want to dance.’
Farhat clapped her hands. ‘Yaah.’
Sehar selected a record and the music of the 80s filled the room. ‘Dance, Fatty,’ she commanded.
Farhat began to move her arms in an action similar to a hen beating its wings, and then overcome with sudden shyness, buried her face in her hands.
‘Fatty, don’t stop!’ Sehar cried. ‘Come on, I’ll join you.’
I watched through peals of laughter as Sehar threw her hands in the air and swayed her hips, her baby bump moving with her.
‘Come on, Zee,’ Sehar urged.
I skipped forward and began to dance, and it was at that moment that Nannyma entered the room with a frail-looking elderly man. He wore a purple ajrak turban on his head and carried a very expensive-looking cane to support his weight. His black eyes were like twinkling buttons set in a heavily lined, smiling face.
‘Always nice to have merry young women in the house,’ the man remarked.
Sehar and I straightened our kameezes and pulled our shawls in place.
‘Girls, this is Sahib Mohammad Ali Khan,’ Nannyma informed us. ‘He is the landlord of the neighbouring district. Sahib, this is my granddaughter, Zeba, and that is Sher Shah’s daughter-in-law, Sehar.’
I noticed Nannyma did not introduce Farhat, who was now standing by the doorway trying to hide her face behind her shawl.
‘Girls, would you leave us?’ Nannyma said. ‘Sahib and I have some land matters to discuss.’
‘He seemed nice,’ I said a few minutes later as we walked down to the riverside.
‘Apparently he is the opposite of my father-in-law: kind, just and fair,’ Sehar replied. ‘That’s why everyone calls him Sahib. It means ‘sir’ in English. They are giving him extra kudos because he is so widely respected.’
‘Really?’ I asked doubtfully. Could landlords be respected when the very structure of the feudal system meant there was always a master and a servant?
‘Yeah,’ Sehar nodded. ‘They’re not all bad, you know. Some actually care about their tenants. Sahib Mohammad’s villagers are quite fortunate. He has a small medical centre for the poor and there is a school for peasant kids, which his wife opened before she died. The girls have to attend until they are at least thirteen and the boys till they are fifteen.’
‘Why not sixteen like us?’ I wondered.
‘’Cause this isn’t England!’ Sehar said flatly. ‘Why do you keep comparing everything with home? This is another country, not even developed, and you keep applying the standards of a First World country.’
I suppose Sehar was right. At least the children benefited from some education, unlike the ones in this district.
‘I think I know why Sahib is here,’ Sehar said suddenly.
‘Why?’
‘There is a big meeting going on at the haveli later today about the elections. You know that Sher Shah is standing for election as the political representative of this part of Sindh, don’t you?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Why would I know that?’
‘I thought your nannyma would have told you,’ Sehar said with a shrug.
‘Will he win?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t he? Ninety per cent of his voters are illiterate and will do as he says. They will vote for him using their fingerprints as their identity. The idea of a democracy is a sham. The people don’t have a choice with their vote. They will think of their stomachs and they will vote for the landlord. It’s standard practice.’
‘What about people in other districts?’
‘Well, that’s what the meeting is about. Sher Shah will get a commitment from the other landlords by promising something or other, and they will order their tenants to vote for him.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘There are a lot of people in the haveli and they all talk.’
Farhat who had been silent throughout this conversation nodded her head vigorously, having managed to understand that last sentence.
‘Yes Zeba-ji, lots of people in haveli.’
Something occurred to me. ‘What about his opponents?’ I asked, thinking of the elections we had in school every year for Head Girl. There were at least five or six girls from Year Eleven who would each try to persuade the rest of the school that she would make a fabulous Head Girl. ‘Surely the meaning of an election means there is more than one candidate.’
Sehar laughed. ‘They don’t stand a chance. Money is what wins elections in these parts. If Sher Shah stood his donkey as the candidate and told everyone to vote for it, the animal would win. Most of the people around here can’t read or write so they don’t know better. People just do as they are told by their landlords.’
Chapter 13
I missed fish and chips.
I missed the big fat chunky slices of potato and large cod that our local chippie sold. I had mine with lashings of vinegar and I ate them sitting on a wooden bench on the high street. The bench was dedicated to a man named Jamie Simpson and the plaque read ‘Husband, father, councillor’. I’d no idea who he’d been and I doubted the other users of the bench knew either.
My local chippie was run by old Mrs Smith, a woman past a certain age and very much set in her views. Mrs Smith had been a presence in my life for as long as I could remember. She was tiny and bent with age, and as I’d grown from a child to a teenager, Mrs Smith had seemed to shrink further and further into herself. My mum would say she could remember Mrs Smith when she’d had a straight back but I couldn’t.
Dad said that Mrs Smith had played an important role in our lives. One fine day, back in the late 1980s, he had been on his way to Leeds from Manchester when his train had pulled into a quaint-looking railway station. He’d decided to get off for a while just to take in the scenery of the surrounding hills. However he hadn’t realized that the train would only stop for two minutes and it had left without him. Having been told he’d have to wait another hour for the next train, he’d decided to go for a wander and the first shop that had caught his eye on the little high street had been Mrs Smith’s chippie. He had enjoyed a hearty meal using a stubby wooden fork to scoop his potatoes and fish out of old newspaper. But the best part of it had been Mrs Smith’s friendly chatter.
Dad said it was on that full stomach and hospitality that he’d decided this was the town for him. Besides, the open countryside reminded him of home. Old Mrs Smith was a firm fixture on my dad’s Christmas list, which was made up of his non-Muslim fr
iends. In return, Mrs Smith never forgot to present us with a chocolate box every year on our festival of Eid.
Susan and I were always fascinated by the old woman’s knowledge of our area’s history. Her family had lived in our town for centuries and there were more stones belonging to her family in the graveyard than any other. Mrs Smith said she could trace her family back to the time of the Wars of the Roses, although the history teacher at St Mary’s High, Mr Duffield, wasn’t so convinced about the credibility of that claim. We’d touched on the Wars of the Roses in school once, but nobody could talk about old battles as passionately as Mrs Smith.
When we were younger, Susan and I had sat in Mrs Smith’s shop window bay on quiet afternoons and begged her to tell us the story again. She claimed it used to be called the Cousins’ War because the battles for the English crown had been fought over by the descendants of one king. On one side had been the House of Lancaster and on the other the House of York, and Mrs Smith’s however-many-greats-ancestor had fought for the House of York. The craziness had continued for decades until it had all ended when the Lancaster heir, Henry VII, married the daughter of a previous York King, Edward IV. Finally both sides were united … or so I had thought.
‘So everybody lived happily ever after?’ I’d once asked. ‘Did your family marry into the other side as well?’
‘Not on your life!’ Mrs Smith had erupted. ‘They killed our people. Slaughtered them! The kings might forgive and marry each other but we don’t. It was our blood that was spilt.’ And so Mrs Smith, a proud Yorkshire woman, carried around a centuries-old hatred for Lancashire.
Looking at Ambreen-bhaji as she prepared home-made chips for me, I wondered whether people here carried hatred from the ancient past that had been handed down from generation to generation. The only thing I knew was that the two most competitive provinces, Sindh and Punjab, were rivals in wanting their own countrymen to become prime minister of the country. One of Sindh’s most famous prime ministers had been Benazir Bhutto, the first woman prime minister of Pakistan.
I found it strange that this country – where women still drew water out of a well – had been progressive enough to elect a woman prime minister. Pondering these thoughts, I said as much to Nannyma when I walked out on to the veranda.