Secrets of the Henna Girl

by Sufiya Ahmed

  Farhat nodded but continued to fuss about, ensuring Sehar had everything she needed. Then we ate a lunch of rice and vegetables before Farhat’s fiancé, Abdullah, came to collect us in one of Sher Shah’s minivans. When it was time to leave in the mid afternoon, the sun was still high in the sky. We drove back to Nannyma’s house to collect her, Ambreen-bhaji and Husna-bhaji. Farhat was unimpressed at having to travel in the same car as the outcast widow, but one look from Nannyma meant she kept her mouth shut.

  ‘I don’t think I should be going,’ Husna-bhaji said nervously. ‘You know who will be there …’

  ‘My dear, you cannot hide,’ said Nannyma, cutting her off. ‘It is a public place and you have every right to be there.’

  Husna-bhaji had looked pleadingly at Ambreen-bhaji, but found no support there. We all knew that once Nannyma had her mind set on something nothing would change it.

  It was a long drive on the dusty inland roads and the bumpiness of the ride made me feel sleepy. I leaned my head against the seat rest and my mind drifted again to home. Our town’s big holiday festival was based around Christmas. I’d always loved that time of year, mainly because it meant two weeks off school and a binge of entertainment shows on TV. Sometimes when it snowed Susan and I would take cardboard boxes from my dad’s shop and race to the top of the nearby hill. There we’d use the flattened boxes to slide down on the snow alongside dozens of other locals. It was the best.

  In the centre of town Christmas lights would appear, in the shapes of Santa Claus, reindeers, little elves and stars. These decorations had been a feature of our town for as long as I could remember, but last year there had been a big dispute over them. I’d heard my mum and dad talking about it over dinner. Apparently our area had two new local government councillors who were insisting that the lights could not be used any more because Christmas lights were offensive to the town’s small Muslim community.

  ‘I’m not offended,’ my mum had said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Dad had agreed, absolutely livid. ‘They can’t use our religion as an excuse for someone else’s agenda.’

  In fact, he had been so incensed that he’d organized a petition, which he urged all his customers to sign declaring their support for the Christmas lights. The petition stressed that although as Muslims we did not celebrate Christmas as a religious festival, we respected the right of the local people to celebrate their own festivals in whatever manner they saw fit. My dad presented the petition to the local council and in the end the two councillors were defeated and our town’s Christmas lights came on in December as scheduled.

  ‘A victory for common sense,’ my father declared happily.

  There were now only a few months left till the town’s lights would be lit again and I wondered if I’d be home to see them turned on by some suited middle-aged councillor whom nobody knew, but everybody cheered. Our town was so small and unremarkable we didn’t even merit a D-list celebrity from some long-forgotten reality-TV show.

  The cold days of Britain’s December seemed a million miles away as the minivan finally pulled up at a field filled with colour and bustle. The wealthy women were dressed in their finest clothes, the fabrics a heady mixture of red, yellow, blue and purple embroidered with gold and silver thread and topped with twinkling beads. Gold jewellery and colourful gems glistened against their necks, fingers and wrists. The poorer women wore fabrics just as bright, but significantly sparser in gold and silver embroidery and beads. Simple necklaces adorned their necks and on their wrists shone bangles made of glass instead of precious metal.

  Compared to the locals, Sehar and I were quite under-dressed, but neither of us cared and in such heat we were actually grateful to be dressed in simple white salwar kameezes with light shawls draped across our shoulders. Farhat, on the other hand, was wearing a bright lavender-coloured salwar kameez with a matching ribbon in her hair and glass bangles on her wrists. She had even applied the same coloured eye shadow. She looked like a walking, talking lavender flowerpot and she made me smile with her excited chatter. Two steps behind, Husna-bhaji followed with a nervous step, fully garbed in her black burka. I imagined she was really hot underneath the folds of dark fabric as it absorbed the sun’s rays. She held her scarf over her mouth and I knew she was trying to hide her face, lest anyone recognize her.

  The mela, it turned out, was a cross between a funfair and a circus. As we walked around we stopped to watch the performance of a trained monkey. The little animal looked like something out of a Disney cartoon. A red Ali-Baba hat was perched on his head and he was wearing a matching waistcoat. The monkey was dancing to the tune played on his owner’s flute with his paws waving in the air. Every time the music stopped the monkey would whip off his fez and hold it out to his captivated audience for money. As the locals obliged with plenty of coins, I couldn’t help thinking that this display would probably be frowned upon back home.

  ‘People are staring at Husna-bhaji,’ Sehar whispered to me.

  By now Husna-bhaji was covering most of her face with the end of her black shawl, leaving only her eyes peering out. I glanced around to see some peasant women staring and pointing at her. I looked closely at their faces – a combination of ridicule, anger and fear – and then it hit me. These women genuinely thought Husna-bhaji was a witch. She was such a spectacle to them that she could have been the star attraction of the mela. If the women could have their way, would they have tied Husna-bhaji to a wooden pole and thrown rotten fruit at her?

  I thought of school history lessons about the treatment of medieval English witches. People back then had thought of water as a pure element, so accused women were tied up and dropped in the river. If the pure water accepted her – as in, if she sank, and probably drowned – then it was declared the woman had been wrongly accused and was innocent of witchcraft. But if she floated and survived? Well then she had been rejected by the water and was therefore a living, breathing witch. And so she would hang or burn at the stake.

  I threw a sideways glance at Husna-bhaji, unable to stop my mind from playing out its own images of her in the role of an English medieval witch, her hands tied to her feet, ready to be dunked in the river. I must have been frowning because Nannyma placed a hand on my arm.

  ‘Don’t worry about the looks, my dear. Nobody can touch Husna-bhaji when she is with me.’

  I had to bite my lower lip to stop the words from tumbling out. But what will happen to her when she is alone?

  ‘Zeba,’ Nannyma said, smiling at me. ‘I want you to enjoy yourself. Please make an effort for me.’

  I smiled back, nodding, and then Nannyma called Husna-bhaji to her side and asked if she could link arms to help her walk. I knew Nannyma didn’t need to do this, but pulling Husna-bhaji close to her sent a message to everyone at the mela that the widow was under her protection.

  We walked towards the rides on the other side of the field where a big wheel majestically rose up into the air. It was the only high-rise ride and there was a long queue of people leading up to it. Two men stood nearby, waiting to manually crank various pieces of machinery. There were no engines to power anything.

  Farhat wanted to sit on the big wheel and begged Sehar to join her, but she merely pointed to her bump to make her refusal clear, which only left me to join the queue. After a long wait we climbed into the plastic seat, which was shaped like a teacup, and secured the lock on the metal security bar.

  One of the men operating the ride swung his arm and we were abruptly pushed into the air. The teacup swayed back and forth, and although we were only four feet in the air, Farhat clutched my arm, her face suddenly looking nervous.

  ‘Hey, it’s OK,’ I reassured.

  She nodded but did not let go of my arm.

  ‘Have you ever been on one of these before?’ I asked.

  Farhat mumbled a ‘no’.

  Oh no, I thought. The teacup would rise until everyone below would look like ants. I hoped Farhat was
n’t going to panic. Was she afraid of heights? It didn’t make sense; she had happily climbed the mango tree that day on Sehar’s order. But then again the tree wasn’t as high as this ride. Maybe she was just feeling dizzy from the rotation. I closed my hand around hers and squeezed tightly, then stole a look at her face. She was white with anxiety and I wondered if I would be seeing the contents of her stomach soon. I hoped not.

  ‘It’s going to be OK,’ I repeated.

  ‘Yaah … yaah,’ Farhat nodded, trying to look brave as the wheel moved higher. For the rest of the ride Farhat kept her eyes firmly closed as she bruised my hand with her crushing grip. Thankfully it was over quickly and a grateful Farhat scrambled off. The wheel had only spun around once, but I suppose the men could only work their arms so much in a day. They really should get engines, I thought as I watched a group of overweight ladies, dressed in their finest, queue for a place in the rotating teacups.

  Chapter 16

  A few days later the fun of the mela was forgotten as I stared up one morning at the man known as Sher Shah.

  This was the first time I had seen him in the flesh, and I realized that the huge portraits in the haveli did no justice to his fierceness. He was enormous: well over six feet tall and seemed almost as wide. His face was huge and he was bald, save for a few strands, which he tried to sweep across his shining head. His eyes were like his face – big and round and looked like they were ready to pop out of their sockets at any moment. His nose was long and hooked and a moustache – more fearsome than even Taya-ji’s – dominated his upper lip, the curls at both ends defying gravity to rest halfway up his fat cheeks. This man was the stuff of children’s nightmares.

  He towered over me as we assessed each other. I imagined he was unaccustomed to women meeting his gaze head-on. I had noticed the village girls trying to merge into the walls when Taya-ji crossed their paths, and I imagined they behaved the same way with the landlord. When I’d first seen this behaviour, I hadn’t been sure if it was out of fear or respect, but I knew now that it was one masked by the other.

  ‘So you will be our Asif’s wife?’ Sher Shah said silkily, his mellifluous voice at odds with his vast bulk. I had expected it to be deep, masculine and gravelly.

  I maintained the eye contact that many of the villagers would regard as scandalous. Etiquette dictated that I should show deference to his male strength and higher intellect by behaving coyly, almost pretending to be dumb so that he could feel superior. I had no intention of doing anything of the kind, or of raising my shawl to my head, which was a basic requirement to offer respect in Pakistani society. I left my hair uncovered, flowing free in all its glory as if it signalled my loyalty to Sehar. This man’s wish had the final word here, and he could have put a stop to Sehar’s marriage if he’d had an ounce of moral responsibility. But he was a leader simply because he had inherited his father’s land, not because he had compassion. This was his power. This was feudalism.

  ‘Are you going to continue scowling at me?’ Sher Shah joked, but there was an underlying warning in his voice.

  I racked my brain for some cutting reply, but lost the opportunity when Nannyma walked back on to the veranda. She had left us to find some papers Sher Shah had come to collect. I wasn’t sure what they were and a few weeks ago I would have accused Nannyma of fraternizing with the enemy, but I knew now that in order to survive in the jungle the different beasts had to find ways to live together.

  Nannyma ordered tea and Ambreen-bhaji brought out the best china. There was an extra cup on the tray. It turned out that my taya-ji was also coming to pay a visit. I’d not seen him or Mariam-chachi since the day I had left their house on an ox cart.

  Arriving in a cloud of dust, Taya-ji jumped out of his Land Rover and leaped up the two steps of the veranda. Noting the scene before him, he glowered at me and not a word of greeting passed his lips. I knew he had noticed my uncovered head and was probably fighting the urge to grab my shawl and cover me completely with it. I couldn’t work out who was scarier: my uncle, with his thuggish demeanour, or Sher Shah with his malice disguised by a diplomatic veneer. But I realized I was insulting my nannyma by not respecting the village hierarchy in her presence, so I reluctantly pulled my shawl over my hair.

  Nannyma greeted Taya-ji with salaam and pointed to a chair. He accepted the invitation before turning to me, his expression now no longer so furious. ‘How are you?’

  I was surprised by the question. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but a query about my wellbeing was not what I’d had in mind. ‘Good,’ I answered.

  ‘So I hear that you have made friends with Sher Shah’s daughter-in-law. Very good.’

  I nodded. Of course he would know that. The entire village knew the actions of the foreign girls.

  ‘She will help you adjust to this life,’ Taya-ji said gruffly. ‘Not long now until Asif returns from duty and you can both leave for the UK. It must be very boring for you here with your old grandmother. No TV.’

  ‘Actually I prefer it here,’ I said defensively.

  Taya-ji’s eyes widened at my tone of voice and he looked like he was going to bark at me, but then he thought better of it and simply said, ‘Well, I am sure you will be able to visit often.’

  ‘Visit from where?’ I demanded.

  ‘From my house of course. You and Asif will live with us after you get married and before you leave. We don’t have this Western business of young married couples living separately from their parents.’

  Sher Shah made the appropriate guffing noise at the pointed remark.

  ‘Taya-ji,’ I said icily, ‘I don’t know what my dad has said to you, but I have no intention of marrying your son, or anyone else in this village for that matter. If you had been considerate enough to ask me about my plans, I would have told you.’

  The silence that followed was so thick with tension that Ambreen-bhaji could have cut it with the knife she used to slash the throats of chickens. I didn’t know where I had found the courage to confront Taya-ji, but the bravery in my veins was vanishing quickly under his murderous glare.

  Sher Shah took charge. ‘Young girls do not know what they want most of the time, and they definitely don’t know what is good for them,’ he said. ‘We have come here on business; let’s not allow a domestic dispute to waste our time. Zeba, leave us.’

  I blinked. Was this man ordering me to leave my own home?

  ‘Zeba,’ Nannyma said. ‘Go see your friends. I have some land business to take care of.’

  As much as I wanted to protest, I knew that it was better to obey Nannyma’s authority. At least it would irritate the men that I listened to her but not them. Stepping off the veranda I made my way to the river. I didn’t want to go to the haveli and Sehar and Farhat would not wander over for another couple of hours.

  I sat down at the usual spot and thought furiously about the arrogance of Sher Shah and Taya-ji. Who did they think they were? My blood was beginning to boil as I thought of several retorts I could’ve thrown at them.

  ‘Are you all right?’ a voice interrupted my thoughts. I looked up into the beautiful but concerned face of Husna-bhaji.

  ‘Yes,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Do you mind if I wash my clothes here?’ she asked, holding a small bundle under her arm.

  I shrugged half-heartedly, not really wanting the company, but unable to be so directly rude. Sometimes when I’d passed the river in the morning, I’d seen the village women huddled in groups washing their clothes. They were always armed with bars of soap and wooden sticks that looked like cricket bats. They would soak each item in the river, create a lather with the soap and then beat the soapy clothes with the stick. According to Farhat, it was the traditional way of removing dirt.

  Husna-bhaji crouched down and began to untie her bundle, revealing three salwars and two kameezes. She shuffled forward and dipped one item in the river.

  ‘You are alone?’ she asked. ‘Doe
s your nannyma know you are here?’

  I nodded. Taking the hint that I wasn’t in the mood to speak, Husna-bhaji busied herself with her washing. I leaned back on my hands and glanced sideways. Two men were walking on the crooked path that ran alongside the river. They looked like field hands and were heading in our direction. I expected the men to walk past but when they were just a few feet away they stopped in their tracks. They were staring at the side profile of Husna-bhaji. Having recognized the widow, they raised the fingers of each hand to clutch each earlobe and then crossed the fingers from side to side.

  I recognized the Muslim gesture, which was normally accompanied by the word ‘tauba’, meaning ‘pardon’. As a child I had been taught by my mum to make the sign whenever I wanted to voice my disapproval of something. I grew up uttering ‘tauba’ whenever I saw a Muslim person stroke a dog, which was forbidden in Islam, or if I saw a classmate steal a sweet from Mr Sam’s corner shop. For years I would religiously touch my ears in a self-righteous manner until I was told to stop by my madrassa teacher Imam Zahid, who deemed it ‘ancient cultural nonsense’. Looking at the behaviour of these village men, it was clear that the practice was still popular here.

  Feeling outraged, I must have been scowling at them as they hurried past us because Husna-bhaji placed a gentle hand on my arm and said, ‘You don’t have to look offended on my account.’

  ‘I … uhh …’ I stammered.

  ‘Really, it’s fine,’ she reassured me. ‘I am used to it. It is actually better this way.’

  ‘How?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘They think I am a witch. It is better this way because the men keep away from me. I would rather be alone and pure than have to fight off unwanted male attention.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all I could manage.

  ‘And I am not alone. Your nannyma is my friend and I live with the main protector.’

  I was confused. I thought Husna-bhaji lived on her own. Her smile widened at my puzzled expression, revealing perfect white teeth that any American actress would be proud of.