The End of Innocence

by Moni Mohsin

  ‘May Allah bring Mashooq on the right path.’ Rehmat brushed his clothes, showering the floor with cigarette ash. ‘What I don’t understand is why he has so much anger inside him. He has a job, a wife, children, a roof over his head. What more does he want?’

  ‘Some men, no matter how much they have, are never happy. He’s one of those.’ Barkat got up and stretched. ‘Laila, baby, are you ready to go to your grandmother’s?’

  ‘No, she has to brush her hair and wash her hands,’ Bua said. ‘Look how much crumpled your dress is, Lailu. Come, you have to change also.’

  Sardar Begum sat cross-legged on the daybed in her courtyard poring over a tattered register. She had needed glasses for the last twenty years but had refused to wear them. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,’ she insisted.

  ‘But, Maanji,’ Fareeda had sighed, ‘you are long-sighted. You need …’

  ‘They are my eyes or yours?’

  ‘Yours.’

  ‘Then?’

  She held the register at arm’s length and craned her neck back. Her thin red plait curled down her back like a gecko’s tail. The lines on her brow were deeper than usual as she scrutinized the register.

  ‘This doesn’t add up,’ she muttered. ‘Sixty rupees for meat, fifty for chicken, don’t add up to one hundred and twenty. It’s written a hundred and twenty, isn’t it, Kaneez?’ She jabbed a finger at the entry in the register.

  Kaneez raised herself with some difficulty from her squatting position on the ground by her mistress’s bed. ‘I can’t see without my glasses.’

  ‘Then get your glasses, fool,’ snapped Sardar Begum. ‘Why do you have to pretend you can do without them?’

  Kaneez fumbled in the pocket of her shapeless sludge-coloured tunic and produced a pair of spectacles held together with string. Placing them on her hooked nose, she squinted at the register.

  ‘Looks like a hundred and ten to me.’

  ‘Can’t be. You’re blind. Fetch Nazeer.’

  Kaneez was about to shuffle off when Sardar Begum looked up and saw her son’s family enter the courtyard. Quickly, she shoved the register under a sheet.

  Sardar Begum’s registers were a constant source of tension with her son. In these well-thumbed books she kept account of every single paisa that went from her hands. It was a habit she had acquired on the death of her husband and clung to ever since.

  Her husband, a placid, bookish man some twelve years her senior, had passed away with little fuss early on in their marriage. He had left his young widow with two small children, the haveli and five thousand acres of land. He had also left behind a fine library of Persian literature and Arabic philosophy that seldom found mention in Sardar Begum’s account of her struggles.

  ‘What had I? Nothing. Nothing except this house and some land,’ she’d say with a careless wave encompassing the haveli and the fields beyond. ‘And most of that also left barren. Tariq’s father was a good man but a not-so-good farmer.’

  Sardar Begum, however, had the makings of a very good farmer. Though reared for a life of secluded indolence by a wealthy landowning father, she chafed at the bonds imposed on her by purdah. She yearned for the big, masculine world outside; for news of local elections won and lost; innovations in farming; roads extended; tube wells dug; fluctuations in the market, anything except the narrow, smothering world of purdah.

  Her husband was a sympathetic man who tried to channel her lively intelligence and unquenchable curiosity into reading and writing. But hers was too literal a mind, too earthy a sensibility, to appreciate the effete verse of Hafiz or the complex philosophy of Ibn Khaldun. The books that she yearned for were the registers and ledgers in which the farm accounts were kept. So he indulged her, bringing the books along with him to the women’s section of the haveli when he retired for the night.

  Sardar Begum soon grew familiar with the tables of income and expenditure written in the manager’s neat hand. She questioned her husband closely on expenses incurred too early, crops sold too cheap. Whenever she barked a question, he would look up from his book with a distracted frown. It was on one such evening, while she sat cross-legged on the floor with the open register in her lap and he was in an armchair, slowly turning the pages of a book, that he lurched forward, clutching at his chest. Sardar Begum leapt to his side. But there was little she could do.

  ‘The doctors said it was heart,’ Sardar Begum told the multitudes of mourners who came to his funeral. ‘And I think so they were right. His heart was very big. Always he was giving, giving. Food, clothes, money. The poor around here were so fat and spoiled. He’d always say, “If you give to others, Allah will give to you.” So innocent he was, bless him. If you ask me, his heart had grown so big that it burst.’

  The house was still seething with mourners when Sardar Begum announced her decision to take charge of her children’s patrimony. Her husband’s family was aghast. A woman, and that, too, a widow who flouted the laws of purdah was a public disgrace. Besides, what need had she to dirty her soft hands when they were there to do it for her? But, for Sardar Begum, this was an opportunity, and she wasn’t about to let it pass. And so, Sardar Begum became a farmer of distinction. She was a quick learner and, unlike her late husband, ruthless. She had a low tolerance for ‘lying-cheating lazy tenants’. If they did not produce results in two seasons, they were flung off her land.

  But her ambitions were not limited to farming. She had plans for her son. When, upon his return from Oxford, Tariq rejected the civil service for Sabzbagh, Sardar Begum was pleased, for it was here that his destiny lay. Nonetheless, Sardar Begum found it difficult to relinquish her beloved ledgers – even to her son. It was only when Tariq threatened to leave for the city that she acquiesced grudgingly.

  But still she found her ‘register habit’ hard to break. Now she gripped Kaneez’s hand and muttered, ‘Don’t call Nazeer just yet. And don’t mention the accounts in front of Tariq Sahib.’ Then with arms outstretched and face garlanded with smiles, she called out: ‘Light of my eyes, beat of my heart, flow of my blood. Welcome, welcome.’

  ‘Salaam, Maanji.’

  ‘Salaam, salaam, may you live a thousand years. Come here, my little dove.’

  Laila sidled up to her grandmother and was enfolded in a cushiony embrace redolent of Imperial Leather soap, Touch Me talcum powder and the cloves and neem leaves that Sardar Begum scattered in her wardrobe.

  ‘Ah, my own flesh and blood. Sit here.’ Sardar Begum drew Laila down beside her.

  A white sheet covered the bed, and matching bolster cushions lay like bookends on either side. Three rattan-backed chairs faced the daybed in a semicircle.

  ‘How are you, Kaneez?’ asked Tariq, taking a chair.

  ‘I’m all right, Tariq Sahib. Just getting on.’

  ‘You’re looking quite frail to me.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ Sardar Begum snapped. ‘She eats like a horse.’

  ‘Do I have the teeth to eat like a horse?’ Kaneez’s tone was indignant. Having served Sardar Begum for the best part of her life, she could take liberties the other servants dared not. She was the only one in her household, for instance, who could contradict her mistress. And though Sardar Begum ranted and raged at Kaneez, she often followed her advice.

  ‘Here, Maanji,’ said Fareeda to Sardar Begum, ‘I brought you some kheer.’ She handed the pudding to Kaneez.

  ‘Bring it here, Kaneez, let me see.’ Sardar Begum crooked her finger.

  ‘What’s this hard thing under me?’ Laila tugged the ledger out from under the sheet.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Tariq groaned. ‘It’s her damned register. Are you still accounting for every anna and every paisa? Why can’t you use your time to do something more enjoyable and useful?’

  Sardar Begum plucked the ledger from Laila’s hands.

  ‘What’s more useful than accounts? You want these fat, greedy servants to eat me up?’

  ‘Nazeer’s been with you for twenty years. Even if he were t
o pilfer the odd ten rupees, what difference would it make?’ said Tariq. ‘You won’t starve.’

  ‘Every flood starts with a droplet. Look at this kheer. At least two bags of nuts in it and enough zafraan to scent a garden. Your cook thinks money grows on trees? I know how hard it is to earn …’

  ‘Can I go to see Rani?’ Laila jumped up from the bed.

  ‘No, you stay with your grandmother.’ Sardar Begum pulled Laila down by her wrist.

  ‘But …’

  ‘Perhaps Kaneez will fetch Rani later,’ Fareeda suggested.

  ‘Now? Please?’

  ‘All right,’ said Sardar Begum, relenting. ‘Go, Kaneez. Take the kheer to the kitchen and bring some sherbet for everyone. And get Rani.’

  A breeze rustled the leaves of the neem tree, releasing their astringent scent. Sardar Begum’s pet peacock, Haseen, strutted along the encircling wall of the haveli. The setting sun picked out the blaze of turquoise in Haseen’s breast and bathed the haveli’s worn bricks in a honey glow. The house seemed to be in repose at that hour, its verandas in shadow, its thick-walled rooms silent.

  ‘It’s so peaceful here,’ murmured Fareeda.

  ‘Then why can’t you come and live here?’ Sardar Begum tucked the register under her knee. ‘This house is too big for an old woman by herself.’

  ‘For the hundredth time, Maanji,’ said Tariq wearily, ‘it’s best we live separately. Anyway, if I was to live here, we both know it wouldn’t be peaceful any more.’

  Sardar Begum knew there was little chance that Tariq would ever move to Kalanpur but, in her idle moments, she diverted herself with the thought of how different his life would have been had he lived with her. Under her guidance he would not have grown so engrossed in his charitable work. It was fine, she felt, occasionally to help the poor. After all, it ran in his blood. His father had been equally foolish. But doing so at the expense of pursuing his destiny was the height of stupidity.

  It was Sardar Begum’s unwavering belief that Tariq was meant for higher things. He had all the right credentials. He was landed, had an impeccable bloodline and was connected through his parents to some powerful families in Punjab. His link to Fareeda’s family, she acknowledged grudgingly, was also not harmful. Moreover, he’d received a fine education, had a good brain, integrity and, Allah alone knew why, but he seemed to command respect from those around him. Who could hold a candle to Tariq Azeem in the whole of Colewallah? Forget Colewallah, in the whole of the Punjab?

  He could have contested the last election from Sabzbagh and romped home. All those lazy peasants who’d been fattening themselves on the Azeems’ largesse for generations would have cast tens of thousands of votes for him. But, instead of being a minister or a governor and making speeches, cutting ribbons and shaking hands with presidents and kings, Tariq was running a tailoring shop. Her heart wept tears of blood at the waste, the loss.

  Tariq, however, had no intention of realizing his mother’s ambitions for him. He knew that he did not have the stomach for politics. He had neither the requisite ruthlessness nor the hunger for public approbation. He was much happier doing his bit out of the limelight. He knew Sabzbagh was a small pond, but it was his pond. Tariq also did not like the idea of public probes and inquiry committees. He was too much his mother’s son, too conscious, despite his education, of his social standing, to feel the need to justify his decisions.

  Sardar Begum’s sole comfort was the thought that Tariq hadn’t allowed his farming to slip. In fact, in introducing better seeds, experimenting with new crops and mechanizing some of the ancient methods his forebears had practised, he had raised his yields significantly.

  ‘Talking of peaceful, is there going to be war?’ asked Sardar Begum.

  ‘We’re already at war,’ replied Tariq.

  ‘I don’t mean the Bengalis. I mean the Indians. As long as it’s just the Bengalis, the fighting will take place there. But once the Indians get into it, it will spill out here as well.’

  ‘It may well come to that.’

  ‘In that case, you’d better move in here. You live too close to that canal. If a bomb fell on it, you’d all drown. Allah forbid. Dust and ashes in my mouth. Also, with that big industry there, you’ll be targets. Best is if you come here.’ Sardar Begum’s voice quickened, and a pair of heavy gold bangles clunked on her creamy wrists as she outlined her plans. ‘Fareeda, you hire some trucks, pack them with everything you’ve collected for the girls’ dowries – jewellery, silver, linen, clothes, everything – and all your good things also, and put your car behind them and follow them here. Call Sara immediately from Lahore and all of you shift here tomorrow. There! I’ve spoken.’

  ‘But, Maanji, we’re not at war with India yet,’ Fareeda protested.

  ‘They’ll ask your permission before attacking you?’

  ‘Let’s not get carried away.’ Tariq spoke firmly. ‘First, war hasn’t started yet. Second, even if the Indians were to attack us tomorrow, won’t they go for the military installations in Lahore and Pindi rather than a measly little powdered-milk factory near Sabzbagh?’

  ‘Don’t listen to me. What do I know? I’m only your mother after all.’

  ‘Don’t be upset.’ Fareeda patted Sardar Begum’s hand. ‘Allah willing, there won’t be a war. He will protect us all.’

  ‘Doubtless, but even Allah says, “Trust in me but tether your camel first.”’ Sardar Begum clutched Fareeda’s hand. ‘Promise me, if there is war, you’ll send the girls to me.’

  Fareeda leaned out of her chair awkwardly, her hand imprisoned in Sardar Begum’s grip.

  ‘Sister Clementine also wanted to know if we were going to fight with India.’ Laila’s voice dropped like a stone into a pool of silence.

  ‘Whose sister?’ Sardar Begum’s head swivelled round to Laila.

  Laila reddened but was saved from replying by Rani and Kaneez’s timely approach. Rani carried a large brass tray with freshly squeezed lemonade and a dish of sticky gulab jamans. Beside her granddaughter’s tall, lissom frame, Kaneez’s hunched body looked like a hook. A tablecloth was folded over her bent arm. Carrying a table on his head, Nazeer, the cook, brought up the rear.

  Rani looked much more like herself since Laila had seen her a week ago in the church. Her hair was smooth and her muslin dupatta was draped modestly across her bosom. She looked calm and self-possessed. True, her face was sallow and her cheeks a little hollow, but when she smiled, it was as if an electric light had been switched on in a cellar.

  Laila hopped from foot to foot while the servants salaamed her parents and laid out the food and drink. Then she launched herself at Rani and hugged her tight. Inhibited by Tariq and Fareeda’s presence, Rani grinned awkwardly at Laila’s upturned face.

  ‘Enough!’ ordered Sardar Begum in an indulgent voice that belied the command. ‘Why haven’t you been to see me, Koonj? You know no one massages my feet the way you do. Your grandmother mangles them with her pincers. Where have you been?’

  ‘Nowhere, Begum Sahiba.’

  ‘Then why have you been hiding yourself?’

  ‘She’s not well.’ Kaneez spoke up. ‘Complains of headache and dizziness. So I told her to rest.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Rani?’ Fareeda asked. ‘Have you had fever?’

  ‘No.’ Rani hung her head.

  ‘Why are you standing there with that foolish face?’ Sardar Begum demanded of Nazeer. ‘Go! Work!’

  ‘How old are you now, Rani?’ Fareeda questioned.

  Rani looked at her grandmother enquiringly.

  ‘She was three when Fatima married again,’ replied Kaneez. ‘That was twelve years ago last monsoon.’

  ‘So you’re fifteen. You should be doing your Matric exams soon, shouldn’t you? I hope you haven’t dropped out of school?’

  ‘She still goes,’ said Kaneez. ‘But I’m thinking of removing her.’

  ‘Why?’ Fareeda frowned.

  ‘People will say I’m trying to rise above myself. Also, wha
t will she do with so much education? In the end, she has to marry and have children like everyone else.’

  ‘While I’m alive, no one dare say a word about you or your Koonj,’ Sardar Begum said firmly. ‘But, I agree, too much education for girls is not good. It confuses them.’

  ‘Matric is not too much education,’ protested Tariq. ‘Is there a problem with school fees?’

  ‘What you give more than covers her fees and books,’ replied Kaneez.

  ‘Then what?’ Fareeda asked. ‘Has Mashooq been bothering you?’

  ‘He hasn’t come here since that time you warned him,’ said Kaneez.

  ‘Rani, don’t you want to complete your Matric?’ asked Fareeda.

  Rani glanced up at Fareeda but did not reply.

  ‘Well? Do you or don’t you?’

  ‘I want to, but I don’t know if I can,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Why ever not?’ enquired Tariq.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Sardar Begum barked. ‘Answer properly when Sahib speaks to you.’

  ‘Do you like children, Rani?’ Fareeda asked gently.

  Rani’s face paled.

  ‘You don’t have to look so frightened. All I want to know is if you’d like to join our centre at the village. The woman who used to mind the children while their mothers worked has to go. You could take her place. You’d be good with small children.’

  ‘No, no, Bibi,’ Kaneez quavered. ‘I beg you, no. I’m a poor widow, all by myself. If Rani starts working in a factory, people will say she’s up to no good. As it is, with school only, they are constantly whispering that I want to sell her …’

  ‘Sell Rani?’ laughed Laila incredulously. ‘How can you sell Rani? She’s not a potato or a, a … table.’

  ‘Now look what you’ve done, you stupid woman,’ Sardar Begum scolded. ‘You girls run off and play. And you go as well.’ She shooed Kaneez away.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, Fareeda spoke to her mother-in-law.