Selma and Samiya looked at each other. Shabanu was first to break the silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I felt finally as if I could no longer breathe, buried alive up there.”
Selma held up her hand. “You think I don’t understand? You don’t give me much credit. But we have something important to discuss. We can talk later about your annee-jannee nonsense—your coming and going as you please. Come.” She reached for the door to the back stairway. “Samiya has made lunch and will join us upstairs.”
Selma moved slowly up the stairs, one leg and then the other on each step, her arthritis flaring to bright pain every morning and through midday. Samiya disappeared into the kitchen to fix their tray. When Shabanu and Selma got to the top step, Selma went into the pavilion to get out of the hot sun. She drew the end of her embroidered white lawn sari around her shoulders and sat heavily on the wood-and-string charpoi. Selma patted the cushion beside her, inviting Shabanu to sit.
“The evening was very festive,” said Selma. “Mumtaz and Jameel are lovely, and they’re such good friends. You would be so proud of your daughter.”
Shabanu’s heart quickened at the thought of Mumtaz, whose photograph sat on the table in her room. But she also heard in Selma’s voice a note of something less pleasant about to come.
Samiya brought the tray with plates of cold chicken, roti, dahi, stewed spiced lentils, and milky sweet tea. Selma and Shabanu were quiet while Samiya laid the table, then sat down with them.
“Mahsood was in rare form—as usual!” Selma smiled only slightly, and told Shabanu about the Jet Ski. “And as usual, Leyla behaved despicably.” Selma recounted how Leyla had humiliated Mumtaz in front of her cousins.
“It never ends,” Shabanu said when Selma had finished. She remembered that when she’d first come to the farm at Okurabad from Cholistan as Rahim’s wife, she was terrified of the other women in his household. One morning someone had caught a rabid bat in a net and hid it in Shabanu’s clothes cupboard. When she opened the door, the bat flew out and screeched around the room until Shabanu caught it with a broom and beat it to death on the floor. All the while she heard the stifled laughter of the women through the window that looked out onto the arbor-covered terrace at the side of the house.
Later, when Rahim learned of the bat, he was angry and demanded to know who had done such a thing. A small, thin boy, the son of a man who worked in the cattle pens, was produced as the culprit. Shabanu was certain that the women had put him up to the prank.
In the seven years of Shabanu’s marriage to Rahim, his family—with the exception of Omar, Baba, and Selma—never let her forget that she was the daughter of camel herders. The women played cruel tricks on her and treated her like a servant. Rahim dismissed Shabanu’s complaints and said he was too busy dealing with more important issues.
Rahim had loved Shabanu the best of all his four wives, and they never forgave her. Rahim would not tolerate dissension in the house, and so Shabanu and Mumtaz had to sleep with their eyes open and their ears tuned for trouble.
Shabanu and Mumtaz visited Lahore for the first time when Mumtaz was five. They stayed with Selma in the haveli in the Old City, which was the family’s ancestral home. When Pakistan became independent from India and British colonial rule in 1947, Baba and Nazir had moved with their mother to the house in Gulberg because they wanted a more modern house than the haveli, with its unlit rooms and unplumbed baths and creaking stairs. But Rahim and Selma loved the Old City. Shabanu and Mumtaz felt safe there with Selma, untroubled by Rahim’s other wives, who lived in fancier houses in the Cantonment and Gulberg. The haveli became Shabanu and Mumtaz’s home.
“There is more,” Selma said. “I overheard Amina and Tahira saying that Leyla has been making inquiries about a marriage for Mumtaz with a boy from the farm.”
“But Omar and Mahsood would never let that happen!” said Shabanu.
“No, not together. But if something were to happen to Mahsood, I’m not sure that Leyla couldn’t manipulate Omar,” Selma said. “She has grown to be an indomitable force in that way.”
“But Omar would never allow anything to keep Mumtaz from finishing her education!” Shabanu said. Like Rahim, Omar was a man of honor. He had known how much she wanted an education for Mumtaz, and he would see that Mumtaz finished school.
“In any case,” said Selma, “we should be prepared if Omar gives in to Leyla. I think perhaps it’s time you and your daughter had a reunion. She’s already older than you were when you married Rahim. She’s old enough to understand what happened, and old enough to keep your secret. And she still needs you—perhaps now more than ever.”
Shabanu took a deep breath. It was difficult to think of Mumtaz as a young woman—impossible to think of her married to an uneducated boy in a dusty village. She had to remind herself that her daughter was no longer the five-year-old child she’d last held in her arms ten years before. Shabanu still thought of the sweet smell of milk on Mumtaz’s breath, the soft curves of her small elbows and knees, the way her eyelashes fell to her cheeks as she fought sleep at nap time.
“I agree,” said Shabanu. “Mumtaz and I should become reacquainted—as soon as possible. What shall we do about Nazir?”
“He was there last night,” said Selma. “He’s different, Shabanu—he’s like a toothless old tiger now. He’s failed at every scheme he’s plotted. He’s been abandoned by his family, and he looks pathetic. His only interest is his airplane, and I don’t think he’s flown it in ages. His clothes aren’t clean, he needs shaving, and heaven knows how long since he’s had a haircut. He barely spoke to anyone last evening, and I saw no one speak to him.”
Shabanu thought of the day she and Omar went with Rahim to confront Nazir over the theft of some of Rahim’s land. Nazir’s men had cut down the trees and fenced off several dozen hectares, and Nazir’s cattle grazed there. Rahim was just stepping from the car when bullets began to fly. Several slammed into Rahim and knocked him to the ground, and Omar, whom Shabanu loved more than she could now remember, exposed himself to the bullets, leaping from the car and pulling Rahim back inside, blood seeping through his uncle’s clothing. Shabanu didn’t see the shooter, but her mind’s eye captured Nazir’s fleshy face bunched in a squint as he took aim down the barrel of his gun and killed his brother. She heard Nazir’s heavy breathing, felt it on her face as he demanded that she marry him.
After Rahim’s death, Nazir had kidnapped her and Zabo, his own daughter and Shabanu’s only friend, and held them prisoner in a damp, dark room in the depth of the house on his farm near Rahim’s at Okurabad. She watched him pluck a cockroach from the floor, heard its shell shatter as he pinched it between his fingers to show that he held the same power over her, and felt its insides splatter on her face and clothing.
And when they escaped, Shabanu felt Zabo’s arms around her waist as they fled from Nazir’s farm into the desert by camel—until she heard the impact of a bullet piercing Zabo’s back, and her friend slumped against her shoulder. She stopped only when they were safely inside the gate of the fort at Derawar. She saw Zabo’s eyes close in her pale face and felt her last shuddering breath. So much death, so much fear, so much loss caused by Nazir and the penchant that men had for taking revenge.
“You must never trust a tiger, even a miserable, toothless old tiger,” said Shabanu.
Shabanu told Selma and Samiya then how she had broken the spell Nazir had cast over her by sending the pigeon to her family with the message that she was alive, and by leaving the haveli, showing the fates that fear no longer held her in its grip.
Selma took Shabanu’s hands in both of hers. “You’re right,” Selma said. “You cannot live here forever. You still have a whole life before you!”
Shabanu held Selma’s gaze, but she did not answer. One more memory crowded into her mind’s eye: she saw Omar kneeling beside Zabo’s grave inside the walls of Derawar Fort, thinking it was Shabanu’s. He threw back his head and howled like a jackal, a
nd a chill skipped down between her shoulder blades. It was a long time ago, she reminded herself.
Shabanu did not go out into the bazaar again. She thought of everything she wanted to say to Mumtaz, and she waited for the bird from Okurabad. Both times in the bazaar she’d imagined seeing Mumtaz in the distance, recognizing her daughter under her burqa out of sheer love.
She kept busy by arranging photographs of her mother and father for Mumtaz to see, photos of her wedding, with Rahim looking young and handsome, although he was forty years older than Shabanu. She had waited for ten years, and these last days or hours before Mumtaz’s visit seemed to go on forever. Shabanu was impatient, because waiting felt like the old life, and she did not want to go back to her old self.
On the fourth day after she’d released Barra into the sky, another pigeon appeared at the wire enclosure, a plump brown bird with a green head and splatters of black and gold on her breast—a pigeon as old as Barra. The bird circled the roof—almost as if she wasn’t sure she remembered the place where Rahim had called her home—until Shabanu noticed her. When Shabanu opened the wire enclosure, she flew in as if she’d only been gone for an afternoon’s flight, instead of having been almost a lifetime away from home.
With trembling fingers Shabanu unlatched the compartment attached to the bird’s leg. Inside was a small piece of featherweight blue rice parchment even lighter than the one she had sent Ibne.
The Sun has risen! In its vast dazzle
Every lamp is drowned.
In answer to Shabanu’s note Ibne had quoted another timeless, graceful poem by Rumi. Ibne had been just as cautious, letting her know that he and her family rejoiced in the knowledge she was alive, but not fixing a date when they might see each other again.
4
“Can you give me a lift to Fariel’s?” Muti asked as Omar stood up from the breakfast table and wiped his lips with a linen napkin. It was the week after Jameel and his parents had left for America, a monsoon morning that smelled lush and damp.
“Does her mother know you’re coming?” Leyla asked without looking up from her newspaper. “You shouldn’t be pestering them. Fariel will be having her school clothes made this week.” Leyla tapped her bright crimson fingernails on the table.
“Five minutes,” said Omar, setting his napkin beside his plate.
“Yah,” Muti said, swallowing the rest of her sweet lime juice in one gulp. “Fariel and I’re going with Shaheen to the bazaar to look for fabric. Their darzi is making school clothes for both of us.”
“Really, Mumtaz,” Leyla said, “why do you say ‘yah’? You do it just to annoy me!”
“Sorry,” said Muti, lowering her eyes. But she was not in the least sorry. A long time ago Muti had heard Leyla mutter under her breath, “She’s a low-born Gypsy just like her mother.” Remembering always made Muti want to behave like a Gypsy. And sometimes that compulsion cost her dearly.
“Sorry, what?” Leyla demanded, and Muti looked straight at her.
“Sorry, Auntie,” she said, her eyes holding Leyla’s until Leyla was forced to look away.
Leyla was not her auntie at all but a half sister—they were both Rahim’s daughters. Leyla insisted, however, that if Muti was to live with her and Omar, she must call her Auntie. And Omar was not Muti’s uncle but her cousin. Baba was not her grandfather but her uncle. Muti had learned at a tender age that very little in her world was what it appeared. She went along with Leyla’s version of family relations to keep peace—if this uneasy tiptoeing around could be called peace. Muti had grown accustomed to the shifting ground that was her family.
After Muti’s mother and father died, she’d been sent to live with her mother’s family in the Cholistan Desert. Although her grandparents and Auntie Sharma were kind to her, Muti missed her mother terribly. She never stopped watching the horizon for her mother’s return, and her stomach ached constantly.
One day Muti thought her prayers had been answered. Shortly after sunrise on a spring day, a tall horseman appeared like an apparition from behind a sand dune. He rode his fine black stallion deliberately toward where Muti sat helping her grandmother roast roti on a flat black pan over a small hot fire.
The rider was Omar, and when she saw him she jumped up and ran to him. She threw her arms around his neck when he got down from his horse and knelt to say hello. “Have you come to take me to my mother?” she asked. She thought of the happy days at the haveli when Omar had been her mother’s friend and was part of their lives.
Her grandmother hushed her and sent her to fetch her grandfather, who was at the well, hauling water for the camels. Omar looked very much like his Uncle Rahim, and the old woman easily guessed who he was.
They all shook hands several times, and Mumtaz’s grandfather held on to Omar’s hand after the introduction was over. Shabanu’s parents had loved their son-in-law. They invited Omar to sit with them on a dhurrie beside the cooking fire. Muti and her grandmother poured tea and offered Omar freshly roasted roti, which he ate while he explained why he’d come.
“Shabanu’s fondest wish was that Mumtaz should go to school,” Omar said. Grandfather said nothing, and Grandmother looked down at her hands. “I’ve come to bring her back to Lahore to live with my family and to attend St. Agnes Academy.” More silence followed.
“Mumtaz is all that we have left of our Shabanu,” Grandfather said finally. “We would not like to let her go.” At that, Grandmother raised her eyes.
“We would miss her terribly,” she said. “But she has been here for several months and still she has not adjusted well. Perhaps she would do better in the city where she remembers living with her mother and father.” And so it had been decided, and Muti had lived with Baba and Omar, Leyla, and their son, Jaffar, ever since.
“May I please leave the table?” Muti asked, standing abruptly.
“I want you back by teatime,” Leyla said. “Your cousins are coming, and I want you to help.” Muti set her mouth. What Leyla meant was they were having their weekly tea party, and Muti would serve them all cakes and tea, and then she would look after her little cousins and nieces and nephews to keep them out of their mothers’ hair so the women might gossip in peace.
Babysitting and serving tea were not very high on the scale of pinpricks. The worst pinprick underlay all that Leyla said and did. Muti knew that Leyla would evict her from the house with the least provocation. But like a moth drawn to flame, Muti could not keep herself from provoking Leyla. Muti also knew Baba and Omar wouldn’t let anything happen to her. And so Muti and Leyla struggled in a perverse tug-of-war.
“Yes, Auntie,” Muti said, her eyes still lowered. “Um—bye!” She turned from the table abruptly and ran out through the arch into the front hallway, her bare feet slapping on the cool marble floor.
“Stop running!” Leyla shouted after Muti. “And since when do we come to the table without shoes?” Muti pretended she hadn’t heard and took the steps two at a time.
She stopped outside the doorway to Baba’s bedroom/ sitting room to say good morning. Muti couldn’t love Baba more if he really were her grandfather. Through the partly open door she heard the restless movement of his legs under the bed linens. She stepped closer and tapped softly on the doorframe.
“Baba?” she whispered. There was no answer. She knocked again and peered around the doorframe in time to see a flash of what looked like a small ball of extraordinarily bright firelight just over Baba’s form in the bed. Her heart leaped, but the flash disappeared so quickly she thought perhaps she hadn’t seen it at all. Normally Muti was not one to doubt herself. But this time the spacious room lay dim, and she wondered whether her eyes hadn’t deceived her.
She tiptoed into the room. She wondered if the flash had come from outside. She pulled back the heavy green velvet drape and looked down over the garden. Could it have been a reflection of the sunlight from something on the ground—the mirror of a car? Or from something overhead—a small, low-flying airplane? She let the drape fall back
over the window and turned around. Baba seemed quieter now, and she decided to let him sleep. Her dear Baba had seemed to slow down at times these last few weeks. Sometimes he seemed to have no energy, and other times he was his old self. She must keep a closer eye on him, she thought as she tiptoed out and into the hallway that led to her own room.
Muti sat on the bed and slipped her favorite worn sandals onto her feet. She stuffed a pair of white churidar pajama, the closer-fitting drawstring trousers she wore for tennis, into her duffel with a folded, fresh white tunic, a towel, and her tennis shoes and racket.
Tugging at the back of her mind was another peculiar event of a few days earlier—the day after Jameel left. That early morning she awoke suddenly, as if something had disturbed her sleep. She sat up and squinted at the luminous hands of the clock on the bedside table. They pointed to five-thirty. She swung her bare feet over the side of the bed and got up. She didn’t bother turning on the light because she knew the bathroom was a clear shot across the bare floor. Muti had taken to cleaning her bedroom every day so that Leyla would not have that to complain about. Just a few feet from her bed she tripped over something soft. Each step took her deeper into what seemed to be a sea of clothing.
She flipped the switch to the overhead light when she reached the wall next to the bathroom door, and was amazed to see that someone had emptied every hanger and shelf of her closet onto the floor. Towels were spread around the bathroom as if someone had used each one and discarded it. When she had gone to bed both rooms were as neat and tidy as if the ayah had just been there, followed by the sweeper with his dust cloths and whisk broom. Muti crossed to her closet and threw open the doors. The hangers were empty and knocked askew, where they had been evenly spaced on the bar before she’d gone to bed; the shelves were empty. She knew very well that she had taken to folding every shawl and dupatta neatly and stacking them with mathematical precision on top of every other shawl and dupatta.
The House of Djinn Page 3