Salt and Saffron
Page 11
Yes, when Askari heard Fariduddin’s cry of rage he galloped away to a neighbouring state, where the East India Company had something between a toe- and a foot-hold. What exactly Askari said to the Englishman, Fraser, I don’t know, but he might as well have held out a silver platter with the soil of Dard-e-Dil sprinkled on it, and a gout of blood added for good measure. The rest is painfully predictable. The troops loyal to Askari, with the aid of the English, overran Dard-e-Dil. Fariduddin was killed. Askari became regent to the infant Nawab (the ugly one, who grew up to be beautiful despite all predictions). Did Askari think the English would tip their hats, collect their gold, and go? Did he think? Clearly not, because in addition to the fifty lakh rupees he paid out, he also made a treaty of mutual assistance with the English.
Were they involved, the Empire builders, in stirring up trouble for Askari? Every time the state lurched towards peace another nobleman would carve out an alliance to unseat Askari, and every time that happened Askari turned to Fraser and his men. By the time the Nawab attained his majority and Askari died in a drunken brawl at the banquet to celebrate the Nawab’s birthday, Dard-e-Dil was just another de facto vassal, and Fraser, that man of common birth, was a lord. The rest of the story? This is how the history books sum it up: ‘Near the turn of the century the state’s fiscal debt to the English was so vast the Company annexed half the lands of Dard-e-Dil in commutation of arrears.’ Half the lands. Those three syllables cannot begin to convey the orchards and rivers and mosques and temples and shrines and people, yes, there must have been people on those lands, too. I only just thought of that.
(Has anyone asked what became of Fariduddin’s wife? Fariduddin killed her. Though some say Askari killed her when she shielded her husband from Askari’s drawn sword. This, at least, is incontrovertible: she died. So much for movie rules.)
I looked up from my haleem. Touched my foot to Sameer’s for support. ‘Don’t worry about Mini Apa’s twins.’ Sameer, now with his own place setting, moved his chair a little closer to mine. ‘There’s never been more than one pair of not-quites co-existing at one time. And if that pattern holds, her twins will be fine. After all, I’m still alive and, though god help us we have no way of being sure of this, so is Mariam Apa.’
Ami tapped my cheek with a piece of naan. ‘Aliya, I love you truly-truly, so don’t take this badly, but I have no idea what you just said and why and don’t dip your sleeve in the haleem.’
‘It’s my sleeve,’ was all I could say.
‘No, Aliya, it’s mine. But it looks a lot better on you so you can have it.’
‘Just the sleeve,’ Aba said. ‘The rest of the kameez goes back to your mother’s cupboard. What’s the matter, little bug?’
So, finally, I told them about the family tree.
Aba snorted.
Ami rolled her eyes.
Dadi looked at me. And nodded. And sighed.
Aba turned to his mother. ‘Mama, don’t you dare,’ he said.
Dadi stood up in her most regal way. ‘The one thing left to us was the ability to hold our heads up high. She took even that from us. The curse has already come to pass.’ She looked at me. ‘You had no part in it. The histories teach us that the twins aren’t always directly responsible for what happens. Sometimes they are victims of others. Sometimes only one twin is responsible. Sameer, escort me to my car.’
Sameer glanced at me, and I loved him for that moment of treason. I nodded, inclined my head towards Dadi. Should I be angry with her for saying Mariam had brought a curse upon us; or should I be grateful for her declaration that I had no part in the curse? Just before she turned to walk out with Sameer, Dadi bent down and kissed the top of my head.
Aba watched her go, his expression bordering on petulance. ‘She gets worse with age.’ He threw a stick of ginger at me, his expression of paternal command restored. ‘Ignore what she said. The twin thing hits a raw nerve in her.’ He pointed at Ami. ‘Your mother didn’t want her filling your head with all of that from such an early age, but I said they’re good stories. Nothing more.’
‘Are you saying you don’t believe any of it, Aba?’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Ami said. ‘He wants not to. But he was raised on the stories, too.’
‘You and Mariam aren’t twins. Not in any sense of the word. What she did, she did. She would have done it even if you’d been born a day later.’ Aba folded and unfolded his napkin repeatedly. ‘I should have fired Masood when—’
‘Nasser!’ Ami said. ‘Be quiet.’
Sameer came back in and sat down. ‘Clones,’ he said, picking up the stick of ginger that had bounced off my shoulder, and pointing it at me. ‘Human cloning. Theoretically, it’s possible.’
‘Point?’ I said.
‘If someone … say, Ghair Insaan, is cloned, then he and his clone are … what?’
‘Used to settle the nature versus nurture debate?’
‘Wrong. They are twins. More than twins. So they’re not-quite-twins. Yes?’
‘Point?’
‘Theoretically, in the next generation or two of Dard-e-Dils there could be dozens of sets of clones. Imagine every baby cloned in all the extended family. If that were to happen it would be impossible for every set of not-quites to bring downfall upon us because, after all, there’s only so much downfall that can happen in one generation, and only so many people who can be responsible for it.’
Aba nodded. ‘Point.’
I shook my head. ‘Rubbish.’
Sameer threw the ginger at me. I ate it before it could be used as a missile again. ‘Theoretically, it’s possible. Theoretically, a mass cloning across the family would prove that the theory of not-quite-twins fated to bring about disaster is rubbish.’
Ami stood up. ‘This whole family is mad, bhai, cent percent banana bread. I’m going to lie down with cucumbers over my eyes.’
‘There’s something you should know, little bug,’ Aba said. ‘Your Dadi didn’t believe the legend of not-quites when she was young. It’s just that with Partition, the horror of what went on then, and the whole Akbar and Sulaiman thing, believing the legend was the easiest way of making sense of things. Even your mother admits it was strange how everything unfolded – the break-up of the family and my father and uncle’s roles in it. It makes it hard to dismiss family lore.’ He walked out of the room, turning in the doorway to glance briefly at me.
He still couldn’t dismiss family lore entirely.
Chapter Thirteen
A couple of days later, at Dadi’s house, the Starched Aunts entered the room and I said, ‘At last! The tarts are here.’
I was referring to the lemon tarts which Dadi’s bearer wheeled in on the tea-trolley, just after the aunts entered, but it was an inauspicious start to the evening, nonetheless. The two aunts did their round of the room, kissing their aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews and nieces, and when it was my turn they both pinched my cheeks and said to each other, ‘She still gets excited about pastries. Like a baby! Sho shweet.’
They pulled their signature crisp, starched kurtas taut as they sat down, so that the material wouldn’t crease, and the older sister spread her hands as though to ward off any accusations. ‘So sorry to arrive in this haalat –’ she pointed at the incongruous running shoes on her feet – ‘but we’ve both been for a walk and came straight over from the park. Bhai, I said maybe we should skip the walk today, but you know, have to look good for Kishoo’s wedding next week. We saw Kishoo’s mother yesterday and tobah! She’s put on so much weight and was wearing a sari on top of that and I swear a tidal wave of fat came lurching towards us when she walked into the room. And Kishoo’s in-laws-to-be are so stylish. I mean if I looked like that at my daughter’s wedding I’d do her a favour and stay away altogether.’
‘Or claim overflowing of religion and cover yourself in a burkha,’ said Younger Starch.
The sisters beamed and looked around. ‘So good to be with family. Why don’t we do this more often?’
‘Kishoo? You mean Kishwar? Lily’s daughter? Hanh, I heard she was getting married. Who to?’ While Dadi was asking the questions she was also using hand gestures to direct two of my young cousins to hand around plates and tea things and find out how much sugar everyone took in his or her tea. Sameer and I watched this with great satisfaction; not too long ago we were the two considered both old enough and young enough to have this chore placed on us.
‘Quite a catch!’ Younger Starch said. ‘The oldest son of the Ali Shahs. He has the family seat in the National Assembly.’
‘Really?’ Great-Aunt One-Liner sniffed. ‘Lily’s daughter is marrying a Sindhi?’ Great-Aunt One-Liner generally made only one comment in an evening. She usually waited until late to make it; just when she realized everyone was about to leave and she hadn’t said anything memorable to leave her stamp on the occasion she’d speak, and then everyone would feel that the evening had truly come to an end. The only exceptions to her policy of delayed vocalization occurred, as now, when someone gave her an opportunity to reveal her disdain for anyone not from Dard-e-Dil or the states around it.
I glanced over at Sameer’s father, whose mother was Sindhi. He winked at me.
‘They’re very important people, the Ali Shahs,’ Older Starch said. ‘Kishoo’s parents are thrilled with the match. After all, why should the Ali Shahs have settled for a girl who isn’t from a political family? They won’t get any mileage from the match. And yet, they’re conscious of lineage, they understand these things matter, so they’re welcoming her with open arms.’
‘In fact –’ and here both the sisters looked at me – ‘the Ali Shahs have a younger son. Unmarried. Very intelligent, very ambitious. They say he won’t remain in the shadows long. In fact, some say, if democracy survives, future prime minister. And he’s looking for a girl from a good family. He’ll be in Karachi for the wedding. Aliya, you should come with us to all the functions. We’ve been invited to everything – even the really small dholkis.’
I opened my mouth and Sameer shoved a sandwich in it. Cheese and tomato. Too much butter.
Great-Aunt One-Liner leant forward and, shockingly, spoke again. ‘Have they expressed an interest? In Aliya.’
‘My granddaughter is not a confectionery item,’ Dadi said. ‘And in any case, she’s got two years of university ahead of her.’ I felt the urge to stand up and cheer.
A bachelor uncle shook his head. ‘She’ll be twenty-four then. Her “best before” date will nearly have passed.’
Aba turned to him. ‘I have a stone aimed at your glass house. Should I throw it?’
‘The lemon tarts are really wonderful,’ Ami said. ‘For years they were too sweet, but this is how I remember them from my childhood.’ She put a hand on Sameer’s mother’s wrist. ‘Zainab, remember how your mother always used to have two lemon tarts waiting for us, by the side of the pool, when we finished our fifty laps at the Club? When is your mother arriving?’
‘Don’t have the exact date yet. You know what she’s like. Loves the element of surprise. For all we know she could be in the air right now, halfway between Greece and here.’
The bachelor uncle returned the conversation to its earlier topic. ‘Aren’t the Ali Shahs related to that Jahangir? The one whose lands Mariam was on when she … What’s the preferred family euphemism? … Disappeared.’
I had the desperate urge to yank off his toupee.
‘Oh, everyone is related to everyone,’ my mother laughed. ‘And you have ketchup on your silk shirt. I think it’ll stain.’
‘Well, I think this is as good a time as any to say it,’ Older Starch said. ‘My children, as you all know, have both, Allah ka shukar, been admitted to Karachi Grammar School and Maliha will be joining the Senior School. You know what kids are like at that age. Anything to tease about they’ll tease about. So I’ve said it plain to them, if anyone mentions Mariam they’re to say she is no relation to them. She was an imposter. And I’m not just saying this for my children’s sake, because of course you have to teach them to speak the truth. I truly believe it and why no one else has thought of it already I don’t know.’
I had been about to pick up the lemon tart on my plate, but drew my hand back when I heard the word ‘imposter’. Anything I ate now would taste like ashes.
‘Thought of what?’ Ami said, and now she wasn’t even pretending to keep her voice cordial.
‘Ayeshoo, this is no reflection on you, sweetie.’ If there’s one thing my mother dislikes more than being called ‘sweetie’ it’s being called ‘Ayeshoo’. ‘We were all taken in by her, and no one has anything but praise for the hospitality you showed her, but what proof did we ever have that she was one of the Dard-e-Dils?’
‘She looked just like her father,’ Great-Aunt One-Liner said. She was having a wild, wild day. ‘Didn’t she, Abida?’
‘Just like him,’ Dadi said. ‘Right down to her smile.’
What a smile it was. I had taken with me to college the one picture in the world which captured it and Celeste, remarking on it, said, ‘Looks like she’s seeing angels beckon in the camera lens.’
‘Well, Booby looks like Orson Welles,’ Bachelor Uncle said, pointing at his stocky cousin. ‘That doesn’t mean he should be getting percentages from video rentals of Citizen Kane.’
Older Starch leapt upon that with alacrity. ‘Exactly! I’m not saying she wasn’t clever, probably looked around to find a family she could fit into and, let’s face it, we’re prominent. Pictures in the papers all the time. Social pages. Business pages. Art pages. Front pages. My theory is this …’ She leant forward, and I tried to determine the trajectory of my lemon tart if I were to get so engrossed in her theory that my hand pressed down with all its weight on the edge of my plate. I shifted the plate slightly. But I couldn’t help listening. ‘I’m not saying Mariam was some dehati who’d never seen a big city before. Clearly she had learnt social graces somewhere. But we’ve all heard the stories of girls from good families who go bad and are disowned. Usually because of some man. So what if Mariam was disowned. Because of some man. Probably lower class. And then he didn’t want her because it was only her money he was after. And maybe somehow she’d heard the story of our family. It’s no secret. And she saw pictures and saw her features repeated in those pictures. So she wrote a letter, sent it to Nasser and Ayesha. The address is in the phone book, always has been. Then she arrived. But she couldn’t speak because speaking would mean answering questions which would mean revealing the truth. So she remained quiet. Except about food because she knew if she developed one eccentric trait it would shield her. Then if she ever did something odd, something out of keeping with the way our family behaves, we would just say, “Oh, that’s just Mariam. She lives by her own rules.” And we did. We said it often.’
You bitch, I thought. You absolute stupid bitch.
‘And what about Masood?’ Bachelor Uncle asked.
Younger Starch raised a hand for attention. ‘That letter which announced she was arriving, we’ve all read it, we all agree it’s strange. Clearly not written by someone like us. So what if this man – the one who waltzed her up the garden path – what if she made believe, to herself, that he was the one writing the letter. To make herself feel better about him not wanting her. She imagined she was the one choosing to leave and he was the one writing the letter. So she wrote it the way she imagined he would write it. That tells us what kind of man he was. Lower class. Definitely. So from him to Masood was no big leap. For some reason she’s just attracted to that type.’
‘She had no birth certificate, it’s true,’ Bachelor Uncle said. ‘Remember all those strings I pulled to have a passport and ID card made for her? Broke the law, but anything for family, I said. But there’s no way of knowing if that’s what she really was.’
Around the room I saw people nodding their heads, mu
rmuring to each other. Great-Aunt One-Liner seemed to be crying; Aba had gone red; Ami had gone white; Sameer’s mother was trying to restrain her husband from attacking the Starched Aunts, though it might have been the other way round.
The oldest of the relatives, a woman who had doted on Mariam Apa said, ‘Perhaps it is best to say just that. For the sake of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Family reputation is the most precious jewel in a young bride’s jahez.’ She sighed. ‘There was a time we were so close to the heavens no stigma could reach us. But what we were we no longer are.’
I could almost hear the scissors snipping away the strings which bound Mariam Apa to our lives. Here, now, the story was shaping; the one that would be repeated, passed down, seducing us all with its symmetry. In parentheses the storytellers would add, ‘There are still those who say she really was a Dard-e-Dil, but a new identity was fabricated for her by those who felt she blemished the family name.’ Would she hear the story one day, wherever she was, whatever she was doing? Was her life so separate now from ours that even the wind carrying our lies would never play with her hair, swirl it away from her ears and make all hearing possible?
Or did she know us better than we knew ourselves?
Who starred her name and mine on the family tree?
If Mariam Apa were ever to send me a message it would be wordless. A strain of music pushing open my window and creeping through; a fistful of saffron sprinkling over my eyelids while I slept; a shell yielding to my cochlea the whisper of waves allied to the sound of footsteps running away from the rushing tide. These were the signs I waited for. But how could I forget the stars?
Mariam Apa used to point out constellations to me; she’d show me the clusters of light as a lesson, not in astronomy but in our lives. No star, except the brightest, has meaning on its own. During nights at the beach she’d sweep her arm in the direction of the sky, showing me this star and that and the other one there, and we could not discern the difference between them. But when we saw the middle of Orion’s belt or the handle of the Big Dipper, then the stars ceased to be interchangeable, one no different to the other. Mariam would point out a star and make a shadow picture of a bear against the wall of the beach hut. Her hand would reach out as though to extinguish that star and as she did so the shadow picture would disappear. Without that star, there’s no Ursa Minor. Without Ursa Minor the sky is less than it can be. Somehow Ursa Minor became our favourite and we’d talk (so to speak) of buying a boat and sailing for ever within sight of that constellation as the seasons shifted and the bear moved away from us.