by Anniqua Rana
Dissonant Harmonies
On the day I made the chameli garland, my monthly bleeding had ended, which meant I had to go to the maulvi’s house, instead of watching Sultan prepare for school.
As with all the homes in the village, the smell of burning dung emanated from Zakia’s kitchen, a pyre to buffalo waste. Before we reached the front door, we could detect the odor, but the pungent smoke comforted me more than Zakia, in her unfathomable rigidity.
In the courtyard, close to the front door, Zakia sat on a low stool at her outdoor kitchen. The two clay stoves that made up her kitchen were built in the corner of the veranda. At some distance was the pump that served as the sole source of water in the one-room house.
Her two other students for the morning lessons, Hamida and Nafissa, twin sisters from next door, were preparing the morning meal. They sat close to Zakia. Hamida rocked as she kneaded the dough to make rotis, and Nafissa sliced the onions to prepare the main meal later that day.
Hamida and Nafissa cleaned Zakia’s house, washed her clothes, swept her floors, and cooked her meals in exchange for her teaching them to read, for which they were beholden to her. Their parents and grandparents had never had the opportunity or the reason to learn how to read the Holy Book, or any other book, for that matter.
Like Taaj, Maalik, and I, the adults must have chosen ways to avoid learning from a teacher like ours when they were young. We slipped into the front courtyard without Zakia’s noticing us. If we stood silent for half an hour, she would not expect to teach us, and we would leave when the time was up.
The early-morning shadows of the lone lemon tree in the front courtyard camouflaged us for a few minutes. I stood close enough to see her wrinkled clothes and unbrushed braid, covered hurriedly with a blue dopatta. Zakia was preoccupied, the frown on her forehead holding tight to thoughts that she would never share.
She rolled up the sleeve of her right arm and then rolled it back down again, sensing Hamida and Nafissa halting their dough making and onion peeling to stare at the bright scars on her taut left wrist, contrasting with three green glass bangles.
As she looked away from them, she saw the three of us in the doorway and spoke harshly. “Where were you all buried this morning? When the maulvi comes, you boys will get a beating.”
Then she looked at me.
“And you, daughter of a nabob, what’s with the flowers on your wrist? You think you’re a movie star?”
We didn’t respond but took special care to straighten our shoes as we took them off to sit on the reed mat in the courtyard.
“Yes, you—princess without a state! Where have you been?”
I straightened myself and pulled my head higher, my bruise barely healed from the time she had hit me with a coal catcher for laughing when she’d stumbled. I wouldn’t let that happen again.
Under my glare, she busied herself stirring the onions in the oil. She hunched on the stool, covered with ashes that Hamida had just blown over her while helping to build the fire. She looked old, and I felt even more beautiful. But I didn’t have enough feelings to feel sorry for her. She was quick to remind me why I shouldn’t.
“You didn’t throw out all the garbage yesterday. Look at that corner, piled with filth, covered in flies,” she scolded Hamida.
Amman Bhaggan scolded me about keeping the place clean too, but it didn’t bother me as it did when it came from Zakia. Would she sound different if she had her own child? I, the motherless child, and she, the childless mother. Did we behave differently because of what we lacked? Would I have had more respect if my mother had taught me? Would she have had more love if she’d had a child?
Unable to stop myself, I blurted out, “You only talk to her like that because you know her mother is afraid to say anything to you.”
I glanced at Hamida to see if she realized that I was trying to protect her, but she had already moved on to cleaning the clay stove—an unnecessary task for an outdoor stove that would capture dust regardless of how often it was cleaned. Everything here was covered in dust. And the dust was covered with a layer of flies.
I attempted a deeper stab: “No wonder Allah doesn’t grant you a baby. He knows you wouldn’t care for one.”
“How dare you!” she yelled. “After all I do for all you brainless idiots. This is how you repay me? Get out!”
Then she took off her slipper and threw it at me, and I ducked, and it flew past, barely missing the maulvi, who, having returned from the mosque, stood in the doorway.
I covered my face with my chador to hide my smile and waited for the maulvi to explode, but before he could react, the sound of raucous movie music emanated from the house next door: “When you whisper my name, I die in ecstasy.”
It was the soundtrack of one of the most popular movies of the time, and it drowned out all other noise.
Just then, Zakia fainted, toppling off her perch on the stool. She had a habit of reacting to loud noises like that.
Hamida and Nafissa rushed to her.
“Bring her some water!” one said.
“No, rub her feet,” the other suggested.
The two boys jumped up from their lessons, pleased at the diversion. “What happened to her?” Maalik asked.
“It’s the loud music,” Hamida whispered. “Our father can’t hear, so he keeps the volume up, and she faints every time he does that.”
Taaj raised an eyebrow and grinned, though he stayed silent, since the maulvi still stood in the doorway.
Now he moved closer to his wife, but we knew he would never touch her in front of us.
“Help your khala jaan,” he said to the girls, sitting close to her.
Hamida started rubbing Zakia’s feet and gestured to her sister. “Help me straighten her. She’s too heavy for me to move.”
The twins tried to bring their teacher back to consciousness. They still hadn’t started their lessons and would have to memorize the page before they left. Then they had to clean the lentils too.
Zakia came to and pointed weakly toward a glass of water on the table in the corner.
“Hand me that glass. The maulvi blessed that water. It’ll give me the strength I need to handle my trauma.”
The maulvi reached down to retrieve his wife’s slipper, which lay on the ground nearby. He lifted it and gently placed it at the edge of her stool.
“And why is Tara standing, doing nothing?” He looked at me.
I looked directly at him, aware of his half-shut eye, and said, “I want to read the Holy Book with melody, like Sultan.”
“Only boys can do that,” he responded in a subdued voice, like when he explained to Sultan the times for prayer. I listened carefully to what he told the boys. Their lessons were so much more interesting than my mere memorizations in a language I would never understand.
“The first call is before sunrise. The second is in the after-noon—the time of necessity, as it is called. The third is when there’s enough time for a man to walk six miles before the sun sets,” he explained to Sultan, anticipating that, one day, Sultan might take on the role of village maulvi himself. I knew that I, even as a grown woman, would be expected only to follow the call to prayer, never to lead it, as a man would.
“The fourth is when the sun is twelve degrees below the horizon.”
I never asked him what he meant by that. Maybe now I would.
“The fifth, and final, is when the red thread of the sun disappears,” he ended.
If I couldn’t make the call to prayer, I would be sure I could read the Holy Book with the harmony I’d heard when Sultan had learned.
“But why can’t I? I’ve completed the primer and have memorized the prayers Bibi Zakia taught me. Why can’t I read in harmony, like the boys?”
“Because your massi Zakia here doesn’t know how to read like that, so she can’t teach you.”
I felt an even stronger urge now that I knew that Zakia didn’t know how to read that way.
“Then you teach me.”
I wanted to take down the bride-red, brocade-covered Holy Book and caress it lovingly in my hands. I would unwrap it and place it delicately on the intricately carved wooden reading stand. Then, very deliberately, I would open it at the silk bookmark and luxuriate on the green, black, and white Arabic script, with the delicate translation below. Then, like Sultan, I would place my right-hand pointer on the page, take a deep breath, and begin reciting what I read.
The maulvi would follow my finger as it underlined each word, scrutinizing for blunders. His left eye, permanently shut with an ax mark, would move as if it could see.
Neither of us would completely understand what I read. It was in Arabic, and neither of us knew it, but it sounded so beautiful.
As he followed my finger on the page, I would not dare look at his face. Maybe if I could look into his unseeing eye, I would glimpse the memory of despair about a younger son with no option but to teach reluctant children how to decipher this mysterious script from centuries earlier.
I would see the son forced to marry his older cousin because no other suitor was reaching out to her. She came with a dowry of furniture for two rooms, just enough to fill the home he would receive in the village where he chose to lead in prayer.
His wife would teach the village girls, like Hamida and Nafissa, who spent the afternoon cooking and cleaning in exchange for a half-hour lesson of reading the primer to the book each day.
As if realizing my wish, the maulvi sat on the charpoy on the veranda and told me to sit next to him.
“Follow me,” he said.
And I did. I inhaled till I felt dizzy, squeezed my larynx, and began with the best of intentions:
Aoozobillahe minishaita nirajemm: I seek refuge from Allah from the outcast Satan!
Amman Bhaggan was right. Reading the Holy Book was peaceful. Each verse rhymed with the next, creating a familiar harmony that helped me forget the hawk-eyed maulvi following my every note.
I feared the maulvi’s gaze, even though I had no reason to. Nothing he had done had caused me harm, but I knew what he did. I had heard everything that his wife had shared with Bibi Saffiya and Amman Bhaggan. In hushed voices, she had told them how he forced himself on her to create a child that her barren womb would never bear. The violent secondhand memory had seared my mind. I hurriedly finished the verse, not sure that I had the strength to continue my pursuit of finding my way into a world designated for men.
Glass and Marbles
The maulvi mumbled a shabash for my first attempt at reading the Holy Book with harmony, but I didn’t think my lessons would continue. I sat with my hands in my lap, unsure of what to do next, and he spoke softly.
“Leave it here.” He gestured to the book. “I need to read it before I eat. Go home now.”
I gave a perfunctory salaam to Zakia, who was now upright, with the two girls still hovering around her. The boys had already left. They had to go to school. I pulled my chador tightly over my head and rushed toward the front door.
Beams of sunlight reflected off the marbles in Maria’s right hand as she juggled them and then caught all three in her left hand. Her tiny fingers strained to keep them from falling onto the dusty pathway just outside the maulvi’s house.
I stumbled across the maulvi’s doorstep toward my friend, glad to be distracted by her dexterity. As if sensing an audience, she looked up and caught my admiration. She embraced me with her warm smile.
Abandoning her pride in having caught the marbles, she praised me instead.
“Your recitation, it sounded so beautiful. How did you convince Maulvi to teach you?”
With ease, I projected my accomplishments for Maria’s veneration, and, with the same ease, she embraced my explanation. I badly needed to comfort myself by maintaining control of the situation, even if my perception was a skewed interpretation of reality.
“He had no choice this time. I wasn’t going to let him go.”
Still feeling uneasy, I switched the focus to her, declaring, “You should be happy you only have to go to the church on Sunday. I must do a lot more work than you. I have the morning lessons, and then I’m supposed to pray five times a day. You have it much easier than me, sitting juggling marbles on the streets.”
“Did you see how I caught all the marbles in one hand?” She stood up, smiling, with her hands on her hips.
But I felt my self-control returning, and so I ignored her question. Sensing the putdown, with a turn of her head, Maria signaled her impatience, but I was her match.
“If I had time like you, I would have done better than that. And I can still beat you at hopscotch.” I didn’t want the situation to slip out of my control.
“But you’re taller than me,” she mumbled, clarifying why I could jump across the big squares that we both knew I drew large enough to make her stumble.
Maria’s smiling lips straightened, and she turned to walk in the opposite direction. I didn’t want her to know that I would rather have spent with her the half hour I’d been at the maulvi’s house.
Instead I pulled my dopatta around my head to shift the moth hole to one side and hide it in the folds, pulled my shoulders back, and lifted my still-developing chest. I would never admit to Maria that I sought out her company to build my confidence. I decided to follow her but picked up speed so it seemed as if I were leading the way. I would join her in helping her sister, Stella, and take her to Saffiya’s home.
We walked past the mud houses, and I pulled her aside when she wanted to step on dog shit in the middle of the road. We could hear the village sounds of chickens, cows, and the tractor humming in the distance. Somehow, our silence was louder than those sounds.
As Maria’s parents’ one-room home came into view, the high-pitched, frenzied screeching of Jannat, Maria’s mother, warned us to slow down. As we got closer, we realized Stella was the focus of her ire.
“I swear, my mouth fills with bile. Even your father doesn’t smell that bad. Can’t you smell the foul stench of egg? And why does he stare at you? What does he see in a cripple like you? I tell you, he is deranged. Crazy.”
Jannat’s breathlessness and the swish of the broom as she berated her daughter Stella indicated that she was busy sweeping the one-room hut.
“Sultan is just like his father. The old hag Bhaggan thinks her husband was perfect, but he wasn’t. The whole village knows his reality.”
Maria slipped her hand into mine as we moved closer to the door. I had never heard anyone disparage Bhaggan’s husband, or Sultan, for that matter. Had Jannat always disapproved of them, or was this one of her fits that would force Maria to return to me for company?
“Bhaggan’s husband came and went to the main house as if he belonged. And now his son does the same. Why does he go into the room where you sit to do your embroidery? I’ve seen him stare at you when you limp by him.”
I was surprised to hear her criticism. When had Sultan shown so much interest in Stella? Jannat was on a rampage.
“Quiet boys are more dangerous. I don’t know his intentions, but you keep your distance from him.”
I was outraged that Jannat, the crazy woman, was maligning Sultan. Why would he be attracted to Stella? He had confided in me, shared his fears, and now Jannat was insinuating that he preferred Stella, not me. Had Maria been right when she’d said Sultan had given her a notebook for her flowers? Impossible!
Maria and I stopped outside and waited until Jannat was finished yelling at Stella. We heard the broom swish across the bare courtyard, and then a pile of broken glass was swept outside the front door. Jannat’s head appeared at the bottom of the doorway, as if she were squatting on the floor.
I pulled Maria behind the open door, but not soon enough. Jannat caught the movement of Maria’s bright pink dopatta and lashed out at us. “And where did you die? You’re never home. Always following Tara, as if you’re her tail.”
Maria started mumbling before she made eye contact with her mother. “We saw a munyari wala selling all kinds of cloth
and red glass bangles near the canal. You would have liked what he was selling. I thought I would come and tell you.”
Maria’s lies sounded so true, even I wanted to believe them. Falsehoods became the truths she told her mother to protect herself from being beaten. Lies were her self-preservation. They were how she made sense of life.
“What would you tell me? That your father has found gold in the gutters. That I could exchange that gold for a new outfit and the scarlet glass bangles. What was written for me is worse than I thought. Stella can’t walk. You walk and talk too much. My babies are dead. What am I left with?”
“Don’t say that, Amman,” Stella said from her perch on the peerhi in the courtyard. “God blesses us all with his brilliance.”
Stoic Stella had spoken. If her sister’s chattiness grated my nerves, Stella’s level-headedness destroyed them. What made her so calm in such chaos? Jannat felt as I did.
Jannat’s glare couldn’t penetrate her daughter’s calm, so she used words instead. “God must have blinded me, then, because I see nothing. He didn’t choose you or me to bless.”
Jannat brushed the last pieces of glass to the left of the doorstep. They sparkled in the sunlight. She stood up, and her knees made a noisy clicking sound. She threw the broom in the corner and, without looking at Maria, addressed her.
“Collect the pieces of glass, Maria, and add them to the pile of glass in the bin. When the garbageman comes along, we can sell the glass, but don’t let him trick you by giving you cane-sugar crispies in exchange. Take cash.”
Maria looked away, as if in protest. The money from broken glass was never worth much, and the crispies were such a treat. Jannat pretended not to notice and continued her tirade. “Well, who else will give us money? Tara’s bespoken mother, Bibi Saffiya, doesn’t care for us. She just keeps piling on more work for me, without ever paying me. You know what she said last week?”