by Anniqua Rana
I didn’t wait for her to respond. I ran toward the fridge in the indoor kitchen. I had softened her edge.
“Bus, beta. That’s enough.” Amman Bhaggan indicated that Maria should stop now.
“Pass me my potli, and I will open it up and give them to you.” Maria passed the potli to her so she could get her hands on her doll.
It didn’t take me long to make the tea, but I had to rush to pull it off the fire before it all boiled over. As I sucked my nearly charred finger, Bibi Saffiya’s high-pitched voice called out from the inside rooms. “Are you back?”
“What does she think?” Bhaggan muttered. I knew she had no patience for attending and listening to her now.
“Amman, you sit and I’ll go tell her.” I felt good being in control. I looked at the dolls in Maria’s lap. They were both female dolls. We wouldn’t be able to play our marriage game anymore. I wished I had asked for some glass bangles instead. Even some earrings, now that Amman Bhaggan had pierced my ears a month earlier. It had hurt, but now that the swelling had reduced, I could replace the soiled green thread with some dangling rings, if I had any.
I would let Maria take both dolls.
I straightened my dopatta and ran to Saffiya’s room to see what she wanted.
It was time for the afternoon prayer, and she needed her tea and rusk. The aroma of the sweetened, smoky, milky tea boiling over onto the fire must have slid into the inner sanctum of the house and awakened her from her afternoon nap.
I prepared and brought the tea tray to her room, but as I poured the cup, Amman Bhaggan yelped from the kitchen, distracting me, and the milk spilled on the already soiled floral tablecloth. Bibi Saffiya and I looked at each other, and she rolled her eyes.
“Tara, my daughter!” Bhaggan called again.
“Go listen to what she has to say, and then come back to take the dishes when I’m done,” said Bibi Saffiya.
I covered my head and pulled down my sleeve to hide the chamelis on my wrist, now wilting in the late-afternoon heat.
“And bring the flyswatter when you return. I’ve told you so many times to leave it near my bed,” Bibi Saffiya reminded me.
Amman Bhaggan sat filling the servants’ cups with the dark, dung smoke–flavored, raw cane–sweetened tea.
A fly buzzed around her, and she blew twice to get it out of the stream of the boiling liquid, but the third time it flew directly into the stream, struggled a bit, and then, as if giving in to a sweet death, whirlpooled into the scalding, milky tea. Bhaggan pinched it out and threw it to the corner of the kitchen. This mesmerized me until she brought me back.
Her call didn’t seem as urgent now.
“Go, my daughter. Sultan has left his notebook in the kitchen. He has to study for his exam with his tutor this evening, and I’ve already made him late. He shouldn’t have gone far.”
“It’s been so long since he left,” I said, feigning reluctance. But in fact I was ecstatic for the opportunity to see him without an audience. I’d straighten the chamelis on my wrist, now darkening with the heat.
“Run, my jaan, and you’ll catch him before he reaches the main road.”
Taaj, who had joined his mother for tea, looked up at me with a knowing smile.
“I would send Taaj, but he has to help Maalik feed the buffalo before evening,” she explained. “I’ll clear Bibi Saffiya’s tea dishes while you’re gone.”
“Be careful of the wild boar in the cane field,” Taaj whispered, as he sipped his tea.
“What nonsense!” Bhaggan threw the kitchen cloth at him, and a few drops of tea fell on the notebook.
“It’s all wet now,” I protested. “What will Sultan bhai say when he sees it?”
“What will he say? He’ll be glad that his mother has thought of him.”
Bhaggan’s euphoria seemed to be slipping into despair again. “Tea stains are nothing compared with how my life has been marked. My husband left and never returned. I was left to care for my children and my mother-in-law, and since then I have served Bibi Saffiya. A wet note-book is nothing compared to what I have endured …”
I slammed the kitchen door as I left, not wanting to hear the rest of the story or see the smirk on Taaj’s face.
I passed the kitchen window sedately and then picked up speed as soon as I left the vicinity of the house. I rushed past the village and the one-room mosque, crossed over the stream, and then made my way to the first dust road, hoping to reach the pathway that would take me to the main road, where Sultan would be walking to the next village. A retired schoolteacher there prepared the village boys for their exams. He must not have been that good, considering how many times Sultan had attempted them. Maybe he should find another teacher.
The pathway led me past the cane fields. I wished Taaj had not made that comment, but I had only heard of the wild boar. I had never seen them.
I rushed past, more to avoid the distaste of seeing one of the village elders relieving himself. The only reason the boar would have left the nest at this time would have been to bring back sustenance for their young. Motionless cane fields were safe. Rustling cane might seem like the result of a warm breeze, but there was usually a wild boar; at least, that was what I had heard. I held the notebook close to my chest and rushed on, trying not to breathe, to avoid being noticed by anyone or anything.
Once the fields were behind me, my fears were alleviated. I loosened my grasp around the notebook, but I realized it was a little like holding Sultan’s hand, so I tightened it again.
I remembered how that morning he had been silent when his brothers had made fun of his marrying me. Had his silence meant agreement? Maybe. Had he enjoyed wrapping my braid with the garland of chameli now wilting on my wrist?
The light breeze gave me confidence. Good weather meant great fortune.
As I jumped over the canal, my foot slipped on the muddy bank and I fell forward. I looked around, embarrassed that it would reduce the grace I tried so hard to project, but there was no one around, so I didn’t worry. I brushed the front of my kameez and stood up.
Finally, I could see him in the distance. Alone, as always. I might have called to him to stop him from going farther, but I decided it was too vulgar to do that. Only the village women would call out across fields. Bibi Saffiya would wait until she was closer, and I would do the same. Even the heroines in the TV dramas I had seen were poised and aloof.
I struggled to wipe the mud off my slippers on the grass, and as I did so, I nearly lost my balance and the notebook fell. When I picked it up, a few loose pages slipped out. I wished I had learned to read, but, as much as I tried to put the words together, nothing made sense. I flipped through the pages until I got to the last one.
A pressed rose, exactly like the ones I had seen in Stella’s embroidery design book, taunted me. Stella must have given him a token of her love from her collection of pressed flowers.
I let the rose drop into the mud and then, with my already muddy slipper, pushed it deeper. I wished I had crumpled it before I had dropped it, to destroy it completely.
How had I let this happen? Why would Sultan prefer Stella, the illiterate, limping girl who sat in a corner embroidering flowers on pillowcases? Had I made a fool of myself flirting with him that morning?
My feet no longer felt the need to rush. I took a few more seconds to wipe all the mud off my shoes. I watched Sultan’s figure get smaller and smaller, and I no longer cared. And when he reached the main road, I decided to return. I walked past the cane fields again, not caring about the villagers relieving themselves, not caring if a wild boar came out and pulled me into those deep, dark, sugary rows. I heard a rustling, but it was just a field mouse sucking on the side of a cane that someone had cut and decided wasn’t sweet enough to take with them.
I passed by the mosque and looked in to see if anyone was in there. The door was locked, but the window was open. I could have climbed in, like Maria and I had done many times before, but I chose not to. I no longer had the urge t
o enter where I was not supposed to go.
The notebook was still with me. Now it had mud, as well as tea marks, on its cover, but at least it no longer held within it the ugly pressed rose.
The Wail
I stared in horror at Sultan’s oiled hair. It was still combed as if nothing had happened. His body, covered in a white shroud, stretched on the charpoy that he used to share with his brother. Without thinking, I reached up to the now-shriveled chameli garland barely hanging on my wrist. The flowers were no longer white. They had aged within the day. Why had I not destroyed them as soon as I’d gotten home?
It was time for the evening prayer. The wailing in the courtyard had drowned out the maulvi’s voice from the mosque.
It hadn’t taken us long to gather around the charpoy in the middle of the courtyard. Four villagers, followed by two policemen, had carried the rope cot in, holding on to the crudely carved poles.
I had finished washing the tea dishes, and Amman Bhaggan had been preparing the evening meal. Now she stood at the foot of the charpoy, tearing out her hair and looking to the skies.
“My beautiful boy! You would have passed your exams. You would have become the groom every girl wanted to marry. You would have had sons, as many as you wanted. As beautiful as you. As intelligent as you.”
“That’s enough, Bhaggan. Find peace. God takes from us the best of what we have.” Bibi Saffiya spoke from the charpoy that was placed at a safe distance from the body on the charpoy covered in flies.
The white shroud was soaked with blood. Flies buzzed all over it. Amman Bhaggan now sat at the foot of the charpoy, one hand covering her head with her dopatta, the other fanning the dead body of her favorite child.
“I did it to him. I praised him and cast an evil eye on him. I should not have praised him, and then others would not have been so envious of him,” she mourned.
I looked around the courtyard. The police van had brought the broken body, which looked as if it had been run over by a bus, squashed in the center. Two officers stood in the corner, drinking glasses of warm water. It had been hot that afternoon. But now it seemed even warmer.
Why had he been run over by a bus? Was I to blame? If I had brought him the notebook, would that have delayed when he crossed the road?
I looked across the courtyard at Stella. Had my jealousy caused his death? Was it because I didn’t want her to have him? But I didn’t even like him. I didn’t like the smell of eggs. I couldn’t remember it now. I had already forgotten the smell of his coconut oil.
I looked away from Stella. I could not bear to see the pain on her face. She sat staring at the bloodied body in the middle of the courtyard. She stared at Bhaggan and the wailers. She held Maria’s hand tightly. Then she tugged at it, and Maria looked down at her. The sisters communicated without saying anything, and Maria helped her sister to walk toward the body.
I approached Amman Bhaggan in silence to try to rub her feet, but she wouldn’t let me touch her.
As her screams became louder, more village women joined the mourning wails. I didn’t recognize some of them. They had come from the village across the canal. They had heard the sirens and now the wailing. I didn’t know that they had known Sultan. I had never seen them in Bhaggan’s kitchen. They were here to help her mourn.
One wailed, “You left your mother all by herself. You selfish son. How could you have chosen to go before her? How could you have chosen to be with your maker before it was your turn?”
Another joined in, “You were always impatient. You were always wanting more than your share. And now you have taken it. You wanted to be with your father. You chose to be with him, rather than stay here with us.”
Another slapped her own head with both hands. “What a beautiful prince. There will be no other like you.” As she wailed, the woman pulled Maalik and Taaj into the circle and said, “Pull your hair, tear your clothes. Why do you continue to live? Why do you not join your brother?”
The two boys looked at their mother, not knowing how to respond. I wasn’t sure either. When Bhaggan had talked about death, it had been about old people, or people who were evil, who needed to die. Sultan had been neither.
I watched as Stella took the fan from Bhaggan’s hand and sat on the other side of the body. Slowly, she started fanning his head, and the flies flew away from his face. Then she took her dopatta and wiped the blood off his cheek.
She sat there until the maulvi told the women to leave so he could cleanse the body and prepare it for burial.
I felt weak. I couldn’t stand. I hid in our room. It was dark and hot, but I didn’t care. I waited until it was dark outside.
No one would cook in the kitchen today. The house of death was also the house of starvation.
TIME OF NECESSITY
Sanctified
Three years had passed since the morning when I had enticed Sultan to pin the chameli garland on my braid, the day that had ended so tragically with his death. His death changed our lives in ways we had not anticipated.
Bhaggan still went to the shrine, but her prayers were not of hope, but rather of solace in her despair—a sorrow that she hugged close, as if releasing it would make her plunge into an abyss. She would not recover from the loss of Sultan.
No longer did she participate in the annual festivities by distributing sacrificial meat at the Eid celebrating the pilgrimage, or by cooking semolina pudding for Eid breakfast after the month of fasting. Bibi Saffiya asked Hamida’s mother to come and help me until, by the third year, I was able to manage it all myself.
Bhaggan continued with the daily cooking, but I had to remind her to peel the potatoes or add salt to the lentils, until I took over those chores, too. She stopped bathing regularly and wore white to remind us that she was still mourning her beloved son.
The day Sultan died, Bhaggan sat all night at the foot of her dead son’s charpoy. His body lay covered with a bloodstained white sheet. Stella sat near his head and fanned the flies away from the white sheet covering his oiled hair.
The next morning, the maulvi washed the scarred body and covered it in a clean white shroud to bury it in an unmarked grave next to his father.
I envied the stamina of Stella and Bhaggan, so dedicated, so loving. I needed to do something to memorialize him, to show I could love like them. The chameli garland was brown and wilted, but it was the only tangible evidence I had of our connection, so, like Stella, I decided to save my memory by pressing the garland in a book.
I chose the purple brocade–covered Holy Book Amman Bhaggan had gifted me, recited the prayers for forgiveness, and closed it on my memory of Sultan with the flowers. Over the years, I’d opened the book and the flowers on occasion, but each time, that prompted the petals to keep disintegrating, until only a few brown, odorless remnants of my first love were left.
Sultan’s death changed us all.
In the three years afterward, Maalik, the youngest, became his mother’s dependable son. He didn’t say much, but he joined Bhaggan when she had to travel to the shrine. He stopped attending lessons with Zakia and decided to leave school. The only time I heard him speak up was in response to Saffiya when she called him in to admonish him for not appreciating her support in paying his school fees.
“I can do more for myself and my mother if I work in the fields, rather than waste my time with books,” he’d say. From then on, Maalik took on the role that his brother Sultan had vacated in death.
Taaj, the second son, disappeared after Sultan’s burial. He ran away. And then, for the next three years, he continued to run away, only to return when he needed food or funds. He’d hitch rides on buses from the main road. Jumping on as they sped by, risking his life, tempting fate, as if in hopes of joining his brother.
On each return, Bhaggan would spoil him by cooking his favorite food, in an attempt to keep him at home and out of trouble, but with each departure he became bolder in the risks he took.
Maria talked less. She no longer asked questions. She smile
d less. She spent less time with me and more with her mother.
Stella stayed in bed after the burial, and none of Bibi Saffiya’s remedies could make her return to her daily routine of embroidering pillowcases in her designated corner. She was so listless that we all thought she might die of heartache, until one day Bibi Saffiya decided to take her to the hospital in the city.
Saffiya called for the village taxi because there was no way that Stella would have been able to walk to the bus stop. Maria and I carried her to the taxi and laid her on the back seat. I sat with her head in my lap, and Maria placed Stella’s feet on hers. Bibi Saffiya sat in the front seat, next to the taxi driver. This was the first time Maria or I had ever sat in a car, but by now we didn’t share our excitement about such novelties.
An hour later, we reached the hospital, which was run by doctors and nurses of the same faith as Stella. They wore long white robes and covered their heads, but not with dopattas. Some had fair skin and spoke the same language we did, but it sounded different. Others looked just like us but wore the same dress as the others.
Maria and I waited in the hallway while Saffiya took Stella inside. We sat quietly for a long time, stunned by the misery of the patients around us, who had come with their own families.
In one corner stood a huge glass box. Inside was a tall man dressed in flowing robes, but he was not made of cloth. He was like a huge doll. He stood with both hands raised and tendrils of hair on his face. He looked kind. He reminded me a bit of the maulvi, but he was much younger.
“That’s the savior, Eesah,” said Maria.
I didn’t care that she knew something I didn’t, so I didn’t acknowledge what she’d said. Now that she’d said it out loud, I knew who this was—Christ, the Christian God.
When Saffiya returned, she was alone.
“They will take care of her,” she said.
We returned home that afternoon, without Stella.
SIX MONTHS LATER, Maria and I joined Saffiya to pick Stella up from the hospital. There she stood in the same hall with the huge statue of the savior in a glass box. Saffiya left the three of us outside and went in to talk to the doctor.