B005OWFTDW EBOK

Nadeem Aslam

 

AYAZ JOKHIO
Mother and Child
, 2008
Acrylic on canvas, gold frame. 1.1 x 1.5cm
© Ayaz Jokhio

And my soul is a woman before you …

– Rilke

I
n the beginning, the great river was believed to flow out of a lion’s mouth, its size reflected in its ancient name –
Sindhu
, an ocean. The river was older than the Himalayas; the Greeks had called it
Sinthus
, the Romans
Sindus
, the Chinese
Sintow
, but it was Pliny who had given it the name
Indus
. One night under the vast silence of a perfect half-moon and six stars, a mosque appeared on a wooded island in the river, and Leila was woken by the call to prayer issuing from its minaret just before sunrise. It was the day she was to be blessed with a son.

As she knew there was no mosque within hearing distance, her initial impression was that the air itself was singing. Leila manoeuvred herself out of bed and went towards the door, making sure not to disturb her mother-in-law who had taken to sleeping in the same room as her in these last days before the birth. The servant girl appointed outside the door had fallen asleep, and as Leila moved past, a bad dream caused the girl to release a cry of fear.

Leila was fourteen years old, thin-framed with grey, glass-like eyes and a nervous flame always burning just beneath her pale skin. She pursued the song of faith drifting in the fifty-roomed mansion that had been in her husband’s family for several generations. The river with its boats and blind freshwater dolphins and drowned lovers was half a mile away, and there was nothing but rocky desert and thick date orchards between the riverbank and the mansion.

Long after the voice withdrew, she continued her search for its origins, now and then placing an ear against a wall. Earlier in the night she’d heard momentary fragments of other songs from the men’s side of the mansion, where her husband was celebrating the imminent arrival of his first son in the company of musicians and prostitutes. No doubt they were all asleep by now.

The windows in the women’s section of the house were inaccessible, nudged up against the ceiling, so the light poured in but not enough air. Leila was looking up at one of them when she heard someone come in behind her.

‘You shouldn’t be down here,’ Razia, her mother-in-law, said, unable to conceal her alarm. ‘If you needed something you should have asked one of the servants.’ Her attenuated face was
wheat-coloured
and pitted with smallpox scars. She had long white hair and every other year a doctor would inject liquid gold into her bones and joints to counter the ravages of time. ‘You should be resting,’ she said. It was the tone she had employed a year earlier when Leila came to the mansion as a bride, a tone suitable for the child that Leila had been back then. Someone who longed for her dolls and frequently misplaced her veil. But as soon as she became pregnant there was no end to Razia’s devotion and love. Along with the abundant care came the vigilance, an ever-present awareness that the girl was not mature enough to know the importance of the asset taking form inside her body.

Razia summoned the servants and they led Leila back up to her room.

‘I don’t mean to be harsh with you,’ Razia said mildly, accompanying them up the staircase. ‘If only you knew about the behaviour of my own mother-in-law and husband towards me. When I failed to conceive within the first few months of marriage, I was marked for days from the beating I received. But Allah heard my cries and granted me my son Timur.’

‘I went downstairs because I heard a voice, a call to prayer,’ Leila said as she settled on the bed and the servant girls began making her comfortable with pillows and cushions. ‘Somewhere not too far.’

‘You did,’ Razia answered. ‘I heard it too. I have just been talking to Timur, and he says that a mosque has appeared on the island in the river.’

The air in the room changed.

‘Who was the muezzin?’

‘No one knows. People woke at his call and followed the sound to the bank. There was the mosque, with a green dome visible through the trees and the mist of the river. But they say that when they rowed across to the building they found it empty.’

With great tenderness Razia neatened a stray lock of hair on Leila’s forehead and kissed her on the temple. ‘These are very auspicious hours. This miracle augurs great things for the boy about to be born.’

Leila had been told about the day Timur, her husband, was born. How Razia had been given one hundred and one gold necklaces, five hundred and one finger rings, and one thousand and one pairs of earrings. It was declared that if you could see the smoke of the cooking fires, no matter how far away you were, you should consider yourself invited to the feast – the festivities lasted an entire month. And similar things would no doubt occur after the birth today, though Leila knew she would not be allowed to wear any of the ornaments presented to her. Ten years ago, Razia had taken the oath that the women of the family would strictly abstain from jewellery until the daughters of Kashmir and Palestine were free of their Indian and Israeli oppressors.

Razia motioned to the shelf where an oversized book bound in green moss-like velvet lay, and two servant girls carried it to her. Since they were Christian, the girls could not touch the sacred volume and so carried it slung on a shawl between them. They placed it on a table and stepped back. It was the family
Book of Omens
. An image was painted on each of its right-hand pages, with the explanatory text occurring on the opposite page. During the previous weeks, Razia had asked Leila to open the book at random several times. And on each occasion the day that was just dawning was revealed to be the day of her grandson’s entrance into the world.

Now once again she brought the book to Leila and it opened on a portrait of Muhammad. He had been painted in a robe of dark blue brocade, with a white turban and crimson boots that curled at the tips, his face unseen behind a veil. He was raising his hand to split the moon in half, the text on the opposite page reading: