Haveli (11 page)

Gradually it occurred to Shabanu that this was the house she had come to in her daydreams, the house she imagined she and Mumtaz would share one day. There were differences, of course, for she’d never seen these particular rooms before; but she couldn’t say what those differences were, and the
haveli
was just as she’d imagined it would be.

Shabanu splashed water on her face over the porcelain basin and went to check on Mumtaz, who was to sleep with Zenat in a small nursery off to one side and opposite the door to Zabo’s room. Mumtaz sat on an embroidered pillow, the fawn at her feet. She talked earnestly in a low voice, shaking one fat finger at the animal’s black wet nose. Choti blinked serenely, and Shabanu thought of herself in the desert as a child, mothering baby camels.

She sent Mumtaz downstairs with Zenat for an early supper, then knocked on the carved wooden door to Zabo’s room.

Zabo sat on the edge of a hundred-year-old
charpoi
with loose strings that sagged in the middle. Her head was bowed, and she stared at her hands in her lap.

“Father is so pleased with the land Uncle Rahim
has deeded him, he’s given me a fortune to spend on jewelry.” She rocked forward, and her hair made a curtain over her face.

“Rahim deeded land to your father? The land that goes to Ahmed is customary, but …”

“It was a bribe,” Zabo said.

Shabanu was silent for a moment, then she knelt before Zabo, laid her hands over her friend’s hands, and looked into her face.

“I’d do anything to keep this from happening to you,” she said. “But Rahim won’t discuss it with me. ‘The issue is closed, Shabanu!’ ” she said, mimicking his stern formality. “Keeping the family land together is a sacred thing to him. There’s nothing I or anyone can do to change his mind.”

“I know,” said Zabo, and a large tear splattered onto the back of Shabanu’s hand. “It’s just that until now the idea of Ahmed has seemed so remote. Coming here makes it seem more real.” She drew her shoulders forward. “The idea of him touching me, lying with me—that I’m to have his baby!” Her voice caught as she spoke through her tears.

“I’ve had a nightmare—several times I’ve dreamed it,” Zabo went on, “that a baby is growing inside me. It’s not a baby, really; it’s a … sort of a growth.

“I can barely breathe in the dream as my belly gets bigger and bigger, and I wonder what it looks like. It talks to me. It says terrible things, threatening me and
scaring me, and I wake up feeling as if I’ve just escaped being smothered.”

Shabanu sat beside Zabo and held her close. Her own tears fell into Zabo’s beautiful black hair. Zabo sobbed for a while, and then was quieter. She took a deep breath, shook out a handkerchief, and wiped away her tears.

“I may not be able to prevent your marrying Ahmed,” said Shabanu. “But I promise I will never leave you.”

It seemed so little to say, she thought. She remembered how Zabo had made her believe she’d survive when she’d been horrified at the prospect of marrying Rahim, a man old enough to be her grandfather.

But marrying an idiot was far worse than marrying an old man.

There was a gentle rap on the door, and the servant girl Yazmin came in carrying a tray with an old china teapot, two cups, and a plate of tiny meat dumplings and sugary biscuits.

Shabanu made Zabo eat something and sip some milky tea. Then she made her lie down, and rubbed her temples until she relaxed. Tears seeped through her eyelashes even as she slept.

Zabo was a strong young woman, and the intensity of her unhappiness frightened Shabanu. When Rahim arrived that night he would expect Shabanu to sleep with him. There would be no question of her
staying in Zabo’s room. She needed to find someone who could help keep an eye on her.

Should she trust Selma? Selma reminded Shabanu of her Auntie Sharma—gentle, wise, and knowing about the ways of men. But she also was Rahim’s sister. It took a powerful woman to follow her heart where family loyalty was concerned. Should she trust Selma? Her instincts said yes.

Shabanu lit a candle from the nightstand, wrapped her
chadr
around her shoulders, and found her way though the vaulted hallway. It was dark except for the candlelight glinting from tiny mirrors set into the arches overhead.

She found the back interior stairway and followed it as it wound downward, the shadow of her head bobbing along beside her. She kept one hand on the curved wall to guide her way to the second floor, where Selma’s quarters were. Shabanu felt as if she knew her way throughout the
haveli
.

At the landing she turned right and bumped sharply into a tall young man, banging her nose so hard against his shoulder that tears blurred her vision. She looked up through a haze into his surprised dark eyes. Neither of them spoke for a moment, and Shabanu stood with her hand to her smarting nose.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief, then handing it to her. She dabbed at her eyes. When her vision cleared, she was startled by his frank stare.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was watching my feet.”

She handed back his handkerchief.

“Oh, you can have it,” he said, leaning toward her slightly to peer into her face. She moved backward a step, uneasy at his closeness.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” he said, leaning closer still to study her nose. “It’s on straight, and there’s no blood.”

She took another step backward and nearly fell down the stairs. His face colored.

“I’m Omar,” he said, sticking out his hand. She looked at his hand, not knowing what he meant for her to do with it.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and pushed his fists into the pockets of his fitted Western trousers. “In America ladies shake hands. You must be my Auntie Shabanu.”

He was formal and uncomfortable-looking. Shabanu laughed out loud.

“My aunties are old and wrinkled,” she said, grinning at him. He smiled slowly. She stuck out her hand, and he took it in a firm handshake. She was surprised at the largeness of his hand and the gentleness of his touch.

“Punjabi ladies are supposed to look at the floor when they meet men,” she said, still smiling. “In the Cholistan Desert, where I grew up, I would have offered you tea by now, so it would have been fine for you to put out your hand.”

He laughed then too, and they set out together to
find Selma. Omar produced a small but brilliant flashlight from his pocket. Shabanu’s candle seemed dim by comparison, and she blew it out.

“If Auntie Selma doesn’t put lights in these hallways, someone will fall down the stairs and be killed,” Omar said.

“Why doesn’t she?” asked Shabanu. “Is it a question of money?”

“Well …” he began, then thought better of what he was about to say. “Maybe she’s just old-fashioned.”

“You were about to say that your father and uncles can’t agree on spending money to keep up this place,” said Shabanu. “They want to use it when they’re in Lahore, but they’re not willing to spend money on it. Poor Selma puts everything she has into running a hotel for them.”

“I’m not sure …”

“It’s true!” said Shabanu, annoyed with him for sticking up for Rahim. “You’re just like your uncles and your father!”

But Omar was quick to change the subject.

He explained that he’d just arrived from New York by way of London, and that he couldn’t wait to get to the farm. She marveled at how he covered all that distance with just a few words.

He’d been in America nearly six years, with university and graduate school. He’d been back only a few times in those years.

Shabanu listened intently. He spoke in Punjabi,
and she kept falling behind what he was saying. He spoke quickly with inflections that moved in strange cadences, as if his words held some meaning that only he could understand.

At the same time she was thinking she’d expected him to be different—haughtier, perhaps. She hadn’t expected to like him. Perhaps she thought he’d be more like Leyla—selfish and spoiled. And Shabanu wondered whether Amina and Leyla would poison his thoughts so he too would hate her in a short time.

They found Selma not in her room but in the kitchen, where a grimy light bulb suspended from the ceiling by a wire supplied the only overhead light. The room glowed with fires from several burners atop the woodburning mud stove, and from flames on the hearth and in the bread oven. The cook, an ancient stooped man wearing a white apron caked with flour, bent over the mud oven, hanging long slabs of bread dough on a rack inside the flames. The kitchen smelled of rich
masala
spices and baking bread.

Shaheen, the toothless old
ayah
who had been with Selma since she was a girl, stood over a pot of dark curry, stirring with a long wooden spoon. A pot of yellow lentils simmered on the stove beside her. Shabanu felt very hungry.

Selma reached behind her to untie her apron and herded them out of the kitchen.

“Mr. World Traveler has come to see your husband,” she said, inclining her head toward Omar, “in a
motor rickshaw that tooted into the courtyard and nearly ran over my chickens. Never let anyone know when he was coming so he could be met properly at the airport.” She adjusted her
dupatta
over her head and shot Omar a look with her eyes half closed.

“Rahim will be here later tonight,” Shabanu said, remembering the message suddenly. “He said we shouldn’t keep dinner waiting. He had business at Okurabad.”

“If Rahim’s not killed on the road, he’ll work himself into the grave,” said Selma. “It’s a good thing Omar has come to help.”

Selma was wheezing again by the time they reached her sitting room on the second floor, where she heaved herself into a tattered stuffed chair.

The shutters were drawn against the heat from the alley below, and the room was dark except for the pleasant light of china lamps that threw comforting soft shadows on the high ceiling. Some of the main rooms had electricity, and this was one of the few with lights.

In the center of the far wall was a hand-cut crystal fireplace mantel and facing. It was smudged with the soot of long-ago fires and fingerprints, but still it caught the dim light from the lamps and cracks in the shutters and flicked it back in colored pinpoints.

Rahim’s great-great-great-grandfather had been prime minister to the Mogul emperor Akbar, and the house had been one of the grandest during Lahore’s
most opulent period. Now there were only ten rooms in use among the
haveli’s
dozens.

The armchairs and carpets had been stuffed with goose down once, covered with rich silk brocades. But now they were lumpy, and the fabric was worn in places to long thin strands that barely held in the stuffing. The furniture was sparse, but the shabbiness and austerity were not unpleasant. Shabanu felt certain that Selma would have chosen to leave the
haveli
old and comfortable even if she could afford to have it otherwise.

Selma talked of how happy Rahim was that Omar was here, how good it was to have young voices in the house again.

“Of course we’ll keep dinner until Rahim comes,” she said. “I’ve been cooking half the day, and there are six servants in the kitchen now. Tomorrow we shall …”

But Shabanu was contemplating how she could get Selma away to herself, so she might talk to her about Zabo. She was worried that Zabo might try to run away in the middle of the night or, worse, that she might harm herself. Perhaps Selma could send the young servant girl to sleep near Zabo’s bed.…

“… flutes,
shenai
, sitar, tabla.… There will be music until God knows how late,” Selma was saying. “So we must sleep early tonight. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate!”

Shabanu looked away with a start when she saw
Omar’s eyes on her. He sat on a sofa beside Selma’s chair, where he’d been watching Shabanu intently while his aunt talked. She felt her face go warm. A soft rushing in her ears sounded like a distant river.

When Selma got up to check on the kitchen, Omar unfolded his long frame from the sofa and came to sit in the chair beside Shabanu’s.

“Would you like to see the rest of the house? It’s like a museum—at least that’s how I remember it.”

Shabanu nodded. He helped her from the chair, and the touch of his large, soft hand sent shivers through her.

He took the flashlight from his pocket and handed it to her.

“I’m used to candles,” she said.

“I brought dozens of these from New York,” he said. “You’ll need it going up and down the stairs.” He pressed it into her hand.

Shabanu walked behind Omar through the door of the parlor into the main salon. She felt acutely aware of the air that touched her skin, the blood that went through her veins, the feel of the floor under her feet. The brightness from his flashlight outlined the hard, angular planes of his shoulders and neck and chin in front of her, and Shabanu realized it had been a very long time since she had even seen a young man.

He spoke to her in his foreign-sounding Punjabi, and she gave up concentrating on what he said just to
take in the smooth texture of his skin and the rich timbre of his voice. And the idea that he touched her so easily. She knew her feelings meant trouble—but her fingers still felt his touch.

He turned and shone the light on her face.

“Are you listening?” he asked. She was startled, but she realized she hadn’t heard what he’d been saying.

“I’m sorry,” she said in Seraiki, which she was sure he understood from having grown up on the farm at Okurabad. “I speak Punjabi very badly.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, smiling at her face in the glow from the flashlight. “I love speaking Seraiki.”

She managed a smile.

In the main salon on the first floor a rich silk rug hung on the wall opposite the wrought-iron fireplace. Despite decades of exposure to smoke, dust, and the grime of the city, the vivid phoenixes, dragons, and tigers seemed to leap in the brightness of the flashlights as if they were alive.

Off the courtyard was a bath, with a series of tanks and fountains. The tanks were tiled with interlocking octagons and squares of black and white marble that formed mazes with stars of oxblood stone at the center.