Haveli (17 page)

“But I don’t understand,” said Shabanu.

“Listen,” said Selma. “Nazir has always coveted what is Rahim’s—his land, his house, everything. You are Rahim’s youngest and most beautiful wife. Why shouldn’t he covet you?”

“If Rahim finds out, he’ll have Nazir’s head, never mind his ears!” said Shabanu. “Selma, did you know that my father gave me to Rahim because he settled a
land dispute between Nazir and my sister’s in-laws?”

“Oh, oh!” said Selma, the crease between her eyebrows deepening.

“Nazir tried to kidnap my sister and me. He killed Phulan’s fiancé. And then he tried to steal her in-laws’ farm! Rahim stepped in and made peace. My father gave me to Rahim to thank him.”

“Oh, oh!” said Selma again, plucking at the folds of her widow’s white silk sari. Heavy emerald globes hung from her ears, earrings of her great-great-grandmother from the days of the last Mogul emperor. Shabanu recognized them as the earrings Omar had called “Auntie’s pigeon eggs.”

“So this is the wound to Nazir’s pride that will not heal.”

Shabanu’s heart raced. She should have been paying closer attention to Rahim’s troubles. Her preoccupation with Omar had clouded her judgment.

“Oh, Selma!” she whispered. “How do things get so complicated?”

“My brothers bring it upon themselves,” Selma said wearily. “These feudal grandees have more pride than sense. They inherit more land than they can take care of, and then they want more. They fill their houses with women and call it duty. The Koran says men should take more than one wife to protect their brothers’ widows. But these fellows take as many wives as they want to serve their pleasure! They end up causing mountains of woe.”

“I’ve tried to get along with Amina and the others,” Shabanu said.

“I know, child, it’s impossible,” said Selma, shaking her large gray head. “There are so many good and simple people in the world. But the wealthy make life very difficult for them.”

“Perhaps the younger ones, like Omar …”

“Bah!” said Selma. “He will end up just like them—or else he won’t survive.”

Shabanu felt as if she were caught in a hill torrent, the kind that swept down out of the mountains of Baluchistan and wiped out villages and farms and cattle and roads.

“If Mumtaz and I need a place someday …” She swallowed hard.

“You and Mumtaz are always welcome here,” Selma said, reaching to lay a hand on Shabanu’s arm.

When Selma had gone, Shabanu climbed to the roof. It was just as they’d left it, except for the lock, which was missing from the door.

After they had found Choti, Shabanu had slipped the key to the roof from Selma’s key ring and tied it into a corner of her
dupatta
. Omar had relocked the door by snapping the old brass lock shut; it did not require the key. She was certain no one would notice that the key was missing from the ring, which had more than three dozen other keys on it: keys to the spice cabinets, the soap cabinets, the food cupboards, the jewelry cupboards—keys to every cupboard and
every door to every room in the house. Selma kept the large ring tied at the waist of her white sari at all times.

After Omar had gone and the rest of the household was napping, Shabanu slipped back up to the roof and removed the lock, reattached the key to its ring, and fastened it at her own waist for safekeeping until she could return it to Selma. She replaced the lock with an identical one that she’d brought from Okurabad for her trunk. She wore the key on a chain around her neck.

The last amplified strains of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer at neighborhood mosques hung in the air. It was just sunset, and the light was still golden and pink around a wide margin of the sky. The fat domes of Badshahi Mosque still glistened at the edge of the walled city through the early evening haze.

Yes, she thought, I must remember. There are so many good people in the world. Mumtaz and I can survive. But we must get away from Amina and Saleema and Tahira and Leyla. And Nazir. And Omar.

The
haveli
looked down over the rooftops of several houses in the immediate neighborhood, and Shabanu could see many dramas of family life unfolding in the dusk below. Some electric lights came on, and many oil lamps flickered to life. Women brushed the hair of little girls, cleaned vegetables, bathed babies in large buckets; cats stretched on waking
from naps to hunt mice among the grain cupboards; and men in close-fitting crocheted caps squatted in twos and threes in doorways, smoking
hookahs
.

One day Mumtaz and I will have a normal life like these people, she promised herself.

Her plan to furnish the pavilion took on a new urgency. She felt powerless over the other events in her life. A battle between desire and the certain knowledge that loving Omar was too dangerous to contemplate ground on within her endlessly. No wonder she was exhausted. With her every ounce of will she vowed again that she would keep him from her mind.

She sat and watched until it grew dark, then took out the flashlight Omar had given her and went to the room where shrouded furniture was piled to the ceiling. She searched through the dusty piles for small treasures to furnish the summer pavilion.

“For the sake of Mumtaz,” she murmured to herself over and over as she worked in the pavilion.

In a week’s worth of evenings searching through musty rooms filled with draperies and cushions and broken pieces of furniture, she found several beautifully embroidered pillows and bolsters from which she pounded clouds of ancient dust. She arranged them in the corners of the pavilion as places where she might read and play her flute and think. In one corner she placed two carved and enameled
charpois
where she and Mumtaz might sleep in their summers
together in the
haveli
.

Perhaps, she thought, next she would clear the room beside the pavilion for them to sleep in during the winters.

She uncovered low, carved chairs and tables from the Valley of Swat that she rubbed with oil until they shone darkly, and placed them together. She found a small, low writing table and a cushion to sit on, where she could write to her father and where Mumtaz could do her lessons.

And she unearthed and polished four old brass lamps with cut-crystal chimneys. She asked Samiya to bring her scented oil from the bazaar so that she might stay up and study while the rest of the
haveli
slept. And she filled the lamps in the pavilion so she could come there to read and write.

The activity made her feel she was doing something to protect herself and Mumtaz and Zabo in case of trouble. Her notion of what exact form that trouble might take was dim, but nevertheless she perceived it as a concrete threat.

She arranged the furniture in clusters, with no particular divisions within the pavilion, so that the chairs and tables looked as if they had floated and perhaps come to rest at random. She liked their inadvertent harmony.

When she finished at the end of the week, she looked around with satisfaction. It was what she had always wanted: a place of her own. And no one else
even knew about it. She loved Selma for offering her a place at the
haveli
without asking questions. Selma knew that Shabanu and Mumtaz could never stay at Okurabad or in the Cantonment if anything happened to Rahim.

By day she concentrated on her work, on her plans with Zabo, on her books—on anything but Omar, or Rahim’s troubles with Nazir. If Omar appeared unsummoned before her mind’s eye, she banished him quickly with the thought that in just a few weeks he would be not merely unavailable to her as he was now; as Leyla’s husband, he was likely to be her enemy.

Being surrounded by danger made it easier to keep from hoping to talk to Omar or from seeing his face in her sewing.

She imagined Omar as an enemy until she could not hear his name or catch a glimpse of him without seeing also the hot green glint of Leyla’s eyes, the crimson flash of her pampered fingernails, her languid repose after executing one of Amina’s evil tricks.

As Omar’s image was suffused with Leyla’s evil, it became habitual for Shabanu to regard him with a certain remoteness. She concentrated on the evil aspects, the danger Omar represented to her and to Mumtaz, and hoped that her feelings for him would subside altogether.

Her immediate world was inhabited by slow—and often suspended—motions. Very little happened
in the
haveli
in early summer. The lazy cadences of waking, studying, eating, gossiping with Selma over amusing anecdotes about life in the Cantonment, and Rahim’s increasingly occasional visits were punctuated by brief, rapid, secret exchanges with Zabo about a series of planned visits to the Anarkali Bazaar.

Still she didn’t tell Zabo about the pavilion. The danger Shabanu perceived also included Zabo, who remained unwilling to concentrate on anything in the future except for the task she now had before her. Shabanu could hardly blame her.

Zabo had researched the subject of the almost-real jewels meticulously. She had been cunning with her confidences—and had won not only the acquiescence of Selma and Ibne in her scheme, but their complicity as well. So great was their faith in her, they helped her find the places she sought without once asking why.

Shabanu marveled at the skill of her friend. Zabo, whom Shabanu had loved for her directness in their world of shamelessly manipulative women, had worked together the strands of her bravery, the cruelty of her betrothal, the sympathy of the only trustworthy souls in the
haveli
, and a knowledge of the process of making disingenuous jewels into a plot so fine and seamless that Shabanu imagined it couldn’t fail.

With an innocence as pure as Zabo’s bridal linens, Ibne had scouted out the finest jewelry establishments in the bazaar. He brought samples—both real and less
than real—for Zabo’s approval, until she was satisfied that there was no discernible difference between them.

“These days even the finest experts need electronic instruments to pick a red zircon from a row of rubies,” Zabo explained. “They even make them with the tiniest flaws …”

She held up a ruby necklace with a jeweler’s monocle for Shabanu to inspect the stones.

“See how toward one side of the large stone it turns slightly cloudy? The stone has been cut so that the facets sparkle around the cloudy plane. The stonecutter must have been a master!”

Shabanu saw only blood-red glitter through the eyepiece. “Well, even if the stones aren’t real, the work of such a master would make this very expensive …”

Zabo clapped her hands with delight and laughed. “That’s just it! The stone maker turns out thousands of stones with the same imperfection. But there are enough counterfeiters these days that the jewelers have a huge selection of fake stones and can match them with zircons of similar cut and color. They’re just imperfect enough to seem real.”

“But the gold must cost …”

“Don’t be silly! It’s rolled gold,” said Zabo. “Bite into it and see.”

Shabanu tried to find a piece of the setting large enough to test with her teeth. The piece was so
encrusted with stones that there wasn’t enough gold to bite into. Zabo clapped her hands and put them over her laughing mouth. She took back the necklace and handed it over Shabanu’s head to Ibne.

“Well done,” she said. “I think we’re ready to discuss prices.”

Ibne nodded, then hesitated a moment.

“I believe your father’s guards will be taking their guns to the gunsmith tomorrow afternoon,” he said gravely. “It seems someone dropped sweet tea into the mechanisms. Your father would not be happy with them for being so careless. I’ve assured them that I will take full responsibility for your welfare, and I’ve promised not to breathe a word about their misfortune.”

“Thank you, Ibne,” Zabo said. “Perhaps tomorrow would be a good day to visit the Anarkali Bazaar?”

“Yes, no doubt,” he said. “Will that be all?”

“Yes, thank you,” Zabo said.

Shabanu felt her eyes grow wider as she looked from one face to the other. After what Ibne had been through because of Amina and Leyla, Shabanu was amazed that he would dare to take part in Zabo’s elaborate scheme!

That same evening Rahim came to spend the night with Shabanu. She had thought several times about how seldom he came to see her, and that somehow she should be more concerned that Tahira or another of his wives had rekindled his interest. Or,
worse, there might be someone new—someone he’d met in the Cantonment, perhaps. But she’d been so wrapped up in thoughts of Omar and Zabo’s plans and in learning to read that she’d welcomed the diversion of his usually earnest attention.

That evening, however, she took special care with her makeup and wore a new turquoise and purple
shalwar kameez
that brought out the blue-green flecks in her gray eyes. She served his favorite mint tea and tried to amuse him with talk about Mumtaz’s progress and the antics of Choti—things that ordinarily would have charmed him.

Her heart was not fully in her chatter, but Rahim never noticed.

His mood was grim and fretful, and he fell asleep without even holding her in his arms. As she lay on her side with her back to him, Omar crept into her thoughts again. She pushed him away, but his face appeared in her mind, and regardless of her efforts to keep him away she could not. It made her dizzy with a sense of failure, and she was relieved that Rahim was not interested in her.

Once again she conjured up images of the danger that meeting Omar posed. Still she could not stop the desire for him that welled up and left her feeling hollow with longing. She stayed awake the rest of the night so that he could not creep into her dreams.

Very early the next morning, Shabanu heard Zabo’s rapid light tap on her door. She moved quickly
out of bed and to the door, grabbing her shawl from the nightstand and wrapping it about her shoulders in one motion.

She held her finger to her lips and opened the door just an inch, to where she knew the old iron hinges would begin to groan. Zabo was dressed, and her long slender fingers fluttered in frustration when she realized Shabanu was not alone. She formed the words “Anarkali Bazaar” with her lips, drew a necklace around her neck with her fingers, while her eyes danced, then pointed to her delicate wristwatch to indicate that they would leave in one hour. Shabanu raised her shoulders and eyebrows to say she wasn’t sure she could be ready. Zabo nodded, then went away.