Haveli (2 page)

When the birds were fed, Mumtaz turned again toward the gray weathered gate leading to the canal. Shabanu was about to call to her when a tall, dark figure sped from the veranda. In two strides the figure
was behind Mumtaz, and a long, pale hand with crimson nails flashed out from under a dark green
chadr
. The hand grabbed the child by the hair and yanked her from her feet.

“You filthy urchin!” It was Leyla, Mumtaz’s eldest half sister. “How dare you spy on my father’s house!”

“He’s my father too,” said the child, her voice piping. Leyla flicked the wrist of her hand that grasped the child’s hair. Mumtaz bit her lips and squeezed her eyes shut against the pain in her scalp. Leyla turned back toward the house, pushing the child before her like a prisoner of war. Mumtaz was small but strong, like her mother, and when she struck out at Leyla with her wiry arms, Leyla tightened her grip on the child’s hair to keep her moving along.

“Thank you,” said Shabanu, appearing at Leyla’s side as if from thin air. She took Mumtaz by the hand and stepped between them. Leyla’s mouth, the same deep, shiny red as her nails, went slack with surprise for a moment. She shook her fingers loose from Mumtaz’s tangled hair and withdrew her hand gracefully under the folds of her
chadr
.

“How can you let her run loose like a street rat?” Leyla asked. “She’s wild. She scares the chickens.”

“That’s enough, Leyla.” Shabanu’s voice was calm.

Mumtaz’s eyes remained tightly shut against tears as Shabanu knelt before her and held her by the shoulders.

“I’m here, pigeon,” she said, turning toward
Mumtaz again. “That will be all, Leyla,” she said without looking up. Mumtaz slumped into her arms and buried her face against her mother’s neck. Shabanu held her for a moment, then removed her to arm’s length and brushed the hair from her eyes. Her gaze held the child’s.

“Come, we’ll feed the ducks, and then you can bathe in the canal,” Shabanu said, as if Leyla had ceased to exist.

It was Shabanu’s refusal to defend herself, as if she had nothing to defend herself against, that drove the other women of Rahim’s household—Leyla, her mother Amina, the other wives, Leyla’s sisters and half sisters—to hate her. If only she would
say
that Mumtaz had as much right as the others to run about the courtyard, and ask what harm the child caused. But Shabanu refused even to acknowledge their resentment.

Shabanu was the favorite of Rahim—“the Merciful”—their powerful father and husband, the landowner and patriarch of the clan. The other wives hated her pretensions to dignity.

Each wife had her own private grudge. Leyla’s mother Amina, the first and most important of Rahim’s wives, was the eldest, the best educated among them all, and the only one who was his social equal. Amina also was the mother of Rahim’s only surviving son, a poor quivering thing called Ahmed.

Amina had borne two other sons, also sickly and
defective in one way or another. Like all of Rahim’s sons, with the exception of Ahmed, both had died in infancy.

Amina had long since stopped sharing Rahim’s bed. While her position gave her an unquestioned advantage over the other wives, she guarded her jealousy with a keen eye.

Ten years after Rahim had married Amina his attentions began to wander, and that is when he took a second wife. She was Saleema, who had captured his fancy one hot July when he visited his family at their summer retreat in Dinga Galli in the Himalayan foothills.

Saleema had come to see Amina, a second cousin, with her elder sister. She was a shy, slender girl with large dark eyes and a serious mouth. Saleema was far from beautiful. She inspired no jealousy in Amina, who had grown weary of her husband’s physical demands. They culminated in pregnancy after pregnancy, each of which ended, to everyone’s great disappointment, with a defective son or a daughter—three girls in all.

Then there was Ahmed. And by then Amina had had enough. It was such a relief not to have Rahim come to her bed at night when she was tired and wanted only to sleep! She had borne a healthy son. It was much later that Ahmed’s weaknesses became apparent.

Saleema bore three daughters and two sons, both
of whom died within a matter of months. Rahim’s disappointment seemed to diminish Saleema with each birth. Amina watched with satisfaction as Saleema grew thinner and paler, until there seemed to be nothing left of her but her large black eyes and a straight line for a mouth.

Eight years later, under similar circumstances, came Tahira, who at the age of fifteen became Rahim’s third wife. Tahira still was beautiful. After five years she too had borne three daughters and two feeble sons, both of whom died within a year. In that time she had been the chief co-occupant of Rahim’s bed.

While Saleema had lapsed into bitter resignation that she had been replaced in her husband’s affections, Tahira still harbored hope that Rahim would tire of Shabanu, return to her bed, and give her a healthy son who would inherit his father’s land. For it was not at all certain that Ahmed would survive. And although Tahira was eight years Shabanu’s senior, still her skin was smooth and her waist was slender, and the need for a viable heir should have been of paramount importance to the aging leader.

But from the time six years ago when Rahim first met Shabanu, a girl of twelve with budding breasts, wisdom beyond her years, and a dazzling smile, he had eyes for no other woman. In truth it had been too long since he’d had any appetite for his third wife, whose dainty approach to love made her seem insipid to him.

When Shabanu produced only one female child, those close to Rahim advised him to divorce her and take another wife who would produce a healthy heir. But Rahim demurred. His total indifference to all women but his fourth wife could only be explained as witchcraft.

Amina could not conceive of anyone else’s happiness being achieved without expense to her own, and she viewed anyone who made her husband smile and whistle as he walked about the farm—as did Shabanu—with the deepest suspicion and contempt.

The women of Okurabad couldn’t understand what attracted Rahim so powerfully to Shabanu—the way she went about barefoot, wearing the heavy silver ankle bracelet of the nomads, and no makeup. She, a lowborn gypsy, dared to regard them with contempt! They were all daughters of landowners like Rahim, holy men, tribal leaders whose ancestors had descended directly from the Holy Prophet Muhammad Himself, peace be upon Him!

Shabanu’s father was a camel herder. She was a daughter of the wind.

They all knew how to dress and behave in the best houses of Lahore. Shabanu walked about the courtyard singing gypsy songs in her wood-smoke voice in Seraiki, the language of the desert. She’d never even been to Lahore!

They said among themselves that she practiced evil magic.

They were frightened of Shabanu, of the levelness in her eyes which they mistook for a conceit, a certain knowledge that Rahim would side with her against his elder wives.

For many weeks now the entire household had been preoccupied with preparations for Leyla’s approaching marriage. Although the ceremony was not to be for several months, Leyla was busier than she ever had been before, and for some time had not followed Mumtaz about the garden as once was her custom. Shabanu cursed herself silently for letting down her guard.

Leyla growled low as a cat and turned swiftly away, her
chadr
swirling out around her like a green flame. When she was gone, Shabanu shook the child gently by the shoulders.

“You mustn’t go to Papa’s house until I’m awake and can go with you,” she said.

Mumtaz said nothing, and Shabanu pressed her fiercely against her breast for a moment. Then they walked holding hands to the canal, which ran like an opal ribbon through the morning haze.

R
ahim returned from Lahore during the day, and that evening Shabanu sat at her dressing table and watched in an ivory-framed mirror as Zenat took a heated rod from the fire. The old
ayah
arranged curls around Shabanu’s face to soften the strong line of her chin.

Shabanu removed the silver cuff from her ankle and replaced it with a fine gold chain.

Mumtaz sat quietly watching the ritual of her mother adorning herself for her father. Shabanu lifted strands of pearls and rubies from red velvet cushions and twisted them together, then held them up for Zenat to fasten at the back of her neck.

“How do I look?” she asked, glancing from the mirror to Mumtaz’s face. Mumtaz stuck a finger into her mouth and ran to her mother.

“Like Papa’s birds,” she whispered, and clasped her arms about her mother’s waist. She buried her face in the silken folds of Shabanu’s deep red sari,
which hung from her knees heavily, weighted by embroidery of golden thread at the hem.

“Come away, Mumtaz. You’ll mess your mother,” said Zenat, circling the child’s wrist with her clawlike fingers.

“Oh, let her be,” said Shabanu. “God knows there’s little enough time for her to sit in my lap like a baby.” She hugged Mumtaz, who breathed in deeply, as if she wanted to keep her mother’s rich, dark perfume all to herself.

Shabanu put the child to bed, telling her a story of the desert wind. The wind, she said, was a poet whom God had sent to live in the desert. His love dwelt among the stars. He could never reach her, and was doomed to spend eternity singing among the dunes.

When Rahim’s servant rapped on the wooden door, Shabanu blew out the candle, kissed the smooth curve of her daughter’s cheek, and left her in the careful guardianship of Zenat.

Rahim’s servant held a lantern aloft, and its light glittered in the mirrors of his black velvet waistcoat and gleamed from the starched fan at the front of his turban. Zenat lifted the wedding
chadr
on which Shabanu’s mother had embroidered desert flowers so perfect the individual stitches were invisible, and Shabanu bent her head like a bride as the
ayah
arranged it over her hair.

Rahim was standing before the heavy wooden
mantel of the fireplace in the grand front room of the old house when Shabanu entered. The electricity was off in the house, diverted to the pumps that carried water from the tube wells in the farthest fields, where the cotton was newly planted. Candles glowed from silver holders on the mantel, and crystal oil lamps beside the draped windows threw golden glints from the mirrored ceilings. The ancient mud walls were painted with fat melons and trellises bent with the weight of heavy-headed flowers.

Rahim’s square shoulders belied his sixty years. Shabanu lifted her head and removed the
chadr
, letting it slip down over her shoulders, and Rahim watched her silently. The turbaned servant reappeared at the door with a silver tray and offered Shabanu a glass of apple juice.

“Are you well?” Rahim asked, his voice rich and warm. Shabanu nodded. The incident with Leyla was not important enough to bother him with, especially not on his first night home. She saved the most serious of Amina’s and Leyla’s acts of malice for her argument that she must find a place away from Okurabad where she might live with Mumtaz one day, when Rahim was no longer there to care for them. He was forty-two years older than Shabanu, and she was truly afraid to be at the farm without him.

“See!” she’d said to him two weeks before, when she’d presented him with the body of Mumtaz’s favorite puppy. She had found it with its neck wrung
at the edge of the stable yard. “What will become of Mumtaz and me when you are no longer able to protect us?”

As always when these things happened, an acceptable explanation was found for the puppy’s death. It was said that Mumtaz played with the pup in the stable, which was forbidden. Rahim and his brother Mahsood kept their stallions there. The least disturbance could cause a hormonal storm that might rage within the high-strung beasts for days.

“You must keep the child under control,” Rahim had said to her. He dismissed her fears, and she’d had to let the matter drop.

Rahim put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead gently.

“My old soul is always better when I’ve laid eyes upon you, my love,” he said.

The deep lines in his face softened as he smiled in the flickering light. His hair was gray as his silk
shalwar kameez
. A woolen Kashmiri vest fit flat over his middle, and his trousers billowed out from under the tunic before narrowing again above his soft polished shoes. He was straight and slim, but Shabanu thought he looked weary, and wondered what weighed so heavily on him.

“Would you like to visit Zabo?” he asked, and Shabanu’s heart lifted.

“When?”

“I’m going to Mehrabpur tomorrow. I thought
you and Mumtaz would like to come along.”

“Yes, of course,” she said quickly, and lowered her eyes. Shabanu was afraid to show pleasure at the thought of seeing her one friend, for fear something would happen to prevent her going. It had been so long since Shabanu had been with anyone her own age with whom she could talk freely.

Rahim lifted her chin and looked into her eyes.

“I wish I could do more to make you happy,” he said. She did smile then, and his eyes lost their dark worried look for a moment.

“It will make me very happy to see Zabo.”

Rahim tapped her chin with his knuckle.

“But I need your help,” he said. “I am going to ask Nazir for Zabo to marry Ahmed. Will you persuade her?”

Shabanu thought at first that Rahim was mistaken; he couldn’t mean Ahmed!

“But Ahmed is … not right!” said Shabanu.

“He’s been to doctors in Lahore, and he can give her children,” Rahim said quietly, not looking at her.

“But what if they’re like him?” Poor Zabo! She was lovely and fair as a spring day in Cholistan. Shabanu’s stomach tightened and her mouth felt dry.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Rahim said softly. “But she’ll be safe here with Ahmed. You and she can spend all your time together. You need someone to talk to and laugh with. You will persuade her?”

“If Zabo marries Ahmed, she’ll never have anything
to laugh about—ever again!” she said. “Must you?” She looked into Rahim’s face, but his eyes would not meet hers and finally she looked away.