Haveli (20 page)

The walls of the small room were lined with jars and bottles of various colors, sizes, and shapes. Overhead a canopy of dried plants gave off a musty smell.

He asked Shabanu to sit, and with one foot he pushed a small flat cushion toward her so she wouldn’t have to sit on the bare earthen floor.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said before Shabanu had even said who she was. “I can get a message to Sharma tonight.”

“Please let her know that Zabo will be married at Okurabad in three days,” she said. “It’s much earlier than we’d expected. Please tell her we need her before the time we’d agreed on.”

“It will be done,” he said simply. He had neither written down what she’d said nor asked questions.

The
hakkim
then shifted his whole attention to Shabanu for the first time since she entered the room. He asked about Mumtaz and about Choti. He questioned her closely, as if the small deer somehow was the key to solving a very serious problem.

Then just as abruptly he stopped asking questions and took out an old wooden box and lifted its lid. He removed small round bottles with square bases and glass stoppers that were filled with different-colored
liquids, powders, and grains. He arranged the bottles in a cluster before him.

He withdrew a long, clear crystal on a fine gold chain from the fold at the top of his
lungi
and twirled it in slow circles, letting out the chain bit by bit as it swung over the vials. He concentrated on the crystal and the vials, eliminating them one by one until only two stood from the cluster, one containing a white powder, the other grains that looked like lavender sand.

“The stars show trouble for you and your daughter,” he said finally, his rosy cheeks pouching as he pursed his lips. Even his voice was childlike.

“What kind of trouble?” Shabanu asked quietly. Something in his eerie high voice and his ethereal looks made her believe there was a special connection between the
hakkim
and the world of the unknown—something to be regarded with gravity. She trusted him.

“I cannot be one-hundred-percent sure,” he said. “It may be that both of you will fall ill.” He leaned over the vials again and poured a bit of the contents of each onto small white squares of paper and folded them into two neat packets.

“Mix these with your tea. The white in the morning, and the lavender in the evening. Divide them into equal portions, one for each of the next five days. Both of you drink this without fail. When you return to Lahore, come back to see me.”

“Can’t you tell me the nature of the danger? Perhaps I could be more vigilant …” she said.

“Just do as I say, child,” Aab-pa said, working his lips over his small, even teeth, which were stained red with betel juice. “Keep the child with you. Sleep with her. Don’t let her out of your sight. And her pet deer, too. And tell nobody about any of this. These are dangerous times.”

Shabanu was alarmed. Her heart thundered. He had helped her without her having to ask. She must concentrate only on keeping herself and Mumtaz safe.

She hurried through the lanes on her way back to the
haveli
. She wanted to be back before she was missed at teatime. She felt light-headed and slightly ill as she let herself in through the back gate.

It’s good we’re going, she thought. It’s time for a return to reason.

But reason was not so easy to come by.

On the drive from Lahore to Okurabad, Shabanu, Zabo, and Mumtaz sat in the back of Rahim’s European sedan. Rahim drove, and Omar sat in the front seat. The air conditioner cooled the air to a frigid stillness, keeping out the smells and sounds of animals and vehicles on the roadway. The bodyguards rode in automobiles in front, clearing the road as they went. The other servants followed in the van behind.

Omar and Rahim were engrossed in talk of politics and crops. Zabo stared out the window, and
Mumtaz begged Shabanu to play a game of cat’s cradle with her. Shabanu concentrated very hard on the string in order to keep her eyes from Omar.

There was a loud thump, and Shabanu felt a jolt to the side of the car. Rahim jammed his foot on the brake, and Mumtaz was thrown against the front seat with the suddenness of the stop.

A woman standing at the side of the road threw out her arms, and horror twisted her face. She raised her hands fluttering to her mouth.

On the roadbed beside and slightly behind where the car had come to a stop, a child lay sprawled on his back, his arms flung wide. Blood gushed from a terrible wound in his head. A young man rushed to the child, and a crowd gathered around him. A moment later another man sped off down the canal path on a bicycle.

Rahim slapped the wheel with impatience. The bodyguards emerged from the car behind with their guns, and the crowd moved back a step.

The crowd fell silent. People stood beside their animals, cars, and bicycles along the roadbed, some staring at the child, others at the bodyguards.

A few moments later the bicyclist returned with a
beldar
, still wearing the red turban from his job as tender of the canal, behind him on the seat over the rear wheel. The
beldar
jumped from the bicycle before it stopped and ran to the boy. He knelt, gathering the small form against his chest. When he stood, the boy’s
arms dangled lifelessly from his shoulders. The man looked up and walked toward Rahim’s car, his bare chest heaving with sorrow. The bodyguards stepped forward to stop him, but he brushed past them, tears wetting his face. His wife wailed and struggled against the women who restrained her.

Rahim stepped from the car. Shabanu opened the back door to go to the mother. All she could think was how grief-stricken she would be if the dead child were Mumtaz.

“Stay in the car!” commanded Rahim, and Shabanu froze for a moment, then pushed the door open wider. Rahim whirled around.

“Get back inside,” he said, his voice flat and hard.

Shabanu looked at Omar, who sat immobile in the front seat. Slowly she got back into her seat. Omar did not turn around, nor did he return her look. A muscle twitched in his cheek.

Mumtaz sat with her nose pressed to the window.

“What happened, Uma?” she asked.

Shabanu picked up Mumtaz and resettled her on her lap, hugging her close.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Papa’s taking care of it.” Mumtaz looked up, and Shabanu realized that she had spoken with such bitterness that even the child recognized it. She rolled down the window to listen.

Still Omar sat facing forward, saying nothing.

Rahim reached into his breast pocket. He pulled out a packet of five-hundred-rupee notes and, unfolding
it, counted out two bills. He leaned forward and held out the thousand rupees toward the man.

“Will this bring back my only son?” asked the man, his voice cracking. But after a moment he reached out and took the money, which no doubt was more than he’d ever seen at one time.

The crowd dispersed silently, Rahim returned to the car, and they drove off again with nothing more said.

Shabanu’s heart raced with anger. She could keep silent no longer.

“How can you be so callous?” she asked, her voice breaking. Rahim didn’t so much as look at her in the rearview mirror. A blush crept up the back of Omar’s neck. He too remained silent.

“Don’t you realize that people like the
beldar
and his wife live simple lives? The death of an only son is the loss of their greatest treasure!”

Rahim’s silence could only mean he was angry. Zabo reached out and put her hand over Shabanu’s.

“It would have been better to offer sympathy than money!” she said, and then through a monumental effort managed to say nothing more.

The car flew over the sun-dappled pavement, the overhanging acacia branches sheltering the roadway.

B
ack at Okurabad the focus shifted to preparations for Zabo and Ahmed’s wedding. Mumtaz was cross because Shabanu would not allow her out to play with Samiya’s children. Samiya and Zenat kept watch outside Shabanu’s room, where Zabo stayed with them during the day. At night Zabo went with Selma to the house.

Choti also remained in the room with them, according to Aab-pa’s orders, and she liked the confinement as little as Mumtaz did. She stood in the doorway tossing her head and tapping her small hooves on the floor.

After lunch, Zabo, Shabanu, and Mumtaz napped in the room beside the stable, under the limp mosquito netting, their breathing shallow and slow in the afternoon heat. They awoke slowly, their eyes still hot, and folded back the mosquito netting. Shabanu opened the shutters, and the harsh white sunlight was painful to her eyes. There was no breeze, and the air
outside was as hot and stale as the air inside the room.

From under the
charpoi
Zabo dragged two large trunks. She and Shabanu shook out the pieces of Zabo’s dowry and arranged them about the room, examining each piece minutely.

The top of every table and chair, the floor, the cupboards were covered with elaborately embroidered and jeweled saris,
shalwar kameez
, and shawls.

Sitting atop each article of clothing—several suits for each day of the celebration of the wedding—was the jewelry Zabo would wear with it.

Mumtaz stood beside a pink and shimmering yellow-green silk
shalwar kameez
fingering rows of tiny peridots strung on gloden threads and earrings of peridots clustered with diamonds. Beside it a silver silk sari woven with a maroon paisley border was offset with deep, mysterious crystals of wine-colored garnet set in platinum. Choti stood immobile beside her, as if she too were in awe of such finery.

“This is the real test,” said Zabo as she lifted two identical lamb suede sacks and dumped their clinking contents onto the coverlet on the bed between her and Shabanu. The red sack in her left hand contained solid gold bangles; the one in her right held imitation rolled gold of exactly the same color and design, created by the finest jeweler in the Anarkali Bazaar. As the bangles mixed together on the coverlet, they were impossible to tell apart.

“Guess which are real,” said Zabo. Shabanu picked them up and turned them in her fingers.

“They weigh the same,” she said. “And they’re exactly the same color.” She hefted them, one by one, in her palm.

“I can’t tell,” she said.

“Let me see,” said Zabo, bending her head over the gold circles in each of Shabanu’s outstretched palms. “I can’t tell either.”

Shabanu was about to test the two gold pieces with her teeth when the door to her room banged open, and there stood Nazir, his globular frame outlined by the harsh light from the courtyard.

“Why are you hiding in here?” he asked, his voice booming in that still, small room, which until this moment had never reverberated with a man’s voice. “What are you doing? Looking at your dowry? Why haven’t you shown me? I sent you a fortune.… ”

“Father! I was just organizing it to display in Uncle Rahim’s house for you to see,” Zabo said. A small red dot high on Zabo’s left cheekbone was the only sign that betrayed her fear. Her voice was calm and normal.

Nazir came in without asking or being asked, his breath wheezing in a rattle through his overfat chest.

Shabanu and Zabo sat immobile with shock on the bed, and Shabanu’s shoulders twitched with wanting to hide the bangles away. But she knew Nazir’s suspicious nature and sat still, the gold—was it real or
fake?—still sitting in her open palms.

Nazir bent over Shabanu to peer into her hand. His breath was sour with the aftersmell of tobacco and whiskey, and floating over the stench was an overwhelming cloud of expensive perfume. He reached out and picked up the bangle in Shabanu’s right palm. A large diamond gleamed from a gold ring on his pudgy pinkie finger.

Shabanu’s breath caught in the back of her throat, and Zabo shot her a searing look, but Nazir appeared not to have heard. Neither of the women moved.

Nazir sidled over to the doorway and turned to look at the bangle in the unforgiving sunlight. Shabanu reached out for Zabo’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze, then she stood and walked to the doorway.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Shabanu asked him.

“How many ounces are they?” he demanded.

“I … I’m not sure,” said Zabo.

“I sent you enough money that each one should weigh at least two ounces,” he said.

“I don’t believe in buying heavy bangles,” said Zabo, standing to face her father with resolution. “I think it’s vulgar.”

Shabanu sensed that Zabo, who never disobeyed or questioned her father, wanted to engage him in a discussion of the jewelry to distract him from testing it.

Without warning, Nazir’s arm lashed out. The
back of his hand caught Zabo full in the mouth, sending her flying backward onto the floor. The diamond ring had caught her lip, and a thin line of blood trickled down one side of her chin.

Choti bucked and bolted from the room with a skittering of tiny hooves, and Mumtaz shrank back against the wall. Shabanu hurried to help Zabo to her feet. Mumtaz ran over and hid behind them.

Nazir turned back to the sunlit doorway, ignoring them, and lifted the bangle to his teeth. Allah have mercy, please let that be a real one, Shabanu prayed to herself as she dabbed at Zabo’s now profusely bleeding lip with the end of her
dupatta
.

They couldn’t see Nazir’s face, for his back was turned to them, and that moment seemed to last forever. The spot between Shabanu’s shoulder blades twitched wildly.

Then Nazir turned.

“At least it’s good twenty-four-karat gold,” he said. “You shouldn’t have more than eighteen-karat gold in a bangle. This will bend. Still, it’s better to err on the side of heavier gold, even though it’s softer.… ”

He went around the room then, bending over to examine every article of clothing and every piece of jewelry that lay with it. He held each piece of jewelry up to the light and turned it to see the facets gleam. He touched the silks and embroideries tenderly, with the only affection Shabanu had ever seen him display.

Zabo clung to Shabanu, but he seemed not to
notice he’d hurt his daughter, or indeed even that the two women and Mumtaz were in the room.