Leela's Book (34 page)

Aisha sat on the bed looking out of the window into the garden. Until now, she had done exactly what she had been told. She had stayed in the Ahmeds’ house, picking at the food set before her, wearing the clothes Urvashi handed to her, and all the time going over the events of the past twenty-four hours, remembering good moments from the last six months. She worried that Humayun had heard what had happened and wanted nothing more to do with her; she would wipe her eyes and tell herself that this wasn’t true. Then an image would come to her of the old Hindu man’s face as he lay on top of her – frozen, as if in agony – and after that she would sit for a very long time, hunched up, immobile, staring out of the window, until Mrs Ahmed came to find her.

Last night, after the Hindu man had left her in the Professor’s house, Aisha waited until she was sure he had gone, and only then did she get to her feet, feeling giddy and ill, pulling the dupatta so far down that it completely covered her face, and made her way slowly down the Professor’s garden path and along the quiet road that ran between the Chaturvedis’ and the Ahmeds’. Humayun had warned her not to leave the Chaturvedi house until Mrs Ahmed came to collect her, but now that the Hindu man knew where she worked, she couldn’t wait there. She approached the Ahmeds’ house slowly, reassured by the familiar sight of its long glassy windows and large wrought-iron gate. The house was in darkness and she opened the front gate and curled up there under the plants, in her familiar place where she waited for Humayun in the time between swabbing the floors at Mrs Ahmed’s and beginning at Professor Chaturvedi’s. Late in the afternoon, on the days he hadn’t picked up the milk in the morning, Humayun would hurry to Mother Dairy with the pails she had cleaned, to queue for milk, and Aisha would water the plants in the front garden, looking out through the leaves at passers-by, at their shoes, their saris, their necklaces and blouses, watching the goings-on of the neighbourhood – waiting especially for the girls of her age in their blue school dresses who came home across the bridge, punctually every day at half past two – and eventually she would see Humayun coming down the road, swinging his milk pail as he walked, and smiling, because he knew that she could see him. She had closed her eyes as she lay there and the next thing she knew, Mrs Ahmed had arrived and was carrying her across the threshold of her house and into the guest room.

Aisha got to her feet and opened the bedroom door. She wanted to know, now, what it was that Mrs Ahmed and her mother were talking about in the study. She moved silently across the front room in her bare feet and put her head against the study door. Her mother was speaking in a low voice, and Aisha could only make out a few words:
Bihar
, she heard, and
Mamu
, uncle, and then that word,
Shaadi
, marriage. She wondered why her mother wanted to take her to Bihar for a wedding; they never went there any more. The last time had been when Aisha was very small. She remembered her Mamu, a fat, kind-faced old man, whose wife had died long ago and whose children had grown up and made families of their own. But the village – she didn’t like the village – it had very bad electricity connections and no running water.

Her mother raised her voice slightly, interrupting something that Mrs Ahmed was saying: ‘But it is the only way to save her honour.’ She sounded both sad and indignant, and Aisha stepped back from the door as if she had been hit. So it wasn’t a cousin’s wedding they were going to. Her mother meant for her to be married – to her Mamu. She stared around her wildly, trying to find something familiar in Mrs Ahmed’s front room to focus on, but her eyes roamed over the polished furniture and ornamental objects that she had dusted so often, without finding any solace. She knew that this was what women always warned of, in sharp but hushed voices: the advantage men would take of young girls. She thought of Humayun’s promise to marry her – and how he had immediately taken her into his quarters and laid her on his bed. She was stupid to have gone with him; everybody would say she had only herself to blame. But he had promised to marry her, and maybe the promise would have been honoured if she had not opened the door of the Professor’s house to the old Hindu man. Nobody would forgive her for that. And now this third man – this aged village uncle. She hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. There was nobody to trust, nobody. Even Humayun was to blame. He should have married her first, in front of their whole community, and then taken her into his room and forced his children upon her. That was the proper way in which things were done.

Her mother was speaking again, louder now, sounding frustrated and tired. ‘I have been told that his family is against us,’ she was saying. ‘They think the reason the police have locked Humayun up is because Aisha accused him of the crime.’

‘But why would they think that?’ Mrs Ahmed asked, sounding shocked, and when Aisha’s mother uttered a wordless sound of exasperation, Aisha knew that nothing she could say would make her employer understand. She walked silently back into the guest room and sat down on the bed. So Humayun was in the police station, that was the reason he hadn’t come to see her.

Aisha’s mother had always told her that life was difficult, that life was unfair. She knew that Humayun’s opinion was different: with hard work, he thought, you made your own luck. Now it was Aisha’s turn to see her choices laid out before her. She could do as her mother said, and go to the village, and never see Humayun again. Or she could tell the police they had taken the wrong man. Then Humayun would owe her something. If she freed him from the police, he would have to save her from shame and marriage to her uncle.

But if she went to the police station now, who knew what the police might do to them both. Today at the police station, the tall, angry constable had mentioned doctor’s tests, and Aisha did not want to be tested again. The doctor whom Mrs Ahmed had called to the house last night had made her lie on her back on the bed as he pulled up various parts of her clothing and removed items from her skin – and even from deep inside her. He had touched her here and there, asking about scratches and bruising. ‘What are you doing?’ Aisha pleaded at last, chilled and scared by being semi-naked in front of yet another strange man. The doctor had sighed and apologised: ‘I am sorry, my little one, I have to collect these samples, just in case.’

Aisha couldn’t confide in Mrs Ahmed, who was a Hindu and didn’t understand some things that everybody else seemed to know. She couldn’t tell her mother about the promises Humayun had made. It was too late for that. If he had announced his plan to marry her just one day earlier, everything would have been different – his mother may have objected and made difficulties, but Humayun could have persuaded her. Now it was impossible.

There was only one other person Aisha could speak to, and that was Iqbal, Humayun’s cousin. He lived in the basti in a small brick-built house, not far from the shrine. Humayun had shown her the house once, when he went to collect his cousin on Eid. But she bit her lip in worry: how would she get out of the house without Mrs Ahmed hearing, and how to get to the basti without being recognised by Humayun’s family?

Then she remembered. Yesterday, Mrs Ahmed had come home from the market with a paper-covered package from the Islamic bookshop. ‘Look at this,’ she had told Aisha, and opened it up. The silky black material had spilled out into the air as if Mrs Ahmed was a djinn controlling a stormcloud. ‘Do you know what it is?’ she asked, and Aisha had nodded. It was an Arab-style burqa, such as some women in the basti now wore. Mrs Ahmed pulled the layers of georgette over her face and tied the string around her chin. Then she laughed. ‘I’m not going to tell my husband just yet,’ she said. ‘He may disapprove. I’ll have to hide it.’ She pulled it off, and pushed the burqa back into the paper bag. ‘I’ll put it in the rice store.’

That evening, after she had said goodbye to her mother, Aisha ate dinner sitting alone in her bedroom, a plate of food on the low table near the window. She dragged the roti round the plate until it was clean. Then she waited for Mrs Ahmed and her husband to go upstairs, and once the lights had gone off and everything was quiet, she crept out of the guest room, across the marble entrance hall, and into the kitchen. First, she took a stool and reached up to the crockery cupboard. There, right at the back, hidden under the piece of paper lining the shelf was a slim envelope with this month’s salary from Mrs Ahmed in large denomination notes. She pulled it out and put it in her pocket.

The rice store was in the cupboard next to the gas cylinder below the window. Aisha felt inside for the bulky paper packet. Standing by the stool where she had been sitting when Humayun kissed her, she unwrapped the burqa and tied it around her body as Mrs Ahmed had done. It was too big for her, and the folds flowed down from the crown of her head.

Outside in the street, she lifted the gate back on to its latch. Tonight there was no moon and the trees lining the road created a canopy that frightened her, made denser and more impenetrable by the layers of material in front of her eyes. But she walked slowly down the street, passed the Professor’s house and then, reaching the entrance to the basti, slowed down because the houses were built so very close together, and the street, with its small shuttered shops and stalls, was quiet, and she didn’t want to miss the turning to Iqbal’s house. She walked slowly, trying to see the outline of the houses through the burqa; they were blackened by fire, their roofs caved in, and she remembered what Mrs Ahmed had told her that morning, about the stampede and the burning.

Iqbal’s house was near the shrine, beyond the kabariwallah settlement, right up the hill just before the girls’ madrassah. It was a distinctive house, brick-built, only two storeys high. There was a dog lying in the road, and Aisha heard the drone of cars on the main road in the distance. When she approached the door, she could hear voices inside and wondered what she should say. At last, she raised her hand and knocked on the wood and somebody came to the door almost immediately. ‘Yes?’

In a low voice Aisha gave Iqbal’s name, and said, ‘A message from Aunt Raziya.’

It took some minutes to bring Iqbal to the door. ‘Excuse me, Auntie,’ he said when he arrived, ‘I was eating.’

Iqbal had recently become very religious, and he wore a white cap and shaved his upper lip; but his beard was still so exceedingly thin and wispy that Humayun liked to tease him for it. Aisha motioned him away from the house, around the dog, to the other side of the street. The wind was blowing the colour supplement of a newspaper across the road; a film actress with long billowing hair and a modern slinky sari smiled up from the banner of the paper.

‘I am Aisha,’ she said.

‘Aisha,’ he replied, his voice full of wonder, and she felt the hope that had left her when the Hindu man pushed her into the house return like a flock of brightly coloured birds alighting nosily in a tree.

‘Humayun is in trouble,’ she said. He bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘Brother,’ Aisha went on, ‘I am in trouble too.’ In a hushed voice she explained about her mother’s plans, about the wedding, about the uncle, and the village. ‘If I stay in that house,’ she said, ‘they will come and take me.’

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding. Then he added, ‘Humayun’s mother will never let him marry you.’

They stood together in the road as the wind blew the news papers and fire ash around them in a dirty, colourful squall. Aisha knew that they would have to hurry; if they stood here any longer, Humayun’s uncles would grow suspicious and come out to question them both.

At last, Iqbal spoke. ‘You should wait in the shrine,’ he said. ‘It is the safest place. Can you do that? You may get cold. Wait by the grave of Princess Jahanara, it is the most secluded part. Tomorrow, either Humayun or I will come and find you. You will have to wait for many hours, all night. You will have to be careful.’

He took some money from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Buy something to eat from the stalls outside the shrine. If anybody questions you, say you are praying for a son, and that after some time your husband is coming to collect you.’

He turned to go, and then stopped. Aisha saw him stoop down to the ground and pick up a piece of blue string that had been used to tie up a bundle of newspapers.

‘Fix this on to the hem of your burqa,’ he said, ‘so that I can tell Humayun to look out for this mark.’

She thanked him.

‘
Alhamdu lillahi allaa kulli haal
,’ Iqbal said, and turned away towards the house. Praise to Allah in all circumstances.

Aisha watched him go, and stood there, alone in the street, thinking about what he had said. At last she set off, walking very slowly, towards the shrine, but as she walked, she thought about the police, and the crime Humayun had been accused of, and the marriage her mother wanted to make for her in Bihar, and the act that Humayun had performed, which bound him to her, and the more she thought about it the more clearly she saw that Iqbal’s advice was wrong.

She walked on, past the turning to the shrine and out to the main road. When she arrived at the police station she didn’t hesitate. With her envelope of money clutched tightly in her hand beneath her burqa, she walked up the steps and announced to the policeman on the desk what she was there for and that they had taken the wrong man. Then she held out the money.

Humayun was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall when he heard the sound of the door being unlocked from the outside. ‘You,’ he heard the policeman say, ‘there’s a woman here to take you. Get up. Quickly. Go.’

He shook his head, unbelieving. He had been in the police station for less than twenty-four hours, but already it felt as if days had passed. ‘Get out of here,’ the policeman was saying as he got to his feet, ‘and don’t come back. If you show your face again in Delhi we’ll do to that girlfriend of yours what we’ve done to you.’

Why weren’t they asking for money? Humayun wondered as they unlocked the cell and let him out. Then he felt in his pocket: they had taken the envelope with his pay from the Professor.