Revolt (19 page)

Rukhsar’s nimble fingers carefully embedded the ruby gems into the appropriate tiny grooves of the necklace and earring set. The goldsmith left it to his wife and daughters to check the minutiae – including whether all the little
machlis
, the dangling bits, were strung in the correct sequence on the earrings.

Rukhsar had just counted ten rubies in one ear stud and eleven in the other. Feverishly, her fingers began to count again: loudly reciting
‘ek, do, teen’
. Each ruby cost extra rupees and they couldn’t afford to make generous mistakes, particularly with three daughters to wed and with inflation on the rise. The
atta
, flour, was so expensive and there was sugar rationing, too; it was back to
gurh
tea for many villagers. Rukhsar wondered how the poor coped, especially those with large families.

‘Massi Fiza is here!’ her youngest daughter crisply announced, obeying the house rule to first warn their mother and then to help her quickly shield the gold jewellery from the visitors’ prying eyes. Rukhsar either tucked them under a cushion or covered them discreetly with a newspaper if a tablecloth was not available. This time, however, Rukhsar didn’t rush. It was only Massi Fiza, a good and trusted neighbour, whose eyes had been fully corrupted by hundreds of
tholas
of gold, but she had no knowledge as to where the goldsmith family stored their cash or gold at night.

The sturdy wooden door leading to the rooftop was forever bolted with three large, clumsy bolts. Only the master goldsmith’s solid masculine fingers could prise them open. So Rukhsar and her daughters were deprived of the luxury of sleeping on the open terraces, under the gleaming, heavenly stars in
the summer. They had to make do with the ceiling fans and air conditioning that their loving father had generously provided for his
nazak
, his delicate, ‘boarding school educated’ daughters as he proudly liked to describe them. Daughters aside, security was the number one priority for all. And no female in the household complained, especially since the trauma of an overnight robbery via the rooftop door, when thieves who had climbed over from the neighbouring terrace had made off with half a pillowcase of gold items. Poor Master-ji never forgot or quite recovered from that tragic incident. Rukhsar was adamant that it was then that her husband’s hair had started to go grey, almost overnight. Insurance was unheard of in the village; loss was loss and had to be philosophically borne.

So from that day on, somebody from the family always had to guard their goods. ‘Business was business after all,’ Master Goldsmith had briskly drilled into his wife. No customer was ever left alone with the gold, irrespective of their status or their relationship with the goldsmith’s family. Today, Massi Fiza-ji could not help gawping at the gleaming gold and emerald choker set lying on a bed of velvet. The counting finished, Rukhsar snapped the velvet box shut and peered up at their neighbour through her large blue bifocals.

‘Welcome, Massi Fiza.’

‘Oh, what a lovely necklace! Whose is it?’ Massi Fiza squinted to take a closer look. Unlike her friend, she hated wearing her glasses, loathing the weight of them on her nose, and was therefore content to remain semi-blind when it came to examining minute details.

Not bothering to answer, Rukhsar passed the box to her hovering daughter. Massi Fiza-ji was just as persistent this morning.

‘Was that necklace ten
tholas
in weight? Is it meant for that lawyer woman, Saher?’

‘Actually, yes,’ Rukhsar reluctantly divulged. Her head shot up as her friend’s body had doubled in laughter. ‘What’s so funny, Massi Fiza-ji?’

‘Well, I can tell you one thing – that necklace you have been working on, Rukhsar-ji, won’t go on Saher’s pretty neck.’

‘What do you mean?’ Rukhsar looked up, aghast.

‘I mean that she’ll not be wearing it. If anybody – it will be a lady with a very white neck indeed.’

‘What are you insinuating, Massi Fiza-ji?’ the goldmistress asked sharply, not caring for Massi Fiza’s tendency to embroider events this morning. They had worked tirelessly on this set for the last few days and she had the arthritis in her finger joints to prove it. They were still glowing with the honour that the landlord had chosen them, the village jewellers, rather than the sophisticated urban ones, with their posh display cabinets and a team of workers to design and sell the goods.

‘Well, I might as well tell it to you straight, as half of the village probably already knows by now.’

‘What? Please don’t exaggerate!’ Rukhsar urged, already irked by what she had learned.

‘That
goorie
, the white woman staying at Mistress Gulbahar’s house, is Ismail’s wife!’ Massi Fiza triumphantly blurted out and eagerly waited for her friend’s reaction.

Result.

Rukhsar was shocked into silence, mouth pursed into a tight line, a glazed look behind the designer frames.

‘Well, what do you think of that?’ Massi Fiza prompted, scanning Rukhsar’s face with interest.

Her neighbour merely nodded, struck dumb at the thought of all that money possibly lost. Landlord Liaquat had kept her poor Sharif-ji busy for days, working tirelessly on scores of jewellery items of all shapes, styles and sizes. And now this! Would the landlord buy all these sets if the wedding was not even going to take place?

‘Oh, no!’ she cried out aloud. The cost of her eldest daughter’s trousseau was partly invested in the landlord’s commissioned jewellery items. The lavish engagement party had already put them in arrears by thousands of rupees and there were the college costs for their youngest daughter, Farah. Rukhsar turned a pained gaze on her friend.

‘Have you heard what I’ve been saying, Rukhsar-ji? Are you OK?’ Massi Fiza was now genuinely alarmed.

‘Massi Fiza-ji, what cruel news you’ve given us! I knew something like this would happen. When you send your sons abroad and they bring back strange parcels – including foreign wives. Just as well my daughters aren’t getting married abroad. My daughter is only going to the nearby town.’

It was Massi Fiza’s turn to first stare and then button her mouth into a straight line.

‘Who’s getting married?’

Rukhsar blushed, her eyes falling. ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you that my Shabnum is engaged?’

Massi Fiza-ji was most aggrieved on two accounts. Firstly, that her friend hadn’t told her anything, and she visited them every day, and secondly, that she had planned to ask for the girl’s hand for her eldest son. Rukhsar glimpsed the disappointment in her friend’s eyes and just as slyly and skilfully ignored it, knowing exactly what Massi Fiza was thinking. Inside she was churning with fury. Did the laundrywoman actually have the audacity to think that she, the goldsmith’s wife, would stoop down to wed her town-educated, Murree boarding school daughter to a village lout, and to have her live in a village home stacked with other people’s dirty laundry!

‘Poor Saher, being jilted like that,’ Rukhsar forcefully dragged her thoughts back to the matter in discussion, ‘and by a woman from another race! Please, Allah Pak, save all our daughters from such a tragic fate as being jilted! I can’t imagine what it must be like in those three mighty
zemindar
sisters’ households. They are probably all going crazy. All are affected by this in some way or other – aren’t they?’

‘Yes, they are, Rukhsar-ji. Do you know that Mehreen sacked her housekeeper, Rasoola? Apparently Rasoola is going around everywhere, telling tales about her mistress and the white bride. Can you imagine having such a housekeeper? It’s disgraceful – that woman hasn’t one ounce of loyalty in her!’

‘You’re right!’ Rukhsar agreed. ‘What a thing to do – to betray the very hand that feeds you.’

‘Talking about betrayal, the children of those landowners have done a fair share of that – letting their parents down, I mean.
First the daughter of one sister marries a potter’s son, and then the only son of the third sister brings home a foreign woman; the daughter of the second sister to be jilted in the process. I feel so, so sorry for that poor woman. Haughty though she is! I’ve once or twice tried to speak to her when she is visiting her aunt’s home, but she looks right through you. It’s so humiliating. Why are we treated with such contempt? Do we … people of the lower classes not matter?’

‘Poor you, but to those people you are just the servant – your detergent-stained clothes – that probably puts her off … And why should she, a famous lawyer, enter into discussion with you? You two have nothing in common.’

‘I’m human, too! Allah Pak made me, too!’ Massi Fiza heatedly reminded her friend, hating her for the remarks and feeling demeaned by them.

‘Of course!’ Rukhsar hastened to mollify her neighbour. ‘By the way, I’ve heard about Jennat Bibi’s daughter-in-law, Faiza, miscarrying and she blamed it on that poor girl – Salma!’

‘Yes, I forgot to tell you, that poor girl is in a real state according to her mother, Zeinab. In fact, I’ve heard she has locked herself in her room and says that she’ll not leave!’

‘What?’

Massi Fiza energetically shrugged her shoulders. ‘She’s daft! When Jennat Bibi told her not to visit their house, why did the silly girl bother going there? Who knows, it might be her
perchanvah
that has caused it!’

‘Oh, come on, Massi Fiza-ji. This is silly!’

‘Well, Jennat Bibi’s
pir
can’t be wrong, can he?’ Massi Fiza bristled, a true follower of Jennat Bibi’s school of thought, wearing one of the amulets that the sweetmaker’s wife had ‘kindly’ bought from the
pir
for her. Every time she visited Jennat Bibi’s home for the laundry, Massi Fiza was supplied with a good dose of the
pir’s
teaching. And Massi Fiza was an extremely avid listener and a faithful follower, intent on pleasing Jennat Bibi, a good customer for the laundry and supplier of sweets and snacks. Massi Fiza hated washing the sweetmaker’s syrup-stained overcoat, but the added bonus was that she always ended up picking
the leftover sweets from the shop. So in Massi Fiza’s house, her steel plate of
ladoos
,
gulab jamuns
and
patesas
, her three favourite sweets, was never empty. And, unfortunately, she had three missing back molars to prove it!

‘Oh, well, if the
pir
says so,’ Rukhsar drily acquiesced, not bothering to debate the matter on superstitions further.

‘By the way, I spotted Ismail entering the potter’s house right now, as I was leaving my house. I wonder what those two are getting up to,’ she winked, eyes sparkling in mischief.

‘Well, your guess is as good as mine – both have made their parents suffer. They are probably commiserating with each other. And he’s made my family suffer, too – for making those wretched necklace sets for his wedding!’

Zeinab stood under the veranda outside her daughter Salma’s bedroom, her knuckles hurting from banging on the old mahogany door, which dated to the period preceding the partition of India and Pakistan. Her father-in-law had gone back to their village house near Delhi and carted their special wooden door back to Pakistan.

‘Open the door, you silly girl! Come out and eat. If you carry on like this people will believe that there is something
seriously
wrong with you … with your silly habit of hiding in the sugarcane fields and now locking yourself in. I’ve called your husband to take you away from the village.’

‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to eat anything.’

‘Will you not help your poor mother? I’ve three quilts to darn for Gujjar’s daughter’s trousseau.’

‘Leave me, Mother!’

‘Stubborn girl!’ Zeinab angrily muttered, despairing at the thought of the stitching yet to be done. The quilt needed to be fully stitched in the next hour and she could not afford to lose her next order. Gujjar, the village milk supplier, was a good customer, as his wife was devoted to annual spring cleaning and also tended to order new bedding every year. For Gujjar’s wife, airing quilts on rooftop terraces was not enough; she insisted on new ones, just before the Bakra Eid festival.

Daughter or no daughter to lend a hand, the quilt had to be finished; this was her livelihood. The basket of thick darning needles tucked in the crook of her elbow, Zeinab climbed up the mud-baked steps to the rooftop terrace to continue her
work under the sun. The raw, lumpy bits of cotton buds for the deep blue velvet quilts had to be flattened out first before being stiched by hand. With her long, thick darning needle, Zeinab’s dexterous fingers dug in and out of the thick quilt border.

Down below, Salma peeped out of her door, listening for some sounds. Guessing that her mother was up on the terrace with her work, she sneaked into the small, dimly lit kitchen, annexed to one side of the veranda, with a small hole for a window. The clay
tandoor
shared with their poor widowed neighbour who had three young children to feed was still warm from her afternoon
chappati
-making. Salma poured herself a cool glass of
lassi
from the round-bellied clay pot and gulped it all down.

Then, veiling herself carefully in her long blue
chador
, she tied the item she had picked from the kitchen in one corner of it. With her face half hidden, she scurried out of her home and through the village lanes.

Shirin was playing alone, as usual, for the village children had been schooled by their parents to keep away from the girl. Though none of their mothers or fathers had ever explained the reason why to their children, it was out of respect for their landlord. If he ignored the potter’s child then they should follow suit. Like him, they averted their eyes from Shirin’s longing looks; she wished so much to play hopscotch with Chanda, the little girl who lived next door. From the age of six, Shirin got used to spending time on her own. Laila let her play out in the lane, expecting the village to be a safe place. In the city, Shirin would never be allowed to step out of the home without her parents.

What Laila had not realised was that the girl was wandering further and further away from the village on her exploratory jaunts. Today, Shirin had already climbed her favourite tree, snagging the hemline of her frock on one of the branches. Now, she was excitedly hopping to her second favourite place – the termite mound – to play with the little creatures again.

Hearing hurried steps behind her she looked over her
shoulders, her curls flying around her cheeks and mouth parted open. It was the
pagaal
woman in the blue
chador
who talked funny. The greeting of ‘
salaam
’ died on Shirin’s mouth as the woman dashed into the sugarcane field, thrusting her body through the tall, sturdy sugarcane plants.

Bemused and shrugging her small shoulders Shirin carried on walking to the termite mound, now armed with a large twig, ready to give the mound crust a really good poke. Her feet wide apart, she was debating where to start – at the top or at the bottom – when a shadow fell on the mound. Frowning, Shirin stood up. It was a tall man, with a huge turban on his head, fair suntanned skin, and a wiry moustache styled to fall to the sides of his face. She had seen men like him knocking at their apartment door in Islamabad, selling goods. This one also had a bag slung over his shoulders.

He smiled down at her; she gazed spellbound into his startling, liquid-blue eyes.

‘What are you doing, my little girl?’ the man asked in heavily accented Urdu.

Shirin blinked, not wanting to answer – small soft mouth fallen open, very much aware that he was standing too close. Her mother had warned her in the city not to talk to strangers. Nervously, she stepped back. The man’s smile widened.

‘Ah, little one, you want to play with the ants – let me help you.’ He took the twig from her hand, ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

Shirin relaxed, watching him poke a very big hole in the crust. To her delight, almost immediately the ants began to scramble out. She giggled and he laughed.

‘See … look at them. Now you do it …’ Shirin let him guide her hand to poke another hole, his other hand resting lightly on her shoulders, his body leaning against hers from behind as he squatted down to her level.

Salma, the quiltmaker’s daughter, was lying on the ground in the cramped space between the sturdy sugarcane shoots, the long sharp leaves digging into her back and scratching her arms. Eyes
tightly closed, she waited, willing herself to shut out the pain; it was just a matter of time.

The blood was trickling down over the sugarcane shoots.

‘Forgive me, Mother!’ Feeling faint, a buzzing sound echoed in her ears. Then it was shattered by a startling scream and the words ‘No! No!’

Salma sat up, heart thudding, listening. Thinking it was her imagination, she closed her eyes again, slumping against the sugarcane shoots, crushing them beneath her body.

Another piercing scream rent through the air. Salma sat up, alarmed. Staggering to her feet, her blood-soiled shawl caught on a stem was forgotten. Scratching her hands, she thrust her way out of the rows of sugarcane plants and stepped onto the village path.

Ahead of her, she saw a tall man pulling the landlord’s screaming granddaughter behind him. And then, lifting her up, he threw her onto his shoulders and started to run down the path out of the village.

Salma screamed, startling the man in his tracks.

‘Get your hands off her, you pig!’ she called, running after him, her wrist leaking blood.

The man put Shirin down and sprinted off. Salma carried on shouting for help, hoping someone was around in the neighbouring fields to hear her.

‘Help! Our daughter is being kidnapped!’

Traumatised, Shirin rose to her feet, body shaking with violent sobs. The man had told her he wanted to take her to see a
mela
, a fair. When she had politely refused, he had grabbed her arm making her scream as fear took hold of her, her mother’s words of warning, that some men stole children, ringing in her head.

Reaching Shirin, Salma gave her a tight hug.

‘You OK?’

‘Auntie, your arm, it’s bleeding!’ Shirin was frightened of the gash and the stream of blood rushing out.

‘Don’t worry! Let’s get you home.’ Salma held her throbbing wrist against her chest, blood soaking into her
kameez
. Shirin let
herself be pulled, but these hands Shirin trusted. And she was going in the right direction – back to the village.

Her own legs unsteady, Salma tightened her hold of the girl. Looking ahead, she thought fast. The potter’s home was too far; she knew she would not make it there and so she stopped in the village square.

Salma ignored the young boys playing cricket, gawping at her bloody wrist, and the bearded Imam on his way home after leading the prayers in the mosque. There was no modesty
dupatta
or shawl around her body. The Imam quickly averted his gaze from the fulsome thrust of Salma’s breasts straining through her thin cotton
kameez. ‘Besharm
woman!’ he hissed under his breath. ‘Has the quiltmaker’s daughter really flipped this time? That she goes without any modesty covering, save a thin
kameez
!’

He had heard about her strange hiding jaunts in the sugarcane fields. When a woman passer-by called her name, Salma ignored her and carried on walking, her only concern being the girl’s safety.

At the
hevali
gates, she kept her fingertip pressed on the buzzer until a panting Begum, with Rasoola in tow, appeared.

‘Hold on! What’s the hurry, you silly girl? Look at you! What?’ Begum exclaimed, stopping dead, her eyes on Salma’s dripping wrist as she clutched tightly onto the terrified Shirin. What was going on?

‘Please, take her home – she was being kidnapped.’ Salma spoke so low that they could hardly hear her.

‘What?’ Aghast, both housekeepers echoed together.

Next minute, Salma was on the ground, in a heap at their feet.

‘Oh my God! Rasoola, call the doctor! Call Ali! Look at this stupid woman – she’s slit her wrist.’ Pulling off her own shawl and tearing one end of it she wrapped it tightly around Salma’s wrist. Begum did not care; showing the shape of her
middle-aged
breasts was the least of her problems.

‘Take her inside,’ she instructed Rasoola. ‘And you, pet,’ she turned to Shirin, ‘come with me. I’m not letting you out of sight now until I hand you safely back to your mother.’

Begum thought fast. Master Arslan was at home. That was good, as he could take the girl. So much to do. They needed to let Salma’s mother know. Child kidnapping, slit wrists, and a
goorie
bride at their door – what next?

‘Fetch Master Arslan, Rasoola!’ Begum called, glad to have the other housekeeper with her at this moment.

Shirin was now sobbing uncontrollably, looking at the woman who had saved her, with her closed eyes and bandaged wrist.

‘What happened to her arm, Auntie Begum?’ she asked meekly.

‘Nothing, my princess, she cut it by accident …’

‘She was in the sugarcane fields … she ran to help me when that man grabbed me!’ Shirin hiccupped to a stop. Begum hugged her tight. The thought of losing her, being abused and sold by some man terrified her. Arslan came sprinting out of the
hevali
gates as soon as he heard.

‘Master Arslan, please take this lovely girl back to her mother’s home,’ Begum instructed. Bemused, Arslan stood staring at the woman on the ground and his niece sobbing in Begum’s arms.

Shirin slid back into Begum’s arms, reluctant to go into the arms of another man, even if he had visited her mother.

‘It’s OK, my princess, I’ll take you home myself! Master Arslan, please take Salma inside. I hope that her husband can take her away from this village.’ She mouthed the words, ‘The silly girl has slit her wrist … the doctor!’

‘Why?’ he asked. She shook her head before striding off with Shirin, her arm protectively draped around the girl’s shoulders.

One street away her young companion timidly requested:

‘Please don’t tell Mummy about that bad man … she’ll get angry. I disobeyed her – please, Auntie.’

‘OK, but see that you now play inside the village. There are some wicked people in the world who are not kind to children.’

‘Oh! I will, Auntie. I promise.’

Arslan waited for Rasoola to help him to pick up the
semiconscious
woman, wanting to avoid having to touch her.