When She Was Queen (12 page)

Not two months had passed since their visit to Pakistan, when the Sheikh sent the edict that came like a rock thrown at the boat that was her life. Abid was told about it by his sister, who called late one night from Lahore. He was so stunned he forgot to hide his reaction from Yasmin, who was listening and watching from the bed.

“
What? Are
you sure …
every
woman? Even in Canada and US? Think of public relations. He won’t relent? Arré what’s come over him … thik hé, then. But try. Soften him up a bit….”

The Sheikh had pronounced that the moral order in the world continued to decline. It pained him to see that even decent people had begun to deviate from the path of the righteous, dazzled by the attractions conjured up by wily Azazel, beguiled by honeyed words from the forked tongue of Satan. He, Sheikh Murad Ali of Lahore, was exhorting his followers to rectify their habits and come back to the path. Rules regarding halal were to be followed strictly. Personal hygiene was to be observed according to Islamic tradition. And women had to cover their heads with a black or white chador that reached at least to their shoulders.

Yasmin, shocked beyond belief, had little doubt that this edict from afar was the real answer to her outburst in the Sheikh’s study in Lahore. She recalled the old man’s initial reaction when she spoke up—that pause, the stillness that momentarily overcame him before he recovered
with the smile and the patronizing comment. His eyes had grazed her neck, met hers, before he lightly dismissed her objection. She had met his eyes again on the way out. She felt humbled and defeated by his power over her now.

“You’ve betrayed me,” she said tearfully to her husband. “You misled me—”

“Yasmin, my life, how can you say that?”

“You expect me to wear that … that tent over my head?”

“Not a
tent
—” he laughed—”it’s supposed to come only to the shoulders. He’s our Sheikh, my love, he stands between us and God. And it’s only temporary.”

My foot
, she wanted to blurt out, but held her peace.

She sulked and wept intermittently all that day, and the next.

The following evening a potluck dinner was arranged at a friend’s house to discuss this new edict of Sheikh Murad Ali, their leader. Ten couples were present, and to Yasmin’s surprise nobody showed any concern about the ruling. A few people even poked a little fun at it and at some of the Sheikh’s ways (for example, he burped loudly and with relish). What could have set him off? the question was raised. Perhaps Benazir Bhutto’s recent antics. Or the recent performance of the Pakistan cricket team. Or the jokes that were made even there about President Clinton’s affair with that girl Monica Lewinsky, a name familiar in every village now, following the recent TV crash course on sex. They discussed ways of bending the new rule: the Sheikh had ordered white or black chador to be worn, but he didn’t specify what material, and
hadn’t placed any injunctions on the designs printed or embroidered on it; and surely, they agreed, black meant simply dark, therefore blue would be acceptable; the chador should reach the shoulders, but even a dupatta did that…. There were of course arguments among the men, as there usually were, when the subject veered off toward world politics. There was plenty of food to eat. Poetry was recited, songs were sung. Yasmin was reminded sharply of the sense of community among these people, of their common struggles against life’s crazy contradictions, and the sense of humour they could always call upon to cope with them. She went home immensely relieved.

That night she and Abid spent many tender moments together. At length, when they were ready to go to sleep, he asked, “Is it too late for you to have a child?”

“I think so. Why, you want one? I could ask the doctor.”

“No…. We are both done with that. We need all the time to be with each other and enjoy life.”

“I agree.”

And so, said that voice in her head, as she lay on her back, wide awake but eyes gently shut, happy, listening to her own breathing, and that of the man beside her. And so, said that voice, a smidgin of sex, a bit of
meri jaan
, and you’ll go out tomorrow wearing a tent on the head—

Stop it! He loves me, and it’s not a tent. You know that…. And what do you mean by “a smidgin of sex” anyway? He’s better at it than you were by a long shot—

Oh yeah, I didn’t see you exactly moaning with helpless pleasure now or screaming for more—

It’s not just the moaning and screaming, you insensitive man, it’s also the gentleness, the love you feel inside every pore of your entire body, the—

I see.

That takes care of him, she thought, regaining her breath. Finally. She sensed him receding from her mind … he would go away for ever now, truly dead. She realized all of a sudden that she didn’t quite want that to happen. She began to miss him.

Karim? she called.

Yes? Sullen, and distant, as if from the door.

But I do need you … stay …

Aw, he said.

It was almost a year since Abid had come into her life.

“Shamshu Mukhi,” she said
, “how are you?”

I had just stepped out of the front doorway of the Don Mills mosque and onto the stoop, where she had been standing, waiting.

“Hale and hearty, and how is the world treating you, Yasmin,” I replied jovially. The formal address
mukhi
always provokes an exaggerated, paternal sort of cheeriness in my
manner that I can’t quite curb and (as I’ve realized over the years) don’t wish to either, because it is what people expect, draw comfort from. But no sooner had my glib response escaped my lips than I was reminded by her demeanour that lately the world had not been treating Yasmin Bharwani very kindly.

I asked her, more seriously: “And how is Karim—I understand he’s in hospital?”

A pinprick of guilt began to nag. It was more than a week now since I heard that her husband, who had been a classmate of mine, had been admitted for something possibly serious. I had not seen Bharwani in years, our paths having diverged since we ended up in this city; still, I had meant to go and do my bit to cheer him up for old times’ sake. Only, with this and that to attend to, at home and away, that good thought had simply sieved through the mind.

She nodded, paused a moment to look away, before turning back to reply, “He’s at Sunnybrook. I’ve come to ask, can you give him chhanta?…”

“Now, now, Yasmin, don’t talk like that. It can’t be serious—he’s young yet, we all are.” (That irrepressible bluster again—who was I kidding, since when has the Grim Reaper given a hoot about age?) “And what will your unbelieving husband Karim say to my giving him chhanta—he will scream murder.”

Chhanta is the ceremony at which a person is granted forgiveness by his mukhi on behalf of the world and the Almighty. You join hands and supplicate once a month at new moon, and then finally at death’s bed. I recall a sceptical Bharwani from our boyhood days arguing with
hotheaded arrogance, “What have I done against the world that I should crave forgiveness all the time?” And some of us replying, “If nothing else, you might have stepped on an ant and killed it, ulu—even an angel commits at least seven sins daily, and what do you think, that you are better than an angel?” We called him “Communist” in those teen years, which nickname he rather relished, for it had intellectual connotations and set him apart from the rest of us, all destined for the heavenly embrace.

“Try, please,” his wife now begged me. “He’s dying … and there’s another matter too….”

At this moment Farida joined me, and we invited Yasmin to come home and have supper with us, when she could also unburden her mind. We had anticipated a quiet Sunday evening together, but such sacrifices of privacy have been our pleasure, having brought meaning to our lives as we approach what are called our more mellow years. It is a traditional responsibility that I hold, as presider of a mosque, father to its community; nothing could seem safer for someone so conventional, indeed mediocre, as I, until Yasmin and Karim Bharwani put me through an ordeal from which I don’t think I recovered.

Yasmin must be some five years younger than both my wife and I; she is petite and trim, fair complexioned, with short dark hair. She was dressed smartly that night, though perhaps a bit sternly. She had her own car, so we met in the lobby of our building and went up together. At first we discussed anything but the gloomy subject at hand, her husband’s illness. Finally, over a swiftly put-together supper, an assortment of leftover and fresh, I said to Yasmin, who was waiting for just such a prompt, “Now
tell us what’s this other matter that you mentioned.”

She looked anxiously at me and said all in a rush: “My husband wishes to be cremated when he dies.”

I spluttered out a quite meaningless: “But why?” to which nevertheless she answered, “I don’t know why, I don’t understand his reasons—he has plenty of them and I don’t understand them.”

“But surely you’ve not given up hope yet,” Farida said, “it’s too soon to talk of….” Her voice trailed off. We watched Yasmin break down silently, large tears flowing down her cheeks. Farida went and sat beside her, poured her a glass of water. “Pray for him,” she whispered. “We will, too.”

“You must come and give him chhanta … now,” the grieving woman answered, wiping away her tears.

The three of us drove to Sunnybrook Hospital, Farida going with Yasmin in the latter’s car.

Trust Karim Bharwani to pose a conundrum such as this one. Always the oddball, always the one with the dissenting opinion: why this way and not the other? Because the world is so, eh chodu, we would laugh him off. There were times when we vilified him, mercilessly, and tried to ostracize him, when he had wounded our pietistic feelings with one of his poisoned utterings. But he was too much one of us, you might as well cast out a part of your body. Now here he was, saying cremate me, don’t bury me. The trouble is, we don’t cremate our dead, we bury them, according to the Book, the same way Cain first disposed of his brother Abel.

I wanted to say to him, as I saw him, Look, Bharwani, this is not the time for your smart, sceptical arguments.
This is real, this is how you leave the world; at least this once, walk along with the rest of us.

He had been washed. His face was flushed, but creased, and he looked exhausted and frail. He had always had rather prominent eyes behind big black-framed glasses; now his eyeballs were sunken deep inside their sockets, where two tiny black pools of fire burned with fervid life. There was barely any flesh on the cheeks. He reminded me rather of a movie version of an extraterrestrial. He said, in answer to his wife’s concerns, that he had been taken for a short walk; yes, he had eaten a bit of the awful food, to keep his strength; and today the pain was less. He would die for a curry; he attempted a laugh. He sounded hoarse and a little high-pitched. He had let an arm drop to the side of the bed; I picked it up, cold, and squeezed it. “Ey, Bharwani, how are you?”

“It’s been a long time,” he said, meaning presumably the time since we last met. He smiled at Farida, who had gone and sat at the foot of the bed. “Mukhi and Mukhiani,” he said to the two of us, with an ever so slight mock in his tone, “so have you come to give me chhanta?”

I threw a look at Yasmin, who turned to him with large, liquid eyes. “Let them,” she pleaded. “In case. It’s our tradition.”

He said nothing for a moment, apparently trying to control himself. Then, in measured tones: “Doesn’t it matter what I believe in or desire for myself?”

She had no argument, only the desperate words of a beloved: “For my sake….”

He fell back exhausted, closed his eyes; opened them to stare at me. I saw my chance then, in that helpless look,
and drove home my simple argument: “Karim, it can’t hurt, whatever it is you believe in.” With a laugh, I added: “Surely you don’t believe you have nothing to ask forgiveness for?”

He grinned, at me, at his wife, and said, “You have a point there.”

I proceeded with the ceremony, having brought the holy water. When we had finished, he joked, “I should go to heaven now.”

“You
will
go to heaven,” Yasmin said happily, “when the time comes. But it was only a formality now.” She smiled and her look seemed to drench him in love. “And you’d not asked forgiveness from God in years.”

“But I asked forgiveness from you, not from Him.”

“Oh.” But she was not bothered.

“But I am firm about the other thing, I tell you. I insist. These two people here are witnesses to my wish. I would like to be cremated when I die, not buried in that cold ground at Yonge and Sheppard called Immigrant’s Corner.”

“But why, Karim, why?” For the first time, her voice animated, passionate.

“Because I
want
it so.”

“It’s not right.”

“What difference does it make? I’ll be
dead
. Doesn’t it matter to you how I want to be treated in death, what I believe in?”

She wiped away tears, looked straight at him and said, “All right. But I’ll have the prayers said over you by Mukhisaheb. A proper service.”

“All right, Shamshu can say his juju over my body—if they let him.”