The Holy Woman (28 page)

He inclined his head politely then, on seeing a smiling Pakinaz approach them, he just said one word: ‘
lay’
. No. His sister’s face fell. Hastening her pace, Zarri Bano walked ahead of them, letting Ibrahim explain to Pakinaz why she had turned him down.

The man who bounded into her mind, all of a sudden, was thousands of miles away on the other side of the world. The mortal ache she had suppressed
months ago on her sister’s wedding day now came back to haunt her. It is a strange world, Zarri Bano mused. Here I am, standing on the ancient remains of Egypt’s glorious past, proposed to by an Egyptian man, when the person I have given up is happily married to my own sister. Why have I thought of him today? Does he ever think of me?

Zarri Bano brushed away the water in her eyes. ‘Sikander, where are you?’ she called out in silent anguish, staring down into the green depths of the Nile as they returned to Karnak, a sadder, more subdued trio than when they had set out that morning.

I
T WAS A
hot, humid night in Karachi. The man in Zarri Bano’s thoughts couldn’t sleep. Getting up from his bed Sikander went to the en-suite bathroom for a drink of water then returning to his room, he walked over to the window and gazed out at the shining stars in the night sky and the lightspeckled city in slumber.

Sikander turned to look at his bed. In the
semi-darkness,
he saw his wife’s profile and her dark hair spread out on the pillow. Squeezing his eyes shut, he blocked out the image of another woman’s face on his silk pillow.

He hadn’t thought of her for two whole weeks. Zarri Bano’s name was taboo – never uttered by anyone in his presence.

In the last few months he had concentrated hard on making his marriage a success. Ruby was a delightful woman, sweet and caring, always seeing to his every
need. An ideal partner, in short. He craved two things in life. To perfect this relationship with his wife and bury the image of the woman who had stolen his heart and then cruelly jilted him. Yet still she continued to haunt him!

Ruby stirred. Her hand automatically crept to the empty space beside her. She opened her eyes and raised her head to peer in the darkness, seeking her husband. Seeing Sikander watching her from the window, she smiled, feeling shy all of a sudden under his intense scrutiny.

Sikander came over and sat beside her on the bed. His eyes flickered tenderly over the face of the woman he had married, grown to love, and had shared his life with for the last six months.

His fingertips lightly caressed the planes of her cheekbones. An answering smile lighting her face, Ruby reached up and tentatively began to trace the outline of her beloved husband’s face with her fingers.

‘I hope I am not going to be sick again in the
morning.
It is terrible!’ she confided, jokingly.

‘You won’t.’ She revelled in the warmth of his deep voice.

‘Should I tell Zarri Bano when she phones next time from Egypt?’ Ruby then asked, and instantly felt her husband’s mood change. When he answered her, the tenderness had gone.

‘Not yet,’ he said harshly. ‘It is too soon. You are only three months’ gone – wait for another few weeks.’

‘Oh, but I am so excited. I can’t wait to tell her the news. After all, she is my sister you know.’

‘Yes I know,’ came the bitter response. Sikander climbed into bed, laid his head on the pillow and turned the other way.

Discomfited, Ruby slid down under the cotton sheet. Was her imagination running away with her again? She and Sikander were happily married and expecting their first child. Zarri Bano had nothing to do with her husband. She was literally in another country now. Why then do I still feel jealous of my own sister? Ruby miserably questioned herself.

She moved her hand slowly over her lower abdomen. ‘I would like to call him Haris, if it is a boy,’ she whispered into her husband’s shoulder-blades, trying to reach out to him.

‘That’s a nice name. I like it,’ he responded. Behind his closed eyelids there loomed and beckoned a smiling tantalising woman with sparkling emerald-green eyes.

How will she take the news? he wondered sadly. Will she be delighted, as Ruby innocently assumes? Or will she ache with longing for a child of her own?

His advice not to tell Zarri Bano for another month or so had sprung from his innate sensitivity about other people’s feelings. He hated his ex-fiancée for jilting him and becoming a Holy Woman, but he still felt strongly for her – enough to want to shield her from any
emotional
pain.

His love for her was a constant torture. He longed to rid himself totally of Zarri Bano’s shadow. At times he forgot her totally, absorbed and happy in his new life. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, her face would beam through his mind, leaving an ache in him – an ache for what could never be.

Does she ever remember me? he wondered now. Or is she truly lost to her holiness and rosary beads?
Allah forbid!
Sikander shouted to himself in his mind. She is my sister-in-law! How can I think of her like this? The hunger for her, however, wouldn’t go away. He could
still recall the feel of her fingertips tracing his lips in the courtyard of her home …

He opened his eyes to feel the warmth of Ruby’s breath on his neck.

‘Do you love me, Sikander?’ The scared whisper signalled to him that she knew instinctively the times she lost him completely.

Sikander melted in a cauldron of guilt. ‘Of course, my darling Ruby.’ Tenderly he pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair.

‘Damn you, Zarri Bano! May you rot in a similar hell to the one you have thrown me in,’ he cursed silently, into the night, hours after his pregnant young wife had fallen asleep in his arms.

I
T WAS THREE
months since Fatima had visited Khawar in the neighbouring village. Khawar had finally decided to return to his mother’s home in Chiragpur as Fatima had advised. Kulsoom had already informed him that Firdaus had left for the city, to take up a post as Vice Principal in a women’s college.

Having sent his belongings ahead in a steel trunk in his jeep, Khawar rode on his white horse through the green fields of Chiragpur. There was no joy in this homecoming. The farmers were busy ploughing their fields on their tractors. Sardara’s milk buffaloes were enjoying their afternoon wallow in the village pond. The cowherd was keeping a close eye on the new beast which had a habit of running back home to its previous owner in the neighbouring village. Chiragpur lay in
a quiet slumber in the warm afternoon of early spring.

Once outside the gates of his father’s
hawaili,
Khawar’s face set into a grim expression. Heading first for the rear courtyard annexed to the stable, he tied his horse to a tree. The young man who had been hired to milk and look after their two buffaloes was sluicing down the redbrick-lined compound with buckets of water, after slopping away the cow dung in a separate aluminium bucket to be collected by a couple of women who used cow-dung cakes as fuel for their cooking. On seeing Khawar, the servant jumped to his feet, bidding his master, ‘Salam.’

With firm steps, Khawar strode through the large wrought-iron gates and into the main central courtyard of the
hawaili.
Here he found Neesa on her haunches, washing the marble-chip floor of the veranda with a plastic hose. Hearing his distinct booted footsteps, her wrinkled face split into a smile as she sprang up to her full height to pat him on his shoulders. He hadn’t been home for over a year.

‘Welcome home, Master Sahib! I am so happy to see you.’

Khawar nodded, trying to relax enough so that he could smile at their housekeeper, who had raised him up in her loving arms since he was a baby.

‘I’ll tell the Chaudharani Sahiba. Oh, she’ll be so pleased!’ Neesa scurried up the stairs, unable to contain her joy.

At the mention of his mother’s name, Khawar’s face once more became forbidding. Climbing slowly up the stairs after Neesa, he followed her into his mother’s bedroom.

Kaniz was combing out the waves of her long, thick hair with a hairbrush, when Neesa charged into the room without knocking. ‘Khawar Sahib is here, Chaudharani Sahiba,’ she gabbled. ‘Isn’t it great?’

Kaniz glanced into her mirror, to see her son’s large body hovering stiffly in the doorway. She stumbled up from the dressing-table seat.

‘My son is home!’ She wept with joy.

Urgent strides took her to his side. Drawing him into her arms, she hugged her beloved child against her body. But Khawar remained unyielding in her arms. Disconcerted, Kaniz peeped up into his
unsmiling
face. Her arms falling to her side, she walked unsteadily back to the dressing table. So he hadn’t forgiven her.

Sitting in front of the mirror, Kaniz began to braid her hair with trembling fingers, into a long thick plait.

‘Are you just passing by, my son, or have you come home to stay?’ she asked nervously.

Khawar didn’t deign to reply, but took out his handkerchief, bent down and began to polish the dust off his boots.

‘Are you staying, or not?’ Kaniz rapped out. She was not at all amused or pleased by his behaviour towards her.

‘I am not sure – for I do not regard this as a home,’ he said loftily. ‘It used to be a home in my father and grandfather’s days. Now I just see it as a large, empty –
barren
place. A home, Mother, is supposed to be full of love and harmony. This place, on the contrary, is
dominated
by a tyrannical, selfish woman who cares for no one but herself.’ His dark eyes flashed with hatred.

Dumbfounded, Kaniz just stared. Then a strange
thing happened – her eyes fell before his. She was unable either to look him in the face or to retaliate.

‘Yes, I have come home,’ he said finally ‘but only for appearance’s sake and because there is all the land
business
I have to deal with. Please don’t think I have come for you. You are not fit to be a mother!’

‘You are cruel, my son!’ Kaniz choked her lower lip quivering.

It was true. Khawar
was
in a savagely cruel mood and had no qualms at all about making his mother suffer. Any love he had ever felt for her had been snuffed out long ago.

‘Guess who I learned my cruelty from,’ he jeered. ‘At your knee, Mother dear. For only a truly heartless,
selfish
woman would stand in the way of her son’s future happiness. You succeeded in driving Firdaus away from the village, and no doubt feel very pleased with
yourself
. For that I can never forgive you! Even if you begged her she’d not marry me now. Therefore, you stupid woman, you had better reconcile yourself to dying without ever seeing any grandchildren. For I will never marry, or bring any other woman as a bride into this house. You can now sing all your lullabies to
yourself
and to these empty walls that you worship. I am going to live here not as your son but as a stranger. You deserve no better.’ Khawar was driven to punish his mother; he had no desire to come back home but had done so because it was his duty – as Fatima had pointed out to him.

‘No, my son, no!’ Kaniz wept.

At one time, the sight of his widowed mother’s tears would have pierced him right through to his soul. Today he turned away in disgust, striding out of the room without giving the stricken woman another
glance. In the courtyard, he ordered Neesa to prepare the afternoon meal for him and his chauffeur. ‘I am back home now,’ he informed her dully.

Inside her room, Kaniz stood bereft. The world had simply given way beneath her. Tears of self-pity gushed down her cheeks as her son’s harsh words echoed through her head. How could he say those things to me? I am his mother! She wept in bewilderment. Does he hate me so much that he can abuse me in such a manner?

Kaniz turned away from her distraught reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Am I such a terrible person, she asked herself fearfully, that my beloved and only son has turned against me? For the first time in thirty years Kaniz began to doubt herself, the power and influence she supposedly held in her fair hands and rightfully enjoyed as the village
chaudharani.

Afraid of bumping into her son she stayed in her room for the remainder of the afternoon, hiding her swollen red eyes from Neesa as she brought her tray of food to her room.

‘Neesa, has Khawar eaten anything?’ she asked shakingly. ‘Make sure you cook his two favourite dishes tonight:
matr pilau
and
kheer.
He has not tasted your cooking for a long time. I don’t know what that old hag has been cooking for him. Bundles of spinach every day from the fields, I guess. Have you noticed my son has lost weight?’ Kaniz kept her ravaged face averted from her housekeeper.

‘No, mistress. He looks fine to me,’ Neesa answered politely before withdrawing, deep in thought, from the room. Something had obviously happened between mother and son. Her mistress hadn’t left her bedroom
all day. She normally spent the entire morning on the rooftop balcony.

Half an hour later she came up to tell her mistress that her sister Sabra had arrived on a casual visit. Brightening up, Kaniz quickly glanced in the mirror. The red eyes didn’t matter. She had nothing to hide from Sabra.

‘What on earth is the matter?’ Sabra cried in alarm as soon as she saw her sister’s swollen eyes.

These sympathetic words acted immediately on Kaniz, affording her the luxury of bursting into tears for the second time that afternoon.

‘What’s wrong? Please tell me,’ Sabra said, in alarm, as Kaniz’s large frame trembled against her slight body.

Sabra pulled her down and they sat together on the
palang.

‘Tell me the truth, Sabra!’ Kaniz implored ‘Am I cruel and selfish? Khawar definitely thinks I am. He hates me so much! His insults have killed me. He is back, but I think I have truly lost him. Sabra – please,
please
tell me what to do.’

There was a long pause, as the younger woman’s eyes hovered uncomfortably over her sister’s face. ‘There is only one thing you can do, my dear sister,’ she quietly informed her.

Kaniz’s almond-shaped but very puffy eyes stood huge in her face. ‘Never! Never!’ she shouted.

Sabra politely edged away from her sister’s
trembling
body. She hadn’t travelled all the way from Punjab to Sind just to quarrel with Kaniz – hence she deftly changed the subject.

‘Have you heard about my brother-in-law, Yousuf? The poor man died last week!’