The Holy Woman (7 page)

Kaniz had throughout kept a careful watch over her son. She looked up, just as Fatima moved away, but not before she caught the triumphant look on her rival’s face. The plate of food in Kaniz’s hand shook and fell with a crash on the concrete floor. Turning back, Fatima quickly and neatly whisked away the debris from around Kaniz’s feet.

‘Chaudharani Kaniz, would you like me to fill your plate again?’ she asked politely, while still squatting on the ground.

‘No, thank you. I want nothing at all from
you
!’ Still livid, Kaniz whispered her insult loudly enough for all the other guests and village women to hear.

Her face going a shade paler, Fatima managed to hold onto her temper by refusing to rise to Kaniz’s bait. Instead she judiciously moved away.

Kaniz can say whatever she likes, but she cannot do anything about damming her son’s affection for my daughter! thought Fatima happily. With a smirk
playing
prominently on her face, she moved on to attend to the other mourners and passed trays of fruit around. She didn’t offer Kaniz anything else.

Habib Khan, too, had watched the short exchange between Sikander and his daughter. Shahzada glimpsed different emotions chase over her husband’s face. She tried to interpret them as best she could, after years of having lived with him. Catching her looking at him, Habib gave his wife the benefit of a pointed stare.

‘Tell our Zarri Bano that she mustn’t converse with
strange men,’ he ordered sharply, ‘especially in this gathering, with all and sundry eavesdropping and
waiting
around for a titbit of gossip. It is not good for my daughter’s reputation.’

‘But Habib Sahib, Sikander is
not
a stranger! He is our special guest, somebody who will soon become a member of our family – our son-in-law, in fact,’ Shahzada replied, her voice raised slightly for some reason she didn’t yet understand.

‘Perhaps it is
kismet
. Perhaps Sikander was never
destined
to become a member of our family. Not as Zarri Bano’s husband anyway.’ Habib turned away, speaking quietly almost as if to himself.

‘What? What do you mean?’ Shahzada croaked,
jerking
her head towards him. A cold fist of fear clutched at her heart. Her eyes stood large in her grief-ravaged face.

‘Nothing. Forget what I said,’ Habib hissed back at her, before rising and crossing the courtyard to speak to his father, Siraj Din.

Shahzada, however, couldn’t forget. Stumbling up from her seat she left the courtyard in a daze, wanting to seek the privacy of her own room. He had threatened her with divorce if she encouraged Zarri Bano to marry Sikander – but this! Her husband’s chilling, cryptic words shook her nearly as much as the death of her only son. ‘It cannot be!’ Alarm bells rang loudly in her head. Surely he couldn’t be planning that fate! Not for her beautiful daughter! They couldn’t be so cruel. They couldn’t! she thought feverishly, her head assaulted by different distressing visions.

Still agitated, she sought her daughter. Zarri Bano was in her room. The appearance of her daughter
reading
the Holy Quran, with a shawled head, gave her mother’s runaway imagination a horrid reality.

‘Zarri, darling. Please place the Holy Quran on the mantelpiece and let’s talk,’ Shahzada appealed in a trembling voice, sitting down on the sofa. She tried hard to smile at her daughter, but failed miserably.

‘Yes, Mother.’ Kissing the Quran’s cover reverently, Zarri Bano placed it on the mantelpiece and then flicked the shawl off her head, shaking out her glossy waves, letting them tumble around her shoulders and face, cascading down to her lower back.

‘Tell me, Zarri Bano, you do want to marry Sikander, don’t you?’ Shahzada began, not daring to look her daughter in the eye.

Her pale cheeks colouring a delicate shade of pink, Zarri Bano nodded. ‘Yes, Mother. Two days before I learnt of Jafar’s death, Sikander Sahib proposed to me and I accepted. That is when I phoned to let you know. But how can I even think about marriage, having lost my dearest, beloved brother?’

‘You must, my love. You must get married quickly.’

‘But it is the wrong time, Mother. How can you advise me to do this? We have only buried our Jafar yesterday. It would be so insensitive. What will Father say?’

‘You must tell him immediately, because I think that he may have other plans in mind for you, now that he has lost Jafar.’ Shahzada’s voice had sunk to a whisper. She waited for the significance of her comment to register in her daughter’s mind, hoping she
understood
, but as Zarri Bano continued to stare blankly, Shahzada was compelled to explain.

‘Your father …’ Shahzada swallowed, finding it hard to say the words, ‘… wants you to become his heiress, and our
Shahzadi Ibadat
, our “Holy Woman”, in the traditional way.’

Zarri Bano stared, stupefied, as the meaning of what her mother had just said sank in. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

In fear Shahzada looked up and Zarri Bano saw her own horror mirrored in her mother’s warm brown eyes. The eyes of a hunted, wounded animal. The world turned on its axis for Zarri Bano.

‘No, Mother!
No
!’

The cry arose from the very depths of her soul.

S
URELY
M
OTHER HAS
misunderstood! Zarri Bano thought wildly in her room after Shahzada had dropped the bombshell and then rushed out, her long white
chador
trailing behind her.

‘It cannot be! – they couldn’t do that to me!’ Zarri Bano implored the walls of her room. ‘I must talk to my father and rid this bizarre idea from my mind.’ She shook her head to see if that would do the trick, but she only felt more dizzy and confused than before.

Pacing up and down in her room, Zarri Bano
wondered
who she could confide in. If she told Ruby, her sister would be just as horrified and shocked as herself. Why burden her further in her grief?

Later in the day, she tried to talk to her father, but all to no avail. Wearing a mask of mourning, Habib was surrounded by other men and she couldn’t reach him. Zarri Bano couldn’t rest, however, until she confronted him with it. ‘I must talk to him tonight!’ she fretted.

At about half past eleven, when she knew her parents would be in their bedroom, Zarri Bano knocked on
their door and entered. The large room with its tall ceiling was in semi-darkness, but the walnut furniture gave it a warm glow. Her mother was praying in one corner on her prayer mat. Habib sat on the sofa near the bed, flicking through the
Jang
newspaper. He put it aside when he saw his daughter enter.

‘How are you, my princess?’ he began indulgently, his face splitting into a smile. ‘With all these guests everywhere, I haven’t been able to talk to you or to comfort you, my dear daughter.’

When Zarri Bano sat down next to him, Habib gave his full attention to his favourite child, his beautiful gem. Even his only son hadn’t been able to compete with the affection he felt for Zarri Bano. Taking hold of his hand, she kissed it and held it against her cheek.

‘Father, I miss our brother. How will we ever survive without him?’ she cried, leaning her head against his shoulder. Putting his arm around her, he squeezed her tight. Then, remembering why she had come, Zarri Bano pulled her head away.

‘Father, I didn’t have a chance to tell you about my visit to Karachi,’ she said.

Habib lowered his gaze to the newspaper. ‘
Huhumm
!’ He made a noncommittal sound in his throat. Zarri Bano watched as the kindly smile was replaced with a blank look.

‘Sikander Sahib proposed to me,’ she continued softly, waiting for him to look up so that she could see his reaction. Instead she saw his shoulders and neck go rigid. ‘Did you hear me, Father?’ Zarri Bano prompted nervously.

‘Yes, I heard you, Zarri Bano.’ Habib turned towards her. ‘I knew about it. Your mother told me. What did you say to him?’ His voice was hard.

Stooped on the mat, Shahzada forgot the prayer sequence she was reciting as she waited, with a
thumping
heart, for her daughter’s reply.

‘I accepted. I know that it is the wrong time, but I thought that I ought to tell you first, before Sikander’s parents approach you.’ Zarri Bano found herself rushing the words in one breath. Her cheeks burnt with
embarrassment
when no reaction was forthcoming. ‘Aren’t you pleased, Father? For years you have waited for me to choose a man to marry and now that I have done so at last, you are silent. It is almost as if you didn’t wish me to marry!’

Habib flinched at the anger in her voice. ‘You are too highly strung, my daughter. This is not exactly the time to discuss your marriage. We only buried your brother yesterday.’

‘I am sorry, Father. Forgive me – you are right, this is not the right time. It is very insensitive of me.’ Zarri Bano forced herself to apologise through gritted teeth. For the first time in her life she felt a flicker of hatred for her father – a totally novel experience.

‘What
is
the matter with him?’ she wondered. Why was he making everything so difficult?

Standing up tall she crossed the room, and caught the troubled look in her mother’s eyes. Fear gripped her once again as she re-entered her bedroom. Something was amiss – terribly amiss, in fact. Her father always had time for her, no matter what mood he was in or at what time. And that coldness in his eyes! She shuddered.

Later in bed, Zarri Bano stared at the white ceiling above and wondered whether she and her mother had imagined it all. After all, Habib was right: it
was
insensitive of her to have mentioned her marriage so
soon after her brother’s death. Anyway, her father couldn’t do
that
to her … not to his beloved child, the daughter he would reputedly ‘sell the world for’.

Feeling happier now, she turned on her side and was soon fast asleep.

Shahzada found finishing her
isha
prayers an ordeal. With trembling fingers she folded the velour-trimmed prayer-mat and placed it on her dressing table. From the corner of her eye, she covertly watched the stiff figure of her husband. He was still sitting in the same position.

Shahzada frantically debated in her mind: what should she do? Should she talk to him about it or not? If she was wrong, she might actually place the seed of the idea in his mind, and she couldn’t risk that. Sighing, she climbed into her own bed.

Ten minutes elapsed. His eyes were still. ‘He isn’t reading, I know that for sure,’ Shahzada told herself. ‘What are you thinking about, Habib Sahib?’ she said aloud. ‘You have not moved since Zarri Bano left the room. Is anything the matter?’

‘No,’ he replied, his back to her.

‘I couldn’t help hearing what Zarri Bano said. I am so glad she has accepted Sikander. At last our daughter has found somebody she wants to marry. Sikander is just ideal for her,’ Shahzada said bravely, very much aware of her husband’s earlier antagonism towards the suitor and knowing that she was playing with fire.

‘Please don’t talk about her marriage! We have only just buried our son, and already you seem to be planning Zarri Bano’s wedding.’

‘You misunderstand me. I am planning no such thing. Like you, I have been robbed of my loved one –
my baby. As a mother, I’ll never recover from the loss, Habib,’ Shahzada stammered defensively.

‘Let’s not bandy childish words as to whose loss was greater, Shahzada.’ His voice breaking, Habib finally turned towards her, his expression haunted. ‘He was our angel, and we have lost him. Now I have fallen at the greatest hurdle of my life. What is to become of us and our inheritance?’

An iron fist of fear clutched around Shahzada’s heart. Mesmerised, like a hare in the clutches of a python, she stared into his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.

‘Well, now that I have no son, who is going to be my heir, Shahzada? To whom am I going to bequeath all this land? I am not going to hand it over to some stranger who just happens to marry my daughter. This is
our
land, accumulated and paid for by the sweat and toil of my forefathers, down the centuries by different generations. Tell me what would you do in my
position
?’ He paused for what seemed to his wife to be a moment of doom. Then: ‘There is only one choice that is facing us.’

‘
No!
’ Shahzada’s deafening cry shook every corner of the dark room. Her breathing ragged, she leapt out of her bed and stood in front of him. ‘No, Habib! Say it is not what I think you mean.’ His ominous silence terrifying her, she beat her fists against his chest. Alarmed, he pushed her away from him.

‘Stop it! Control yourself, woman!’ Shahzada’s face paled. Glaring down at hers, his eyes were colder than the peaks of the Himalayas. At that moment something died in Shahzada. She was staring at a total stranger – the ruthless feudal landlord, not her husband.

‘No, not until you tell me what is on your mind.
Don’t hold me in suspense, I beg of you, Habib!’ she pleaded, reaching up to beat at him again. Alarmed by the primitive violence that had erupted in her body, Shahzada surprised both herself and him in the process.

Habib again grasped her arms tightly and held her away from him. ‘All right, I will tell you. I am going to talk with my father about Zarri Bano becoming a
Shahzadi Ibadat
, a Holy Woman. Are you satisfied now?’ he snarled down into her face.

‘
Shahzadi Ibadat
,’ his wife echoed dully, her voice sunk to a whisper, moving away from him – his touch now scorching her. ‘So you are going to sacrifice your beloved daughter?’

‘Sacrifice?’ he ejaculated, caught on the raw. ‘How dare you say such a thing! My daughter will become a Holy Woman – the most pure, devout, scholarly, and revered by all.’ As the words left his mouth, the better he felt.

‘You are mad, Habib Sahib! How can you do this to your own daughter? I won’t permit it! This is not the Emperor Akhbar’s time. It is the twentieth century – it cannot happen.’

‘It can and will happen! Do you think that you, a female, can prevent it? The scales are weighted against you, woman.’

‘Habib, listen to me,’ Shahzada appealed desperately. ‘She is going to marry Sikander. She has just told you.’ Shahzada felt as if she was walking in quicksand and the ground was fast disappearing beneath her feet.

‘Oh no, she is not. I have decided! You had better tell her. I have lost a son, and I am not going to lose my inheritance to a complete stranger. I want you to support me in this. That is your duty as a wife. If you
don’t do it, our ancient traditions will outweigh your opposition, so you had better get used to the idea. Remember what I said: I will divorce you on the spot if you rebel against us.’

Habib fixed his wife with a cruel stare. ‘And stop talking nonsense about sacrifice. My beautiful Zarri Bano was destined for this fate. Her brother’s death sealed her future as a
Shahzadi Ibadat
. This is what has always happened when only sons died in people of our class: the inheritance then was passed on to the next female member – you know that.’

‘So you are going to wed your daughter to your fields and to her faith.’ Tears of anguish rolled down Shahzada’s face. ‘It is
zulm
, cruelty of the worst kind. If you go through with it, I will never, never forgive you, Habib – never! You can divorce me! There will be nothing left between us. Remember this, you’ll have made your daughter a Holy Woman, but you will have buried a wife too, at the same time.’

‘I will not listen to any more of your foolish prattling. I am going to sleep in another room,’ he blustered, storming out with heavy strides and banging the door behind him. His wife’s words had upset him. He knew what she felt, for he had felt the same pain. Unlike her, however, he had no choice. He was alarmed by what Shahzada had said about not forgiving him but, ‘she will change with time,’ he told himself emphatically.

In his mind he recalled the vision of another
Shahzadi Ibadat
from his childhood. How fascinated he had been by that woman and the fame and reverence she had elicited from everyone. Wherever she went, ‘
Bibi, Bibi
,’ had echoed reverently around her.

His Zarri Bano and her personal charisma would
surpass every
Shahzadi Ibadat
of all time. She was both beautiful and educated. She even had a post-graduate university degree. The more he thought about his daughter becoming a Holy Woman, the more
convinced
he became that it was the right decision. His wife was of a weaker sex, and was thus bound to see it in a shortsighted way.

‘Does she not wish glory and honour for our daughter?’ he addressed the stars above as he took a stroll around his estate. The light from the starlit sky beamed down on the acres of cultivated land. Habib’s broad chest swelled with pride, as his eyes happily scanned the moonlit meadows of sugar cane and rape as they disappeared far beyond the horizon.

A sigh of utter self-satisfaction escaped his lips. Wealthiest of all land owners, nobody could rival his fortune or his influence. ‘Yes! All this will be my Zarri Bano’s, hers to inherit. She will be the sole mistress of all this after my death. As my beloved child, my princess, she deserves it all.’

His spirits soaring, he strolled back to his villa. His agile mind, however, was running ahead and rapidly making decisions. Tomorrow he would consult his father about Zarri Bano. On second thoughts, he wanted to talk to him straight away.

Siraj Din was still awake, unable to sleep. He missed both his village home and bed. He puffed heavily at the hookah pipe, making the water gurgle in its steel base – disgusted. Even the tobacco didn’t taste the same here in town!

Habib found his father on a
charpoy
, on the rear
veranda
, watching the stars dance in the sky above. Siraj Din greeted his son and patted a place on the chair next to his portable bed.

‘Father, I need to talk to you. It’s about Zarri Bano and our inheritance,’ he said quietly. Siraj Din forgot the tobacco and sat up straight in his bed to listen. There was a lot to be discussed.

Shahzada lay curled up on top of her bed, staring dejectedly into space. This was the darkest hour of her life. Horror at what her husband was about to do engulfed her for the hundredth time. ‘How can they do that to my beloved child?’ she cried. ‘It is cruel and inhuman. Zarri Bano is made for love, for life, for
bearing
children. How can they seal her fate to a barren life, with only
ibadat
, worship – for comfort?’

The dark, suffocating silence of her room mocked her. It taunted her, revealed her impotence as a woman, as a mother and as a wife. Shackled to the centuries-old traditions and customs of her husband’s clan, she could do nothing. Zarri Bano’s fate was indeed sealed. There was to be no escape for her daughter.

By the time her husband returned to their room, Shahzada was still wide awake. He didn’t come near her bed and she made no move to acknowledge his presence – a new phenomenon for them both. It was as if a thick wall had suddenly descended between them, sealing them away from each other like enemies. She didn’t fear him any more. In fact, she feared nothing and no one. Not even her father-in-law. All she feared was the ordeal that awaited her daughter.