The House of Djinn (15 page)

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Authors: Suzanne Fisher Staples

BOOK: The House of Djinn
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J
ameel and Muti waited on a bench while Shabanu purchased their tickets for places in the train's third-class section. Despite their being hidden under burqas, Muti watched anxiously for anyone she might recognize. Omar and Nargis might think to look for them at the train station when they weren't at the bus depot. But if they did, it was most likely they would look on the platform for first-class travelers. And Uncle Nazir would look there for them as well.
Shabanu came back with their tickets. They had about an hour to wait until the train was to leave. They made their way to the third-class platform for the Multan train and sat down on a bench. Other passengers spread cloths and sat on the concrete platform. Many others milled about. Muti looked at the people waiting in clusters, eating from hampers, so many people it seemed impossible that all of them could fit on one train.
Jameel went off to find a chai-wallah to get them some tea and something to eat. Despite his wearing the burqa, Muti worried that he looked masculine. His walk was too square and vigorous.
She decided to put her concerns out of her mind. The crush of good-humored travelers, the burqas, and being with her mother made Muti feel safe. The feeling of safety—perhaps for the first time in ten years—filled Muti's heart and she began to weep silently. The well of her tears seemed bottomless. Without speaking, her mother took Muti into her arms, settling back against a pillar, and cradled her like a small child. Muti held on to her mother as if she were a life raft.
Jameel found them that way, and after a while Muti sat up and wiped her face with the flats of her hands. The three of them ate curry biscuits and drank sweetened red tea with buffalo milk, and waited for the train.
When they were seated on the wooden slat benches in the third-class coach, the satchel tucked behind their legs, they were happy to be under way. Exhausted by the events of the previous days filled with death and other partings, they slept fitfully, rocking to the rhythm of the train. The third-class compartment was so jammed with people and bedrolls and satchels, even some baby goats being taken as gifts to relatives in the country, that there was no danger of falling off the bench.
It was late at night when the train pulled into Multan, slowing as it approached the outskirts. The city was
strangely quiet, lit only at major intersections. The air was clear from the day's rain, and the mud still oozed in the streets.
They got down from the train holding tightly to each other's hands. Jameel carried the large satchel, and they fought their way against the waves of people toward the first-class platform, where Ibne would be waiting to meet them. Shabanu and Mumtaz pushed their burqas away from their faces so they could better see where they were going.
When Shabanu saw Ibne in the crisply pleated, sharp white turban and the black velvet vest inset with bits of mirror glinting in the light from the streetlamps, it was just as she'd seen him the first time seventeen years before, and her heart filled with gratitude to her husband's most loyal servant. Shabanu remembered herself from the first time, too, a small desi girl in bare feet destined for marriage to a much older, wealthy man from a family filled with intrigues.
Ibne bowed to Shabanu, and she nodded in return, and lowered her eyes.
“How good to see you, memsahib,” he said. Shabanu smiled.
“And it's wonderful to see you, Ibne,” she replied, her voice choked with the memory of all that time ago.
Ibne led them to the car, Rahim's old sedan in perfect condition as if Ibne had just delivered him to the Provincial Assembly in it. Ibne put the satchel in the trunk, and they all piled in, Jameel in front with Ibne, and Shabanu and Mumtaz in the back.
They were quiet as Ibne concentrated on threading the car
among sleepy passengers fresh from the train, many of them balancing bundles of clothing and bedrolls on their heads. When they came to the edge of the city the car picked up speed.
“Your father and mother know we're coming,” said Ibne. “They were so joyful to learn both of you would be with them again. Your Auntie Sharma and her daughter Fatima are there—all waiting for you in Bijnot.”
Before getting into the car, Jameel had pulled the burqa off over his head. He sat slumped into the corner of the front seat by the passenger door. He watched the scrub of the desert thin outside the windshield as the car hurtled through the night. A line of pale greenish light was appearing on the horizon, a precursor to the monsoon sun, and he wondered what the next day would bring.
He thought of Mumtaz, who sat quietly in the backseat while Ibne and Shabanu talked of the people in Rahim's household, those who still lived at the farm in Okurabad. No one from Rahim's family had lived in the house since his death. Ibne had run the farm with occasional visits from Omar and Baba. Jameel had been to Rahim's farm with Baba and Omar so many times, never once guessing that he would be the proprietor one day. As he faced every new situation, the altered reality of his life jolted him all over again. If Jameel were to become tribal leader, he would decide when to plant the sorghum, and how to deal with problems of the tribesmen who lived nearby, what cattle to put on the land, when to divert the irrigation channels, and what other crops to grow. The locusts would be his problem. And the
hill torrents, and feuds, and diseases of cattle and tribesmen.
He had been so self-absorbed he hadn't been thinking of Mumtaz—it was as if Baba's death and the djinni and the sad separation from his former life had happened only to him. Not only had Mumtaz lost Jag and Baba, but she was adjusting to having her mother back and to the idea of marrying him—and he'd made it so clear he wanted to escape. Jameel looked into the rearview mirror at his cousin. She had pushed the burqa back, and he could see one side of her face as she stared out the window. She looked as if she was in shock. But perhaps it was just the greenish lights from the dashboard that lit her profile dimly.
Suddenly Ibne's foot slammed down on the brake, and Jameel jerked his head around in time to see in the headlights a huge U-shaped barrier made of rocks that crossed the road just where it straightened after a curve around a hill. The rock barrier prevented them from turning to either side. Ibne struggled to control the car, but it swerved violently and spun in what seemed like slow motion, slamming sideways into the boulders. Jameel was aware of his body being hurtled against the dashboard, his head cracking against the post between the dash and the side door, things flying past, and then a black nothingness.
 
 
Mumtaz awoke with one side of her face in the dirt. She had been thrown from the car. Her body felt broken, and her mouth was filled with blood. She wanted desperately to sit
up, to see whether her arms and legs worked, whether her mother was okay, and Jameel. But she heard men's voices, and from somewhere in her head came the warning to stay still and quiet in the dirt.
She managed to open her eyes slightly, and through her eyelashes she saw men milling about. Her mother, still covered in her burqa, sat beside her. She saw Jameel kneeling on the ground. Masha' Allah, God's will, he looked dazed but not seriously hurt. A large man stood between Mumtaz and Jameel, his back to her. Muti's blood went cold as she recognized the tailored tan silk waistcoat that Uncle Nazir had worn what seemed years ago at Baba's funeral.
She opened her eyes a little more and she saw other men with rifles, all facing Jameel. And she remembered someone—was it Omar?—saying that Nazir might try to take over the tribal leadership. And she remembered Auntie Selma saying Nazir was a toothless tiger, and her mother saying you must never trust a tiger, even a toothless tiger.
As Mumtaz's head cleared, she saw her father's car, twisted metal lying on its side, with smoke rising from the place where its engine should be. She recognized it only by the pale blue color of the parts that weren't twisted and burned beyond color and shape. One wheel was revolving slowly, like a fan on a sultry day. And the green Punjab Provincial Assembly emblem still sat proudly on an absurdly shiny bumper.
Slowly the likely consequences of what had just happened began to dawn on her: that in his grab for power Nazir would likely shoot each of them, one by one. But she never
had time to finish the progression of thought through the murk of pain in her head.
Suddenly there was loud noise all around. And scuffling, and running, and men grunting. She saw Omar, still dressed in the fine silk shalwar kameez that he had worn for the funeral, raising a rifle to his shoulder and taking careful aim, and the recoil of the rifle butt against his shoulder as Nazir seemed to fly up into the air feet first, and then crash to the ground in a crumpled pile.
Mumtaz closed her eyes, and when she awoke again, there was a sharp sting in her nostrils and she gagged on something strong, and her eyes teared, and she could only see white all around her.
T
he sounds were ordinary sounds, a clink of metal and water pouring, Auntie Selma's deep, gravelly voice, the click and whir of a fan overhead. Someone was washing her face. She struggled against the hand that held the vial of smelling salts, and someone said, “She's awake!”
Sitting before her was Auntie Selma, and at her shoulder was her mother, and beside her mother was Jameel. They were all dressed in white. Of course, she thought: Baba's funeral. Her mother's arm was in a sling. Jameel had a bandage wrapped around his head. Her first thought had been “Where's Baba?”
“Where am I?” she asked, and their faces whirled slowly once or twice before coming into focus. Her mouth hurt and her words sounded fuzzy. She felt as if a large piece of wood wrapped in cotton wool pressed down on her tongue.
“You're fine, darling,” said Auntie Selma. “You bit your tongue—nearly bit it off!” Arms were helping her to sit. “You're in my bed in the haveli. The doctor said tongues heal quickly, and you will be fine.”
Her next thought made her stomach lurch: They were going to make her marry Jameel. And he didn't want her. She looked up at Jameel and his brow was creased. He swiped a hand across his eyes, which were glistening with tears. She must look a mess, she thought. She reached up and touched her mouth. Her teeth seemed to be intact.
“How long have I been here?” It might have been days, she thought. Her words came out sounding like “Nowon haha knee?”
“Since this morning,” said her mother. Auntie Selma stood then and offered Shabanu her chair.
“Uma!” said Mumtaz, and tears filled her eyes.
“Don't worry, little one,” her mother said, stroking her face. “You're safe. You're going to be fine.”
“Wha hahenned?”
They told her how Spin Gul had followed them to the train station and telephoned Nazir, who flew his airplane to Multan to get there before the train arrived. He'd ordered workers from his farm to build the stone barrier across the road, and after the crash he was about to shoot Jameel when Omar and Jameel's father appeared. Omar had shot and killed Nazir. Jameel's father had been injured, but not seriously. Jameel had a concussion, and so did Mumtaz. Shabanu
had broken her arm in the automobile crash. Only Ibne had emerged without injury.
Thank God they would all be fine, Mumtaz thought, her mouth too sore to say anything at all. And then she fell back to sleep.
S
habanu sat beside Mumtaz as she drifted in and out of consciousness. When her daughter awoke, Shabanu leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I am here, daughter.” She fed her broth and held a cup of water to her lips, fluffed her pillows, bathed her, and took her own meals sitting in the chair beside the bed.
By evening Mumtaz felt well enough to sit up. Shabanu arranged the pillows behind her daughter. She took a hairbrush and carefully brushed the tangles from Mumtaz's thick dark hair, then braided it into a single rope that fell down her back.
“I want to know everything,” Mumtaz managed to say. Her tongue still ached, but the pain was duller now, and her words were slow but more intelligible.
Shabanu pulled her chair closer and took Mumtaz's hand in hers. She began by saying that Spin Gul had come to the haveli and cut the lock on the gate. He crept in to listen as
Samiya telephoned Ibne to say that he should meet them at the Multan train. He slapped Samiya to get her to tell him more, but she refused.
“Samiya is fine,” Shabanu said quickly in answer to Mumtaz's raised eyebrows, and then went on. Spin Gul telephoned Nazir, whose airplane arrived in Multan before the train even pulled out of Lahore station.
“Omar and Tariq got to the haveli and caught Spin Gul and tied him up and called the police,” Shabanu went on. Khoda Baksh stayed to keep watch over Spin Gul until the police came. Omar and Tariq climbed back into the car and sped off for Multan. They got there after the train, but there was only one road Ibne would have taken into the desert and they followed close behind. They arrived just a minute or so after the wreck, and almost crashed into the whole mess at the barrier. Omar was driving carefully because he expected something like the boulders.
“But how did Nazir know you were still alive?” asked Mumtaz. This had been on her mind ever since she saw Nazir raise his gun. She would never have forgiven herself if Nazir had hurt her mother because Mumtaz couldn't keep her secret!
Shabanu shook her head. “It was you and Jameel he was after,” she said. “He thought he should be the tribal leader. He actually rubbed his eyes when he saw me, as if he were seeing a ghost.” She smiled slightly.
“Will you stay here?” Mumtaz asked. There were so many things she needed to know to be able to imagine her own life.
“Nay, daughter,” said Shabanu. “You and Jameel can live here in the haveli. I am going to Cholistan to be with my family and to teach women to read. I will visit often. You two will be safe here with Auntie Selma.”
“I don't want to marry Jameel,” said Mumtaz miserably. “He doesn't want to marry me. I want to come with you!”
Shabanu pressed her lips together and nodded. “Let me talk to Omar,” she said. “If Jameel really is opposed to marrying you, I will take you with me to Cholistan.”
Shabanu helped Mumtaz get up and held her with one arm as she wobbled to the bathroom and back. Mumtaz fell asleep again with Shabanu beside her.
 
 
Omar came later that night and pulled up a chair beside Shabanu at Mumtaz's bedside while she slept. They talked about the wreck and the shooting and how Mumtaz was feeling.
“And what about Leyla?” Shabanu asked. Omar said nothing. “She sent Spin Gul to spy on us and told Nazir where we were. He could have killed us, and she was partly responsible.”
“Leyla wants Jaffar to be the Amirzai leader someday,” Omar said slowly. “I don't believe she was intending to hurt anyone. She just wasn't thinking of the consequences.”
“Leyla has hated me ever since I married Rahim,” said Shabanu, keeping her voice level. “I don't believe she didn't mean to hurt us.”
“I can promise you she will not try again,” said Omar. “I'm sending her to live with her mother in the Cantonment. She will have nothing to do with the wedding arrangements. Jaffar will stay with me. It will be a severe punishment for her not to have Jaffar and me with her. If Jameel and Mumtaz want to live at Number 5 Anwar Road, that's their prerogative.”
“Mumtaz says Jameel doesn't want to marry her,” said Shabanu. “If that's so, I want her to come with me to Cholistan.”
“Mumtaz must stay here,” Omar said gently. “This has been an enormous shock to Jameel. He loves Mumtaz. I know he does. I'll talk to him.”
“But they must decide for themselves!” said Shabanu.
“Nazir is gone. She and Jameel are safe. They are the hope of the Amirzai people.”
“So! You would perpetuate this system of feudal grandees?” Shabanu asked sharply. “After all that it's taken from you, you won't allow these children to choose for themselves?”
“Mumtaz will have a good life,” he said. “I'll see to it as long as I live. And Jameel will see to it as long as he lives.”
“And can they stay here, in the haveli?” Shabanu asked. Omar thought for a moment.
“They can stay wherever they like,” he said, “so long as they are not in the same house with Leyla.”
“You are your Uncle Rahim,” she said quietly. Then they were quiet.
“After all this time, we have nothing to say?” asked Omar.
“My heart has no words,” said Shabanu. “And if it did, there would be no use saying them.”
She asked Omar to sit with Mumtaz for a bit while she took a break. As soon as her mother was gone, Mumtaz opened her eyes.
“This time it was my turn to hear,” she said, smiling at Omar. “Unlike my mother, I do not think freedom to do whatever you want is necessarily a good thing. But first I must know that Jameel wants to marry me.”
 
 
Shabanu climbed the stairs to the roof and went straight to the pigeons' cage. She slipped inside and held up her hands, and several birds landed on them. She caressed them and pressed them to her lips one at a time, and took each out to the edge of the roof, releasing it as she had the first two, until they all were free.

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