Typhoon (12 page)

In a carefully levelled voice, he theatrically
continued
. This was his moment and he was cruelly
relishing
it. They wanted drama –
tamasha
. Very well. He would give it to them!

‘You see, I repeat, if Naghmana is a haramzadi,
then, so is Gulshan, because both are the same to me.’

‘Have you no shame, you scoundrel!’ the Buzurgh barked, barely able to hold onto his temper. ‘You wicked boy – you dare to proclaim your lust for this immoral woman in public and insult your own wife!’

Haroon calmly let his eyes scan over the sea of faces. ‘I do not feel ashamed. We have done nothing wrong.’ He gazed steadily into the old man’s eyes.

‘Allah pak! The audacity of the haramzada!’ Kulsoom mockingly whispered to Sabra. Sabra politely leaned forward to hear the matchmaker’s words.

Before their startled eyes, Haroon stepped forward and stood beside Naghmana’s chair, firmly placing his arm on her shoulders. Her head reeling, Gulshan stared at her husband in shocked betrayal. The villagers watched thunderstruck. What was this? Horrified and totally alarmed they asked themselves whether Haroon had gone mad. He was breaking all codes of decent social and moral behaviour. Had he actually flipped in the middle of the night? What had that evil woman done to him? What magic potion had she plied him with?

Sensing the villagers’ outrage, Naghmana tried to draw her shoulder away from Haroon’s arm. But he held her firmly down. Enjoying the scene in which he was the chief actor, he dropped his bombshell in the theatre of the village courtyard. His eyes now firmly fixed on Hajra’s open mouth, he declared, ‘For you see, Naghmana is my wife!’

At first, a shattering silence gripped the kacheri courtyard. Then short gasps of surprise and in-drawn breaths were heard everywhere, as the attendees
struggled
to make sense of what Haroon had said and to grapple with the situation in front of them.

Naghmana’s head had immediately shot up and her eyes had darted straight at Gulshan’s. Then the two women, their fates joined by one man and one night, stared at one another, frozen in time and space. The world around them forgotten.

G
ULSHAN DIDN’T AT
first understand what Haroon had said, and when she did, her body fell back in the chair, as if he had physically assaulted her. Her
horror-struck
eyes sought Haroon’s, pleading for an
explanation
. Then they sought Naghmana’s, with a desperate need for a denial from her.

It was as if time stood still. A pivotal moment in space – just for them. Both found themselves swimming in new, tumultuous waves of pain and misery. Naghmana’s heart leapt to Gulshan’s,
imagining
herself in the other woman’s place, swapping their pains.

The kacheri was robbed of words and sounds and reality. The eerie silence was stranger than anything Baba Siraj Din had ever experienced in the sixty years of his life. His own mental faculties appeared to have been snatched from him. He gasped for breath as his fingers nervously tugged at the ends of his moustache. This was not what he had anticipated.

It was a novel experience for the Buzurgh. He, the village elder, the qazi, the statesman, now found it difficult to compose himself. He found himself in a drama in which he was no longer the chief performer or director. Somebody else had brutally snatched that role from him. His audience, reeling like himself, were, however, still watching and waiting, their eyes huge with disbelief.

His worried gaze moved from Gulshan’s face to Hajra’s. She looked comical: her rolling eyes and open mouth gave a new physical characteristic to her face – of utter outrage, and crying disbelief.

Baba Siraj Din cleared his dry throat. He leant
forward
over the table and croaked, ‘What nonsense is this? Are you trying to make monkeys out of us, Haroon, by pretending she is your wife?’

‘This is no pretence, Buzurgh Jee. Naghmana is my first wife. This is what I tried and wanted to tell you. You can ask her if you don’t believe me,’ Haroon calmly informed his audience.

Over a hundred pairs of eyes swooped on Naghmana’s lowered face. Her cheeks throbbing with heat, she didn’t dare to meet Gulshan’s eyes or anyone else’s in that space of a few hundred yards.

‘Is this correct, young woman?’

Naghmana’s head jerked up, her gaze meeting that of the Buzurgh. A sudden thought darted in her mind.
This old man hates me
! Her head swam and something died within her.
He
feels happier regarding me as a whore than as a wife.

Holding tightly onto her son and with her heart in her mouth, Gulshan’s life hung on Naghmana’s answer.

When Naghmana caught Gulshan’s piteous
expression
she swallowed and looked back at the Buzurgh – caught between the two. Her mind and heart wrestled. Was she or wasn’t she married to Haroon? The whole kacheri depended on her answer. She lowered her head, opting for silence. Her honour was reinstated by Haroon telling them of her changed status. She
was
the wife. Now, no one could ever call her a whore, but she didn’t want to cause further havoc.

‘Move away from her, Haroon! Go and sit with your
wife.’ Siraj Din’s agitated voice rang over the heads of all the villagers. He was unable to bear Haroon’s action in flaunting the ‘other woman’ in front of his wife.

Impatiently he fired again at Naghmana’s lowered head. ‘Well, what is
your
status? Are you his wife or not?’

Recoiling from the jeering note in the old man’s voice, Naghmana defiantly broke her silence. ‘Yes! Yes!’ she cried, to the stunned audience. Now she ignored the old man and Gulshan, but instead turned to the man at the centre of her world. She let herself feast on her husband with passion-filled eyes.

Gulshan saw the look and trembled with jealousy and hurt. Her husband’s eyes were now on the woman, and they bore the same expression as hers. The knife of jealousy carved in. There was no denying the fact that her Haroon and the woman had a relationship of some sort. It took more than two days to develop into that all-consuming, naked look of passion in the woman’s eyes.

Gulshan’s heart tumbled and sank in a faraway place, from whence she knew she would never be able to drag it back. Bereft. And forgotten.

‘I have lost my husband!’ she cried blindly, her head falling forward against her young son’s shoulders,
hiding
from everyone. The heat of humiliation coursed through her. Where could she go to sink herself and hide?

Naghmana was oblivious to everyone’s reactions. That one magical word ‘wife’ had given their union legitimacy. She didn’t care any more whether everyone saw the passion in her eyes. There was nothing to hide. No shame. As they dived into each other’s souls,
exultant
, both found themselves caught in the spell of their
earlier passion. Their attraction, that had resulted in a short-lived marriage, some six years ago.

Both proud and passionate people, they had loved deeply. Yet they each had one major flaw. They would never compromise. It was that pride of theirs and one argument that had torn them prematurely apart and had cost them five years of separation – and in Haroon’s case, had resulted in another marriage. They had fallen in love, married and separated without either of their immediate families knowing. It was their doomed secret. Then they simply lost touch. They had departed from each other’s lives, almost without trace until two days ago, when Naghmana had unexpectedly come to stay with her aunt in the village, little guessing that her husband was there and that he had married again. Unable to trace her and thinking that his marriage was over, Haroon had married again – this time, his cousin from Chiragpur. In a bid to forget Naghmana, he had never mentioned her name to anyone or let his second wife know that he had had a relationship with another woman before he married her. That was his secret.

Seeing each other again in the village, Naghmana and Haroon found themselves caught up in the magic and spell of their earlier passion. With a wife and a child to think of, and with nobody knowing about his first marriage, Haroon had asked Naghmana to keep their relationship a secret, until he could prepare Gulshan for the explanation concerning Naghmana’s existence. He knew it would rip Gulshan’s world apart. She was a gentle, fragile creature.

Meanwhile, the lovers were unable to stay away from each other, resulting in the passionate embrace that the stricken Gulshan had stumbled upon.

For the first time that day, healthy colour seeped into
Naghmana’s cheeks, fanning them aglow with life. She was riding high on Haroon’s love, a light glowing inside her. Haroon, ignoring the shattered spectators, gazed back at his first wife with his heart in his eyes. As in her face, there was no shame, only pride. ‘To hell with you all, this is my wife!’ his eyes sang out.

Then, Naghmana caught sight of the stricken look of Gulshan’s face, and the lamp, the
diva
, of passion inside her was snuffed out as suddenly as it was lit. And the colour, too, slowly ebbed away from her cheeks. She stared with her soul into Gulshan’s tear-filled eyes, peering back at her from behind her little boy’s head.

Naghmana’s head sank in defeat. ‘This is not
paradise
. This isn’t six years ago,’ she mourned. ‘Haroon and I can’t take up from where we left off. Here, I have a rival for my affection, a
sokan
, another wife to contend with – as well as a sullied reputation.’ Her heart wept anew. ‘Oh God, help me!’

Now she retreated into her shell, hiding her feelings once more, behind the shuttered look in her eyes. Her head held high, Naghmana looked boldly into the eyes of the village elder. It was like looking into the eyes of a cobra. Naghmana reeled at the hatred in them.

‘He really loathes me. This old man will never know how dearly my next words are going to cost me,’ she silently mourned. Aloud, her voice carrying clearly around the courtyard, she declared, ‘What I meant to say was that I
was
his wife, but we are now divorced.’

‘What?’ Haroon shot up. ‘No, we are not!’ he cried out horrified at her answer.

Very alert, Baba Siraj Din eagerly leaned forward. ‘What are you two saying? She says you are divorced, and you say you are not. What kind of game is this, young woman? Are you two trying to make fools out of
us? I warn you both not to sully the sacred nature of our kacheri!’ Siraj Din warned, his large hands spread out on the firm wooden top, his eyes darting fire at Haroon.

‘No! No – we aren’t! Tell them the truth, Naghmana.’ Stunned, Haroon touched her on the shoulder.

Naghmana ignored his request and continued to gaze down at the courtyard floor. The line of ants had now made a dark threadlike path across the dry, dusty ground. Hypnotically, she followed their zigzagging trail, until it reached the nearest tree next to the
verandah
, and then disappeared into a hole. She yearned for a hole big enough for her to disappear into also.

‘How is it that you two are married?’ Siraj Din demanded, fast losing his patience. ‘How is it that nobody knows about her? What is behind this fiasco of yours, apart from using it as a smoke-screen for your immoral doings.’

Angered by the old man’s words, Haroon strode up to the Buzurgh’s table and placed his right hand on the Holy Quran.

‘Look at my hand, Baba Jee. It is on the Quran pak. Do you think I would dare to lie to you, with my hand on the holy book? I tell you, we were married six years ago in Karachi. We loved each other very much – we were both students at university when we first met. Only a few people knew about the marriage. We kept it a secret from most of our relatives, including
Naghmana’s
aunt. Even our own families didn’t know because it ended within a few weeks, thanks to a stupid argument, and we parted whilst still students. We both returned to our home towns and lost touch. We have not seen each other since. Thinking it was all over and unable to find Naghmana, to divorce her, I got married again,
here in the village. I tell you I never divorced Naghmana.’

He gazed at her bent head, willing her to look up at him and support what he had said.

‘So what you are saying is that she is still your wife?’ the old man questioned him, not at all happy with Haroon’s answer.

‘Yes! Yes!’ Haroon shouted.

Naghmana had looked up, glimpsed, read and
swallowed
the misery in Gulshan’s face. Gulshan’s anguish then simply became hers, coiling itself tightly around her heart. It was as if they had swapped their lives and hearts.

Her eyes now huge orbs of passion, yet gentle in their pleading, she addressed her beloved Haroon. ‘No, we are not. We
are
divorced Haroon.’

She hoped, as she pleaded, that he would understand and forgive her for what she was doing, for what she was saying. But Haroon didn’t understand. He stared in amazement at his beloved Naghmana, unable to fathom what was going on in her head or heart.

‘That is not true. I have not divorced you. Why are you doing this, Naghmana? There is no need to hide our relationship any longer. You are my wife. No one can ever dare to call you a whore again. I promise you, I’ll never let them do that to you again. Why are you lying, Naghmana?’ he asked in anguish.

Her answer was her begging gaze locked onto Gulshan’s eyes. Something urgently tapped at Gulshan’s brain; an awareness, an understanding of what Naghmana was trying to do and why. Gulshan’s head fell back against the chair, her eyes widening in disbelief. If this was true, then, oh God – what sort of woman was Naghmana?

Gulshan forgot her own anguish and found herself hurled into the whirlpool of Naghmana’s pain. This woman wasn’t a villain any more, a rival for her
husband’s
affections, but a fellow human being, battling with the tides of human passion and pain but
ennobling
herself in the process.

‘What is going on? Do you want a divorce, young woman? If this man has forgotten it, then let us sort it out now.’ The old man ruthlessly entered the emotional epicentre of the two women and divided them.

At the word divorce –
thalak
– Haroon’s face paled.

‘No! I do not want to divorce her. Why should I want to do that?’ he retorted.

‘My son, Naghmana says that she is divorced,’ came back Siraj Din’s chilly answer. It was at that moment that he saw his wife Zulaikha standing at the back, near the gate. He turned to Naghmana, and found himself urging, ‘You do want to divorce him, don’t you? To end this ugly mess!’

Naghmana heard him and became lost in his
cobra-like
eyes again. She licked her dry lips.

Trapped.

She blinked, but the eyes beckoned. No escape. She looked round at the villagers. Their faces were all turned towards her; their eyes, too, were gleaming. Before her she saw a line of hundreds of cobras, all poised and ready to strike and spray her with their venom. She swept round and stared helplessly into the old man’s clear green eyes.

Naghmana nodded. Her head dropped on her
shoulders
. Defeated.