Typhoon (14 page)

C
HAUDHARANI
K
ANIZ SHUNNED
the offer of a lift in her car, surprising her twenty-four-year-old
chauffeur
, informing him quietly that she had decided to walk back. She made sure, however, that her sister Sabra sat in the car and reached home in comfort.

The crowd of men and women, talking in hushed whispers, left the madrasah courtyard and dispersed into different village lanes. Siraj Din went to his jeep, which was parked outside the gates.

Kaniz walked conspicuously by herself. The village women cast curious glances in her direction, wondering why the Chaudharani chose to walk over the cobbled lane, like everyone else. They lacked the temerity,
however
, to either walk by her side or to converse with her whilst her manner was at its most aloof. The chiffon scarf on her head, too, was pulled tighter around her face, hiding her coronet of hair.

Back in her hawaili, Kaniz ignored Neesa’s timid
message
that her sister was waiting in the dining room. Instead she climbed the set of marble stairs to her room. Shrugging off her outdoor chador from her shoulders and throwing it carelessly onto the bed, Kaniz stood in front of her window looking out onto the village fields. The window was the dividing line, establishing the parameters between ‘her world’ and that of the village outside.

It wasn’t the green fields but Naghmana’s and Gulshan’s faces that spun before her. The kacheri had triggered off the memories of her own pain. In
particular
the humiliation on her wedding day, on learning that her husband loved another.

Sweeping away from the window, Kaniz sat down on the dressing table stool, her head averted from the
mirror
. ‘Naghmana! Naghmana! Badkismet woman!’ she groaned aloud, unable to stop the flow of anguish. Then hearing foot steps, she quickly brushed her hand against her wet cheeks.

Sabra was very concerned at her sister’s posture in front of the dressing-table.

‘Sister Kaniz, what are you doing here? I expected you down for dinner.’ She peered into Kaniz’s face. ‘Are you all right? You’ve been crying!’ Sabra felt alarmed. Kaniz very rarely shed tears.

‘I was crying for Naghmana.’ Kaniz whispered, a tortured look on her face. ‘The unfortunate soul, how could they do that to her? First to suffer public
humiliation
and being called such terrible names. Then to get herself divorced – and that publicly. Sabra, she was his wife! She had every right to be with him, just as Gulshan does.’ Kaniz looked aghast at her sister. ‘Why did she ask for a divorce, Sabra? And why, oh why, did Baba Siraj Din have her divorced? The thalaks – three! Sabra! And all at one go! Are they legitimate?’

‘I don’t know. I wish I had never gone to your kacheri. Why did those women come to tell you about it? I couldn’t eat a morsel now, after imagining what that poor woman has gone through. How on earth must she be feeling at this moment? Her world ripped apart. Her husband lost.’

‘I know – The kacheri reminded me of my wedding
day – you remember, when I found out that my
husband
loved another woman, Fatima. My own world spun before me as I watched the terrible drama unfold today. Sabra, my heart reached out first to Gulshan and then amazingly in a few moments to Naghmana – the so-called
bad
woman. Seeing them both, I relived my own anguish and pangs of jealousy. It all came flooding back, oh so vividly. For a moment there, I imagined myself being publicly humiliated, just as Naghmana was. I still remember the women whispering around me, as I sat as a new bride in my new home, amidst them, about my husband loving another, and wanting to marry her. As Gulshan gazed at Naghmana and saw her as a threat to herself, I too remember looking at Fatima, ten years ago in pained bewilderment,
wondering
how I had inherited this package, of another woman in my life. Was this part of my dowry – the shadow of another woman in my marriage? Even though my husband Sarwar Jee is dead, every time I spot Fatima, I remember him, my wedding day and the shroud of humiliation I have worn since then. There are two days in my life which haunt me, my sister. And they will continue to haunt me till the day I die.’

‘You said two days: what do you mean? Which other day?’ Sabra asked earnestly, a frown on her high forehead. She saw a shadow cross Kaniz’s face.

‘Nothing,’ came the hollow reply. Standing up, Kaniz took the gauzy, seed-pearl-studded dupatta laid out on the bed for her, by Neesa, and draped it nimbly around her shoulders.

‘You are so attractive, Kaniz.’ Sabra’s eyes hovered lovingly over her sister’s face – her fine, delicate
features
, her translucent peachy skin. ‘And with such a beautiful statuesque body that women would die for.’

Kaniz’s hand froze on the dupatta on her shoulder. ‘I die every day because of this body – I hate it!’

Sabra faltered, taken aback by her sister’s reaction. Just then a timid knock on the door disturbed them. Neesa entered.

‘What is it?’ Sabra asked the servant, still reeling from her sister’s words. Neesa nervously stood inside the room, glancing from one sister to the other.

‘Well what is it?’ Kaniz hissed crossly.

‘Younus Raees Sahib’s servant is here. He says that his master would like to talk to you personally this evening – if you are willing?’ Neesa’s eyes promptly dropped, as they always did, before the irate gaze of her mistress.

And mistress Kaniz was in a foul mood.

‘Thank you Neesa. Tell him
I will
see him!’ She then dismissed her woman helper.

With Neesa gone, Kaniz confronted her sister. An angry tide of colour flared in her cheeks. ‘That man! I will have to get rid of him once and for all. I hate him! He was staring at me at the kacheri – all the time, Sabra. Then he had the audacity to call out to me in the street, and that with all the village women around. I will not let him compromise my izzat.’

‘He cares about you and wants to marry you,’ Sabra said placatingly.

‘What is wrong with him anyway? Why does he want to marry me, a widow, when he can have any young single woman he wants?’ Kaniz shrugged her shoulders in distaste. ‘Let’s not talk about him!’
Glancing
down at the lace of her dupatta to check if Neesa had pressed all the edges properly, Kaniz changed the subject. ‘I forgot to tell Neesa to go to Fatima’s home and invite her and her niece Naghmana for lunch
tomorrow. Sabra, I so want to meet and talk to this woman personally. I have heard she is very educated – a professional woman of some sort. Although she comes from another society from our own, I feel as if somehow I can relate to her. It is almost as if Naghmana and I are two souls with a certain kinship between us. I don’t know why, but I have this strange intuition. Our lives are parallel in a lot of ways.’

‘Well, not surprising. You are both beautiful, both young and both are without husbands at the moment,’ Sabra chuckled with a twinkle in her eyes.

‘There you go again,’ Kaniz said irritably. ‘You are still obsessed with the idea of getting me married off.’

‘Yes I am, my darling sister, because I love you so much and I care about you,’ Sabra laughingly replied. Then a frown appeared as a thought crossed her mind. ‘Kaniz Jee, a moment ago you said
two
days haunt you. Come, tell me – which is the other day?’ Sabra was still troubled by her sister’s earlier comment.

Kaniz debated with herself – but no, today it wasn’t to be. She resisted the desire to unburden her heart.

‘I am going to have a shower.’ She walked out of the room.

‘But you had one just before we went to the kacheri! Sabra objected.

‘Well, I am going to have another one, Sabra!
Sometimes
I have three baths a day. Did you not know that? Are you going to start keeping a record? I forever need to wash myself, Sabra. That is the penalty I am paying for this beautiful body.’ And closed the door firmly behind her.

Sabra was left sitting on her sister’s bed, a puzzled frown pleating her forehead into three thick lines.

Siraj Din had looked everywhere for his wife. His last port of call was the kitchen. Their woman servant was washing the floor with the hose, generously swishing the water over the marble surface. Zulaikha wasn’t there either. He returned to the central courtyard and asked one of the male servants, watering potted plants lined against the walls of the courtyard, whether he had seen mistress Zulaikha: apparently she was in the storeroom on the first floor.

Siraj Din found his wife in their large storeroom, lined with huge steel bedding cases, with pyramids of leather suitcases stacked one on another, the smallest one propped neatly at the top. Hearing his firm step in the room, Zulaikha looked up. She held a folded quilt in her arms, ready to lift it over her shoulders and place it back in the steel case. A mound of other folded quilts were piled high on a charpoy. They were special duvets, kept for her children and grandchildren when they visited them. This morning Zarri Bano and Jafar had slept in them.

The one she carried in her hand, with its soft purple satin cover was her eldest granddaughter, Zarri Bano’s, favourite. ‘Grandmother, please don’t let anyone use this
razai
. It is mine – I love its colour so much,’ Zarri Bano had pleaded when she was only six years old, cuddling into it. Zulaikha had bent down and kissed her on her forehead, teasing her, ‘Zarri Bano, I will give you this razai as part of your dowry.’

‘Will it still be around then? When will I ever grow up, Grandmother?’ Zarri Bano had asked anxiously, putting her small arms around her
dadi ama
’s neck and hugging her.

‘You will grow up very quickly, my daughter. In fact, too soon, for your father’s liking,’ Zulaikha had
affectionately told the child. The smile had slipped from her face, as she looked at her granddaughter. Zarri Bano was just like her father, Habib – exuding charisma and good looks. Zulaikha just knew that she would grow up to be a beautiful woman. Those emerald eyes, the dimple in the cheeks, the glossy curls. She wondered whom she was destined to marry, which lucky man would interest her and which home she would grace, and whether Zulaikha herself would be around to attend her wedding. The pain in her chest was getting worse, and she still hadn’t told her husband about it. How long could she go on guarding this secret from him?

Now she turned to look at her husband, her face deliberately expressionless. Siraj Din stared back. Unable to bear the dejection in his eyes, Zulaikha turned to the steel bedding case and heaved Zarri Bano’s favourite quilt back in its place until the next time they visited the village. She hoped that it would be very soon.

Siraj Din waited. Zulaikha still didn’t speak or give his presence any authority. She just picked up Jafar’s quilt and placed that, too, in the case. Then she rested for a minute, feeling the pain in her chest grow stronger. The pain was now so sharp that she decided to leave the bedding and let her woman helper deal with it later.

Carefully avoiding his eyes, Zulaikha quietly passed her husband, standing in the doorway. She walked down to the ground floor, resting her hand on her breast. She only did this when her husband wasn’t watching.

Siraj Din stood alone in the bedding room, amazed at his wife’s behaviour. She had never treated him like
this before, as though he was invisible. This was a room he very rarely visited. It was the domain of his wife and the women servants. Men never had anything to do with bedding. And he had honoured her by visiting her there.

Going downstairs, he stood under the verandah and watched his wife slowly cross the courtyard and enter their guest drawing room. He didn’t follow her. Instead he signalled to his manservant, still watering the plants, to prepare his hookah for him.

Shrugging off his shoes, he stretched out his body on the portable bed, resting his back on the thick bolster. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his wife emerge from the drawing room, cross the verandah and pass his palang before going into the kitchen quarters. A strange uneasiness clutching his heart, Siraj Din rested heavily on the bolster. Naghmana, with her bowed head, stood behind his closed eyes.

‘Javaid!’ he shouted to his twenty-year-old male helper.

‘Jee Sahib Jee’ Javaid respectfully answered, rushing to his master’s side.

‘Go to Fatima’s home and inform her that she and her niece must have a breakfast feast at our home, tomorrow morning. For we desire it very much. Her niece will be our special guest. Do you understand our meaning? Do you know which house you are going to? Remember there are two Fatima’s in the village.
Not
Fiaz’s Fatima: she had gone to Dubai anyway.’

‘Yes, Baba Jee.’ Nodding, Javaid left on his errand.

Siraj Din turned his head and saw his wife. Zulaikha stood against one of the marble pillars, her eyes cold with condemnation.

‘A breakfast feast after you have had her divorced!’ The silent reproach shouted to him.

She had heard what he had said. She stared at him for one more eloquent moment, before turning and disappearing inside.

‘I
T IS A
miracle,’ Kulsoom marvelled. ‘They have both forgotten their particular ailments.’ Jamila, her nausea and pregnancy; Sardara, her arthritis-ridden hips and useless legs. Dutifully shepherding them back home, Kulsoom and Naimat Bibi accompanied their two friends to their doorsteps.

No one exchanged a word during the whole journey. Even Sardara’s kurmani’s twin daughters’ chatter seemed to have deserted them. Twirling the laced and bobbled embroidered ends of their chiffon dupattas in their hands, the twins strode ahead of the four older women, their high-heeled sandals clip-clopping on the cobbled lanes.

Jamila was the first one to be dropped off. Signalling with her eyes and a wave of her hand, she thanked them. She didn’t bother to invite them in and they, in turn, hadn’t expected it. Quietly, Jamila closed the large imposing door on her friends’ faces. Even the goodbyes were dispensed with. It was as if they were afraid of opening their mouths.

Sardara was led to her comfortable hammock seat on her verandah before her two dear friends padded silently away from her courtyard. They cast fearful glances at her swollen ankles, now huge and misshapen. The two mothers-in-law exchanged glances as they fanned themselves with the frilly
pankas
, hand fans. The electric generator had stopped working, but a single
word would neither form itself nor leave their mouths. Sardara’s son crossed the courtyard, shepherding a milk buffalo into the farm courtyard, annexed to the main courtyard. For the first time in her life, Sardara
experienced
a strange reluctance to get up and look after one of her animals – a chore she never dreaded.

‘Allah pak, help us all!’ The sound of her words echoed back into her ears. She got up and hobbled painfully past her kurmani, happily puffing away at the hookah pipe.

Out in the village lanes Kulsoom and Naimat Bibi walked home in silence, an eerie and novel experience for them both.

Naimat Bibi’s home was the first stop. Kulsoom
followed
her friend inside. The humblest of all the village dwellings, the home had just three rooms and a small courtyard, dwarfed by a large grapevine. Much to Kulsoom’s consternation, this vine was a popular haunt for the black crows. They always appeared to be
pecking
greedily at the leaves of the tree in Naimat Bibi’s home. And as they glided from branch to branch, many a time Kulsoom had had her head splattered with their droppings. She was a 100 per cent certain that the crows had a personal grudge against her.

Naimat Bibi stood awkwardly under her
twelve-foot
-long verandah. She didn’t want to go inside her small dark
pasar
, her living room-cum-bedroom. It had no outside window – the only light came from the verandah. Its darkness would be unbearable today. She thus pulled out a footstool from the verandah portion of her kitchen area and dragged it with her foot across the courtyard for her friend. Kulsoom gratefully squatted on it, leaning against the rough plastered pillar
supporting the verandah canopy. Naimat Bibi pulled out another peeri for herself. Both sat facing one another.

‘Would you like some
lassi
?’ Naimat Bibi solemnly offered her friend.

Kulsoom Bibi shook her head. Lassi, the cool milky whey drink, was her favourite drink in summer. Not today. The kacheri had quenched her thirst, and
apparently
her thirst for life. Normally she never left her friend’s home without having drunk at least two bowls of it.

‘We are cursed, my friend, just as her Aunt Fatima threatened!’ she said heavily. ‘Her curses will haunt us all our lives! Naimat Bibi, remember it was us two who went around spreading the rumour about her. We did it, you know. We were responsible too!’

Naimat Bibi wasn’t looking at her friend, but instead was staring up at the two crows on the branch, just above the pillar against which her friend was sitting.

‘I know, my friend. I feel as if someone has struck me a hundred times with my
danda
, my washing stick – but why didn’t she tell everyone that she was his wife? Why wait until the kacheri and
then
tell us, Kulsoom? And then to have herself divorced in front of us all! Allah pak will never forgive us, Kulsoom Jee, for being a party to this event. We went to see her shamed, to see the tamasha, just as her aunt taunted us with. Instead we saw her being forcibly divorced before our eyes by the old man and we did nothing to stop it.’

‘I know, Naimat Jee. Why did Baba Siraj Din force the divorce? Why did he do such a cruel thing?’

‘I really don’t know, Sister Kulsoom. She asked for it herself, didn’t she? But why did Baba Jee insist on the three thalaks? Why not one – why three? It is almost as
if his intention was to get rid of her. The only way he could do it was by the three thalaks. With one she still had a chance of reconciliation, but not with three!’

‘I have never been a witness to a divorce before, Naimat Jee, especially three thalaks given all at one go. Is that legally possible? Can you really receive three thalaks all at one go, in such circumstances? I almost died when Haroon with his tightly closed eyes
pronounced
the third thalak. Did you see her face as he whispered the words?’ Kulsoom shuddered. After that she didn’t glance at him again. Did you note that? A husband and wife totally separated. A whore! A wife! A divorcee! We saw her in the three roles one after the other. All within fifteen minutes.’

‘I am going to pray to Allah pak to forgive me for the part I have played in this tragedy, Kulsoom Jee.’ The other woman’s eyes were full of tears.

‘It is a terrible tragedy. You are absolutely right. I will do the same, Naimat Jee, for we have sinned. We spread untrue rumours about her.’

‘But we didn’t know any differently, did we! How were we to know that she was Haroon’s wife? It was Hajra and Fatima we heard speaking, remember. If anybody must bear the blame it is Hajra. It is all her doing! She set the whole ball rolling.’

Kulsoom sighed heavily. ‘I had better get home,’ she said tiredly. ‘Do you know, I have had nothing to eat all day yet I don’t feel hungry at all.’ She slowly eased her body up, pushing the footstool back against the pillar. Some plaster dust peeled off onto the brick-lined
veranda
floor. Naimat Bibi glanced at it, then
magnanimously
ignored the damage her friend had caused. It was only a bit of plaster. There were far more important things in the world to worry about.

‘I know, I am not hungry either,’ she said. ‘I will not light my chapatti tandoor today. It will remain cold as it does on any days when I am in mourning. I am sorry, but I will have to turn all the women away from my door with their bowls of dough, for I have not the energy nor the will to cook for anyone today.’

‘Whatever you wish, Naimat Jee. I had better get home. Allah hafiz, my dear friend.’

Her glass bangles jangling on her bony arms, Kulsoom left her friend and went straight home across the street. She was in no mood for business either. Her matchmaking calls on her neighbours would just have to be postponed until another day.