Typhoon (23 page)

So when he was on his deathbed and her father-
in-law
had said ‘Call her, please!’ she knew exactly who he meant. He had also asked her to contact the other pair,
Haroon and Gulshan. It proved to be a very stressful time for everyone concerned. Shahzada had to play a diplomatic game with the two couples as they settled in the same villa. She kept them apart, making sure that they had bedrooms on different floors, and she failed to introduce them to each other. They had dinner at
different
times and at different sittings. The poor woman, Naghmana, locked herself in her room on the first afternoon and after that rarely came out. Her bespectacled husband knew no one in the hawaili, and was more concerned in spending time with his wife away from the guests. Haroon remained a silent figure amongst the men, with no knowledge of Naghmana’s new husband. Gulshan apparently never went near her husband at all. Shahzada left them all to it for she had enough to do with arranging the funeral without analysing her guests’ strange behaviour.

‘Why did Grandfather want to meet that woman?’ asked her daughter. ‘She’s very strange, mother,
spending
all day in bed by herself. She has hardly eaten
anything
. Twice poor Naimat Bibi took a tray up for her, and both times the food was barely touched. If you ask her anything she looks vague and hardly answers, and yet she is supposed to be an executive in a large firm. Who is she, Mother? Tell me please.’

‘I don’t know!’ Shahzada lied glibly. Her father-
in-law’s
secret and that of the villagers’ involvement and guilt in the kacheri would die with her. She would not divulge it to anyone, even her own daughter, who, with her brother and sister, had been packed off to the town because of that fateful afternoon, little guessing how the kacheri had caused a permanent rift in her
grandmother’s
home. How her grandparents lost each other that day.

Shahzada saw, felt and lived Baba Siraj Din and Mistress Zulaikha’s estrangement. Why it had
happened
, she had never had the courage to find out. Her mother-in-law died a troubled death only months later on a hospital bed. Her last action was to hand her small silk parcel to her curious daughter-in-law.

‘Keep it safe. It is a precious gift.’ Shahzada took Naghmana’s lock of hair and put it away somewhere, but never found it again.

‘Right, my children, get some sleep. Allah hafiz!’ Shahzada abruptly cut herself off from her thoughts. Enough misery and guilt soaked this house, she wasn’t going to let a little discoloured silk parcel spoil her night.

Shahzada, with her grandson held lovingly in her arms, pressed a kiss on her daughter’s forehead and left the room.

Sikander’s eyes circled his wife in pleasure. Zarri Bano shyly looked away, then boldly met his gaze. ‘I have missed you so much!’ she murmured against his lips.

His arms became a tight band, as he whispered the words: ‘My beautiful bride – my Holy Woman.’

Y
OUNUS
R
AEES LEANED
stiffly against the tree trunk near the village well, looking up at the stars in the night sky, waiting. He was debating with himself about the wisdom of agreeing to meet Chaudharani Kaniz in the middle of the night. She was a woman of an unusual temperament. One never knew where one stood with her.

After a while he spotted two heavily cloaked female figures coming down the path from the village. His heartbeat hastened. Standing up straight he drew away from the shadows of the tree branches, watching and waiting.

One figure stalled, disappearing into the shadows beside a tree near the village path. The other, tall one, was steadily moving in his direction. One end of a chador was held straight across the woman’s face, concealing the lower half, giving her total anonymity in the darkness. Younus Raees stepped back into the shadows, not quite sure now whether it was Kaniz who was coming towards him. She had never put a cloth to her face before.

When she approached the village well the woman saw him. Stopped. Then turned, ready to take flight. Terror-stricken.

‘Kaniz!’ Younus Raees’s firm but reassuring voice froze the cloaked woman. He knew then that it was her. Slowly she turned round and, letting the chador fold fall slowly from her face, revealed her identity to him.

‘Don’t go!’ he urged, taking a few tentative paces towards her.

Unsure, Kaniz stood poised on the edge of the path, hugging the black chador around her –
sheltering
in it. Then her old pride came rushing to her rescue. I am not going to run away from
him
, she thought. It was me who requested this meeting, after all.

Bravely she turned fully to face this man who had somehow persisted in remaining on the periphery of her very existence for the last thirty years. Never visible to her gaze, but somehow always there. Threatening her peace. Beckoning.

Their eyes met, then drifted awkwardly apart. The silence stretching between them was like a humid blanket in the summer evening. Both were painfully aware of the shadowy figure of Sabra, chaperoning them at a discreet distance.

Kaniz boldly took the initiative. Her eyes carefully averted from his, she began in her clear, steady voice. ‘Younus Raees Sahib, three days ago you came with a letter to my home. In that letter you honoured me with a certain request. You said that I could give you my answer to that request in person. And thus I am here.’ Her voice dipped to a low whisper, as she suddenly came over shy.

‘What happened to my letter?’ he enquired.

Kaniz looked up, laughter bubbling and spilling out of her mouth as she recalled her action on her rooftop, with her sharp nails, shredding the note to tiny bits of paper.

‘Raees Sahib, the letter followed you that day, the tiny shredded messengers whispering my answer to you in the wind.’

Understanding dawning on him, she saw his hopeful face transform to a tight polite mask.

‘I see,’ he said coldly, turning to look up at the stars. Had she come to make fun of him, to insult him?

Astutely reading his mind Kaniz hastened to add, ‘You misjudge me, Raees Sahib. I am very honoured by your proposal, but do you know or appreciate exactly what you are asking me to do?
To marry you
? I feel embarrassed to even utter the words. I am not twenty, Younus Sahib, not thirty, not forty. I turned fifty a few months ago and only two days ago became a
grandmother
. I have a thirty-one-year-old son. He is your business partner.

‘And there you are, at this stage of my life, asking me to marry you. You too live in the same world as the one I inhabit. We do not live on separate planets, Raees Sahib. Therefore you should know that there are certain things that can never happen in our culture, in our particular society and world to be more precise. To you, as a man, yes – but to a woman, never! You have the freedom, and can enjoy the social applause to marry even at seventy. For me, as a woman, it has been too late for a number of years, even if I had wanted to, Raees Sahib – which I don’t. Let alone, now, as a
grandmother
! How many grandmothers get married in the social sphere that both of us inhabit? How many do you know? And what will be the outcome of such a strange occurrence? The whole idea, in short, is not only
preposterous
but also ludicrous.’

Disconcerted, Younus Raees stiffly began, ‘I do not care about the culture you talk of. I only know and care about a beautiful woman who stands before me, hiding from my sight in the dark, who came to this village as a nineteen-year-old bride, thirty-two years ago. For me,
Kaniz, time has stood still. Will always stand still where you are concerned. Age has lost its meaning for me. To hell with the social world and its dictates,’ he ended earnestly, his eyes sweeping over her face, recalling other moments in the past.

‘Please stop,’ Kaniz begged, looking away, unable to bear either his words or his eager eyes roaming over her face.

‘I have to say what is in my heart, Kaniz. You
brutally
turned me away from your doorstep twenty years ago. I still remember and loathe your words. I promised myself then that you were the last woman I would ever marry. Yet here I am today, still helplessly tracing your footsteps. I married and was happy with my wife and our life. I have two beautiful healthy teenage children. Allah pak, however, has taken my wife away from me. I am now left without a mother for my children. My daughter, especially misses her mother. She needs and seeks the guidance and company of a woman, that I cannot or am not able to give her. Chance and circumstance have thrown me back in your path. To seek once more, Kaniz, your hand in marriage – this time to become not only my life’s partner, but more importantly, mother to my two children.’

His impassioned speech was met by a poignant silence, as Kaniz looked away, to the dark shadows of the village houses. Escape.

‘I am unworthy both of you and of what you seek, Younus Raees,’ she cried at last, her heart bleeding at his generosity and the feelings he had harboured for her. Life wasn’t fair. ‘With your social status,
personality
and wealth, you can have any woman you want, even thirty years younger. You don’t need me. Please marry someone else!’

‘It is you I want, Kaniz.’ His dark eyes embraced and held her with their warmth.

‘No!’ Heat flaring through her body, Kaniz turned from him, ready to flee from the man who insisted on wanting her. Then, her eyes brimming with tears, she was ready to sacrifice and strip herself of the last ounce of her self-respect. She owed it to him. He had to know – to end it all.

‘You do not know me at all, Younus Raees,’ she said, her voice breaking. She had to bare her past shame before him. Lay out her sullied chador in front of him. And in so doing, perhaps perform penance for her sin and finally close the door to him.

‘True, Kaniz. I do not know you at all – but I can learn, if you let me. If you give me a chance. I have a deep well of understanding, Kaniz,’ he said tenderly.

Gazing up at the moonlight in the sky Kaniz bitterly burst forth, ‘There are certain things, Raees Sahib, that no ‘deep wells’ of your understanding can ever douse with clean waters. Tonight I came not to offer myself in marriage to you – that can never be – but to thank you for the honour you have bestowed upon me and to explain my behaviour. I can and could never be your wife, neither now nor twenty years ago. For you see I stand before you as a damaged goods – a woman long deprived of her self-respect and human dignity, and from whom the gift of womanhood was snatched. I – I …’ Heat scorched Kaniz’ cheeks. The dark night hid their colour. Then, wanting to punish both herself and him for wanting her, she let the words tumble from her mouth. Too late! She could never pull them back.

‘I was raped as a teenager, Younus Raees,’ she told him, her voice sinking to a dull whisper. Raising her head ‘Do you still want me now?’ Her agonised cry
challenged him. She saw his look, and in it her own Nemesis. Wincing at his horror-stricken face, Kaniz felt the stirring of nausea in her stomach.

‘What have I done? Have I gone mad?’ she wailed inside. ‘I have lost his respect.’ Her body shivered with self-loathing. The urge to hide both herself and her shame was strong in her bones.

Instead, she stood her ground, and waited. From behind her came the soft rustling noise from the leaves of the tree in the warm wind, the croaking of the frogs in the tube-well canals and streams, and the song of the night crickets. Tears of shame began to roll down her cheeks.

She took a tentative step, and waited. Then another. Ready to flee and disappear, from him and her shame. Anticipating her movement, Younus Raees’s strong hand reached for her arm and pulled her back by one end of her chador, the other corner now trailing on the dusty path.

Then he stood before her, a tall, dark, masculine
figure
, blocking her path and her vision! With trepidation she glanced up at his face. It was like a mask carved in granite. Her heart sank in dismay. ‘I have shocked him,’ she wept inside, only now realising how much his opinion of her had really mattered.

He stared at her face for so long that she began to wonder if he would ever talk to her again. Tears still trembling and falling out of her eyes she repeated
huskily
, ‘Do you still want to marry me, Raees Sahib?’

Then, when she thought he would remain silent for ever, she saw his lips move. She watched in fascination the way they curved, and behind them she caught a glimpse of his teeth. ‘Such beautiful lips and teeth. Why have I not noticed them before?’ she asked herself
in wonderment. Then she realised with a shy awareness that it was the first time she had ever looked at him properly, as a woman, with a woman’s eyes.

‘Was it
him
?’

Taken aback by his question, Kaniz looked up.

‘The man who made you cry at my party thirty years ago. I have never forgotten him, Kaniz.’

Kaniz stared back with horror-stricken eyes,
recoiling
from the look on his face. ‘He knows everything!’ her mind wept. She tried to draw her chador from Younus Raees’s grasp, ready to flee again. But he held onto her arm tightly.

‘For how long will you go on running away from your past, Kaniz?’ he softly whispered down, but just as quickly looked away, wanting to spare her the pain of looking him in the eye. He understood and felt her shame. It lay between them like a stained chador,
sullied
for eternity, never to be washed clean, always clinging to its wearer.

‘Don’t go, Kaniz!’ he burst out suddenly. ‘Your sister did hint to me earlier today in her letter that something had happened to you in your youth, that made you act so strangely at times, but I never guessed exactly what it was. ‘She wrote: “There is reason behind my sister’s odd behaviour I cannot say what it is – only she herself can tell you.” I am so sorry,’ he said tenderly. If I only had known. No wonder you cried out to me that day your revulsion of men, by expressing it so graphically in words that have haunted me for years. So much so that I have hated you for them, little guessing at the painful truth behind them.’

‘Now do you understand why I could never marry you? Why I have never wanted to go near any man?’ she cried out to him, still looking away. Pulling the chador
around her, she raised it above her mouth, hiding. She withdrew her arm from his grasp and stood away. They had no right to touch each other.

‘But I am not any man, Kaniz. I am not
him
!’ He moved a discreet step back, remembering the social parameters.

‘How can you marry and respect a woman who has been defiled in such a way?’ Kaniz cried, taunting him. ‘Who loathes the very essence of her being. Her body above all – from which she can never escape. I have had ten thousand baths, Younus Raees, but I am still unclean. Do you know what it feels like to be
pleat
, for eternity? To live with a
pleat
body?’

His heart wept at her anguish and suffering. ‘I respect you for what you are, Kaniz. You are not
pleat
. Never have been, never will be. It is all in your mind,’ but she angrily cut him short.

‘Please spare me your magnanimous lectures. You are a very gallant man, and I thank you for your
understanding
, and I am intelligent enough to appreciate your generosity. We meet here in the middle of the night, our assignation cloaked by darkness. It is this night’s dark mantle that has helped me to hide my blushes of shame from you. I could never look you in the eye in broad daylight, let alone lay before you my sullied past and chador of shame. The darkness and the accompanying silence of the world around us has helped me to uncloak myself – to tell you about my past, about which I have never told anyone, apart from my sister. But let me explain. You are under no human obligation to me. Either now – or ever. I expect nothing from you, Younus Raees. No sympathy. Nothing.’

Again a companionable silence wrapped around them, licking a strange warmth to life between them.
Each digesting and weighing what the other had said. The silence was broken by his bitter laugh.

‘How little you know me, Kaniz. For that matter how little we know about each other. You do me great injustice. How could I turn away from a woman I have loved for almost two-thirds of my life, whose shadow has clung to my waking dreams for so long. I am not turning away from you in disgust as you obviously expect me to do. I never will, Kaniz. My heart bleeds for what you have gone through. If only you had told me twenty years earlier, rather than turning me away, Kaniz. If only. So many wasted years.

My hatred for that man will never leave me. He was the man who made you shed tears in my home and for that I can never forgive him. It was the first time you were there in my house – in my room. I was so delighted and honoured. You were happy, smiling, beautiful and content, hugging your beloved Khawar to your chest. Then
he
came along and put terror into you, and you fled. I watched, but was helpless to do anything. I asked, but you never answered, rebuffing me for my interest. It is just as well, Kaniz, I didn’t know the cause of your grief, or what that beast had done to you. Otherwise I would have killed him on the spot. But why are we talking about the past my
beautiful
Kaniz? It is the future that matters.’