Typhoon (24 page)

Kaniz spoke to him, her voice sadly dipped low. ‘I will understand perfectly, Younus Raees, if in the light of day your footsteps were never to cross my threshold again. I expect nothing from you. Nor do I have any right to expect anything from you.’

Younus Raees stepped closer and stood directly in front of her. ‘My footsteps will continue to cross your threshold again and again, in the broad daylight,
Kaniz, but only, if the door to that threshold is held open to me,’ he challenged.

A strange silence lingered between them – hugging them even closer. At last, her face solemn, and her chin held up at a proud angle, Kaniz softly reminded him, ‘It is through the door of shame you will be entering, but it will remain open to you – a welcome guest. However, if you never lay eyes on me again I will understand, Younus Raees.’

‘There are no doors of shame. Only in your mind, Kaniz,’ he sadly reminded her. Silence again embraced them. ‘Tomorrow I will approach your sister with a formal request for your hand.’ He waited for her reply. Her silence was his answer. Her downcast eyes said the rest. ‘Shall I take you back home?’ he asked. She assented with a nod. He had crossed one major bridge. There would be others, he knew, but they were minor, compared to the one he had crossed together with Kaniz this night.

They started to walk back towards the village side by side separated by just a few inches. Sabra stood by the tree, anxiously waiting and watching. She noted the angle at which Kaniz’s face was raised to him. The chador had fallen off her head showing her beautiful coronet of hair. In the darkness Sabra could make out a hint of a smile on her sister’s face, the dipped rhythm of their speech. Intrigued, she wondered what they were talking about. She raised her two hands in prayer.

‘Allah pak, give my sister peace at last. Free her from the demons of her past.’ In her heart Sabra knew that Younus Raees had already freed her beloved sister from those demons.

She stepped out from the shadows of the tree, but the
couple had already gone past, oblivious of her presence. Younus Raees’s head was bent down to Kaniz.

Quietly and unobtrusively Sabra followed a few hundred yards behind them, happy to be forgotten and to give them the privacy they obviously needed. It was such a long time since Sabra had seen her sister with a man by her side. Her heart swelled with pride and happiness.

T
HE STARS DANCED
and beamed their shining light over the rows of portable beds on the rooftop gallery of Siraj Din’s home. The women were honoured by a place on the rooftop to enjoy the cool night breeze and a heavenly feeling of openness. The men had the choice of either sleeping in the courtyard below or in the
air-conditioned
rooms.

In most women’s heads was the fearful thought of the old man lying in his grave; facing his first night of judgement. ‘He was a good man; he has nothing to worry about. He’ll go straight to heaven –
Insh’ Allah
,’ one of the distant relatives confidently voiced aloud.

Some women had already dozed off, while others were trying to get to sleep as best as they could in such a communal setting. Those who knew one another had chosen their beds to be close to each other. They either sat up to talk in hushed tones or lay down and whispered across the narrow gaps between the beds.

Two elderly distant aunts of Zarri Bano were still up, well engaged in a midnight mango feast. They had had long afternoon naps and were thus now wide-eyed, slurping away into the ripe juicy flesh of the sweet mangoes, closing their eyes in pleasure. Mangoes always tasted heavenly on a rooftop, in the cool breeze and from a bucket of icy cold water.

Gulshan had her bed set in the far corner of the gallery, away from the other guests and their prying
eyes and sharp ears. She stiffly clung onto the side of her bed, unable to sleep. They were all there, down below. Naghmana and the new husband were in one room whilst her own Haroon was in another bedroom. And she, naïve,
naïve
Gulshan was upstairs, all by herself. The two wives and the two husbands were all in one house – unbelievable. The woman on whose behalf she had become estranged from her beloved Haroon, was happily in the arms of her new husband. And she, Gulshan, was lying upstairs, all alone, amongst total strangers – her head in chaos!

‘Enough, Gulshan.’ Her body automatically rose to do her bidding. ‘If it’s not tonight, it will be never.’ She mourned in her head, ‘Tomorrow will be too late!’ The same world, the same life, the same routine, the same house, the same suffocating existence! The return to – death!

‘It is time, Gulshan!’ she repeated, throwing aside the cotton top sheet from her body. Pulling her muslin chador around her head, she gingerly tiptoed between the rows of beds, studiously not looking at anybody. She just concentrated on navigating her way downstairs.

‘Are you all right, my dear?’ Sikander’s mother kindly asked as Gulshan sidled past. Even though a tall electric fan whirred its cool air over her bed, she was still fanning herself vigorously with her hand-fan.

‘Yes, Auntie!’ Gulshan quickly mumbled.

The hushed chatter stopped as Gulshan politely passed the two elderly women who had finished four mangoes between them, washed their hands and now snugly lay down on their pillows, savouring the
delicious
taste in their mouths. They propped their heads nearer to one another: it was time to begin their nightly
bout of gossip and chatter, whilst feasting their eyes on the shining diamonds in the sky. Baba Siraj Din’s hawaili had wrung with the chatter of these two women’s all day. At night it took the form of loud
whisperings
. They had nothing better to do than to offer prayers, eat and sleep. Talking was reckoned to be one of the most popular pastimes amongst the funeral guests. Enjoyed by most and widely accepted as the best of all entertainments, for there was always plenty to gossip about. The funeral equipped them with the time, opportunity and place to do it amply. Shrewd guests would arrange their marriages at funerals. Past quarrels were made up. Grudging reconciliations were tidied over and long-lost relatives discovered and
tolerated
as the situation dictated. For many women it was also an opportunity to wear and show off their new outfits.

Once downstairs, Gulshan headed for the room where she knew her husband would be. Gently opening the door she stepped inside the darkness and stood for a moment seeking her husband. What if she had come into a strange man’s room? She breathed a sigh of relief as she glimpsed his bent figure on the prayer-mat. Haroon was saying his
isha
prayers. He always took his time over it – relaxing and offering his own personal prayers.

Shuddering, Gulshan tiptoed across the room and stood behind him, waiting. Having completed his prayer sequence, Haroon rose from the prayer-mat, turning in surprise to see his wife’s dark silhouette behind him.

‘Is everything OK?’ He spoke in a flat tone.

‘I … I …’ Gulshan awkwardly stepped back, ready to flee. She sat on the bed, tongue-tied. Where did one
begin? What did one say? What did one do?
How
did one begin? Her eyes begged for forgiveness, for
understanding
, and for him to help her by reading her mind and trying to understand why she was there and what she wanted to say.

Haroon stared back, harbouring no inkling of what was in her head and as to what she was doing in his room. Perhaps she felt cold on the rooftop.

‘Can you not sleep upstairs? Here, you take the bed and I’ll go and find another room.’ He offered politely. It was the longest stumbling exchange between them in the last four days since they had arrived back in the village. Before she could open her mouth, Haroon was striding away.

Panicking, she rose from the bed. ‘Please don’t go! Don’t leave me!’ Her low cry halted him at the door.

He turned around and stared back at her. What was Gulshan up to? He waited patiently. What next?

‘Help me, Allah pak!’ Gulshan murmured in her head. Jealousy came to her aid, ripping her apart. ‘She is here, your wife!’ she cried, startling them both. ‘You have seen her, haven’t you? She is sleeping with her new husband! Do you still love her and want her? Please tell me!’ Thus Gulshan broke the silent anguish of the past – the first reference between them to Naghmana in twenty years.

Haroon both heard and felt the raw agony and the jealousy behind her cry. He didn’t know what to say. Would it be worthwhile for him to say anything at all? They were strangers after all. Would it be wasting his time and breath? But her eyes were pleading and something had to be said.

‘I know she is here!’ he returned dully. ‘I am not blind, I have seen her. What do you want me to say?’

Crushed, Gulshan fell silent, her head bowed low. The dark room suffocated her. Why had she come? He stood waiting, the door still held ajar, letting the
moonlight
stream in from the outside courtyard. Gulshan just sat. Tears of self-pity threatened and soon her, bitter sobs echoed around the room.

Agitated, Haroon pressed the door shut with his back. Unable to understand her, yet afraid to go near, afraid of being rebuffed. They had senselessly done it so many times, taking it in turns. Each time cutting themselves masochistically further adrift – hurting themselves and each other from afar.

He stood helplessly by the door as Gulshan wept her heart out. Waste! Waste! All those years wasted. For what? What fools they had been! She raised her
accusing
eyes at Haroon. How could she ever narrow this physical and emotional gap between them? What words could she possibly utter to pull him close? He wasn’t even asking her what the matter was. He just stood and waited – an unhappy and uncomforting stranger. What had they between them? Nothing but empty, hollow living. Two married strangers with
separate
lives, sleeping in separate rooms and eating in separate places, thinking separate thoughts. The only words exchanged: ‘What to cook?’ ‘There is a phone call!’ and ‘There is the bill!’.

Their son, Moeen, the troubled child wedged between them since the age of four, had had his life torn apart by his parents and their strange behaviour. Over a decade he lived this bizarre existence.
Eventually
he escaped by going to university far away. When he found work in another town the contact with his parents became minimal. He never really forgave them for what they had done to him.
His young mind had struggled to make sense of his parents’ alienation. Communication and warmth had simply deserted their home. Outside, other people smiled, but his family’s mouths were etched into firm, stiff lines – never curved. He was passed from one arm to another, but those arms never touched. He saw his mother often cry and sometimes argue with his grandmother; he never asked why. He knew that the suffocating silence and misery had sunk into his mind and bones too. He retreated into his own world, playing with kites. His father never talked to anyone, spending most of his time outside. When Haroon was home, he was cold and
uncommunicative
. He and Gulshan never went out shopping together. In fact, they never went anywhere together. The young Moeen didn’t know what was going on? He had hated the departure from the village and he loathed his new school in the town. He was the only child at the new school who had no siblings.
Bewildered
, he had wondered whether he would ever have a brother or sister. No other child ever entered their house – no baby brother, no sister, nothing. His parents were two dead souls tied together, who never parted. He wondered what and who had hijacked their happiness.

‘Mother, what have you done to your lives?’ He broke the blistering silence one day when he was nearly nine. His mother’s stricken face was his answer. She had done nothing! Fate had dealt her the fatal blow, robbing her of everything she had loved. Misery was now her nightly and daily companion.

Hajra lived weighed down by guilt. She died a troubled woman on the prayer-mat uttering her appeal to Allah pak to forgive her. Her heart had wept. She was
utterly broken by Fatima’s curses. She could neither forgive herself nor forget what had happened at the kacheri.

Baba Siraj Din was right: Hajra and he ultimately bore the responsibility. Her daughter was released from the presence of that woman, but her shadow lay as a heavy mantle, smothering them.

Her beloved Gulshan’s world was swept away before her very eyes. Her anguished cry ‘
meh loothi ghi
– I have been robbed, Mother,’ rang in their hearts for two
decades
. She had indeed been robbed of everything. She lived with her husband who was not a real husband. She lived as a wife but wasn’t able to be the wife. Only living a life of guilt for having taken the other woman’s place. On her mother’s orders, three times she had visited her husband’s bed. Three times she had returned humiliated. It was as if she too had received the three thalaks; one each time.

After that one month, she never entered her
husband’s
room again. It became his domain only. He never asked and she never went. They crept into their separate beds hugging their separate lives and miseries. The pattern was mutually established and accepted.

Hajra stood by helplessly watching, unable to intervene.

‘Mother, you destroyed my home!’ her daughter often accused her. ‘If you hadn’t demanded the kacheri …’ she cried out, unable to continue.

‘Are you mad? Did you want another woman to enter your home, to be your husband’s bedfellow?’ her mother had screeched back.

‘It would have been better than this! That woman was his first wife, don’t you remember? She had a prior right to him. Don’t you understand that she sacrificed
him for me? She left him! She loved him too. Women have lived together for centuries – I would have coped.’

‘No, my naïve, innocent daughter. You don’t you know the misery, the hellish existence of having to share your life and husband with another.’

‘Anything would have been better than this living hell!’ her daughter had screamed out her own misery. ‘I have no husband in this existence – no life. He hates me! I have lost him!’

Her mother could not argue with that and wept out her own agony. True, this was no existence.

‘I wish you had never lived!’ Hajra’s hatred erupted against that woman. Soon afterwards, she repeated in guilt: ‘Allah pak, what am I saying? The poor, wretched woman, left empty-handed – how can I
possibly
still hate her? God forgive me!’ she bewailed after her special
Nafl
prayers. One day she never rose from her prayer-mat. Her last words were: ‘Allah pak, forgive me the sin I have committed.’

With her mother’s death, Gulshan faced total
isolation
. There were no friends or close relatives. Haroon lived as a shadow, passing through her life. Life just ticked along. There was no escape, each one blaming themselves, afraid to reach out to the other – afraid of being rebuffed again! The couple lived an unnatural existence, acutely aware of the other’s movements yet never letting the other know. Waiting! Waiting for what? They knew that only a dead end faced them – a brick wall. However, Gulshan’s weeping was now
slicing
through that solid wall – reaching out. But it had been so long that neither knew how to cope with it.

Haroon’s arms hung helplessly by his side; he was unable to obey his instinct to reach out to her, to comfort his wife.

Twenty years had simply frozen him into inaction. Gulshan looked into his face. It wasn’t blank, only bore a confused look. He didn’t know what to do. Gulshan’s heart tripped a beat. A tiny ray of hope was peeping through the minute crack in the wall. ‘He is unsure!’ her heart sang. She had to feel her way and pull him with her through the wall. She didn’t mind hurting and debasing herself in the process.

‘Your first wife is in the next room, Haroon!’ She repeated and waited. Then when he made no reply ‘What do you feel?’ She cried.

‘She is not my wife!’ He bit out. ‘Remember? I divorced her!’

Gulshan see-sawed again, edging back, buried under the guilt and the accusing tone. Was he blaming her?

‘She is happy in her new life.’ She retaliated. He heard the bitter tone. ‘She has married a professor and has two sons and we …’ Her voice petered away into pathos and regret.

She didn’t hear him move softly to the bedside. Only his shadow blocked her vision. She raised her face. They stared at each other, questioning and unsure. Wanting to know more yet afraid to make the first move – afraid of rejection.