Typhoon (25 page)

‘And we?’ He softly prompted, entering into the tentative dialogue to meet her halfway.

She raised her hands up in despair. ‘And we …’ She let them and her tears say it all.

‘And we wasted twenty years of our lives!’ He
completed
for her. ‘That is what we want to say isn’t it?’ He entered into full dialogue. ‘And whose fault is that?’

‘You never reached out to me!’

‘Because I knew you hated me!’

‘What?’ Gulshan gasped. ‘I never hated you! It was
you who hated me for separating you from your beloved Naghmana!’

‘No! No, Gulshan!’ He was striding away, his body trembling in rage. ‘Oh God help us. What crossroads we chose. I never hated you, you foolish woman. I thought you hated
me
for betraying you with another woman.’

Gulshan’s head slumped on the pillow as she cried out her rage and misery.

‘Stupid, stupid misunderstanding.’ She had lost her youth. ‘I have been robbed of twenty years of my life, Haroon.’

‘Who robbed whom?’ His hand had reached out to pat her on the head but then withdrew. ‘Gulshan, we’ve robbed ourselves. We were too stupid and too proud.’

‘I know!’ Gulshan cried. ‘For the last twenty years I have wept in guilt for that woman. But she has enjoyed a happy life and has two sons. While I … I have lost my fertile years in barrenness. My mother died a troubled death. She never forgave herself!’

She stopped, staring at him. It was time …

‘I don’t know if you can forgive me, Haroon, for what happened twenty years ago – but I beg of you, forgive me, for that kacheri!’ She saw a shadow of pain cross his face. ‘It should never have happened. You should never have divorced Naghmana – your wife. I still think of her as your wife. She will always be your wife in my eyes. We could have managed to live together. If only my mother … We …’

Haroon turned and walked to the door. The wall was up again. She watched, accepting with resignation. ‘I forgive you, Haroon. If you walk out of that door and never face me again, I’ll understand, for I know what you feel.’ She offered no bitterness, only quiet
acceptance. She then turned her face towards the wall and curled up her body on his bed.

As if in a dream, he stopped, turned and walked back to the bed. Sitting down on the edge he looked at her. She felt his weight on the bed and held her breath. His hand touched her head, lay on it for a few seconds and then withdrew. She sighed. It was enough. A diamond she had plucked out of the coal of abyss.

Much, much later she heard him lie down. A
foot-wide
space separated them. But she didn’t mind. It was much, much narrower than the ocean before.

‘S
TOP HERE
!’ N
AGHMANA’S
hoarse whisper had Jahanghir braking and bringing the car to an abrupt halt.

‘Where are you going?’ he said irritably, watching his wife climb out of the car and slamming its door. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Unused to raw afternoon heat, he wanted to get back to the
comfort
of his own home and the city life.

Her eyes glittering, she shouted back, ‘You wanted to know what is going on, and what my relationship is with all these people and this village – well, this place is your answer, Jahanghir. Come!’ she commanded, pointing to the large building of the village madrasah, and determinedly walking towards it.

Her feet traced the steps up to the two large wrought-iron gates and pulling the rusty chain latch down, with her two hands she flung them wide open. They noisily heaved apart.

Her eyes closed. Then opened. The madrasah
courtyard
lay before her. A desolate place, with its concrete floor caked with inches of dust and rotting dead leaves. The guava tree, by contrast, had matured into a
majestic
presence in one corner, its branches forlornly remembering and greeting her, swaying in the warm afternoon sun. Three green parrots and parakeets hopped and skipped from branch to branch.

The white plaster of the verandah pillars had long
since fallen off in places, leaving behind large bare patches, showing the naked red brickwork beneath. Three old wooden chairs, were stacked clumsily against one wall of the verandah.

Naghmana stepped down into the courtyard,
recalling
how she had sought refuge behind her Auntie Fatima’s body, twenty years earlier. As if in a dream, her feet floated to the middle of the courtyard. Haunting images danced behind her closed eyelids.

‘Naghmana, what are you doing here?’ Jahanghir’s troubled voice sliced eerily across the courtyard. Even when she felt him grip her arm and shake her roughly, she didn’t open her eyes. Her head swerved from side to side, as she swayed in time.

‘They are everywhere, Jahanghir! Save me!’ Real
terror
marked her voice; her breath hissing out of her mouth in short erratic jerks, confounding her husband.

‘What?’ Jahanghir’s grip tightened.

Her eyes flickered open, a delirious look in them. ‘The snakes!’ she whimpered. ‘They’re reaching out to me! Can’t you see them?’

‘What nonsense is this, Naghmana? Look, where are they?’ he asked, lifting her chin, losing patience with his wife. His body hot and uncomfortable.

She just looked right through him. Dumbfounded he walked around her, his arm held out, brusquely pointing to the empty courtyard. ‘There are no snakes here – just you and me and those stupid parrots!’ Jahanghir wasn’t at all amused. Until now he had always dismissed his wife’s nightmares about snakes, with a laugh. But this was no laughing matter. In the hot afternoon sunshine his body went utterly cold. His wife was losing her mind before his very eyes.

Naghmana edged away from him, stumbling against
a pillar, holding her hand protectively against her chest. The Buzurgh was watching her. They were all watching her, hating her, waiting to punish her.

‘Thalak! Thalak! Thalak!
I divorce you! I divorce you! I divorce you!’ the words thudded against her body like heavy rocks.

‘Naghmana!’ Her husband’s pained voice finally dug into her brain. He cupped her face in his hands and raised it up. Beads of sweat shone on her forehead. Her eyes gently fluttered open and then stared up at him, her mouth half-open. He couldn’t look away. Her eyes were the bleakest he had ever seen. His heart sinking, he had to numbly remind himself that they were his wife’s eyes. It was as if he was looking into the very soul of a stranger. He saw her pink tongue slip out and moisten her dry lips. Then the words, carefully guarded for years, simply rolled away from her mouth – uncaring, defeated.

‘My husband divorced me here – on this very spot!’

He heard her, but the words didn’t sink straight away into Jahanghir’s head. And when they did, Naghmana saw a strange gleam of hard light leap across his eyes. ‘Husband!’ they seemed to accuse.

‘You wanted to know why I have brought you here?’ Heartbeat faint, she tried to explain. ‘This … This is the place of evil. I … I …’ She stumbled over the words, her trembling hand raised across her eyes. ‘I was shamed here! In front of all the villagers – the snakes of my nightmares, with their poison fangs.’

A highly intelligent man, Jahanghir now desperately struggled to make sense of what was happening before him. The sight of his elegant, modern wife, reduced to a gibbering madwoman was ripping him apart. Then he recalled her words.

‘Why were you divorced here? Why were you shamed?’ he demanded.

‘They called me a whore!’ The dam cracked and burst. Twenty years of festered poison, now spluttered out of her mouth. ‘A whore, Jahanghir!’ The agonising cry hung between them. Behind her closed eyes Naghmana didn’t see her husband’s ashen face. It was Hajra’s. Eyes burning coals of loathing. Two chipped front teeth, spitting out the venom: ‘A home-wrecker! A man-eater! A whore!’

‘I forgave them all!’ Naghmana’s voice sank in the desolate madrasah courtyard. Her husband could only just hear it. She murmured, ‘Just as I forgave the old dying man.’

‘I came here on a holiday,’ she continued, unaware of her husband’s wooden presence beside the pillar. ‘My aunt slapped me! One woman from the rooftop hit me with her shoe. The old man, who summoned us here to ask me for forgiveness, he … he hated me! He had me divorced from my Haroon. It was there I sat.’ Naghmana pointed to the place. ‘Haroon sat there! And she, his second wife, sat there with her son – gaping at me! They were all gaping at me! All hating me. The old man forced my husband to divorce me – three times. Not once, not twice, but three times! The cobra demanded three thalaks! He took my beloved Haroon from me!’

‘Why?’ Jahanghir asked quietly. His head was
reeling
at the words ‘my beloved Haroon’. Naghmana didn’t hear him, she was looking at the space where the cobra had sat and pounced.

‘You have never told me anything about your past or your “beloved Haroon”.’ Her husband’s jeering tone lashed out at her, battering through the fog in her head.
‘I am beginning to think I am married to a stranger. I don’t know you at all! Tell me, Naghmana, why did they call you a whore?’

Bewildered, her mouth fell open, eyes scanning her husband’s face. Instead of warmth and understanding, reproach and jealousy danced in her professor’s eyes, marking the hard lines of his face.

The fog cleared in a flash. And something died inside her.

‘They thought that I … I …’ Blushing, she rushed on stumbling over the words, her tongue guarded and twisted once again, afraid to utter them. ‘That I was a bad woman.’

‘
A bad woman
? Why, Naghmana?’ Jahanghir’s voice was icy.

‘Because … Because …’ She stopped, unable to continue, colour flooding her cheeks. ‘His second wife found me in his arms during the night.’

Total silence. Naghmana looked up at her husband. He was no longer her beloved professor. Bitterly it dawned on her, that it was now her husband’s kacheri she was attending. Not the old man’s. Now Jahanghir was the judge.

‘What were you doing in his arms, if you weren’t a
whore
?’

Aghast, ‘Jahanghir!’ Naghmana murmured, as if he had punched her straight in the chest with his hard fist. ‘He was my
husband
, Jahanghir!’ her voice broke, betrayed. Did he not understand?

‘And he is still your husband, you wretched woman!’

Before her dazed hurt eyes, she saw her beloved
husband
stride out of the courtyard. Naghmana stared at the empty space around her. A strange sound buzzed in her head and she sank against the pillar, her body
doubling over. From far away, she heard a car engine start up. Eyes closed, she wrapped her arms around her waist. The snakes were still watching, sliding steadily towards her with their long, sleek bodies, their beady eyes, dark green and menacing – their flickering tongues taunting her with their venom of hate. Closer and closer they crept. Naghmana cowered further against the pillar, its hard uneven surface digging into the lawn fabric of her dress.

‘Allah, Akhbar!’ The muezzin’s call to prayer from the mosque rang through the village. Naghmana’s eyes opened. The empty, derelict surroundings mocked her.

Stumbling to her feet, she ran across the courtyard and out through the large gates, into the open space of the world outside. Far away, along the winding road, her husband’s black car meandered through the fields before disappearing from sight. ‘He has gone!’ her heart and eyes cried out in disbelief. ‘He has left me! My professor has abandoned me!’

H
EADS SWAYING FROM
side to side, Sardara’s herd of black milk buffaloes rounded the corner of the madrasah courtyard wall. Their large mud-caked bodies trundled heavily on the cobblestones, the steel bells hanging from chains around their necks merrily
signalling
to anyone on foot to step aside and let them pass.

A puny-looking young man, with a slender stick raised in his hand, neatly shepherded them along from the side and behind by touching them gently. He tapped the young baby calf on its rear, as it turned its head up to stare at the woman standing perfectly still against the madrasah gates. The young man glanced at the older woman with interest, his eyes shy as they rested on her bare head and shoulder-length hair
swinging
freely around her face. Without a doubt she was a stranger.

‘She won’t hurt you, Bibi Jee!’ Smiling and blushing, he reassured Naghmana, gently guiding the young calf along to follow its mother out into the open space
outside
the village.

Naghmana watched the black beasts trot past her, saw their swaying large bodies cross one field and then another as they headed for the village tube well for their afternoon drink and a cool bath.

A middle-aged village woman with a sturdy straw basket stacked high with vegetables propped neatly on her head, also patiently let the buffaloes pass – standing
pressed against the wall. As she approached Naghmana she glanced up, frowning from beneath the heavy
burden
on her head. Noting the woman’s attire and its stylish cut, she decided that the stranger was definitely from the city. No village tailor could manage stitching like that. A respectful smile playing on her lips, she greeted her, ‘Assalam Alaikum, Bibi Jee!’

‘Walaikum Salam.’ Naghmana was looking far beyond at the fields. Her professor’s car was nowhere in sight.

Feeling faint, she leaned against the wall. The village sounds and smells floated around her. The chugging sound of the flour mill chugged on. The whirring noise of the grass-cutting machine in the nearby garden stopped.

Naghmana found her legs running across the field, trampling the young carrots and other vegetable plants. Her white chiffon dupatta trailed behind her, its one soft end sweeping the ground. She was unaware of the tiny pebbles and dust grains chafing her feet in their elegant open sandals. Panting, she crossed another field and climbed onto the path that she knew led to the village cemetery. Earlier it had been lined with hundreds of mourners for Baba Siraj Din’s funeral.

With wild bushes and rows of trees protectively
circling
it, the large open space allocated to the village’s dead had a conspicuous landscape of earthy mounds of all shapes and sizes in neat rows. Some were tall. Others flattened with time and rain. With over an acre of land devoted to it, the cemetery stood apart from the rest of the village and the surrounding fields.

Naghmana’s eyes went straight to the far corner. She hopped over the gentle bumps of old forsaken graves, some going back generations. Whilst some had only
dried tufts of weeds growing on them, others had been lovingly cared for, and were distinguished by their marble or concrete structures with matching
headstones
. The latter graves were those of well-off
inhabitants
, or those who enjoyed a certain status within the community.

As befitted his family’s status, Baba Siraj Din’s plot of land stood apart from the rest. It was a cemetery within a cemetery. A three-foot high concrete wall had been erected around a small plot, providing seclusion for Baba Siraj Din’s four sons, his grandson Jafar and Zulaikha, his beloved wife. She had died nineteen years ago from a heart condition. They all lay side by side. The land had been reserved for his family thirty years earlier. Only one space had been left. That, too, had now been taken this morning. With its neat mound of freshly piled soil, Baba Siraj Din’s grave stood apart from those of his family, towering above their flattened concrete bases and marble headstones. As a religious man he had insisted on a simple traditional grave, with no marble decorative structure. ‘I have lived in marble all my life, Shahzada. I want a simple humble – humble world for my next life,’ he had quietly informed his daughter-in-law a long time ago.
Dutifully
she had obeyed. The old man was buried in all simplicity.

Naghmana passed through the small gap left in the wall and tiptoed up to Baba Siraj Din’s new eternal home. Pink and red flower petals garlanded neatly the shape of the entire mound. The headstone had not yet been put in place, but Naghmana knew it was the Buzurgh’s grave. Even in death he stood apart. Dominating and superior.

She stared down at the grave for a long time. Finally
her body fell on top of the mound of soil. Grabbing a handful of it and the flower petals in her fist she cried down to him, ‘You evil man!’ The harsh words startled the small sparrow hopping lightly on Zulaikha’s
headstone
. ‘You wrenched me from the arms of my first beloved husband. Now you called me back to your evil village to rob me of my second! He has left me – do you hear? I have lost my beloved Jahanghir! May you rot in hell!’ she hissed down to the village’s most revered Buzurgh, her tears falling on the fistful of soil.

Shocked at what she was doing, Naghmana dropped the soil, getting unsteadily to her feet, asking in
self-disgust
, ‘What am I doing?’ She looked down at her white designer cotton outfit, badly smeared with soil. In a daze she glanced around the cemetery. No living soul was in sight. Apart from the gentle humming of the happy sparrows on the trees and the noisy crickets on the ground, peaceful afternoon silence greeted Naghmana all around.

She gazed up at the mature tree with its low full branches of leaves casting a generous shadow over the old man’s grave. Hysterical laughter rumbling through her chest, Naghmana cried down to the old man once again: ‘The shade of this tree will not save you from the fires of hell, you evil wretch!’

Somehow she knew, just knew, that the cobra of her dreams had heard her.

Blindly, she criss-crossed the narrow spaces between the grave mounds, stepping over some, jumping and stumbling over the others, until she found the opening to the outside world. To fresh air, green fields and life.

Her hand grazing accidentally on a wild thorn-bush, Naghmana didn’t feel the pain. Thorn-bushes were grown abundantly around the cemeteries as a means of
keeping out wild animals, including wolves, lest they trample on and desecrate the graves. Once outside she gulped in air and stood in the wide open space of the village path, with its gentle dry slopes of land on either side and semi-burnt wild grasses growing around it. One path led to Chiragpur, the other to the
neighbouring
village. The sun was now high up, reaching its scorching peak. Its shooting rays beat heavily on Naghmana’s bare head.

A twelve-year-old schoolgirl, carrying a heavy satchel of books under her armpit, walked up the path from the village. She was on her way to her tutor in the neighbouring village. An uncertain smile on her face, the young girl stared in surprise at the older woman’s bare head and grimy white clothes. It was as if she had fallen into a dusty ditch. The girl’s curious eyes fell first on the woman’s beautiful hands with their dirty nails, then crept up to her face. The stranger seemed to be looking right through her.

Nervously the girl picked up the woman’s scarf, which had fallen behind her on the ground and politely held it up to her.

‘Bibi Jee, your dupatta!’

The child’s soft words penetrated. Naghmana stared at her white chiffon dupatta. Wordlessly she took it, then slung it carelessly over her shoulder and started to walk away. Her mouth falling open, the girl continued staring. The woman had neither thanked nor spoken to her. Her dupatta was hanging down to the ground. Its end snagged on a bush, as the woman jumped down into the field of rape. Without turning to look back, she tugged at it to free it, tearing one end in the process.

Losing interest, the young girl shrugged her
shoulders
and made her way to her teacher’s house for private
tuition in English. It was the verbs she had memorised – the participles. She must go over them once more in her head before she recited them to her tutor.

Naghmana walked through the cauliflower field,
stumbling
over its uneven landscape of bare soil and
cauliflower
plants. Brushing the tears from her cheeks, she climbed back onto the narrow path.

Then the old village well was before her, theatrically canopied by a large banyan tree, its mature branches swaying heavily in the hot breeze. Three black crows flew down from the sky and landed on the tree. They hopped from branch to branch. Two sat together,
playfully
pecking and grooming each other’s glossy black coats with their beaks. Their companion floated down onto the largest branch, hanging straight across the eight foot wide diameter of the well, its round eyes blinking at the woman standing below.

‘He was my husband, Jahanghir!’ she shouted to the wind. The two startled crows stopped their playful pecking, nearly losing their grip on the branch, and too stared down at the bent figure of the woman, who was peering into the deep cavern of the well.

Naghmana noted that two bricks were missing from the ledge. This was where she had sat down with Haroon on that fateful night, twenty years ago. The brickwork on the inside was now thickly caked with green moss sprouting between the damp cracks.

Her blurred eyes were fixed on the dark surface of the water, twenty-five feet below. The shimmering,
mysterious
pool smiled up at her and beckoned. She smiled back. At peace with herself. The shadow grew nearer and nearer and then met the welcoming dark surface. The laughing mouth widened happily, gargling and
rippling, before smoothing back in to place again. Content, it resumed its sleep.

The crow’s round, small eyes stared down. Nervously it flew off the branch and stepped on top of the white chiffon dupatta hanging over the edge of the well. As it hopped playfully, its feet got entangled in the soft delicate fabric. Spreading out its glossy black wings, it spun round and flew up in the air. The white dupatta, still entangled in its two sharp feet, sailed high behind it, in the hot afternoon breeze.

Far away, along the winding village road, a black car wound its way back to Chiragpur. The driver peered anxiously through the dusty windscreen, at the herd of black milk buffaloes, blocking the narrow road ahead, their sleek bodies glistening after their energetic afternoon bath.

From behind his glasses, the driver watched the crow fly over the car, across the field, and then disappear beyond the horizon, the white
dupatta
still hanging from its feet, billowing out in the wind.