Haveli (15 page)

Shabanu leaned back against her bolster, her feet curled under her. It was one of those rare times, she thought, when parts of the ancient world of beliefs and customs and art came together to heal modern troubles with their harmony.

Across the courtyard sat Omar, dressed now in a white silk
shalwar kameez
. He looked more at ease out of his Western trousers. In the loose dress of his childhood, he was long and lanky, his form graceful and natural.

As Shabanu appraised him, he looked away from the musicians and turned his gaze directly on her. His eyes held hers powerfully and tenderly, and suddenly Shabanu knew that this was what her heart had been searching for all her life.

I
n the days that followed, it seemed all of Lahore was caught up in preparations for the wedding of Omar and Leyla, which was to be in only six weeks.

Although Amina and her coterie were far away in the Cantonment,
tongas
clattered into the courtyard of the
haveli
every afternoon piled high with gifts;
darzis
delivered clothing, and Pathans brought new pieces of furniture to be stored. A row of rickshaws and scooters waited in the narrow lane to make deliveries, setting up a constant clamor and impenetrable screens of dust and exhaust that were trapped in the airless alleyways.

As the heat of the dry season advanced, the glossy leaves of shrubs in red clay pots around the courtyard turned a powdery white with dust, despite twice-daily washings by the
malis
, who moved ever more slowly by the day.

Apart from the wedding activity, life in the
haveli
was as close as it ever came to a standstill. Servants knocked rather than bring tea unasked; meals were left uneaten on rough tabletops in the shade of the banyan tree, as if they’d been brought for ghosts. The flies hovered so lazily they didn’t even buzz. Everyone shuffled through the halls and common spaces of the great house, bound for or just returned from naps. Even the children who lived in the lanes were quiet, their play subdued as if there’d been a death in the neighborhood.

Shabanu relaxed far away from the other wives, who were busy socializing in the Cantonment. Even Zabo’s bodyguards seemed less vigilant.

Shabanu often felt in those days as if her mind hovered in the driftless air above where she and Zabo sat for long hours talking quietly, sewing and planning. Part of her was there, listening to Zabo plan their trips to the Anarkali Bazaar and describe the kind of imitation jewelry she would buy.

“I do like rubies,” she’d say. “But emeralds are very nice. And we must have everything clustered with diamonds.” She’d reach forward and lay her hand on Shabanu’s.

“This is more fun than real shopping,” she’d go on. “I do love jewelry. But if this were real, I’d feel as though I was being bought and sold!”

Which, of course, she was. But Shabanu never said it.

They never discussed the money. It was as if Zabo
had entrusted that part to Shabanu, as she had entrusted her with seeing that she would get away from Ahmed and her father, as if that was all that really mattered. Both of them knew she would not be able to endure marriage to Ahmed.

As for Mumtaz and Shabanu, they were safe as long as Rahim was alive. When he was gone they must be ready to step into a new and completely different life, far from Okurabad, far from Amina and the others in the Cantonment. It must be laid out and ready to take on, perfectly prepared as a bride’s wedding dress. On those hot and airless days in the
haveli
they felt no harm could come to them. But Shabanu thought about it constantly.

Zabo did not want to discuss anything beyond her plan for the jewelry. But Shabanu knew that having the money accumulate secretly and safely where it would remain until they needed it was as necessary to Zabo as the oxygen she breathed.

There were many obstacles to overcome. But the most difficult of all for Shabanu was one she had not foreseen.

For an important part of Shabanu dwelt on the glimpses she caught of Omar as he came and went from the
haveli
with Rahim, or in the company of his cousins and friends. If he happened to see her, he would stop and watch, his eyes softening at the corners. He sometimes smiled. It made her heart race, and for the rest of the day she found it difficult to
concentrate on anything. Her fingers were sore with needle pricks. She went on with her embroidery, although its quality vaguely displeased her.

She knew she was in a dangerous drift, but she had no power to bring it to an end. All she could do was take on projects that made sense to her—to deal with things she could preside over, and wait for a time when she would be able to end the domination of her wild emotions.

So she spent each morning helping Selma screen prospective tutors for Mumtaz. This was something she’d dreamed of and worked toward since Mumtaz’s birth, and it occupied her mornings completely. It was real and immediate—not something looming in the future, vague and only half-promising—and she pursued it with optimism.

Several of the women they interviewed needed full-time work. Others were humorless, with hard lines for mouths. When Shabanu was beginning to fear they’d never find the right teacher, a small, dark Christian widow came to the door and explained that she lived in the
barsati
on the roof across the alley with her two children.

She had enormous energy. Her eyes were bright, her skin dark, her voice high and sweet. She looked like a small brown bird. Her son was a year older than Mumtaz, small, calm, and serious. The daughter was two years younger than her brother, with a lightness of spirit that matched her mother’s.

There was much excitement in the anticipation of the lessons. Selma ordered an old nursery cleared on the second floor, and a table and chairs were produced. The shutters were mended; reed mats were hung at the windows and doused with water to keep the room cool. The drying reeds smelled like the grass that spilled from broad mowers hauled by oxen around the garden at Okurabad on summer mornings.

Ibne returned from the bazaar one day with a large chalkboard and seven different colors of chalk. Selma and the widow discussed at length the books they would use.

On the morning of the first reading lesson, Shabanu squeezed her knees under the oblong table she shared with Mumtaz and the widow’s children. She was enthralled with the smells of the classroom: the chalk dust, the ink on the books, the oil in the wooden floorboards.

“I am taking you to a wonderful new world,” said the widow, whose name was Samiya, standing before them for the first time. “Once you’ve learned to read, adventures you’ve never even imagined will unfold. You’ll visit places you never knew existed. There will be no secret you cannot unlock.”

Shabanu’s spirits lifted with the thought that knowing how to read could give her a new and extraordinary power over the events of her life.

Samiya turned to close the classroom door. Choti,
who couldn’t bear to be shut out of a room where Mumtaz sat, butted her head against its thick wooden planks and had to be taken down to the courtyard and tied beneath the banyan tree.

In the days that followed, Mumtaz proved to be a quick student. Samiya praised her, rewarding her with hugs and boiled sweets in bright cellophane wrappers. Shabanu sat in on every lesson, and within a few days she had finished the children’s reader. Samiya brought more advanced readers for her, and Shabanu began to practice her script for a letter to her father. Her father was one of the few men in all of Cholistan who could read. He would be so proud of her!

Rahim was busy with the provincial assembly. And, as usual, it seemed half his constituency had followed him to Lahore. They gathered in the courtyard of the
haveli
each morning, just as they did at Okurabad, hoping to have their petitions presented that day and action taken on their cases. Omar sat beside him quietly, learning and establishing himself in the eyes of the tribesmen as heir apparent.

One day Shabanu sat with Zabo on the balcony above the courtyard, sewing and sipping tea in the morning sunshine, watching the petitioners mill about as they waited for Rahim to appear. Mahsood stood in the doorway, keeping watch and establishing the order in which cases would be presented.

The crowd quieted, and Zabo leaned over the balcony to watch Rahim and Omar enter. Behind them
came Ahmed, Mahsood leading him by the hand. Omar sat beside Rahim on the dais, and Shabanu tried not to stare at the square line of his cheekbone, the black fringe of his lashes against his fine light skin. Mahsood settled Ahmed on the floor beside the dais and sat next to him.

Ahmed’s hair was still wet with comb tracks. His skin was soft, and his eyes dark; he looked almost pretty, like a young girl. Mahsood leaned over his shoulder and whispered into Ahmed’s ear.

Ahmed managed to sit quietly for a few minutes. But then he began to squirm, and his chin grew shiny with saliva. Mahsood led him from the room. When Ahmed arose from the cushion upon which he’d been sitting, he left behind a wet stain.

Zabo gasped and clapped her hand to her mouth. Shabanu slipped her arm around Zabo’s waist and led her from the balcony.

It was the only time Ahmed appeared at the
haveli
, and it took Zabo a week to recover.

For the first time in the years since Shabanu had married Rahim, he spent his nights not with her but across the city in the Cantonment, where dinners and sporting events were arranged by friends to honor him and his brothers and Omar on the approach of this most significant of weddings.

In other times she might have worried about Rahim’s shifting attention. Now she was simply grateful to have the time to think of other things, but
mainly to untangle the jumble of her feelings.

Also in the Cantonment, a mad whirl of tea parties, shopping, and gossip occupied the women of the family. Shabanu and Zabo were never invited, and Selma would return from the teas and luncheons with tales of the behavior of her spoiled nieces and their in-laws.

“You’d think the only subjects they’d ever studied were jewelry and clothes,” she said. “Or who was planning the most enviable holiday. And food. Their expensive educations have been wasted!”

In the
haveli
Shabanu and Zabo and Mumtaz were far removed from the others. Each morning after Samiya had dismissed her class, Ibne drove Zabo and Shabanu to the furniture maker or the drapery shop or the cloth bazaar, where they searched for fabrics that were hand-printed or handwoven, which they regarded as superior in beauty to the heavy silks that Amina favored for Leyla and which cost only a small fraction of the price.

From inside the shops Shabanu and Zabo watched over their shoulders for the bodyguards, who arrived silently behind them and stood with their guns at their sides.

The women grew impatient for the day they would not appear, when Shabanu was certain Ibne would help arrange for them to visit the Anarkali Bazaar secretly to find the makers of the jewelry that was less than real.

Shabanu spent her evenings decorating
shalwar kameez
for Zabo, Mumtaz, and herself, embroidering each with loving stitches. As her fingers flew over the handwoven fabric, her mind would drift to Omar, regardless of how she’d try to discipline it. While she was stitching a mirror into the intricate patterns she’d made, suddenly his face would appear, and her fingers would be still for a moment.

Thoughts of Omar settled over her days like a sweet haze of sadness, and her nights were filled with longing so that she was constantly in a heightened emotional state. She was easily alarmed, and easily moved to tears. She felt as if her skin had been scalded; she was aware of the faintest movement of air around her.

Then one hot and humid afternoon, a day in which the limp heat seemed to portend the first monsoon rains, Shabanu sat in a swing at the edge of the courtyard. She looked up to see Omar loping along beside Rahim, across the garden toward the
haveli
. His walk was graceful as a shepherd’s now that he was accustomed again to wearing
shalwar kameez
and sandals. She went back to her sewing, but her fingers trembled.

A while later, Rahim came looking for her.

“Come have tea with Omar and me,” he said. Shabanu looked down. She was not dressed as Rahim liked. She wore her desert clothes: a rough, hand-loomed cotton
shalwar kameez
, a silver ankle cuff, and
no shoes. He was never at the
haveli
during the day, and she felt free to dress as she liked.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You look like the twelve-year-old girl I first met. Just come.”

She slipped her feet into a pair of embroidered leather sandals and followed him into the house. Rahim had never asked her to join him and another man for tea. At Okurabad, Amina was always asked, but never any of the others. When he was in Lahore, Rahim had taken to entertaining in the Cantonment. Shabanu was not his proper Punjabi wife, and everyone was more comfortable with Amina presiding. Shabanu felt tongue-tied and uncomfortable, like the country girl Omar must have thought she looked.

Rahim and Omar talked easily, and neither of them seemed to notice her discomfort. But before the servants even brought the tea tray, Rahim’s secretary came into the parlor, where the curtains were drawn against the hot afternoon sun.

The secretary bent from his waist to whisper into Rahim’s ear. His large pleated turban hid Rahim’s face. The ceiling fans whirred overhead, stirring the hot air lazily. Cobwebs drifted back and forth in the corners, where the hottest air was trapped. High above, the mirrored ceiling winked down at them.

When the secretary straightened to leave, Rahim was frowning.

“Excuse me,” Rahim said, standing.

“Shall I come, Uncle?” Omar asked, standing to follow.

“No,” said Rahim. “It’s Nazir. He will be annoyed if you come. You go ahead and have tea.” He left before the secretary, who held the door for him.

“What is Nazir up to now?” Shabanu asked. She looked up, and Omar’s eyes were steady upon her.