Haveli (16 page)

“Nazir is acting beyond his authority,” Omar said. “He has befriended the commissioner who took over after Uncle Rahim became a member of the provincial assembly. And now he thinks he can do as he pleases. He is moving the edges of his land into the land of his neighbors, including Uncle Rahim. Everyone is angry with him.”

“It hasn’t taken long for Pakistan to reclaim you,” she said. “You were so exotic, so foreign, when I first met you.” They looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

“I have always been a Punjabi in my heart,” he said. He spoke with a soft intensity, and for a moment she thought he might touch her. She felt as if she were being pulled along by a strong current toward a place she didn’t want to go. But she had no power to resist.

“Tell me about America,” she said quickly, breaking the silence.

“In America,” he said, “you can be poor one day, living on the street, and the next you can be wealthy. Money doesn’t grow on trees, exactly—but nothing
is impossible. It’s a wonderful place. But I don’t mind shedding my American ways. And in one way I’ve changed forever. I will never again regard women in the old way.”

She thought about his habit of including women in conversation and looking into their eyes when he spoke. It was the Cholistani way, and it felt right to her. It was one of the things that drew her to him.

“Do women in America look men in the eye when they speak?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said with a small surprised laugh.

“I’m told it’s not done in polite society here,” she said. “But it’s not something I thought of when I was growing up. I never learned not to do it, and it gets me into trouble at Okurabad.”

“Yes,” he said, still smiling. “I can imagine it does.”

“And do women interrupt men in their conversations to give their opinions? I’ve heard this is so.”

“Well, yes, they do …”

“Amina told me once that I was brazen as an American,” she said. “I thought that was what she meant.”

Omar threw back his head and laughed. He had the most wonderful laugh, deep and rich and warm.

“I like it that you’re different from others,” he said. “Are you like your father and mother? And your sister?”

“It’s very strange,” she replied. “My sister and I were born of the same mother and father, even within
the same year. We grew up doing exactly the same things, year after year—learning the exact same lessons about cooking and sewing and about the desert and the animals. Phulan thinks as my parents do about most things. But my whole life has been a struggle to appear to be doing what’s expected of me while I continue to think as I please.”

“And does that also get you into trouble?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Don’t ever stop,” he said. “It’s one of your great charms.”

They talked about other things, Shabanu interrupting to ask questions and feeling surges of joy at the simple freedom of being able to speak openly with him. He
is
different from Rahim and his father after all! she thought.

But a loud wail interrupted them, and Shabanu put her hand to her mouth. Mumtaz called her from the hallway outside the parlor. Shabanu ran toward the sound of her voice. It was high-pitched with alarm. Omar followed.

In the dark corridor, where the air was cooler, Mumtaz struggled to free herself from Zenat, who held her by the wrist. When Mumtaz saw her mother, she broke loose and ran to her.

“Choti is gone! We’ve looked all over, and she’s nowhere. Uncle Omar, help me find her!” She took Omar’s hand and tugged him toward the stairway. He
stooped and picked up the child in his arms, quieting her for a moment.

“Where have you looked?” he asked Zenat.

The old
ayah
explained that they had searched every room.

“The roof?” he asked.

“Nay,
Sahib
,” Zenat said gravely. “No one will go to the roof. The door is locked, so how could Choti get in?”

Shabanu’s heart raced. How could she have relaxed her vigilance, even here in the
haveli?
She felt such a fool! While she was lost in thoughts of a man who could never return her affection, Amina had ordered someone to plant yet another of her evil seeds!

Omar sent Zenat to get three other servants. They were to help search the lower floors of the house again—systematically this time, he admonished. He asked Selma for her huge silver key ring, which she kept tied to her waist at the fold of her sari. The ring held the keys to every door and closet in the house, but Selma handed it to Omar without hesitation. Then he and Shabanu took Mumtaz to the roof to begin a search downward from there.

“I know this house better than any of the servants,” he said as they climbed through the still, hot air in the stairway. “I lived here with Auntie Selma and Uncle Daoud when I studied at Aitchison. They were
always after me to do my homework, so I found places to hide.”

As they got closer to the roof the stairway was narrower, and the air grew closer and warmer. At the top of the last flight, hot white sunlight seeped through the cracks of the locked door that had contained Daoud’s ghost for more than fifteen years. One board had been torn loose, leaving a hole big enough for the fawn to slip through.

“Choti’s probably up here having a nice chat with Uncle Daoud’s ghost,” he said. “You aren’t afraid, are you?”

Shabanu shook her head, but the hair prickled along her spine all the way up her neck. She did believe in ghosts, but she was sure Daoud’s would not harm them.

Mumtaz ran up the last few steps and squeezed through the hole. She turned to peer through at them as they climbed to the top. Her upper lip was misted with sweat, and her chin quivered.

“Uncle Omar, you’re wasting time,” she said, gulping so she wouldn’t cry.

Omar unlocked the door and handed the keys to Shabanu to hold while he pried open the rusty hinges. Shabanu stepped through the old doorway, and it felt as if she’d left behind her world of trouble for one of … of secrets and benevolent ghosts!

“There are many rooms that lead from the roof,”
Omar said. He dropped to one knee before Mumtaz and put his large hands on her shoulders. “We must start here to look for Choti. It’s important to know how the rooms are arranged. We’ll go around this way.”

From the stone parapet around the large square hole in the center of the roof they could see the courtyards of the floors below, where laundry hung ghostly and limp in the faintest of breezes, and small speckled chickens pecked at bits of grain left over from the
mali’s
morning rounds.

A feather floated over the parapet as a pigeon fled at their approach. Otherwise the roof was completely abandoned, left untouched since the morning of Daoud’s death a decade and a half before.

Four floors down, the water in the fountain at the center of the courtyard sparkled and splashed. Only the loudest clanks and rattles were audible from the lanes outside in the walled city.

“We’ll all go together. I know every room, and if Choti’s here she’ll come when you call her,” Omar said to Mumtaz, taking her hand again.

He led them through the first doorway to the left of the one that descended into the stairwell. A dim room lit only by a small square window covered by a lattice screen just under the eaves was mounded high with dust-draped shapes that looked like furniture piled on furniture. Their eyes grew accustomed to the light that shone in from the doorway onto painted
wall scenes from Mogul courtyards. In them, the bodies of men and women were intertwined amid cushions flecked with gold. Shabanu’s breath caught the beauty of the paintings, and a small sound came from the back of her throat.

“Oh,” said Omar, turning toward her. “Maybe you’d rather not look at these. Women should be protected from such lurid scenes.”

“No, no,” said Shabanu. “They’re very beautiful.”

She took out the flashlight Omar had given her to examine the paintings more closely. The scenes had a flat quality to them, but the detail of the figures’ hair and fingernails and eyelashes was minute and intricate.

“I forgot they were here,” said Omar. “This is where Grandfather entertained.… ” Omar’s voice stiffened with a self-conscious correctness that touched her. She smiled to herself.

She switched off her flashlight, and they moved on to the next room.

Mumtaz ran ahead, calling, “Choti, you naughty girl. Please come. Ple-e-ease!”

Each room was different. The walls of one were covered with an intricate pattern of mirrors that soared into the domed ceiling overhead. Omar took the flashlight from Shabanu and aimed it at the dome. Each small piece of mercurated mica tossed the light back at them.

Mumtaz was wild with impatience and ran always
ahead of them, constantly calling.

Then they reached a very special room, half-hidden behind a mound of debris from some long-forgotten construction project, and Shabanu thought the heat was playing tricks with her mind. As they entered she had the sensation that she’d been there before—the same feeling she’d had when they’d first arrived at the
haveli
.

It was a garden room, its walls made of sandstone and marble lattices cut in starlike patterns. Even on this hot and airless day a breeze blew gently through it, and the air playing lightly through the stone screening sounded like the eternal breezes of Cholistan.

“This is the summer pavilion,” said Omar. “Auntie Selma and Uncle Daoud used to come here on summer evenings. Just outside is where they slept the night he was killed.”

“Well, if his ghost is here, it’s a very pleasant ghost,” said Shabanu. “This place is like magic!” Omar laughed.

“I too used to think it was magic. I fled to the roof one day to escape my tutor. To my amazement, someone actually came to the roof looking for me. This was the only place I could reach in time to hide. I was afraid they’d see me because it’s so open. From inside it looks as if there are no walls at all. But from the outside you can’t see in!”

At that moment Mumtaz came around the corner of the pavilion looking for them, turning her head this
way and that, frightened that she too was lost. She went past without seeing them, and Shabanu ran out to her.

They found Choti in a plain room with boxes of papers and disintegrating fabric stacked to the ceiling. The fawn was tangled in an old lace curtain, which had wrapped about her delicate legs. Her face was smeared with torn cobwebs, but her eyes were placid, as if she’d been waiting for them to find her here all along.

Mumtaz threw her arms around Choti’s neck.

“Thank you,” Shabanu said, looking from Mumtaz to Omar. “Now that Choti has learned to climb the stairs, we must keep her tethered so we don’t lose her!”

Omar was watching her, and she was grateful for the duskiness in the room, that he could not see her face color. “Heaven only knows when we would have found her …”

“Just tell me I can visit you in the summer pavilion,” Omar said quietly, and Shabanu felt all at once as if her prayers had been answered and that she’d set off on a dangerous and uncharted journey.

O
mar’s schedule continued to be filled with lavish entertainments arranged by relatives and friends wishing him well in his approaching marriage. Shabanu heard of caravans of thirty vehicles, carrying as many tents, and fifty servants for week-long hunts for the bustard and other rare birds of Cholistan; of wooden barges rafted six across floating down the Indus River, carrying bands of musicians and tables mounded with food; and of lavish dinners under billowing
shamiyana
with embroidered walls of primary colors in geometric patterns, silver candelabra, and whole oxen roasted outside under the stars.

Shabanu began to guess that Omar had been caught in the moment—that he might have intended to visit her in the summer pavilion but was too busy celebrating his approaching marriage. For more than a week she felt bereft. Then she was angry that he had made a promise he had no intention of keeping.

Overriding her dizzying feelings was a sense of danger. If this went any further, she thought, there would be no turning back. If she and Omar met and Rahim found out—the thought made her shudder. For as kind and gentle as Rahim was, the law of the land prevailed: Shabanu’s sin of desiring another man was punishable by death at the hands of her husband.

She knew she must stop thinking of Omar. Still, the thought of him made her emotions swirl within her so that she began to wonder whether she’d lost her senses.

She filled her time with lessons, Zabo’s plans, play with Mumtaz, and a secret project.

One still evening when Zabo had gone to bed early, Rahim was out, Selma was going to a reception in the Cantonment, and Mumtaz was asleep, she had supper alone in her room. She was not hungry and was anxious to go to the roof and see what the summer pavilion would need to make it habitable. But she ate anyway, because it had become a habit at Okurabad, where rumors would circulate if a meal tray was returned to the kitchen untouched.

There was a light tap on the door. Selma stuck her head in.

“I wanted to see you a minute before I go out,” she said.

“Come in!” said Shabanu, looking up from her dinner. “I’m just finishing.” She patted the
charpoi
beside her. She wondered whether the turmoil she
felt had found its way to her face and if Selma, who missed nothing, had seen it.

“I don’t want to disturb you,” said Selma. “I’ll stay only a minute.”

“I’m finished,” Shabanu said. She poured water over her fingers into a small basin and wiped them dry. A servant came and cleared her dishes. This seemed to take a very long time.

“What is it?” she asked, for Selma’s brow was furrowed and her hands were clasped before her so tightly that the skin on her knuckles was pale and shiny.

“Has Nazir spoken to you?” Selma asked.

“To me? He’s hardly ever spoken to me. Why?”

“Well, it’s very odd. I was out behind the kitchen helping Shaheen pluck chickens. Her poor old hands are so arthritic.… And I heard Nazir talking to his bodyguards. It seems he wants them to keep watch over you. All this time I thought it was Zabo they were watching. But he said to them: ‘If you let the little
Begum
out of your sight, I’ll have your ears!’ ”