Haveli (19 page)

Amina and Leyla sat in the middle of the row of women like two large roses in sunglasses. They were surrounded by their relatives and friends, eating chicken on gray paper napkins and sipping lemonade.

The men sat separately, most of them dressed in riding clothes, their handmade leather boots gleaming in the late sun.

On the playing field, Omar sat tall and straight on his bay mare, his green shirt matching the mare’s leg wraps. The horses thundered up and down the field. When the bell sounded to end the chukker, he rode with his mallet on his shoulder at a trot past the women and tipped his cap. When he got to the end where Shabanu sat, his eyes went straight to hers.

Her heart leaped into her mouth. She loved him totally, without hope. The rest of the afternoon she sat still as a stone.

After the match, Omar returned to the end of the field where his team celebrated their victory over the very best army team. He did not play in the next
match. He came to sit in his boots and his green shirt and white jodhpurs, looking painfully handsome and at ease amid the giant roses of Okurabad.

Not once did Shabanu look in their direction. But she heard peals of feminine laughter as Omar teased and joked with his cousins, among them his bride-to-be.

It was a very modern notion, almost scandalous, a betrothed pair socializing together so close to the wedding. They spoke in Punjabi, and Shabanu understood little of what was said. But it sounded very sophisticated, very foreign to Shabanu. She imagined this was how young people in America socialized.

She felt like a bird with clipped wings. She felt thoroughly excluded from their camaraderie—like an outcast. Omar’s voice sounded as if it were the voice of another person, one totally unknown to her. While it sounded relaxed, it also sounded formal; where it expressed humor, it lacked the warmth and gentleness that she associated with him. It sounded somewhat cruel. Suddenly she sensed the enormous distance between herself and Omar, and the gulf felt like a physical illness.

“Are you unwell?” Selma asked. “Your face is pale.”

Shabanu managed a nod.

“I must get out of the sun,” she replied.

Shabanu left with Zabo and Selma before the next match. Amina and Leyla leaned forward in their seats
to watch as they walked down the long row of spectators.

“Shabanu is ill?” someone asked. “Why doesn’t she cast a spell and cure herself?” And a small titter of wicked laughter followed them the length of the stands.

Had she heard Omar’s laugh among them? She thought perhaps it was her imagination.

In the days that followed at the
haveli
, darkness tortured Shabanu’s heart. She had hoped to find comfort in the small motions of everyday life: Samiya’s arrival for lessons, trips to the bazaars with Zabo, naps with Mumtaz in the oppressive afternoon heat, tea with Selma, and evenings spent writing in the summer pavilion. But every move required the utmost concentration of effort.

She tried to find hope everywhere, but it eluded her until she fell into an almost paralyzing torpor. This was how Anarkali must have felt, Shabanu thought, suffocating in her tomb.

When Mumtaz asked a question, she had to force herself to concentrate on every word, and then to think hard to find an answer.

During their morning lessons Samiya would ask Shabanu to read aloud. Often Shabanu did not hear and was unable to find her place in the book. Samiya cocked her little head and looked at Shabanu quizzically.

Selma clucked over her at meals, and Shabanu
forced herself to eat. Zabo seemed not to notice.

Shabanu felt she’d been caught up in a rush of time that ran for someone else, most certainly not for herself. She felt life was passing by without her. And yet the hours crawled past so slowly she thought she would never reach the end of each day. She felt better when she was alone in the pavilion in the evenings. At least there she didn’t have to pretend to anyone.

Then she decided she must do something to shake herself out of this state of paralysis. She began to keep a diary about everything except Omar in the hope that the appearance of normalcy would gradually become reality.

“Zabo’s stash of money has grown enormous,” she wrote. “This week two more bundles of rupees lie in the bottom of my milk jar. We now have more than two
lakhs
—enough, if we live modestly, to keep us for more than ten years.”

Still she told no one about the pavilion. And as time passed she grew more confident that no one would ever invade the roof and see her haven. Zabo slept early each night, tired by the heat and the fervor with which she pursued her plan to purchase clothing and jewelry that made it appear she had spent the entire fortune her father had given her on an elaborate dowry.

Every time Shabanu heard a whistle outside in the courtyard, she would steel her heart and think, I won’t die if I see him. Each time she heard a footstep
in the hall she pretended she’d heard nothing at all. She saw him once from Zabo’s window, which looked out over the courtyard. She felt as if she were on fire, but he didn’t look up. She barely survived, utterly without hope.

Then one day Rahim came unannounced into the parlor at the
haveli
after Samiya’s lessons were finished, and said they would return to Okurabad the next morning.

“You should be packed and ready to leave by seven,” he said brusquely, then turned to leave. It was the first time Shabanu had seen him in more than a week.

“Just a moment!” Shabanu said, her words hard-edged. “Why, may I ask, are we leaving?” She was tired of allowing herself to be buffeted about by her feelings. She was tired of doing what everyone else wanted, of meeting the demands of others, of being without hope for herself. The anger felt good, as if it released the flow of blood into her veins again.

The air in the room was still as everyone stopped what they were doing to look at her. Mumtaz, who had been working to prepare for the next day’s lesson, sat with her pencil poised in the air, her eyes round with surprise. Selma’s rocking chair stopped suddenly in midmotion, appearing to defy gravity. Zabo, who had been gazing distractedly out the window, suddenly paid attention. Even Choti’s ears and nose were still.

Rahim stopped in midstride and turned back toward her, astonishment briefly displacing the lines of worry that had occupied his face for so long.

“Will you excuse us, please?” Rahim asked, and animation was restored in the room as Selma herded Zabo and Mumtaz out the door and upstairs to pack.

“Why didn’t you give us warning, instead of ordering us about like so many sheep?” she asked, the tension still high in her voice. “What’s so important that we should interrupt Mumtaz’s progress with her lessons and shopping for Zabo’s wedding?”

“Zabo and Ahmed will be married in three days,” Rahim said quietly, avoiding her eyes.

Shabanu let out a breath in a rush, as if someone had kicked her in the stomach. She must get word to Sharma!

“But … why?”

“Because Nazir won’t agree to the wedding otherwise. What difference does it make? Selma says Zabo is ready.”

“Yes, Zabo is as ready as she ever is likely to be,” she said. Why would Nazir insist on changing the timing? And why would Rahim agree? Of course, she thought, the wedding
would
be less conspicuous in the country, where the family and all the clansmen would rejoice. There really was no need for a big city celebration.…

Rahim turned and left before she could say anything else, and Shabanu ran into the dark, hot hallway
to find Zabo. Selma caught her there and held her by the arm.

“I’ve already told her,” Selma said. “She’s not happy, but she’s resigned. Samiya will come with me to help at Okurabad. Don’t worry. Zabo wants to see you. She’s in my sitting room. I’ll be along in a minute.”

It was the first time in a week that Shabanu felt something other than grief. It was as though she had wakened from a deep sleep.

She ran to the second-floor sitting room next to Selma’s bedroom. Zabo looked pale and stunned, but she came to Shabanu and hugged her.

“Don’t worry,” Shabanu whispered fiercely. “I am going to Aab-pa the
hakkim
now to send word to Sharma. She will come as soon as it’s safe. We have a plan, and it will work. But we must be cautious. I’ll leave the money hidden here. It’s too dangerous to carry it. Don’t worry,” she whispered again, holding Zabo at arm’s length and giving her a gentle shake.

“Someone will find it!” said Zabo.

“No,” said Shabanu. “It’s hidden where no one has been for fifteen years. I am the only one who knows the place.”

“Everything will be fine,” Zabo said softly. “I trust you. I won’t worry.”

Mumtaz was the only one happy to return to Okurabad.

“Choti needs fresh air,” she said, stroking the
fawn’s ears. Choti blinked serenely.

“Mumtaz, please go with Auntie Zabo to pack,” Shabanu said. “Tell Zenat to be sure to get all Bundr’s clothes. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Zabo took Mumtaz by the hand, and Choti followed them. Before Zabo turned to go, Shabanu looked her in the eyes. Her friend smiled faintly, and Shabanu smiled back. They would make it, she thought. Somehow she had to keep her wits about her and, God willing, they would all survive.

Selma came in then and dropped herself wearily into one of her threadbare chairs.

“I’ve been worried about you, child,” Selma said as soon as she’d caught her breath.

“I’ve been very strained,” Shabanu replied carefully. “But I’m feeling better now.” She was certain Selma knew untruth as well as she knew truth, and Shabanu didn’t want to make the older woman suspicious and set her to guessing.

“The hard times are just beginning,” Selma said as she clicked open her rosewood fan and moved it back and forth in front of her large, pale face. “You mustn’t lose heart now.”

Shabanu felt a twinge in her chest, as if the great gaping blackness inside her had begun to contract, as if her heart was healing.

“Why is the wedding to be now?” Shabanu asked.

Selma sighed and smoothed the ever-unruly wisps of gray hair into the bun at the back of her neck.

“I only know that was Nazir’s demand,” Selma said. “It fills me with foreboding.” She clicked her fan shut then and hefted herself to her feet. “It’s time we got ready,” she said.

Shabanu went to her room. First she reached into her cupboard for her worn canvas suitcase and filled it with the
shalwar kameez
she’d been embroidering for Zabo’s wedding.

Then she went to the stairway that led from the courtyard to the roof. The
mali
was scattering one last handful of maize for Selma’s spotted courtyard chickens before wandering off for his afternoon nap. His thin ankles were the last part of him to disappear into the hard-edged shadow of the first-floor balcony. When he was gone, Shabanu ascended out of the lazy afternoon heat through the stifling, cobwebbed stairway up to the pavilion, which sat shimmering on the roof.

In the doorway Shabanu paused for a second to savor the cool, calm interior that she had created. She crossed to the milk jar, which stood in one corner of the room. She removed the lid and lifted out a tray of thread spools, a bundle of letters from her father, her diary, and a flat piece of round baked mud that made a false floor in the jar, which stood as high as Shabanu’s waist. Under that were the bundles of five-hundred- and one-thousand-rupee notes, all stitched neatly in muslin bundles.

She counted more than enough for Mumtaz,
Zabo, and herself to live into their old age in the desert with Auntie Sharma.

She folded the treasure back into the jar and replaced all of her other treasures with a silent prayer: “Allah be praised,” she whispered. “With this wealth waiting for us in Lahore, we will make our plan work and stay in Cholistan until it is safe to return.”

Then she put an old black
chadr
over her head and climbed back down to the courtyard. She took off her sandals and held them in one hand as she ran lightly as a breeze to the back gate. It was deep into the time for afternoon naps, and she heard loud snores from the servants’ quarters. She had no trouble going unseen out the rear gate into the small alleyway behind the
haveli
.

Shabanu bent to put on her sandals and picked her way through the alley, the
chadr
wrapped around her face loosely in folds that covered all but her eyes.

At the intersection of the lanes she stopped and untied the corner of her
chadr
. She withdrew a many-times-folded paper on which Sharma had drawn a map. It led her down an alley where shirtless men sat stirring large kettles of milk over open fires as if in slow motion, and down another alley where men sat hammering sheets of copper into flat pans for making
kulfi
, and down another where men sat before machines that clanked and whirred, and down yet
another where men welded small bits of metal over gas jets.

In the midst of this lane she stopped before an open doorway. The green paint that identified it as the place she wanted was worn to a faint tint embedded in the wood grain. She knocked lightly.

“Come in,” said a sweet, soft voice.

She stooped through the doorway into an unremarkable brick hut with a roof of corrugated metal that seemed held on more by hope than gravity. It was surprisingly cool and dark inside.

“Come in, come in,” the voice said again, from a room beyond a black curtain. “I won’t bite.” The voice was mild, with a humorous, kindly impatience.

Shabanu pulled back the curtain and bent to pass through the tiny doorway; she entered a small room with a high window that admitted some of the hot white light from the lane without letting in any heat.

Aab-pa sat in the center of the room on a red satin-covered cushion surrounded by fat embroidered bolsters. The opulence of the fabrics seemed oddly out of place against the smooth dirt floor and the rough brick walls. Strewn about him were yellowed, curling charts, unrolled and anchored with bits of broken pottery and pieces of stone, teacups, and amulets.

He was a rotund little man in a white
lungi
with a robe thrown across his shoulders. He wore an angelic
expression on his face, which was so smooth and round it looked like the face of an infant, except for startlingly wise and compassionate eyes that peered out from under a loosely wound turban.