The Holy Woman (20 page)

L
EAVING
N
AIMAT
B
IBI
and Kulsoom doing the washing, Habib headed towards his father’s home. The car hooted a tractor and a bullock cart out of its way on the dusty journey down the narrow road, pulling up in the centre of the village where a large white-washed villa, with attractive white wrought-iron balconies on all four sides, and rows of potted plants cascading down the white-washed walls, stood imperiously amongst the more humble buildings.

Habib’s father now lived here with his three
menservants
and the estate manager who oversaw the
business
side and collected the revenue from the land. Siraj Din was a true countryman, a
zemindar
to his very
bones. Nothing would have induced him to depart from Chiragpur the ‘village of light’, to join his sons in the town. He tolerated their move with fortitude and sadness, but he wouldn’t be persuaded to do so himself.

‘How can a
zemindar
be a
zemindar
if he lives away from his fields? Land is my life. My eyes need to gaze over and to feast on the smell of fresh green vegetables growing in the fields, ready to be plucked and
harvested
. I’ll never leave it!’ Siraj Din had firmly
remonstrated
to his sons, when they had pressed him to move to their homes after their mother, Zulaikha, had died.

At the end they let him be. An independent and proud sort of a man, he didn’t need any close members of his family seeing to his daily needs – his servants could do all that sufficiently well. Naimat Bibi was their regular cook. Siraj Din was still a healthy man at the sprightly age of eighty years. Daily walks in his fields had kept his heart and lungs in good condition. Unlike his sons, he had not piled on surplus fat but had kept a sharp eye on his trim waistline. His sons and grandchildren visited him on a rota basis two or three times a week.

Entering his old home, a familiar scene met Habib’s eyes. There was a large central courtyard with rows of rooms flanked on all four sides. In the middle of the courtyard, with its four red rose beds and three trees, his father sat on a chaise-longue-style
palang
,
half-reclining
on a high bolster. One male servant sat nearby, ready to hand him a hookah. Another stood over him, massaging his shoulders gently but firmly.

Siraj Din didn’t bother to get up, but inclined his head to acknowledge his son’s arrival. A ghost of a smile was allowed to touch his face. Habib came up to his father and, after greeting him, bent down. With a
gesture inherited from his childhood days, Habib lifted his father’s hand and kissed it. Accepting the greeting, Siraj Din signalled his son to sit down on the other
charpoy.

‘Bring food and drink for your master!’ he ordered the young man massaging his shoulder-blades, and sent him scurrying inside, seeking out Naimat Bibi, unaware that she was out in the fields still doing her washing.

‘So, she has gone,’ Siraj Din began, bending over and drawing a powerful puff on his hookah pipe, letting the water gurgle in the steel base for a few seconds.

‘Yes, Father. In about six hours’ time she should have reached Misr.’

‘I see,’ Siraj Din commented, his eyes on his son while taking another long puff. ‘But I don’t know what the world is coming to, my son, for young, unmarried women to be sent off, all alone, to foreign countries to live on their own. I find it totally unacceptable. I
sincerely
hope that you know what you are doing. I would have thought twice about sending my young daughter alone to another city in Pakistan, let alone to another country.’

‘Zarri Bano has lived alone in Karachi, while she was studying at university, Father. If it had been your daughter, she would have been living in another era. Things have changed in many ways. We have to learn to move with the times. You have benefited from modern machinery like tractors to work your land haven’t you, instead of the bullock plough? Women are more independent, educated, assertive and freer to do things now. We cannot keep them locked inside our houses any more. This is not the age of
purdah,
Father.’

‘But she is now a devout woman – a
Bibi,
Habib!’
Siraj Din snorted in disgust. ‘In my days, a
Bibi
would barely have set foot outside her home, for that was part of her modesty and devoutness. Her inaccessibility and seclusion from men gave her the devout rank of a
Bibi.
Such a woman was hardly likely to have gone gadding halfway across the world alone, and Allah knows who she’ll encounter there.’

‘My daughter is not a
Bibi,
as you well know,’ Habib retorted, his lips curling in distaste. ‘You are talking about old, ignorant
Bibis,
Father! Zarri Bano is a university graduate, remember. She is going to be a scholar, who needs to learn in order to teach others about Islam. How can she do that at home, amidst such ignorance? How much knowledge is there about our faith here in Chiragpur in this village of yours? Very little, I tell you. Especially amongst the women, who are barely literate. The place Zarri Bano has gone to is the best place for her to study. She is a mature woman, Father, not a child. You must try to understand. She can look after herself. In any event, I have sent Sakina with her, to chaperone her and keep her company, until she settles in. I will visit her myself in a few months’ time.’

‘Where is she going to stay?’ Siraj Din asked quietly. This was the subject that had lain on his mind all day, as he imagined his beautiful granddaughter in a foreign country, being ogled by strange Egyptian men. Even in her
burqa
, she was bound to draw attention to herself. Her beauty was their pride, but also posed a threat to them when it came to men.

‘She is going to stay with an Egyptian family that I met on pilgrimage in Jeddah, five years ago. We have kept in touch, and I have visited them once. The man has a daughter who is studying at the university Zarri
Bano will be attending, and a son who teaches there. It is he who has also arranged the admission for her.’

Shaking his head, ‘I don’t know, my son,’ Siraj Din replied, not satisfied. ‘You have still not convinced me of the merit and wisdom of what you have done.’

‘Father, I do know what I am doing. Just as I am beginning to learn and regret what it is going to cost me.’ Habib did not bother disguising the note of sadness in his voice.

‘What do you mean?’ Siraj Din asked sharply –
pushing
the hookah away from him. The male servant politely moved it back.

‘I thought I had done the right thing, but I am so unhappy. I have lost my family. I walk all alone in my home, a solitary figure, Father.’ Habib’s eyes focused on the grapevine in the far corner of the courtyard, now heavily swollen with branches hanging down and laden with ripe green grapes.

‘Don’t be silly, son,’ Siraj Din grunted, his green eyes glittering with laughter. ‘You are getting soft in the head.’

‘No, Father, I am not getting soft in the head, as you say. I am plagued by guilt, wondering whether we’ve done the right thing.’

‘Of course we have!’ Siraj Din returned immediately, the laughter whipped away from his eyes, his body tense.

‘Would Selim have done it to his Gulshan?’ Habib stared squarely into his father’s eyes, daring him to disagree.

‘Of course.’

‘No, he wouldn’t.’ Habib wryly shook his head
looking
away from his father’s gaze. ‘You see, his wife wouldn’t have let her. I forced my daughter: she obeyed
me. Shahzada desperately appealed to me not to do it, but in the end, she gave in and stood by me like a strong pillar of support.’

‘Well, so she should!’ Siraj Din snorted indignantly. ‘That’s her duty.’

‘Yes, she has done her duty. But the payment is going to be very dear, as I have learnt to my cost. She will never forgive me, Father. Nor has she spoken to me since the night when I told her about Zarri Bano’s fate. I have lost her.’ Habib’s eyes again focused on the other tree he used to climb as a boy.

Siraj Din sat upright, drawing his legs and feet down onto the marble floor. Pushing the hookah away from him, he leaned forward to look straight at his son.

‘Now listen to me carefully, my Habib, I don’t like what I am hearing. Are you losing your masculine touch? Who is the master in your house? I am very disappointed in you.’ Siraj Din’s eyes, exactly like his son’s and which Zarri Bano had inherited, flashed with disdain. ‘If you give into your weakness, you will find yourself tied to your wife’s
perandah,
her plait. She will rule you and not just your household. She sent Zarri Bano to Karachi to Sikander’s home against your wish, didn’t she? Well! You will be a woman in your house!’ Siraj Din concluded, with a look of disgust on his face.

‘There is no chance of that happening,’ Habib replied bitterly. ‘My marriage, my relationship with Shahzada, is not like yours was to our mother. We have shared harmony in our household. There was no power struggle between us. Shahzada knows her place and her duties, as she has always done. I have not
dominated
her in the way you taught us to do and the way you dominated our mother. I didn’t break Shahzada’s spirit – a thing you spent all your life endeavouring to do with
our mother, but never quite succeeded. Mother stood up to you even on her deathbed. Shahzada is not a
high-spirited
woman as Mother was. That is the problem! I wish she was, for then we could argue and fight, but she has shut me out.’ He paused, then said almost
inaudibly
, ‘I stupidly threatened her with divorce. I think I killed something inside her that day. Her eyes, like Ruby’s, were always warm with love and laughter, now they stare at me with hatred. I have cruelly hurt her, Father. She has lost two children in one go!’

Siraj Din settled back comfortably on his bolster and thoughtfully twirled his hennaed moustache into shape. He stretched his legs out fully on the
palang.
Drawing the hookah pipe back to his mouth, and
wanting
privacy with his son, he waved the approaching servant away, ordering, ‘Go and find Naimat Bibi, wherever she has drowned herself. My son is here and she needs to prepare the dinner.’

He couldn’t believe what Habib was telling him. ‘At your age, Habib! You are nearly sixty. Why do you care so much about your wife? You don’t need a wife to live your life.’

‘Father, I am not like you. I cannot live alone. I have led a different life from the one you shared with our mother. You kept her at arm’s length, always afraid that she might dominate you. In the process you have never really known a woman’s affection, or what it is to live in mutual harmony, have you? You were always chasing after your land, and bent on showing her who was master in your home. What love she ever harboured for you must have been quenched from the day she married you. I remember it all.’

‘You remember my wedding day?’ Siraj Din grunted, unable to prevent the sarcastic rejoinder.

‘No, of course not. But I do have childhood memories. I saw both of you well-matched, and yet ill-matched. Your nature demanded obedience and subservience, hers equality and respect. You never gave her that, did you? And she in turn was never subservient to you. She was a strong woman. That was what kept the whole family going. She was our citadel.’

His eyes now
flashing
menacingly at his son, Siraj Din made his displeasure apparent. ‘I don’t know what has come over you today, Habib. My son is now
abusing
me and defending his mother! I think the whole world has gone raving mad. It seems that I have become obsolete, at this stage in my life. I am living in a country where a young chit of a woman was ruling over us. In an Islamic country, too! Why don’t you go and put your head in Shahzada’s lap and let her massage you back in her favours, rather than coming here to insult me about your mother and our marriage, Habib!’ The elderly man was looking seriously annoyed.

‘We were a different breed of men, my son,’ he went on heatedly. ‘We knew our parameters, just as we expected our wives to dutifully know theirs. It is true that your mother Zulaikha was a strong woman.
Perhaps
that was why I married her in the first place – knowing that she could stand up to me, match my temper with hers. In my own way, I too loved your mother, Habib. I wasn’t dominating her all the time, as you put it. A man still needs the affection of a woman in his life. Although you may find it hard to believe, I do miss her.’

‘Father, there was no harmony in our childhood lives. Our lives were turbulent. I vowed that when I married, it would be different. I said so to Mother. I think that is why she helped me to choose Shahzada, rather than
Gulshan’s mother. She said that Shahzada was better suited to my temperament. Shahzada has been a good wife in every sense.’

‘You, I am disgusted to learn, are the epitome of my elder brother! He used to walk behind his wife. He truly was tied to her
perandah,
obeying each and every command of hers and in the end, he became her shadow and a laughing stock with us. Consequently he didn’t have a say in anything, for his wife married all their children into her clan. I learnt from him that a man can make an utter fool of himself, if he pays too much attention to his wife. Such women are capable of riding roughshod over their husbands. That sister-in-law of mine did! She controlled my brother, just by one tilted eyebrow, and then brazenly flaunted it in all our faces.

‘One day I stood up to her, angrily telling her that she shouldn’t treat my brother like that. Do you know what she did, my son? She peered closely into my face and laughed, her own face screwed up into a sneer. She poked at my chest with her fat finger. “Mind your own business! If you want to practise domination, do it on your own wife – that is, when you manage to get one. Not on me, you little upstart!” she snarled.’

‘I hated them both. I learnt from him, just as you learnt the contrary from me, that I would never become a slave to a mere woman. No female was going to have a chance to dominate and humiliate me. My misfortune was that I spent all my life doing that to my wife and yet never quite succeeded. Your mother was so different from my sister-in-law; but she had guts and stood up to me!’