A Matter of Marriage (15 page)

And where was his Penelope? He must not forget that her many trivial domestic tasks were all designed to contribute in some small way to his material comfort and happiness. Not that the physical comforts were ever paramount with him, given the vastly superior pleasures that the mind could bring. She must be cooking his favorite dish right now, or perhaps rolling a soft, fresh, green betel leaf around a mixture of paan, lime powder, scented sugar balls and cardamon, perfectly tailored to her husband's taste. He swallowed, and realized how dry his mouth was.

But he would leave her in peace for now. Her presence, though well-meaning, was full of hustle and bustle: the ceaseless, needless noise and activity so symptomatic of the shallow mind. Only true stillness, deep repose, was conducive to, nay, almost indistinguishable from, deep thought. His eyelids began to droop.

He reclined his head into the chair's soft tapestry, closed his eyes and let his legs rise from the floor to rest upon . . . nothing. They floated in midair, wavered from side to side, searching for their entitled resting place, then dropped, defeated. Where was his ottoman?

He opened his eyes, pained and annoyed. Had he been through so much, expected so little, for this? It seemed an intentional betrayal, a mockery of his pain, that the ottoman, always precisely placed for his shoeless feet, was sitting on the far side of the hearth, a good five feet away from its appointed spot.

This wifely dereliction must not be tolerated, for where would it end? How could Mrs. Begum respect herself if she did not know her failings as a wife? And if not a good wife, then not a good mother, for did not the two go together, hand in hand? For her own sake the rot must be stopped, before she could no longer look at herself in the mirror. He cleared his throat. That alone, she should be able to hear from the kitchen. Due warning.

“Paper, paper,” he shouted, then sat back, feeling a little calmer.

She would come in with a collection of newspapers from the hallstand and offer them to him. Once he had made his selection, he would clear his throat again, meaningfully, perhaps look at the ottoman sitting flagrantly by the hearth. She, comprehending, would rush to replace it under his feet. She would notice the odd way in which he positioned his injured foot and show wifely concern, offer to wash or massage it. She would perhaps ask him if he wanted some paan or a cup of tea to demonstrate her contrition, which of course he would accept. Domestic harmony, the natural order of things, would be restored, all would be forgiven and forgotten.

Something banged and hissed in the kitchen. There was a rushing and a rustling and his wife was suddenly in front of him, and a cascade of papers fell into his lap. Before he could speak she was gone again, back into the kitchen, to a flurry of cupboard doors opening and shutting, the clash of utensils and the rattle-crash of a pan landing hard on the stove. He sat perfectly still, a hurrumph dying in his throat. More banging from the kitchen, and now that he thought of it, dinner was usually almost ready when he returned from his walk.

He stood, pushing all the papers to the floor except for the fashion supplement, and limped on socked feet back down the hall and into his study. Sometimes, when dealing with the truly irrational aspects of womanhood, which Freud so well recognized, discretion was truly the better part of valor. Not to mention demonstrating a mature understanding of the frustrations and known moodiness of the inarticulate sex. He was not retreating, merely respecting, in the civilized give-and-take of the modern marriage, Mrs. Begum's need for space. He had read all about this in
Cosmopolitan.

He shut and locked his study door. It had been a hot day, and it was going to be an even hotter night. The accoutrements of man were so constricting and unhealthy in this weather. He unbuttoned his shirt and turned to the cheval, breathing in and upward. The afternoon sun lit his skin to shades of golden brown, threw his stomach into shadow and made his chest gleam. Yul Brynner knew what he was doing when he wore those open waistcoats, so heavily embroidered, over his naked torso. Humming the theme to
King of Siam
, he considered his reflection further. What a fine figure of a man he was.

T
HE
Y HAD ARRANGED
to meet at Shilpi's house this time, rather than Aisha's dorm room where they usually went every Thursday. But while Shunduri was still with Kareem in his flat, Aisha had texted to say they were doing
mendhi
, henna designs, and could she bring her magazines for the patterns. So Kareem had done a detour and was now waiting in the Rover while she ran up to her dorm room to get them.

Despite having showered before she'd left Kareem's flat, she felt tired and somehow still dishevelled. She quickly changed into one of her college
salwars
and lower shoes, then freshened up her make-up with a nude lipstick and more kohl around the eyes. She wasn't going to have a repeat of last week, with Shilpi deciding to hold forth about Muslim modesty while she was in her leggings and backless
choli
with just a bit of chiffon around her.

Kareem was smiling and relaxed when she returned. He had three mobiles out and was finishing one call while he held another and texted on the third.

She got into the car, and he started the engine, leaned over and kissed her on the lips, then spoke again into the mobile against his ear. “Yeah, brother, I'll be there. Twenty minutes max—you can depend on me, man.”

I hope I can too
. The thought floated into her mind as they moved into the traffic, and would not leave until she had smoothed her eyebrows in the visor mirror.

Kareem sped down unknown side roads and up hidden back lanes on the way to Shilpi's house. “It'll be a busy night, Princess,” he said.

“Don't forget to do it tonight, yaah.”

“Eh?”

“You're going to speak to Auntie and Uncle. About us.”

“Princess, how could I forget, yeah?”

“You'll text me tonight, when you've done it?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Kareem dropped her a block from Shilpi's house, behind a parked van. She disembarked swiftly, anxious to avoid the sharp eyes of aunties or small children, and didn't turn to look as Kareem accelerated past her. This couldn't go on: they were going to be seen by someone soon. She unlooped the veil from around her neck, covered her head with it, crossed the front and threw the ends over her shoulders. Please God, don't let getting caught be necessary to get him over the line.

The last thing she wanted was some hole-in-the-corner wedding, all over in five minutes, with no visits and everyone talking about the
funchait
that had to be called to make Kareem marry that slut Shunduri, his girlfriend. And everyone watching her stomach and counting the months since she'd married. Her pace quickened, and she pulled the veil further forward over her hairline. She hated being late.

A quick knock on the door of the little two-up, two-down council house, and then the smiles and inquisitive eyes of Shilpi's mother and grandmother and some aunties.
Devdas
was on the TV; the scene where Madhuri Dixit, as the beautiful prostitute, acknowledges her love for the hero, whom she can never marry because of what she is. The sound was turned up so loud that it vibrated painfully in Shunduri's ears, and the aunties were all chewing paan and talking over it about some local scandal, oblivious to the tragedy unfolding in front of them. They were all headscarved up as well now, except for the grandmother, Shilpi's daddu, so it looked as if Shilpi's newly acquired ninja style was having a bit of an effect all round.

They waved her upstairs, and she gave her respects and left the room, but as she turned back into the hallway, she heard the name Guri. She stopped with one hand on the banister, her ears straining. Were they talking about her and Kareem already? There was a burst of conversation, but she could make out nothing further. Were they already discovered?

But then one woman's voice rose above the rest, speaking with the authority of an auntie who felt she had seen everything, as they always did. “Well, of course, it is only natural, with Mrs. Guri doing so much matchmaking and Mr. Guri a businessman that has done so well, that his opinion be asked about the marriage and the dowries.”

Shunduri crept down a few steps to listen better, a sudden hope rising in her breast.

Shilpi's mother's voice cut in then, triumphant. “Mrs. Guri was not needed for my girl. Shilpi, when her studies were finished, she came to me and told me she was ready. Twenty-two: just right.”

“Twenty-two,” Daddu's voice rose querulously. “That is a very good age to be married. That is not too young. I was thirteen when I married, and fifteen when I had you.”

“Yes, Daddu. Would you like more paan?”

“Nah, nah. They should do as their parents did, marry who their parents find for them, none of this quarrelling and delaying.”

“But Daddu,” said a younger, more tentative voice, “you know that for these modern Desi boys and girls, marriage is different for them now, with living apart, and jobs. You cannot just say they are a good family, have a good reputation, and finish it there.”

“Love-match, is that what you say?”

“Nah, nah, nah, it is not just that. I don't say for love-match, Daddu, I don't. These girls that are brought over, they are not always looked after. We all know that. The family just wants the dowry, and a slave in the kitchen.”

There was a pause, then bossy auntie responded. “Or she is not brought over at all. What does that do to a family? Look at Kareem Guri, you know, the boy that Mr. Guri brought over years ago for his restaurant. I was telling you about this before. He married a girl in Bangladesh last year that the Guris betrothed him to long-time ago, and filled in all the forms for the visa like Mohammed Guri wanted but then his son-in-law Ahmed told me that Kareem had said to Immigration he had been forced into it, and they said to him, don't worry, we will never grant her the visa and then in a few years, when your family has accepted the situation, you can divorce her, you know? And marry who you like.”

A quiet
aaah
came out of Shunduri's throat, and she sank down to sit on the stairs, her hands flying up to cover her face, then dropping to make fists on the carpeted step where she sat. She could not bear to listen, or move.

“That Ahmed, always such a gossip. That should have stayed in the family. He could make much trouble, talking like that.”

“The Guris kept that very quiet.”

“I heard the Guris cancelled their trip home two months ago because they didn't want to run into the girl's family, in the marketplace.”

Daddu's voice was audible then, rich with disapproval. “That is a bad, bad thing. That girl's village, that girl's family, will not forget. There will be a feud.”

There was tsking and chewing, and bossy auntie spoke again. “Ah, men, they cause us a world of sorrow. And those immigration-wallahs, they have no idea about why men do these things, for the dowry, and that poor girl is left in her village unable to marry, for who would want her, and her family shamed and in debt.”

Shilpi's mother recommenced the story, as if hastening to finish. “They're saying, yeah, that the dowry money all went to Kareem's pocket, and the Guris, thinking they are so clever, saw none of it. And now they have been left with nothing but a bad reputation in Sylhet province for matchmaking. A good thing for them that both their daughters are already married.”

“Help me up. My shawl. My glasses. Children—they are all the same,” said Daddu.

Shunduri shot to her feet, trembling, then ran up the stairs. As she reached the landing, she looked down at the yellowish-white head of Shilpi's daddu, an auntie on either side of her, being walked with every appearance of reluctance, along the hallway to the downstairs toilet. The two aunties were still talking, about how the girl in Bangladesh was only fifteen, sixteen, with her parents so in favor of the visa, not thinking of what could go wrong.

Shunduri banged the knuckles of her clenched fists together. All this time, Kareem a married man. No one had told her, no one had said a word. All his talk of love, and plans for the future.

How stupid she was to have fallen for his words. To have become the foolish girl that everyone else jokes about, that mothers hold up as a warning to their daughters. Be careful, or you could end up like Shunduri.

She pushed on the door to Shilpi's bedroom, feeling lightheaded, as if she were floating between the two worlds: of the aunties and tradition and arranged marriages; and the Desi world of the girls she had come to visit here, with their talk of clothes and boys and jobs and Bollywood heroes.

Where did this leave her? She was lost somewhere in between, in that place that Aisha's mother spoke about. Purgatory.

She pushed Shilpi's bedroom door, and it swung open, onto a vision of pink. The walls and carpet were a matching pale pink and the bed, the curtains and the bottom part of her dresser were covered in white satin frills. Amina and Aisha were sitting with Shilpi on her bed, all three in pastel
salwars
, their hands covered with intricate henna designs and resting, palms upward, on their knees. There wasn't enough room on the bed for Shunduri, and despite the cries of welcome, no one seemed to be inclined to shift up for her. But that was alright because the last thing she felt like doing was lining up in a row with them and laughing and giggling when she had this painful lump in her throat, and her face could be showing anything, everything. She drifted toward the dresser, half tuned to their chat.

They were listening to Shilpi's tale of her recent betrothal to Shareef, a Desi boy from Manchester who was just finishing his optometry studies and was a big man in the University of Manchester branch of Jamat-al-Islami. They'd met on a Muslim matchmaking website and then for real through a Young Muslims Organisation rally, and she'd managed to steer her mum and dad in the right direction to find him, and he'd done the same with his family.

Shunduri looked at herself in the dressing-table mirror. It was her mouth that would betray what she had heard on the stairs, hanging in a long O of shock and fear beneath the gloss of lipstick. She pressed her lips closed and looked down, Shilpi's smug little voice going on and on behind her.

“As you know, I was all anti-marriage until I went on this
particulaar
Desi website, yaah. And saw dis
particulaar
bruvver. His bio data, I mean. But you know, it's a Muslim woman's duty
,
yaah . . .”

On Shilpi's dresser, amongst all the stuffed animals, spilt make-up and untidy piles of bangles, was a neat pile of shiny DVDs.
On Muslim Prayer
,
What It Means to Be a Muslim
,
The American Military-Industrial Hegemony
,
Jihad for Beginners
. They were all still shrink-wrapped, except for two:
Shakira
and
The 100 Best Songs of Rani Mukherjee
.

Coiled on the white fluffy seat of Shilpi's dresser stool was her discarded
abaya
, black as night and as full of presence in that room as a snake in a flower garden. Shunduri's eyes were drawn to it. It seemed to be the only thing amongst the frills and fluff that made any sense. While the girls talked on, she touched the
abaya
with her fingertips, then lifted it up to shake it out and refold it. The mass of beaded microfiber weighed as heavy as her heart. There was a green label on the neckline with black writing:
From Shukr's Sakina Prayer Collection. For those Intimate Moments with the Divine.

“It's a prayer robe, yeah,” she heard Shilpi's voice from somewhere behind her. “I got it on the Internet. Go on, try it on.”

“Why not, yaah.” She heard her own casual tone, as if from far away. She slid her arms into the wide sleeves, pulled the shoulder seams forward so that it hung straight down at the front, found and fastened the hidden ties and buttons at the front and sides, then looked around for the headscarf.

“Here.” Shilpi tossed the smaller piece of black fabric toward her. “It's a
shayla hijab
, so it just wraps around, yeah. Much better than the
amira hijabs
, you know, wiv dere elastic.”

“Oh that's so true, yeah,” said Amina eagerly. “Those elasticated ones make you look like you've got no neck.”

Shunduri caught it, found the ends and started to wrap it over her head, but it was slipping on her short haircut. Her usual sureness of touch seemed to have deserted her. Everyone was quiet now, watching.

“Sit down,” said Shilpi, “and I'll put it on you. It goes on better wiv the underscarf.”

She sat on the fluffy dresser stool, feeling as if their positions had been reversed, while Shilpi's small hands, rough with dried
mendhi
, wrapped and packed away strands of Shunduri's hair and smoothed the fabric across her forehead. “There!”

Shunduri stood, and Amina and Aisha slid off the bed, to examine and exclaim.

“Wow, Baby,” said Amina. “You look so tall, really elegant.” Shunduri took in her reflection in the mirror. She did look dignified, her eyes large and brilliant, and the
hijab
outlined the fine shape of her head. It shouldn't spoil her bob too much if she wrapped it carefully. She would have to practice.

“And here,” said Shilpi, reluctant to abandon her creation, “you can just pull this bit across the face, and pin it, and now it's a
niqab
. That's how I wear it, anyway. Like in the Qur'an.”

Mysterious, fascinating. Modest. She could go the whole way, cover her face as well. The
abaya
's fabric hung in sculptural folds from her shoulders, as if she were a Greek goddess. Some long gloves like Shilpi's wouldn't go astray, either.

“Wow,” said Aisha this time. “That looks so cool. Can I try it?”

She took the
abaya
off and passed it on with every appearance of nonchalance, but with possessiveness and reluctance in her heart. She could see herself so clearly, walking to the front row when
takbir
, spontaneous prayer, was called at college, the crowd at political rallies parting for her like the Red Sea.