A Matter of Marriage (19 page)

And it was here that Tariq learned that his sister was perhaps even more afraid of re-entering the family fold than of returning to London, friendless and free. And how she had always known that her brother's need for family, for belonging, was so much greater than her own. And for a time, at least, even the terrible secret that still lay between them—that he was not all that he appeared—seemed a little less insurmountable.

W
HEN
D
R.
C
HOUDHURY
finally left the sitting room and walked into the cottage's hallway, there was no one to be seen. It was very quiet.

“Mrs. Begum?” he called out. “Where are your children?” He could hear her slow tread on the landing above, but there was no reply. Where were they all?

After a little while, he found himself standing irresolutely by the front door. He may as well open it: the house could do with a little freshening up. Cool air flowed in, but nothing else. Perhaps there was a full moon. Women were so prey to their natural cycles.

He teetered on the edge of the first step before retreating inside, shutting the door on nature with secret relief. Claude Levi-Strauss was a man of such insight when he divided the world between the natural and man-made forces. Like him, Dr. Choudhury was a man of civilization and culture, whereas Mrs. Begum, less developed, was all nature and impulse. Perhaps he could surprise her with a nice set of Wiltshire Staysharps in their own pine block: he had seen one on the shopping channel. And then she would relinquish that dangerous village-type
dhaa
for good.

The hallway was still dark, not an auspicious sign. After a consideration of the risky complexities of microwaves and how they had a tendency to ding in a way that could be heard all over the house, he decided to forgo the dangers of a wifeless meal for the pleasure of intellectual exercise in his study. And he was almost certain that there was a leftover
ladhu
ball, still edible in its foil, in his desk drawer.

Was that a noise? Maybe his wife was intending to come downstairs again. His stomach rumbled. Perhaps he would wait in his study until he was sure. On the way he passed the ornate hall mirror, almost full-length, and stopped to briefly examine his reflection in a manner that would be virtually imperceptible to others.

Yes, first-rate. A man of the intellect, but of compassion too, like Amitabh Bachchan in
Mohabbatein
. Or maybe
Ek Rishta
. The life of the mind was so preferable to these petty domestic matters that preoccupied the minds of women. Was that a hint of jowl? Of course not. He smoothed his hair, a distinguished white now, back from his high brow. Jowls were on Mrs. Begum's side, along with lack of height and incessant activity.

Beneath the hall mirror was a small telephone table on which Mrs. Begum had placed a stack of saris. The top one was the color of a ripe plum with a deep edging of antique gold, Mughal-style, on a black background. An excellent combination for the coloring of maturity. He slid his fingers underneath so as not to disturb the folds, and carried the stack into his study.

When they had moved to the cottage, just on three years ago, the lack of storage space in their bedroom had prompted him to suggest that Mrs. Begum's most elaborate and rarely worn saris would be best stored in the built-in cupboards of his study, and the arrangement had worked very well. They were not crammed upstairs, and he had the pleasure—the cultivated aesthetic pleasure of the well-educated man—in seeing the glow and sheen of these rich fabrics every time he opened his cupboard doors.

Viewing them, sometimes moving his hands over them in the quiet evenings, brought him a measure of comfort, of gratification impossible to explain, ridiculous to discuss. The three-dimensional roughness of the gold and silver embroidery, the slippery liquidity of modern silks and microfibers and, most precious of all, the stiff smoothness of the raw silk Benares saris, some of them three generations old (many his mother's and her mother's before her), were like a secret treasure trove all his own. Truth be told, he even found it hard to tolerate his wife's occasional forays into them on special occasions. He had arranged them by texture and color, in piles of three, with their matching petticoats, but without their fitted blouses. Those were still upstairs, in the top drawers of the tallboy.

His stomach rumbled again. He had not eaten, his wife was upstairs . . . how had this mess happened? He had prepared himself so well for the role of stern but ultimately compassionate father figure. He had been willing to give his son and daughter all the time in the world to bring him round, to soften his paternal heart with their pleading. But where was the younger generation's patience? Where was their respect? Did they not know that he was a man of many, many parts?

He had been a good father; no one could say otherwise. Dr. Choudhury thought of his own father, of all the changes after his mother's death. His father had started to lock him in the spare room after school to study until bedtime: the beginning of a relentless pressure toward the holy grail of a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford that ground on and on, through the end of primary school, secondary school and Dhaka University first-class honors degrees in History and Architecture.

How many tears had he shed there, just him and the books and the old wardrobe full of his mother's saris, forgotten since her death. He could still remember the scent of coconut oil that lingered on the material, which he always believed came from his mother's hair oil. And the tiny catches in the fabric that perhaps were from snagging on bracelets, or the necklace sets that she was never photographed without.

He had never pressured his own son like that. He had always been a first-rate modern father to all his children. Tariq had been free to choose his own path at university and his own friends. Even when Tariq joined Jamat-al-Islami and started dressing like some ignorant village elder, he had not interfered. And he had been right, right all along. Here was his boy, a grown man, broad-shouldered, no longer a fundamentalist, a number-one success
Inshallah
, with his Oxford master's and now home with his family. He was the perfect blend of East and West: comfortable in
sherwani
and dinner jacket, Bangla and English. Yes. Curry and pudding. Dr. Choudhury's stomach rumbled again. He would have the
ladhu
ball in peace and quiet, so rare in this house.

He opened the sari cupboard and carefully placed the three saris on the piles that were most complimentary to them, stood in contemplation, then moved away to lock the study door. It was, after all, his
sanctum sanctorum
.

As for his daughters, there was no escaping the fact that they were a great disappointment. Especially his eldest, so promising in her paintings, like his own mother, but with the chance to fulfil her promise that his mother had never had. And now where was Rohimun? Her picture in a magazine and now a newspaper, like some page-three slut.

Yet he would not think on such things. In fact, not the
ladhu
ball either. For now, the north of his internal compass was set once more for the sari cupboard.

And pretty little Shunduri, never should have called her that, it was asking for trouble to call a girl Beauty. Unmarriageable, both daughters, unless of course his own high-prestige reputation in the community . . . But that was the trouble, all these peasant-type matchmaking families were the same. They cared nothing for art galleries and master's degrees, just whether the girls could cook traditional-style and if Tariq had his own car.

He removed the plum sari and shook out its folds to see the embroidery on the
pallu
. This, the most elaborate end of the sari, designed to highlight the swing of fabric down the back or over the bent arm, was truly beautiful: a series of alternating black and plum squares, framed by dark gold
aari
cutwork.

Yes, this was the one he had chosen during their last trip to Leicester. Mrs. Begum must have just finished sewing the blouse. A beautiful choice, but a pity she was so short. And stout. A dramatic sari like this deserved a taller, slimmer figure. He looked up from the fabric to meet his own eyes in the cheval glass that stood in the corner. An essential piece of furniture, as he always told Mrs. Begum, for those occasions when he could not adjust his dress in the hallway mirror before leaving the house, that is, cottage. This color was perfect for him.

Keeping his eyes on the mirror, he drew the fabric up to his neckline. He was so right about the color. He started to rotate as he wrapped the fabric around his waist, his head swivelling back toward the mirror with each turn. Beautiful. He jiggled the folds of the
pallu
until it fell in one symmetrical sweep over his forearm, then stared at the cheval,
ladhu
ball forgotten.

—

M
RS.
S
YEDA
B
EGUM
sat in the dark watching her children from her bedroom window. She smiled and nodded to see them embrace, and resumed her own plotting for family unity, grandchildren and general advancement of the Choudhurys. The sooner her troubled son unburdened his heart to his favorite sister the better for everyone.

She reached out to the pile of old
Royalty
magazines tucked into her window recess and selected one, turning the pages reverently. Tariq still had time: Mrs. Darby had told her that Prince Charles had not married till he was thirty-two. Inside the magazine was a newspaper cutting: a double-page spread of photographs showing that good Muslim boy Dodi with poor Princess Diana before they died.

Mrs. Begum examined the photographs in the article. Laughing and smiling and enjoying themselves, like young people in love should. And why not. She was beautiful, and he was rich, and his family did not object. She would have converted, like Imran Khan's wife, and they would have lived happily ever after, with more sons, and everything she wanted from Harrods. A great pity that the Windsors were unable to accept love-matches or mixed marriages. Then again, honor killings were not unknown amongst Muslims either.

A wife for Tariq . . . She had a feeling in her stomach that she needed to look again at the ceevees of prospective brides that had been arriving since he graduated. First choice must now go to those girls who did not look too passionate: more study-types, or motherly, perhaps. Thin lips and big hips. And they could not have the parents and all the aunties living just around the corner, either. The parents, especially the mother, must be dead, invalid or distant, too distant to be always visiting and calling. She herself could give her daughter-in-law all the mothering she needed, and make sure that her attention was properly directed.

After all, that was where the Queen had gone wrong. If she had mothered that poor motherless Diana a bit more, kept her busy in the bosom of the family, then she would never have left. A strong, loving mother-in-law will always be more important to a marriage than a weak husband.

She thought back to the circumstances of her own marriage: she, a nobody, an uneducated village girl who had married up, up, into the dizzy heights of a Choudhury family in Dhaka. Their furious grudging acceptance, forced by a combination of her rounded belly and Babru Choudhury's passionate protestations. It had been the first and only time he had stood up against that dirty-bastard father of his.

Then after the marriage, no welcome, no celebration. She was hidden away in her father-in-law's house while her new husband left for UK to take up his Rhodes scholarship. But she hadn't cared. Even while she hauled her heavy body around working like a slave for that man, she had known it was only a matter of time.

And sure enough, within a few months, Babru's cousin had arrived one day while Bora Khalo, father-in-law (he had never asked her to call him Abba), was sleeping. He gave her the aeroplane ticket and one hundred British pounds. Twenty pounds plus two Benares saris from her uncle the tailor got her the Bangla passport. The remaining eighty pounds, hidden inside a cigarette packet that dropped discreetly onto a file-filled desk at the British High Commission, procured the precious spousal visa.

She had packed in secret, constructing a parcel of newspaper and string—just as she had done for her journey two years earlier, from the drowned paddies of Syhlet province to Uncle's shop in the great dusty capital of Dhaka. The parcel held all her clothes, along with a new shirt and perfume for Babru.

Mrs. Begum marvelled. She was so young then, and alone, yet she had been far more fearful of the train journey with Uncle to Dhaka at fourteen, than the prospect of flying, alone and pregnant and only sixteen, across the world in an aeroplane to a foreign country and her new husband. How much she had grown up in those two years.

Bora Khalo would never have consented to her going. Never. It was the first thing he had said to her after the
nikkah
: that Babru could only go to UK on his own, as a single man, otherwise the Rhodes would be lost, her dirty ways having almost ruined his career before it began.

She shivered and turned another page. Princes and princesses. Kings and queens. No different to anyone else: family troubles, wayward children, the difficult, bitter father-in-law. Look at Prince Charles, so lonely and awkward, just like Babru when she first met him. Long and skinny and shyer in the tailor's shop than a child on his first day of school, wordlessly handing Uncle a bundle of
sherwanis
and
kurtas
for alteration.

Standing at the other counter, shaking out a wedding sari for three anxious aunties, she had seen how his eyes were drawn to the flash and glitter of the embroidery as they fingered it. He had drifted toward her counter, coming to a standstill just behind the aunties with such an air of concentrated desire that the three women, until then arguing amongst themselves about the sari's merits, had moved as one to claim it as theirs.

She had pulled down a selection of the brighter saris from the high shelves behind her, putting them on the far edge of her counter for him to inspect. Then she was back in the whirlwind of bargaining with three determined aunties, and when she next looked up, he was gone.

But a week later he was there again, with his long fingers leaving damp marks on a shiny leather wallet. More saris were shaken out and stroked, and one was bought, for the first price Uncle named. Forced to reply to the tailor's cheery questions about the wellness of “your honored father, the judge,” he dropped his parcel twice as he was bowed out of the shop.