And the World Changed (16 page)

Tahira Naqvi

Tahira Naqvi (1945– ) grew up in Lahore and was educated at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Karachi, Lahore College, and Government College, Karachi. In 1972, she moved to the United States with her husband and earned her masters at Western Connecticut State University. She taught English for twenty years, then Urdu at Columbia University and now New York University. She is known for her English
translations of the works of Ismat Chughtai, including
Tehri Lakeer
(
The Crooked Line
) (Women Unlimited, 1995; The Feminist Press, 2006) and
Ajeeb Aadmi
(
A Very Strange Man
) (Women Unlimited, 2007). She has also translated Urdu stories by the Pakistani woman writer Khadija Mastur, which were published in
Cool, Sweet Water
(Oxford University Press, 1999). Naqvi is currently working on another Mastur collection. Naqvi has just finished her own English-language novel set in Pakistan, as are many of the stories in her two collections,
Attar of Roses and Other Stories of Pakistan
(Lynn Reinner, 1997) and
Dying in a Strange Country
(TSAR, 2001).

“A Fair Exchange” evolved from a true story that Naqvi heard in the 1970s, “of a woman who made a
mannat
[a religious vow that entails self sacrifice] like this and then fulfilled it, forcing her husband to marry the maidservant.” However, Naqvi's story developed its own trajectory. She says, “I don't like seeing female characters give in without a fight, and sometimes I want them to openly rebel. Hence the change in plot, the twist at the end. The story encompasses so many of the ideas inherent in our society.” Naqvi brings out the great social importance that is attached to marriage and provides a fascinating insight into a woman's sexuality and her inability to confront her suppressed desires, which would be considered shocking, disruptive, and self indulgent by the community. Naqvi explores the crisis and confusion that lead Mariam to offer her maidservant Jeena to her husband, and then change her mind. Mariam's subsequent resolve to find Jeena a suitable husband of a higher social status instead and provide her with a generous trousseau reveals the widespread belief (reinforced by the
maulvi
in Naqvi's story) that for rich people to arrange and finance suitable marriages for poor girls is an act of great charity and piety.

Mariam's first dream introduces the traditional power of a mother-in-law and the powerlessness of the bride's mother (and thus the bride) in a marriage. Red, the traditional color of bridal attire, is also a symbol of fertility; gold and bangles are also marital symbols but in Mariam's dreams they merge with images of a black trunk (a coffin) and graying hair.

In mentioning the border town of Sialkot, Naqvi brings to the fore a strategic place where Pakistani troops amassed during the two major wars that India and Pakistan fought against each other in 1965 and 1971. Naqvi provides a precise date for her
story with the reference to the famous singer Noor Jehan and her patriotic songs, extolling the country's heroic soldiers that were broadcast in 1965.

• • •

Mariam was beset by ominous dreams.

In one she wore a red, heavily embroidered suit and moved among a throng of women. Some of them, dressed in glittering finery, were relatives, others wore faces that seemed familiar but remained nameless. Mariam spotted her husband's mother, dead for three years now, her hawk-like eyes darting back and forth as if in eager search of prey, and crouching in a corner, not far from where her sister-in-law sat chewing betel leaf like a cow, she could see her own mother who, much as she did in real life, had tried to make herself unobtrusive in the shadows.

In another dream that followed on the heels of the first, someone came up from behind and threw a
dupatta
over Mariam's head while she was going through clothes in a large, black trunk that did not appear to belong to her, and which seemed to contain newly stitched clothing—everything neatly folded, the gold embroidery on the garments shining like a trail of glitter on a bride's hair. She couldn't determine the identity of the person who had surprised her from behind, nor could she make out the exact shade of the
dupatta
even though she could see it clearly in the dream.

The most disturbing of all her dreams was the one in which she saw herself as a bride. Looking resplendent in a dark red
gharara
suit that could easily have come out of the unidentified black trunk in her other dream, she heard the jangling of shimmering gold and glass bangles on her wrists and saw garlands of crimson roses and pale-white
chameli
buds adorning her long plait. The worst of it was that her hair appeared in the same state as it was now, streaked lightly with gray, dry and thin, not at all as it had been ten years ago when she was a new bride.

Mariam knew better than to be fooled by these dreams. Aware that they were not what they seemed, she had little doubt in her mind that they spelled some dreadful misfortune about to befall her. When she awoke from seeing herself as a bride and remembered the details of the wedding scene, she shivered with fear. Quickly she recited the
Ayat-ul-Kursi
, the verse most apt for warding off evil and misfortune. As she came to the end of her recitation her eyes fell on the emptiness of the bed next to hers. In the half-darkness of the room the white bedsheet took on a ghostly aspect and Mariam felt a tremor rack her lean frame once again. The bed had been empty since her husband left for the front six months before. The war with India had escalated. Every day fatalities were reported on the radio, every day young women were waking up to find themselves widows. Turning away from the bed that had suddenly presented itself to her as an apparition, Mariam again murmured the words of the
Ayat-ul-Kursi
under her breath.

Was her husband's life in danger?

A few minutes later she rose and, walking over to the children's beds, bent down to peer closely at the faces of her son and daughter. Now that her husband was not at home she had brought their beds into her own room. The children had slept in their parents' bedroom till Razia was six. That was when Mariam's husband insisted that she and her brother be moved to the small room adjoining theirs. Mariam was uncomfortable with this arrangement. To her husband she expressed concern about the children waking up in the middle of the night, scared. In her heart she knew their presence in the bedroom was to her advantage since it made it difficult for her husband to come to her bed whenever he wished.

Her husband did not know of her reticence. Not once had she made a display of her real feelings when he silently came to her in the stillness of the night, touched her, stroked her breasts, placed his weight upon her. Her eyes shut tightly, she would take her mind elsewhere, to the kitchen, to the children's room,
in a place where she would be standing alone under a clear, star-studded heaven. Bound by ties of devotion to her husband, she conceded him every privilege; she submitted to his nightly embraces, never allowing him to guess how something inside her grew cold at his touch, never allowing her love and devotion to be affected by these feelings, which were only natural for a woman, she was sure.

The children's presence had helped the subterfuge. However, her protests went unheeded and the children stayed in their own room. Now they were in her room again.

Holding her breath, Mariam listened intently to the sound of their breathing. Then, certain that they had not come to any harm, she adjusted their blankets and moved toward the door of her room. Once or twice in the past her husband had awakened to the sound of her bed creaking and, having followed her to the children's room, had caught her with her ear to the children's faces. Alarmed the first time that had happened, he came over hastily and was annoyed to discover that Mariam was just checking to see “if they are alive.” Shaking her, he had propelled her back to their bedroom, mumbling that she allowed morbid reflections to rule her life.

Slowly Mariam made her way out of the room and, crossing the entire length of the silent courtyard, approached the water pots against the west wall of the room that had belonged to her mother-in-law when she was alive. The June night was warm and muggy.

There was no breeze, no rustling of leaves. The sky was the color of a faded blue
dupatta
that has seen innumerable washings, and stars glimmered sharply as though cut out of silver tinsel. Mariam picked up the wooden ladle from the mouth of the earthen waterpot, dipped it in, and swished it about a few times before drawing out the water.

Where was her husband now? she wondered idly as she raised the ladle to her mouth and drank. All she knew was that he was on the Sialkot border, very close to enemy guns. Was
he inside a trench, or tending to wounds in a makeshift hospital unit? Did he find time to say all five prayers, or even one? As a rule he never missed a prayer. When he was at his clinic, besieged with patients, and the time for
namaz
came around he excused himself if the problem wasn't life-threatening, and if he couldn't get away he said all the missed prayers together, later. But this was war. He probably didn't even have time for the missed prayers.

She splashed the remainder of the water over her face, the cooling moisture dripping onto her shirtfront, and looked up at the sky again. A shooting star, like the tail end of a small firecracker, streaked across the sky and disappeared as if never there. My God, what do you want of me? Mariam whispered, her gaze held upward still. She desperately sought an answer.

There wasn't any doubt in her mind that her prayers were not adequate. Something else was required of her. A sacrifice perhaps, but not just an ordinary one, for she had already had a goat slaughtered last week to counteract the first bad dream that had plagued her. And she had also made up for the six days of fasting she had missed during the month of Ramazan on account of her periods. The hundred rupees and the three suits she gave away to her sweeper for her daughter's wedding didn't have the desired effect, either. The dreams continued unabated. God wanted something more from her in exchange for her husband's life. But what?

Back in her room she picked up her prayer beads and began to recite the
Surah-al-Hamd
. Carefully and with precision she let a bead slip from her fingers with every recitation, her eyes closed as she got into bed and leaned against the pillows. “I begin in the name of Allah who is most merciful and beneficent/Praise be to Allah. . . .” Wide awake with the first noisy chirping of birds, Mariam sat up in bed and tried to remember if there had been another dream. At first nothing presented itself to her. The morning light seemed to have dissipated whatever feelings of

gloom nighttime fantasy had filled her with. Then, as she struggled to get out of bed, her newest dream spilled out in its entirety. Like water gushing out from a shattered earthen pot.

She was a bride again. But this time her mother-in-law was asking for the ring on her right hand. This was the ring Mariam's husband had given her on their wedding night. Mariam gripped her head with both hands. Gifts from the deceased are welcome, indeed they are good omens. But a solicitation from one who dwells in the beyond augurs the most dreadful of possibilities. The woman, bless her soul, was asking for her son! No doubt she was lonely without him. In life she had begrudged Mariam her time with him, and surely in death she was tormented by envy as well.

Had she given the ring? A cloud of fuzziness enveloped that part of the dream. She remembered fingering it, thinking, This is too precious to give away. May God forgive her! What was she to do? She rose from her bed, washed, and said her prayers as usual. But again and again her mind drifted to the dream and she couldn't concentrate on the words of the
namaz
. Afterward she sat back on the prayer mat and, pushing everything out of her mind, shutting her eyes tightly, she said:
Allah, what must I do to ensure the safety of my husband? Ask me for anything, I will give without hesitation.
Having asked the question, she waited, straining with all the intensity she could muster, her body trembling as if it were a reed in the wind. “Mariam
Apa
, we're out of tea, could you give me some from the storeroom?” Jeena stuck her head through the bamboo jalousie on the door.

Jeena was the young woman who helped with the housework, did some cooking, washed everyone's clothes, and scrubbed pots and pans after every meal. An orphan from Mariam's mother's village, she was a girl of ten when she had first come to live in their house as a young ayah for Mariam's newborn daughter. Now she was twenty. Since Mariam and her husband were all the family she had, it was up to them to find her a suitable husband and be responsible for the expenses incurred at her wedding.