Haveli (9 page)

“Send word to me when you’ve come to your senses,” Sharma said. “I will be there within a day. So—now we will make a plan for Zabo.”

They talked then of how Zabo would get to Sharma just after the wedding, and again Shabanu felt a great burden had been lifted from her. When she was with Sharma she felt somehow hopeful, no matter how impossible the situation looked.

The day went too quickly, and it seemed no time at all before the
tonga
cart returned to take Shabanu and Mumtaz back to Okurabad. Shabanu kissed her relatives good-bye.

She fought unexpected tears when they asked how soon they could see her again. She would find a way to persuade Rahim to allow her and Mumtaz to come again within the next month, she thought. But first she must persuade him that they must come to Lahore.

I
n the weeks that followed Ibne’s dismissal, Rahim was quiet. He no longer mentioned the incident. Shabanu still couldn’t tell whether he believed the cook’s story—or perhaps he might be trying to protect her from the gossip that had spread through the compound and the village, and no doubt all the way to Lahore.

Shabanu knew what they said about her: that Mumtaz was Ibne’s child—or perhaps the product of some other liaison—definitely not Rahim’s. She’d heard this from Zenat. Poor Zenat came every afternoon after Mumtaz’s nap, dreading Shabanu’s questions, then trembling with fear when she returned to the house, where the women gathered to gossip.

They were beginning to say things about Zenat, too—that she arranged Shabanu’s assignations and protected her. It was suggested that the old woman put a sleeping draft into Rahim’s tea so Shabanu could slip away at night.

Finally Shabanu had had enough of the women and their gossip, enough of wondering what Rahim thought. When she had decided it was time, she spoke.

“Rahim,” she said one evening. “Zabo’s wedding is just a few months away.”

They were in his study. He looked up from his papers. She sat in a small chair opposite his large leather-topped desk, a smock for Mumtaz in her lap. The electric lights flickered. In the distance she heard the whistle and
whump
of a dozen diesel-powered tube well pumps. It was almost time for the electricity to be diverted from the house to electric pumps in other fields.

“I would like to shop with her in Lahore. Don’t you have to go there soon to meet Omar?” Leyla’s fiancé was due to return from America, where he had spent five years studying agriculture at a university. Shabanu knew Rahim was eager to see him.

Rahim said nothing for a moment, and she kept stitching, her fingers sure and strong with the steady rhythm of the needle.

“If you’d like, you may come with me,” he said, and she knew at once it hadn’t occurred to him that she might like to help Zabo prepare for the wedding, despite Zabo’s having neither mother nor sisters to help her arrange the most significant event of her life. Perhaps he had put Zabo’s marriage from his mind, so carefully was it hidden amidst the excitement of the
wedding preparations for Leyla and Omar.

Even the lowliest tenant farmer’s wife understood that Leyla and Omar’s marriage would secure the future of the tribe and their land for another sixty years, and the joy it inspired was no different than that which accompanied each such union over the centuries since the clan had settled in the Punjab.

The cruel pairing of Zabo and Ahmed would go unnoticed, although it was only three months away, following Leyla’s by just a few days. People could talk about the marriage of Omar and Leyla and pretend the other would not happen at all.

“Wonderful!” Shabanu said, and she dropped her stitching to her lap. “I’ve never been there before, and—”

“But I never knew you wanted to go!” said Rahim. He took off his glasses and set them on the desk before him. She had his full attention.

“I’ve dreamed of you and me eating oranges together on the roof of the
haveli
and watching the sunset.”

She knew well that over the years Rahim had begged his other wives to stay with him in his beloved
haveli
. But they all preferred their modern bungalows in the Cantonment. They hated the pungent smells in the streets outside the ancient courtyard walls—smells of frying bits of meat, cooking fires, and open sewers. He had failed to persuade them to leave their silent, air-conditioned parlors for the clatter of pony
carts, the screech of children playing on the roofs and in the lanes, the colors of clothes drying on swaying lines on the rooftops and balconies.

Rahim loved to share with Shabanu the memories the
haveli
held, of himself and his brothers in navy wool school uniforms leaping from the parapet of the flat tiled roof of the
haveli
to the roof of the next house and up to the next roof, flying kites every day after school; of learning to ride bicycles in the narrow lanes, wobbling among the goats, chickens, and small children; of stealing juicy
kinnu
oranges from the stall on the corner and hiding to eat them in the roof niches above the brightly tiled shrines of saints scattered throughout the neighborhood.

But he was never able to extricate his elder wives and their daughters from their tea parties and masseuses, their
darzis
and hairdressers.

He had never asked Shabanu to go with him. She suspected that since the other women in his life had hated the
haveli
and refused to go there, he thought she also would.

She thought, too, that Rahim would not take her out among Lahore’s sophisticated socialites. She wouldn’t fit in; she didn’t even speak Punjabi properly. Her own clothes were too rustic, and he wouldn’t want her to wear the things he’d bought for her to use only in his company. While her social unsuitability was a matter of pride to her, she didn’t want it to keep her from going to Lahore.

Shabanu had saved asking him to take her to the
haveli
for the right time.

“You’d make me the happiest woman alive if you’d let me go with you when the assembly is next in session. We could hire a tutor for Mumtaz and me—”

“Wait, wait!” he said, putting his hand in the air. “We’re talking about shopping with Zabo, not changing residences!” His brow was creased, and he chewed on the end of his spectacles. “Why do you want a tutor?”

“I want Mumtaz to grow up knowing how to read, and to learn a vocation. And
I
want to learn to read properly, and I want to study music. We can’t do that in just a few days’ time. But if we went with you for the assembly session …”

“Why do you need to know how to read?” he asked.

“I spent my childhood learning about the desert. I know things about Cholistan that you or anyone else would never guess were worth knowing. But that’s not my world now. If I can’t return to the world I know, then I want to learn about the world I’m in.”

He remained silent, and she thought carefully before speaking again. “Things have been difficult for Mumtaz and me since the incident with Ibne. You dismissed him because you were afraid he’d acted improperly. I know Amina laid a trap, but I was her target, not Ibne!”

Rahim did not answer, but he tightened his lips.
Shabanu knew he would not tolerate the women speaking against each other. She took a breath and went on.

“They’re saying terrible things about us: that Mumtaz is not your child, and that I’ve … misbehaved. I’m telling you this because you deliberately refuse to see things sometimes.”

“Why do you think they say such things?” he asked, his voice so quiet it chilled her.

“Because they feel superior,” she said. “You never acknowledge it, but it’s true. They look down on me.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“In part because I’m so much younger; in part because I come from desert people. But most important, because I’m uneducated. I don’t know how to read or to speak proper Punjabi, much less English!”

She felt her face grow warm, and lowered her eyes. English was spoken in the parlors of Lahore by the best-educated ladies. Even their Punjabi was punctuated liberally with English words. The fashionable ladies did it for effect. Most of them had never been—nor would they ever go—to England.

“Their families educated them,” Rahim said, leaning back in his chair and reaching again for his glasses. “It’s part of who they are.”

“If you think I
feel
inferior to them, you’re mistaken!” she said. “I don’t care what they think. I’m afraid for Mumtaz and me … if we should lose you. What will happen when you’re not here to look after us?”

“Both of you will be looked after,” he said curtly. “Soon a husband will be chosen for Mumtaz, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“
Who
will look after us?” He was startled by the anger in her voice. “I don’t question you, Rahim. You have been generous beyond even my father’s wildest hopes. But you are forty-two years older than me. When you are gone, Leyla and Omar will be in charge of all the clansmen. Amina and Leyla hate me. They tell the others things so they’ll hate me too.”

“What things?” he asked.

“They say I steal money from you. That’s why I don’t want you to give things to Mumtaz and me. They hate every moment of my happiness and every evidence of your generosity. Amina and Leyla will throw us out the second they have the power to do it. The wolves could eat us, and they’d be very happy.” She was afraid she’d gone too far, but he listened to her thoughtfully.

“I’ve always tried to be fair, Shabanu,” he said. “What I can’t leave you and Mumtaz in my will, I try to make up for with attention. I do love you beyond life itself, and want you to be happy and safe.”

“Then let me stay with you in Lahore. Let me try it for a year.”

Rahim stood and turned toward the window, gazing out at the garden, where the early summer’s dust had begun to settle like pale powder on the mango leaves and rosebushes. It was difficult for him
to hear about conflicts among the women. If he kept Shabanu and Mumtaz in a special, safe compartment in his mind, he did the same for the others.

“I thought you would want to be here with Zabo.”

“You know perfectly well that Zabo spends the season in Lahore!” He would try everything to dissuade her.

“I thought you enjoyed being here with the others away. If you want to spend the season in Lahore, it will be arranged.”

“Rahim,” Shabanu said, struggling to be patient. “It’s not the season I’m interested in. I want an education for Mumtaz and for myself.”

“I don’t want to be here without you,” he said, interrupting. She could barely see his face. The lights had grown dim as the electricity was diverted to the fields. The dimness helped her to ignore the petulance in his voice.

But her heart sang that he hadn’t taken more serious issue with her wanting to be in Lahore!

“Oh, I wouldn’t want you to be here without me! I’d only want to be in Lahore when you’re there. We’d stay in the women’s quarters and not bother you. That’s why we would want a tutor for Mumtaz, so she wouldn’t have to keep a regular school schedule. And we could return here with you at the end of each session of the assembly.”

“We’ll see,” he said, putting on his glasses again and sitting down behind the desk.

Her heart quivered with a mixture of triumph and despair. This was Rahim’s first concession on the subject of her leaving the farm. But she knew he was only giving in to her whim—without a shred of understanding that she desperately wanted a life beyond Okurabad.

A
s spring turned to summer in Okurabad the courtyard was disturbed with increasing frequency by the excitement of deliveries. One morning a dozen oxcarts clattered through the main gates on wooden wheels that raised showers of thick gray dust. While the large, gentle-eyed oxen drank water brought in brass buckets from the stable yard, tall men in gray turbans—the kind worn by Pathans in the North West Frontier, where furniture was made—unloaded rosewood tables, chairs, and chests that were carved delicately with Mogul patterns, inlaid with brass, and polished to a warm red finish.

From first light to near dark, the air vibrated with hammering, sawing, and clattering as workers swarmed over the new bungalow that Rahim had ordered to be built for Leyla and Omar at the opposite end of the courtyard from his own house. The wall at that end of the compound divided the ancestral
property into what was owned by Rahim and what belonged to his brother, Mahsood, who was Omar’s father.

It was said that when the two brothers were dead the two-hundred-year-old wall between the two properties would be demolished. For the first time since the tribe had settled the Punjab their ancestral lands would be joined. Every landowner and official in the district, every widow and beggar on the streets of the villages of the tribal lands would celebrate the marriage of Omar and Leyla.

In its own way, the marriage of Ahmed and Zabo was also of utmost importance and added to the general air of festivity. Although Nazir’s holdings were the least substantial of the three brothers, and despite his having settled in Mehrabpur at the opposite end of the clan’s territory, his lands adjoined those of Mahsood and Rahim. Indeed the union of Ahmed and Zabo would be less celebrated than the wedding of Omar and Leyla. It was one of those odd facts of life—a gentle-eyed girl marrying an idiot boy for the sake of reuniting all the ancestral lands for the first time in two centuries. That was all anyone was likely to think of it. And anyone with any sensitivity at all would never mention it to a member of Rahim’s family, much less to Zabo herself.

Teams of
darzis
came to Okurabad to outfit Leyla, bringing with them yard upon yard of shimmering silks in turquoise and purple and lime green, and pale
georgettes embroidered with sequins and semiprecious stones. The
darzis
took their places each morning on the veranda of Rahim’s house. The sun shone through the branches of the neem trees, dappling the clean white cloths upon which the
darzis
sat cross-legged, their small black sewing machines whirring before them. Servants in white turbans and
lungis
came with trays of steaming tea, pink and rich with buffalo milk.