Women Dreaming E-Book

N/A Salma

• Herausgeber: Tilted Axis Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 344

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Mehar dreams of freedom and a life with her children. Asiya dreams of her daughter's happiness. Sajida dreams of becoming a doctor. Subaida dreams of the day when her family will become free of woes. Parveen dreams of a little independence, a little space for herself in the world. Mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, neighbours… In this tiny Muslim village in Tamil Nadu, the lives of these women are sustained by the faith they have in themselves, in each other, and the everyday compromises they make. Salma's storytelling – crystalline in its simplicity, patient in its unravelling – enters this interior world of women, held together by love, demarcated by religion, comforted by the courage in dreaming of better futures.

Leseprobe

Women Dreaming

Cast of Characters

Subaida, first married to Shahul, then after his passing, Dawood. They had a son, Hasan, and a daughter, Parveen.

Hasina, married to Iqbal. Their son Rahim was married to Parveen.

Asiyamma, mother to Meharunnissa (Mehar), and grandmother to Sajida (Saji) and Ashraf. Mehar was married to Hasan.

Sabiamma, a neighbour.

Sulaiamma, another neighbour, married to Hanifa Hazrat (cleric and village elder).

Amina, Subaida’s great-aunt, who was born blind, and never married.

Nafeesa, Parveen’s collaborator and family friend.

Jessima (Jessi), Sajida’s friend. Her mother was also Mehar’s childhood friend.

Khadija, Hasan’s second wife.

Habibullah (Habi), Mehar’s second husband.

Prologue

Parveen runs as though her head is falling apart. Seeing Amma, Hasan and a few others chase her, she runs even faster. The panic of being captured makes her run without paying heed. She runs bounding across walls, past open grounds, she runs and runs…

Waking suddenly out of this nightmare, Parveen was very relieved that no one had caught her. Drenched in sweat, lazy and reluctant to get out of bed, she started thinking about the nature of her dream, what she could recollect of it, the dregs of an earlier life that tormented her now in the form of fantasy. She hated it. She pinched herself to make sure that she had really got away – and that made her overjoyed – then she once again raided her memories.

Meanwhile, downstairs… ‘Her mother has come to visit Rahim’s wife,’ Hasina heard the violent disdain in Iqbal’s voice. Absorbing her husband’s words, Hasina gathered her loose hair, tied it up in a bun and slowly made her way out of her bedroom. Because she could not see anyone in the living room, she shouted, ‘Parveen, Parveen,’ her voice loud enough to display her authority as mother-in-law.

Parveen shouted back, ‘Maami, here I come,’ as she rushed down the stairs. Hasina saw Subaida trailing behind her daughter. Responding to Subaida’s muted salaam with a loud and prolonged ‘wa ‘alaykum al-salaam,’ Hasina sat down on the sofa.

When Subaida asks her how she is doing, her tone is reverential, its politeness exaggerated. Hasina’s cold response – ‘By the grace of Allah there is no dearth of wellness here’ – comes across as slightly menacing. Although Subaida is upset that Hasina hasn’t asked her to take a seat, she hesitantly stoops to perch on a corner of the sofa.

Parveen is annoyed and angered by her mother-in-law’s tone and manner, but she quickly pacifies herself, refusing to show any sign of being perturbed.

‘You took the stairs to be with your daughter without first paying your respects to me,’ Hasina remarked.

Subaida, registering the reason for Hasina’s displeasure, attempts to placate her: ‘You were sleeping, that’s why I went to talk with Parveen. It has been two weeks since I saw my daughter, you see, so I was very eager...’

This makes Parveen even angrier, to watch her mother plead and try to make peace in such a cringing act of deference.

Perhaps because Hasina had just woken from a nap, her face appeared to be bloated. She had not parted her jet-black hair, merely tied it up into a loose knot, not a hint of grey visible. Parveen compared her mother’s veiled head; most of Amma’s hair had gone white although both women were of the same age.

‘Here, I have brought some snacks,’ Subaida extended a bag that she had brought with her towards Hasina, who rejected it casually.

‘Why? Who is there to eat them here?’

Parveen ground her teeth in anger – this was all too much to take.

‘So, what happened to your promise of buying a car for us? This Eid or the next one?’

Parveen caught the sarcasm in Hasina’s sudden barb. She looked towards her mother to see how she would react.

Parveen could not forget that this was the same Hasina who on the day of Parveen’s marriage to her son had said, ‘She is not your daughter – from this day, she will be my daughter, she will ease my pain of not having given birth to a girl.’ She wondered if her mother, too, was ruminating on something similar that Hasina had told them in the past…

‘It has been three months since the nikah. When are you going to make good on your promise? Your daughter doesn’t understand the first thing about how to conduct herself. She appears to be unfit for any sort of domestic work, as if she was a college-educated girl. Even after I’ve got a daughter-in-law, I’m the one stuck in the kitchen.’

Subaida regretted having come here. Parveen was meanwhile chastised by Hasina: ‘Why are you standing here like a tree – go and fetch some tea for the both of us.’

Parveen moved towards the kitchen. She was curious to know what excuse her mother was going to provide for the demand of a car – but she also knew that she did not have the strength to listen to her spineless words. They must not have promised a car. Why should they have sought an alliance like this? What was wrong with her? Why did they arrange this wedding? She understood nothing.

She filtered the tea into a tumbler. She carefully stirred only half a spoon of sugar in her mother-in-law’s cup, knowing that she had to keep an eye on her sugar intake.

Though Parveen had eagerly awaited her mother’s arrival, her foremost instinct now was that Amma should leave here immediately. She had wanted to share as many things with her as possible, but now she decided not to confide in her at all. She only wanted her mother to return home peacefully.

With shaking hands, she extended the cup of tea towards her mother-in-law, then served Amma, looking at her intently for some clue.

Hasina, taking a sip and grimacing, remarked: ‘Hmm, it’s too sweet. Why have you poured so much sugar into this? There’s nothing you can do properly. In three months, you have not even learnt how much sugar to add in your mother-in-law’s tea. Go, add some milk to my cup and bring it back.’

Her harsh tone made Parveen feel crushed. She worked out that her mother’s response about the car must have displeased Hasina. She could see from her mother-in-law’s face how embittered and angry she felt.

The house wore a dreadful silence.

Parveen’s mother finished her tea and got up to leave. In that dreary living room, Amma stood forlorn, like a beggar, and Parveen felt again that she must leave immediately. She fought hard to prevent the words in her mouth that were waiting to burst forth, restraining herself with great measure. Quietly, she took her mother aside, ‘Why do you come here to be humiliated? Go home now.’

In the next few months, when Parveen had been branded an infertile woman and sent back to her parental home, she was actually relieved. When the village started to look at her with sympathy, she realized the full extent to which she was considered a failure. She realized that even worse than the shame of infertility was the shame attached to separation and divorce – society, after all, did not seek any explanations in its appraisal. She, too, sympathized with her situation. If she’d been educated and armed with a degree like her classmates Sabitha or Prabha, she would not have had to go and live in another man’s house as a slave and subsequently be kicked out after being labelled infertile because she could not provide her in-laws with a car.

She felt depressed when she realized there was a difference between leaving a marriage on your own terms and being sent back by your husband and his family. She waited for a day when this shame would not invade every fibre of her being.

—

Half-asleep, Meharunnissa looked at the clock. It was 11.30 p.m. and she was worried that her husband was not home yet. She wondered what he was doing so late into the night. The shop would have closed at nine. What was he doing afterwards? She went to the bathroom, then came back and lay down on the bed. She was still very tired. This was the third abortion. For the procedure, she and her mother had secretly visited the family doctor in town and to make sure that no one caught wind of it, she’d spent the next few days in her mother’s house. She could not tell her mother-in-law that she was bleeding and healing and unable to cook and clean in this post-operative state. Even when she’d spend a single day in bed, recovering from a cold or a virus of some kind, Subaida would throw dirty glances at her. She did not like to see her daughter-in-law idling away. Wracked with all this guilt, Mehar could only eat very little. How could she afford the luxury of eating in bed having terminated a pregnancy without anyone’s knowledge?

If Subaida came to know about the abortion, she would scold her mercilessly. How could she know that her son disliked using condoms? Or was this even something that could be revealed to her? Mehar hadn’t confided in her own mother, after all.

When Mehar had first realized her menstrual cycle was delayed, and told Hasan, he’d said, ‘Let’s keep the child. It’s a sin to abort in Islam.’

She had wept bitterly. ‘I cannot manage. I already have these two. And you don’t even let me use birth control.’

‘Don’t you know that it is not permissible to use contraception in Islam? If you do so without my knowledge because your mother is putting ideas into your head, you will only receive a talaq from me.’ With that single threat, he’d silenced her.

The next day she had gone to her mother in tears. Her mother reached for every possible slur she could summon to curse Hasan for using her daughter’s unblemished body so pitilessly, but she kept her arrows to herself.

‘Who in this day and age does not use contraception? Do these laws apply only to him?’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘If you sleep with him again, I’m going to give you a beating.’

After Hasan’s admonishment over the first abortion, Mehar never again breathed a word to him if her periods were delayed.

First, she would simply ask her mother-in-law, ‘I’d like to go to my mother’s house for a week, may I go?’

Subaida never objected to it. ‘Why only for a week, go for ten days, even, and enjoy yourself. It’s only the next street – it’s not as if you have to take the trouble of going there by car.’ So she would wave the green flag. After that there would be no need for Mehar even to ask her husband – she would merely inform Hasan that she was going and she would leave.

The next day, in order to not rouse anyone’s suspicion, she would say to her husband and mother-in-law that little Sajida had a fever, and that she had to take her to the doctor. She would then leave for the procedure, her mother accompanying her.

Her mother’s lament would promptly begin in the car, and take at least ten days to subside.

—

The image of Shahul swinging from the noose came to her in a nightmare, and Subaida awoke startled and anxious. ‘Allah, why are you ruining my mind,’ she muttered and reclined against the wall. Her sari, which hung on the clothesline, fluttered under the ceiling fan.

She did not want to think about those memories, yet she could not avoid how they crept into the corners of her subconscious.

Before her marriage, she had heard the whispers and laughs, the comments about how effeminate Shahul’s gait was. But since the day she’d been born, her marriage to him had been fixed. When the time came, Subaida’s mother had her reservations: ‘Our son-in-law’s behaviour and mannerisms do not seem right…’ She was afraid to discuss the subject at length with her husband.

‘Why?’ he would say, ‘You don’t want to give your daughter in marriage to my sister’s son?’

Her mother remained silent. ‘Oh no, it’s nothing like that…’

‘We have only one daughter, and my sister has only one son. There’s a lot of property between the two of us. This will be a perfect fit.’ He would say this with so much pride that it would quell Subaida’s mother’s fears. Subaida was not yet at an age where she understood the mysteries of matrimony.

She was married when she was fourteen and went to live with Shahul and his mother – that is, her paternal aunt – who were very kind to her.

Shahul would bring Subaida something to eat every day. He would also buy her earrings, bangles and other little trinkets from the bazaar. She liked him a lot. Her mother who lived one street away would visit her daily. ‘Did anything special happen?’ her mother would ask her, and she would reply, bemused, ‘No, not really.’

One day, after her mother and her aunt had been whispering among themselves, her mother finally asked her, kulichiya, have you bathed? Subaida did not understand. She blinked and said, ‘Yes.’

‘No, not that bath, what an idiot!’

Subaida pondered deeply over the significance of this exchange. She intended to ask Shahul about bathing that evening, but fell asleep before he came home.

In the middle of the night, she was woken by a rustling noise. She had hung her sequinned sari on the clothesline as her mother had always advised her to. She’d intended to air it for an evening before folding it and putting it away in her cupboard for future use. Now she watched Shahul remove the delicate fabric and take it in his arms. Curious, she observed him take her blouse in his hands next, and enter into the nearby room. She could not contain her surprise. She was simultaneously dazed and confused. Subaida summoned up the courage to get out of bed. She took soft steps and stood outside the door of that room; it had been bolted from the inside, so she looked through the keyhole.

To her surprise, Shahul was wearing her sari and blouse. He was standing in front of a small mirror, looking at himself with immense warmth and affection! Subaida felt her head reel. Gripped by fear for her husband’s sanity, she quickly went back to bed and lay there with her eyes open. A little while later, she felt him enter the room and lie down next to her. He slept as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

The next morning, when she decided to observe him closely, he seemed to appear as normal…

Meanwhile, her mother and aunt had grown tired of asking her about the ‘bathing’. Presented with an opportunity when her aunt was not around, she asked her neighbour Kanisha about it.

Kanisha could not hold back her surprise. ‘Oh, you idiot! You are fourteen years old and you still don’t know!’

But she had not understood – despite the many, many times her aunt and her mother had brought up the subject. Now she wondered how Kanisha could have grasped the meaning of this mysterious word the very first time she mentioned it. She asked her with wide-eyed wonder: ‘What are you saying? Do you really know what kulichiya is?’

‘Why? Has your husband not said anything to you? Why do you ask me, instead of asking him?’

Kanisha said all this in jest, but when she heard a door open and the approaching footsteps of Subaida’s aunt, she scampered off.

‘Who is that? Is it that Kanisha? If one is not around, it’s enough for such people to invent stories. They’ll lose no time in ruining a family,’ saying so, Subaida’s aunt asked her to fetch a pitcher of water. Subaida wondered how much her mother-in-law had heard, and if perhaps she had rat ears.

Three days later, Shahul had hung himself. Subaida’s innocent question had been enough to cause the whole village to talk about him, leading to Shahul taking his own life.

When Subaida thought about how clueless she had been at that age, she was always overcome with disbelief.

Chapter 1

Sajida tried to remember the names she knew of the colourful flowers that were strewn along the road on the way back from school. Mullai, malli, December, kanakambaram, she hummed their names to herself as she sprinted home.

Thinking that perhaps she could cheer her mother a little by presenting her with some flowers, she scooped up the ones that were not muddied. She knew that the smallest things could make her mother happy. If Aththa got her a new sari, she would be happy for a week. It was even enough just to tell her that the food she made was very tasty. Of the tricks that her father had mastered in the art of fooling her mother, this was perhaps the simplest.

What could the time be? Could it be four o’clock? Sajida grew sad when she realized that Aththa would probably already be home. If he was at home, it was enough to only be a pair of ears. There would be no need for her eyes, her brain or her limbs to carry any sort of function on their own accord.

What is the need for a girl to watch TV, why not read the Quran?

Why is a girl sleeping in the morning instead of reciting the fajr prayers?

Why are you laughing? Should girls laugh as you do?

Why do you run?

Why do you play?

Why can’t you show some patience instead of all this anger?

Mehar, look at your daughter, teach your daughter to have some respect for her elders.

Teach her morals.

Teach her to pray.

These would be the only words that she would hear. How to escape from all of this? Seated on the toilet – a precious moment of respite and solitude – Sajida would search in vain for an answer. The only way out would be to get married. What her mother had to endure was even worse. She wondered if perhaps her mother had become used to all this after all these years.

Approaching the house now, she was shocked to see that the front door had been left wide open. Her mother usually remained behind locked doors all day long, since Aththa believed it was improper for unaccompanied women to be outside. Even if she made the mistake of glancing out at the street, her father would come to know of it somehow and come and shout at her.

Once, their neighbour Sabiamma encouraged her mother to venture out and visit the dargah with her. They could light some lamps, she said, then pray and stroll back home leisurely, enjoying the cool breeze on their faces. Her mother accompanied Sabiamma happily and came back home before Aththa returned – she assumed that the burqa she was wearing would have prevented anyone from identifying her.

But then, Sabiamma had told her husband Sadiq that Mehar had joined her on the visit to the dargah. He, letting out his long-suppressed bitterness, had informed Hasan straight away. Betraying the confidence of his wife and Mehar, Sadiq lectured Hasan just as Hasan had lectured him before: ‘When women of the village go to the dargah, you quote a thousand hadiths and censure them, asking them what a woman is doing in a man’s burial place – how are you going to justify your own wife going there today and lighting lamps?’

Sajida vividly remembers the scolding and beatings that her mother received that night. She had remained silent and motionless under her bed sheets as she heard her father reproach her mother. I’m trying to reform those who choose the wrong path and bring them towards ibaddat – and you are trying to ruin my reputation? That long terrifying night, punctuated by her mother’s desperate sobs, Sajida went to sleep plotting her escape from her father.

‘Hey Sajida, are you returning home from school only now?’ the voice of her neighbour Sabiamma broke her reverie. She nodded and stepped inside. Her exams were due to start the next day so she planned to revise long into the night.

As she walked into the living room, her mother ran towards her and held her in an embrace. She burst out crying, ‘Your father has dropped a rock on our heads.’ Without fully understanding the import of these words, Sajida wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and wept with her.

Chapter 2

The house was calmer than ever. Mehar sat in her room wondering if this was a good thing or a bad thing. A layer of cream was forming on the cup of tea that her mother had made for her. She was yet to reconcile with the shock. On the one hand, she was concerned about the future. On the other hand, there was a feeling of immense relief, of having escaped something dreadful. The sound of the call to prayer came from far away. Before, whenever she heard it, she would hastily pull the headscarf over herself. Now, for whatever reason, it annoyed her. She felt as if offering prayers was no longer necessary.

I’m a man. I can marry as many times as I want. The law lets me do that – the arrogance of Hasan’s words had lodged itself in her ears. From the next room, her mother’s protestations echoed against the walls. Sajida and Ashraf were asleep.

Mehar was delighted that Allah Himself had given her the opportunity to escape a miserable hell. If that were the case, she thought it essential to say her prayers of gratitude to Allah the Saviour.

In earlier times, the women of the village would only wear white headscarves. She, too, would wear a loose white cotton headscarf if she had to leave the house to attend someone’s marriage or someone’s wake. It was only after Hasan returned from Saudi Arabia that his dogma had become unbearable. From now onwards, wear the purdah – even your eyes should not be visible to the outside world. He had brought the purdah himself all the way from Makkah.

Before, at least some of the jewellery she wore or the sari that she had draped was visible. She felt happy to show these things to other women and listen to their compliments. After she started wearing the purdah, it became pointless to wear beautiful saris.

Every morning, upon waking, her husband would set out to write the hadith of the day on the community blackboards kept in every street. What he wrote was always some chastisement aimed at women, whether related to their conduct, their obligations to their husband and family, or their moral infirmities. At times it would irritate her greatly. Did people write such things in the olden days? Even her mother would note, ‘Your husband is so worried about the world’s moral code, does he mean to reform the entire village? Even the women in the neighbourhood are mocking him!’

In a way, Meharunnissa felt that she had attained her freedom. Now, she was not going to live in his house, under his rules. There was some comfort to be found in this.

Chapter 3

As she lay in bed, Mehar tried to reason whether her decision to leave him was solely because of his second marriage. Only her heart knew the truth. The day after she came to her mother’s home, she told her flatly: ‘I will not live with him again, we have to seek the khula.’

It did not appear as if her decision either shocked or upset her mother. As if she agreed with her daughter’s intention of asking for a divorce, she sat down calmly beside her. The two women sat in silence, an intermittent tubercular cough occasionally ringing out from within Mehar’s mother’s burqa.

Mehar knew the chain of thoughts that was running through her mother’s head: This sinning bastard, my innocent daughter… He married her when she was barely a child and as if it was not enough to leave her body wounded and savaged, he has the gall to marry a second time! May he perish in hell.

Asiyamma coughed loudly. ‘Was there a single day, my child, when you could step out of the house? All the time, it was prayer, ibaddat! He ruined my daughter, never showed her any of the world’s pleasures, kept her locked up, and now he has married another woman—’ her mother raged on and on, her words already starting to tire Mehar.

What was the use of crying over spilt milk? Why did her mother have to lament when she knew Mehar was herself unhappy with him? Was this not a blessing in disguise since now he could no longer lord over her? Would life not be peaceful now?

All the village women would wear lipstick on festive occasions, at a wedding or Eid celebrations. On the one occasion she wore it, her husband had called Mehar a prostitute a thousand times.

I am a member of the Tablighi Jamaat. From now on, you need not go to pay condolences for a death in anyone’s family, nor to the ritual observation on the third day. You must not deviate from the true path of the religion, you must stay at home and recite the fatiha.

Even Subaida would wonder where her son got all these rules and regulations from, for how could she not recite the fatiha on Wednesday or the twenty-seventh day of the month? She’d been doing so her entire life! She would complain endlessly.

When she was not allowed to make a donation to some cause or other, she sobbed and sobbed. ‘The whole village is feasting on kandhuri rice and curry but this man is not even letting us taste it!’ She prayed to God to bestow her son with some good sense.

While the women of the village wore light cotton or chiffon saris as a matter of pride, Hasan would buy thick polyester ones for the women in his household. These village women, they lack any propriety or morality and drape their saris so that their whole body is exposed. It would be better if they went about bare-assed instead.

Subaida would refuse to wear the polyester saris! ‘If my sari is thin, at least it will not be suffocating, it will rest easily and it will be breathable. In my old age, I cannot carry this heavy polyester. At this point in my life, who will stare at this old lady’s breasts! Tell your wife to wear them if you must!’

Mehar treasured her lightest saris. Her mother had selected them with great care, and since her thirteenth birthday, had amassed about fifty saris as part of her dowry. To guests who would visit, Asiya would proudly say: ‘I’m keeping some of the finest Indian saris for my daughter. Over two years, I have collected fifty saris. If I do not get her married now, in two more years, I will have a hundred!’ Mehar thought of her mother boasting about this fact in front of those who came for the fatiha a day before the wedding.

For a couple of years, Hasan behaved as a man ought to. But after his two-year stint in Saudi Arabia, he forbade Mehar to wear even a single one of her thin saris.

Mehar sighed. She reminded herself of all the reasons why she should divorce him. She consoled herself with the thought that God had shown her the way out of a trap that she could never have escaped otherwise. But just as her sister-in-law Parveen had been labelled a failure, so she, too, would inevitably become one in the eyes of the community.

Chapter 4

Hasan simply could not come to terms with what he was meant to do, once he realized that Mehar was not coming back.

What did it matter to a woman how a man lived? Islam did not consider it a sin for a man to marry four times, he thought to himself. Just thinking about Mehar filled him with aversion. She was an idiot who knew nothing. Since the day he had married her, his hatred towards her had multiplied. He was left with nothing except the feeling of living with a corpse. Perhaps things would improve with time, he’d thought, since she was only fifteen years old when he married her. But she proved to be utterly incompetent at anticipating his needs.

That morning, after the fajr prayers, Hanifa Hazrat had taken him aside. ‘Yesterday, your mother-in-law came to my home,’ he said, ‘She gave me notification of khula, your wife’s intention to divorce. I just wanted to inform you…’ The hesitation in his voice suggested that he was aware of the seriousness of the situation.

‘What arrogance! Fucking bitch!’ Hasan grumbled to himself, then quickly asked Allah’s forgiveness for swearing.

‘Well, what can be done now… For the first time, in the history of this community, something that has never come to pass before.’ His face revealed his worries.

‘I spoke to the jamaat too. Sadaq is your uncle, after all. He says that if we allow this to happen it will set a precedent for every other woman in the village. He’d like to avoid it, but what to do?’

Hasan’s blood boiled. He bit his tongue, furious.

Knowing that any attempt to talk to Hasan was like banging one’s head against a wall, Hanifa Hazrat spoke the bare minimum. Then, in a rush of urgency, he asked, ‘Why did you marry for the second time, brother? That was not right.’

‘I’ve only done what the religion permits,’ replied Hasan coldly. ‘The law allows me to marry four women. I have the boldness to do that and the means to support my wives. What is wrong with that?’

Hasan’s reply only frustrated Hanifa Hazrat further.

‘That was in the olden days. And more importantly, you must remember what the law says – that you must first obtain your first wife’s permission to marry; next, that you can marry another woman only if you can treat both wives equally and with no difference in your comportment. Will all this work out in our modern times? And did you ask Mehar’s permission to take a second wife? And, then, who is this new girl?’ His curiosity betrayed itself.

‘Permission!’ Hasan untied the lungi wrapped around his waist and retied it with exasperation. ‘Which woman will accept it, Hazrat? You are asking me to respect her and obtain her permission. I am earning a good salary. Islam allows for four wives. They are doing just that in the Arab countries. I’ve married under halal law. What do you have to say to that?’ He argued so loudly and vociferously that Hanifa felt a bit taken aback.

He conceded some ground. ‘Okay. That is your wish. Now I have received this petition. What are we supposed to do? She has asked for it – it’s not like I’m in favour of it. That is all.’

Hasan tied his kerchief on his head and left the mosque.

Hanifa could see that the arrogance in Hasan’s tone was missing from his stride.

Hasan did not understand what the fuss about his second marriage was. His mother Subaida had not uttered a single word to him the whole week. His daughter Sajida had left along with Mehar – she had refused even to speak with him on the phone. Then his sister Parveen was giving him the silent treatment. Out on the street, he heard the hawkers crying, ‘nungu, nungu,’ weaving along on their bicycles. Sajida loved eating nungu. Hasan wanted to buy some and send them to her grandmother’s place, but he quickly dropped that idea.

He missed the sweet cajoling voice of his daughter – but instead of blaming himself for the situation, he directed his anger towards Mehar. ‘Stupid, unlucky bitch, she has not even finished sixth standard and she has the cheek to divorce me. Has she even any idea where her next meal will come from?’

And then he thought how he had grossly underestimated her. She would cry for two days and then she would settle down to passively accept the situation – that had been his calculation.

Filled with such conflicting thoughts, he started making his way home. He greeted Razak, who half-heartedly returned his salaam, and Hasan could glean the hatred that lay underneath. Even the youngsters of Sheikh Dawood’s house seemed to regard him with contempt now. Hasan wondered if he was projecting his own anxieties.

By the time he reached home, he realized that he had lost both Mehar and Sajida and that he no longer had any control over their lives.

Chapter 5

Subaida felt her throat had dried up from all her weeping. She had not eaten since morning and, in any case, her daughter-in-law Mehar was not around to cook. The family’s honour, their name, reputation – everything had been burnt to the ground. What was the point of living! With her arms outstretched, she broke into open-mouthed lament, ‘I only gave birth to two children. What pleasure did I derive from this life, God, getting married to an old man as his second wife? Now both my children’s lives have been ruined, does this seem just?’

She was terrorized by the prospect of what the neighbours and relatives would say to Mehar initiating divorce proceedings – after all, when Parveen was sent home everyone had said uncharitable things.

Why did Hasan’s mind have to tread this path when he had a wife and children to think of – couldn’t he live with them for the sake of his family even if he did not like his wife? Now he would pay the price for all this sin – he would be ruined!

Subaida felt worn out. She thought back to the days of her marriage to the old Dawood bhai, after the passing of Shahul.

She remembered crying as a young girl, newly widowed, ‘You are marrying me to this old man as if there is no food in this house to feed me?’ Her mother, too, had wept and begged her, ‘No, my dear girl. A woman must live with her husband. How long can we support you? After us, who will be there to look after you? Everyone in this village knows that you are a virgin. But who else will come forward to be your second husband, you tell me?’

The price she paid for her first marriage was the life she lost through her second. But all her sadness and grief had been absolved by the birth of Parveen and Hasan. Her mother had been right; when Dawood died, she was happy to live her life with just her children. But it seemed as if God was not happy even with this arrangement.

‘Allah, you have dismantled my family and mauled this little sparrow’s nest.’

No one was at home now to hear her cries.

Chapter 6

Sulaiamma tentatively opened the door and peeked inside. The door had not been bolted. Softly, she said, ‘Asiya?’ then, ‘Mehar,’ a little louder, but nobody could be seen. Again, she shouted, ‘Hey, Asiya!’

From behind the clothesline at the end of the house, Asiya emerged. ‘What?’ she asked, a little sharply.

‘Nothing. I just came by – to see you all...’ Sulaiamma’s voice faltered.

Asiya was having none of it. ‘Okay, now you have seen us. You may leave.’

It did not appear as if anyone could speak to her. Sulaiamma quickly scrutinized the verandah to see if she could at least catch sight of Mehar passing by. Asiya chided her: ‘What are you looking for? She is asleep. No one need come by to meet my daughter or enquire about her sorrow. She is fine – please do not provoke things.’

With this, Asiya stalked off. Sulaiamma started back towards her own home. ‘What bloody arrogance. Damn widow, came to give her my good counsel – but…’ Of course, Sulaiamma thought, men make mistakes. It was for women to bear with them. Had Hasan done something no other man had done in the entire world? For that, Mehar would be ignoring the fate of her two children and asking for khula? She would ruin this whole village!

As she approached her house, she heard the voice of Hanifa Hazrat. ‘What happened? Did they say anything?’

‘No. They did not even let me enter the house,’ Sulaiamma’s face shrank with shame.

Knowing that his wife’s undertaking had failed, Hanifa Hazrat made his way towards the mosque. He reasoned to himself that whether or not Hasan agreed to the khula was immaterial. If the wife had decided, so be it; there was provision for that in the law. This was the way of the Lord.

The call to prayer that reverberated in the distance seemed to harden his resolve.

—

When Parveen returned from her in-laws’, Hasan was bolting around like a mad man.

‘I will bite his throat, that bastard,’ he swore at his brother-in-law. It was left to Parveen to pacify him, ‘Leave it bhai, he is a useless fellow…’

Gradually, Parveen became extremely irritated by the rules and regulations that she found she had to subscribe to in Hasan’s house. She was seized by anxiety: how would she and her mother spend the rest of their days living with a man who constantly preached the hadith and ibaddat? She longed to seal her ears with wax just so she didn’t have to listen to his ceaseless talk. Her childhood home had become at once a mosque and a prison. Advice, advice, unceasing advice to women… the steps one must follow to live a good life, to reach heaven – women were subject to all of it. Compared to Hasan’s home, Parveen felt that even her covetous husband’s house was a better place!

When had Hasan adopted this persona? She grew tired of thinking this through – had it all been a Saudi influence? When she received the polyester saris and the black burqas just like her mother and Mehar, perhaps she should have considered her future more seriously. She was afraid of developing a great hatred towards her brother and her religion because of his constant preaching. After all, she said her prayers five times a day and read the Quran; but the unyielding and antiquated rules her brother insisted upon were entirely unacceptable to her.

Here, Parveen. Allah will grant you great rewards in the afterlife. Forget what is going on in this one. It is nothing. Pray, observe your fasts, increase your ibaddat, do not watch TV, relinquish the vulgarities of life, search for the path to heaven: what do you say to this?

She thought of Mehar and felt great pity for her. How had she put up with him? She realized that his actions and utterances were mixed with the arrogance that comes from being a man. Resolute in her decision not to spend the rest of her life at his mercy she had told her mother, ‘I cannot bear to stay in this house any longer – I feel suffocated!’

Subaida looked at her daughter, a worried expression on her face. ‘Where will you go?’

‘I will stay with Nanni. She only lives on the next street.’

Subaida could not prevent her. She could not understand the extent to which life in the house was oppressive. When Parveen saw her mother was agitated, she brushed it aside as a sign of the older woman’s rigidity. Her great-aunt Amina had no children, so Parveen moved in with her.

Parveen felt unable to attend any village ceremonies or festivities. The women’s sympathetic looks made her life hell. She was offended. At least the home of her great-aunt felt like a refuge she could claim, and it lacked such tensions. Often, she would wonder how Mehar and Sajida would escape the tyranny of Hasan in the coming days. She thought of their parallel lives time and again.

—

‘What have you come to see? That my daughter’s life is broken, that she sits in a corner, that she is weeping?’ The shrill tone of Asiyamma’s words pierced Parveen and caused her to turn. Asiyamma was beating her own face and chest with her hands as she wept.

Parveen made her way towards Mehar and sat next to her.

Sajida and Ashraf, who woke on hearing their grandmother’s cries, hugged their mother and buried their faces in her lap, scrunching the fabric of her sari in their mouths.

‘Please do not cry, it is upsetting the children,’ Parveen said, though she was aware that her words would not bring consolation to anyone.