“What’s the matter?” I snapped. “Why do you look so unhappy? I am pregnant and my husband is a rich man who looks after me well and will take care of my child!”
“Stop pretending,” Nupur retorted.
“Do you think I don’t love you, just because I haven’t come to see you?” Now I was trying to keep from crying, but I could not. I threw myself into my mother’s arms and wept uncontrollably. I was so ashamed. Baba and Ma had made
sacrifices to send me to school and university and they had always encouraged me. And here I was, my brain turning idle. I had no life of my own. I remembered the many times I heard Baba and Ma say with pride, “She will become a brilliant scientist. She will take care of us when we are old.” Just like a son would. I couldn’t stop weeping, looking at Baba, his proud and dignified face. I remembered how he’d sold our land in Bikrampur for a song rather than ask for a penny from his relatives. How he had always remained true to his beliefs, never straying from his true self. Now he and Ma lived on his pension. It was a modest life, but I had a father who would never acknowledge even the most difficult hardship.
“I wasn’t educated like you. I did not have your opportunities.” Ma said. She was stroking my hair as she had when I was little. “But my darling, I don’t understand why you stay at home so much.”
“I’m pregnant, Mama.” She let me go and smiled sadly.
“Pregnancy is no excuse,” she said gently.
We were sitting in the elegant front parlor, and though my family was polite, I could tell they weren’t impressed, even though our house in Wari was almost shabby in comparison. In Wari, when I was a child, we had a rich next door neighbor, and, once when I saw him leave in his great big car, I commented to Baba that he must be a very important man. Baba immediately corrected me. “Not important, just rich.” I, of course, envied the clothes the rich man’s daughters wore and said so, but Baba did not soften. “Who says expensive clothes make one pretty? Your distinction lies within yourself. You will have wisdom and someday you will
have learning. Beauty will come when you become beautiful in your attitude and behavior.”
Another time when I was thirteen, I came home crying because some boys had pulled at my dress, and Baba took me aside and said, “Don’t think that just because you’re a girl, you’re a lesser being. Walk with your head high, keep your backbone straight, and stand up for yourself.”
With all his urging, Nupur and I had become spirited young women. But what had happened? Now we were both incarcerated in marriages, and Baba, in spite of his progressive ideas, had encouraged me to marry Haroon. I supposed that he could be forgiven for underestimating the barbarity of marriage—he never treated Ma badly. I had grown up knowing that a woman took her husband’s name in marriage, but I did not imagine that my independence of spirit would disappear as well. Sebati was not Doctor Sebati at the clinic, but Mrs. Anwar. My obstetrician had no idea I had a degree in physics, though she knew very well that I was the wife of Haroon Ur Rashid, that my husband had an office in Motijheel, and she was well informed about the business he ran. As for the woman called Jhumur, she didn’t know her at all!
Amma summoned us to dinner and Haroon himself served the rice. At the table, instead of being amused when Amma encouraged me to eat more, I was embarrassed. When Amma declared to my mother that she and Abba loved me like a daughter, Ma smiled, but I could see she was just playing along. Haroon glanced at me from time to time to see if I was suitably impressed by the delicious korma his mother had cooked, but I felt awkward. My in-laws were
putting themselves out to honor my family, but I was sure they weren’t planning to invite them back any time soon. How I longed for the kitchen in Wari and my mother’s simple cooking—rice with
kajali
fish and dried red chillies.
It was decided that the family car and driver would take my family home. Leaning against the door, as I watched Ma and Baba and Nupur leave, my thoughts drifted again to the days when Baba had insisted I stand on my own two feet, when he declared money was not the key to a good life. In spite of having grown up in such an enlightened atmosphere, I now seemed helpless in the face of old superstitions and attitudes about women. Baba had told me to marry Haroon or stop seeing him, but he certainly hadn’t expected that I would turn into the bloated pregnant
bou
who now disappeared into darkness as she waved goodbye.
After they left, Haroon gave me an accounting of how much the dinner had cost—the shops where he’d bought the fish and meat, the most excellent fish and meat that could be found anywhere. I was stunned to be reminded how much money meant to him. I recalled that when we first discussed marriage, it was Haroon who wanted to know how much money my family would ask that he pay. I remember he had been shocked when I said, “Not a penny!” Haroon had been stunned. “But the woman’s family always gets money!”
“But we aren’t marrying for money, are we?” I was laughing. “We’re marrying because we love each other. Think about it. Do you think I’d ask for a refund if our relationship broke down?” Needless to say, Haroon was very happy when I said these things. He took my hand and rubbed it against his cheek.
“You’re different from other girls—that’s why I love you so much!” He was practically in tears, moved I now realize, because he didn’t have to dole out any money. “I want you for myself,” he kept repeating. “Just for myself.”
“We are two different people, my darling.” I’d corrected him then. “Each with an independent mind. I am not your property, any more than you are mine.”
Memory of those days, when my back was firm and straight and my mind as free as the air, brightened my spirits like fragments of light from a full moon.
17
H
aroon had me admitted to a birth clinic in the Gulshan district, and not in Dhanmundi. “The care is better there,” he said. He took unlimited leave from the office and stayed at my bedside. It started to seem as if he himself was about to give birth. He kept busy making me eat, sit, walk, and sleep. He bought linens for the bassinet, bottles for feeding, and summoned specialists and nurses to my bedside. Relatives paraded through my room and Aunt Sahedi lectured me on how to cope with labor. Amma tied a good luck charm around my arm and wrote out a prayer for me to recite. She looked terribly anxious—but the amulet and prayer were not for my health, but for the well-being of Haroon’s child.
Like my husband and his family, I became enchanted by the promise of this child; all I could think of was a baby lying on my belly, the smell of it, the softness of its skin. I would no longer need to beg for love, I would have my child.
Haroon was always agitated when the doctor came in the evening. “Are mother and child all right?” he would ask over and over. “Is everything OK? Will she need a caesarean?”
The doctor confronted this buffoonery deadpan, not knowing what to say. Haroon would follow him to the door, and stop chattering only when the doctor, fed up, turned and scolded him. “How many times must I repeat that everything is fine?” Nevertheless Haroon ran for him at my slightest sigh. This compulsive attention made me furious. “Why are you so anxious?” I felt like asking. “This isn’t your child I’m carrying. You destroyed what was yours with your own hands—now you are showering your love on a creature who has no relation to you, in whose conception you played no part!”
I did require a caesarean. I gave birth to a male child at three o’clock in the morning, after an excruciating labor. Haroon was ecstatic. He all but tore the infant from the nurse’s arms and then held him wrapped in an embroidered
kantha
close to his chest. It gave me pleasure to see this, but sleep pulled at me, and dreams, reminding me I had forgotten nothing. Not the scooping out in bits and pieces of the fetus, not the pain afterward, not my sorrow. Nor had I forgotten how I had implored my supposedly devoted husband not to destroy what was ours, or how he had turned his eyes toward me, cold and expressionless as marble. “The child is yours!” I’d shouted over and over. I can still hear the sound of the sharp metal instruments invading my womb, though it’s not the doctor I see, but Haroon. He is wet with sweat, bleary-eyed, wearing a garish, toothy smile as he pokes with grim determination at the walls of my uterus. I ask him
to stop. I tell him I am in pain, but he carries on. He’s not only yanking at the fetus, but at my uterus and vagina. Sharp contraptions dig into my belly and slice through my face, my eyes, and my brain. I can’t prevent it. My head throbs with excruciating pain and I cry out for tranquilizers.
When I wake up, I find myself in a new room on a bed with fresh sheets. Haroon is sitting on another bed holding the newborn. Amma, Dolon, Ranu, and the aunts surround him. “He has Haroon’s nose and forehead!” Aunt Sahedi exclaims.
“Not only that,” Amma adds, “but also his arms and legs!”
“But what about his lips?” Dolon asks, and Ranu quickly answers.
“Haroon’s lips were plucked from his face and set right here!” Somaiya is so thrilled to have a baby cousin, she can hardly keep still. She wants to touch him, but her mother won’t let her. Amma claims the baby will, of course, have legs as long as his father’s, and Haroon lifts the quilt to take a look.
My eyes are now wide open. Haroon brings my son to me, his face beaming with fatherly pride. He holds him close to my face, and I catch a flash of a miniature Afzal in the child’s expression. I’d blocked Afzal’s face from my mind, but the baby’s face brings him back. I want to take the infant in my arms, but Haroon tells me that I should be careful. I have to sit up, wash my hands with warm water and soap, place a fresh
kantha
on my lap. I’ve never held a child so small and I’m afraid he will slip through my fingers. The baby
cries, draws his lips into a thin line, reminding me of Afzal’s mouth ready for a kiss! Haroon presses close to me, staring at the baby with captive eyes.
“Everybody says he looks like me!”
“You wanted that, didn’t you?”
“Of course he looks like me! He’s my flesh and blood.”
I smile ironically, which Haroon takes to mean I’m asserting the baby looks like me as well.
“His ears are like yours,” he concedes, but he’s not willing to give me any more credit.
Already there’s a gold chain around the baby’s neck. Now, Haroon insists I breast-feed and I take the baby into my arms, pull away my nightgown and feed him as Haroon and everyone else watches. The room is crowded with the family and with doctors and nurses, and Habib is passing a plate of pastry and sweets.
In the evening, Haroon’s friends visit, laden with gifts, toys, baby soaps, creams, and shampoos. Some bring a gold ring or chain, but my mother brings tiny linen vests—she is too poor to buy gold, which, I can tell, disappoints Haroon. Of course he is not content with just sweets either. He’s promised a
biryani
feast to celebrate my return from the hospital—I’m here a few extra days to recover from the caesarean and still in some pain, but Haroon himself nurses and bathes me, changes the baby’s diapers, applies ointment to my wound, takes care of everything. I sleep through the night, but Haroon can’t close his eyes, even for a second. I had wanted Nupur to come stay with me, but Haroon
wouldn’t hear of it. He’s the father, he says, and welcomes the work that accompanies this joyous occasion. Looking at his tired, sleepless yet smiling eyes, I wonder why it is I don’t feel guilty at my deception.
When we come home from the hospital, the house is decked with flowers to welcome the newborn, and one by one, relatives arrive to take a look. They bring more gifts and the house is filled with singing and dancing. In spite of myself, I revel in the attention. I’m no longer the veiled daughter-in-law who hovers quietly passing the tea tray. I am the mother of the precious scion of the family. In my absence the house has been adorned to a degree that no daughter’s birth would have inspired. To welcome this boy child, a buffalo is slaughtered to feed the relatives, the neighbors, everyone we know. Haroon names his son Mahboob, and of course bestows him with his family surname, Ur Rashid. I am Jhumur Zeenat Sultana, but my son is not called Mahboob Ur Sultana.
“Let me give him his pet name,” I insist.
“And what will that be?”
“Ananda,”
“Okay then,” Haroon laughs. “Ananda it will be!” I laugh, too, and Haroon kisses me on the lips. “You’ve done me proud,” he says.
“How?”
“By giving me the gift of a son.”
I pity Haroon. I watch Sebati and Anwar moving around the room, helping to look after the guests. Wiping perspiration from her brow, Sebati comes toward me. “I’m jealous!” she says. I look at her and am about to reassure her
that someday she will have a child when she surprises me. “I didn’t realize Haroon loved you so much!”
“He loves his son, not me.”
“Can’t be,” she insists. “He wouldn’t be so mad for the child if he didn’t care for you.” We talk about all kinds of things, and finally about Afzal. “He’s gone away to Australia,” she announces. Before I can think, I give a deep sigh. Sebati doesn’t notice. “He left a painting behind,” she says. I give a slight start. I wonder which one? The nude with long hair like mine, or the girl from South India?
“It’s the one with a girl standing, her back to us, facing a long flight of stairs,” she says, as though I had uttered my question aloud. “I asked Afzal who she was, and he said ‘No one.’”
“How do I look?” Sebati asks me. She is wearing a dark green sari of sheer figured muslin and has placed a green dot on her forehead.
“You look lovely, but you always do.” She leans toward me and pinches my cheek. “Not as good looking as you, my dear. It’s not for nothing Haroon is crazy about you!” I push her hand away and smile.
“I’m a mother now. I have no time for Haroon’s antics.” And then I take the baby in my arms and begin to breast-feed him as Sebati watches, her eyes wide with envy.