Haveli (26 page)

The village was as dusty as if there had been no rain. It was a poor village. Many mud-brick buildings stood empty and unused, their walls crumbling and roofs caving. Men stood silently in doorways and watched them pass. The shutters were drawn across the entrances of the shops in the bazaar. Even the flies were still.

Shabanu wondered whether the village was in mourning for Ahmed. For she was sure now that Ahmed was dead. She was certain Nazir had arranged a hunting accident. Perhaps he had even shot Ahmed himself—Ahmed, who would have been too excited about the hunt ever to have suspected.

She thought it likely that Zabo was all right. That would explain why Nazir had given Ahmed whiskey on the wedding night, so the marriage would not be consummated, and why he had whisked Ahmed and Zabo away the very next day. He had intended to grab Ahmed’s land from the start. And Nazir wanted to be sure there was no heir to challenge his holding of the land.

The car slowed to turn into the lane that led to the broad wooden gates of the thick mud wall surrounding Nazir’s house and garden.

The bodyguards stood at attention, two at either side of the gate, their red turbans starched and pleated, khaki
shalwar kameez
pressed and creased, sandals shined, and rifles across their chests.

Ibne opened his window and spoke rapidly in Punjabi. Two of them opened the thick wooden gate, while the other two stood with their guns ready.

Ibne drove the car slowly into the courtyard. Shabanu sensed instantly that something was wrong. The courtyard was empty and quiet. Usually servants and farm workers crossed back and forth, just as they did at Okurabad. Normally goats and chickens mingled with the wild birds in the courtyard. But even the hoopoes had fled from under the saal trees in the garden. And the light was hard and sharp, despite the gray sky, outlining everything in dark edges.

Both Rahim and Omar sensed the danger. They got out of the car slowly, and Rahim walked around to where Omar stood facing the front door. Shabanu sat immobile with fear, feeling as if her spine were attached to the seat of the station wagon.

In the second before the shooting began, a glint from the balcony over the portico caught Shabanu’s eye. There stood Nazir, watching, one pudgy hand with a diamond ring on his little finger rubbing the silk that stretched over his broad paunch.

The first shot came from inside the house. Rahim threw himself in front of Omar, and several bullets that would have killed his nephew ripped across his back and shoulders. Rahim fell forward, completely immobile and limp. Omar tried to drag him back into the car.

“Leave him!” shouted Ibne, who had ducked down behind the door he’d held open for Rahim. “He’s dead.”

“We can’t leave him,” said Omar, who was still clasped in his dead uncle’s arms. Omar was not hurt.

“He’s dead. Get in! Get in!” Ibne screamed at Omar.

Dark stains of blood appeared around the two holes at the center of Rahim’s back. One of his shoulders had been partially torn away, and Shabanu stared at the fragments of bone and white ribbons of ligament that protruded from where just seconds before Rahim’s skin lay whole under his shirt.

There was only a second’s pause in the shooting. The guards, who seemed to have been unaware that an ambush was to take place, stood frozen beside the gate.

Still Omar dragged at Rahim’s body, though bullets whistled in the air and pinged through the metal of the car. In desperation Ibne lunged through the car and over the backseat to help pull the body inside. Shabanu, who had been motionless with shock, barely managed to get out of the way.

It began to rain, and the moment seemed strangely protracted. Shabanu remembered later that she had looked up to see Nazir still standing on the balcony rubbing his belly, his ring winking in the sun.

“Get down!” Ibne shouted, and they crouched as he whirled the car and aimed it at the gate, which the lately stung-into-action guards were just pulling closed.

As the car made its turn, knocking over flowerpots and small trees in the landscaped courtyard in front of the house, a man with a bandolier across his chest darted out of the house, yanked open the rear door where Shabanu sat, and pulled her from the car.

“Stop!” Omar shouted, but Ibne paused only briefly. His eye caught Shabanu’s and it said I’m so sorry, and he kept going, smashing through the closing gate and splintering it. She understood that Ibne was doing his duty to protect Omar, his new master, as Rahim would have wished.

She struggled like a newly captured bird, striking with her fists at the man who held her by the wrist, and kicking at his legs. He hoisted her up in one arm, and she turned her face toward him, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. The man screamed with pain. He drew back his other arm, and his fist crashed into the side of her head.

When she awoke, Zabo was dabbing her face with a damp cloth. Shabanu was confused. Her body ached. Had she dreamed it all?

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Shh,” said Zabo.

“No talking, please!” said a voice from behind Zabo.

Shabanu looked past her friend. A kerosene lamp was lit on the table. Beyond it she saw the dark muzzles of the bodyguards’ guns.

Funny, she thought, how contemptuous of them we were in Lahore.

Zabo stayed with her. Shabanu’s clothes were torn, and Zabo unfolded one of her own
shalwar kameez
for her to wear. They were silent, not wanting to agitate the guards. A servant brought dinner on trays. They ate without speaking. Shabanu barely touched the oily spiced stew.

“You must eat. Just a little,” said Zabo. There was urgency in her voice.

Shabanu did manage to swallow a few bites of vegetables and bread. She thought that both she and Zabo would need their strength if they were to escape. Zabo’s eyes never left her face.

The guards put aside their guns and ate noisily, crouching in the doorway.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Zabo whispered quietly enough that the guards could not hear her over their slurping and sucking at chicken bones. “I’m sorry it happened like this.”

“What happened?” Shabanu asked.

“Ahmed was killed in a hunting accident,” she
whispered.

“And what will happen now?”

“You should get some rest,” Zabo said.

Shabanu lay back against a hard pillow. She tried to focus on what Rahim’s death meant: that Omar was now the leader of Rahim’s people, and that he must now avenge Rahim’s death. A bloodbath, she thought. Would Omar also then try to rescue her and Zabo? If he did, she would return to Okurabad, and she would be under Amina’s control.

No, thought Shabanu, that is not what Rahim’s death means. It means I must never return to Okurabad. If Omar does rescue us, we must somehow get away.

It means that Zabo and I must now go to Sharma. Her heart was buoyed by the thought of being with Sharma and Fatima and Zabo and Mumtaz. But she knew it would be difficult.

Nazir had what he wanted—the land. Perhaps he would let them get away. Why would he take the trouble to find two women in the desert? She felt he would leave them alone after a while, as Sharma’s husband had done when she had run away.

She fell asleep, and when she awoke it was as if no time had passed. The two bodyguards remained at attention on either side of the door. Zabo sat beside her, watching her face, and the kerosene lamp glowed in the room’s stillness.

Then there was a loud crash at the door that sent
Shabanu’s heart hurtling into her mouth. Filling the doorway was Nazir, his bulky frame swaying. The mingled odors of stale cigarettes, cologne, and alcohol floated into the room before him.

He came to the side of the bed and pushed Zabo aside. He sat down and took Shabanu’s hand and belched.

“My brother is dead,” he said. “It is my duty now to protect you.”

Shabanu shrank back against the hard pillow and tried to pull away her hand. Nazir seemed not to notice, and went on holding it between his two fat hands. He shifted his weight, swaying the
charpoi
. The stink of him made her stomach churn.

“You murdered your brother,” she said, her voice a low, dangerous growl. “I would rather die than let you protect me.”

Zabo sucked in air through her teeth, and Shabanu too prepared for a blow from his huge fist.

But Nazir stood slowly and bent forward. From the floor beside the washbasin that Zabo had used to bathe Shabanu, he picked up a large, shiny brown cockroach. He held it before his face between his forefinger and thumb and studied it carefully.

“You will learn to accept me,” he said. He smiled, and his teeth were brown and ragged. Perspiration stood out on his forehead and lip and chin. “It is the duty of a good man to marry his brother’s widow.”

“Marry you!” said Shabanu. “Ha! The thought of
you makes me sick. I would die first.”

Nazir smiled again and turned his head slightly away from the roach, which struggled between his fingers, its sticklike legs moving frantically.

“You will marry me,” he said. “Or your sister, Phulan, and her puny husband—eh?” And with that he squashed the bug between his fingers, and the yellow liquid contents of its body splattered over Shabanu and Zabo.

Shabanu leaned her head over the side of the
charpoi
and retched into the basin on the floor. Nazir threw back his enormous head and laughed loudly.

S
habanu and Zabo marked the passing of the next two days only by the delivery of meals. The shutters at the windows were closed. On the second day a loud banging shook the room. Shadows of movement flickered around the lit edges of the window as someone nailed boards over the outside. The thin lines of light disappeared inch by inch until the room was dark.

A cold stillness began to grow inside Shabanu’s chest until it made breathing painful.

Is this what despair feels like? she wondered. No, there is no room for that kind of thinking, she scolded herself, and she lit the lantern.

Still they were not allowed to talk. An old
ayah
brought them a bucket of water to wash with in the mornings. In the evenings she came to empty another bucket that had been brought to them to use as a toilet. The guards refused to leave the room when the two young women wanted to wash or use the toilet.

“We are under orders,” they said. And Shabanu and Zabo hung their
chadrs
from nails across one corner of the room for privacy.

At midday the room was still dark, but it had grown hot and stuffy and filled with the smell of their toilet and the greasy food that was brought to them from Nazir’s kitchen. It made them ill.

A desert chill crept into the air at night, and there were no blankets. They huddled together for warmth, but neither could sleep until the room warmed in the morning.

If only I could see the stars, Shabanu thought at night. But then she disallowed those thoughts, too. “Soon enough,” she whispered softly to herself. “Soon enough.”

She spent some time thinking about how good Rahim had been to her. She remembered how kind he’d been when Mumtaz was born. He never said, “You must have a son,” which is what many men would have said after the birth of a daughter.

When she failed to conceive again, his only concern was for her health. He was so kind she had felt a little guilty that she had chosen not to conceive. But only a little guilty.

He was a good and gentle man, she thought. If his greatest fault was in sacrificing all for his family and their land, it also was his great strength. It was difficult to realize she’d never see him again.

She thought about Mumtaz, and how happy she
was among the camels and the dunes. She thought of her own childhood, and her daughter’s freedom consoled her.

And she thought about Omar, about how she had tried and failed to banish him from her heart. She wondered whether he would just stay there, and if he did, would the impossibility of loving him fill her with longing the rest of her life?

These thoughts drifted through her mind in a haze, as if they were part of a dream. Then suddenly the reality of what had happened would pounce on her.

She saw the stain from the roach on her tunic, and the picture of Rahim’s blood and his shattered shoulder became fixed in her mind until she could see nothing else.

Then she caught a whiff of Nazir’s lingering stench, and the thought of her waiting night after night, terrified that he’d come to her bed, drunk and smelling of the fat of meat, made her retch.

When these realities took hold of her mind, Shabanu began to fight.

There is no time to mourn Rahim now, she thought to herself. There is no time to worry about Nazir. You must think clearly, calculate accurately, plan how you and Zabo can escape! And it worked. A fine plan took shape in her mind. It calmed her.

For each step of the plan, she thought of an alternative plan. It became a fascinating game, memorizing
details and then replaying them in order; it was like following a maze inside her head.

On the third day, just after their breakfast of greasy fried bread arrived with lukewarm tea, a loud explosion rocked the room that had become their world.

The guards threw open the door and looked outside. Gunfire was raining down, and explosions rocked the house every half minute. The guards stayed outside in the hallway for a few minutes, arguing about whether they should leave Shabanu and Zabo unwatched to join the fight.

In that moment Shabanu closed her eyes and whispered a small prayer: Please, Allah, guide my hands and feet that this plan might bring both of us to safety. And—please protect Omar.

“He’ll have our heads if we leave them,” said one guard.

“You fool,” said the other. “We can lock them in. He’ll have our heads if we don’t fight!”

They closed the door and locked it from the outside. Shabanu waited for the clatter of their running footsteps to recede down the hallway. She went to the door and bent to look through the keyhole. No light came through. It was almost too good to believe!

Another explosion hit so close to the room that plaster dust rained down on them.

Shabanu took from the breakfast tray a stiffly starched napkin and pushed it flat under the door.
Then she put her cheek against the floor, with her eye close to the crack at the bottom, and worked a teaspoon under the door to position the napkin under the keyhole on the other side.