Haveli (5 page)

Streaks of green appeared on the horizon, outlining the inky black trees around the courtyard wall as she brought the bucket back and lit the fire in the
stable yard pit. The darkness diffused slightly, and stripes of orange appeared beneath the green, and the stars dimmed, and the animals began to stir, and it seemed the day had begun to happen all in one instant.

Shabanu loved being close to the animal sounds in the morning, as if the horses moving about, the cocks crowing, the cows lowing with their udders full were all intent on letting her know the world was safe for another day.

By the time the water was heated, the light glinted watery and pale from the rim of the bucket, and steam rose as she carried back her bathwater. The rising sun shone purely, for the air was still free of the dust that would gather as activity increased about the farm.

Precious as her time grew as each day wore on, with mending and looking after Mumtaz and cleaning and storing the wheat and rice from the market and a thousand other household chores assigned her by Amina, Shabanu spent a long time in her bath.

Though water was plentiful here at Okurabad, Shabanu still prided herself on being able to bathe in very little. When she and her sister were small, her mother would pour a thin stream of water over each of their heads, soaping their hair, then rubbing the soapy water into their shoulders, backs, and bellies. By the time each girl was rinsed, only a single cup of water had been used.

The air felt cold and astringent as Shabanu pulled her
kameez
over her head and, loosening the string of her
shalwar
, stepped free of her clothing.

She loved the bare austerity of the servant women’s bath, with its swept-smooth dirt floor, whitewashed walls, thick, tallowy soap, and rough, wind-dried towels. The baths in Rahim’s house puzzled her—their pale pink tiles, perfumed soaps, and soft towels that refused to absorb water seemed frivolous and useless.

She stood on a small platform of thin wood slats beside the drain and scooped the hot water from her pail with a plastic cup. She shivered with pleasure as it ran over her scalp, through her hair, and then splashed cooler over her shoulders and down her spine.

The soap smelled clean and honest, and produced a slippery lather as she rubbed it over her shoulders and chest. She ran her hands over her full round breasts.

As she stood there in the bath, Shabanu thought of her many blessings, the things that brought her pleasure and made her life worthwhile: First, of course, was Mumtaz, who grew stronger and cleverer and more beautiful by the day; then there was Rahim, who treated her well and wanted enough for her to be happy that he allowed her these small freedoms, and who gave her beautiful gifts of jewelry and clothes; and there were the gifts themselves—she loved to wear them, but more important, they gave
her a sense of material well-being, as they might always be sold if she needed money; and the women she loved—Zabo, Sharma and Fatima, her mother and Phulan—for, though she saw them seldom, their strength, wisdom, and beauty were folded in and around the chambers of her heart, as if they had become an organic part of her.

That same morning she asked Mumtaz to stand before her to have her hair brushed. In the afternoon Shabanu took her to the bazaar at Multan and let her pick her favorite colors in cotton lawn so fragile and light the
darzi
clucked his tongue over it when he sat down to cut it into pieces for small
shalwar kameez
.

As the days began to lengthen, Rahim noticed the change in how the child looked. He stopped now and then to speak to Mumtaz in the courtyard, and she curtsied to him.

Still Mumtaz played by the canal and climbed thorn trees in her new
shalwar kameez
. Every afternoon when she came back for her nap, Shabanu undressed and bathed her and sat down to mend the rips in the knees and sleeves of the soft cotton garments as Mumtaz slept.

One afternoon Rahim returned from a hunt in the desert, the jeeps dripping blood from their floorboards. Mumtaz stood watching as the men unloaded the dead deer, their delicate hooves crossed and pointed toward the sky.

Her father saw her and went to the back curtain
of his big four-by-four, returning with something in his arms. Mumtaz stood her ground, unaware that the small, angular bundle was for her. He stooped before her, and the first thing she saw was a timid face with large, brave eyes shining brightly from it.

Rahim held out the fawn, and Mumtaz lifted her hand gently to touch the velvety place between those beautiful eyes. The fawn struggled, kicking out its legs, and Mumtaz withdrew her hand quickly. Rahim set it on its feet. Its legs were so slender that Mumtaz was afraid they’d break as the fawn bucked to get away from them. Its soft pink tongue licked out at its shiny black nose, and Rahim let it go.

“She’ll be back,” he said. “She’s looking for her mother, but she won’t find her. Go ask Zenat to warm some buffalo milk with sugar, and get out one of your old nursing bottles so you can feed her.”

From that day on, Mumtaz and the fawn were inseparable. The tiny hooves followed her,
tak-tak-tak
, across the courtyard and down to the canal. The child tied colored ribbons around the fawn’s neck, and the animal’s coat became thick and shiny from the rich buffalo milk. The
mali
fed her grain in the mornings when he tended the birds. Mumtaz was totally absorbed in her pet, and it lifted Shabanu’s spirits so that Rahim noticed a new warmth in her.

In the dead still afternoons the heat began to accumulate, and Shabanu and Mumtaz napped. The air shimmered up from the dirt in the white light outside
their door. The mosquito netting hung heavy and limp around them as they lay side by side, sleeping behind leaden eyelids. The air felt too hot to breathe, and the
charpoi
strings prickled their shoulder blades through the rough cotton sheet.

They had been napping for more than an hour on such an afternoon when a shrill scream pierced their heat-drugged sleep. Shabanu pushed aside the mosquito netting. At the doorway she paused to grab her
chadr
, and as she emerged into the shade of the tarpaulin that Zenat had stretched over the doorway, she saw two men scuffling, their feet raising clouds of dust from the parched earth. One of the men wore a smartly starched turban.

The screaming went on, and Shabanu saw a veiled figure slip away to the edge of the stable yard as other menservants came in their undershirts from doorways behind which they’d been asleep. Some wrapped limp turbans around their heads as they ran.

“I saw him in her room!” the voice shrieked, over and over. The voice was strange but familiar. Shabanu knew it was the voice of Leyla, though the veil and dust muffled the sound. The voice quavered, and its pitch seemed oddly higher, as if Leyla was trying to disguise herself.

“The mosquito nets were heaving! I was afraid he was trying to strangle her!” The voice trailed off, thin and ghostly.

Through the dust Shabanu saw the twinkle of
mirrors on Ibne’s vest. His proud white turban fell from his head in the scuffle and was trampled in the dirt.

He struggled silently with the other men, who grunted and wheezed as they fumbled to pin his arms to his sides and pull him to the ground. Ibne’s eyes slid wildly from side to side until they found Shabanu’s in the shaded doorway.

She thought of the times Ibne had brought Rahim’s gifts to her in the desert, he riding his shining white horse, and she sitting with her father astride a camel.

In all the years Shabanu had known Ibne, this was the first time their eyes had met. His held an urgent plea as the servants wrestled him to his knees. He didn’t make a sound as they dragged him away. When the dust cleared, the dark veiled figure had disappeared.

Zenat came to take Mumtaz in the early evening so Shabanu could dress for dinner, and Shabanu asked what she knew about the commotion in the stable yard. The old woman worried her long, widely spaced teeth with her tongue and kept her eyes lowered. She pulled at her stained white
chadr
.

“They said he was caught in your room,
Begum
,” she said.

“They!” Shabanu said. “Who are
they?
” The old woman kept her eyes on the floor.

“The women,
Begum
,” she said.

“Was it Leyla?”

“I don’t know,
Begum
,” Zenat muttered. She was rescued by Mumtaz, who came in with her dolls and Bundr tucked into the wicker pram. The fawn trotted behind her, raising and lowering her velvet head.

When they were gone, Shabanu sat in the corner of her room, where she could keep an unseen eye on the dusty haze in the stable yard. It turned golden as the sun sank over the walls. Flies darted in and out of the doorway, and someone walked Rahim’s stallion past on its way to the stable. Birds twittered in the trees.

Amina and Leyla had trapped Ibne. Shabanu saw it as clearly as if she were watching the plot of a movie unfold. Amina had arranged the incident to cast suspicion on Shabanu.

Amina set the tone for the other women’s attitude toward Shabanu. She enlisted the servants, her daughters, and the other wives to wage war against this unwanted member of the household. If Amina was the general, Leyla was her field commander.

Amina and Leyla said she manipulated Rahim. They believed he protected her while she seduced him into misappropriating property and possessions that rightfully would be theirs when he died. They would be shocked to know what Shabanu really wanted was to be gone from them, away from this place, rid of everything that would remind her of it, and alone, when Rahim was gone.

Shabanu stood and crossed to the rough wooden cupboard, where she moved stacks of bright-colored tunics and saris until she found a silver shot-silk
kameez
and a tight-fitting
churidar
pajama in the same silver, striped with black. She flicked the tiny silver bells embroidered into the pattern on the bodice, and her heart lifted with their delicate rings.

She wouldn’t let them cast their shadow over her life. She would show Rahim exactly what had happened. She would shine a light so bright over herself and Mumtaz that there would be no darkness in the world.

R
ahim questioned Shabanu about Ibne that night almost as if he didn’t want to know, so anxious was he that she not be hurt by the accusations he’d heard. She told him the simple truth, and he nodded while he listened.

“He never entered your room?” he asked when she had finished. “Could you have been too sound asleep to know?”

“Ibne would never come into my room alone, even if he knocked first. Not even if I asked him to! It was a lie planned to make you distrust me.”

“Ibne said the cook sent him with a message. And the cook said he sent no message. The cook has been with me for twenty-five years.”

“And so has Ibne,” said Shabanu. “And his father before him.”

Rahim rubbed his chin with his forefinger and tightened his lips over his teeth.

“You don’t think he’d risk everything—his job, his
dignity, your respect—by trying to hurt me? It doesn’t make sense.” She spoke calmly, keeping all urgency from her voice.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Shabanu. Never underestimate a man with desire in his heart.”

She threw up her hands and let out her breath in an exasperated puff. Forgive me, Ibne, she thought. I can’t let him think I’m trying to convince him. He must decide on the truth in his own heart.

“Will you let your most trusted servant go because of a foolish screaming woman?”

“Leyla is not—”

“Ha!” Shabanu said, and folded her arms. “So it was Leyla!” He stiffened at the coldness in her voice. “And you believe her?”

“I know you think Leyla and her mother have tried to hurt you, but they’re good women, Shabanu. You’re too sensitive about your background …”

“I’m proud of my background! I wouldn’t trade my family or growing up in the desert for a
crore
of rupees!” she said. But she allowed him to soothe her and tell her how honorable her father was.

Shabanu spent the night with Rahim, and although she was very tired, she took special care to please him, giving him jasmine tea and rubbing scented oil into his skin until he fell asleep.

The next morning she was up early. In the low-lying haze she and Mumtaz walked beside the canal, the fawn following behind, ducking her head and
throwing out her feet in delicate kicks. A bell jangled from the red braided collar around the animal’s neck, and Mumtaz stopped for a moment and watched her speculatively.

“Uma, why is she so small?” she asked. “Her ears get bigger, and she eats a lot. I want her to grow as big as Guluband so I can ride her!”

“Guluband was a camel,” said Shabanu. She thought of herself at Mumtaz’s age riding the majestic Guluband among the dunes, his feet lifting in rhythm to her songs. Shabanu turned to look at the fawn, and both she and Mumtaz watched as the animal gazed back at them with her long, graceful ears pitched forward.

Mumtaz is right, Shabanu thought. The fawn had not grown at all in the month since she’d come to Okurabad. Perhaps losing her mother at such a young age had shocked her, or her confinement within the courtyard had stunted her growth.

“This little one will never be big enough for you to ride,” said Shabanu. “Shall we name her Choti, and she’ll always be your little one?”

Mumtaz nodded solemnly and took her mother’s hand. They walked on without speaking.

A little farther on they met Tahira, Rahim’s third wife, a slim woman with fair skin and a deprecating air. Tahira had deep-set eyes and a gentle sense of humor. When Shabanu had first come to Okurabad, the women would summon her to tea each afternoon.
They would assemble formally in the parlor and catch up on the household gossip. They’d watched her carefully, and after she’d left them they’d talk about her, inventing things they claimed she’d said to them.

In those days Shabanu had wanted to befriend Tahira. But Tahira would have no part of her. If Shabanu spoke to her, she would look at the floor and pretend not to hear. Never in her life had Shabanu felt so alone.