Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel (17 page)

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Authors: Samina Ali

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Nafiza didn’t say anything.
I quickly asked, “What happened to make you lose touch?”
Zeba turned to me with a look of surprise. “Partition, Beti! No one knew where anyone went. Some said your
nana
took the family to Pakistan. Others said the
haveli
had been attacked and your family was …
nauz-ibiil’lah,”
she said, shaking her head. “I heard they’d all been killed. It was Allah’s hidden work that we rented here, so close to your family. If your Taqi Mamu and my husband hadn’t bumped into each other, we would never have heard about you.”
“Kismet,” I said, recalling the Qur’anic reading about my marriage. Better, it had forecast. Better for me to get married. This was already better than the life I’d once known.
“Enough about the past,” Zeba said, adjusting the pillows behind her. “History was my favorite subject in school, so you must be careful of me. Tell me, Beti, what is your
amme’
s life like now in the States?”
What was there to tell? Zeba may not have owned her house, but at least she owned her husband. “She does what you do. She cooks and cleans.” I didn’t say that rather than pray, Amme watched Hindi movies.
“
She
cooks and cleans. You mean a servant …”
“We have no servants there.”
“No servants! Your mother cooks!”
“Yes, she cooks.”
And there was that smile again, the small tug at the corners of her lips, curving them like the upward slants of her eyes.
“Hai
Allah, she has gone to America only to find a life like mine. What would your
nana
think of that? You know, he never let her near the kitchen.”
Nafiza suddenly looked up, the sari-
pallow
draped over her head doing nothing to soften her face. Zeba had us all covering. “We cook with wood in the jungle. So much smoke. He no want he child to get
dhum,”
asthma.
“Dhum! Chalu,
Nafiza, the man was proud. Remember what happened when the village mutt mated with his
alshishan
? He brought out his rifle and killed it.” She grunted, loosening the veil around her face and using the edge to wipe the sweat on her brow. “What good did it do? Rosy still had seven puppies by him. Your
nana
buried them alive,” she said, turning to me. “I can still hear Rosy howling in grief, chained to the …”
“I’ve never seen Miryalgurda,” I blurted.
“No need to see it,” Nafiza said. “All gone, you
nana
’s land. Nothing left to see. Even his
haveli
burn down—
they
burn it down.” She turned back to the beans, cursing the invaders under her breath.
“Your
amme
never liked it there, Beti. She was always scared. The
haveli
was big and dark. They didn’t have electricity out there, only lanterns. And all night, your
nani
would scream in pain. Toward the end, she began hallucinating, seeing
shai’tans,
even talking to them. Most nights, your
amme
would sleep at my house, in my bed.” Her hands finally went still. “And now she’s sent her daughter to my house,” she said, looking at me with a tenderness I was not used to seeing on a mother’s face, the same she’d shown me the morning after the wedding, when she’d called me her virtuous daughter. “Sameer tells me you don’t know how to read the Qur‘an,” she said. “Don’t look so surprised, Beti. Your husband did not tell me to betray you, but because he did not want me to … embarrass you again by asking you to read with me. A child not knowing the Qur’an is not her fault, but the mother’s, so you should not feel ashamed. It is a mother’s duty to teach Islam. The man’s domain is outside, and the woman rules the house. Without the balance, children would be lost.” Even as I was wondering if she was chastising Amme, she said, “I will not neglect my duty to teach you. You will find solace in the words of Allah, Beti. And the long hours before your husband returns will pass much quicker.”
Even if I wanted, I couldn’t recite the Qur’an or pray with her, not with the bleeding. But how could I tell her this?
Nafiza said, “The child no clean. She begin menses.”
Zeba took in my damp hair, her wide cheeks squeezing into a
solemn face. She continued to believe Sameer and I were having sex, so expected me to come out for breakfast only after my cleansing bath. I had been showering every morning since my arrival. Now she said, “In this house, there is prayer, not sin, Allah, not
shai-tan.
My son should know better than to come to you when you are bleeding. Sickness comes from such acts, sickness and disease. I shall talk to him tonight, and if he cannot vow to control himself, then you, Beti, shall sleep by my side.”
 
 
MY HUSBAND SLEPT with his father all week, the two sharing the
takat
in the main room. It was narrower than our bed, so father and son slept inches apart from one another, much closer than Sameer and I had ever lain.
Zeba stayed with me in the bedroom, our bodies enclosed by the thick mosquito netting, the bird’s face turned away from us. She snored in her sleep, loudly, often catching her breath and startling awake, and as the nights wore on, I began to turn heavily in bed, pounding my legs against the mattress, to wake her. In the brief lull, I would try desperately to fall asleep. But, in truth, it was less her snoring than my own thoughts keeping me awake.
Over that week, I began to realize that it was those very nights of sleeping beside my husband, though we did not touch—because we did not touch—that were drawing me to him. His weight next to me, his steady breathing, his withdrawal. Not as complete as Dad’s had been, but enough to make me yearn for him to beckon.
Now he was even farther away, barely visible through the bed’s heavy netting, the darkness of the house, the diminishing moon. New moon. He had come to me on the new moon, sliding in through the back screen door, sliding into my bed, into me. Lying next to Sameer’s mother, I found myself thinking about my lover, his touch becoming my husband’s, and when I finally fell asleep, even the faceless demon who continued to visit me in dreams took on my husband’s pretty form. In the heart of every night, we made love.
If Zeba could only see her daughter’s dreams, she would know the
shai-tan
was already in her house.
 
 
FRIDAY AGAIN. THE first call to prayer.
In the next room, Zeba was leaning over Sameer, shaking him awake. He groaned his protest and she pinched his ear, pulling him out of bed.
“You use your leg as an excuse not to pray anymore,” she said. “But, for one day, you can bear the pain—as I bear the pain each moment of your lack of faith. Now get up!”
He protested again, but soon enough, was standing beside her, offering up dawn prayers along with the rest of his family. That complete, she told him to perform two more, one
shuk’rana,
thanking Allah for our successful union, and one in repentance for coming to me while I was bleeding.
I was not asked to join them, being impure, and while the family prayed, I bathed, planning to tell Zeba it was my cleansing bath for menses, and my husband should be allowed back into our room.
When I came out, Sameer was standing by the foot of the bed, his trunk of clothes open before him. His cotton pajamas were so sheer that the light shining in the window bared the shape of his legs, the thickness of his thighs. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, his broad chest clean of hair and scars. He was not one to take a blade to himself, aroused by religion. When he saw me wrapped in a towel, he straightened, his tongue swiping his upper lip, his eyes falling down my body, taking me in as even Nate had not been able to in the darkness. If I was seeing my husband’s naked form for the first time, he was also seeing mine.
He stepped backward and closed the door. On his head, a white prayer cap embroidered with the same design as the pillows Zeba rested against. Those dark eyes took on a look God should never see. He came toward me and, without a word, pulled me against him, sucking the dampness from the hollow of my collarbone.
I closed my eyes. It was not enough anymore to be touched only in dreams.
“Why did you tell your mother you would make love to me during my menses? Why did you lie? Is it to keep yourself away?”
“Lie? I did not lie. I want nothing more than to be able to make love to you.”
The bedroom door opened and she stepped inside, a black ghost against the white walls. He did not notice, his back to her, his hands pushing inside the towel. I tried to stop him, but he grabbed my arms and twisted them behind me, the towel falling away.
“Stop it now!” I cried.
He drew back, the look of bewilderment folding into anger. He said, “So, in the end, I’m not the man you want.”
“Sameer!” It was his mother.
He spun around and I tightened the towel about me. The two stared at each other awhile, before Zeba lowered her gaze, as though she was the one ashamed.
She said, “Just minutes before, Beta, you bowed your head to Allah. And now, you are succumbing to
shai-tan.
It’s as if you have two men inside you.”
Sameer drew in a long breath, his back and shoulders widening. He said, “I do not believe in your scriptures. All these limitations you have put on me.” He lunged forward and picked up his boots, shaking them at her. “Look at what you have done to your son!”
She shut her eyes.
“I do not believe!” he yelled, yanking off his prayer cap. He crumpled it and threw it at her feet.
She raised her chin, her lips curled into themselves, trembling.
He grabbed a T-shirt and tucked it under his arm along with the boots as he walked out. A few seconds later, we heard the sound of his motorcycle blazing down the street.
Zeba did not stir and I went and picked up the cap, smoothing it over a palm. She grabbed my hand, the embroidery’s thread scratching at my skin.
“If he is like this here, what will he become when you take him to America?”
 
 
THE MUSLIM NEIGHBORS wanted to meet the new bride.
There were three other Muslim families on the brock, one directly across the street, and two down the road, though in which of the squat houses, I couldn’t be sure.
Only the women came, all veiled in lengthy
duppattas
like Zeba’s, faces clean of makeup. It was another blazing day, and before Feroz and Ibrahim left for
juma
prayers at the mosque (then on to work and school), they dragged seven chairs out from the
divan
and set them in a circle in the courtyard. I sat in the shade of a lean ashoka tree, some of its pointy, long leaves turned yellow and brittle, scattered about the ground. Zeba sat beside me, more animated among the women than I had ever seen her, though whenever a motorcycle or scooter passed, her eyes flitted to the gates as quickly as mine. Both of us awaited Sameer’s return. Above,
koyals
called to each other.
Nafiza set out chai and biscuits, fresh fruit, then sat on the steps of the house. I wished I were alone inside.
The woman from across the street picked up a cup of tea and scraped the bottom against the saucer. She was glancing down, a coy smile teasing her lips. “My son’s match has been tied,” she announced, suddenly gazing up at me and assessing this other bride. Her eyelids were as dark as Amme’s. I turned away. “He’s getting married at the end of Zil’hij.”
One neighbor had brought along her two adolescent daughters, and the girls glanced at each other and bowed their heads, shyly anticipating their own marriages. Their veils were attractively draped about their fair faces, thick braids pulled out of the fabric, sliding down past their breasts, knotted with matching bows. A flamboyant and daring gesture, meant to catch the eye of men. How different Henna and I had been.
“
Mubarak, mubarak,
Zehra!” the three friends cried, congratulating her.
Then the plump one with the daughters pouted and said, “
Ar’re,
I didn’t even know you were looking. Why did you keep it a secret, huh, telling me you were going to wait until he finished college?”
Zehra did not answer, and neither girl looked disheartened, as though having pined for the son.
Zeba said, “The end of
Zil’hij
? That’s right before Muhar‘ram,” the month of mourning. “Zehra, have you thought about how you will have to keep the two sleeping apart for the month?” She glanced at the gate and said, “Your son may become … cross with you. He will be a new groom, after all. Perhaps it would be better for all if you waited until after Muhar’ram.”
Zehra kept her eyes on me. “They have the rest of their lives to have fun. Best to marry them as soon as the match is tied. Nowadays, these arrangements break so easily.
Ar’re,
it’s not like when we were young. Then, your parents found someone, you got married, and everyone learned to live together. Now …” her lips curled up into a sneer, her head shaking.

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