Marrying Ameera (10 page)

On the way to Zeba’s school I thought about Haider. Perhaps he had a point: if we were caught together Aunt Bibi would call off the wedding. Then I could go home. I didn’t trust everyone’s praise for Shaukat. How often had Jamila or Meena seen him? He may not be my idea of a good man. I would have to be careful dealing with Haider though. He was like a faulty power line: you never knew when it could burst into flame.

Zeba’s chatter broke into my thoughts; she was using a lot more English words now. ‘Ameera, my friend is Tariqah. She has an aunty in Australia. She sent Tariqah a toy possum.’

My gut churned at the name. Tariqah would mean the same as Tariq: the morning star. I’d looked it up on the internet after the party. Tariq was my morning star, and I’d imagined waking up every morning and seeing his smile. Would that ever happen now?

At the school, girls in blue dresses, white shalwars and red jumpers rushed up to us as we entered the gate. Tariqah was one of them and Zeba introduced us. She
had a cute smile and a plait that she swung across her shoulder. Soon she put her arm around Zeba and took her off to play. The whole school was made up of tents, even the principal’s office. Surely they would have to close down soon because of the cold?

Jamila introduced me to the principal, Mrs Malik.

‘We are very happy to have a native speaker of English helping in the classes,’ Mrs Malik said formally.

‘I am happy to help.’

She was busy; she kept glancing at her desk. A boy hovered nearby, ready to run an errand. A handbell rang and Jamila took me to Zeba’s class tent.

‘Why don’t they rebuild?’ I asked.

‘It takes time. The government offices are first to be rebuilt. The schools are not the highest priority.’

‘They should be.’

Jamila gave me her first genuine smile. ‘I agree.’

All the girls stood as we entered. Jamila introduced me in Urdu and then in English. ‘This is Miss Ameera. She is an English teacher from Australia.’ I raised my eyebrows but didn’t correct her. The girls chorused a ‘Good morning’ and then stared at me. Jamila smiled and left.

‘Please sit down. Who can tell me what page you are up to?’ I was determined to speak in English since it was an English class.

No one answered, not even Zeba, but at least they all sat down on the cheap blankets. The only furniture in the tent was the teacher’s small table and chair—more evidence of the devastation of the earthquake.

I picked up a book from the desk. ‘Which lesson?’

A girl at the back stood. ‘Please, Miss, we study page twenty.’

‘Good. Open your books to page twenty.’

A few girls understood and then the rest followed them. The older ones helped the younger ones. Even though this was Grade 4, there was a wide range of ages. It was a world away from what I remembered of primary school at home. The girls listened to everything I said, and were polite. I was careful to speak slowly, remembering Asher’s warning about my fast speech. When I asked them to repeat sentences after me they did. I felt I’d travelled back a hundred years. As they leaned over their exercise books, writing the sentences, I counted them—fifty-seven. When they finished they formed a line so I could mark their work.

One of the older girls said in English, ‘You is very beautiful, Miss,’ and then blushed.

She was the only one who dared to speak to me directly and I didn’t have the heart to correct her grammar. I told the girls to read from the textbook while they waited in line, and so I became a teacher.

At recess Jamila came to take me to the staff tent for a cup of tea. One of the office workers had made chai and was pouring cups for us all. Jamila introduced me to some teachers but I doubted I’d remember their names. Some of them hadn’t completed their teaching degrees but were learning on the job. It was either that or close the school, I was told. Another teacher had recently come from the Jesus and Mary Convent School in Murree, the school Benazir Bhutto had attended, and discussion soon centred on the latest news.

The woman on my right was called Nargis. She had a bruise under her eye, almost hidden by heavy make-up. ‘Are you married?’ she asked me.

‘No.’ I glanced over at Jamila who was watching me. I turned back to Nargis. ‘And you?’

‘Yes.’ But it was barely a sigh. She touched the bruise on her face.

Jamila moved closer and gently laid her hand over Nargis’s. ‘Nargis has been married a year.’

Nargis smiled at her; it was a brave smile full of a meaning I wasn’t privy to. Before any more could be said, another teacher leaned over and introduced herself.

‘I am Asma, Zeba’s class teacher. She is telling me you come from Australia.’

‘Yes.’

‘I have family in Melbourne. We hope to visit at Eid next year. Could you take a parcel for me?’

I glanced at Jamila. ‘Of course.’ Then I suddenly thought of the phone. I didn’t care if Jamila heard. ‘Do you know how to send messages to Australia on a mobile phone?’ I asked.

She smiled. ‘You have to leave off the zero and put plus six one. Then you can ring mobiles and send messages.’

‘Thank you.’

The time at the school did stop me from dwelling on my own problems. Seeing the kids in tents in the cold and yet still willing to learn made me want to help. On the way home, I said as much to Jamila.

‘Yes, it fills your heart,’ she said.

I asked her about Nargis. ‘Is she in a difficult marriage? She didn’t look happy.’

Jamila glanced at me before she answered. ‘Nargis is the victim of a forced marriage.’

Before I could stop myself, I said, ‘That’s what’s happening to me.’

Jamila swung around on me. ‘You are not being forced. You are having a marriage arranged by a loving family. Nargis was sold into slavery. Her evil husband beats her and uses her like a dog. That will not happen to you.’

The anger in her eyes made it difficult to remember the smile she’d given me at the school. I didn’t agree about my marriage, but she’d shocked me into silence. All the same I felt sorry for Nargis.

‘Can anything be done?’ I said eventually. ‘In Australia there are refuges for women whose husbands abuse them.’

Jamila’s lip curled. ‘This is not Australia.’ After a moment she relented. ‘I have heard of a refuge in Islamabad for women who are beaten, but how can Nargis go there? If her husband found out, he would kill her.’

‘What about her parents?’

‘Her father just tells her to be a better wife and not annoy her husband.’

There was nothing to say in the face of such injustice. Yet was my position any better because my husband was said to be a good man? Was Nargis told that too?

When we returned home, Aunty Khushida was busy in the kitchen. Dadi jan was with her, peeling garlic for the evening meal. I put on an extra shawl and went into the
garden with my phone hidden in my pocket. It was colder and there was snow now on the mountains. Baba ji was out there near the Persian garden, weeding in an old heavy coat. I sat in the pavilion and keyed a text to Tariq: family aranging marrige 4 me. Dont kno what 2 do. It went through this time.

Then I rang Riaz. He didn’t answer the first time. The sound of the fountain calmed me while I waited. I kept trying and finally he answered. ‘Ames, you okay?’

‘No.’ I swallowed a sob. ‘They’re arranging a marriage.’

‘For Jamila?’ There was hope in his voice.

‘No. It’s for me.’ It came out as a squeak.

‘Shit, so it’s true.’

‘You knew? Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I heard Dad on the phone one night. It sounded suss but I wasn’t sure. Who’s the guy? Not Haider?’ The disgust in his tone echoed my own feelings.

‘Shaukat.’

There was a slight delay and I panicked. ‘Riaz?’

‘I’m still here. Can you hear me properly?’

‘Yes.’

His voice was different now, almost eager. ‘Find out if you like him.’

‘But—’

‘I’m serious. Just listen. I’ve heard good things about him. Maybe he’ll come to Australia to live and you’ll get us back and a good marriage as well.’

‘I’m barely seventeen. I don’t want to be married.’

‘Just check it out. Dad wouldn’t do something to hurt you.’

‘This hurts. I wasn’t told. Isn’t the marrying age eighteen in Australia?’

‘I think it’s younger in Pakistan.’

‘But wouldn’t it be illegal if I didn’t consent?’

‘Not there probably.’

Then I took a chance. ‘Riaz, I can’t do this. I love Tariq.’

There was a silence so long I thought I’d lost him. ‘Are you still there?’

‘I’m here.’ I could imagine his face, how he’d screw up his eyes as he thought. ‘Look, if you still feel like this in a week ring me back and I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Can I speak to Mum?’

‘She’s at Grandpa’s.’

‘Still?’

‘She hasn’t come back yet. She didn’t like the way Dad sent you over there so quickly.’

‘Wait till she hears about the wedding.’

There was a silence again.

‘Riaz?’

‘Yeah, but what can she do? She doesn’t understand as much about Dad’s background as she thinks.’

‘Can’t you do something? Talk to Uncle Rasheed; or find out if it’s illegal and scare them with that?’

‘I don’t think it’ll work, but ring me later, okay?’

‘I won’t be changing my mind,’ I told him.

Speaking to Riaz had unsettled me so much I couldn’t face helping in the kitchen. I went to my room instead. I
was wishing Mum had a mobile, and thought I should have asked Riaz for Grandpa’s number so I could speak to her.

In my room, I noticed my backpack was in a different spot by the low dressing table. A few of my things—my brush and make-up—were on the floor.
That Zeba,
I thought,
I really must tell her she can’t go through my stuff.
I picked up the bag and then stiffened. The quilt on my bed looked dishevelled as though someone had slept on it. Had Dadi jan rested in here while we were at the school? I checked that my passports and ticket were in their usual spot under the mattress. My hand brushed against the rope support…nothing. I moved my hand down, maybe they’d slipped. Still nothing. I stood up and pulled the mattress off the bed. The rope bed was bare. My return ticket and passports were gone.

I raced to the kitchen. ‘Aunty Khushida, my passports and ticket are missing.’

Aunty Khushida was stirring onions in a large pot on the stove. She wiped her eyes but didn’t answer. I thought she hadn’t heard, then I saw her face. On it was a mixture of disapproval and concern.

‘Aunty ji?’

She glanced at me but didn’t stop stirring. ‘It is better this way. At the moment you are not thinking wisely. Maybe you will try something dangerous, to return by yourself. It is better that we keep you safe.’

‘But—’ Then I stopped. Would I try to go home by myself if they kept on with arranging the wedding? I hadn’t considered that; at that point I still believed the wedding could be stopped.

Aunty Khushida gave me a longer look. ‘You Western girls can go where you want, walk by yourself down the street. You cannot do that here. Especially not since Begum Benazir’s assassination.’

‘Who took my passports?’

‘Your uncle has them in his safekeeping, for when you need them.’

‘You took them, didn’t you? While we were at school. And Meena? Was she part of the ploy to get me out of the house? Jamila knew they were there.’ My voice was rising and dangerously close to being disrespectful.
How could they betray me like that? How could Meena?

Aunty Khushida stopped stirring and turned to face me. ‘Meena knows nothing of this, nor does Jamila. It is for your benefit only that your uncle and I have acted.’

My words dried up. I walked back to my room and sat on the bed. I stared at the flaking paint on the wall outlining the crack that ran from the ceiling almost to the level of the bed. I thought of myself as half-Pakistani. Was our Pakistani culture in Australia so different? Maybe Mum had unconsciously made me more Australian than Pakistani, for if this was Pakistani culture then everything that made me who I was fought against it. I dropped back onto the bed. People’s faces swirled in my head: Aunty Khushida, Uncle Rasheed, Dadi jan saying it would be all right, Aunt Bibi suffocating me in a hug, Jamila smiling for the first time, Haider squeezing my arm, hurting me, Zeba pulling at me to come and read to her, Asher watching, always watching.

I lay there and must have finally slept for I dreamed of Omar and Marui—how he came on his camel to her
humble village to abduct her and carried her to his fort in the desert. She refused all his attentions and gifts, and pined for her home and her childhood sweetheart. Her brother and cousins finally found her and took her home but Marui’s starvation and pain of longing in Umarkot had taken its toll. Now she was dying. ‘To die among you is sweeter than to live in a beautiful palace among strangers,’ she said to her family. She died like a beautiful desert flower that grows then withers after the rains.

Things went from worse to disastrous. The next morning, breakfast was strained. Jamila was quiet, but it was an uneasy quiet. Even Zeba and Asher didn’t say a word, as if they could sense an impending storm. I felt as if I had run a marathon; I was wrung out from a restless night thinking about the folk tales, and Dadi jan’s marriage and how she was abducted. Tariq had told me the Koran said marriage had to be willingly entered into, but my relatives didn’t seem to agree. As we sat together uneasily, munching on greasy parathas and eggs, Uncle Rasheed came in.

‘Beti ji,’ he addressed me. I looked up. So the veneer of politeness was to be continued even after he had taken my passports and ticket. ‘I hear you have a mobile phone.’

I felt as if I’d been submerged in freezing water. I shot a look at Asher, but he half-shook his head.

Uncle Rasheed sat down. ‘Hassan says he gave you one. Do you have it, beti?’

There was no point lying. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I think it best that I keep it for you.’

Did he find this easy, I wondered. He scratched his beard, perhaps a sign of discomfort, but his face was as impassive as if he’d asked me to get the milk from the fridge. I didn’t reply.

‘Ameera.’ It was a warning, but I took a chance.

‘Uncle, Papa said the phone was for my safety. If I should get lost I can ring you.’

‘You will never be alone here, beti.’ Perhaps he meant to sound caring but to me it was a threat.

‘You can use our phone to call home,’ Aunty Khushida said. She glanced at her husband. I knew that look: Mum used it on Papa when she thought he might lose control.

‘Get the phone, beti.’ Uncle Rasheed’s voice had a sudden edge to it, like Papa’s often got: the hint of anger lurking.

I stood to go to the bedroom and had a sudden terrifying thought: what if Tariq should ring? He’d said he wouldn’t but what if he changed his mind? And what if Uncle Rasheed answered it? There was Riaz too—I mightn’t be able to ring him back and he’d think I was happy about the wedding. And Mum. I’d been considering getting Grandpa’s number and asking her to change my flight or something. Oh, why hadn’t I thought of that before?

And what if Uncle Rasheed went through my contacts list? There wasn’t enough time to delete it but maybe there was time to send a message.

In my room, I sat on my bed and quickly texted Tariq: truble. dont rng or txt. I started a message
to Riaz—no change—when I heard Aunty Khushida’s footsteps. I pressed the send button, deleted all messages and turned the phone off, just as Aunty’s hand came over my shoulder to take it.

‘Your uncle cannot wait all day,’ she said. Perhaps she could see how miserable I was for she didn’t say anything else, she just left with my phone.

Now I had no means of contacting anyone privately. It was like being trapped in a nightmarish story of thwarted love. There was no way around any of it. I couldn’t ask them to call the wedding off. I couldn’t even talk to them about it: they had such a different view of it from me.

It was lunchtime when I showed my face in the kitchen. Aunty Khushida was cooking a chapatti. She pressed hard on it with a tea towel and the tava clanged against the stovetop.

‘We need to go shopping today,’ she said when she noticed me. ‘Meena will come too.’

I was silent and she went on without looking at me. ‘The wedding will be in two weeks.’

That got a response. ‘Two weeks?’

She turned to face me with weariness etched in every line of her face but I didn’t care. ‘Aunty, how can you do this? I haven’t consented. I haven’t even seen the bridegroom.’

‘Bibi does not want you to see him, she wants to surprise you. And we have talked of this before. It is
your father who has said to have the wedding early.’ Then she added, ‘You will be happy.’

Papa had said I would be happy with the marriage too but I didn’t believe any of them.

Aunty Khushida put the chapattis on the table wrapped in a bright cloth. ‘Just accept this. It is a happy time.’

I stared at her, at the sadness in her face that belied her words. If it was a happy time why was she worried? Then I found myself saying something I never thought I would to her. ‘Aunty ji, I’m frightened.’

This seemed to be a situation she knew how to handle. She came to me immediately, put her arms around me. ‘Ameera, we women are always frightened at this time, frightened and happy both. But you need not be concerned. Shaukat is a good man, trust us. And Bibi, she will always treat you as if you were her own.’

‘We’ll live with Aunt Bibi?’

Aunty Khushida took time to consider her response and I grew worried afresh. ‘Normally you would stay with your Aunt Bibi after the marriage since Shaukat has a clinic in the tribal areas, but in the circumstances we feel it is best that you go with Shaukat and get to know each other from the start.’

‘The tribal areas?’

‘He directs a clinic near Khala Dhaka, Black Mountain,’ she added.

It meant nothing to me.

‘It is near Mansehra.’ She sighed noisily. ‘Oh, Hassan.’ She said it low and roughly and I realised it wasn’t me she was annoyed with. Still it was small consolation.

By the time Meena came I had composed myself. Jamila had gone to school for the afternoon session. It seemed I could only help at the school when I wasn’t shopping for the wedding. The shopping trip was a blur of sparkling material, shawls, dupattas, shoes and gold jewellery. Meena was kind to me and never left my side.

‘I was so excited when it was my turn,’ she told me. ‘The jewellery alone was incredible. Imagine trying on all that gold.’ She glanced at me and put an arm around my shoulders. ‘Ameera, all will be good.’

She sounded like Dadi jan. How did they know it would be good for me? They didn’t know about Tariq. But even if I hadn’t met Tariq, I was sure I’d be upset with Papa for doing this. Would he have organised it this way if I hadn’t been caught at the Collinses party? Maybe I was being punished after all and needed to submit to Papa’s discipline. That’s what Raniya would say. I thought of her and Maryam. How differently I had imagined my wedding: my friends giving me advice on clothes and colours, Mum taking me shopping, me overjoyed about the young man we’d chosen together: Tariq. In time I could have persuaded Papa to accept him. Instead, I was in a strange place, far away from my family and friends, being forced into a marriage I didn’t want.

I lost count of how many gold shops we visited. They were all on the one street. Most only had a bench to sit on, some gold in the window, and a cabinet inside with more gold. In the last one, a man with a hooked nose bigger than Papa’s brought some velvet-covered trays from a safe in a back room.

‘Memsahib,’ he said to Aunty Khushida, ‘this is the latest we have. Twenty thousand rupees. You will not find anything as fine as this necklace in all of Muzaffarabad.’

If Aunty Khushida was impressed she kept it hidden. She sighed loudly. ‘It is no different from any of the others. We shall have to go back to the first shop.’

I must have looked horrified: I was tired of gold shops. Maybe my expression convinced the man Aunty Khushida was genuine.

‘All right, Memsahib, for you only fifteen thousand rupees for this beautiful piece.’

Still Aunty Khushida didn’t look convinced. ‘Come, we must go.’ In a lower tone, she hissed, ‘Stand up.’

Meena and I obeyed.

‘Madam, thirteen fifty. I cannot go any lower or I will be selling below cost price.’ He sounded genuinely worried.

Aunty Khushida flopped onto the bench. ‘Oh, I suppose we can look at it again. Thirteen fifty?’ She raised her eyebrows at the man and he nodded sadly.

‘Let me buy you Pepsi,’ he said, ‘and then I am showing you earrings and bangles to match.’

‘Thank you,’ Aunty Khushida said with satisfaction, and a boy was despatched into the street.

I went to look at the pieces in the window. I wasn’t interested in the gold necklace Aunty Khushida was about to buy me to wear at my wedding. Yes, it was beautiful but I hadn’t chosen it. Nothing about this wedding was of my choosing. It took a moment for me to notice a young man holding out a paper bag. I frowned.
Wasn’t it a boy who was sent for refreshments?

‘Missahiba, for later,’ he said quietly, then in a louder voice added, ‘Mittai, sweets for the bride.’

Aunty Khushida smiled at me, and the young man gave her and Meena a paper bag of sweets too. The bags were made from the pages of old exercise books showing sums worked out in large pencilled numbers. I glanced at the young man, but he half-shook his head. I shrugged and stuffed the bag into my handbag.

‘Have a sweet,’ Meena said to me. She took out a piece of barfi and nibbled from the corner. ‘Mmm, delicious.’

‘I’ll eat them later,’ I said. The young man smiled slightly as he swung back out to the street.