Their Language of Love (2 page)

The driver got out to buy paper bags filled with rose petals and garlands from the flower-bedecked array of lean-tos lining the path to the shrine entrance and handed them to us as we got out of the car. Leaving the driver in charge of the baby asleep in her carry-cot, hanging on to Feroza, I pushed my way through the unusually large crowd visiting the shrine that day. The dust churned up by tramping feet had spread over the whole area and hung in the air like a mist.

As we approached the huge vats of steaming rice by the parking lot, the thick-set man we usually dealt with spotted us. Roughly shoving away the other salesmen, pulling his stained vest down over his massive stomach, he led us to his stall. He slid back the immense copper lid from a vat of aromatic rice for my inspection. It was three quarters full of lightly browned long-grained rice with a smattering of chickpeas. I nodded my approval and also selected a vat of sweetened yellow rice. Feroza and I stood to one side as a rapidly forming line of beggars and villagers, many of them refugees from the war-torn border, held out their shirt-flaps and veils for the ladled rice.

Covering our heads with our dupatta-shawls, carrying the newspaper bags filled with rose petals, we climbed the steep flight of steps that led to the women’s entrance to the inner sanctum. The crowd was immense. It must have
occurred to others as well to visit the saint’s tomb at a time like this, and the air was charged with the fear of the war and the murmur of prayers and supplication as we pushed our way to the enclosed space that contained the saint’s grave. ‘Allah is merciful,’ a woman sighed and other women echoed her words.

We scattered the rose petals on the green cloth and colourful shawls that covered the mound of the grave. I said a short Zoroastrian prayer for our safe journey and, invoking Sarosh Ejud, the Angel of Success Who Protects Mankind With Effective Weapons, bequeathed Cyrus to his care. I also prayed for the safety of our friends, our city and the millions who dwelt in it.

It was dusk by the time we arrived in Rawalpindi. It had taken us eight hours to cover the 175 miles, a distance we normally travelled in half the time. The area around the Brewery, which was on the outskirts of the city, was observing blackout. With our headlights off, I felt as if we were creeping through a ghost town. There was hardly any traffic.

Abdul, almost invisible in his khaki guard’s uniform, was expecting us. He held a dimly lit kerosene lamp and carefully shading the light with his palm, pushed open the guest house gates with his shoulders. Holding the sleeping baby in my arms and shepherding Feroza before me, I followed the gate-keeper through a spooky, unlit hallway into the room we were to occupy. It was pitch black inside and I instinctively groped along the wall to switch on the light. As the anaemic light from a lone bulb cast shadows on the lime-washed walls, Abdul hissed: ‘Madam, switch it off!’

I glanced at the jute sacking which covered the windows. ‘The light won’t get through that,’ I said dismissively, intending to put the old retainer in his place and at the same time quell more histrionics—I was too weary to indulge him.

‘
They
don’t like it, Madam,’ Abdul said, his tone suitably apologetic and conciliatory as he pointed in what I assumed was the direction of the requisitioned Brewery Lodge, its imposing gates diagonally across from ours. ‘It is where General Sahib is staying,’ he added by way of explanation, and it dawned on me that the Field Marshal had made the Lodge his residence.

Sure enough, a chorus of gruff voices shouted from across the road: ‘Shut the light! Shut the bloody light! Do you want us to be bombed?!’

Shaking his head and ruefully saying, ‘The military guards are
that
nit-picky … they won’t tolerate the slightest haze,’ he leaned across me to turn off the switch.

I had not packed even our toothbrushes, and the next day I drove frantically around Pindi collecting the items the children and I would require for the next few days. My brother Rustom, I discovered, had gone to Abbotabad to fetch our mother. Sarahbai was visiting friends in the hill-town about 100 miles west of Pindi and, caught unawares by the war, had frantically summoned him to drive her back to Pindi. Everyone wanted to be near their kin if they could.

On the second night of our arrival I was shocked awake by the fearsome thunder of an ear-splitting explosion. The windows and doors of our room rattled and a tremor shot
through the brick floor beneath my feet as I sprang up. It felt as if the bomb had exploded quite close, at most a few furlongs away, though later we learned it had fallen in the fields beyond Satellite Town, nine miles to the north. I heard glass splinter and shatter elsewhere in the guest house and the tramp of feet as the guard and the awakened servants began moving about the house and compound. There was a great deal of shouting from the sentry box across the road; orders flying back and forth. Within seconds Abdul was knocking on the door, and as I turned on the flashlight to let him in, there was an eerie whizzing sound followed, after what seemed like an age, by a blinding flare of light and an earth-shaking explosion.

I have turned deaf; I can barely hear the children scream. Feroza has groped her way to me and is clinging to my legs in terror. Holding her close and dragging her weight, I clumsily grope my way to the baby’s cot. I am certain the bomb has dropped in our compound or on Vine Cottage next door. Most likely, the Brewery is flattened.

As it happened, the bomb destroyed several houses in Satellite Town, a scant nine miles from our house.

‘Is Sethji back?’ I shout hysterically, using the appellation the servants use for my brother.

No.

I angrily assume my brother has been seduced by the tranquility of the tree-spangled hills—not to mention the cosseting of Sarahbai’s doting friends—to spend another day in Abbotabad. The leaves must be starting to turn. My
brother and my mother should be with us, I think with a proprietary sense of angst. Don’t they know we are in Pindi, and Pindi is being bombed? I carry the shrieking baby to my bed, stroking her and Feroza and whispering calming words, soothe them to fitful sleep. Propped up on pillows I sit awake all night long. I must have dozed off because close to dawn I am awakened by another crashing explosion; but this time, thankfully, it seems further away; somewhere in the Margalla hills perhaps.

Cyrus calls the next morning. He sounds exultant and excited, ‘So, did you enjoy all the bombing in Pindi?’

I finally let go of the control I have exercised to keep the children and servants calm, and begin to sob. I shake so much I can barely hold the receiver to my ear.

‘What’s the matter, Jaan? Are you okay?’ Cyrus shouts anxiously, his exultancy sapped.

‘Yes….’ I say.

‘Are the children all right?’

‘Yes, yes we are all fine!’

‘I told you not to go! The Indian jets dropped bombs but not a single bomb exploded in Lahore!’

‘Lahore has Data Sahib’s protection,’ I say, shakily wiping my nose, vaguely thinking of the aggregate of stories I’ve heard about the saint’s miraculous feats in defending our city. These stories are credited to awe-struck Indian fighter pilots, young Hindus and Sikhs who are said to have seen Data Sahib’s disembodied hands pluck the plummeting
bombs from the air and gentle them to the ground. I had discounted the stories as a frightened populace’s wishful fantasy, and attributed the unexploded bombs found near his shrine, which is close to Ravi Bridge, to poor manufacture. There is not all that much difference between India and Pakistan—the Indians are as capable of producing defective arsenal as the Pakistanis are.

However, right at this moment, in Pindi, I’m credulous.

‘I believe the stories,’ I say, speaking with conviction into the phone.

‘What …?’ says Cyrus, sounding confused.

‘I said—the stories about Data Sahib are true! I believe them … How else can you explain the unexploded bombs near the bridge? Indian bombs can’t all be duds!’

‘Zareen, what are you talking about?’ Cyrus says, unable to follow my thoughts.

‘I know what I’m talking about. Their bombs aren’t duds! They damn well explode!’ I shout. I know I’m sounding garbled and unreasonable and hysterical, but it’s all right—I’d be insane not to be hysterical and I trust Cyrus enough to know that.

‘Yes, yes,’ says Cyrus, trying to soothe me: ‘Of course, the bombs aren’t duds … they exploded didn’t they …? Who’s with you? Has Rustom returned?’

‘He’s still in Abottabad!’ I catch the whine in my voice but I cannot help it; I begin to cry helplessly.

‘Zareen, you’d better come back. I’m coming to fetch you and the girls.’

‘Jana, don’t you understand?’ I say, speaking between my
sobs: ‘I can handle the bombs, but I can’t bear the thought of an occupying army—of soldiers tramping through our house.’

‘No one’s going to occupy Lahore,’ Cyrus says. ‘An Armoured Division is at the border guarding the city.’

It is rumoured that the Indian generals have vowed to toast each other with the finest Scotch at their old pre-Partition haunt, the Gymkhana Club in Lahore, within ten days of the start of the war. It is no idle boast. The Indian army, seven times the size of the Pakistan army, better equipped than Pakistan’s, can occupy Lahore with the ease of a knife slicing through cake.

Cyrus knows all this as well as I do, and I’m in no mood to reiterate it. ‘You can come to Pindi if you like, Janoo,’ I say. ‘But I’m not going back with you.’

Late in the afternoon I hear the thud of car doors, the scrape of shoes on gravel and the small commotion attendant on the arrival of my mother and Rustom at Vine Cottage. As I pick up the baby and, Feroza in tow, scurry across the small field of young wheat between the houses I am dimly aware of the image I must present—that of the distraught refugee mother with her babies. The servants are carrying their luggage in. I exchange the requisite hugs and resist the impulse to fall sobbing into my mother’s arms. My mother is not the type into whose arms a sobbing woman can impulsively fall; at least, not yet: she mellows with age. In any event, Feroza has staked her claim and is clamouring to be picked up by her grandmother.

‘What took you so long?’ I complain, trying to control my tearful voice. ‘Didn’t you know I was here? Alone with the children? I needed your support.’ I turn to my brother: ‘Did you
have
to spend another day in Abbotabad at a time like this … enjoying the scenery while we were being bombed?! We could be dead for all you care!’

Sarahbai looks up from bending over Feroza and I notice the deep lines between her eyes. She looks drained, stricken with remorse. I have not seen her react to me this way before and something catches in my heart. She turns her distraught face to Rustom. His face and ears have reddened and he appears contrite and bewildered. ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t know you were here,’ he mumbles. Our family is not given to emotional outbursts and my uncharacteristic behaviour has disconcerted him. Rustom is the only one in the family who is light-skinned enough to actually turn red. To break the awkwardness my eruption has created, he turns to Feroza and stiffly bends over her: ‘Are you frightened, Feroza?’ he says, gingerly patting her head. ‘You are a big girl now, you mustn’t be frightened.’ He is uneasy around children.

Feroza’s unambiguous, hazel-eyed stare embarrasses him further. I have seen the effect of that stare on my friends; it’s unnerving. ‘Feroza, run into granny’s room and get me a tissue,’ I say, coming to his rescue.

It is the sixth day of the war. The call is out to contribute to the war effort; to donate money, quilts and clothes for the alarming accumulation of war-widows and village refugees.

The newspapers blazon the amounts donated by various businesses, and two days after their return to Pindi, my brother and I escort our mother on a gallant mission of mercy on behalf of the brewery company.

It is all rather stagey. At nine o’clock on a cool September morning we await the Brewery’s ancient Daimler, a coach-like relic with running-boards, and sporting the Daimler’s signature radiator grill. Bequeathed by the Brewery’s British owners, it is hand-cranked to life and chugged out on special occasions such as this. Mother and I climb into its spacious interior, which smells of boot polish and varnish, our incongruous evening-saris rustling and puffing up with the electricity generated by the friction of the leather cushions against our silks. We avoid touching each other because of the tiny shocks delivered by the static.

Up front, in a dark suit, a white handkerchief blooming in his breast pocket, my brother appears to be composed. I can tell, though, from his scarlet ears, the frequency of his bland social smile and faintly abstracted air, that he is already projecting himself into varying scenarios of his imminent meeting with Field Marshal Ayub Khan and generally nerving himself for the occasion. He has already met him briefly at two State functions, so he has acquired some substance on which to base his imagined scenarios.

The ancient Daimler crunches up the gravel drive and rumbles past the guard standing to stiff attention at our modest gateway. It humps a long-snouted passage across the strip of road that separates Vine Cottage from an imposing pair of gates set in a tall wall and comes to a jolting halt. To
one side of the gates is a brass plaque emblazoned: S
TATE
G
UEST
H
OUSE
. Topped with jagged glass and strings of barbed wire, the wall surrounds the estate as far as the eye can see. The gates of Vine Cottage and the State Guest House are diagonally across from each other. Had we walked, even accommodating our pace to Sarahbai’s totter in her heels, we would have covered the distance in about ten minutes. But, given the significant nature of the occasion, that was out of the question. The services of the Daimler had to be corralled.

A conscript in khaki uniform and red-crested turban detaches himself from a similarly attired group of military guards. Eyeing our antique vehicle with suspicion, the man saunters up to the driver’s window and peers in curiously.

Leaning across the driver and clearing his throat, my brother speaks with the brusque authority he has acquired since our father’s death: ‘Arrey bhai, General Sahib is expecting us,’ he says. And, impatient and on edge, with small, assertive waves of his hand, he peremptorily dismisses the sentry and simultaneously directs him to open the gate.