The Pakistani Bride. Bapsi Sidhwa
grass of the parks, watching boys at a kabbadi match. The boys would crouch in rows facing each other. One of them, brown, his limbs shining with oil, would dart into the clearing slapping his naked thigh, calling “kabbadi kabbadi kabbadi kabbadi,” until holding his breath, he would touch a boy of the opposing team and swerve and dodge back to his line. If caught, the two would wrestle, trying to pin each other down on their backs.
They visited Shahdara, Emperor Jehangir’s tomb, its marble minarets rising in delicate towers set like a jewel in the jade of the gardens. They lay in the cool, fountain-hazed Shalimar Gardens, the summer sanctuary of Emperor Shahjehan, and strolled down Anarkali, the crowded bazaar named after the beautiful dancing girl who was bricked in alive by the Emperor Akbar because Prince Salim was determined to marry her.
Qasim perched a frightened Zaitoon on the tall, proud snout of the Zam-Zam cannon, known because of Kipling as “Kim’s gun.” They sat on the sands of the shallow Ravi, gazing at its gentle brown eddies . . . Lahore—the ancient whore, the handmaiden of dimly remembered Hindu kings, the courtesan of Moghul emperors—bedecked and bejewelled, savaged by marauding Sikh hordes—healed by the caressing hands of her British lovers. A little shoddy, as Qasim saw her; like an attractive but aging concubine, ready to bestow surprising delights on those who cared to court her—proudly displaying Royal gifts . . .
“Don’t you want to find some work?” Nikka inquired once, but Qasim, with typical tribal disdain, saw no need for it. “I get my keep from you for so little. And don’t forget, at the end of six months, I’ll be receiving four hundred rupees from you. We shall see later.”
Nikka didn’t mind, especially since Qasim was often at hand for odd jobs. Besides, a burly tribal—a bandolier across his chest—added to the shop’s prestige. Once he borrowed Qasim’s pistol and holster and garlanded them round his photographs.
When Qasim accompanied Nikka to a fair he was surprised how easily the wrestler picked off an array of balloons strung up to test marksmanship, and with a gun that Qasim suspected had been doctored to miss.
At the end of six months Nikka returned Qasim his two hundred rupees with an additional two hundred in interest. The new terms they arrived at compelled Qasim to find work. He was to give Nikka forty rupees a month for his and Zaitoon’s keep. Zaitoon would be looked after by Miriam while he was at work. Good jobs were hard to find. Qasim sheepishly asked Nikka to take him on as a partner in his business. Nikka brushed him off with a casual, “Too late, friend. Too bad you missed the bird when it sang at your window.”
Qasim worked at odd jobs as a construction laborer and coolie.
Chapter 6
Lahore was getting cooler. A soft breeze from the foothills of the Himalayas gently nudged the merciless summer away. Disturbances subsided. October, November and then December, with its icy cold, checked the tempers. Hordes of refugees still poured in, seeking jobs. The nation was new. The recently born bureaucracy and government struggled towards a semblance of order. Bogged down by puritanical fetish, in the clutches of unscrupulous opportunists—the newly rich and the power drunk—the nation fought for its balance. Ideologies vied with reason, and everyone had his own concept of independence. When a tongawalla, reprimanded by a policeman, shouted, “We are independent now—I’ll drive where I please!” bystanders sympathized. Fifty million people relaxed, breathing freedom. Slackening their self-discipline, they left their litter about, creating terrible problems of public health and safety. Many felt cheated because some of the same old laws, customs, taboos, and social distinctions still prevailed.
Unused muscle, tentatively flexed, grew strong, and then stronger. Dictatorial tyrants sprang up—feudal lords over huge areas of Pakistan.
Memory of the British Raj receded—shrinking into the dim past inhabited by ghosts of mighty Moghul Emperors, of Hindu, Sikh and Rajput kings.
The marble canopy that had delicately domed Queen Victoria’s majesty for decades looked naked and bereft without her enormous, dour statue. Prince Albert, astride his yellowing marble horse, was whisked away one night from the Mall; as were the busts of Viceroys and Lords from various parks. No one minded. Portraits of British gentlemen bristling with self-esteem and dark with age vanished from club halls and official buildings, to surface years later on junk stalls.
Jinnah’s austere face decorated office walls and the Jinnah-cap replaced the sola-topee. Chevrolets and Cadillacs gradually edged out Bentleys and Morrises and, the seductively swaggering American Agency for International Development (A.I.D.), the last sedate vestiges of the British East India Company.
Jinnah died within a year of creating the new State. He was an old man but his death was untimely. The Father of the Nation was replaced by stepfathers. The constitution was tampered with, changed and narrowed. Iqbal’s dynamic vision of Muslim brotherhood reaching beyond the confines of nationality—a mystic-poet’s vision—became the property of petty bureaucrats and even more petty religious fanatics.
Despite the unsettled times Nikka’s business prospered. He and Miriam shifted to three rooms on the ground floor of a tenement. He acquired for his home a cheap sofa set and a radio for the shop. The new living quarters were painted parrot-green, gratifying the tastes of his friends and acquaintances.
Miriam, reflecting her husband’s rising status and respectability, took to observing strict purdah. She seldom ventured out without her veil.
Qasim and Zaitoon remained in their solitary room on the second floor.
Nikka’s prowess in wrestling and his enormous strength became legendary. Qila Gujjar Singh pitted its pehelwan against wrestlers of other localities and gloated over Nikka’s unfailing victories. Nikka’s generosity and his capacity for arbitration also were widely acclaimed.
One of the political factions sniffed him out—embraced and flattered him—and he became a miniscule part of a huge political package.
Policemen became courteous. All appreciated his ability to intercede for friends, and some shady characters from the political underworld aired their grievances to him.
Qasim was wafted upward on the swell of Nikka’s success. Nikka procured him a job as night-watchman at a steel-ware warehouse. His leisure hours he spent loitering around Nikka’s shop.
As for Zaitoon, Qasim laughed at her prattle. He was continually touched by the affection she lavished on him.
Zaitoon had the short memory of a happy child. Recollections of the horrendous night, of her parents, of tilled earth and lazily dipping wheat fields soon dimmed into oblivion. She played with the little urchins of her street, and came to look on Miriam and Nikka as part of her family. Though Qasim rarely saw Miriam, Zaitoon was constantly in and out of her rooms.
Their own room was dingy, and except for a single misshapen door, it had no ventilation. Qasim and Zaitoon slept on straw mats spread on the bare, brick floor. The chief piece of furnishing was a shiny new tin trunk in one corner which Qasim hoped to fill with clothes. Later, when he could afford it, he bought two charpoys and they carried these to the roof and slept beneath the stars during the summer.
He saw to it that Zaitoon attended school for a full five years. Awed by her recital of the mysterious Urdu alphabet and by her struggle on the takhti, a wooden slate coated daily with mud-paste, he tried to learn from her. When she began writing in a book he gave up. Miriam, scandalized by such a foolish waste of the girl’s time, at last told Nikka, “Now that she’s learned to read the Holy Quran, what will she do with more reading and writing—boil and drink it? She’s not going to become a baboo or an officer! No, Allah willing, she’ll get married and have children.” Another time she sighed, “Poor child . . . had she a mother she’d be learning to cook and sew . . . does Bhai Qasim think he’s rearing a boy? He ought to give some thought to her marriage . . . who’d want an educated . . .”
“But she’s only a baby,” protested Nikka.
“A baby? She’s ten! I can already see her body shaping. The Pathan doesn’t realize she is