In the Company of Strangers, page 15
Chapter Fifteen
Bilal
He splashed water on his face to hide the tears. What would his mother say if she found him weeping like a little girl?
‘You are a little sissy,’ she’d say, her tone brokering no argument. ‘You’re not your father.’
He scrubbed hard at his hands, as if cleaning them would wipe away the proof of his savagery, his inhuman nature. He’d beaten her more today than he ever had before. The thought made him want to vomit, but he forced the bile back down his throat.
She had forced his hand. She always did.
He had tried to stop himself when he saw how her body shuddered under his hand – his kicks. Her whimpers had pierced him, but it was as if a frenzy had gripped him, a longing to exact vengeance for all those years of her ineptitude as a wife.
‘Why can’t you understand my love?’ he shouted, bringing his fist down on the mirror hard. Shards of glass flew everywhere. His hand came away bloody, but he didn’t feel a thing.
This wasn’t what he had bargained for. He thought he’d married a living thing, but it took him exactly a year to realise that he’d married a stone. She had no feelings, or if she had, she kept them masked from him.
Her indifference to his business affairs, his preferences, hell, even their children alarmed him. It was as if she just pretended to care, the way she went through the right motions like a bloody robot. He didn’t know her. Even after all these years, he didn’t know her. Sometimes, he caught emotion on her face – real emotion – like the first time she had discovered that he was seeing another woman. It was after Aimen had been born, and having fallen prey to post-natal depression, Mona had distanced herself from him, sleeping in the guest room adjacent to theirs. Looking back, he knew that this depression was what really brought that wedge between them. They’d never been the same again. He had never known then just how many nights she would come to spend in that horrible room. If he’d known, he would have had it demolished.
She had discovered lipstick marks on his collar – stupidity on his part – and that being his first real affair, he had floundered when she had questioned him. Unable to properly answer her questions, he had seen the realisation dawn on her face, the hurt of his betrayal manifest in those almond eyes of hers. Her mouth had tightened, her eyes narrowed as she fought back tears, hands bunching up the shirt she held.
‘Why?’ she said. ‘We were so happy.’
The statement infuriated him. ‘Were we?’ he had replied. He had shaken her by the shoulders, shouting the same thing again and again.
And then the light had gone from her eyes, and when the first slap landed on her cheek, she didn’t flinch. That made him hit her more – the first time he had ever raised his hand to her.
‘Women are wanderers,’ was the first thing his father had told him when he was old enough to understand. ‘Keep them shackled, and they’ll stay loyal to you. Let them roam free, and they’ll find a man faster than you can blink your eyes. That’s the greatest lesson of life that I can teach you as your father.’
Nonsense, he realised now. His father had been a miserable masochist, too caught up in the cruel little world he had created around himself to care about anyone. It was a wonder his mother had emerged from that abusive relationship the way she had – unharmed and full of strength.
Not like Mona, who cowered under his hand. At times, he almost wished she’d hit him back. To give him what he deserved.
God, he loved that woman – more than anything in life. But she had never been his. She didn’t want to be. No matter what he did, it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough. There would be months when everything would be normal again, they’d be happy again, and just when he would begin to hold out hope that there really was love between them, something would shift in her. He’d lose his temper at the smallest thing, and she’d take it as a personal affront. And the same vicious cycle would commence again.
She would punish him by lying in bed like an unresponsive statue. It made him furious.
Her trembling body came into his mind again, and he rushed out of the bathroom to the guestroom. He needed to make amends. He couldn’t live with the remorse.
He twisted the door handle.
Locked. He was locked out of the guest room just like she’d locked him out of her heart. He raised his fist to the door, but changed his mind. Instead he pressed his forehead to the cold wood, trying to breath evenly through the pain exploding in his hand. He deserved it after what he’d done to her.
‘Beat her, did you?’ his mother asked him as he passed her room the next day.
When he didn’t reply, she changed tack. ‘What happened to that hand of yours?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Amma,’ he replied, keeping his voice even.
She laughed, but there was anger there. Her eyes blazed as she watched him, her hands gripping the armrest hard.
‘One of these days, she will leave you, Bilal. She will leave and never look back.’
It was his turn to laugh. ‘She can try.’ He turned away from her to hide his face. His heart was pounding. ‘She can’t leave me,’ he said aloud, as if saying it would somehow make it all true.
‘I think it’s safe to come out of that delusion, my dear. We live in the twenty-first century. She can do as she bloody well pleases. I might not like her guts, but I don’t like the way you treat her either. She doesn’t deserve it.’
‘And me? Do I deserve to be treated like this?’ It was a whisper, but his mother had heard.
‘Oh, you men and your arrogance. You’re so much like your father, and yet so different. You have a heart, Bilal, even if you don’t know it yet.’ Her voice hardened. ‘Do right by your wife, Bilal or I promise you I will assist her in getting rid of this violent marriage. If she wants out, I will make sure she gets out.’
Bilal didn’t turn around to face her. He couldn’t let her see the pain on his face. ‘I don’t care, Amma. She can do as she pleases.’
‘But, you do care, my son.’ His mother’s voice was soft now. ‘More than anything. You love her even more than your own mother.’
As he walked away, he knew she was right.
Chapter Sixteen
Mona
The swelling on her face had subsided a bit, leaving behind an ugly shade of purple on her right cheek. There were black circles around her eyes, where the skin felt like a child’s playdough. She wondered if her foundation would manage to conceal it.
She felt a sudden longing to speak to her mother. In Mona’s younger, more disruptive days, it was often up to her mother to force her to sit down and take a breath. Mona would only have to put her head in her mother’s lap, and listen to her soft voice, and the fight would leave her. She would become the meek and dutiful daughter her mother always wanted her to be, not the wild, unkempt urchin she usually was.
Her mother had been a kind soul, but practical. Long before Mona’s father had made it big in the stock market, back when she had been a young girl, they were poor. With her father’s meagre salary, they would struggle to make ends meet. Food was scarce, meat even more so, and vanities like watching movies in theatres or buying make-up were inconceivable. Her mother would buy that cheap one-rupee kaajal from a street vendor, and getting back home, she would mix some ash from the firewood in it, just to make it last longer.
They used to wear ash in their eyes.
Mona remembered how delicious meat would taste on her tongue in those days; the way it would just melt in her mouth with those rare buttered rotis only her mother knew how to make. Chicken would be even more elusive. They could eat it only as an infrequent treat: on birthday dinners or special occasions, like when she had emerged first in her Grade 6 writing contest.
Life had been brutal in those days, an unceasing cycle of hardships, empty stomachs, and cruel landlords. But even then, Mona remembered those days as full of love and happiness.
‘One day, you are going to get married, Mona, and then you will understand the joy of being a wife, of being a mother.’
Marriage. Joy. Motherhood.
What had happened? How had things come to this? Each day unfolding to reveal the same perpetual sorrow, a lifetime of misery that clung to her soul dragging her deeper into the abyss. Her feelings seemed to have been swept under the expensive rug of prosperity. ‘When you have money, who cares about happiness?’
That is what people said; that is what she used to believe when she was poor.
But not anymore.
She was scrolling down her Instagram feed, in admiration of flawless women, when the door to the guest room opened.
‘Mona darling!’
Mona froze, the phone falling on the floor with a loud crack, splitting open to reveal its battery.
‘Oops. Didn’t mean for that to happen,’ Bilal said.
He was smirking.
Don’t overreact, she told herself, as she caught Bilal’s reflection in the mirror, approaching her. She noticed his right hand was heavily bandaged.
She ignored it.
For a moment they watched each other, sizing each other up, Mona’s gaze fierce, Bilal’s placid, almost amused. It had been a week. His temper had cooled, but Mona was still angry; angry enough to hurt him.
After what seemed like a minute, Mona vacated the stool to squat on the floor, picking up the debris of her phone, and shoving it into her handbag. Her ears burned with anger and apprehension, her heart fluttering inside her chest like a frightened bird. Deliberately, she slowed her movements to stop her hands from shaking, and convinced that she had retrieved all the contents of her mobile phone from the floor, she straightened, and made her way toward the door.
She walked straight past Bilal without once meeting his eye, and had just begun experiencing a steely triumph when Bilal grabbed her hand, spinning her back toward him. There was no escaping this conversation.
‘What?’ she asked him.
‘I’m sorry. There, I’ve said it. Don’t make me say it again.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I just asked you not to make me say it again.’ Bilal’s eyes crinkled with amusement, as if this was all a big joke, a charade created to entertain him. That more than anything angered Mona: the presumption that she was so easy.
‘I don’t have time for jokes,’ she replied, her voice terse. ‘Let me go.’
She pulled her arm back, but it wouldn’t budge; Bilal’s grip was strong.
‘Look at me. No, stop struggling. Just look at me.’
The amusement left his eyes. All of a sudden, he seemed dead serious. Mona found herself unable to return his stare, so she lowered her eyes. She tried to prise his fingers off her wrist with her other hand, but soon gave up. His grip was like iron.
‘Let go. You’re hurting me. Haven’t you hurt me enough already?’
Bilal’s head tilted to one side. ‘Why are you being like this? Didn’t you just hear what I said? Here,’ – he dug his free hand into his pocket, and pulled out a small box – ‘this is for you. I know I shouldn’t have raised my hand against you, but you just… you force me. You can be so implacable at times. I mean, why dress so provocatively? It’s not like we were doing something wrong by inviting people over for Aimen’s rishta. Then why sabotage the entire thing deliberately? Don’t you want your daughter to get married? Now that bastard Wazir is telling the whole world that I’m married to a slut.’
Mona listened to the tirade, her eyes downcast, her hand going numb from the restricted blood flow. ‘Do you even hear yourself? If this is your idea of contrition then I’m sorry to inform you that you suck. Just go to hell, Bilal. Do I look like I care what that loser Wazir says about me?’ Her breath caught. ‘You are my husband. You’re supposed to protect me, not beat me.’
‘Oh Mona, you know how it is. When I saw you dressed up like that, with that cleavage, and the improper fitting, I almost had a heart attack. The fact that my wife could dare wear this attire in public was more than I could bear. What were you thinking? What the hell were you—’
‘You raised your hand against me.’ Mona’s voice was low, almost a whisper.
‘What was that?’
‘You raised your hand against me.’ Mona raised her eyes to meet his. He blanched at her expression. ‘You kicked me, the mother of your children. You kicked me until I collapsed, and if that wasn’t enough, you then abandoned me like a dog. That is not okay. That is not okay.’
She was shouting now.
‘You left me for dead, Bilal.’
Bilal’s grip slackened on her wrist, his mouth open in wonder. Blood rushed back to Mona’s fingers, tingling her extremities. ‘And now you have the nerve to ask me for forgiveness.’ She took his hand, and thrust it on her right cheek. ‘There. Feel it? Do you feel the swelling? This purple gob of meat used to be my cheek. You kicked me in the face, and here you stand like nothing’s happened? Do I look like I care about your petty gifts? To hell with you. I don’t ever want to see your face again.’ She said the last words in a measured, but murderous tone.
Bilal’s mouth was still open when she pushed past his shoulder, and strutted out.
‘What has got into you?’ he called out from behind.
She turned to face him from the doorway.
‘Sense.’
‘Where are you going? We’re not done here.’
‘Go to hell, Bilal!’ Mona shrieked, not bothering if anybody could hear her.
She needed to get outside. This house was toxic.
The furious shades of colour on her face caused her no end of trouble when she sat down to apply make-up. Thankfully, a headscarf hid the strangulation marks around her neck and she wore her Chanel shades to mask the purple bruises. She was far from her normal self, but at least she looked presentable.
Despite her best efforts, Meera’s jaw still dropped when she saw her at the charity fundraiser that afternoon. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
Mona tried to smile, but it still hurt. ‘Fell down the stairs,’ she murmured. Her tongue felt thick and sticky in her mouth, like a foreign object. ‘You know me, clumsy as a clown.’
Meera slid her forefinger under her chin and lifted her face. Mona’s hand shot to her neck to keep the headscarf fabric around it in place.
Meera immediately pulled at her headscarf. ‘What’s this foolishness? Why are you wearing a headscarf? Are you going all Islamic on us?’
‘Meera, please—’
Mona tried to prise her friend’s fingers away from her, but they came away with the fabric. She felt the touch of the air conditioning on her warm neck and knew her secret was exposed. She hadn’t bothered to lather any make-up on her neck.
As quickly as she had removed the fabric, Meera fixed it back around her neck, her eyes wide and frightened.
‘Is that bastard hurting you?’
Mona looked at a spot on Meera’s shoulder, too afraid to meet her eyes. There was some dust near the collar of her navy blue jacket. ‘No,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I fell down the stairs.’
‘Oh my God.’ Meera’s hand shot to her mouth briefly before she looked around and neutralised her expression. ‘Come with me.’
She led her into a corner behind a large, concrete pillar. The only people around were waiters setting the lunch table. They stole a few looks, and then scurried away.
Meera’s words came out slurred as if she were drunk – drunk and angry, a horrible mixture. ‘You can’t let him get away with this? This is absurd. No, I don’t think I even have a word for this. This is cowardly abuse, worse than what the tribal men do to their wives. At least they own up to it.’ She shook her head. ‘I am going to kill that bastard.’
‘Stop it, Meera. I don’t want to create a scene. I didn’t come here for this.’
‘So this is why you haven’t been returning my calls and are missing all the society parties. Shit. I had thought the worst that could have happened was that you got an abortion. That’s why I didn’t pry.’
Mona laughed, briefly, before clutching her jaw again. ‘Ow.’
‘Is he at his office at this time? I am going to go see him right now. Right this moment. There is simply no excuse for this kind of abuse. What is he, an animal? Hell, even animals have limits. And what was your rhino of a mother-in-law up to while he shredded you into pieces?’
‘Please Meera, if you so much as say a word about this to anyone, I will never talk to you. Promise me.’
‘No. Absolutely not.’
‘Promise me! I need to handle this my own way.’
It took two more attempts before Meera agreed, grudgingly. ‘This isn’t over, you know,’ she muttered, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I would have divorced the bastard if I were you, and then sued him for domestic abuse. I would have dragged him through the streets if he’d so much as lifted a finger to me. Pakistan is not the country it was twenty years ago, Mona. Today, we have rights… frail, meagre rights, but they are something.’
‘Hello, stranger,’ someone said.
Mona jumped at the voice.
It was Ali.
‘Jesus Christ in heaven,’ Meera exclaimed, her hand on her heart. ‘You scared the life out me.’
Mona clutched the right side of her face and allowed herself a short laugh. The pain singed through her bones, but she forced herself not to wince. ‘Wherever did you learn that phrase?’
Meera gave her a half-smile. ‘It was this American I married once. It was a disastrous three-month marriage that culminated in us threatening to shoot each other in the head, but he taught me a few choice phrases. Care to learn them, Ali?’
Ali held up his hands. ‘No thanks.’ His eyes fell on Mona, and he took a step back. ‘What happened to your face?’
Mona sighed. ‘Is it that obvious? I thought I didn’t look conspicuous.’
