Maps for Lost Lovers, page 36
“We can eat in the sitting room,” Mah-Jabin suggests. “We’ll move the table in there.” She slides open the door and looks in to confirm that there is enough room in there. When Ujala comes down—he is putting on a sweater and his face emerges out of the neck-hole like a diver coming up and breaking the water’s surface—the brother and sister move the dining table and chairs into the centre of the next room, pushing the coffee table with the vase of lilies to one side. The Koranic verses hang in their black frames against the pink walls that are lined up to waist-length with bookshelves. “I used to cut the bookmark ribbons off Father’s books to tie up the hair of my dolls,” Mah-Jabin says. Ujala takes the latest issue of the Muslim women’s magazine Kaukab subscribes to—the monthly Veil, published in Pakistan—and puts it in the pile where the previous issues are kept.
“It doesn’t do any harm,” Mah-Jabin whispers: she had seen the distaste on his face when he picked up the magazine full of orthodox rants and strictures, apocalyptic visions and prophecies.
“I think it does.”
She looks away. “It makes her happy.”
“I don’t think it does. I have never seen more misery and guilt on her face than when she has just finished reading something printed in there. It’s turned her into a selfish monster. She is the reason why Father won’t openly condemn the idiocies of Islam. He thought it would hurt her. She and her like don’t do any harm? She has harmed every one of us. She won’t allow reason to enter this house.” Mah-Jabin leaves the room and he stands looking at the verses on the wall. For millions of people, religion was often another torture in addition to the fact that their lives were not what they should be. Their world is pitiless from womb to tomb, everything in it out of their control, almost as though the life-lines on the palms of their hands were live knife-cuts, a source of pain since birth. This world gives them terrible wounds and then the holy men and women make them put those wounds into bags of salt.
He follows Mah-Jabin out into the kitchen. A ladle in each hand, Kaukab is stirring two pots simultaneously. “I should have made some chickpea stew as well, Charag’s favourite, but it is not the easiest thing to digest and I didn’t want him getting a stomach ache.”
“But chickpea stew looks, smells and tastes so nice, though,” Mah-Jabin says, as she takes one of the ladles from Kaukab.
“Yes,” Kaukab agrees. “Jugnu said: ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t eat it, and you’ll regret it if you do eat it . . .’ ”
The air in the room changes. Mah-Jabin winces inwardly and takes in a breath at the mention of the dead man’s name. Kaukab slowly looks over her shoulder at Ujala, who is sweeping the area of linoleum that has been exposed now that the table is gone. He had stopped but now resumes the strokes of the long-handled brush, the nylon bristles red as a fish’s gills.
“Don’t worry about the stew,” Mah-Jabin says, as she picks up the cauliflower pieces and adds them to the pot. “You’ve cooked enough food for today. It’s a feast.”
“A feast?” Kaukab says. “It cost £39.”
“No, Mother,” Mah-Jabin shakes her head. “The ingredients cost that much. You should add the cost of the planning, the organization, and the cooking that has gone into it all. A meal like tonight’s, if we were to pay a firm of caterers for it, would cost hundreds. Hundreds. And the food probably wouldn’t taste half as good as yours.”
Kaukab smiles. “I am just an ordinary woman. Your cooking is much better.”
“But I learnt it from you.”
“Would one of you stop licking the other’s pussy for a second and tell me where the dustpan is.”
Mah-Jabin turns around, stunned. “Ujala!”
He stands there with his jaw clenched, the eyes bright red.
“How dare you talk to your mother and sister like that,” Kaukab says to him. “I wish I had never come to this country.”
The tears spill over onto his cheeks but he is still breathing like a bull, the jaw pulsating. “What the fuck is all this for? What are we celebrating with this . . . this feast? May I remind you that yesterday it was confirmed that Uncle Jugnu and Chanda were murdered, chopped up and burnt.”
Kaukab turns back to the pans set on the hobs. “We are not celebrating anything. My children were coming home after a long time, so I thought I’d cook something . . . Then I started thinking about the favourite dish of each one of you . . .”
“Did you, even for a moment, stop to think that it might be a little inappropriate—your seven spiced-and-saffron’d dishes, and tandoori chicken, with a choice of chappatis and rice?”
“Ujala, please stop it.” Mah-Jabin takes a step towards him. “Mother has been working on this for two whole days now.”
Kaukab is frowning. “As I said it’s not a feast. Only a few dishes I cooked. It’s not a party. And yes, when someone mentions saffron you are bound to think the meal is luxurious and special, but I’ve always put a little saffron in my rice, a festive occasion or ordinary day.”
“Let’s hope you stop at saffron and don’t start putting any other ingredients in the food,” Ujala says.
“What does that mean?” Mah-Jabin looks over her shoulder. She turns to Kaukab: “What is he talking about?”
Kaukab too is puzzled: “What other ingredients? It’s Charag who doesn’t like cumin seeds in his food, you eat everything . . .”
“I was thinking of that powder a Muslim cleric gave you, after you had gone to him to tell him how unruly your son Ujala was, how he had done nothing but quarrel with you ever since he entered his teens. Remember?” He smiles contemptuously at Kaukab. “The holy man read special verses of the Koran over some powder and asked you to secretly mix it into your son’s food. ‘With Allah’s help the child will be obedient within thirty days,’ he said, or something along those lines.”
Kaukab looks ashamed. “I didn’t know what else to do. I . . . I . . . How did you find out?”
“You put things in my food!” he shouts. “If you lot had tails they would wag every time you approached a man with a beard.”
“I asked Allah to help me through that holy man. And it worked, thanks to His blessing. After I started putting the sacred salt onto your plate, you did become very kind and affectionate, mindful of the respect you owed your elders. But then, for some reason, you disappeared and I haven’t seen you since then. And I have felt you moving and walking about in the world the whole time. They take the baby out of the mother but not all the way out: a bit of it is forever inside the mother, part of the mother, and she can hear and feel the child as he moves out there in the world.”
“Do you want to know why I left? Do you?”
“I do know now. You must’ve seen me putting that blessed and consecrated salt in your food.”
Mah-Jabin approaches Ujala and places a hand on his shoulder. “What difference does it make, Ujala? It’s all harmless and it makes her happy.”
Kaukab looks fiercely at the girl: “Don’t patronize me, Mah-Jabin.”
Ujala removes Mah-Jabin’s hand from his shoulder. “Yes, I saw you putting that thing into my portion of the food but I didn’t leave because of that.” He turns to Mah-Jabin: “I did think it was all harmless at first, but then I found the place where she had been hiding that stuff and had it checked out. It was a bromide, the thing they put in prisoners’ meals to lower their libido, to make them compliant. That was when I left.”
Mah-Jabin gasps and looks at Kaukab.
“It was just some salt over which the cleric-ji had read sacred verses,” Kaukab says. “And it worked. His behaviour was exemplary then. Any decent mother would have been proud of his conduct during those days . . .” She talks but cannot ignore the horror in Mah-Jabin’s eyes, and asks: “What’s a libido? What’s a bromide, Mah-Jabin?”
Ujala crosses the kitchen and goes out of the house, leaving Mah-Jabin and Kaukab where they are.
“Mah-Jabin, go after him. Take his coat and go after him. Bring him back . . . Yes, yes, put on your own coat too . . .”
“Mother, did you know what that powder was?”
“I told you it was just ordinary salt over which some verses of the Koran had been read. What is a bromide?”
“I’ll tell you later. I’d better go after him.”
Alone, Kaukab suddenly sees for the first time the amount of food in the kitchen. There are bowls, plates, saucers, basins, katoris, pots, kamandals and glasses on every surface, full of ingredients large and small, black cardamoms, green cardamoms, clove, cinnamon, mace, cumin, coriander seeds, saffron, yoghurt raita, green chilli, red chilli, onion, red onion, garlic, honey, gram flour, wheat flour, chicken pieces, mutton cubes, potato wedges, cauliflower florets, peas, beetroot, kebabs, basmati rice, bitter-gourds, vermicelli, cream, sultanas, dry coconut, lemons, fruits, dates, pink-husked pistachios, rose essence (the sweat of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him), lettuce leaves detached whole and curling like seashells, salted butter, unsalted butter, clarified butter. She feels shame for having forgotten that all this might appear inappropriate so soon after the confirmation of Jugnu and Chanda’s death. How insensitive would she—and therefore all Pakistanis and Muslims as a result—appear to the white girl Stella? A rush of blood to the head had resulted when she realized that her family would be together under the same roof for the first time in many months—many years. But now it is a possibility that Ujala would disappear again. What had she added to his food? What is a bromide? Is it some kind of poison?
She lets out a whimper.
She switches off the gas from under the pots and begins to clear some of the surfaces, thinking fast about how she can scale down tonight’s meal, her mind occupied by the complex culinary algebra. Just the mutton-and- potato curry and the pilau rice? But the white girl Stella doesn’t eat meat. So: the cauliflower-and-pea curry and pilau rice? But Shamas doesn’t like cauliflower, so she would have to fry the shami kebabs for him. She could freeze the almost-ready mutton-and-potato curry and use it at a later date . . . What had she fed her son? Is he ill as a result of it? She leans her head against the wall. There would be no fruit salad and the vermicelli would have to go without the sparkling gold leaf that the grandson would have enjoyed looking at . . . She reminds herself that her plan was to put the immersion heater on around about now so that the water could warm up for when the guests needed to wash their hands. Slowly she climbs the stairs and goes into the bathroom to switch it on. In the hatch she finds the piece of crumpled up paper and pulls it out, puzzled. Flattened, it looks like a soft square popadum. The handwriting looks like little black ants stuck to the popadum. . . . It is a story of love . . . She doesn’t know who this paper belongs to.
The Television keeps informing us in the news bulletin that we are defeated yet again. The newspaper headlines scream. They say we are defeated, irrelevant, finished. And the reins are now in the hands of those who neither say their prayers nor keep the fast. On Allah’s vast earth, we small and humble Muslims are everywhere in ruins. Our lives and our lands lie like a pile of rubble. Our women have become disobedient like Western women. Our children seduced by the West into being strangers.
The heads that had never bowed before anyone but Allah are being cut off.
Kaukab frowns at the page. It reads like the text of a Friday sermon at a mosque. But what is it doing here?
It is a story of love. The caravans of the lovers of Allah are being ambushed again and again and looted. Those talking—they who “claim” to be the possessors of wisdom—say, “We should realize that we are weak and should bow down before the strong.”
From Adam to today, from Noah to Ibrahim, from Ibrahim to Lot, from Christ to Muhammad, peace be upon him: the believers carried the truth to streets and lanes. They were stoned. They were taunted. They were ridiculed by those who refused to believe. The Liars activated the laws against them. The non-believers said we won’t believe. The believers said we will believe even if they kill us, even if they burn our buttocks with live coal. (Remember the tip of my cigarette on your skin, Mah-Jabin? Keep that fire in mind. The fires of Hell are a thousand times hotter.)
Kaukab lets out a cry, and quickly turns the page around to see who this letter is from. There is no name. But, of course, she knows it is from Mah-Jabin’s husband: who else would write to her in Urdu? If so then what does the reference to the cigarette-burn imply: had his cigarette accidentally come into contact with Mah-Jabin once?
So: Is this temporary setback—the fact that the Muslims are humiliated everywhere on the planet—a defeat of the faithful? The earth and the sky say no it isn’t. The universe says no it isn’t. He who created the universe says no it isn’t. Those who side with the Liars, those who laugh at the true believers, those who wrinkle their brows every time Allah’s name is mentioned,those who claim to be God themselves—they are made an example of in the afterlife, and they are forced into burning flames day and night. This is the punishment for those who resisted the truth. They’ll have spikes in their flesh. (Remember the sewing needles in your thighs, Mah-Jabin?)
Kaukab reels and lowers herself onto the edge of the bath. Mah-Jabin has always let it be understood that her husband was a loving and caring young man . . .
Yes, we—the good—do stray from the path occasionally. Satan made me enter the room where Chanda was asleep during her and Jugnu’s stay with us. I had been unable to bear the burden of need ever since my own female deserted me. Satan made me approach her bed and beg her for comfort. Satan told me she was from the West and therefore would have easy morals. She said she would make a noise and awaken my father and Jugnu in the other room. I came to my senses and left. And in the morning—as if to remove temptation from before me—Allah made Chanda tell Jugnu that she was homesick for the West, and they left that very day. I remained on my prayer mat all day and well into the night, thanking Allah for havingremoved temptation from before my eyes, but His kindness towards my soul was unending: I was still on my prayer mat, in the middle of the night, when the telephone rang and Aunt Kaukab wanted us all to know that Jugnu and Chanda were lovers, sinners. Allah, the merciful, the Beneficent, saved me from polluting myself in that polluted stream! I haven’t told you any of this before but now I want you to know in order that you may be wise to His ways.
Kaukab, not believing what she has read, rereads the lines. She realizes now that she is not to blame for the fact that Chanda and Jugnu had left Pakistan earlier than they had planned. But there is little comfort in the alternative, real, sequence of events. “Poor Chanda.” She sits with her hand in her head. “My poor Mah-Jabin.” Suddenly she gets up and, a last attempt at resistance, looks behind the drum of the immersion heater. Could this letter be a trick of Mah-Jabin’s? A forgery to torment her? A plot hatched by Mah-Jabin and Ujala and Charag and the white girl Stella and Shamas to humiliate her, to ridicule her faith? But there behind the drum is the crumpled-up envelope the letter had come in. She recognizes it, remembers that it had arrived back in spring. The stamp portrays a tree ablaze with pink-white blossoms in the distance and in the foreground a sprig containing a ruffled orchid-like flower and a leaf resembling the imprint of a camel’s foot: it is Bauhinia variegata, the wording informs along a vertical margin, and horizontally that the stamp is one of the MEDICINAL PLANTS OF PAKISTAN. She drops the envelope and continues with the letter.
We stray but we beg for forgiveness and are pardoned because we are good. The world is lit only with the light of our love for Him, we, the men who were submissive to Allah, and the women who were submissive to their men.
The book of History is recording everything, and He is making a list of the believers and a list of the unbelievers. Try thinking about which list your name is going into, Mah-Jabin, and be afraid. What kind of End awaits you after this short life of fifty or sixty years?
Having read to the end, Kaukab picks up the tattered envelope from the floor and places the folded sheet of paper into it. She sits there, staring at the stamp depicting the pretty flower of the tree that is valued for, among other things, its effectiveness against malarial fevers, the abil ity to regularize menstrual dysfunction, and as an antidote to snake venom.
The sun rounds the corner and begins to sail at the front of the house. She sits there, wondering if that’s who she is, if that’s what her image looks like in the mirror: a mother who feeds poisons to her son, and a mother who jumps to conclusions and holds her daughter responsible for the fact that her marriage ended disastrously? The realizations are still new and she is not sure what effect they will have on her soul after she has lived with them for an hour, a day, a month. The bitterness of the poison is as yet only testing her tongue and mouth: what will happen when it soaks into the veins?
She hears a car pull up outside and, from the bathroom window, she looks down to see that Charag and Stella have arrived. Charag opens the back door of the car to let the eight-year-old son out. The temperature has plummeted over the past two days and Kaukab is pleased to see that the grandson is wrapped up against the December cold. The end of the woollen cap doubles in a band across his little forehead, over the ears and back along the nape of the neck, for extra warmth. When they were still married Kaukab had once seen Stella and Charag arrive for a visit—and Charag had kissed her on the lips out in the street. Kaukab had backed away. Must they display such lewdness in public? (Chanda and Jugnu at least spared her such obscene behaviour outdoors.) And right there in front of the little boy too, who would no doubt begin to chase girls as soon as he is in his teens and be sexually active by the time he is fifteen, thinking display-of-wantonness and sex-before-marriage was the norm and not grave sins! The little boy would no doubt marry a white girl and his own children would too: all trace of modesty and propriety would be bred out of them. Is this how Charag’s grandchildren would think of Charag?—“My mother and father are white, and my mother’s people are all white. I look a little dark because of one of my grandparents. He was a Paki.”
